Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  Secondary Literature

  Little is known about the author of Lives; scholars have even disagreed over whether his name should properly be rendered Diogenes Laertius or Laertius Diogenes (though most now accept the former). On the basis of circumstantial evidence, including the figures he does (and does not) mention in Lives, scholars generally agree in dating him to the third century AD: see the “Notizia Biobibliografica” in Gigante’s edition.

  Much scholarly work on Lives has taken the form of attempts to clarify the manuscript tradition and to establish a definitive text. The most complete account of this work can be found in the introduction to Dorandi’s edition. Readers of Italian will have access to Dorandi’s further reflections in his Laertiana: Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia del testo delle “Vite dei filosofi” di Diogene Laerzio (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), which deals in depth with issues in the paleography of Lives. A related project is the attempt to track down all of Diogenes’ sources. An important pioneer in this area was a young German philologist named Friedrich Nietzsche: see his “De Laertii Diogenis fontibus,” “Analecta Laertiana,” and Beiträge zur Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes, all of which are collected in Fritz Bornmann and Mario Carpitella, eds., Nietzsche Werke: Philologische Schriften (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982). For recent reflections on Nietzsche’s reading of Lives, see Gigante, “Gli studi di Nietzsche su Diogene Laerzio,” in Classico e mediazione: Contributi alla storia della filologia antica (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1989), 41–53; and Jonathan Barnes, “Nietzsche and Diogenes Laertius,” Nietzsche-Studien 15 (1986): 16–40.

  Among the few attempts to provide a comprehensive interpretation of Lives as a literary and philosophical work is Richard Hope, The Book of Diogenes Laertius: Its Spirit and Its Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930). The journal Elenchos devoted a special issue (vol. 7, 1986) to Lives; entitled “Diogene Laerzio storico del pensiero antico,” it includes some of the most noteworthy essays on Diogenes’ literary and philosophical style: see especially the contributions by Gigante, “Biografia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio,” and by J. F. Kindstrand, “Diogenes Laertius and the Chreia Tradition.” On Diogenes’ methods as a historiographer, see James Warren, “Diogenes Laërtius: Biographer of Philosophy,” in Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, ed. Jason König and Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 133–49. On the role of death scenes in Diogenes’ biographies, see Sergi Grau, “How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosophers’ Deaths in Relation to Their Way of Living,” Ancient Philosophy 30 (2010): 347–81. Kendra Eshleman’s “Affection and Affiliation: Social Networks and Conversion to Philosophy,” Classical Journal 103 (2007–2008): 129–41, reads Lives as a source of evidence regarding how ancient philosophical schools grew and recruited followers. On Diogenes’ place in the world of ancient writing about the history of philosophy, see Jørgen Mejer, Diogenes Laertius and His Hellenistic Background (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1978) and “Diogenes Laertius and the Transmission of Greek Philosophy,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 36.5 (1992): 3556–602. For an introduction to the wider tradition of ancient Greek biographical writing, see Arnoldo Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (exp. ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  Introductions to Ancient Greek Philosophy

  Readers who are just beginning to approach ancient philosophy should start by immersing themselves in a range of primary texts. Two anthologies that contain a representative selection in translation are: Julia Annas, ed., Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Nicholas D. Smith, Fritz Allhoff, and Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, eds., Ancient Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008). Scholars often group the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Pyrrhonian and Academic Skeptics together under the heading of “Hellenistic Philosophy.” For selections from the extant evidence regarding these schools, see A. A. Long and David N. Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), which includes texts in both the original languages and translation, along with notes and commentary. The same territory is covered more briefly and in translation only by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson, eds., Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (2nd ed.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

  A classic survey of ancient Greek philosophy in depth and breadth is W. K. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (6 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–1981). Succinct modern introductions can be had from Julia Annas, Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Anthony Kenny, Ancient Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). For introductions to the various ancient schools through their competing views of happiness, see Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). Introductory works that focus on the “Hellenistic” schools include Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (New York: Scribner, 1974); and R. W. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998). Peter Adamson’s ambitious History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps series includes two volumes (both Oxford: Oxford University Press) that cover figures in Lives: Classical Philosophy (2014) focuses on the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, while Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (2015) covers the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics.

  There has recently been a considerable revival of interest in the idea of philosophy as a way of life in antiquity and beyond. For treatments in this vein, see Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); James Miller, Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011); and Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). More focused explorations of the cultural and political context around some of the figures discussed by Diogenes can be found in: Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, “The Porch and the Garden: Early Hellenistic Images of the Philosophical Life,” in Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World, ed. Anthony W. Bulloch, Erich S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and Andrew Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 303–29; and Christian Habicht, “Hellenistic Athens and Her Philosophers,” in his Athen in Hellenisticher Zeit: Gesammelte Aufsäzte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994), 231–47.

  Figures and Schools Described in Lives

  This section is divided into eight subsections: (A) the Pre-Socratics; (B) Socrates and the early Socratics; (C) Plato and the Academy; (D) Aristotle and the Lyceum; (E) the Cynics; (F) the Stoics; (G) Pyrrhonian Skeptics; and (H) Epicurus and Epicureanism. In each case, I first mention editions and translations of primary works by the figure or school in question, and then secondary works by modern scholars. Readers should keep in mind that many of the writings of the thinkers described by Diogenes are nearly or entirely lost. In particular, this is true for many of the most intriguing and historically significant figures in Lives, such as Diogenes of Sinope, Zeno of Citium, and Epicurus. This profound loss makes it extraordinarily difficult for us to properly assess their thought today; it is also one of the reasons that Diogenes’ biographies are such an important source for our knowledge of their works. In some cases, we possess works by later thinkers in antiquity who commented on or sought to develop the views of these predecessors, and so these are sometimes mentioned in the corresponding places, but always under the caveat that these later writers are engaged in their own original work and should not be regarded as merely transmitting what their predecessors thought.

  Some of the divisions below correspond to Diogenes’ organization of his biographies, some do
not. B corresponds to Book 2 from Socrates onward, C to Books 3 and 4, D to Book 5, E to Book 6, F to Book 7 and H to Book 10. Pyrrho and his follower Timon are discussed by Diogenes in Book 9. The most difficult case has to do with the extremely broad group of “Pre-Socratics.” This category, largely the invention of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers and philologists, contains a wealth of diverse figures who were active in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. It typically includes these thinkers discussed by Diogenes: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Philolaus, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus, Zeno of Elea, Leucippus, Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia. Diogenes assigns these men to quite different parts of his work, according to his sense of their place in certain lines of intellectual affiliation and influence. Thus he places Thales, for example, in Book 1, Anaximander in Book 2, Empedocles in Book 8, and Heraclitus in Book 9. Rather than following Diogenes’ arrangement, we will adopt modern convention here and treat the Pre-Socratics as a group.

  A. Pre-Socratics

  The Pre-Socratics in General

  The classic edition of the Greek texts (all of which are fragmentary) is Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, revised by Walther Kranz (6th ed.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1952). Its numbering of the fragments is standard, although disputes continue about the precise readings of the texts. Two more recent collections of the fragments, both of which include English translations, are: G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Daniel W. Graham, ed., The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  A classic overview of Pre-Socratic thought is John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (4th ed.; London: A. & C. Black, 1930). Other good introductions are Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London: Routledge & Paul, 1979), and Catherine Rowett, Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). An excellent collection of essays, containing investigations of various aspects of the Pre-Socratic thinkers, is D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy (2 vols.; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970–1975). Each chapter in Patricia Curd and Daniel W. Graham, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), provides an orientation to current research on a major figure or topic in this area. For a recent study that compares the lives (and deaths) of three major Pre-Socratic philosophers, see Ava Chitwood, Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus and Democritus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, several major figures in the German-speaking philosophical world sought to lay claim to the intellectual legacy of the Pre-Socratics. The reader should keep in mind that the interpretations in these works are more philosophical than historical. The trend arguably began with Nietzsche: see his writings posthumously published as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (Marianne Cowan, trans.; Chicago: Regnery, 1962) and Pre-Platonic Philosophers (Greg Whitlock, ed. and trans.; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). It continued with Martin Heidegger’s lecture courses An Introduction to Metaphysics (Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, trans.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (Richard Rojcewicz, trans.; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015); Parmenides (André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz, trans.; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); and Heraclitus (Marnie Hanlon, trans.; London: Athlone, 2013). A third German philosopher who sought to align his intellectual project with the Pre-Socratics is Hans-Georg Gadamer: see the essays collected in his The Beginning of Knowledge (Rod Coltman, trans.; New York: Continuum, 2001). Finally, Karl Popper’s The World of Parmenides (London: Routledge, 1998) is a collection of essays on the Pre-Socratics by a major figure in twentieth-century German-speaking philosophy with a philosophical sensibility of a rather different sort from that of the three mentioned above. Later in the twentieth century, there was another surge of interest in the Pre-Socratics, this time fueled by French thinkers who sought to approach this material through a lens influenced by anthropology: see Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982); and Marcel Detienne, Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (Janet Lloyd, trans.; New York: Zone Books, 1996).

  Pre-Socratic Figures and Movements

  Ionians (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras)

  The fragments of Xenophanes, with translation and commentary, can be found in J. H. Lesher, Xenophanes of Colophon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). For the fragments of Heraclitus, see Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). The fragments of Anaxagoras are collected in David Sider, The Fragments of Anaxagoras (2nd ed.; Sankt Augustin, Ger.: Academia Verlag, 2005); and Patricia Curd, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae: Fragments and Testimonia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). For interpretation of these fragments, see Malcolm Schofield, An Essay on Anaxagoras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Daniel W. Graham’s Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006) is a general introduction to this tradition, focusing on Anaximander, Anaximenes, and their intellectual heirs and critics.

  Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism

  The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press, 1987), compiled and translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, contains all the extant biographies of Pythagoras from antiquity, including the extensive life by Iamblichus, as well as fragments from Pythagoras and other Pythagorean authors. A classic study of Pythagoreanism is Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (E. L. Minar, trans.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972). See also J. A. Philip, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966); Charles H. Kahn, “Pythagorean Philosophy Before Plato,” in The Presocratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. A. P. D. Mourelatos (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), 161–86; and Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001). On Philolaus, see Carl A. Huffman, Philolaus of Croton, Pythagorean and Presocratic: A Commentary on the Fragments and Testimonia with Interpretive Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For texts and interpretations of later Pythagoreanism, see Holger Thesleff, An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period (Turku, Fin.: Åbo Akademi, 1961); and his The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period (Turku, Fin.: Åbo Akademi, 1965).

  Eleatics (Parmenides, Melissus, Zeno of Elea)

  For the fragments of Parmenides, see A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen, Neth.: Van Gorcum, 1986), which also includes testimonia, translation, and commentary. The fragments of Zeno of Elea can be found in H. D. P. Lee, Zeno of Elea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936). For philosophical interpretation of the Parmenides fragments, see A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). Parmenides’ philosophical influence is discussed in Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). Detailed and influential investigations concerning Zeno’s paradoxes can be found in several essays by Gregory Vlastos collected in D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, vol. 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).

  Empedocles

  The most current edition of the text of Empedocles, incorporating new material from recently discovered papyri, is Brad Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles (rev. ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). For an attempt to reconstruct one of Empedocles’ major arguments, see Denis O’Brien, Empedocles’s Cosmic Cycle (Cambrid
ge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). A reading that takes the new evidence into account can be found in Simon Trépanier, Empedocles: An Interpretation (London: Routledge, 2004).

  Atomists (Leucippus, Democritus)

  The best edition of the fragments of Democritus is Democrito: Raccolta dei frammenti (Milan: Bompiani, 2007), published under the direction of Giuseppe Girgenti, and based on Demokrit, a Russian edition by Salomon Luria (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970). For an edition with English translations, see C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). An ambitious attempt to reconstruct Democritus’ thought in its original scope is Walter Leszl, “Democritus’ Works: From Their Titles to Their Contents,” in Democritus: Science, the Arts and the Care of the Soul, ed. Aldo Brancacci and Pierre-Marie Morel (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 11–76. For in-depth discussions of specific aspects of Democritus’ views, see C. C. W. Taylor, “Pleasure, Knowledge, and Sensation in Democritus,” Phronesis 12 (1967): 6–27; and Gregory Vlastos, “Ethics and Physics in Democritus,” in D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 2:381–408. (Works treating the relationship between the early Greek atomists and Epicurus can be found in the section on Epicurus.)