H. P. GRICE (M. A. LIT. HUM.) E LA STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA ROMANA ANTICA

Doxography in the narrow sense (derived from the nature of the majority of the sources discussed and edited by Diels in the Doxographi Graeci), can be defined as the normally very brief presentation according to theme, or subject, of contrasting (or even bizarre, or compromise) tenets in natural philosophy (or science, if you wish), which in itself does not provide a decisive answer to the issue involved although it may assist you to find a solution. 

The application of the term ‘doxography’ to what one finds in Aristotle (or, on a much more limited scale, in Plato, who occasionally quotes the views of others to further a discussion) can therefore be misleading (see Mansfeld 2000).  

Turning now to doxography in the broad sense, we observe that Cicero’s leisured and extensive presentations, e.g., in his On the Nature of the Gods of the Epicurean and Stoic doctrines in the field of theology-cum-physics—presentations followed by Academic-Skeptical refutations—may be, and have been, called by the name of doxography. But there are obvious differences from doxographies of the Aëtian type. 

To be sure, one might perhaps, with some hesitation, maintain that what we have here is a sort of blow-up of the dialectical scheme one also finds in the Placita literature, with the skeptical component made explicit: contrasting doctrines which turn out to be improvable. 

Such  a move however  is less valid for Diogenes Laërtius, in spite of the fact that this author several times makes a distinction between the life (bios) of a person (Plato; the Stoic Zeno of Citium) and the areskonta or dogmata of this person, or of his school. It is therefore perhaps better to classify these overviews in Cicero and Diogenes Laërtius as belonging with an ancient genre which we may view as a sub-species of doxography, namely the (largely lost) literature Peri Haireseôn (‘On Schools’), which deals with philosophical, or medical, schools and eventually may include arguments against the position of a particular hairesis (‘school’). Philodemus, and Arius Didymus (on ethics), belong here as well.  Scholars, as we have noticed, also speak of ethical doxographies. One could justify this usage by submitting that this is going beyond Diels, and back to Aristotle. We have seen that Aristotle advised his pupils (and himself) also to construct lists of ethical propositions and problems. In his ethical treatises we actually find dialectical overviews concerning problems in ethics, though on a much more modest scale than in the physical treatises. 

But a doxographical literature in the field of ethics, which as to scale and taxonomy would be even remotely comparable to physical doxography, never existed. Yet one occasionally encounters short lists and overviews of ethical tenets in some later authors. It is therefore possible that modest doxographical collections of ethical views did circulate, and we may have some evidence concerned with the circulation (and adaptation) of a diaeretical overview of tenets about the End, or Highest Good (Algra 1997).