Democritus wrote on ethics, physics and music; even his atomism comes to us through other people
Diogenes Laertius lists a large number of works by Democritus on ethics, physics, mathematics, music and cosmology.
The work itself survives only in secondhand reports, sometimes unreliable or conflicting, so the reasoning behind his positions often needs to be reconstructed.
Much of the best evidence is Aristotle, who regarded Democritus as an important rival in natural philosophy. Aristotle wrote a monograph on him, but only a few passages quoted in other sources survive.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Aristotle is the best witness and a rival at the same time. Being a rival does not make him useless as a witness.
The bigger problem is not hostility but loss: a monograph on Democritus existed, and we have only a few quoted passages from it.
And the atomist label itself is a bundle: reports often name Democritus and Leucippus together, so credit is easier to give to a system than to a particular argument.