Phronesis Book Notes Neoplatonism 2007 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The dialogue between Stoicism and Platonism in Antiquity
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.
Stoic Philosophy: Its Origins and Influence
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.
The Stoics and their Philosophical System
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.
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.
Aristotle's Legacy to Stoic Ethics
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 1968
In his life of Zen0 Diogenes Laertius (vii, 2; 25) makes the founder of Stoicism a pupil of Crates the Cynic, Stilpo the Megarian, Xenocrates and Polemo of the Academy, and Diodorus Cronus. The same teachers, except Diodorus, are mentioned by Numenius (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta = SVF i, 11) and Strabo and Cicero also cite Polemo (ibid. 10 and 13). Chrysippus with such a varied formal education, but he did apparently go beyond the Stoa to hear Arcesilaus at the Academy (Diog. Laert. vii, 183-4). Peripatetics, Theophrastus, Strato and Lyco, as having any direct influence on the early Stoics. Plutarch (Comm. not. 1069e) asserts that Zen0 agreed with Aristotle and Theophrastus, a s well a s Polemo and Xenocrates, in taking q6uis and ~b K~T & p6uiv as the 'elements of happiness'. This enigmatic remark, which I will attempt to explain later, is the nearest Plutarch comes to suggesting a Peripatetic influenceand a shared one at thaton the Stoics, though Aristotle is mentioned several times in his antistoic treatises. (De fin. iii, 41) for the view that only terminology distinguished Stoic ethics from that taught in the Lyceum, and Piso, the spokesman for Antiochus (ibid. v, 74), claims essential agreement between the 'Old Academy' and the Stoics, after expounding a system allegedly based on Aristotle and Theophrastus (ibid. 9-13). But the polemic of the sceptic and the oversimplification of the eclectic have been sufficient grounds for discrediting these statements, though it remains to ask why they could have been made at all. Tradition does not credit No ancient authority mentions the Cicero, on the other hand, cites Carneades What then do we say about the antecedents of Stoicism? For Zeller, Socrates and the Cynics had the primary claim to influence Stoic ethical theory. Aristotle inspired much in logic and physics, but his influence on ethics is "restricted to the formal treatment of the material.. . and the psychological analysis of individual moral faculties" .2 and Xenocrates. Unfortunately, the ethical theories of these Academics are desperately elusive. are cited by eclectic sources not for independent moral positions but for positions which they shared with the Peripatetics. to Aristotle and give Polemo the credit are not c~n v i n c i n g .~ De fin. iv, 45, Polemone.. .a quo quae essent principia naturae acceperat (sc. Zeno). On the basis of this evidence Philippson and Brink reasonably concluded that Polemo influenced the Stoic concept of-rrpGjTa K~T & q 6 0 1 v .~ Not even so much can be said safely about Xenocrates. We should look rather to Polemo Professor Brink has recently given somewhat similar instruction^.^ In most cases they Von Fritz's attempts to explain away the references in such passages Strangely enough, he omits Cicero
The Socratism of Epictetus: The influence of Plato’s Gorgias on early and Roman Stoicism
academia.edu, 2013
Epictetus likes to use examples from what is known of Socrates’ life to illustrate points of discussion: his courage in facing his execution, his refusal to obey the thirty tyrants in doing something he held to be wrong, his courage in battle , his physical endurance in harsh climates, his even temper in discussions. He makes use of familiar Socratic expressions, such as ‘’the unexamined life is not worth living’’ from the Apology . Moreover, a study by Armand Jagu has shown that he makes allusions to several of Plato’s dialogues, usually in reference to Socratic principles. The dialogues include the Alcibiades, the Apology, the Crito, the Protogoras, the Gorgias, the Phaedo, the Symposium, the Phaedrus, the Republic, the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Philebus, the Timaeus, and the Laws. It has been observed that Plato’s Gorgias is a dialogue that Epictetus seems to favour in particular. There are at least two clear paraphrases from that dialogue in the Discourses. Otherwise, the references are not always explicit and are adapted to his Stoic terminology and his own personal style, so that the correspondences are more thematic than textual. The Gorgias is a dialogue that discusses what rhetoric is and through the course of the dialogue, examines notions of pleasure, tyranny, virtue, justice, politics, culminating in extended monologues by Socrates on the nature of the good life, before concluding with a myth about the judgment of the soul. It is considered a major exposition of Socratic ethics and had an influence on the Early as well as the Middle Stoa. In order to get an idea of the influence of the Gorgias on Stoicism and on Epictetus in particular, what follows is a series of passage taken from the Gorgias paired with a corresponding passage from Epictetus’ Discourses. The comments aim to briefly point out the essential notions that Epictetus retains from the Gorgias and how he adapts them to Stoic doctrine and his personal style. Moreover, related notions from early Stoic doctrine will be discussed when appropriate.
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,
Natural Philosophy and Stoicism in Philo of Alexandria
Now available in Open Access: 'Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourse,' ed. by L. Doering and M. Cover., 2024
In this paper -- for a collection of essays on the role of philosophy in Philo of Alexandria's works-- I reexamine Philo's attitude towards natural philosophy in light of Maren Niehoff's thesis that the works which he wrote after his embassy to Rome show a markedly more Stoic bent than his earlier writings. In a review of that book, I have suggested that it might be helpful now to look for what I called "bridge" concepts or texts, which would allow us to detect connections between these different phases of Philo's intellectual trajectory, that is, before and after his visit to Rome, and advance our understanding of the alleged shift. One such set of bridge-concepts could be provided by Plato's Timaeus, because, as I have argued before, by the time Philo came to use the Timaeus, Stoic and Platonist elements had already become intertwined in the history of its interpretation. The paper is now available through Open Access, in 'Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourse,' ed. by L. Doering and M. Cover (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024).