I've been reading Diogenes Laertius' LIVES AND OPINIONS. Considered as a piece of writing, it is a terrible job. It is just one thing after another. "Another story told about X is that Q1 happened to him. But according to some sources, it was Q2 that really happened. And according to others, Q1 really happened to Y instead. Yet another thing said about X is... Here are three brief poems attributed to X." Considered as a source on events of ancient times, that anti-stylistic formlessness is presumably its value. Laertius isn't inserting his own grand design into his account of lives and opinions of classical Greek philosophers. He is just passing along what he has heard. As to Socrates, [and yes that is the cliched image of Socrates above, the David painting], Laertius has heard at least two things that I hadn't encountered in any other source, and that seem intriguing: Socrates was taught by a philosopher named Archelaus, who was a philosopher of nature i...
As of this moment, I have NOT been able to give this answer to this question at Quora. For some reason, my interface with the site for this purpose has been unsuccessful. I will post here then, to lessen the sense of frustration. Both question and answer. Hello: To the people who read philosophy, can you explain to me its benefits and why I should read a book by a philosopher and then read a book by another philosopher who responded to him 200 years later, for example? Those are two very different requests, but since you have used only one question mark I suspect you think you have asked only one question. First you asked whether I, someone who reads philosophy, can explain its benefits. Presumably this means its benefits to me, whatever keeps me reading such books and articles. You could probably have put a question mark after the word “benefit”. Thereafter you ask a very different question: whether I can tell you why you should read at least two books by phi...