Įchoes of this story appear again in the Islamic world. There amidst the crowds a talkative fellow shouted at him, ‘Aesop, what are you doing with a lamp in the middle of the day?’ ‘I’m just looking to see if I can find a real man’, said Aesop, as he quickly made his way back home. Since his search had taken him out of his way along a winding path, he decided to shorten his journey on the way back and go straight through the forum. He thus had to visit a few houses looking for fire, until at last he found a place where he could light his lamp. Once when Aesop happened to be the only slave in his master’s household, he was ordered to prepare dinner earlier than usual. Although as a historical figure Aesop predated Diogenes, many of the stories in the Fables are later attributions, and so it is likely that the story of Aesop is based on the story of Diogenes, and not vice versa. It appears in Aesop's Fables, where Aesop himself is the fool with a lamp. This idea of the Wise Fool and their lamp recurred throughout the literary and philosophical traditions of Europe, and also spread beyond to the Islamic world. When challenged about his behaviour, he said, 'If only rubbing the stomach could alleviate hunger pains so easily.' ĭiogenes parading with his lamp through Athens is itself a kind of performance: he shows himself to be a fool (who needs a lamp in daylight?) but in making a scene like this, he is also underlining the fact there is nobody in the whole city who is a straight-up, honest human being. He was renowned, for example, for public masturbation. Plato's description was apt: like Socrates, Diogenes called his fellow-citizens to account but the ways in which he did so were more extreme. And he had a sharp awareness of the foolishness of everyday life. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.ĭiogenes was a philosopher who mixed extravagant showmanship with a taste for ribald comedy. When people asked him what he was doing, he said, 'I'm searching for an honest man.' Image from UK Office of War Information 1943-5.
Another much-retold anecdote is that he went around in full daylight holding up a lamp. He allegedly described him as 'Socrates with a screw loose.' And Diogenes's behaviour was admittedly bizarre. Plato was, unsurprisingly, not impressed by Diogenes. But Diogenes refuted it by plucking a chicken, bringing it to Plato’s Academy, plopping it down and proclaiming, ‘There’s Plato’s Man for you!’ The definition was generally well received. In one famous story about Diogenes, Plato defined Man as a featherless biped. In the ancient Greek world, the philosopher Diogenes the Cynic was even more well-known than Socrates for his foolish wisdom. The Wise Fool is someone who, in their search for wisdom, appears foolish in the eyes of the world. Being both wise and a fool, he was able to fool with those who claimed wisdom for themselves, and in fooling with them, he could demonstrate that they too were fools - only more foolish fools than he was himself. Arguably, Socrates was both a fool (he was ignorant) and wise (he knew he was ignorant). This history goes back at least as far as Socrates. The idea of the Wise Fool has a long history. Looking for the light: The wise fool and the lamp So when thinking through what it means to be wise, we are going to have to ask what it means to be foolish. And also we know that for the Zhuangzi there is something wise in giving up in the pursuit of wisdom.
We already know that Socrates was a self-confessed know-nothing. Instead, it seems that for some philosophers, at least, there is a kind of wisdom in foolishness. One reason for this is that throughout the history of philosophy, the relationship between wisdom and foolishness has not been one of simple opposition. If philosophy has always been preoccupied with wisdom, its relationship with the opposite of wisdom-foolishness-has always been a vexed one.
So what is the relationship between philosophy and foolishness? But throughout its history, philosophy has also been haunted by wisdom's opposite: foolishness.