. Greek writer of the 3rd century AD His voluminous work “Ten Books on the Life, Opinions and Judgments of the Most Illustrious Philosophers” is valuable as a unique compilation of the classical period on the history of philosophy ; it includes biographical data and theories of the representatives of Greek philosophy up to Sixth the Empiricist . Diogenes Laercio is worthy of attention only as a compiler – the oldest – of various sentences and data, often even anecdotal. The part of greatest interest is the one dedicated to the Stoics (book VII) and to Epicurus(book X). The last book contains the only works of Epicurus that have survived: three letters and his “main thoughts.” With regard to the Stoics, Diogenes Laercio maintains a critical attitude; instead, he expresses sympathy for the skeptics and for Epicurus. [1]
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Artwork
- 3 References
- 4 Sources
Biographical synthesis
It is believed that he lived in the first years of the third century, since he does not cite philosophers after the second. Even his very name has been the subject of controversy: he is usually called Diogenes Laercio, that is, a native of Laertes, in Cilicia ; but sometimes in the manuscripts the order of those two words appears reversed, and some (Wilamowitz) have adduced the possibility that Laercio was a nickname, reminiscent of Homer; however, it is not clear why this would explain its predominance of the name.
Work
The title of his main work is also uncertain: Sopatro cites it as Lives of the Philosophers , Esteban Byzantino as Philosophical Stories , while in the Paris manuscript it is titled Lives and Sentences of the Most Illustrious Philosophers and a brief compendium of the opinions that predominate in each sect . Divided into ten books, the work is dedicated to a woman scholar in Platonic philosophy, perhaps the Empress Julia Domina or Arria , Galen’s friend, and is preceded by an introduction in which the author deals with the origin and name of philosophy, its various parts, the main philosophical schools and its founders.
In the successive books the biographies of the ancient philosophers are contained with more or less abundant data about their doctrines; The philosophers themselves are distinguished in the work from the wise men, of whom the first book deals, and they are Solon , Thales , Chilo , Pythagoras , Biante , Cleobulus , Periander , Anacarsis , Mission , Epimenides and Ferecides .
The second book deals with the philosophers of the Ionic school, Anaximander and Anaximenes ; later, of Anaxagoras , Archelao and Socrates ; the third book is dedicated to Plato ; the fourth to his disciples, from Speusippus to Clitimachus ; the fifth to Aristotle and the Peripatetics; the sixth to Antisthenes and the Cynics; the seventh, whose ending has been lost, deals with the Stoics, from Zeno to Chrysippus . With the eighth book one goes to the Italic school, with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, among whom are numbered Empedocles , Epicamio and the mathematician Eudoxio ; the ninth book deals with various philosophers: Heraclitus , the Eleatas, the skeptics; the tenth is all dedicated to Epicurus . The latter and Plato are thus the philosophers who are most widely discussed.
Laercio’s work heterogeneously brings together different philosophical doctrines, biographies, anecdotes, legends and book catalogs. It is a compilation of fragments that range from the most irrelevant gossip to valuable biographical and bibliographic information, containing both summaries of doctrines and reproductions of significant documents, for example wills or philosophical writings. Although he cites hundreds of authorities, most of them the author only had second-hand news and, except in a few cases, his true sources have not been determined.
