Post funny anecdotes about philosophers
I'll start with a classic:
>One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, the 3rd century BC Greek Stoic philosopher, tells that he died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died"
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I still can't believe Plato thought a chicken was a man
Backstory
Sayings of Diogenes the Maddest:
>When he was once entering the house of a courtesan, and one of the lads who was with him blushed, he said, 'It's not going in that is bad, but unable to get out again.'.
>Seeing a young man behaving in a giddy and deranged fashion, he said, 'Young man, your father must have been drunk when he begot you'.'
>"Seeing an old woman beautifying herself, he said, 'If that's for the living, you're out of your wits, if it's for the dead, don't be too slow about it."
>"When someone chided Diogenes on seeing him coming out of a brothel, he said, 'What's the matter then, should I have been coming out of your house?'
>"Seeing an Ethiopian shitting, he said, 'Just like a leaky cauldron!'"
>"Seeing a woman who was beautiful but small, he said, 'That's what they call a half-evil.'"
>"When someone pointed out to him that a woman was being carried away by a river, and said, 'Lets try to save her', he replied, 'Oh let the notorious evil be carried away by another evil.'
>"Diogenes was admonishing a man of thoroughly bad character, and when someone asked him what he was doing, he replied, 'Scrubbing an Ethiopian to turn him white.'"
[when Diogenes was a slave]
>"It is said that when he observed that one of the purchasers, who was suffering from the female disease [an eunuch], was not at all masculine in his appearance, he went up to him and said, 'Why don't you buy me, since it seems to me that you could do with a man.'"
>"When someone asked him, "What sort of a man do you consider Diogenes to be, he [Plato] replied, 'Socrates gone mad'"
>"Diogenes would constantly say that to manage our lives properly, we need either reason or rope."
Who was the one that jumped in a volcano?
>diogenes hates plato (and everyone else for that matter)
>plato says "man is a featherless bird"
>diogenes plucks a chicken, bursts where plato was holding a lecture, and screams, holding the chicken "BEHOLD, A MAN!"
>plato later so butthurt he changes it to "man is a featherless bird with feet"
No, Plato said Man was a featherless biped.
Plato was being a pretentious prick as always and thought he could show everyone how smart he was. So he told a gathering of listeners that man could be classified as a bipedal animal with hard nails. Thinking he had figured out the secrets of science and so happy with himself.
Diogenes heard this description and threw a chicken at Platos feet and said "I present Platos "Man""
It goes something like that as I remember. Diogenes was based.
sorry, brain sharted
Still better version than I could remember.
The thought of Diogenes crashing platos lectures by yawning, laughing and eating loudly really fucking cracks me up for some reason
Diogenes would walk up to people in the market and bark at them until they threw him scraps. Thus he was known as Diogenes the Dog.
He also urinated, defecated, and masturbated publically. When asked if he did not consider it below common dignity to do these things in society he declared that there is nothing beneath the dignity of society.
He reportedly lived in a large tub or bell outside the city. During mid day he would walk about the city with a lit lantern looking for an honest man.
When he saw a boy drinking from a well with his hands he smashed his wooden bowl.
All in all he was an ancient edge lord and walking meme machine. He would have fit right in here on 4 Chan.
Was it autism?
Yeah, like I said, he would fit in well here.
The Oracle told him he was a breaker of coins, and he thought it meant customs
pretty sure a friend of nietzsche's criticized him by saying that he masturbated too much
>“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.”
Absolutely savage.
The epitome of "say that to my face fucker not online see what happens"
The madman gave a wicked diss to literally the greatest conquerer in the world.
>>"Diogenes would constantly say that to manage our lives properly, we need either reason or rope."
>tfw all out of reason
Posting it cause nobody else has yet
Diogenes was really just a genius at marketing cynicism. Being the leader of an Athenian philosophy school was extremely competitive which is why he heckled Plato so much, because he recognized him as his main rival.
a featherless biped
>with nails
was the distinction Plato added after he got rekt. chicken still have feet you silly goose.
Empedocles
So Diogenes was basically the first otherkin?
>Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".
>He was known to talk to himself, a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions.
>He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness, and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study.
>According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he needed help to escape.
>He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had.
>According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24 km) outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality.
kek
Smith ? Adam?
"Hey look its nigger jim" - Mark Twain
>plato later so butthurt he changes it to "man is a featherless bird with feet
>feet
it was flat nails.
What was that one about the Irish guy who called Charles the Bald a drunkard
Bernard Stiegler robbed a bank
holy fugggggggSNAP!!!!
what does that quote mean?
You either need a reason to live and guide your life, or you may as well hang yourself with rope because without reason to guide your life you're fucked. Without purpose humans degrade like the mice utopia experiments. Without purpose, there is no reason to live. It is why ya see poor people happier than rich people. The poor have a purpose as simple or complex as it may be. The rich people have all their needs met. Now what? We weren't designed to have no purpose, we need something. Without it we lean towards self destructive behaviors; whether unrestrained hedonism always seeking out new experiences and sensations for novelty, or a void in your life that leads to suicide. Or both. With nothing to keep you moving forward you either die or you become self destructive. Unless you find purpose, that is.
i c
thank u
Did Diogenes really hate Ethiopians that much, or has /pol/ added some quotes in there?
If you think that's "hate," you need to deprogram yourself. Perhaps it was just a poor choice of words though.
Does Newton count as a philosopher?
>In September of that year, Newton had a breakdown which included sending wild accusatory letters to his friends Samuel Pepys and John Locke. His note to the latter included the charge that Locke "endeavoured to embroil me with woemen".
Yes
But my life has little to no purpose, yet I'm not particularly hedonistic or suicidal. I think it's possible for one to live in a gray fog and then die.
I'm just wondering what the hell were Ethiopians doing in Greece
Althusser strangled his wife.
That's neither funny nor an anecdote
>neither funny
gtfo normie
Trading, being slaves, the whole gambit. Unless you're asking how they got there, just a quick trip down the Nile and across the Mediterranean.
...
Ethiopia was fairly developed and traded a lot in spices with India and also produced their own gold. Greece and Egypt were in frequent contact and trade, Egypt was in frequent trade with Ethiopia.
There are several sets of rapids/waterfalls along the nile that could not be traversed by boat, most of them in Sudan, which is why Egyptian influence never spread further into Africa. It was impossibly to get to ethiopia by river so they travelled up and down the red sea.
>''I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.''
>hear someone shitposting
>get mad
>pluck an entire chicken
>throw it on the floor in the middle of a man's speech to discredit him
The ancients knew how to b8
That was John Scottus Eriugena (whose name literally means John the Irishman from Ireland)
>William of Malmesbury's humorous anecdote illustrates both the character of Eriugena and the position he occupied at the French court. The king having asked, Quid distat inter sottum et Scottum? (What separates a sot [drunkard] from an Irishman?), Eriugena replied, Tabula tantum (Only a table).
Another anecdote about John Scottus: He is said to have been stabbed to death by his students because "He made us think".
I went to a school named after him, which is pretty ironic when you remember how he supposedly died.
The school itself was weird as fuck too. All sorts of /b/-tier shit went down there.
Once, during the XVII century, due to the napoleonic wars, Hegel was forced to carry around the entire manuscript for Phenomenology of Spirit with him and so he did and while doing so one day he looked down from a building or something and saw Napoleon passing by, stating: "There goest the spirit of time". And so he said while he himself carried some part of said spirit.
>not posting Diogenes
Niggerwut
Read the thread nigga
pretty much all of diogenes / the other stoics. Penguin puts out a good collection on the Stoics
Ikkyu, a zen monk, too
>He is said to have been stabbed to death by his students because "He made us think".
Really makes you think
>anecdotes
are everything that is wrong with how people appreciate history. repeating these stupid cliche narratives are bad for both the board and your own intelligence
>implying anyone takes these anecdotes seriously
>implying the constant influx of /pol/ tier race baiting threads isn't far worse for the board
Philosophers are serious business, not a topic of funny anecdotes.
He didn't hate Ethiopians. He just thought they were funny looking.
being slaves.
Did ancient Greeks used rope as a metaphor for suicide?
Seems to me that the rope means "coercion" and thus the quote means that Person needs either reason to live wisely or a leader to obey.
>philosophers are serious business
It's like you've never read Plato
>The father of modern economics was completely cut off from reality
hmm
Hanging was a relatively common method of suicide/execution in ancient Greece, but it is worth noting here that it was considered a particularly effeminate way of killing oneself. I didn't stick Greek long enough at school to tell you whether or not "the rope" would be a common metaphor for suicide though.
Poison was the masculine way out, right?
If you could call it that, sure. Socrates wasn't quite as popular in the century or so immediately following his death as we'd like to believe today, but even his detractors respected how he stuck to his principles and this set a precedent of poison being seen a "respectable" method of suicide
>But my life has little to no purpose, yet I'm not particularly hedonistic or suicidal.
Are you sure?
How much have you been eating?
How much have you been masturbating?
How much have you lazed around?
Trading.
Stop crying.
He's German, excuse him.
What the fuck are you saying?
>He fell into a huge tanning pit
Jesus that's fucking disgusting. If it didn't burn him to death, then it wasn't the lye stage of the process... he fell into the giant vat of dog, cat, and human shit they put the hides in to soften them.
>He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had.
rofl
sounds like nonironic autism
the 2nd bit about "scrubbing and Ethiopian white" has to do with the impossible, Ethiopians clearly can't be "washed" white, and admonishing an evil man is just as fruitless
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Diogenese BTFOD by archeologists
>The school itself was weird as fuck too. All sorts of /b/-tier shit went down there.
...do continue
Dying of laughter is very unstoic when you think about it.
The great philosopher and mystic Empedocles, best known for the "theory of atoms", died when he leapt into an active volcano in order to prove his divinity.
>best known for the "theory of atoms",
Wrong, he may have been an atomist but his chief contribution was the theory of the "four elements" (earth, air, fire and water, plus the two forces of 'love' and 'strife')
>When he saw a boy drinking from a well with his hands he smashed his wooden bowl.
This only makes sense in the context that the wooden bowl was all he owned at that point, except for the amphora in which he lived and maybe some clothes.
>17th century
>Hegel
>Napoleonic Wars
Nope
He sought to harden himself from the elements and create durability where possible
>>"When someone chided Diogenes on seeing him coming out of a brothel, he said, 'What's the matter then, should I have been coming out of your house?'
Savage wew lads
I love him now.
>Socrates gone mad
But Socrates was already mad
>Muh /pol/
>Fuck off faggot