We visit the full-sized concrete replica of the Parthenon, which sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Nashville’s supposed to be the Athens of the South, our hosts tell us. The Athens of the South! I should feel at home here with my formidable knowledge of ancient languages, W. says.
W. insists on buying us souvenir togas. I take a picture of us posing on the steps. W. feels like Socrates, he says. But who am I, next to him? It’s ironic, because Socrates had a kind of idiot double, a man who looked exactly like him, but who begged for a living, and lived in a barrel in the marketplace, his shameless habits scandalising all of Athens.
But Diogenes merely acted like an idiot, W. says. He lived in squalor, true enough – but that was because he despised the conventions of society. He lived in poverty – but that was because of a disdain for the stupidity of the rich. He was shameless – but that was because he thought human beings lived artificially and hypocritically.
But Diogenes had a terrible wisdom of his own, even Plato granted that, W. says. He had a terrible teaching, which he taught by living example. A Socrates gone mad, that’s what Plato called him. A Socrates, because Diogenes, too, believed in reason, exalting it above custom and tradition. But a Socrates gone mad, because he took shamelessness to a new extreme: eschewing all modesty, pissing on people who insulted him, shitting in the theatre and masturbating in the public square …
A Diogenes gone mad, W. says: that’s how he thinks of me. A man without shame not because he rejects ideas of human decency, but because he knows no better. A man outside of society, not because he would live as an ascetic, but because no one wanted him in it.
(from Dogma)
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