The Man Who Plucked the Chicken

Diogenes of Sinope was one of the most influential philosophers in the ancient world. He founded Cynicism, shaped centuries of thought about virtue and self-sufficiency, and attracted the personal attention of Alexander the Great, who once visited and offered to grant him anything he desired. Diogenes, sunbathing at the time, asked Alexander to move because he was blocking the light.

He owned almost nothing. He lived in a large ceramic jar in Athens. He carried a lamp through the streets in broad daylight, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He performed every bodily function in public — all of them — on the philosophical grounds that anything natural required no shame. When people objected, he objected to their objecting.

He was, by any measure, a man committed to his project.

But his masterpiece was a chicken.

The story goes that Plato, riding high on the admiration of his students, had produced a definition of a human being: a featherless biped. The Academy was delighted with this. It was clean, logical, elegant.

Diogenes plucked a chicken, walked into Plato's lecture, threw the naked bird on the floor, and announced: "Here is Plato's man."

Plato was forced to revise his definition. The new version added the phrase "with broad, flat nails."

It is perhaps the only time in the history of philosophy that a chicken won the argument.