Diogenes of Babylon

Diogenes of Babylon (Greek Διογένης ὁ Βαβυλώνιος; Latin Diogenes Babylonicus; * around 240 BC in Seleucia on the Tigris; † shortly before 150 BC). Was a Greek philosopher and the most important leader of the Stoic school after Chrysippus of Soli They called him " Diogenes the Babylonian ," which origin from the landscape Babylonia, not from the time lying in ruins city of Babylon was meant. His hometown was rather Seleucia ( one of the many cities of that name ), therefore it is also called Diogenes of Seleucia.

Life

Diogenes ' life data can only be inferred from approximate information: According to Marcus Tullius Cicero 150 BC, he was already dead when he died, according to Lucian, at the age of 88 years, he must have been born around 240 BC.

Diogenes studied with Chrysippus of Soli and Zeno of Tarsus. At an unknown date he became his successor as head of the school after Zeno's death. Among his most famous pupils were Antipater of Tarsus and Panaetius of Rhodes. When Diogenes also studied one of the main representatives of the academic skepticism, Carneades of Cyrene. Later, Diogenes the Stoic ethics defended against Carneades ' objections.

Both of them took 155/156 BC along with the Peripatetics Critolaus on the famous philosopher embassy to Rome part. On behalf of the city of Athens, she performed with the Senate negotiations regarding a cash fine of 500 talents to the detriment of Athens and reached that the sentence was reduced to 100 talents. Diogenes ' talks in Rome were the first public presentation of Stoic thinking by a school head in the Roman capital, even if the main ideas of the Stoics were safe previously known.

Writings and teaching

Diogenes ' numerous papers on all aspects of philosophy, but especially to rhetoric and music are all lost, so that we are for the knowledge of his teaching on fragments and reports dependent (eg Cicero ). The most detailed reports on Diogenes ' doctrines which in turn only fragmentary treatise On Music of Philodemus of Gadara.

Diogenes the Stoic teaching system developed further for many issues. Characteristic of the Stoa were particularly his statements about the goal of life (Greek telos ), on ethical principles and practical action as well as the gods. In the dialectic Diogenes unfolded the previously probably only roughly scale Stoic theory of meaning to the first semiotics. His treatise on the language ( τέχνη περὶ τῆς φωνῆς ) was probably a model later grammars.