created 2025-02-28, & modified, =this.modified
tags:y2025greecewalkingloststrange
From the Journal of Hellenic Studies 120, Silvia Montigli
The wandering philosopher is best known to us as a Romantic ideal that projects one’s longing for physical and mental withdrawal. Rousseau’s “promeneur solitaire” does not cover great distances to bring a message to the world. His wanderings, most often in the immediate surroundings, rather than convey spiritual alienation.
What is the meaning of ancient wandering, when it was less desirable and one’s native city represented a locus of identity?
The wander in Greece could be anything and anywhere, looking like a beggar but being a god. In the Odyssey a youth says “you did well to not strike the unhappy wanderer, ruined man. What if perchance he is a god come from the sky.”
The outcomes of Odysseus’ undesired wanderings is knowledge.
The Presocratic philosopher who travels to expand his knowledge is the opposite of the Romantic wanderer who moves away from men. Solitude is valued by the wanderers but when the presocratics need it, they do not wander, they withdraw (ekpatein) and chose an isolated residence.
Planē (mythology) to Planet
Planē was an abstract goddess in Greek religion, the personification of the concept of error (her name Planē was derived from the Greek term for wandering.)
The word planet had etymological roots with planḗtai (wanderers.)
Middle English: from Old French planete, from late Latin planeta, planetes, from Greek planētēs ‘wanderer, planet’, from planan ‘wander’.
The planets have apparent movement, unlike the “fixed” stars.
Socrates embarks on wandering (Planē) for the sake of sophia (wisdom.)
He had acquired the knowledge that there is nobody who knows, unlike a positive knowledge through his wandering.
Plato on the other hand did not romanticize wandering, he romanticized the standing thinker.
Cynics
Diogenes the Cynic did not present himself as a walking philosopher in the Greek tradition, but as an outcast wanderer. At all events he was “Without a city, without a home, bereft a country, a beggar, wanderer, living day by day.”
Diogenes lives in exile both literally and metaphorically. Only this condition, he claims, made him a philosopher. Homelessness of the body becomes the prerequisite for the philosophical life.
The entire earth was fatherland to him alone, and he chose none. Through wandering he gets rid of everything and thus achieves the supreme Cynic value, freedom.
Thought
Does being lost only have issue because we value the home? I fear getting lost in the woods, because I have a destination, a home. There is a time for me to be there. I’ll miss my day.
We think of a center where we are located, similar to the resolution of a song and not a note hanging. But if we are truly exiles, constantly wandering, can we be lost?
Nothing is lost if we hold onto nothing.
It could be also that what we desire to seek is so strong that we lose the importance of our home. We also aren’t lost there.
Cynicism is homeless.