Comment on It is crazy how Whitewashed the practice of roman slavery has become

• Schmoo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Ah, that makes sense. Even more hypocritical of him then to suggest slaves shouldn’t try to free themselves. He leveraged his privilege to obtain a favorable outcome for himself and then allowed that experience to paint the way he viewed the institution of slavery as a whole.

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  • PugJesus@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I also don’t remember him advising slaves not to free themselves.

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    • Schmoo@slrpnk.net ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      So I looked back at where I got this from - an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Diogenes - and it seems this is more of an interpretation of Diogenes’ teachings by Margaret (the host) rather than something he said directly. Here’s the relevant portion:

      Speaker 2 (27:57): Because he also wrote books, so he clearly owned more than and just these things. You know, at various points, maybe he’s like borrowing a pen to write a book. I don’t know whatever, And basically he’s like, hey, sell me to that guy, and people are like, oh, it’s because he believes so much in this philosophy. I think Diogenes is being canny and knew it would go better with that guy, probably because he knows he’s educated, like

      (28:20): he himself is educated, and he’s like, oh, I can get myself into like a teaching job instead of a fucking mining job, you know, right. He works for Zeniades for a few years, running the man’s household and tutoring his kids, who apparently all loved him, and then he was freed. Letting people buy their own freedom was a

      (28:41): way to recoup capital costs. You steal a few years of someone’s life and then you let them pay you back. Your upfront cost. And also if you promise the slave you’re going to free them, they’re much nicer to you.

      Speaker 1 (28:53): Yeah, and you are able to extract their labor.

      Speaker 2 (28:55): Yeah, totally. And so it’s technically hypocritical of him to want to become free again and to like buy himself this freedom. And I do not blame him for this hypocrisy at all. This is a completely natural thing. He taught that if you desire to better your station in society, like a slave who wants to be free, as the example uses, it’ll never be enough. You’ll get free, and

      (29:15): then you’ll want to be a slave owner, obviously, naturally, that just happens to everyone, and then you’d want to be a landowner, and then a citizen, and then an officer, and then a king and then godhood. Where does it stop?

      Speaker 1 (29:28): I know, it’s just too much slop, very slope.

      Speaker 2 (29:31): But like whatever is a philosopher, he’s going to make random as philosophical points, and he sharees oak the freedom that was offered him, and he didn’t go and buy someone, so good on him.

      The transcript is kinda terrible so maybe just skip to this part and listen, but that’s where I got it from. There are sources linked in the first episode description but I couldn’t find the specific quote about not improving one’s station in life after a quick search, so ¯\(ツ)/¯.

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      • PugJesus@piefed.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        In general, Diogenes did advocate against ambition, but that advocacy was largely oriented towards the idea that man is happiest in a ’natural state’.

        In other words, Diogenes worked towards freeing himself from slavery, because slavery was not a natural state. Once free, he made no efforts to accumulate wealth or power, because accumulation of such things was unnatural. He wanted to live as close to his ’natural’ state as possible - hence the anecdote of him throwing away his water bowl when he realized he could drink with his hands alone.

        Reading the transcript it seems very, uh, off-the-cuff rather than a serious examination of Diogenes.

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    • Schmoo@slrpnk.net ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’ll see if I can find a source for that and get back to you. I could be misremembering.

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      • PugJesus@piefed.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        No worries if you can’t. It’s just that Diogenes is, in general, very much on the side of “Fuck all human institutions, and fuck your hierarchies in particular” in most of the reliable accounts of his life and philosophy. “There is nowhere to spit in a rich man’s house except his face”, and all that. Or “If my slave can live without me, why can I not live without my slave?” when questioned, earlier in life, even before he became a homeless philosopher, why he didn’t make any effort to catch the slave who ran away from him.

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