Ten books of biographies of Greek philosophers, from Thales to Epicurus. Diogenes preserves anecdotes, doctrines, wills, and quotations that survive nowhere else. Disorganised but indispensable.
Start ReadingThe Seven Sages and the Ionian philosophers. Thales, Solon, Periander, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Philosophy begins with wonder at the natural world.
The Socratics. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, Antisthenes, and other pupils of Socrates who went in very different directions.
Plato. His life, his dialogues, his doctrines, his Academy. The fullest ancient biography of the philosopher.
The Academy after Plato. Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Crantor, and Crates — the heads of the school from Plato's death to the sceptical turn.
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and the Peripatetic school. Their lives, their writings, and the institution of the Lyceum.
The Cynics. Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates, and their followers. Philosophy as radical poverty, shamelessness, and freedom from convention.
The Stoics. Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus. Their physics, logic, and ethics — the most influential philosophical school of the Hellenistic world.
More Stoics and transitional figures. A continuation of Book VII, covering later Stoic thinkers.
The Sceptics. Pyrrho, Timon, and the Pyrrhonian tradition. Suspend judgement, avoid assertion, and live by appearances — the path to tranquillity.
Epicurus. His life, his letters, his doctrines. The garden, the gods, the atoms, the good life. 'Death is nothing to us.' The fullest surviving exposition of Epicurean philosophy.