A Dog's Life
Diogenes rejected the worship of gods because he said they didn't need anything from humans, and that it was outside the bounds of what should be daily living. He felt that for a human to be in accord with nature is to be rational, and it is in the nature of a human being to act in accord with reason. He pursued simplicity and virtue in his own life and didn't hesitate to point out the flaws in other people's lives. He was contentious, but only to promote virtue, as he understood it, in other people.
The idea of a cynic was to live life in the same way that a dog does, according to historian Jennifer Michael Hecht. "Why try to press against this mad universe our plans and memories and desires and try to defend them against the cruel world when, instead, we could just kind of go with the flow and not worry about our dignity, for instance? And that's really the key point of being like the dogs. Live outside, then you don't have to defend a house. Live casually. Go to the bathroom in the same way dogs go to the bathroom. Don't be ashamed of yourself and don't try to accomplish anything. When we think of cynicism today, we tend to think of people dismissing even those things dogs love. And that's inappropriate." And yes, Diogenes is reported to literally have been seen barking in public and masturbating and urinating in the marketplace without shame.
Value of Doubt
In modern times, we often equate religious doubt with the rejection of ideas and theologies, but such doubt is actually the opposite. People who reject, as well as people who accept, beliefs and theologies are not doubters. At the extremes of religious dialog, both atheists and fundamentalists alike are confident of the correctness of their positions. As we look back through history, however, we realize that all of the major advances in religion have been made by doubters, the insiders who were open to new thinking, rather than heretics, the outsiders who disregarded the official doctrine. Doubters have often articulated positive philosophies that lead the way forward.
Diogenes asked the important religious questions, and found a way of using his skepticism to advance the conventions of his day. In the words of historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, "The great doubters have tried to figure out how you can live, and they've very much respected the answers that religion has come up with. They just have to fill in certain parts differently because they don't think that the world is being guided or has been created or is being judged by anyone. And if you don't think that you're being watched and if you don't think that, for instance, morality comes from some outside source, it immediately gives you an incredible amount of responsibility. We can start to think about morality in different ways and start to celebrate the aspect of humanity that generates this thing. And it doesn't mean you have to question the religious morality because, indeed, the doubters suggest that that came from humanity in the first place. So there's no reason to throw it out."
Essence of the Universe
The following reading is from the reported sayings of Diogenes. Like other thinkers who proceeded Socrates, Diogenes sought to understand what the world was made of. "And my view is that that which has intelligence is what men call air, and that all things have their course steered by it and that it has power over all things. For this very thing I hold to be a God and to reach everywhere and to dispose everything and to be in everything. And there is not anything which does not partake in it. Yet no single thing partakes in it just in the same way as another. But there are many modes both of air and of intelligence, for it undergoes many transformations. Warmer and colder, drier and moister, more stable and in swifter motion, and it has many other differentiations in it and an infinite number of colors and savors."