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Greek Philosophy and Encyclopedic Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Ilsetraut Hadot
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What does “encyclopedic knowledge” mean to us today? I believe that, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, what we mean by this term is a knowledge that strives to embrace in detail the greatest possible number of sciences and bodies of knowledge. As Sainte-Beuve said in 1850 regarding Madame de Genlis:

All these tastes, all these diverse talents, all these pleasurable arts, all these trades (for she didn't even omit the trades), made her a living Encyclopedia that prided itself upon being the rival and the antagonist of the other Encyclopedia.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 45 , Issue 178 , June 1997, pp. 33 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. Causeries du lundi (Monday Chats), 14 October 1850, t. III, p. 20. At the author's request, translations of the quoted texts have been made directly from the French translation supplied by the author. In some cases, existing translations have been consulted.

2. There is a hesitation already present between enkyklios paideia (= A) and enkyk los paideia (= B) in the two most ancient manuscripts of the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian (I,10,1), dated the ninth century A.D.

3. I. Hadot, Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique, Paris, Etudes Augus tiniennes, 1984, pp. 263-293.

4. The subsequent confusion of enkyklios paideia with the customary education of youth, the liberal arts in general and the cycle of the seven liberal arts in partic ular, goes back to the German scholars of the nineteenth century, and was tire lessly repeated after them by a number of scholars, particularly H.-I. Marrou.

5. Republic 537c; Phaedrus 266b; Epinomis 991e-992a.

6. Parts of Animals, I, 639a.

7. Grammatici Graeci I, 3: Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem grammaticam, A. Hil gard, Leipzig, 1901, pp. 112, 16-20. The scholiast comments on the distinction established by Dionysius of Thrace (second century B.C.) between two classes of the arts, those founded on reasoning (logikai technai) and the practical arts (praktikai technai). As examples of the first, Denys mentions grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy; as examples of the latter, the arts of the carpenter and the blacksmith.

8. Vitruvius, De architectura, I, 1,12.

9. Ibid., I, 1,15.

10. See Hadot, (note 3 above), pp. 99;150;157 n. 9; 176.

11. Galen, Protreptikos, 14,38 f., p. 129, 10 ff. [Marquardt].

12. See Hadot, (note 3 above), pp. 276-282.

13. Cicero, De oratore, III, 6, 21.

14. See Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta, 2: "All of the arts that have any bearing upon cul ture. (quae ad humanitatem pertinent) have a certain common bond and are linked to one another by a kind of kinship."

15. Plato, Republic, VII, 537c ff.

16. See also H. J. Krämer, Platonismus und hellenistische Philosophie, Berlin, 1971, p. 21, and G. Ryle, "Dialectic in the Academy," in R. Brambaugh (ed.), New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, London, 1965, p. 55.

17. The following pages are supported by my discussions in Arts libéraux et philoso phie dans la pensée antique, pp. 34-52 and 63-214, where detailed references and bibliographic information can be found.

18. See P. Hadot, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique?, Paris, 1995.

19. Ibid., p. 130.

20. Suidae Lexicon, Vol. 3, p. 468., 13 ff. [Adler].

21. Cicero, De Finibus, I, 21, 71 f.

22. Diogenes Laertius, X, 6, p. 496 [Long].

23. See M. Erler, "Die Schule Epikurs," in Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie- Die Philosophie der Antike, Vol. 4, Basel, 1994, pp. 205-362.

24. Physics of the Stoics, London, 1971 (first edition, 1959).

25. See, for example, P. Louis, Aristote, Les parties des animaux, Paris, 1956, p. XIII.

26. Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, 88, 2.

27. See Seneca's attacks on another part of "logic," that is, on the syllogistic quib ble of the Stoic dialecticians. For example: Ibid., 45, 5; 48, 6; 49, 5; 82, 21; 83, 9; 87,41.

28. Strabo, Geography, XVI, 2,10.

29. He likes to call the founder of the Stoic school "our Zeno": see, for example, Ibid., I, 2, 34 and XV, 4, 27; see also XVI, 2, 10.

30. I,1,1.

31. Saint Augustine, De ordine, Book II. This dialogue was written at Cassiciacum during a period in which Saint Augustine underwent a strong Neoplatonist influence.

32. I will add only one detail perhaps of interest in our context: the studies of the mathematical and physical sciences were not part of the customary instruc tion of the golden youth in Antiquity, but took place within certain philosoph ical schools or in a strictly professional framework.