General Notes on Stoicism

Dr. Mark Alfino

Gonzaga University

General Notes on Stoicism

Philosophy of Nature

Living in Agreement, amended to Living in Agreement with Nature, (Zeno/Cleanthes) then Living in Agreement with experience of what happens by nature. (Chrysippus)

Long 108: w. To put it another way, cosmic Nature or God (the terms refer to the same thing in Stoicism) and man are related to each other at the heart of ( their being as rational agents.

Long 112: re. It is sufficient to note the clear links between ‘creative reason’, Zeno’s cosmic principle, and the divine craftsman, or soul of the world, in Plato. 1 o. The theology of Plato’s Laws with its eloquent accidental. defence of providence has affinities with Stoicism which cannot be be accidental.

Long 120: The two fundamental concepts in Stoicism are logos (reason) and physis (nature). It is because nature as a whole is informed by reason that SA>icism seeks to imify all aspects of philosophy. Stoic philosophy, we might say, is designed to make for complete correspondence between langu^e and conduct on the one hand and the occiurence of natural events on die other hand.’

Connection to Heraclitus (Long 145-147) “Although the logos is common, the many live as if they have a private under- jc standing (fr. 2). From these passages it is clear that logos is something which an be heard, which serves to explain things, which is common to all, etc

Also, share concept of harmony with Her.

(go through this) Important differences Stoicism/Platonism: 146: “The assumption that the universe is an orderly structure is characteristic of Greek philosophy. And in Plato and Aristotle, as in Stoicism, ‘^ the notion of order is combined with the notion of goal or purpose. ^ But needier Plato nor Aristotle agreed with the Stoics that this order is an order of cause and effect perfectly represented both in terrestrial phenomena and the movement of die heavenly bodies. There is nothing in Stoicism corresponding to Plato’s Forms, nor again to Aristotle’s distinction between the celestial and sub-lunar reabns. Stoicism does not set up Plato’s degrees of reality, nor Aristotle’s distinction between necessity and contingency. Real ‘. The objects of perception in Stoicism are all perfect examples of ‘what ousts’, that is. Bodies; and they exist necessarily given the causal nexus which determines all things.” [Almost like they would not be surprised by Hume!]

Long discuss the connection between logos and Physis; artistic fire; example of arg from design (149); biological orientation of stoicism (150); cf. Craftsman in Timaeus, passage from Laws that sounds Stoic,

Nice contrast also, between Plato’s Eleatic Stranger, in the Sophist, who argues that a knowledge confined to touch and sense is limited. prob is how to account for “justice” in a body. Seems incorporeal. Crit of knowledge for Plato “s. The Eleatic Stranger next proposes that the materialists should abandon their previous criterion of existence in favour of a new ‘mark of reality’—‘that anything which really exists possesses some power of causing a change in something else or of experiencing change’ (247E)” (153) [Note reversal in Stoics. ]

Long argues that Stoics are not just materialists, but vitalists. –pneuma is vital heat.

157: nice passage on the way pneuma connects to body. Also, pneuma is an entity at the level of world-soul. [using a “states” interpretation, I think you can avoid an additional metaphysical claim here. [Analogy of Being -- this works if you use the pure arrangement of a state of affairs as an individuating principle. ]

Relation of pneuma to matter….

Epistemology

-defended against Skeptics their view that there is a kind of experience that brings certainty with it (Phantasia Kataleptike)

-also, believed in “preconceptions” (prolepsis) (like Epicureans), which give criteria of truth.

-episteme (science) can be built on this base of preconceptions

-katalepsis – grasping, illustrated with example of clasping hands (Zeno) (Also in Long)

128 Long: “This modified doctrine implies that die assent to a cognitive impression is normally instantaneous and not something calling for deliberate choice on our part. The ‘obstacles’ which these later Stoics had in mind are referred to by Sextus as ‘external circumstances (ibid. a54ff.): Menelaus returning from Troy received a cognitive impression of Helen, but failed to assent to it owing to a belief that Helen was still on his ship; in fiict the Helen on his ship was a phantom fiishioned by the gods to look like the real Helen. …[point is: this is an exception we usually get impressions right. Other sources of error in the emotions…]

at if a man wants to grasp something as it really is, then he must taike every step to obtain a ‘dear and striking impression’. “

130: dist. Between “truth” and “the true”

****(esp. in light of the logic, I’m beginning to think the epistemology is a representationalism combined with a confidence (preconception) of holism and vitalism.)

Physics

-passive matter hyle vs. active god (theos), these “principles” interpenetrate each other.

-like Epicureans, Stoics make God material so that he can be causally efficacious.

-pneuma – both a principle of life and aworld organism.

-Being is corporeal. Non-reductive materialism.

-“justice is a body” –state of a soul, a commuity of souls.

-Is time incorporeal?

Cosmology

-ekpyrosis

-pyr technikon - a form of pneuma

-spermatakoi Logoi

Determinism

-(need to make clarification of difference in criteria of free will. Ancient: Freedom to follow one’s nature (barrel example), Modern: Freedom from physical causation, postmodern: freedom is a construct.

Long 167: “In explaining a deliberate act as the combination of an impression andai lal response Chrysippus is in line with the general position of Aristotle {De an, iii lo-ii). Like Aristotle the Stoics did not look for a criterion of voluntary action in ‘being free to act otherwise now {SVF ii 984). Their test of human power is not freedom to act otherwise but acting deliberately. In spite of the distinction between internal and external causes, the character of the individual fells under the general causal law.”

168: connection to Spinoza. 169: problem of evil. [tough I don’t see this as such a hard problem in Stoicism]

-Chrysippus: example of setting out to get ill, or the foot getting muddy.

Long: As these passages show, the Stoics held stricdy to the view that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. Chance is simply a name for undiscovered causes {SVF ii 967). A possible event is one ‘which is prevented by nothing from occurring even if it will not occur’ (ibid.). But there is something which prevents all non-events from occurring — the causes of those events which do occur. It is only human ignorance of causes which entities men to assert the absence of any impediment to die occurrence of non-events. “164

Chrysippus’analysis of will : the rolling drum 166.

“Cicero (De fato) shows how Chrysippus applied this causal theory to the explanation of human actions. The problem is to maintain some human autonomy within the causal nexus, and Chrysippus sought to achieve this by arguing that in every action we have to distinguish between the external stimulus and the mind’s response. He seems to claim that external causes are responsible for the ‘impressions’ which present the mind with a possible course of action. But it is up to the man himself how he responds to the impression. The external causes are an expression of the working of destiny, but they are not sufficient to necessitate our actions.” 166

Logic

-propositional – interst in logic on complete thoughts.

-universal are not “ti”(somethings). They are outside logic, as the following is considered invalid: ‘If someone is in Athens, they are not in Megara; but man is in Athens; therefore man is not in Megara’.

-for this reason, Stoics preferred to use hypothetical reconstructions for universals.

Origin of Stoic logic in the dialectical schools of Diodorus Cronos, Philo the Dialectician.

-Divided logic into rhetoric and dialectic: On dialectic, Long recalls meaning in Aristotle: Logic, in our formal sense, is treated most fully in the Analytics where Aristotle sets out the principles of syllogistic reasoning. The Topics and the De sophisticis Elenchus have ‘dialectical reasoning* as their subject-matter. This is distinguished from ‘demonstrative reasoning* (the subject of the Analytics) by reference to the premises from which it starts: dialectic for Aristotle means reasoning which takes men’s convictions for its premises; the premises of the demonstrative syllogism are ‘true and primary’

-In stoicism dialectic has the nature of real things as its study. “Dialectic in Stoicism is defined as ‘knowledge of what is true, false and neither true nor false’ (D.L. vii 4a).

Language

Lekton – sayable

Legein – saying – attaching a predcate.

Nominatives are corporeal, as are properties.

Some evidence ofa Wittt. Like mirroring of language and logic with the rational structure of nature.

Long:

Properties and Nouns are corporeal, but sentence meaning is not. Review of Cratylus argument, passage on onomatopoesis really important to Stoic thought on language because it suggests a harmony between words and the world: 134: “It If words and what they signify have a natural relationship to each other, it is reasonable in which words have been formed and the formation of concepts. “

137: Stoic anticipation of sense and reference distinction in Frege

Stoic semantic theory then is that there non reduction from the level of statements, but all properties and nominatives are corporeal.

Importance of denial of universal (hypothetical construction)_142: prpositional logic. ;

Self/Personal Identity

Appeared to have a causal theory of self. Ex. of Dion: what endures as the subject of growth is not the material substrate (or ‘substance’, ousia), but the ‘peculiarly qualified individual”. Qua ‘substrate’ Dion (to use the Stoics’ favorite stock name) has little if any endurance, but qua ‘peculiarly qualified individual’ {idios poios), that is, qua Dion, he endures throughout his life. Although Dion’s matter constantly changes, the individuating quality that makes him Dion is with him, unchanged, from birth to death. That there is such a lifelong peculiar quality is a thesis of Stoic physics (there is no evidence what they thought it consisted in; the uniqueness of fingerprints is a modern discovery), but the need to solve the growing argument elevates it to the status of a metaphysical necessity. It also plays a part in Stoic epistemology (see §12).

-Oikeiosis – instinctive sense of self, from self-interest to other-regarding situations. All stages may be rational, if qualified appropriately.

Ethics / Becoming a Sage

Long:

Metaphysical assumption that what happens in Nature accords with nature. (good example of a “what the?” moment in reconstruction.) But thinking of large inductive patterns like seasons, and regularities of human behavior as well.

Faith in “harmony of the universe” (empirical or faith?)

Four parts to subject matter of ethics: 1) “on impulse’ - divides in “virture and “the goal of action” 2) “on good and bad things” -- divides into “rimary value”, “moral action” and “appropriate acts” 3) “on passions” -- divides into topics like “suasions and disuasions” (schema from Diogenes L. I think)

Stoics grant a continuum of rational impulse from self-interest to altruism. Posit development schema.

Fragment of Hierocles, “Foundation of Ethics” “lat the first thing of which a creature is aware is not something in the external world but itself. Self-awareness, he argues, is the precondition of perceiving externals but to be aware of oneself is at die same time to picture oneself in relation to something else.” 186

Axial separation of Good and Pleasure. But note, to say that a stoic believes that Pleasure is not a good, you must compare two scales that are utterly separate for Stoics. Rather “good” refers only to virtue, only virtue has intrinsic value, everthing else is indifferent, but there are the preferred indifferents.

“Diogenes of Babylon, who was Chrysippus’ successor as head of the Stoa, defined ifae goal of life in the formula: ‘to act rationally li>ewith right reasoning] in the selection of natural advantages’ (D.L. vii 88). “ 195

196: attacks of separation of good and preferable by academics; 201: moral virture by analogy to health.

Important for Stoic to perform the rite actions for the rite reason.

207: major problem for Stoics: trying to hang values on Nature.

Also: trying to describe “rational assent” as in our power yet also part of the structure of the universe.

Sedley:

-virture alone is good, cirtue secures happiness

-evertyhing else is indifferent, though there are “preferred indifferents”

-still justified in pursuing wealth, fame.

-Things which accord with nature (e.g. health) - ta kata physin

-Value – axia

-Things contrary to nature – ta para physin

Sedley—“Stoicism legitimizes a familiar set of personal and social values, while denying them any intrinsic worth (sec. 15)

Precept prescribe duties.

Kathkonta –

Problem: all or nothing charcter of wisdom and happiness.

-adopts Plato’s four cardinal virtures. Unity of Virtues.

Prosoche – attention to oneself (minfulness)

Interesting sermon by Basil of Caesarea. Stoic/Platonic/Christian

Dorotheus of Gaza.

Hagiography

Stoics disputes with skeptics and academics, record during 2nd century clearer. Carneades disputed a lot.

From 150 bc Stoicism in Rome.

General Notes on Stoicism