Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  B. Socrates and the Early Socratics

  The standard edition of the fragments and testimonia concerning Socrates and his followers is Gabriele Giannantoni, ed., Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquae (4 vols.; Naples: Bibliopolis, 1990). Xenophon’s extant writings are available in five volumes in the Oxford Classical Texts series (various editors; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922–1985), and in six volumes, with facing English translation, in the Loeb Classical Library (various editors; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914–2013). For the texts of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, see Erich Mannebach, Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum Fragmenta (Leiden: Brill, 1961).

  Xenophon’s writings are an important source of evidence concerning Socrates and his companions: see his Memorabilia, Symposium, and Apology (Xenophon’s account of Socrates’ defense at his trial). These texts are collected, with English translation, in E. C. Marchant, O. J. Todd, eds., Jeffrey Henderson, rev., Xenophon: Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, Apology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013). A number of other ancient sources shed light on the Socratic circle. For a comedic view of Socrates as a huckster and pedant, see Aristophanes’ Clouds, in Jeffrey Henderson, ed. and trans., Aristophanes: Clouds, Wasps, Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). The most influential representation of Socrates comes from Plato: see in particular his Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, which depict his conduct just before, during, and after his trial. Plato’s Phaedo represents Socrates during the last moments of his life in conversation with certain intimate members of his circle, although the views expressed by the character of Socrates in that dialogue are often thought to represent Platonic innovations. All of these Platonic texts can be found, with English translation, in Harold North Fowler, ed. and trans., Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914). For collections of these materials in translation only, see Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West, trans., Four Texts on Socrates (rev. ed.; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), which includes Clouds, Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito; and J. M. Cooper, ed., and G. M. A. Grube, trans., Plato: Five Dialogues (2nd ed.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), which includes the three Platonic dialogues just mentioned, plus Phaedo, but not Clouds. Plutarch’s life of Alcibiades is a primary source of evidence for our understanding of Socrates’ relationship with this Athenian politician: see Bernadotte Perrin, ed. and trans., Plutarch: Lives (11 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914–1926).

  Since the secondary literature on Socrates is immense, we present only the briefest survey here. For concise introductions to his life and thought, see A. E. Taylor, Socrates (Boston: Beacon, 1952); C. C. W. Taylor, Socrates: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and George Rudebusch, Socrates (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Perhaps the single most important writer about Socrates in the last half century is Gregory Vlastos: see his Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), and Socratic Studies (Myles Burnyeat, ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Discussion of Socrates’ trial and death can be found in Myles Burnyeat, “The Impiety of Socrates,” Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997): 1–12; and C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the “Apology”: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). For a study of visual representations of Socrates and other ancient thinkers, see Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity (Alan Shapiro, trans.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). On the role of Socrates as an exemplar for many later philosophers, especially the Stoics, see A. A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” in Stoic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–34. Overviews of current topics in the scholarly literature can be found in: Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar, eds., A Companion to Socrates (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); John Bussanich and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); and Donald R. Morrison, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  During the nineteenth century, a reconsideration of Socrates became an important part of the intellectual movement we now call “existentialism”: see in particular the following pseudonymous works of Søren Kierkegaard, all of which are translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong and published by Princeton University Press: The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1989), The Sickness unto Death (1980), and Philosophical Fragments (1987). Socrates is also a recurring concern in the writings of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy (Walter Kaufmann, trans.; New York: Penguin, 1967), and Twilight of the Idols (Duncan Large, trans.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  On the other members of the Socratic circle, see George Grote, Plato: And Other Companions of Sokrates (London: J. Murray, 1867); and Deborah Nails, People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002). Among the most significant Socratic thinkers was Aristippus, who went on to found the Cyrenaic school. On Aristippus and his school, see Voula Tsouna-McKirahan, “The Cyrenaic Theory of Knowledge,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 10 (1992): 161–92; André Laks, “Plaisirs cyrénaïques: Pour une logique de l’évolution interne à l’école,” in Hédonismes, ed. L. Boulègue and C. Lévy (Villeneuve d’Ascq, Fr.: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2007), 17–46; Klaus Döring, “Der Sokratesschuler Aristipp und die Kyrenaiker,” in Kleine Schriften zur antiken Philosophie und ihrer Nachwirkung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010), 77–139; and Kurt Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015).

  C. Plato and the Academy

  Plato is one of the few thinkers discussed in the Lives from whom we are fortunate enough to have a complete set of texts—indeed, we have too many, in the sense that several of the texts included in our Platonic corpus are now generally considered spurious. The standard edition of the Greek text is published by Clarendon/Oxford University Press in the Oxford Classical Texts series (various editors; 5 vols.; 1922–1995). A classic collection of Plato’s writings in translation is Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (New York: Pantheon, 1961). It has now been essentially superseded by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, eds., The Complete Works of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), which includes the full corpus and contains more up-to-date translations.

  The reader first coming to Plato should be aware that scholars today usually group his dialogues into three “periods” of composition, early, middle, and late. The assignment of dialogues to these periods is largely based on internal evidence of style and doctrine, and it continues to be a matter of dispute. The “early” dialogues, such as Euthyphro, Apology, Gorgias, and Crito, are often thought to present a picture of Socrates that is closer to historical reality. The “middle” and “later” dialogues, such as Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, Symposium, and Theatetus, are supposed to represent the more original development of Plato’s own thought, albeit often expressed in the voice of his character “Socrates.”

  Beyond Diogenes’ biography, there are a number of other ancient sources regarding Plato’s life. The letters in the Platonic corpus are generally considered to be one important source, but they may not all be genuine; of them, the seventh is the most substantive (particularly in its details about Plato’s Sicilian connections) and is today widely thought to be authentic. Alice Swift Riginos provides an overview of many of the other ancient sources for Plato’s biography in Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1976). For ancient biographies of two powerful politicians connected to Plato, see Plutarch’s lives of Dion and of Phocion. Both can be found in Bernadotte Perrin, ed. and trans., Plutarch: Lives (11 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914–1926). On the cult of Plato after his death, see the later Neoplatonic Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, edited and translated by L. G. Westerlin
k (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1962).

  The situation with regard to primary texts from the post-Platonic Academic figures whom Diogenes describes in Book 4 is not good: some of them made a point of writing nothing at all, and of those who did write, none of their writings survives complete. Collections of fragments have been published for only three of the men discussed in Book 4: Leonardo Tarán, ed., Speusippus of Athens (Leiden: Brill, 1981; this edition includes commentary but no translation); Richard Heinze, Xenocrates (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1892); and J. F. Kindstrand, Bion of Borysthenes (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1976). In the absence of primary texts from the Academics, attempts to reconstruct their views tend to rely on later testimonia, such as those found in Cicero (see his Academica in volume 11 of the Loeb edition of his works, edited and translated by Harris Rackham, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933) and in Clement of Alexandria (see his Stromata, edited by Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, and Ursula Treu, 4th ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985).

  As with Socrates, the literature on Plato is enormous, so here again we will have to be extremely selective. A concise and accessible introduction is Julia Annas, Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Richer and far more ambitious is Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). On Plato’s cultural and intellectual milieu, see George Grote, Plato: And Other Companions of Sokrates (London: J. Murray, 1867); Deborah Nails, People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002); and G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries (London: Methuen, 1967).

  Perhaps the central issue in interpreting Plato’s writings concerns the significance of his use of the dialogue form. For various approaches to this issue, see Julia Annas, “Plato the Sceptic,” in Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues, ed. James C. Klaage and Nicholas D. Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 43–72; Michael Frede, “Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supplementary volume 1992, 201–20; Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and C. J. Rowe, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). A collection of classic essays that have shaped the field of Plato studies over the past half century is Gail Fine, ed., Plato (2 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For overviews of main topics in current scholarship, see Richard Kraut, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Gail Fine, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Hugh Benson, ed., A Companion to Plato (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

  For major treatments of the post-Platonic Academy, see John Dillon, The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); and John Dillon, The Platonic Heritage (Farnham, Eng.: Ashgate-Variorum, 2012). In-depth studies of specific figures in the Academy include: David Whitehead, “Xenocrates the Metic,” Rheinisches Museum 124 (1981): 233–44; and John M. Cooper, “Arcesilaus: Socratic and Sceptic,” in Knowledge, Nature and the Good (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 81–103. For a study of the debate between the Academics and the Stoics that shaped the career of Carneades, see Gisela Striker, “Sceptical Strategies,” in Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, ed. Malcolm Schofield, Myles Burnyeat, and Jonathan Barnes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 54–83. On the nature of Academic Skepticism, and its relation to the other major form of ancient Skepticism, Pyrrhonism, see the essays in Richard Bett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Skepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the development of the Academy and its internal struggles after Plato’s death, see E. J. Watts, “Creating the Academy: Historical Discourse and the Shape of Community in the Old Academy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 127 (2007): 106–22.

  D. Aristotle and the Lyceum

  All the works Aristotle published in his lifetime are now known to us only in fragments. The vast Aristotelian corpus that we think of as representing his intellectual legacy was assembled by later scholars in antiquity from lecture notes or drafts. The standard edition of the Greek text is published in thirteen volumes in the Oxford Classical Texts series (various editors; 1920–1981). The complete Oxford edition is published in translation in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle (2 vols.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). Barnes’s edition is comprehensive but unwieldy. More useful for students are two smaller, though still ample selections: The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon and revised by C. D. C. Reeve (New York: Random House, 2001); and J. L. Ackrill, A New Aristotle Reader (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).

  The other major Peripatetic figure from whom we possess significant works is Theophrastus, including his Characters, a collection of short sketches of various character types, as well as two works on botany, On the Causes of Plants and Enquiry into Plants. They are published in seven volumes, with English translation, by the Loeb Classical Library (various editors; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916–2003). No works survive from the other Peripatetic figures described by Diogenes, but the series Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers) has published several volumes containing their extant fragments: see Marie-Laurence Desclos and William W. Fortenbaugh, eds., Strato of Lampsacus (2011); William W. Fortenbaugh and Stephen A. White, eds., Lyco of Troas and Hieronymus of Rhodes (2004); William W. Fortenbaugh and Eckart Schütrumpf, eds., Demetrius of Phalerum (2000); and Eckart Schütrumpf, ed., Heraclides of Pontus (2008). Primary texts in translation illustrating the development of the Lyceum can be found in R. W. Sharples, ed. and trans., Peripatetic Philosophy, 200 BC to 200 AD: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  The ancient sources for Aristotle’s life are collected in Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1957). Evidence regarding Aristotle’s connection with the Macedonian court can be found in Plutarch’s life of Alexander, in Bernadotte Perrin, ed. and trans., Plutarch: Lives (11 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914–1926). For a collection of the extant evidence regarding Theophrastus’ life and views, see R. W. Sharples, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1995).

  As with Socrates and Plato, the secondary literature on Aristotle is massive and we will give only a small sample here. The most complete, up-to-date account of Aristotle’s biography and of the Lyceum during his lifetime is Carlo Natali, Aristotle: His Life and School, ed. D. S. Hutchinson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013). Brief introductions to his thought can be had from W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1923); Marjorie Grene, A Portrait of Aristotle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); and, more recently, Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Christopher Shields, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 2007). A classic (though controversial) overview of Aristotle’s life and work is Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, trans. Richard Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948). One influential attempt to formulate and defend Aristotle’s overall philosophical methodology is T. H. Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). On the organization of the Lyceum as an institution, see John Patrick Lynch, Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). Many of the most formative essays for recent scholarship can be found in Jonathan Barnes, Richard Sorabji, and Malcolm Schofield, eds., Articles on Aristotle (4 vols.; London: Duckworth, 1975–1979). For a survey of current topics in the secondary literature, see Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  On Theophr
astus, see two books by W. W. Fortenbaugh: Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985), and Theophrastean Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1988). More focused on his Characters is Paul Millet, Theophrastus and His World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  E. Cynics

  Few writings from the ancient Cynic movement survive. The literary remains of the early Cynics can be found in vol. 2 of Gabriele Giannantoni, ed., Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquae (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1990). But interest in Cynicism persisted for centuries and a variety of later ancient authors provide some of our best remaining evidence about the movement, in the form of praise, censure, or satire of the Cynics: see Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 1–11, trans. J. W. Cohoon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932), especially discourses 6 and 8; and the satires of Lucian, translated by A. M. Harmon, K. Kilburn, and M. D. MacLeod, and published in eight volumes by Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Mass.: 1913–1967), especially Philosophies for Sale (in vol. 2), The Passing of Peregrinus (vol. 5), and Pseudo-Lucian, The Cynic (vol. 8). There are also many references to the Cynics, some more approving than others, in the works of the Roman Stoics: see Seneca, Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere (3 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996–2001), especially letters 29 and 90; and Epictetus, Discourses, trans. W. A. Oldfather (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925–1928), especially 3.22. Finally, evidence for the long persistence of some form of Cynic activity comes from the fourth-century AD emperor Julian, who criticizes contemporary Cynics, while praising the original movement, in his Orations 7 and 9: see The Works of the Emperor Julian, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright (3 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1913–1923). An important piece of evidence for Antisthenes’ proto-Cynic views is a speech attributed to him in Xenophon’s Symposium. For a complete collection of the textual remains of Antisthenes, see Susan Hukill Prince, Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations and Commentary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015). On the Diogenes–Alexander relationship, see Plutarch’s life of Alexander in Bernadotte Perrin, ed. and trans., Plutarch: Lives (11 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914–1926). A useful collection of the ancient sources in English translation is Robert Dobbin, ed. and trans., The Cynic Philosophers from Diogenes to Julian (London: Penguin, 2012).