IN AND OUT OF THE STOA: DIOGENES LAERTIUS ON ZENO

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.

Philosophia, 2003

The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, 2020

An overview of the Stoic philosophers and the main elements of their system. A chronological presentation of brief biographies of the Stoics with the most notable contributions of each individual is followed by a sketch of their philosophical system divided into the branches of logic, physics, and ethics. Logic includes topics in rhetoric, dialectic, and epistemology. Physics is the account of physical reality, including ontology, cosmology, and theology. The synopsis of ethics includes the Stoics’ version of naturalism, the doctrine of oikeiōsis, the virtues, emotions, the sage, moral progress, and cosmopolitanism.

Forthcoming in N. Powers and J. Klein, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press).

This article examines the reception of Stoicism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from Justus Lipsius to Immanuel Kant. It considers topics often associated with Stoicism during the period, notably the interconnected concepts of fate, necessity, and providence, as well as the rise and development of scholarship on Stoicism during the period. While this was an especially rich period for the reception of Stoicism, more often than not the Stoics found themselves drawn into contemporary disputes, such as the potentially atheistic conclusions of Spinoza's philosophy. At the same time, it saw a shift away from seeing Seneca as the pre-eminent Stoic and towards the systematic philosophy of Zeno and Chrysippus.

In: Cyprus in Texts from Graeco-Roman Antiquity, edited by K. Carvounis / A. Gavrielatos / G. Karla / A. Papathomas, Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2023, pp. 311-325

POLIS, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, 2015

Recent scholarship on Stoic political thought has sought to explain the relationship between Zeno’s Republic and the concept of a natural law regulating a cosmic city of gods and human beings that is attributed to later Stoics. This paper provides a reassessment of this relationship by exploring the underappreciated influence of Plato’s Laws on Zeno’s Republic and, through Zeno, on the subsequent Stoic tradition. Zeno’s attempt to remove perceived inconsistencies in Plato’s treatment of ‘law’ and ‘nature’ established a philosophical framework that overturned the republicanism of Plato and Aristotle; this same framework established the preconditions for the cosmic city of gods and human beings regulated by natural law. Thus, the early Stoic tradition on the topic of natural law is characterized by continuity rather than by discontinuity.

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.

This chapter deals with the reception of accounts about Socrates by the first Stoics in the 3rd century BCE. When Zeno of Citium (334-262), the founder of Stoicism, started his own school in the painted "colonnade" or "Stoa" on the Athenian marketplace at the beginning of the 4th century, Socrates (469-399) had been dead for almost a hundred years. Even so, according to the anecdote preserved by Diogenes Laertius, at 7.3, Zeno, upon his arrival from Cyprus around 312, is said to have become interested in pursuing wisdom by hearing about Socrates: "After having heard the bookseller reading about Socrates in a bookshop and Zeno having expressed his interest in Socrates, Crates of Thebes passed by, whereupon the bookseller suggested to Zeno that he should 'follow [parakoloutheson] that man!'" The bookseller was surely right about connecting Crates and Socrates: Crates of Thebes (360-280) had been a pupil of Diogenes of Sinope, himself a follower of Socrates. Zeno indeed became a student of Crates, a Cynic, who like Socrates and his own teacher, Diogenes of Sinope, propagated the simple life, disregarding conventions. A string of other teachers followed, all in one way or another inspired by Socrates: after Crates of Thebes, Zeno studied with Stilpo of Megara (DL 7.24, SVF 1.278, fr. 4 Giannantoni) and with Diodorus Cronus (DL 7.25, fr. 3 Giannantoni), 1 whoaccording to Diogenes Laertius 7.25-were both interested in the Socratic method of arguing correctly. Thereafter he studied with Polemo of Athens (314-276) in Plato's Academy (DL 7.2, Polemo fr. 85 Gigante, SVF 1.1 and DL 7.25, Polemo fr. 88 Gigante, SVF 1.5), where he will yet again have learned about Socrates. 2 According to the formulation by the Epicurean Philodemus of Gadara (first century BCE), On the Stoics, col. 13.3 Dorandi, Zeno and his pupils even went as far as that they were apparently "willing to be called Socratics." "Willing" suggests that Zeno may not actively have endorsed this name-for the obvious reason that other thinkers also claimed to have been inspired by Socrates-but it offers further evidence for the inspiration Socrates apparently exercised on the early Stoics. Among the other major Hellenistic schools that were inspired by Socrates, the Academics, and even the Epicureans, can be mentioned (for other schools see De Luise and Farinetti 1997, Brouwer 2008). According to Epicurus of Samos (341-271) and followers, Socrates was the perfect anti-hero, the embodiment of dishonesty, as someone

Ancient Philosophy

There is much to be learned from reading Brad Inwood's new source book dedicated to later Stoicism. Stoic scholarship, which has tended to focus on the early and middle Stoa (if, as Inwood points out, there even is such a distinction to be made), will benefit tremendously from taking later Stoicism on its own, apart from and yet very much in conversation with earlier Stoicism. Inwood makes a well-reasoned decision to mark the end of the Chrysippean era and the transition to later Stoicism at 155 BC with the diplomatic mission to Rome by the skeptic Carneades, the Epicurean Critolaus, and the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon. He argues that Carneades was the Stoics' most important critic, and that '[t]he school's need to respond to these challenges was a major catalyst for change and development' alongside their engagement with Plato and Aristotle (4). Though we don't know how Diogenes reacted, Antipater 'clearly dealt with Carneades' critique extensively, though perhaps not always effectively' (4). Hence Inwood takes Antipater to be the turning point to later Stoicism. This narrative is of great interest. The spectrum on which Inwood locates the views of Antipater and his students, from conservative to most adventurous, gives depth and nuance to the account of this stage of development. There are elements both of conservatism and of innovation in this period, like a brackish meeting of fresh and salt water in an estuary. For example, in Chapter 1 we find Antipater conservative about grammar, definition, and ἀπραξία, but engaged in controversy on modal logic by siding with Cleanthes over Chrysippus in denying the first premise of the Master Argument,