The Stoic School

Chapter III — Post-Aristotelean Philosophy

Article 1. The Stoic School

(300 b. c. to Christ)

This Chapter discusses the Greek Philosophy of the period of decline. With Aristotle the Golden Age came to an abrupt end: no definite progress was made in the philosophy of the succeeding age, and the body of accumulated doctrine was not kept in integrity. Greek Philosophy retrograded. Skepticism, Materialism, and Pantheism became widespread once more. Two causes may be assigned for this decline in philosophy: feirst. the great teachers, and particularly Plato and Aristotle, were not popular in the sense that their doctrine was generally known and easily understood: and the followers and pupils of the masters were too few and of too meagre intellectual capacity for the work of keeping the inherited doctrine intact and pure. /Secondly, external circumstances furthered the decline. In 338 the yoke of Macedonian rule was imposed upon liberty-loving Greece, and in the 2 century b. c. came the subjugation to Rome. The cultivation of the arts and sciences, so favored in the days of liberty, fell off and finally disappeared under foreign domination.

The one common question discussed by post-Aristoteleans of different schools was the ethical question, i. e., the question of man’s happiness and the objective thing in which happiness is to be found.

The chief Schools of this period (omitting the Aristotelean or Peripatetic School discussed at the end of the last Chapter) were the following, which we shall treat in separate Articles:

a) Name: The name “Stoic” is taken from “Stoa” or ‘‘porch,” a portico in Athens in which Zeno of Citium, founder of the School, was accusto bL Doctrine: Philosophy is the science of virtue. It is divided into three departments, Logic, Physics, and Ethics, but the first two parts are of value only in as far as they help in the elucidation of Ethics.

Logic was studied by the older Stoics, but was neglected by the later members of this School, and by the Romans who adopted the Stoic Philosophy. The chief questions of Stoic Logic concern the origin of ideas and the criterion of truth. The Stoics teach that ideas are acquired through sensation plus a spontaneous activity of the mind. This doctrine is vaguely expressed, and is capable of various interpretations. Obviously it can be understood as the Aristotelean doctrine of abstraction by the active intellect from the data of sense; but such an interpretation is not consistent with other Stoic tenets. Probably the real meaning of the doctrine is that universal ideas are collections of sensations. The criterion of truth is described as the power of a representation in the intellect to win the unwavering assent of the knowing subject. Why and how such representations can exact assent was not, so far as can be discovered, explained by the Stoics. But we do know that these philosophers attributed no objective value whatever to universal ideas, and that they sought a criterion of truth as a norm of judging the validity of knowledge about extra-mental things.

Physics was discussed by the older Greek Stoics; the Roman followers of this philosophy omit the subject, or accept the doctrine of the Greeks in its entirety. Matter alone is real. What we call spirit is a subtle form of matter (materialism). God is the soul of the world, and is to be conceived as a primordial fire, which is the principle of all activity and intelligence. The human soul is a spark of the divine fire. The world and God, its soul, act according to fixed and necessary laws {determinism}. Most Stoics deny the personal immortality of the soul; but all admit that the soul will endure always because nothing in nature can wholly perish.

Ethics, or philosophy proper, is the science of virtue. The great fact and principle is that virtue is to be practised, not, indeed, with any forward-looking view towards reward in a life to come, but as the sole means of achieving happiness in this life. Virtue consists in action which consistently accords with reason. Man is not the possessor of a free-will, since the science of Physics establishes the fact that all things follow necessary laws; yet man’s passions can interpose in action an unwillingness or repugnance to reason which shows man the laws to which he must submit. To allow passion to have sway is to act against reason, and therefore to act unvirtuously. One must be utterly apathetic, passionless. Only in apathetic action does man conform to reason and the cosmic laws. Therefore man must bear all things evenly, and abstain from the mere pleasures of sense. Abstine et sustine, bear and forbear, is the Stoic rule. One might express this principle as “Grin and bear it!” except that one would be obliged to omit the grin.

c) Chief Stoics: i. Zeno of Citium (about 350-264 b. c.) founded the School of Stoics at his native place, Citium on the Isle of Cyprus. In early life Zeno followed the Cynic philosophy, and his own doctrine is an apparent development of this.

ii. Cleanthes, of Assus in Troas (331-233 b. c.), who succeeded Zeno as principal of the School or scholarch, was a less able philosopher than his predecessor, but his zeal for Stoic doctrine and his dogged persistence in defending it made him a notable influence. Only a “Hymn to the Most High God” has survived as a specimen of Cleanthes’ writings.

iii. Chrysippus of Soli or Tarsus in Cilicia (about 282-209 b. c.) succeeded Cleanthes as scholarch, and under him the Stoic School reached the height of its achievement. Chrysippus is said to have written more than seven hundred books or treatises.

iv. Succeeding Chrysippus as scholarchs came the following in order: Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus.

v. Other Stoics worthy of mention are: Panaetius of Rhodes (about 180-110 b. c.) and Possidonius of Apamaea (Famit) in Syria, both of whom professed a mitigated Stoicism, intermingling with the tenets of their School the doctrines of non-Stoic philosophers.

Of the Roman Stoics we shall speak in the Chapter on Roman Philosophy.

d) Remarks: The Stoic School marks a retrograde movement in Greek Philosophy. ItJiarks back to old errors refuted by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It teaches that all things are material or bodily (materialism): that the world is moved by a soul indwelling in it (dynamism}: that God is identified with the world-soul and the activity of matter (_pantheism) _; that man has no free-will, but acts, as does the rest of the universe, by the force of necessary laws (determinism and fatalism}. Stoicism has always appealed to those who refuse the doctrine of immortality and the eternal last end of man to be achieved fully in a life to come, but who shrink from the crossness of hedonism, i. e., of the cult of sense-pleasures.