Diodorus Cronus

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Diodorus Cronus, who lived in the second-half of the 4th century BC, was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. He was most notable for logic innovations, including the paradox of future contingents.

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[edit] Life

He was a son of Ameinias of Iasus in Caria, and he lived at the court of Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, who is said to have given him the surname of Cronus on account of his inability to solve at once some dialectic problem proposed by Stilpo, when the two philosophers were dining with the king. Diodorus is said to have taken that disgrace so much to heart, that after his return from the meal, and writing a treatise on the problem, he died in despair.[1] However, according to Strabo,[2] Diodorus himself adopted the surname of Cronus from his teacher, Apollonius Cronus. Further information about his life is not known.

He belonged to the Megarian school of philosophy, and was the fourth in the succession of the heads of that school. He was particularly celebrated for his great dialectic skill, for which he is called The Dialectician.[3] This effectively became his surname, and descended even to his five daughters, Menexene, Argia, Theognis, Artemesia, and Pantaclea, who were likewise distinguished as dialecticians.[4]

[edit] Philosophy

On the doctrines of Diodorus we possess only fragmentary information, and not even the titles of his works are known. It appears, however, certain that it was he who fully developed the dialectic art of the Megarians.[5] He seems to have been much occupied with the theory of proof and of hypothetical propositions. In the same manner as he rejected in logic the divisibility of the fundamental notion, he also maintained, in his physical doctrines, that space was indivisible, and consequently that motion was impossible. He further denied the coming into existence and all multiplicity both in time and in space; but he considered the things that fill up space as one whole composed of an infinite number of indivisible particles. In this latter respect he approached the atomistic doctrines of Democritus and Diagoras.

In regard to things possible, he maintained that only those things are possible which actually are or will be; possible was, further, with him identical with necessary; hence everything which is not going to be cannot be, and all that is, or is going to be, is necessary; so that the future is as certain and defined as the past. This theory approached the doctrine of fate maintained by the Stoics, and Chrysippus is said to have written a work, On Possibility, (Greek: περὶ δυνατῶν), against the views of Diodorus.[6]

Epictetus summarised Diodorus' argument on possibility in a form which became known as the Master Argument:

The argument called the Master Argument (ho kurieuôn logos) appears to have been proposed from such principles as these: there is in fact a common contradiction between one another in these three propositions, each two being in contradiction to the third. The propositions are, that every thing past must of necessity be true; that an impossibility does not follow a possibility; and that a thing is possible which neither is nor will be true. Diodorus observing this contradiction employed the probative force of the first two for the demonstration of this proposition: That nothing is possible which is not true and never will be.[7]

Diodorus also made use of the Sorites paradox, and is said to have invented two others of the same kind, viz. The Masked Man and The Horns, which are, however, also ascribed to Eubulides.[1] Language was, with him, as with Aristotle, the result of an agreement of people among themselves.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Diogenes Laërtius, ii.
  2. ^ Strabo, xiv., xvii.
  3. ^ Strabo, xiv., xvii.; Sextus Empiricus, adv. Gram. i.; Pliny, H. N. vii. 54.
  4. ^ Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iv. 19
  5. ^ Cicero, Academica, ii. 24, 47.
  6. ^ Diogenes Laërtius, vii.; Cicero, de Fato, 6, 7. 9, ad Fam. ix. 4.
  7. ^ Epictetus, Discourses, ii.19.1

[edit] See also

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