Fragments

The fragments presented here are attributed to Democritus and come from Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, the critical edition published in 1903 by Hermann Diels. Democritus left no surviving works in the form of continuous treatises: his thought has reached us indirectly, through quotations, summaries, and remarks preserved by later ancient authors. These fragments are the scattered traces of a vast body of work that has otherwise been lost.

In his edition, Hermann Diels gathered these dispersed testimonies and organized them with scholarly rigor, making it possible to distinguish what is attributed directly to Democritus from later interpretations and commentary. This approach has profoundly shaped our understanding of the philosopher of Abdera, particularly his vision of the world grounded in atoms, void, and the natural order of things.

The Greek texts assembled by Diels are in the public domain. Not all the fragments recorded in scholarly anthologies are reproduced here: such collections also include passages of primarily historical interest, sometimes extremely fragmentary or lacking intrinsic philosophical significance. In this application, these texts serve as the basis for a contemporary translation and reformulation, designed to make Democritus’ thought accessible and alive for today’s reader. The aim is not to reconstruct a closed system, but to let emerge, through these fragments, a philosophy marked by clarity, joy, and attention to nature, measure, and inner freedom.