12 Addendum – Bibliography

Xenocrates

Collected Writing (after Diogenes Laërtius)

Instead of Chrysippus, a later leader of the Stoic School, I’m appending here Xenocrates as an example of the (often abstract) primary topics of Classical philosophy. While the Stoics often gladly occupied themselves with linugistic-analytical studies, the Platonic Academy (at least in its early days) discussed every subject of interest to its founder. The Platonic Academy existed nearly a thousand years. From the idealism of its founders it digressed early on and propagated a measured skepticism that was finally, in the end, replaced with Plotin’s Neoplatonism. Plato’s thinking was rediscovered primarily in the Renaissance and in the age of Historicism, i.e. in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Xenocrates lived 396–314BC and was a direct student of Plato. He led the Academy, after the latter’s death, twenty-five years. “Many times a day he would devote himself to the most strenuous reflection and, it was said, would spend an entire hour in total silence.” (Diogenes Laërtius). The listed books are all completely lost. Unless otherwise noted, each entry refers to one “book” (papyrus roll):

On Nature – six books
On Wisdom – six books
On Abundance
Of the Arcadian
On the Unbounded
On the Love of Boys
On Self-Possession
On the Useful
On Freedom
On Death
On Spontaneousness
On Friendship – two books
On Equity
On Contraries – two books
On Felicitousness – two books
On Writing
On Memory
On Untruth
Callicles
On Insight – two books
The Housekeeper
On Discretion
On the Force of Law
On the State
On Piety
On the Teachability of Virtue
On Being
On Fate
On the Passions
On Forms of Life
On Concord
On the Learnable – two books
On Equitableness
On Virtue – two books
On General Terms
On Desire – two books
On Conduct in Life
On Fortitude
Of the One
On Ideas
On Art
On the Gods – two books
On the Soul – two books
On Knowing
The Statesman
On Prudence
On Philosophy
On the Teachings of Parmenides
Archedemos or Of Justness
On the Good
The Works relating to the mathematical Mind – eight books
Resolution of Problems of Speaking – ten books
Lectures on Physics
Main Section
On Genera and Species
Pythagorean Teachings
Resolutions – two books
Classifications – eight books
Clauses (Claims) – twenty (forty-three) books
On the Art of Interlocution – fourteen books
Treatises for Lecture-Recitation
Logical Disquisitions – nine books
Regarding Subjects of Study – six books
Regarding the mathematical mind – two books
On Geometry – five books
Notations (Memoranda)
Contradistinctions
On Numbers
Theory of Number
On Intervals
Astronomical Teachings – six books
Element for Alexander the Great on Kingship – four books
To Arybas
To Hephaestion
On Geometry – two books