Discourses and Selected Writings (29 page)

[114] This is the kind of freedom Diogenes got from Antisthenes, saying he could never again be enslaved by anyone. [115] Which explains his behaviour toward the pirates when they took him captive.
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Did he call any of them ‘master’? No. And I don’t mean the word; it’s not the word I’m concerned with, but the attitude behind it. [116] He yelled at them for not feeding their captives better. And when he was sold, it was not a master he looked to get, but a slave of his own.

And how did he act toward his new owner? He at once began to criticize him, saying that he shouldn’t dress this way, shouldn’t cut his hair that way – besides advising him on how his sons should be brought up. [117] And why not? If the owner had bought a personal trainer, he would have acknowledged the trainer to be his superior, not his slave, so far as exercise is concerned. The same goes if he had bought a doctor or architect. In any field you care to name, the person with experience should command the one without. [118] So whoever is possessed of knowledge about how to live should naturally take precedence there. For who else is master of a ship except
the captain? Why? Just because whoever disobeys him is punished?

[119] ‘But so-and-so can have me whipped.’

Not with impunity, however.

‘Well, so I believed too.’

And because he does not act with impunity, he does not act with authority; no one can get away with injustice.

[120] ‘And what punishment do you foresee for the master who puts his own slave in chains?’

The act itself of putting him in chains – an idea even you will accept if you have any wish to honour the principle that human beings are civilized animals, not beasts. [121] A plant or animal fares poorly when it acts contrary to its nature; [122] and a human being is no different. Well, then, biting, kicking, wanton imprisonment and beheading – is that what our nature entails? No; rather, acts of kindness, cooperation and good will. And so, whether you like it or not, a person fares poorly whenever he acts like an insensitive brute.

[123] ‘So you’re saying that Socrates did not fare poorly?’

That’s right – the jurors and his accusers did instead.

‘Nor Helvidius at Rome?’

No – but the person who killed him did.

‘How do you reckon that?’

[124] Well, you don’t call a fighting cock that’s bloodied but victorious unfortunate, but rather one who lost without receiving a scratch. And you don’t yell ‘Good dog!’ at one that doesn’t hunt or work; you do it when you see one panting, labouring, exhausted from the chase. [125] What’s odd in asserting that what’s bad for anything is what runs contrary to its nature? You say it for everything else, why make humanity the sole exception?

[126] Well, but we assert that in their nature human beings are gentle, honest and cooperative – that’s pretty ridiculous, is it not? No, that isn’t either – [127] which is why no one suffers harm even if they are flogged, jailed or beheaded. The victim may be majestic in suffering, you see, and come through a better, more fortunate person; while the one who really comes to harm, who suffers the most and the most pitifully, is the
person who is transformed from human being to wolf, snake or hornet.

[128] All right then, let us go over the points we are agreed on. The unhindered person is free, that is, the person who has ready access to things in the condition he prefers. Whoever can be thwarted, however, or coerced, frustrated or forced into a situation against their will – that person is a slave. [129] The person who renounces externals cannot be hindered, as externals are things that are not within our power either to have or not to have – or to have in the condition we might like. [130] Externals include the body and its members, as well as material goods. If you grow attached to any of them as if they were your own, you will incur the penalties prescribed for a thief.

[131] This is the road that leads to liberty, the only road that delivers us from slavery: finally to be able to say, with meaning:

Lead me, Zeus, lead me, Destiny,

to the goal I was long ago assigned

[132] What about you, philosopher? The tyrant is going to call on you to bear false witness. Tell us: do you play along or not?

‘Let me think it over.’

Think it over
now?
What were you thinking over in school? Didn’t you rehearse which things are good, which are bad, and which are neither?

[133] ‘I did.’

And what did you decide?

‘That justice and fairness are good, vice and injustice bad.’

Is life a good?

‘No.’

Is dying bad?

‘No.’

Or jail?

‘No.’

And what about slanderous and dishonest talk, betraying a friend, and trying to ingratiate yourself with a tyrant – how exactly did you characterize those?

[134] ‘As bad.’

Well, it’s obvious that you aren’t thinking it over, and you
never did think it over in the past. I mean, how much thought is really required to decide whether you should exercise your power to get the greatest goods and avoid the greatest evils? A fit subject for thought, no doubt, calling for a great deal of deliberation. Who are you kidding? No such inquiry ever took place. [135] If you really did believe that vice alone is bad and everything else indifferent, you never would have needed time to ‘think it over’ – far from it. You’d be able to make a decision immediately, using your faculty of reason as readily as sight. [136] I mean, when do you have to ‘think over’ whether black things are white, or light things heavy? No, the clear evidence of the senses is enough. So why say now that you have to ‘think over’ whether indifferents are more to be avoided than evils? [137] The fact is, this is not what you really believe: you don’t think that death and jail, etc. are indifferent, you count them among the greatest evils; and you don’t regard false witness, etc. as evil, but matters of indifference.

[138] You’ve developed this habit from the beginning. ‘Where am I? In school. And who is my audience? I’m conversing with philosophers. But now that I’ve left school, away with those pedantic and naive doctrines.’ And thus a philosopher comes to traduce a friend, [139] thus a philosopher turns informer and prostitutes his principles, thus a member of the Senate comes to betray his beliefs. Inside, his real opinion cries out to be heard – [140] no faint or timid idea, based on casual reasoning and hanging, as it were, by a thread, but a strong and vital conviction rooted in practical experience.

[141] Be careful how you take the news – I won’t say that your child died, because you couldn’t possibly tolerate that -but that your cruet of oil fell over. Or that someone drank up all your wine. [142] Anyone finding you in despair might well say, simply, ‘Philosopher, you sang a different tune in school. Don’t try to deceive us, or pretend that you are a human being when you’re no more than a worm.’ [143] I’d like to come upon one of them having sex, just to see how much they exert themselves and what kind of sounds they make; whether they remember who they are or recall any of the sentiments which they hear and preach and read.

[144] What has any of this to do with freedom? On the contrary, nothing
except
this relates to freedom, whether rich people such as you choose to believe it or not.

[145] ‘What proof do you have of that?’

Only you yourselves, with your abject reverence for your great master, the emperor, whose every nod and gesture you live by. You faint if he even squints at you, and toady before the old men and women of the court, saying, ‘I can’t possibly do that, I’m not allowed.’ [146] And why can’t you? Weren’t you just arguing with me that you were free? ‘But Aprulla won’t let me.’ Tell the truth, slave – don’t run away from your masters or refuse to acknowledge them, don’t dare to invoke an emancipator when proofs of your servitude are so manifest.

[147] I mean, someone constrained by love to act against their better judgement, who sees the right thing to do but is powerless to act on it, might be considered the more deserving of compassion inasmuch as they are in the grip of a violent and, in some ways, a supernatural force. [148] But what sympathy can you expect with your passion for old men and women, as you wipe their nose and wash their face, ply them with presents and nurse them when they’re sick as if you are their slave – all the while praying for their death and pestering their doctors to find out if they are terminal yet or not. Or when you kiss the hands of other people’s slaves, making yourself the slave of slaves, all for the sake of these great and glorious honours and offices – what can you expect then?

[149] So don’t parade before me in your pride because you are a consul or a praetor – I know how you came by these offices, and who presented them to you. [150] Speaking for myself, I would rather be dead than owe my living to Felicio, having to put up with his airs and his typical slave’s impertinence. I know what a slave is like who has acquired influence and self-importance.

[151] ‘Are
you
free, then?’

By God I wish I were, and I pray to be; but I still can’t face my masters, I continue to value my poor body, I attach great importance to keeping healthy – though it isn’t healthy at all.
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[152] But I
can
show you a free man, to satisfy your desire for an exemplar. Diogenes
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– he was free. Why? Not because his parents were free (they weren’t), but because he himself was. He had eliminated any means to capture him, there was no opening to attack or seize him in order to make him a slave. [153] Everything he owned was disposable, and only temporarily attached. If you had seized any of his possessions, he would have surrendered it to you sooner than be pulled along behind it. If you had grabbed him by the leg, he would have given up the leg; if you had seized his entire body, the entire body would have been sacrificed. The same with family, friends and country: he knew where they had come from, from whom, and on what terms.

[154] His true parents, the gods – these he never would have dared sacrifice; nor his real country, the world at large. He yielded to no one in his zeal to serve and obey the gods, and there is no one who would have sooner died for his country. [155] He did not care for the mere appearance of acting on the world’s behalf; he constantly bore in mind that events all have their source there and happen for the sake of that universal homeland by the command of God, who governs it. Observe, therefore, what he personally says and writes: [156] ‘Here’s why, Diogenes, you are at liberty to speak your mind to the Persian king as well as to Archidamus, king of the Spartans.’
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[157] Is it because he was of freeborn parentage? Sure, and I suppose the reason all the citizens of Athens, Sparta and Corinth could
not
address them as they pleased, but feared and flattered them instead, was that their parents all were slaves. [158] So why did he enjoy this licence? ‘Because I don’t consider the body to be my own, because I lack for nothing, and because the law
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is the only thing I esteem, nothing else.’ That’s what enabled him to be free.

[159] And just so you don’t think I choose as my exemplar of freedom someone unencumbered by wife, children, friends, relatives and the demands of citizenship, factors that could make one bend and compromise, take for consideration Socrates, who had both wife and children, but as if they were
on loan. He had a country, to the degree and in the manner called for; he had friends and relatives – but all these were subordinate to the law and the need to obey it.
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[160] And so, when he was drafted to serve, he was the first one to leave home, and once on the line fought without any regard for his life. Ordered by the tyrants to arrest Leon, he did not give a thought to obeying, because he thought the act unlawful, even knowing there was a chance he might die if he refused. [161] He didn’t care; it was not his skin he wanted to save, but the man of honour and integrity. These things are not open to compromise or negotiation.

[162] Later, when he had to defend himself at risk of his life, he did not comport himself like someone with a wife and children, but as someone alone and unattached. And how did he behave when it was time to drink the poison? [163] Given the opportunity to save himself, with Crito urging him to go into exile for his children’s sake, did he look upon this as the lucky pretext he needed to stay alive? Hardly. He reflected on the right thing to do, with no thought or regard for anything else. In his own words, he didn’t want to save the body, he wanted to preserve the element that grows and thrives with every act of justice, the element that is diminished and dies by injustice.
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[164] Socrates does not save his life at the cost of dishonour – Socrates, who resisted the Athenians’ call to bring an illegal motion to a vote,
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defied the tyrants, and spoke so memorably on the subject of virtue and character. Such a man is not saved with dishonour; [165] an honourable death, not flight, is his salvation. A good actor preserves his reputation not by speaking lines out of turn but by knowing when to talk – and when to keep quiet.

[166] So what will become of his children? ‘If I had run off to Thessaly, you would have cared for them. If I go to Hades, will no one be there to look after them?’ Note how he makes light of death, and sports with the idea of it. [167] If it had been you or I, we quickly would have rationalized our behaviour thus: ‘People who wrong us should be paid back in kind,’ not failing to add, ‘If my life is spared I will help many people, but dead I’m of no use to anyone.’ If we had to squeeze
through a mousehole to escape, we would have done it. [168] But how could we then have helped anyone, with our friends still back in Athens?
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If we had been helpful alive, wouldn’t we have done people much more good by accepting death in the appropriate time and manner? [169] Even now, long after Socrates’ death, the memory of what he did and said benefits humanity as much as or more than ever.

[170] Study this – these principles, these arguments – and contemplate these models of behaviour, if you want to be free, and your desire corresponds to the goal’s importance. [171] Don’t be surprised if so great a goal costs you many a sacrifice. For love of what they considered freedom men have hanged themselves, have thrown themselves over cliffs – and whole cities have occasionally been destroyed. [172] For true, inviolable, unassailable freedom, yield to God when he asks for something back that he earlier gave you. Prepare yourself, as Plato says,
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not just for death, but for torture, exile, flogging – and the loss of everything not belonging to you. [173] You will be a slave among slaves otherwise; even if you are a consul ten thousand times over, even if you make your residence on the Palatine,
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you will be a slave none the less.