Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  Very well. But then, just as his section on Plato’s physics ends, Diogenes seems to contradict himself by baldly asserting that Plato “holds that god, like the soul, is incorporeal (asōmatos). For this renders him immune from decay and death” (3.77; emphasis added). What are we to make of this, in view of all that has preceded?

  All I can suggest, if we are charitably to try to preserve some vestige of consistency in Diogenes’ account, is that one may relate this passage to a similar one in the works of the Jewish Platonist philosopher Philo of Alexandria.16 Like Diogenes in the puzzling passage on the incorporeality of the soul, Philo describes the Logos, in its immanent aspect within the cosmos, as well as the heavenly bodies and the soul, as asōmatos, while also recognizing that they are composed of “heavenly fire” (the Stoic pyr tekhnikon or noeron), since this is consistent with their changelessness and eternity. I suggest that this role could also have been assumed by the Aristotelian (and Old Academic) concept of aether. Such a position would once again bring Diogenes quite close to the presumed position of Antiochus; but, as I say, such an interpretation requires some generosity.

  Diogenes ends by speaking of “the ideas” as “causes and principles whereby the world of natural objects (ta physei synestōta) is what it is”—a formulation reminiscent of a definition of Forms attributed to Xenocrates: “the paradigmatic cause of whatever is at any time composed according to Nature” (aitia paradeigmatikē tōn aei kata physin synestōtōn).17 One could imagine such a definition filtering down to Diogenes through Antiochus, though there is no evidence it did.18

  ***

  When Diogenes turns to Plato’s ethics, which he treats much more briefly at 3.78–79, he begins, quite normally, with a definition of the telos, or purpose of life. And this is the prevailing definition in later Platonism, from Eudorus of Alexandria on: “likening oneself to God,” homoiōsis theōi, deriving from Theaetetus 176b–c—though Diogenes chooses to strengthen this to exomoiōsis, a compound form he shares with Philo of Alexandria.19

  This produces a complication for my provisional theory about Diogenes’ primary source, in that it distances him from Antiochus, for whom the preferred telos is the Stoic one of “life in conformity with Nature” (homologoumenōs tēi physei zēn).20 There is admittedly an interesting passage in Cicero (De Legibus I 25), where, in an Antiochian context, he asserts that “virtue is the same in man as in God, and in no other species apart from that. Yet virtue is nothing else than one’s nature made perfect and brought to a peak [of excellence] it constitutes therefore a likeness of man with God.”21 This effectively assimilates the Stoic definition to what would become the Platonist one, but Antiochus does appear to have retained the Stoic definition as his preferred formulation. Diogenes would thus seem to be reflecting here a later stage in the development of Platonist doctrine, possibly stemming from the first-century BC Platonist Eudorus of Alexandria.

  On the matter of the role of virtue (aretē), however, Diogenes is once more in accord with Antiochus. “Virtue,” he begins by declaring, “is sufficient for happiness (autarkēs pros eudaimonian)”—the Stoic position. But he immediately qualifies this, as would Antiochus, by specifying that the presence of both bodily and external goods are required (prosdeisthai) as “instruments” (organa)—though the sage will be no less happy in the absence of these.

  As Diogenes sets out the doctrine, it comes dangerously near to self-contradiction, but then the Stoic position lends itself to that. Antiochus’ solution was to make a distinction between being “happy” and being “supremely happy.”22 The sage is always happy, and this happiness cannot be removed from him; but the fullest happiness is only achieved with the aid of at least a sufficiency of the lower goods (and the absence of their opposites).

  Summing up Plato’s views on the bodily and external goods, Diogenes lists only three of each (rather than four, to match the virtues): in the case of the bodily goods, “strength, health, a keen sensibility” (euaisthesia),23 and in the case of the external goods, “wealth, good birth, and reputation.” It is notable—but perhaps not surprising—that, just below, in the so-called divisions (3.80), Diogenes represents Plato as upholding a more usual list of four bodily goods: “beauty, a good constitution (euexia), health, and strength” (more closely reflecting a list given in Republic IV 444d). Diogenes also offers a much more unusual list of four external goods, supposedly upheld by Plato: “friends, a good reputation, the prosperity of one’s country, and wealth.” That Diogenes makes no attempt to coordinate these two lists, presented within a page of each other, says something about his methods of compilation.24

  Diogenes goes on to say that Plato expects the sage to take part in public affairs (politeuesthai), marry, and not transgress the established laws; he will even legislate (nomothetēsein) for his country, if circumstances call for it and his state is not excessively corrupt.25

  All this adds up to a vote for the “mixed life” (symmiktos bios) as commended by the Antiochian spokesman Piso in De Finibus V (especially V 58), but set out already by Aristotle in Pol. VII 3. And in fact many people were trained in the Academy to take part in the affairs of their cities, such as Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsis, or indeed Dion in Syracuse, and Plato himself is a deeply political philosopher. Plato commends marriage in the Laws (VI, 772d–e), and he makes “not transgressing the laws” the moral, in particular, of the Crito. The injunction about being prepared to legislate for one’s state, if it is not hopelessly corrupt, can be derived from Plato’s remarks in the Republic (VI 488a–497a).

  Diogenes passes on (3.79) to Plato’s doctrine of divine providence—“gods oversee human affairs” (ephoran ta anthrōpina). This is a well-known doctrine, attested in the Timaeus (30b, 44c) and also Philebus (28d–e). He also tacks on an assertion of the existence of daimones, or semidivine beings, for which the major dialogues would be Symposium (202e), Cratylus (397d–e), and the Republic (III 392a); such stalwarts of the Old Academy as Xenocrates had developed quite an elaborate theory of daimones.26

  Divine providence and daimones are presumably subsumed under ethics because of the moral quality of the interventions of superior beings in our lives. The section on ethics is rounded off, however, by a curious definition of “the notion of good” (to kalon). Plato, claims Diogenes, was the first to declare the concept (ennoia) of to kalon to be bound up with “whatever is praiseworthy (epaineton), rational (logikon), useful (khrēsimon), becoming, and appropriate”; and these in turn are all connected with the concept of “that which is consistent and in harmony with nature,” a clear reference to the Stoic definition of the telos, adopted by Antiochus: “living in accordance with nature” (homologoumenōs tēi physei zēn). This whole sequence of epithets, although it contains nothing contrary to Platonic doctrine, seems to be influenced more powerfully by Stoic syllogistic definitions of virtue.

  ***

  Diogenes moves on finally to a summary of Plato’s views on the topic of logic: “He also discoursed on the correctness of names (peri onomatōn orthotētos), and was thus the first to develop a science for correctly asking and answering questions, a science of which he made excessive use (katakorōs)” (7.79).

  This is a cursory reference, first to the practice of etymology, as carried out by Socrates (with a degree of irony that seems generally to have been lost on later generations) in Cratylus; and then to that of dialectic—which Diogenes characterizes as being employed by Plato to excess, a judgment perhaps emanating from a later dogmatic Platonist (such as was Antiochus), impatient with the use of the aporetic, or rhetorically baffling, aspect of Socratic dialectic to buttress a skeptical Academic position.

  That is all Diogenes cares to say about Plato’s logic. His doxographic summary is rounded off (3.79–80), curiously, by what might appear to be a return to an ethical topic, but which is really, I think, intended as a comment on Plato’s use of myths, which Diogenes feels to be in need of some defense.

  What he says is that Plato, in his dialogues, present
s justice (dikaiosynē) as the law of god, as a stronger inducement to men to behave justly, by showing them what punishments await malefactors after death—and Plato’s description of these punishments lays him open, in the view of some, to being “overly devoted to myths” (mythikōteros).27

  Again, such criticism could come from either inside or outside the Platonist tradition, but we cannot put our finger on a source. The reference would seem to be primarily to the Republic, and in particular to the Myth of Er in Book X, though of course many other myths, such as those of the Phaedo, the Gorgias, and the Phaedrus, could be taken into consideration.

  ***

  As we have seen, Diogenes’ account of the doctrines of Plato is in many respects muddled and superficial. Yet it reveals a bit of his method, if that is the right word—namely, how he went about representing the doctrines of his eminent philosophers. In the case of Plato, he seems to have relied heavily, not on primary sources, apart from the Timaeus, but on previous doxographers, whose work he has culled, perhaps more discriminately than some critics suggest.

  The summary of Plato’s doctrines seems on the whole to emanate from strongly Stoicized Platonist sources, possibly under the influence of Antiochus of Ascalon (perhaps his Kanonika, which seems to have concerned epistemology, but also some work or works on ethical themes), but borrowing as well at least one formulation (the definition of the soul) from the Stoic Posidonius, and departing from Antiochus in the adoption of the later Platonist doctrine of the telos (a feature it may owe to some such figure as Eudorus).

  The resulting account may not tell us much about Plato’s own views as we find them expressed in his dialogues. But it tells us a great deal about the transmission of philosophical doctrines in antiquity, through compact summaries of varying degrees of coherence and reliability—the raw material, along with traditional biographical lore, for Diogenes’ own compendia.

  1 The second, and rather longer segment (3.80–109), consists of a most curious collection of allegedly Platonic “divisions” (diaireseis) of philosophical concepts, attributed, rather implausibly, to Aristotle. Since these also occur in a Christian recension, we may suppose that Diogenes is transcribing them from some (probably Hellenistic) source. He makes no attempt to link this to what precedes it.

  2 Diogenes lists an impressive body of works from his pen (4.11–14), covering virtually all aspects of Platonist philosophy.

  3 Hermann Diels, Doxographi graeci (1879), p. 485, 1–4.

  4 Ibid., 287, 17ff. He describes idea as “an incorporeal essence in the thoughts and imaginings of God” (ousia asōmatos en tois noēmasin kai tais phantasiais tou theou). This concords well with Alcinous (ch. 9); Diogenes Laertius (3.76–77) is less than specific as to whether the Ideas are thoughts in God’s mind, though he probably assumes they are.

  5 And indeed from Aristotle’s report in the De anima 1.2.404b16ff. (see below).

  6 Cicero, in Academica 1.6, makes Varro, his spokesman for the Platonist position of Antiochus of Ascalon, declare that the union of the “efficient force” and matter involves the introduction of geometry—implicitly in the creation of three-dimensional bodies.

  7 Discussed by me at more length in The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 40–64. Speusippus’ multilevel universe involved, at its summit, a pair of (supraessential) One and Multiplicity (plēthos), followed by a level of (essential) Number, followed in turn by Soul, which has a geometrical essence. This he doubtless saw as being a “clarification,” rather than a contradiction, of Plato’s doctrine as he understood it!

  8 Ludwig Edelstein and I. G. Kidd, eds., Posidonius, vol. 1, The Fragments (1972; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), fr. 141.

  9 In fact, Mario Untersteiner, in “Posidonio nei placita di Platone secondo Diogene Laertio III,” Antichita classica e cristiana 7 (1970), has gone so far as to propose Posidonius as the source behind Diogenes’ exposition of Platonic doctrine here. Antiochus will fill the bill equally well, without straying outside the Platonist fold.

  10 In the Antiochian summary of Platonist philosophy at Cicero, Academica 1.26, the stuff of souls as well as of the stars is declared to be the Aristotelian fifth substance, or aither.

  11 He goes on to characterize the soul as “self-moved and tripartite,” appealing, for the former assertion, no doubt to Phaedrus 245c, and, for the latter, to the Timaeus 69c ff. rather than to Republic 4—though the epithets of the three parts, logistikon, thymoeides, and epithymētikon, are borrowed from the Republic, being not so named in the Timaeus.

  12 This is perhaps what Diogenes has in mind below, in 3.69, when he speaks of the soul being able to recognize reality (ta onta) through having the elements harmoniously (kata harmonian) disposed within it.

  13 E.g., Aët., 1.10.308 Diels; Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales 8.2, 720b; Alcinous, Didaskalikos ch. 9.

  14 Cf. Cicero, Nat. D. 1.18, 1.24.

  15 Diogenes does not, however, as does Plutarch in the Proc. An., postulate a precosmic disorderly soul; he sticks with matter.

  16 Cf. my essay “Asōmatos: Nuances of Incorporeality in Philo,” in Philon d’Alexandrie et le langage de la philosophie, ed. C. Lévy (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998) (repr. in my The Platonic Heritage [Farnham, Eng.: Ashgate-Variorum, 2012], essay 8).

  17 Ap. Proclus, In Parmenides 888, 18–19 Cousin; cf. further on this in Dillon, The Heirs of Plato, 119–20.

  18 Forms are mentioned at Cicero, Academica 1.30, but only as the eternally simple and uniform objects of the intellect, not as causes (though that is what they must be).

  19 This is certainly Philo’s preferred formulation, used fully six times, De opificio mundi 144; De decalogo 73, 107; De specialibus legibus 4.188; De virtutibus 8, 168. The compound form derives, doubtless, from Plato’s use of it in Timaeus 90d4.

  20 Cf. Cicero, De finibus 2.34; 5.26–7.

  21 A good discussion of this passage, and of the telos in general, is to be found in Harold Tarrant, “Moral Goal and Moral Virtues in Middle Platonism,” in Greek and Roman Philosophy, 100 B.C.–200 A.D., ed. R. W. Sharples and R. Sorabji, BICS 94 (2007): 421–24.

  22 This is laid out in a passage of Varro’s De Philosophia preserved by Augustine in his City of God (19.3)—Varro being in philosophy a faithful follower of Antiochus—but is also widely implied in De Finibus 5. Alcinous is more austere (Didaskalikos ch. 27); he declares that happiness is dependent upon virtue alone.

  23 This term is actually found in Timaeus 76d2, in connection with the description of the Demiurge’s fabrication of the head. Philo uses it three times (Legum allegoriae 3.86; Noë seu de sobrietate 61; De Abrahamo 263), always in conjunction with health, and in the last passage as part of a sequence of four bodily goods, along with health, strength, and beauty.

  24 But what, one might ask? The most charitable interpretation, perhaps, is that Diogenes did not regard these lists as incompatible, but rather as complementary.

  25 I would certainly here read aparaitēta, with Casaubon, for the euparaitēta of the mss., which gives only a very forced sense.

  26 Cf. Dillon, The Heirs of Plato, 129–31.

  27 Using this term in a sense apparently found nowhere else.

  Cynicism: Ancient and Modern

  R. Bracht Branham

  Cyn-ic (sin’ik) n. 1. A person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness. 2. Cynic. A member of a sect of ancient Greek philosophers who believed virtue to be the only good and self-control to be the only means of achieving virtue. –cynic adj. 1. Cynical. 2. Cynic. Of or relating to the Cynics or their beliefs. [Latin cynicus, Cynic philosopher, from Greek kunikos, from kuon, kun-, dog. See kwon- in Appendix.]

  —American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

  Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

  —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

  A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

  J
onathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects” (1727)

  There is a problem peculiar to Cynicism—or is it “cynicism”?—both as a word and a concept: it is Janus-faced, and it is often hard to say which way it is looking. Is it looking back to an ancient philosophical tradition (known in German as Kynismus and in English by the capitalized form “Cynicism”) or forward to the modern perspective that can be derived from it (known in German as Zynismus and in English by the lowercase spelling “cynicism”)?

  If ancient Cynicism is being invoked, what feature of the complex figures of Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, or Menippus does it foreground—not to mention the five other philosophers whom Diogenes Laertius includes in Book 6?1 Is it the rigorous asceticism of Diogenes of Sinope—his reduction of bodily needs to the biological minimum in the pursuit of moral autonomy? Or is it the evident pleasure he takes in breaking taboos about food or sex in his public demonstrations of exactly what living “according to nature” entails, shameless behavior that earned him the derisive epithet “dog” (kuon), a fighting word as old as the Iliad?2 Or, if it is modern, lowercase cynicism that is meant, is it used to express the freedom from collective illusions and prejudices that a “cynic” attains by “seeing through” the idols of the tribe, or does it serve instead to describe a state of disillusionment and alienation that seems to make the postmodern cynic incapable of taking anything seriously?