Lives EN
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~180,000 words · 848 passages
Cite this work
- APADiogenes Laertius. (n.d.). Lives EN. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/diogenes-laertius/lives-en
- MLADiogenes Laertius. Lives EN. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/diogenes-laertius/lives-en.
- ChicagoDiogenes Laertius. Lives EN. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/diogenes-laertius/lives-en.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in English.
Context and history
Worth knowing: the catalogue holds TWO entries for this same work — this one and another under the longer title. They are not different books. And the point about Diogenes bears repeating: he was no philosopher but a compiler, mixing verifiable fact with anecdote and rumour without signalling it, and he is nevertheless irreplaceable, because for many ancient philosophers he is the only source that has reached us. He is cited by book and section, not by page.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
as the Peripatetics; others again from derisive nicknames, as the Cynics; others from their temperaments, as the Eudaemonists or Happiness School; others from a conceit they entertained, as Truthlovers, Refutationists, and Reasoners from Analogy; others again from their teachers, as Socratics, Epicureans, and the like; some take the name of Physicists from their investigation of nature, others that of Moralists because they discuss morals; while those who are occupied with verbal jugglery are styled Dialecticians. Philosophy has three parts, physics, ethics, and dialectic or logic. Physics is the part concerned with the universe and all that it contains; ethics that concerned with life and all that has to do with us; while the processes of reasoning employed by both form the province of dialectic. Physics flourished down to the time of Archelaus; ethics, as we have said, started with Socrates; while dialectic goes as far back as Zeno of Elea. In ethics there have been ten schools: the Academic, the Cyrenaic, the Elian, the Megarian, the Cynic, the Eretrian, the Dialectic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean. The founders of these schools were: of the Old Academy, Plato; of the Middle Academy, Arcesilaus; of the New Academy, Lacydes; of the Cyrenaic, Aristippus of Cyrene; of the Elian, Phaedo of Elis; of the Megarian, Euclides of Megara; of the Cynic, Antisthenes of Athens; of the Eretrian, Menedemus of Eretria; of the Dialectical school, Clitomachus of Carthage; of the Peripatetic, Aristotle of Stagira; of the Stoic, Zeno of Citium; while the Epicurean school took its name from Epicurus himself.…