front cover of Diogenes the Dog-Man
Diogenes the Dog-Man
Yan Marchand and Vincent Sorel
Diaphanes, 2017
At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Naturally inquisitive, pint-size scholars need little prompting before being willing to consider life’s “big questions,” however strange or impractical. Plato & Co. introduces children—and curious grown-ups—to the lives and work of famous philosophers, from Socrates to Descartes, Einstein, Marx, and Wittgenstein. Each book in the series features an engaging—and often funny—story that presents basic tenets of philosophical thought alongside vibrant color illustrations.
           
In Diogenes the Dog-Man, the philosopher Diogenes not only admires the honesty of dogs, he has actually become one—sleeping, eating, and lifting his leg to pee wherever he chooses! Best of all, unlike humans, who dupe one another as to their true feelings, Diogenes the Dog-Man is free to bark his displeasure and even bite his adversaries in the calves—even if they happen to be Alexander the Great. Initially, the citizens gathered in the Agora think Diogenes is mad. Does he have rabies? But it soon becomes clear that we can all learn a thing or two from dogs about how to live a simple life.
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front cover of Myths of the Dog-Man
Myths of the Dog-Man
David Gordon White
University of Chicago Press, 1991
"An impressive and important cross-cultural study that has vast implications for history, religion, anthropology, folklore, and other fields. . . . Remarkably wide-ranging and extremely well-documented, it covers (among much else) the following: medieval Christian legends such as the 14th-century Ethiopian Gadla Hawaryat (Contendings of the Apostles) that had their roots in Parthian Gnosticism and Manichaeism; dog-stars (especially Sirius), dog-days, and canine psychopomps in the ancient and Hellenistic world; the cynocephalic hordes of the ancient geographers; the legend of Prester John; Visvamitra and the Svapacas ("Dog-Cookers"); the Dog Rong ("warlike barbarians") during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods; the nochoy ghajar (Mongolian for "Dog Country") of the Khitans; the Panju myth of the Southern Man and Yao "barbarians" from chapter 116 of the History of the Latter Han and variants in a series of later texts; and the importance of dogs in ancient Chinese burial rites. . . . Extremely well-researched and highly significant."—Victor H. Mair, Asian Folklore Studies
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