Verso una rivalutazione di Diogene di Apollonia, filosofo e fisiologo monista

The contribution belongs to a broader and long-lasting project about Dio- genes of Apollonia – the subject of André Laks’ first monograph (1983), definitely the most important on this thinker. Diogenes plays a major albeit partially hidden role in Aristotle’s overall narrative about the Pre-Socratic thinkers. Diogenes’ the- ory underlies the standard rationale – given by Aristotle for views such as: «That out of which all things that are consist, and from which they first come to be, and into which they are finally resolved – the substance remaining, but changing in its modifications – this they say is the element and the principle of things, and there- fore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved». In Metaphysics 1.3.983b8–13, this view is quoted without name and precedes Aristotle’s overall historiography, splitting Pre-Socratic thinkers in two groups, monists (including Diogenes, who makes air prior to water and the most primary of the simple bodies, 984a5–7) and pluralists. If the whole theory is by Dio- genes, he can be regarded as a major, albeit indirect source of the main lines of Aris- totle’s doxography, which lays in its turn at the foundations of the historiography about early thinkers in Greek philosophy. However, bold facts concerning Diogenes are often overseen: 1. The main sources on Diogenes are Aristotle and Theophras- tus, i.e. the earliest and most authorized ones. 2. Aristotle (if nothing escapes to us) quotes Diogenes (HA 511b21-513b12) at greater length than he does with any other scholar in his time, living or not. 3. Aristotle’s mention of Diogenes in Metaphysics Alpha is not directly included in Diels-Kranz fragments and testimonia about him. In spite of recent scholarship (Pinto 2018, Dondoni 2021 among others) insisting that Diogenes’ monism deserves particular attention, much work is still needed: the time has come to leave Diogenes shining on his own.