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PHILOSOPHER ON A CITY STREET // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 11-26

Visual semiotics studies a variety of fields of human culture and human behavior. In particular, various forms of social self-identification and presentation of a visual nature are directly related to the field of its study. We propose to expand this list to include forms of social clan self-presentation, which is quite obvious, but also the visual component of the intellectual practice. In our case – the ancient. The modern metaphor of the polis as a “city of speeches” is quite applicable to the ancient world. But we must add to it the equally important metaphor of the “city of viewing”. The visual curiosity of the ancient Greek was no less than the auditory curiosity. And philosophers responded to this need. The creators of the most radical visual version of philosophical behavior in ancient Greece were cynics. It was strange not only from the point of view of food austerity and eccentric manners (attributed to the Pythagoreans). It contradicted other visual examples of ancient intellectuals. The provocative behavior of cynics can be called “visual rhetoric”. In contrast to the rhetoric of Aristotle, which was aimed at preserving public order and decency, without which a policy is impossible as “communication for the sake of maximum good”, the cynics rejected public decency. They did it in a clearly visible way. Their rhetoric was illustrative. As one of her tools, they used their own body, which became a vivid expression of freedom and independence from public control. The description of cynical visual arguments allows them to be classified into the following topics. 1. Overcoming myself: Victory over myself means deliverance from the power of a social type with which a person identifies himself. In order to cope with the mandatory power of symbolic communications, it is necessary to train in oneself the “power of Socrates”: the ability to pay no attention to anything other than virtue. The cynic asceticism was intended to prevent the transformation of the satisfaction of needs into a subject of passionate lust. This was expressed in their economical minimization and in a clear demonstration of how to get rid of lust. Visual clarity freed from the fear of obsceneness. 2. Argumentation: Cynics use elements of everyday food culture as cheese, beans, and fish as illustrative tools for refuting. They actively exploit the metaphorical connotations of these objects in ancient folklore and literature. 3. Counter-Movement: Cynics visually demonstrate that they are “swimming against the stream”. They are convinced that this is the only correct way of behavior. 4. Search for a person: The famous anecdote about «the Lamp of Diogenes » testifies to the famous Heraclites’ «argument from a dream». 5. Attitude towards death: The attitude of Diogenes to his own death shows that in this case “visual decorum” must be rejected too. A dead body is more worthy of a “barbarous” (most likely Zoroastrian) burial, but not a Hellenic one. Cynics’ visual arguments were related to Antisthenes’s teaching of the correct name, which should have a one-to-one correspondence with the subject. The paradoxical behavior of the cynics was aimed at changing the focus of our view on the real. It can be said that cynic behavior is part of their “name correction” strategy.

Keywords: Visual anthropology and semiotics, cynicism, Antisthenes, Diogenes the Cynic, chreia

THE WALL AND THE CITY: EDUCATIONAL SEMIOTICS OF AN IMAGINARY POLIS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 4 (38). P. 79-98

The article explores the projects of urban development and transformation on the example of Plato’s philosophical utopia and urban planning innovations of Hippodamus, an architect of the 5th century BC. These projects are based on a certain idea of the nature of the City, which is formed not only by general considerations about the needs of people and the urban community as a whole, but also by a completely material form of the city’s structure, which in this case acts as a medium of urban self-representation. In the article, the objective was set to reveal the nature of such a medium and show exactly how this medium performs the work of mediation. The authors argue that one of the most important mediums of urban self-representation is the city wall. It does not form a center unlike a temple or a palace; it is located outside, but its presence permeates the city, gives existence and visibility to the unity of the city, its inseparable whole composed of many elements, and its compelling law similar to the hardness of stone, guaranteeing the safety of the urban space. The wall divides and collides with each other identical and different, one and many, heavenly and earthly, male and female; it protects not only kings and citizens, but also their gods from hostile neighbors; and, finally, it has a kind of power because, acting externally, it turns the outer space into the property of the City, into its system and laws. In Plato’s Republic, the wall marks the boundary of the soul’s reversal from existence in the world of shadows to self-knowledge and movement towards the light. In the famous grid of Hippodamus we find the geometric correctness of the order of streets as a continuation of the social structure and the educational impact of law and order on the citizens of the city. At the same time, the order is given not only by the ratio of parallel and perpendicular streets, but also by the closeness of space guaranteed by the city wall, since only in this case the potential infinity of lines and the emptiness of space obey the correct ratio of the limit and the unlimited, the full and the empty, being and nothing. It is in this neighborhood of the artificial organization of the inner space and the outer limit set by the wall that the contradiction that generates the inner dynamics of the city finds its expression and consists in the fact that the border of the city mobilizes and concentrates forces that cannot be held by this limit and strive for infinite expansion. Walls dictated a new space of life, the stay in which required new skills, habits, a new structure of consciousness. All this also required new educational practices: didascaliae and palaestras could arise only in Greek cities, but not in Greek villages of the “dark ages”.

Keywords: city, power, wall, medium, Plato, Hippodamus, Hippodamus’s grid