Stoic metaphysics at Rome

Draft paper exploring how, if at all, we can square the Stoic paradoxes concerning the sage with their mutually supporting technical definitions of wisdom, philosophy, knowledge, and crafts. The paper concludes, with due caution, that 1. the “received interpretation” of the sage as omniscient is implausible, undesirable, and can only answer part of the textual evidence. 2. If, following Brouwer, we approach the sage by way of the definitions of wisdom (sophia), knowledge (epistêmê), philosophy, and crafts (technai), we see that: i. Wisdom is described as involving both (1) a belief component: “knowledge of things human and divine” and (2) a craft component (it is a “fitting craft” (επιτηδεiας τέχνης) whose object is either/both the virtue and the best life for human beings. ii. If we follow 1(1) we see that knowledge itself for the Stoics has a belief component (1) and involves a transformed hexis in the psyche of the knower (2) iii. If we follow 1(2) we see that the crafts are defined both in terms of systematic cognitions (1) and a transformed hexis (2), and that both of these are characterised by their stability of “constancy”. iv. Thus wisdom involves both systematic beliefs about things human and divine, and a transformed hexis, where both are characterise by constancy, and it becomes a question of understanding how this is humanly possible. v. The Stoics’ emphasis on the epistemic virtues of “unhastiness” and “non-precipitancy” suggest that, following Liu (Apeiron, 2008) what is at stake is a way of acquiring beliefs systematically, rather than an established, unchangeable body of systematic beliefs. vi. Such fragments that suggest omniscience, mastery of all crafts, can be explained as paradoxes turning on exoteric (doxastic) v. esoteric (technical) meanings of terms like “rich”, “generalship”, “kingship”. vii. And/or they are hyperbolic paradoxes aiming to attract attention/publicity and awaken curiosity in potential new students.

Philosophia, 2003

This paper examines Anaxagoras’ influence on Stoic cosmology and physics. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of the Anaxagorean notion of Mind (Nous) for the early Stoics, who make significant changes and adjustments to it as they integrate it into their philosophical system. In addition, it further analyzes Anaxagoras’ contributions to the Stoic development of the notion of continuity and infinite divisibility of matter. Despite the obvious differences, both theoretical and lexical affinities show that the early Stoics were well aware of Anaxagoras’ book On Nature and were influenced by him perhaps no less than they were by Heraclitus. Please note this paper is published with Brepols Publishers as a Gold Open Access article under a Creative Commons CC 4.0: BY-NC license. The paper is also freely available on the website of Brepols Publishers https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484%2FM.PHR-EB.5.144538 under this same license.

K. Arenson (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy. , 2019

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2012

In this article I investigate what the Stoic doctrine of the two principles, God and matter, owes to Plato. I discuss recent scholarly views to the effect that the Stoics were influenced by Old Academic interpretations of the Timaeus and argue that, although the Timaeus probably did play a role in the genesis of the Stoic doctrine, some role was also played by a dualist theory of flux set forth in the etymologies of the Cratylus. I also discuss Theophrastus’ account of Plato’s achievements in physics (fr. 230 FHS&G) and the report of Old Academic physics contained in Cicero’s Academica, 1. 24–9, and commonly taken to go back to Antiochus of Ascalon, and I show that those reports too are likely to have been influenced by the Cratylus.

Bonazzi, Mauro and Christoph Helmig. Platonic Stoicism - Stoic Platonism: The Dialogue between Platonism and Stoicism in Antiquity. Leuven University Press, 2008, 2008

This book examines the important but largely neglected issue of the interrelation between Platonism and Stoicism in Ancient Philosophy. Several renowned specialists in the fields of Stoic and Platonic analyse the intricate mutual influences between Stoic and Platonic philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the Imperial Age, and after. Although it has been repeatedly claimed that the phenomenon addressed in this book could best be labelled eclecticism, it emerges from the various articles collected here that the situation is much more complicated. Far from being eclectics, most Stoics and Platonists consciously appropriated their material in order to integrate it into their own philosophical system. The dialogue between Platonists and Stoics testifies to active debate and controversy on central topics such as psychology, epistemology, physics, and ethics. This book will deepen our understanding of the dialogue between different philosophical schools in Antiquity. The results presented here teach one clear lesson: Platonism and Stoicism were by no means monolithic blocks, but were continuously moulded by mutual influence and interaction.

Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2003

The latest entry in the long-running series of Companions will hopefully raise the profile of Stoicism in philosophical curricula-hope, however, being a sentiment condemned by the Stoics. i There is not a single area of philosophical reflection which could not be advanced by an intensive reexamination of Stoic positions and polemics. The school's long duration in diverse habitats, moulded by a succession of powerful intellects with differing facilities and preoccupations, represented by a panoply of sources none of which, however, constitutes an adequate presentation of the Stoic project, has the curious effect of bringing into the foreground the ideas which united the school. As a result it is the systematicity of Stoic thought that strikes one every time it is presented, despite the diversity of projects to which the appropriation of Stoic thought has lent itself, and despite the fact that it is, for us, a philosophy in fragments. It is due to this essential integrity of the Stoic project that the fragments have been sufficient to prompt time and again revivals of the project begun, according to Diogenes Laertius, by the fortuitous shipwreck near Athens in the late 4th century BCE of a wry-necked Cypriot, "lean, fairly tall, and swarthy," with "thick legs," who was "flabby and delicate" and "fond of eating green figs and of basking in the sun," (DL VII. 1). His name was Zeno, and the school that he founded was named for the painted colonnade or stoa of Pisianax, in which "he used to discourse, pacing up and down" (ibid, 5). Beginning in some sense as an outgrowth of Cynicism (Zeno's earliest teacher Crates was a Cynic), the school grew into one of the most ambitious and comprehensive philosophical programs in antiquity. Universality and systematicity were goals of the school right from the start, as can already be seen from Zeno's famous definition of the telos: "Living in agreement/consistently [homologoumenôs]," (Stobaeus II 75). This agreement or consistency had as its condition of possibility the absolute immanence of the ideal in the world, which in turn demanded of humans the recognition at every moment and in every field of endeavor of its absolute sovereignty. Thus, although it may seem to us hopelessly naïve that the Stoics should have sought to answer questions which plainly called for empirical inquiry by syllogisms instead, their total faith in the methods of formal reasoning was simply the obverse of their evacuation of the Platonic universal. Having brought the intelligible down to earth, there could no longer be any question of allowing the particular to slip out from under its determination. We see this reflected as much in their epistemology, where they affirm the identity of indiscernibles, making of each individual an infima species, as in their ethics, where the individual is expected, as the final stage in their natural development, to take up a cosmological, indeed, in some sense, a cosmogonic perspective on their own life. The Stoics reached out to incorporate as much of the legacy of their philosophical forebears as could be harmonized with the principal intuitions of the school, in accord, seemingly, with the no-doubt-initially-unpromising oracle received by Zeno advising him to "take on the colors of the dead," which he took to mean "study ancient authors" (DL VII 2). Particularly interesting-and receiving insufficient attention in the Companion, I would say-is the Stoic appropriation of Heraclitus, surely beginning with Zeno, but documented for, and becoming pervasive under, his successor Cleanthes. David Sedley's fine opening historical piece, "The School, from Zeno to Arius Didymus," provides inter alia an elegant account of the school's integration of Platonism i This condemnation has interesting consequences in Stoic thought. It seems as if the tendency in Marcus Aurelius (e.g. at Meditations X 6) to suspend his properly Stoic belief in the providential ordering of the universe (what Gill in the Companion calls the "providence or atoms" theme (p. 50)) may derive from such considerations. And Simplicius-for his own reasons, of course-takes Epictetus this way when he explains that Epictetus' speeches "render the people who believe them and put them into practice blessed and happy without the need to be promised the rewards of virtue after death-even if these rewards always do follow too" (H194, trans. C. Brittain and T. Brennan); a sort of inverted Pascal's wager. beginning in the mid second century BCE. We are accustomed to thinking of Stoicism as the minor element in any such synthesis, but Dio Chrysostum, the Stoicizing sophist of the Imperial era (c. 40-c. 110 CE), has the semi-Scythian Greek colonists he encounters in the Crimaea characterize Stoicism as "this more precise philosophy," compared to the Plato they know (DC 36. 26). And for the Romans of the late Republic and early Empire, of course, Stoicism represented Greek philosophy in the truest sense. Christopher Gill's chapter, "The School in the Roman Imperial Period," argues effectively for the continued creativity of the school in its transplanted home. In Cicero's Academica-in which we are privileged to witness the process of coining the Latin translations of Greek philosophical concepts which are so familiar to us today (e.g., qualitas for poiotês at I 6)-the views of the Platonic Academy itself are represented by the heavily Stoicizing Antiochus. There is a paradox to be noted here, perhaps, concerning the difference between a living tradition of philosophical argumentation as opposed to a scholastic interpretation of texts: the former may bear fewer evident characteristics of its filiation, while the very intensive textuality of the latter may indicate that it no longer possesses an unbroken connection to the circumstances in which its core texts were generated. The last heirs of Plato's Academy in antiquity would continue to draw productively upon the Stoic legacy, long after the Stoics had ceased to exist as a living school of thought: the 6th century CE Platonist Simplicius, who was among the philosophers emigrating temporarily to the court of the Persian King Khosroës, writes a long commentary on the Encheiridion of Epictetus. In addition to their attempt to incorporate the best from the other philosophical schools, the Stoics did not hesitate to intervene, to accumulate interests and stake claims, so to speak, within the most diverse sectors of intellectual life, expanding from their firm base of "prior commitments," as Michael J. White terms them in the Companion (p. 127), ii into new intellectual territories, albeit not always with felicitous ii Citations of page number alone will refer to pages of the Companion.

Much has been written as of late on the characteristic and influential philosophical school of thought called Stoicism which was originally founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the second century BCE and further fleshed out and promulgated by Cleanthes and then subsequently by his student Chrysippus, collectively referred to in modern classical studies as the Old Stoa. This work intends to try and provide a succinct overview of the philosophical tenets which were characteristic of the school in the early period as well as identify some unique contributions of the later Stoa which are represented by the Roman/Latin intellectual and politically elite such as Seneca, Cicero and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The paper also reviews some of the earlier Hellenic philosophical traditions from which it Stoicism drew some of its primary tenets and evolved in conjunction with, as well as in the Summary provide an overview of some of the lasting contributions Stoicism has made to the development of the philosophical and theological tradition in the West. Although none of the complete writings and treatises written by the Old Stoa are extant, much of their philosophical tenets are covered by later authors and philosophers whose work is and this article draws on some of these what you might call pseudo-primary sources (in particular Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius) as well as various secondary, more contemporary sources who draw not only on these sources but also extensively from Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta which is an invaluable collection of fragments and quotations of the early Stoa composed in the early part of the 20 th century and from which much of what we know about specific tenets of at least early Stoic philosophy come from.