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In Search of an Honest Man
- blotter_paper 7y agoThe title is an obvious reference to Diogenes, though his name isn't on the page. The story goes that he would walk around Athens with a lantern in the daytime, and when asked what he was doing he'd reply "searching for an honest man." Another fun story about Diogenes has Alexander seeking him out (while the other great philosophers of Athens sought out Alexander), only to find him laying in the sun. Alexander supposedly told Diogenes to ask for anything he wanted, and Diogenes replied "stop blocking my sun." According to a third fable of history, when Plato defined "man" as "a featherless biped" Diogenes burst into the academy holding a plucked chicken and declared "BEHOLD: A MAN!" He also liked to eat and masturbate in the marketplace, as a defiance of social norms (and maybe because he liked masturbating in public, but that's revisionist history).