• nehal3m
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    5 months ago

    According to legend, Alexander the Great came to visit the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. Alexander wanted to fulfill a wish for Diogenes and asked him what he desired. As told by Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes replied, “Stand out of my light.”

    One day while he was eating a frugal dish of lentils, he was challenged by the philosopher Aristippus, who, for his part, led a golden life as he was one of the king’s courtiers. Aristippus scornfully told him: “See, if you learned to crawl before the king, you wouldn’t have to settle for rubbish like this vulgar dish of lentils!” Diogenes replied: “If you’d learned to make do with lentils, you wouldn’t have to crawl before the king!”

    Big dick energy. Love this guy.

        • SuddenDownpour
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          5 months ago

          That also serves as a response to his blabbering.

          “Aren’t you ashamed that you should have worse intentions for yourself than nature had?”

          “My dude, you literally live in a barrel. And cover yourself already.”

      • zaph
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        5 months ago

        He should be ashamed to think nature doesn’t make mistakes. Although, and not to “it was a different time” this, he probably didn’t know about cancer and had some other excuse for birth defects.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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          5 months ago

          You can’t fully extract yourself from your cultural environment, exceptional philosophers like him already managed to do that a lot more than commoners but he missed other things, it’s to be expected. Reminds me of the people who wrote the first Men’s Rights Rights of Man and of the Citizen during the French revolution which was incredible progress and yet they voluntarily ignored women, despite women fighting to be mentioned (like her https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympe_de_Gouges).

          • twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            Just a heads up: you put the closing parenthesis and period inside the hyperlink you posted.

            Nbd, and good comment, just letting you know.

            • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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              5 months ago

              UI dependant bug I guess because it looks normal on the default web interface.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          He should be ashamed of even believing nature had any sort of will or intentionality. Nature doesn’t care about what Diogenes, or any human for that matter, has to say about nature.

      • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Wow, my opinion of this intentionally abrasive and combative, potentially mentally ill homeless man who was well known for public urination, defecation, and masturbation, and who lived in a society 2400 years divorced from my own, whose understanding of gender and sex that was, as is the case for literally all of us, a product of his environment and upbringing, has never been lower.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          Did you actually read those articles? The latter was a biographer of the former (among others – he wrote about pretty much all of the famous Greek philosophers).

          • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            Yes, I did read it. I’m going to need a source that says that was written by Diogenes Laertius quoting sometime else, not a quote of him, and he was quoting Diogenes of Sinope and not one of the other “pretty much all of the famous Greek philosophers”.

            Maybe you should brush up on basic logic with Aristotle.

            • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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              5 months ago

              Well lucky for us, the book is so old that it’s long out of copyright, and additionally, the screenshot includes a precise location within that book (6.65, likely referring to Book 6, paragraph 65).

              Here’s the book:

              https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_VI#Diogenes

              Please verify for yourself that paragraph 65 does indeed relay the same story as presented above, so that we can all be safe in the assumption that “he” in that paragraph does indeed refer to Diogenes of Sinope, not Diogenes Laertius.

          • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            This comment should be automatically linked to anyone on this platform saying the average Lemmy poster is smarter or less sheepish in their behavior than the average reddit poster. People are legit downvoting you for being right and having sources to back up your argument.

            • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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              5 months ago

              People are the same everywhere you go. Everyone thinks they’re smarter, kinder, and better educated than “those guys over there”. Lemmy is no exception.

      • nehal3m
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        5 months ago

        Oof. Was not aware of that one.

      • Lucidlethargy
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        5 months ago

        I saw the meme as more this specific lesson (above) that he was on about.

        I don’t know any single person I’m willing to listen to completely. People are flawed, ignorant, and often stupid.

    • pumpkinseedoil
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      5 months ago

      Usually it’s translated as “step/stand out of my sun” (just in case someone is wondering which light is meant)