Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.157 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.157
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Zeno of Citium and Antipater, in their treatises De anima, and Posidonius define the soul as a warm breath; for by this we become animate and this enables us to move. Cleanthes indeed holds that all souls continue to exist until the general conflagration; but Chrysippus says that only the souls of the wise do so. They count eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the generative power in us, our power of speech, and that of reasoning. They hold that we see when the light between the visual organ and the object stretches in the form of a cone: so Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics and Apollodorus. The apex of the cone in the air is at the eye, the base at the object seen. Thus the thing seen is reported to us by the medium of the air stretching out towards it, as if by a stick.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.157 (on the Stoics), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.157
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesThe soul is defined as warm breath, what lets us live and move. Thinkers disagreed on whether all souls or only wise ones last until the universe burns up. The soul has eight parts, and sight works by a cone of air stretching from the eye to the object.
Older wording
- “conflagration”
- — the periodic burning up of the whole universe
- “apex”
- — the pointed tip of a cone
Themes and situations
- Nature and the cosmos
- Death and mortality
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