ABSTRACT
Four formulae are important for the Cynics' conceptualization of their lifestyle: rejecting inherited custom, living according to nature, cultivating self-sufficiency, and speaking with uncompromising honesty. Absolute freedom in the moment is a peak experience barred from most people most of the time, according to a Cynic like Diogenes Laertius. Diogenes led the most uncompromising assault on custom, as if it were the citadel of tyranny. Separated from the comforts that communal custom makes possible, a Diogenes seeks to recover their true meaning in the simple necessities of ascetic, natural living: eating, drinking, and sleeping only according to bodily need. Diogenes for his part was not a silent sage. Images of Diogenes mocking Plato's forms have led many after Nietzsche to take him as a model of subjective self-fashioning: in a world decentered by the "death of God" and uncoupled from objective grand narratives and Platonic Goods. Diogenes' laughing self-sufficiency is the model for a meaningful existence.
