This is my finalized, exam-prep summary of Stoic Philosophy making use of the resources prescribed by Professor Angier. I formulated these notes in order to generate a foundational understanding of the stoic arguments and their refutations.
- Basic Outline:
o Founded by Zeno of Citium
o Succeeded by Chrysippus
o The only path to achieving ataraxia is virtue.
Stoic logic dictates that a proposition may only be true if the opposite of the consequence would
falsify the first part.
Eg:
If it is day, there is light
(But) it is day.
Therefore, there is light.
If it is day, there is light.
But there is not light.
Therefore, it is not day.
Stoic physics dictates that everything that exists is matter. The human soul and thus – God are
material, physical things. There are no immaterial souls (as in Platonism) and no world of forms.
Matter is the passive principle in the world, the active principle is thus;
Stoics believe the world is governed by reason and intelligence (logos). Logos encompasses not only
human reason but the forces that govern the entire cosmos. The stoics classify God as something they
refer to as pneuma – a subtler kind of physical matter (the stoics are corporealists) akin to fire or
breath. The stoics are pantheistic, God is the unity that permeates all things. Everything is pre-
ordained. All things in the universe are connected through sympathia.
The stoics employ a top-down view of nature:
- Nature is God/Zeus.
- Nature is alive.
- Nature is rational, logos.
- Nature is an animal.
Thus we can infer:
- Nature is unified (NOT uniform).
- Nature has purpose.
- Nature is providential.
- Nature is corporeal.
- Nature is a craftsman.
Nature is full of bodies in which there is no void. Void lies beyond the natural world.
Contrary to Aristotle, principles are corporeal. The argument is that impulse and choice have causal
effects and only physical things can have causal effects.
, Nature as the site of value simply meaning ‘living in accordance with nature/nature’s principles,’.
The paradigm for rationality was divine; ‘The heavens and everything [regular] cannot be produced
by man, that which by such things are produced must then be better than man. What name other than
God would you give this?’.
Problems:
A. What about evil events? What about irrational events?
Humans, as the only reflective part of the Cosmos can act irrationally. So then how are their irrational
acts consistent with the rationality of the whole natural order?
What of natural disaster and/or disease?
The argument is that it has logos has peculiar to itself and so it must occur in accordance with
universal reason, and not without usefulness in relation to the whole as without such events there
could be no good.
Marcus Aurelius later remarked that if all is willed by reason and unity (sympathia) then nothing
could truly be considered evil. Evils are conditions of goods.
B. The problem of free-will is sympathia, logos, reason?
The stoics believe in fate/causal determinism – if all happens for the best then nothing should deviate
from this perfect, natural/rational order.
But then what of human free-will?
The stoics affirm ‘soft’ determinism. Humans operate in response to external stimuli but the way in
which we operate is owed to our intrinsic nature or constitution.
As a spinning top moves in response to external stimuli however the way it moves is
determined by constitution.
Just because one has one’s own nature, does not necessarily mean that their response to a stimulus is
free.
- One has nature by necessity, there is no choice not to have it.
- One has little freedom other than simply to act as the person one is.
C. Soul
- The stoics view humans as bodies that consist of both matter and mind.
- Mind is the active principle (pneuma).
- Mind is equivalent to soul to the stoics.
- Soul is compared to a spider, receiving messages from the environment from disturbances in
its web.
- The soul is obligated to seek oikeios (suitable) responses/impulses to its impression.
- In stoicism, the soul is mortal as it is corporeal. Think that pneuma is breath and breath is
something bodily.
o The soul acts on the body – feelings of shame and fear turn one pale or red
respectively.
Thus, what has causal power must be bodily.
Ergo, soul is moral, soul is bodily.
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