The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
X. The Annicereans, in many respects, agreed with these last; but they
admitted the existence in life of friendship and gratitude and respect
for one’s parents, and the principle of endeavouring to serve one’s
country. On which principle, even if the wise man should meet with some
annoyance, he would be no less happy—even though he should have but few
actual pleasures. They thought that the happiness of a friend was not to
be desired by us for its own sake; for that in fact such happiness was
not capable of being felt by the person’s neighbour; and that reason
is not sufficient to give one confidence, and to authorise one to look
down upon the opinions of the multitude; but that one must learn a
deference for the sentiments of others by custom, because the opposite
bad disposition being bred up with infirm and early age. They also taught
that one ought not to like friends solely on account of the advantage
that we may derive from them, and not discard them when these hopes or
advantages fail; but that we ought rather to cultivate them on account of
one’s natural feelings of benevolence, in compliance with which we ought
also to encounter trouble for their sakes, so that though they consider
pleasure the chief good, and the deprivation of it an evil, still they
think that a man ought voluntarily to submit to this deprivation out of
his regard for his friend.
XI. The Theodoreans, as they are called, derived their name from the
Theodorus who has been already mentioned, and adopted all his doctrines.
XII. Now Theodorus utterly discarded all previous opinions about the
Gods: and we have met with a book of his which is entitled, On Gods,
which is not to be despised; and it is from that that they say that
Epicurus derived the principal portions of his sentiments. But Theodorus
had been a pupil of Anniceris, and of Dionysius the Dialectician, as
Antisthenes tells us in his Successions of Philosophers.
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