Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων) is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, written in Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD.

It professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. Michel de Montaigne once wrote that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen.

Organization of the work

Laërtius treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools. The biographies of the former begin with Anaximander, and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus and Chrysippus; the latter begins with Pythagoras, and ends with Epicurus. The Socratic school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic; while the Eleatics and sceptics are treated under the Italic. He also includes his own poetic verse, albeit pedestrian, about the philosophers he discusses.

Books 1-7: Ionian Philosophy			Books 8-10: Italian Philosophy
Book 1: The Seven Sages, beginning with Thales			Book 8: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
Book 2: Socrates, with predecessors (Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Archelaus) and followers			Empedocles
Book 3: Plato			Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics
Book 4: The Academy	Book 5: The Peripatetics	Book 6: The Cynics	Xenophanes
Speusippus	Aristotle	Antisthenes	Heraclitus (not Italian)
Xenocrates	Theophrastus	Diogenes of Sinope	Parmenides
Polemon	Strato of Lampsacus	Crates of Thebes	Melissus of Samos
Crantor	Lyco of Troas	Book 7: The Stoics	Zeno of Elea
Arcesilaus	Demetrius Phalereus	Zeno of Citium	Leucippus
Lacydes of Cyrene	Heraclides Ponticus	Cleanthes	Democritus
Carneades		Chrysippus	Book 10: Epicurus

The whole of the last book is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three letters addressed to Herodotus, Pythocles and Menoeceus. His chief authorities were Diocles of Magnesia's Cursory Notice of Philosophers and Favorinus's Miscellaneous History and Memoirs. From the statements of Burlaeus (Walter Burley, a 14th-century monk) in his De vita et moribus philosophorum the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess.

Notes

External links

• On-line version of Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
• Article
• Diogenes Laërtius The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers trans. C.D. Yonge (London: George Bell & Sons, 1895: Public Domain)

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Saturday February 23, 2008 at 17:30:55 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation