Y2K = AP2583

Jonathan Rée

  • The Cambridge History of 17th-Century Philosophy edited by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayres
    Cambridge, 1616 pp, £90.00, April 1998, ISBN 0 521 58864 2

The earliest systematic history of philosophy, or at least the earliest to survive into the age of print, is Diogenes Laertius’ survey of the Lives, Opinions and Sayings of Famous Philosophers, written in Greek about 250 AD. Diogenes described 82 thinkers, some cursorily, others with copious quotations and stories about their characters and curious habits. He moved equably from Thales through Plato and Aristotle, to Zeno, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and eventually Epicurus, but his impartiality probably had less to do with scruples about objectivity than with uncomprehending indifference to philosophical questions, and a terrific appetite for gossip. If Diogenes Laertius were alive today, he would be a high political journalist rather than a mere historian of philosophy.

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Vol. 21 No. 12 · 10 June 1999 » Jonathan Rée » Y2K = AP2583 (print version)
Pages 13-14 | 3013 words