Diogenes of Oinoanda

Table of Contents

  • Fl. early-to-mid 2nd century AD. From Oinoanda, in Lycia (modern southwestern Turkey). Wrote in Greek. A wealthy, elderly Epicurean who had a summary of Epicurean physics, ethics, and canonics carved onto a massive public inscription in his home city's marketplace, explicitly so that people not yet born could benefit from the doctrine -- the largest surviving inscribed philosophical text from anti

    Fl. early-to-mid 2nd century AD. From Oinoanda, in Lycia (modern southwestern Turkey). Wrote in Greek. A wealthy, elderly Epicurean who had a summary of Epicurean physics, ethics, and canonics carved onto a massive public inscription in his home city's marketplace, explicitly so that people not yet born could benefit from the doctrine -- the largest surviving inscribed philosophical text from antiquity, with fragments still being discovered and published today.

    1. Key Texts

    Quote from Diogenes of Oinoanda 26.1.2 -- 3.8 (= Fragment 32)

    Shortly I will speak about imprudence, but for the present about the virtues and pleasure. Now if, fellow men, the question at issue between these people [the Stoics] and ourselves involved examining 'what is the means of happiness?', and they wanted to say the virtues, as is in fact true, there would be no need to do anything except to agree with them and abandon the matter. But since, as I was saying, the issue is not 'what is the means of happiness?', but what being happy is and what our nature ultimately desires, I affirm now and always, with a great shout to all Greeks and foreigners, pleasure is the end of the best lifestyle, while the virtues which are now being inappropriately fussed about by them (being transferred from the position of means to that of end) are in no way the end, but the means to the end. (tr. Long & Sedley)

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