The lives and opinions of eminent philosophers
The lives and opinions of eminent philosophers is presented as a mixture of a short, humorous biography, with many personal habits and behaviours, and a well-elaborated description of their philosophical beliefs and writings. Diogenes Laertius must have collected his information from hundreds of Ancient Greek sources and referred to a great number of quotations.
Diogenes organized his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers into ten books. The first five cover what he terms the 'Ionian School', which begins with Thales and terminates (in his work) with Chrysippus. The final five cover what he terms the 'Italian School', which begins with Pythagoras and terminates with Epicurus.
Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy
What famous people said about this book:
I am very sorry that we have not a dozen Laertiuses, and also that he was not more expansive or more thoroughly informed. For I am equally eager to know the fortunes and lives of these great teachers of the world, no less carefully than their doctrines and ideas.
—Montaigne, Book II, Essay X: Of Books
Diogenes Laertius, in him, there lives at least the spirit of the ancient philosophers . . . The only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves anything, namely trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities; all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words.
—Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator
Let me now put the finishing touch, as one might say, to my entire work and to the life of this philosopher by presenting his Chief Maxims, thereby bringing the whole work to a close and offering as its conclusion the beginning of happiness . . . —Book 10, Epicurus
Review by Shyam
Diogenes organized his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers into ten books. The first five cover what he terms the 'Ionian School', which begins with Thales and terminates (in his work) with Chrysippus. The final five cover what he terms the 'Italian School', which begins with Pythagoras and terminates with Epicurus. • Book One covers the seven sages, who comprise different individuals depending on whom you ask • Book Two covers some pre-socratics, Socrates, and some following Socratics • Book Three is solely devoted to Plato • Book Four covers the Academics • Book Five covers Aristotle and the Peripatetics • Book Six covers the Cynics • Book Seven covers the Stoics down to Chrysippus, but is sadly incomplete • Book Eight covers the Pythagoreans • Book Nine covers more Pre-Socratics whom Diogenes terms the 'Scattered Philosophers' • Book Ten is solely devoted to Epicurus In all, he covers 82 philosophers.
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