![]() What surprises me most is that much of my knowledge of the classics, gleaned as it was from the formal education system, is a facsimile of a facsimile copied and recopied and passed on through the ages until what I have been given barely resembles a mere trace of the original. As I am currently reading Aristotle's Rhetoric, there is some congruence with the basic elements of the philosophy that all piece together as I read more of the classics. These Stoic authors wrote on logic and ethics and physics and so on, and were far more sophisticated in their philosophy then simply not budging when somebody punched them in the face. Without Diogenes Laƫrtius' work, the existence of many of the Stoic works would be unknown, as it seems that none of these other works has survived. Once I had the provenance under control, I appreciated Seddon's work in resurrecting a Stoic classic, and then the knowledge of how much I don't know began to flow in. Unfortunately, only fragments of the original work, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, of which the present work is drawn, from Book 7, have been recovered. The original author, Diogenes Laƫrtius, has, in effect, written a literature review of some of the major Stoic philosophers, and listed their various works. But this is actually an annotated work of an original Greek work written some time in the early 3rd century CE, and then translated into English by Yonge, Charles Duke in 1853, and then re-worked by Keith Seddon in 2007. It was published by Lulu, a self-publishing platform, and for a time this put me off. I was a little confused when I first picked up the book. ![]() It was recommended by one of the Stoic websites I have visited. It took me a while to get into this book. ![]()
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