Philosophy of The Stoics

Zeno

General Notions

The founder of the Stoic School was Zeno, who was born about 336 B.C., at Citium on the island of Cyprus; Zeno dies about 254. He seems to have followed his father in commercial activity. Coming to Athens, he learned philosophy and became a disciple of Crates the Cynic. About the year 300 B.C., he founded his own philosophical school, which took its name from the Stoa or Porch from which he lectured.

Zeno's writings were lost and we possess only fragments. He was the first to divide the Stoic doctrine into logic, physics (which takes the place of metaphysics), and ethics. For Zeno, philosophy is practical knowledge, and it must resolve the problem of life; hence ethics will occupy the central position.

Because of the different predominant tendencies, Stoicism may be divided into three periods:

• Early Stoicism, by which is meant the School of Zeno;

• Middle Stoicism, by which is meant the tendency of Stoicism to assume Eclecticism, in accordance with the thought of the times;

• Neo-Stoicism, who predominant tendency was interested in religion -- during this period, Stoics like Seneca and Epictetus were directors of the spiritual life, and under this form Stoicism was widely diffused throughout the Roman empire.

Theory of Knowledge

The Stoics held that all knowledge is restricted to sensation. The soul is a "tabula rasa" (blank sheet) upon which the impressions of sensations are received, and these and their combinations form the whole of our knowledge (empiricism). The general notions (universal ideas) are nothing other than the repetition of similar sensations, in which common characteristics remain while particular notes are canceled. Memory and the word (speech) assist in fixing and reawakening the content of previous sensations.

The recalling or reawakening of the content of preceding sensations in the memory consists in that which the Stoics called anticipations. By awakening in ourselves the sensitive content had in previous times and fixed in the memory, we feel in anticipation what we will sense if the object should be presented again to our cognitive faculties. But since not all sensations are true (e.g., a stick immersed in water appears broken, whereas it is not), to distinguish the true from the false the Stoics had recourse to the criterion of truth, which they made to consist in assent -- that is, a judgment we give on the data of sensations. There are sensations which are presented in such a manner that they compel the reason to assent, and these are true; the others, which do not have this power to claim assent, are false.

Physics (Metaphysics)

The Stoics conceived of the universe as a great living organism, composed of soul and body, both of a material nature. The body (earth and water) represents the passive element; the soul (fire and air) represents the active element. The soul of the universe, although of a material nature, has all the divine attributes: God is immanent in the world (pantheism). God is conceived of as Heraclitean Fire which contains the germs of all things and actuates their becoming. Reason and providence are the coordinators of all things unto good. Hence everything that happens is the best that can happen (optimism). What we call evil is ordained for the attainment of the universal good of nature and consequently is not a real evil.

Every activity is reduced to movement and finds its root in mechanical necessity. What happens must happen and it is not possible for it to happen otherwise (Democritean fatalism).

The human soul is a spark of the original Fire, God; but as it is of a material nature it is submitted to the universal laws of fatal necessity. The soul alone enjoys a temporary afterlife until such time as the great palingenesis (rebirth) of the world, which will resolve everything into the primitive Fire. Then will begin another cycle in the form of the descending and ascending stairway of Heraclitus (the law of eternal return).

In such a concept there is no place for liberty -- either for God or for man. Everything happens according to the inexorable laws of movement, whether in God or in man. This physics, departing from the visible world, and speaking of itself as the root of all things, is at bottom a metaphysics. But it is a decadent and contradictory metaphysics.

Ethics

Virtue is the sole good, in so far as it is, considered in itself, happiness for the sage. Hence virtue should be desired as a virtue and not for the sum of pleasures which can be derived from it. Virtue is an end in itself and not a means to attaining the good. In the earlier philosophies, virtue had also been considered as a means to attaining peace of soul, in which the ideal of the sage was made to consist.

As virtue is the "summum bonum," so also is vice the greatest evil. All that is neither virtue nor vice is indifferent (riches, pleasures, life, death, etc.). These will be good if coordinated with virtue; otherwise they will be evil. But just what did the Stoics mean by virtue and vice? Virtue signifies living according to reason. Since reason tells us that all that happens must happen and that it happens so as to actuate a superior good willed by the providence of God, virtue consists not only in not desiring anything except what happens, but in accepting with eagerness anything that does happen. He is foolish who desires other than what happens, while he is a sage who knows how to give his assent only to what happens, not only without regret for the contrary but without any desire for that which does not occur.

The life of the sage is not only made up of reason but also of passions and the emotions to which they give life. For the Stoic the passions and the emotions represent the irrational, because they tend to turn away reason from that which indeed must happen. In this opposition vice consists. Vice, hence, is everything that tends to oppose itself to reason, every desire or emotion which opposes itself to the natural development of nature.

Since the Stoic sage must avoid every surprise that can come from this irrational world, not only must he control the passions, as Aristotle asserted, but he must also eradicate them, strive never to feel their presence, and be indifferent to every emotion whether directed toward cruelty or toward piety. It is in this complete domination of reason over the passions and the emotions that Stoic apathy consists. In a word, the Stoic must be like a god who, closed up in his reason, passes among men without a care for all that happens.

Nothing must ever disturb this solemn indifference of reason for human events. If such events threaten to disturb this indifference of reason, the Stoic sage will have recourse to death, because death, as we have noted, is in itself indifferent and is good if coordinated with virtue. It is better to flee life than to lose tranquillity of spirit. Suicide, so common among the Stoics, is in contradiction to that forcefulness of spirit so affected by them.

Stoic theories were diffused widely in the ancient world on account of their alluring qualities -- the praise of virtue, the sole good. Also the theories produced various goods, such as the overcoming of racial sentiment and the supplanting of it with cosmopolitanism. The Stoic is a citizen of the world because wherever he is, he lives according to reason, and is at home in the midst of his own.

The Stoic theories also brought about a certain alleviation of the condition of slaves, since, considering all men as particles of Fire and hence of God, there was no further motive for some men to dominate others. Such dominion proceeded from the irrational part of nature. The practical effects, however, of philanthropy were modest. Indeed, as a consequence of another important principle of their theory -- that the virtuous man must not have any connection with vicious man -- Stoics were led to put an uncompromising distance between the sage and the multitude of men; i.e., between the Stoic who lives according to reason and the others who live according to their passions. Of such a disparity the Stoic is conscious and proud.

Thus the Stoic seems like a god among the multitude of the foolish, unmoved by the accidents of nature and insensible to the miseries of others. Stoic virtue then is reduced to intellectual pride through which the Stoic shuts himself up within himself, setting himself apart from all others. He has no care for others, and indeed despises them because they are not wise. In this, Stoic virtue is distinguished, for instance, from the concept of later Christian virtue, which is based on humility and charity.