(@mods: i hope this can stay here, i originally posted it in the OT but it got just one response -which wasn't on topic either- so i thought of trying here with the rest of the academic community )
I decided to share this article, which is hopefully to be printed next week as my 15th work in a newspaper:
"On the meaning of the term “Philosophy”
Diogenes Laertios' work, titled “Lives of those who flourished in philosophy”, begins with a quite elegant synopsis of the history of philosophy, including the use of the term itself and how it came about.
The 3rd century AD thinker is attacking the idea according to which philosophy first appeared in other peoples, and he does so by examining the various classes of “sages” that Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Celtic and other northern cultures, and India had, and correspondingly are the Magi (magicians), the Chaldeans, the Priests, the Druids, and the Gymnosophists.
Refferencing a series of sources such as Eudoxos, Eudemos, and Aristotle, he attributes to those foreign sages traits which do not mix with philosophy as the latter formed in the greek world. In Greece he names as the most archaic forefathers of the notion two figures: Mousaios of Athens – of which he informs that he is said to have created a work on Theology, and another one examining the Spherical volume – and Linos of Thebes – noting that the latter was in the habbit of beginning all his verses with the phrase “There was once a time when all things were One”, and going on to tie this archaic verse to the classical philosopher Anaxagoras and his similar premise: “All things were One at first, but Thinking caused them to be divided”.
Diogenes Laertios goes on to mention Orpheas of Thrace (and condemn him for presenting the gods as even more filled with vices than mere mortals, a position which was also used by Xenophanes when that late 6th century BC philosopher was scoffing Homer's theology), and also Zalmoxis of the Paradunabean Thrace... He clearly considers both of those figures as religious thinkers, and not actual philosophers. And this is the dismissal that he has in mind for the spiritual-oriented sages of the other cultures.
As for those foreign sages he mostly discusses Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and the theologic tradition tied to him in Persia.
In regards to the origin of the term “Philosophy” we are told that it was apparently first used with this intent by Pythagoras, and that the end behind the use was to replace the previous terms “sophos” (sage) and sophist. According to this claim the reason that Pythagoras proposed the change in terms was his view that only god is actually a sage, and therefore a human can at best strive to be a friend of wisdom, thus a philosopher.
The opening chapter of this work concludes with an important collection of lists compiled by previous sources, naming the various categories of philosophies and philosophers. One distinction was between the physical philosophers (whose subject was the external world), the ethical ones (examining how to better live one's life), and the dialectic philosophers (those involved with the process of thought itself). Another categorisation involved the location where the philosophers mostly taught, so some were academics (using an Academy) and others were stoics (giving their lectures in a Stoa of the city they were in). Another, very important, distinction, was between the Ionian and the Italian school of philosophy, with its first founders deemed to be Anaximander of Miletos and Pythagoras of Samos (who was renown for teaching in the Italian colonies).
Diogenes Laertios names also those deemed as the teachers of those two founders: Thales of Miletos for Anaximander, and Pherekydes of the island of Syros for Pythagoras."
*
You can discuss any theme tied to the brief article (something like 500 words in the original). I think it is quite interesting; Diogenes Laertios is more of a historian of philosophy, not an actual philosopher (at least one to be compared to the illustrious names he writes about), but his book is regarded as invaluable for the study of the history of this order in thinking
PS: bit of interesting trivia: apparently Diogenes Laertios estimates the Trojan War to have happened at around 1500 BC, going by other dates given when referring to the archaic figures of Mousaios and Linos
I decided to share this article, which is hopefully to be printed next week as my 15th work in a newspaper:
"On the meaning of the term “Philosophy”
Diogenes Laertios' work, titled “Lives of those who flourished in philosophy”, begins with a quite elegant synopsis of the history of philosophy, including the use of the term itself and how it came about.
The 3rd century AD thinker is attacking the idea according to which philosophy first appeared in other peoples, and he does so by examining the various classes of “sages” that Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Celtic and other northern cultures, and India had, and correspondingly are the Magi (magicians), the Chaldeans, the Priests, the Druids, and the Gymnosophists.
Refferencing a series of sources such as Eudoxos, Eudemos, and Aristotle, he attributes to those foreign sages traits which do not mix with philosophy as the latter formed in the greek world. In Greece he names as the most archaic forefathers of the notion two figures: Mousaios of Athens – of which he informs that he is said to have created a work on Theology, and another one examining the Spherical volume – and Linos of Thebes – noting that the latter was in the habbit of beginning all his verses with the phrase “There was once a time when all things were One”, and going on to tie this archaic verse to the classical philosopher Anaxagoras and his similar premise: “All things were One at first, but Thinking caused them to be divided”.
Diogenes Laertios goes on to mention Orpheas of Thrace (and condemn him for presenting the gods as even more filled with vices than mere mortals, a position which was also used by Xenophanes when that late 6th century BC philosopher was scoffing Homer's theology), and also Zalmoxis of the Paradunabean Thrace... He clearly considers both of those figures as religious thinkers, and not actual philosophers. And this is the dismissal that he has in mind for the spiritual-oriented sages of the other cultures.
As for those foreign sages he mostly discusses Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and the theologic tradition tied to him in Persia.
In regards to the origin of the term “Philosophy” we are told that it was apparently first used with this intent by Pythagoras, and that the end behind the use was to replace the previous terms “sophos” (sage) and sophist. According to this claim the reason that Pythagoras proposed the change in terms was his view that only god is actually a sage, and therefore a human can at best strive to be a friend of wisdom, thus a philosopher.
The opening chapter of this work concludes with an important collection of lists compiled by previous sources, naming the various categories of philosophies and philosophers. One distinction was between the physical philosophers (whose subject was the external world), the ethical ones (examining how to better live one's life), and the dialectic philosophers (those involved with the process of thought itself). Another categorisation involved the location where the philosophers mostly taught, so some were academics (using an Academy) and others were stoics (giving their lectures in a Stoa of the city they were in). Another, very important, distinction, was between the Ionian and the Italian school of philosophy, with its first founders deemed to be Anaximander of Miletos and Pythagoras of Samos (who was renown for teaching in the Italian colonies).
Diogenes Laertios names also those deemed as the teachers of those two founders: Thales of Miletos for Anaximander, and Pherekydes of the island of Syros for Pythagoras."
*
You can discuss any theme tied to the brief article (something like 500 words in the original). I think it is quite interesting; Diogenes Laertios is more of a historian of philosophy, not an actual philosopher (at least one to be compared to the illustrious names he writes about), but his book is regarded as invaluable for the study of the history of this order in thinking
PS: bit of interesting trivia: apparently Diogenes Laertios estimates the Trojan War to have happened at around 1500 BC, going by other dates given when referring to the archaic figures of Mousaios and Linos