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Herakleitos and Diogenes

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The fragments of Heraclitus (or, Herakleitos) and Diogenes are a collection of the remains of their now-lost works, joined to various sayings attributed to them by other ancient philosophers both in their own day and later. This is basically a collection of translated aphorisms - 124 of which belong to Heraclitus, and 124 of which belong to Diogenes. Each philosopher's fragments are given a brief introduction - although, for reasons unstated by the author, the introduction to Diogenes is almost 3 times as long as that for Heraclitus - and, in a few places, some explanatory notes are given for the translation. I was disappointed that the translator, Guy Davenport, gave no information whatsoever about the manuscripts that he used for the translations here, or any information about the history of the texts that he used for the translation. Although I do not know Greek, it would have been nice to at least have some of this sort of background material.

Neither set of fragments has any systematic organization; there is no narrative to follow. However, within the writings of Heraclitus one is given a sense of the permeability of all existence, and that the world we know is not a stable place. He has a tremendous sense of the instability of life, and he expresses this with some very poetic images: "One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped as moved on" (# 21); "There is a new sun for every day" (# 36). Some of the aphorisms are much food for thought; others are more humorous: "Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine reveals it" (# 53). All of them are worth reading, and if one chooses to make connections between them - if fire is the destruction of all things and pride is like fire, is he trying to say that pride will destroy us? - then one can come up with some interesting insights.

The fragments of Diogenes are of a very different flavor than Heraclitus's musings. Diogenes, as one reviewer put it below (quite brilliantly, I might add), really can be considered history's first punk. He was certainly an iconoclast, and he seems to have reveled in it. However, he also came up with some genuinely fascinating ideas that we still repeat today - "I am a citizen of the world" (# 7) and "Practice makes perfect" (# 119). He also stated, hundreds of years before St. Paul, that "Love of money is the marketplace of every evil" (# 78). Predictably, some of his musings are humorous - "Go into any whorehouse and learn the worthlessness of the expensive" (# 36) - but some are also quite quarrelsome; Diogenes seems to have had a considerable dislike for Plato, in particular.

Readings this book might take you a full hour. However, there are considerations in these pages worth mulling over for years, and perhaps even a lifetime. This, of course, is exactly what philosophy is supposed to be.

Sharp and concise are how these translations come across. Compared with recent translations like Brooks Haxton's (Heraclitus) and Luis Navia's (Diogenes the Cynic), Davenport's work will stand the test of time. Highly recommended.

Parataxis

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

The Cloud Reckoner

Before grunge, before punk, before monks renouncing this "evil world" for the purity of the desert, there was Diogenes. If Plato codified and, to some extent, "created" Western philosophy, then Diogenes lit a stink bomb at Plato's Academy and sent all the earnest young students scrambling for fresh air: what they didn't realize was that Diogenes WAS that fresh air. Listen to his dismissal of the great man of the West: "Plato winces when I track dust across his rugs: he knows that I'm walking on his vanity." And how about his summary of the state of Greek culture in the mid-fourth century B.C.E.: "Men nowhere, but real boys at Sparta." Nor did his satiric bite exempt his own condition: "When I die, throw me to the wolves. I'm used to it." How many of Plato's dialogues deliver a message as direct as this one?: "I threw away my cup when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough." In pithy saying after saying, Diogenes makes it clear that he has "broken through" to the freedom of being owned neither by his possessions nor by society's limitations, all of which is in some sly way conveyed by his opening [in Davenport's translation] salvo: "I have come to debase the coinage." And, oh yes, this translation includes all the meaningful fragments of Herakleitos as well. But once you have read Diogenes, Herakleitos will seem like the stodgiest old coot you've ever heard of, except maybe for Plato. [Updated versions of these translations are also available in Davenport's 7 GREEKS, which also includes the "complete" works of Sappho, Archilochos, Alkman, Anakreon and Herondas.]

It's a collection of quotes with some very terse history. Personally, this book is of no use to me, but if you like quote lists, then you'll love it.