In collaboration with Jaap Mansfeld (Utrecht University) and David T. Runia (University of Melbourne), three workshops were held in 2010, 2012, and 2013 hosted by Oliver Primavesi at the Center for Advanced Studies of LMU Munich. All these three workshops were devoted to the doxographical—and especially the Aëtian—tradition. In December 2015, they were followed-up by an international colloquium at Queen’s College of the University of Melbourne under the title “The Placita of Aëtius: Foundations for the Study of Ancient Philosophy.” The inspiration and aim of these four joint endeavours was to provide both a network of exchange for the growing number of scholars who explored Greek doxography and the Aëtian tradition, and a suitable format to discuss recent developments and advances made in the field.

One year later, we—Mareike Jas, then assistant to Oliver Primavesi, working on Ps.-Galen, and contributor to the 2015 colloquium, and Andreas Lammer, then doctoral student at the Munich School of Ancient Philosophy under the supervision of Peter Adamson—pursued the idea of organising a fifth conference, this time devoted to both the Greek and the Arabic doxographical tradition. An initial impetus for this pursuit was our shared interest in the Arabic translation of Ps.-Plutarch’s Placita philosophorum, which Hans Daiber edited forty years ago under the title Aetius Arabus. Consequently, our new initiative was meant not only to continue the ongoing cooperation, which has existed so fruitfully for several years, but moreover to expand it in its historical perspective in an interdisciplinary way. In fact, there has been a nascent interest in the Arabic doxographical collections in recent years, too, and this interest pertained both to such collections which in one way or another derived from Greek precursors and to such which did not. However, the many connections and similarities—alongside, of course, differences—between the Greek and Arabic doxographical traditions have so far remained largely unconsidered in scholarship, to such an extent that there was not even an ongoing exchange among those working in these two related fields.

In order to remedy this situation and, in effect, to bring together scholars and experts in the fields of classical philology and Arabic studies (and, of course, the history of philosophy more generally), we organised our conference. We hoped it would provide the opportunity for the first time to discuss Greek and Arabic doxographies, their traditions and issues in scholarship, together, indeed to learn more about the phenomenon of doxography, exploring it from different angles and perspectives.

We successfully sought financial support with the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (to which we are now expressing our gratitude, especially to Hendrikje Gröpler) and also institutional backing from the Munich School of Ancient Philosophy (for which we are grateful to Oliver Primavesi, Peter Adamson, and Eleni Gaitanu), which enabled us to invite nine international experts (Yury Arzhanov, Han Baltussen, David Bennett, Aileen Das, Christoph Helmig, Jaap Mansfeld, David T. Runia, Teun Tieleman, and Elvira Wakelnig) alongside three Munich colleagues (Fedor Benevich, Christian Pfeiffer, and Bethany Somma) to our conference “Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World” (6–8 March 2018). It was a delightful experience and, from our own personal and subjective point of view, a great success.

Further financial support was subsequently provided by the “Trierer Kolleg für Mittelalter und Neuzeit” (TriKo), which helped us to prepare the proceedings (special thanks to Claudine Moulin and Petra Schulte as well as to Christoph Hocks for carrying it out). Furthermore, we wish to thank Colin Murtha as well as Ina and Sebastian Schäfer for more help in the final preparation.

We wish to express our deep gratitude to Frans de Haas and the editorial board of Brill’s series “Philosophia Antiqua: Studies in Ancient Philosophy” for supporting our volume and including it alongside all those other precious tomes, and thank the anonymous reviewer for providing their further insights.

Finally, we would like to alert the reader to the fact that with the publication of these proceedings now in 2022, not all authors—who revised their contributions during the difficult year 2020—were able to take full advantage of the contents of the enormous fifth volume of the Aëtiana series of Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia, to whose tireless efforts everyone working with doxographies, in one way or another, will always remain indebted.

The editors

Trier/Munich, May 2021