Les vies de philosophes de Diogène Laërce : une réflexion sur l'histoire de la philosophie

Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of themonumental works of ancient philosophy, an inestimable source of biographical and doctrinalinformation. For a certain time, little value was assigned to the work, since Diogenes Laertiusused to be considered someone who was not able to comprehend doctrines, had theunpleasant habit of compiling them out of order and was fond of uninteresting anecdotes.Diogenes is commonly presented as a great scholar, passionate about philosophy, whocopied without understanding what was copied – someone not to be entirely trusted.However, contemporary studies have shown that such point of view must be correctedthrough the analysis of the structure of Lives, in spite of the still present disagreement overthe choices the author made when reorganizing the works he compiled, both in terms of thescope and meaning of such choices. Two interpretative threads are identified: one beingdeflationary, the other, inflationary. This article tests the validity of the inflationaryinterpretation, and the investigation will concern two main questions: 1) Does the text showtraces of the author’s personality?; 2) Is the text the result of a personal conception of thehistory of philosophy