Diogenes’s goal, he said, was “to deface the coinage,” meaning strip away the false conventions on which society was built and expose the raw reality underneath.14 He is not only the first homeless philosopher, but the first deconstructionist. Before he died in 323 BCE—the same year as Alexander, an irony he would have appreciated—Diogenes had given Cynicism a respectable position in the field of literature as well as philosophy. His mordant wit inspired the major creators of Greek satire and parody and founded a Western comedic tradition that has lasted until today.
