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Philosophy Dictionary:

Diogenes Laertius

(? 3rd c. ad) Greek biographer. Diogenes is not a serious philosopher, but his book Lives of Eminent Philosophers is a major biographical source for all classical Greek and Roman philosophers until the 3rd century AD, when it is presumed that Diogenes Laertius lived. He has been counted as making reference to 365 books by 250 authors, and it is in his quotation of lost material that he is regarded as most reliable. Nietzsche, himself a considerable classicist, wrote of Diogenes that he is ‘by accident the clumsy watchman guarding treasure whose value he does not know’.

 
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Diogenes Laërtius
(dīŏj'ənēz lāör'shēəs) , fl. early 3d cent., Greek biographer. Extant is a work in 10 books on the lives and opinions of the philosophers from Thales to Epicurus, with whole books devoted to Plato and Epicurus. His work is an invaluable source of history.

Bibliography

See his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, tr. by R. D. Hicks (1925, repr. 1979–80).

 
Quotes By: Laertius Diogenes

Quotes:

"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."

 
Wikipedia: Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laërtius (Greek: Διογένης Λαέρτιος, Diogénes Laértios), the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii.

Nothing is known of the circumstances of his life. He must have lived after Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 AD), whom he mentions, and before Stephanus of Byzantium (c. 500 AD), who quotes him. It is probable that he flourished in the first half of the third century, during the reign of Alexander Severus (222235) and his successors.

His own opinions are equally uncertain. By some he was regarded as a Christian; but it seems more probable that he was either a sceptic or, more likely, an Epicurean.[1] The work by which he is known, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, was written in Greek and professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. Although it is at best an uncritical and unphilosophical compilation, its value, as giving us an insight into the private lives of the Greek sages, justly led Montaigne to exclaim that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen.

He treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools; the division is somewhat dubious and appears to be drawn from the lost doxography of Sotion. 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.

The whole of the last book is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three most interesting letters addressed to Herodotus, Pythocles and Menoeceus. His chief authorities were Diodes 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. In addition to the Lives, Diogenes was the author of a work in verse on famous men, in various metres.

Quotation

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Notes

  1. ^ On Diogenes' treatment of scepticism, see Jonathan Barnes (1992).

Bibliography

  • Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers ISBN 0-674-99204-0
  • Barnes, Jonathan, "Diogenes Laertius IX 61-116: the philosophy of Pyrrhonism" in W. Haase and H. Temporini (ed.) Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II 36.6 (de Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 1992): pp. 4241-4301.

References

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Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Diogenes Laërtius" Read more

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