Diodoros Kronos

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Diodoros Kronos ( ancient Greek Διόδωρος Κρόνος Diódōros Krónos , Latinized Diodorus Cronus ; * in the 4th century BC in Iasos ; † around 284 BC probably in Alexandria ) was a Greek philosopher of antiquity . In the history of philosophy he is one of the megarics .

If Diodorus wrote, they are lost; only a number of testimonies have survived (ancient reports on life and teaching).

Lore

Above all Diogenes Laertios , Strabo and Clemens of Alexandria report about the life of Diodoros Kronos , about his teaching mainly Sextus Empiricus , various Aristotle commentators, Cicero , Epiktet , Aulus Gellius , Alexander von Aphrodisias and Boethius .

Life

Diodoros Kronos, who came from Iasos, was a student of a certain Apollonios of Cyrene, who in turn was a student of Eubulides . The nickname "Kronos" (roughly "old fool") has passed from his teacher to him.

Towards the end of the 4th century BC Diodoros taught Kronos in Athens , probably in the 280s BC. He is likely to have moved to Alexandria , where he presumably also died. A possibly made-up story about his death has come down to us from Diogenes Laertios, according to which he is said to have committed suicide (or dropped dead in shame) after he was unable to solve a dialectical problem presented to him at the court of Ptolemy I.

Clement of Alexandria reports of five daughters who all received dialectic lessons. Disciples of Diodoros Kronos were Zeno of Kition and Philo of Megara ; the claim that this also applies to Arkesilaos is rather unlikely .

Teaching

Neither writings nor titles of writings by Diodoros Kronos have survived.

Logic and semantics

A modern truth value table for conditional statement (or implication)
p q p → q
W. W. W.
W. F. F.
F. W. W.
F. F. W.
Definition of the true conditional statement

According to Cicero, Diodoros dealt with the question of when a conditional statement ( synēmménon ; an example not from Diodoros: “When it rains, the street is wet”) is true or false. Sextus Empiricus reports that his answer differed slightly from that of Philons of Megara (“The conditional statement [is] true if it does not begin with truth and ends with falsehood.”): “A conditional statement [is] true if it is neither was possible, it is still possible that it begins with truth and ends with falsehood. ”It cannot be deduced from the passage whether Philo's or Diodorus' answer is older.

In the modern truth value table provided for the conditional statement, one can read - what Diodorus and Philo of Megara already noted - that a conditional statement (in the table “p → q”, for example “When it rains, the street is wet”) then is false if the antecedent ( ēgoúmenon , in table “p”, for example “It's raining.”) is true (in table “W”) and the suffix ( lḗgon , in table “q”, for example “ The road is wet. ”) Is incorrect (in the table“ F ”).

Definitions of the modal terms and the master's conclusion

Cicero, Plutarch, Boethius and Alexander von Aphrodisias report on Diodorus' definitions of the modal terms possibility, impossibility, necessity and non-necessity. What is either true or what will be true is possible, according to other sources, what either is or will be the case. According to Boethius, Diodorus defined the other modal terms as follows. Impossible is what is not and will not be. What is and what will be is necessary. What is not or will not be necessary is not necessary. Diodorus' concept of possibility bears a similarity to that which Aristotle had previously ascribed to the Megarians.

Diodorus tried to prove the correctness of his definition of the concept of possibility with the master's conclusion or master's argument ( kyrieúōn lógos ), which was already so called in ancient times . The most important ancient report comes from Epictetus, but the understanding and interpretation of the master's conclusion are controversial in research. Diodorus is said to have considered the following three statements to be incompatible:

  1. All that is true in the past is necessary.
  2. The possible does not result in the impossible.
  3. There are things that are neither true nor will they be true.

The first two are true according to Diodorus, so the third must be false. If the negation of the third statement is true, then Diodoros' definition of the possible is also true. Objections to the truth of the first two statements were raised in ancient times.

Ambiguity of the words

According to Aulus Gellius, Diodorus claimed that no word was ambiguous. Whatever you think or say only means what you mean by it. If others take it in a different sense, it is not because what has been said is ambiguous, but because you have expressed yourself vaguely. Based on this view, later authors ( Ammonios Hermeiou , Simplikios , Stephanos von Alexandria ) assigned him to the group of "conventionalists" who claimed that words were not of nature ( phýsei ), but of positional ( thései ). With the thesis that only the intention of the speaker determines the meaning of a word, namely in relation to the specific occasion and the particular situation in which the statement is made, Diodoros stands in the tradition of Hermogenes , the Plato in his dialogue Kratylos allows the idea of ​​conventionalist semantics to be represented, and radicalizes it again, since the convention is not formed by the totality of the speakers of a language.

Presumably Diodoros also made the argument that 10,000 grains do not make a heap because three grains do not form a heap, but one added grain is not enough to turn a non-heap into a heap. With this and similar arguments, sharply defined boundaries between states or entities were repeatedly called into question in the Hellenistic period. They turned out to have consequences for the doctrine of definition: for the definition of a heap it is obviously irrelevant whether one counts the grains or not.

physics

According to Sextus Empiricus, Diodoros claimed that no object ever moves in the present, but that objects have moved. Everyday experience shows that the objects have moved that the objects were previously in different places than afterwards. The process of moving, on the other hand, is inconceivable, which Diodorus tried to prove with a few arguments. The first read: “When something moves, it either moves where it is or where it is not. But it does not move on to whom it is, because it rests on him, nor on that on which it is not, because it is not on him. So it doesn't move. ”The second, which can be seen as a variant of the first, says:“ The partless body must be in a partless place, and therefore it doesn't move about it - because it fills it up; What is supposed to move, however, has to have a place that is larger than it is itself - still in a place where it is not - because it is not yet in it in order to move in it. Therefore it does not move at all. ”Another argument is based on the distinction between predominant and total movement. From this distinction it is concluded that movement is impossible. Some scholars have interpreted Diodorus' assumption of the impossibility of movement to mean that they should attack Aristotle's arguments. But there are doubts about this interpretation.

reception

In 1935 Jan Łukasiewicz was the first to work out the independent character and value of Stoic logic, which, in contrast to the more influential Aristotelian logic, was not a conceptual logic , but a propositional logic . Łukasiewicz pointed out that Philo von Megara and Diodoros can be regarded as the foremen of Stoic propositional logic, since their concern with the truth of conditional statements falls into this very area.

Source collections

  • Klaus Döring : The mega-riders. Annotated Collection of Testimonies , Grüner, Amsterdam 1971, (Studies on Ancient Philosophy 2), ISBN 90-6032-003-4
  • Gabriele Giannantoni (Ed.): Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae , Volume 1, Bibliopolis, Naples 1990, Section II-F ( online )
  • Robert Muller: Les mégariques. Fragments et témoignages , Vrin, Paris 1985

literature

Overview representations

Investigations

  • David Sedley: Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy. In: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 203, NS 23, 1977, pp. 74-120 (groundbreaking study on the school of dialectics).
  • Jules Vuillemin : Nécessité ou contingence. L'aporie de Diodore et les systèmes philosophiques. Paris 1984 (English translation: Necessity or contingency. The Master Argument. Stanford 1996, ISBN 1-881526-86-0 , paperback edition ISBN 1-881526-85-2 ).
  • Theodor Ebert: Dialecticians and early Stoics with Sextus Empiricus. Investigations into the emergence of propositional logic. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1991, ISBN 3-525-25194-7 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, p. 221.
  2. ↑ The information on the life of Diodoros Kronos is based on Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221-230, here: p. 222, which mainly uses Diogenes Laertios ( On the life and teachings of famous philosophers 2,111-2,112) as a source.
  3. ↑ Clemens of Alexandria, Stromateis 4,19,121,5.
  4. ^ Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221–230, here: p. 222.
  5. ^ Cicero, Lucullus sive Academicorum priorum liber 2 143.
  6. ↑ Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoneiai hypotyposeis 2,110-2,112.
  7. ^ Harry A. Ide: Possibility and potentiality from Aristotle through the Stoics , Dissertation, Cornell University 1988, pp. 202-206.
  8. ↑ Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1055d-1055e; Cicero, De fato 17.
  9. ↑ Boethius, De interpretatione II 234.22-234.24; Alexander von Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis analyticorum priorum librum I commentarium 183.34-184.1.
  10. ↑ Aristotle, Metaphysics 1046b29-1046b32.
  11. ^ Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221–230, here: pp. 227–228.
  12. ↑ Epiktet, Dissertationes 2,19,1.
  13. ^ Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221–230, here: pp. 228–229.
  14. ↑ Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 11,12,2-11,12,3.
  15. ↑ Ammonios Hermeiou, In Aristotelis de Interpretatione commentarius 38.17-38.20.
  16. ↑ Simplikios, In Aristotelis categorias commentarium 27: 15-27, 24.
  17. ↑ Stephanos of Alexandria, In librum Aristotelis de interpretatione commentarium 9.20-9.24.
  18. ^ Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221–230, here: p. 223.
  19. ^ Diodorus Cronus , in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  20. ↑ Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 10.48; 10.86; 10.113-10.117.
  21. ↑ Aristotle, Physics 240b8-241a6.
  22. ↑ The section on physics follows Klaus Döring: Diodoros Kronos, Philon, Panthoides . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998, pp. 221–230, here: pp. 224–225.
  23. ↑ Jan Łukasiewicz: On the history of propositional logic . In: Knowledge. Number 5, 1935, pp. 111-131. Reprinted in: David Pearce, Jan Wolenski (Hrsg.): Logischer Rationalismus. Philosophical writings of the Lviv-Warsaw School. Athenaeum, Frankfurt / Main 1988, pp. 76-91.
personal data
SURNAME Diodoros Kronos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of propositional logic
DATE OF BIRTH 4th century BC Chr.
PLACE OF BIRTH Iasos (Caria)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd century BC Chr.