Diogenes Laertius

Philosophy

Diogenes Laertius (probably 3rd century CE) was a doxographer and historian of ancient philosophy, best known for his work *Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers*. This extensive compilation is one of the primary sources for our knowledge of Greek philosophy, especially the Stoic, Epicurean, and Cynic schools. Diogenes Laertius was not a philosopher in a systematic sense, but a transmitter: he collected biographies, anecdotes, sayings, and summaries of doctrines, often preserving quotations that survive nowhere else. Though uneven in critical rigor, his work is invaluable, offering a rare window into how ancient philosophies were lived, remembered, and handed down through generations.

Works (1)

Thoughts (2)

The Nature of Mental Goods

Of mental goods, some are habits, others are dispositions, while others again are neither the one nor the other.

The virtues are dispositions, while accomplishments or avocations are matters of habit, and activities as such or exercise of faculty neither the one nor the other.

And in general there are some mixed goods: e.g. to be happy in one's children or in one's old age. But knowledge is a pure good.

Again, some goods are permanent like the virtues, others transitory like joy and the exercise of walking.

Diogenes Laertius

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, R.D. Hicks, Ed. 7.98

Stoic Virtues and Evils: Means and Ends

The virtues, the Stoics say, are goods of the nature at once of ends and of means.On the one hand, in so far as they cause happiness they are means, and on the other hand, in so far as they make it complete, and so are themselves part of it, they are ends.Similarly of evils some are of the nature of ends and some of means, while others are at once both means and ends.Your enemy and the harm he does you are means; consternation, abasement, slavery, gloom, despair, excess of grief, and every vicious action are of the nature of ends.Vices are evils both as ends and as means, since in so far as they cause misery they are means, but in so far as they make it complete, so that they become part of it, they are ends.

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, R.D. Hicks, Ed.7.97