Posidonius’ Two Systems: Animals and Emotions in Middle Stoicism (original) (raw)
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The ancient philosophical debate on the psyche’s structure has profound implications for understanding human emotions and ethical behavior. While Stoics like Chrysippus advocate for a unified soul governed by rationality, the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition emphasizes a tripartite model of rational, spirited, and appetitive elements. This essay examines the strengths and weaknesses of these competing models, focusing on the contributions of Chrysippus, Plutarch, and Galen, while engaging with modern scholars like Christopher Gill. It argues that a synthesis of these ideas provides a nuanced understanding of internal conflict, emotional regulation, and moral development, all of which remain relevant to contemporary psychology and ethics.
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T HROUGHOUT THE LONG tradition of Greek anthropological speculation the principles of both popular and philosophical psychology were based, virtually without exception, upon the dichotomy between rational and irrational forces in the human soul.1 Plato's elevation of 8v~~ to the status of a separate soul-part-the most radical attempt to modify this division so fundamental to Greek ethics 2 -exercised considerable influence throughout antiquity, but its significance as a challenge to the principles of earlier psychology was misunderstood almost immediately. As early as the first generation of the Peripatos, the tripartite psychology of the Republic was re-interpreted in the terms of Aristotelian bipartition (Mag. Mor. 1182a24f)~ subsequently, throughout later antiquity, tripartition was regularly presented as a bipartite dichotomy. The Peripatetic interpretation of tripartition is based upon a dichotomy between reason and emotion that Plato's elevation of (Jv~~ to independent status was meant to modify~ in representing tripartition in terms of Aristotle's division into aAo'YoJ) and AO'YOJ) EX0J) the Peripatetics could not help but misrepresent the fundamental orientation of Plato's psychology.3 Nevertheless, both philosophers-such as Posidonius, who explicitly adopts tripartition in opposition to orthodox Stoic moral psychology-and school texts of Platonic doctrine-such as the Didaskalikos-are strongly influenced in their exposition of tripartition by the formulations and principles of Aristotelian bipartition. Middle Platonic writers regularly represent tripartition as a bipartite dichotomy, and through them this understand-1 This is clearly brought out by A. Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley 1982) 20-67; see also F. Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton 1975) 126-71. 2 W. Jaeger (Eranos 44 [1946] 123-30; cf E. L. Harrison, CR N.S. 3 [1953] 138-40) has argued plausibly that TIepi aepwv 12 and 16 influenced Plato's doctrine of 9vJ.Ul<;, but the ethnology of this work neither presupposes a tripartite psychology, as Jaeger argues, nor does it fall within the mainstream of Greek psychology. The attribution of the tripartite soul to Pythagoras is apocryphal (cf n.64 if/fra). 3 See P. A. Vander Waerdt, "The Peripatetic Interpretation of Plato's Tripartite Psychology," GRBS 26 (985) 283-302. Except as indicated below, editions and abbreviations here correspond to those of the previous study (esp. 283 n.O.
Oxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy
Stoic ethics is probably best known for its injunction to eradicate, rather than moderate, the emotions-not only negatively-valenced ones like anger and fear, but all of them, including positively-valenced ones like pleasure and love. Pursuing the question of why the Stoics maintain such an extreme position about what seem to be basic human responses to events takes us deep into Stoic moral psychology and value theory. Section 1 below investigates the Stoic claim that all emotions involve judgments of value that are contrary to reason. Section 2 explores the attitude with which the Stoics say we should replace emotions in order to make moral progress, namely 'impulse with reservation'. Finally, section 3 examines one surprising strategy for eliminating emotions given the goal of eliminating them all, namely, the use of one emotion to remove another; our example will concern the replacement of anger by pity.
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A familiar interpretation of the Stoic doctrine of the πάθη runs as follows: The Stoics claim the πάθη are impulses (ὁρμαί). The Stoics take impulses to be causes of action. So, the Stoics think the πάθη are causes of action Premise (1) is uncontroversial, but the evidence for (2) needs to be reconsidered. I argue that the Stoics have two distinct but related conceptions of ὁρμή – a psychological construal and a behavioural construal. On the psychological construal (2) is true, but there is strong evidence that (1) is true only on the behavioural construal. That is, when the Stoics classify πάθη as impulses they are thinking of them not as impulses to act, but as cases of action in their own right.
The Octopoid Soul. Stoic Responses to Aristotle’s Soul-Body Hylomorphism
Aristotelian hylomorphism-for plausible reasons. 1 As is commonly known, Stoic philosophers developed a peculiar physical theory, which also provided the background for their account of the soul. It is owing to this peculiar physics and owing to Stoic ontology that the soul cannot be incorporeal. In this respect the Stoic account of the soul is markedly different from both Platonic and Aristotelian psychology and similar to the Epicurean antidualist and materialist position. Still, in spite of these fundamental differences, not only to Platonic dualism but also to Aristotelian hylomorphism, it turns out on closer examination that there are remarkable similarities to Aristotle-especially to the Aristotle of the Parva Naturalia, De Motu Animalium and De Generatione Animalium. With regard to some of these similarities the Stoics even seem to be indebted to the Aristotelian legacy. More than that, in some respects the similarities to the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition seem to be more profound than the ties to the similarly anti-dualist and materialist theorems of the Epicureans-for example, because Epicurean materialism immediately implies the mortality of the soul, while the Stoics are not inclined to draw this conclusion 2 and sometimes describe the relation between the ruling part of rational beings to the animal's body in terms that are rather reminiscent of Platonic dualism than of material reductionism. In particular, or so I am going to suggest, the idea of a centralized soul 3 that stretches out to the animal's peripheral sense organs like the tentacles of an octopus 4 bears a significant resemblance to Aristotle's 1 I would like to thank Francesco Ademollo, David Charles, Reier Helle, Brad Inwood and Francesca Masi for very helpful oral and written comments on the first draft of this paper. 2 See Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 15.20.6 = SVF 2.809 = LS 53W. 3 I owe this notion to Corcilius/Gregoric 2013, who outlined what they called the 'centralized incoming and outgoing motions' (CIOM) model. 4 See Aetius 4.21.2 = SVF 2.836 = LS 53H. 2 cardiocentric model of the soul, according to which the whole animal body is alive in virtue of the agency of the soul residing in the animal's heart or in its analogous part. This resemblance includes, among other things, several anatomic and embryological details, the processing of incoming and outgoing impulses, 5 the reference to some version of the connate pneuma with its peculiar motions, certain arguments for cardiocentrism, the role of the rational soul and its identification with a rational animal's true self and, on a more abstract level, the philosophical challenge to reconcile a centralized and unified, centrally located soul with the soul's responsibility for the cohesion and animation of the animal's body as a whole. In other words, the idea that significant aspects of Stoic philosophy of mind might deserve to be mentioned as part of the history of Aristotelian hylomorphism is only surprising if we associate Aristotle's soul-body hylomorphism exclusively with the claims that the soul is the form or the entelecheia of a living body; for in these respects, it is easy to see that the Stoics deliberately deviate from the Aristotelian theory by emphasising that the soul is corporeal or even a localizable body. However, there are strong reasons for assuming that there is more to Aristotelian soul-body hylomorphism than just the claim that the soul is the form or entelecheia of the animal's body. Above all, Aristotle's soul-body hylomorphism commits him to explaining how exactly the soul is able to perform its various functions within the animal's body. And in conformity with key theorems of hylomorphism, it is clear that the soul (with the notable exception of the intellectual soul) could perform none of its functionsnutritive, generative/reproductive, sentient/perceptual, locomotive-without an appropriate body or bodily part. All these functions are said to require something like a central hub within