Philosophical vs. Biographical

A New Assessment of Greek Literature Peri biōn

Bibliographic Data

ID10286788
AuthorsGraziano Ranocchia (0000-0002-4873-3903, Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica Università di Pisa Pisa Italy, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume75
Issue5
Pages759-792
Publication date2021-04-08
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMnemosyne (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-7074 • E-ISSN: 1568-525X
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/1568525x-bja10023
OpenAlexW3155113475
LanguageEN
References cited23

Greek works On Ways of Life have been seen to consist in either collections of biographies or proper philosophical treatises. Recently, a unitary reading of this literary phenomenon has been advanced, but some fundamental evidence has escaped attention. This evidence, along with what remains of Epicurus and Chrysippus’ Peri biōn , suggests that in antiquity this label actually encompassed two essentially different genres: a mostly biographical one, which was cultivated by fourth/third-century BC Peripatetic philosophers and imperial writers, and a moral-philosophical one, which was first developed by Epicurus and Chrysippus and then cultivated by Academic and Peripatetic thinkers in the Hellenistic period and in later centuries

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Hellenistic Period · Linguistics · Literature · Period (music · Phenomenon · Reading (process · Unitary state · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Classics · History · Law · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Philosophy

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