Stoicism |
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The term "Stoicism" derives from the Greek word "stoa," referring to a colonnade, such as those built outside or inside temples, around dwelling-houses, gymnasia, and market-places. They were also set up separately as ornaments of the streets and open places. The simplest form is that of a roofed colonnade, with a wall on one side, which was often decorated with paintings. Thus in the market-place at Athens the stoa poikile (Painted Colonnade) was decorated with Polygnotus's representations of the destruction of Troy, the fight of the Athenians with the Amazons, and the battles of Marathon and Oenoe. Zeno of Citium taught in the stoa poikile in Athens, and his adherents accordingly obtained the name of Stoics. Zeno was followed by Cleanthes, and then by Chrysippus, as leaders of the school. The school attracted many adherents, and flourished for centuries, not only in Greece, but later in Rome, where the most thoughtful writers, such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, counted themselves among its followers.
We know little for certain as to what share particular Stoics, Zeno,
Cleanthes, or Chrysippus, had
in the formation of the doctrines of the school, But after Chryssipus
the main lines of the doctrine
were complete. The stoic doctrine is divided into three parts: logic,
physics, and ethics. Stoicism
is essentially a system of ethics which, however, is guided by a
logic as theory of method, and
rests upon physics as foundation. Briefly, their notion of morality
is stern, involving a life in
accordance with nature and controlled by virtue. It is an ascetic
system, teaching perfect indifference (apathea) to everything
external, for nothing external could be either good or evil. Hence to
the Stoics both pain and pleasure, poverty and riches, sickness and
health, were supposed to be equally unimportant.
Stoic Logic
Stoic logic is, in all essential, the logic of Aristotle. To this,
however, they added a theory,
peculiar to themselves, of the origin of knowledge and the criterion
of truth. All knowledge, they
said, enters the mind through the senses. The mind is a blank slate,
upon which sense-
impressions are inscribed. It may have a certain activity of its own,
but this activity is confined
exclusively to materials supplied by the physical organs of sense.
This theory stands, of course,
in sheer opposition to the idealism of Plato, for whom the mind alone
was the a source of
knowledge, the senses being the source of knowledge, the senses being
the sources of all illusion
and error. The Stoics denied the metaphysical reality of concepts.
Concepts are merely ideas in
the mind, abstracted from particulars, and have no reality outside
consciousness.
Since all knowledge is a knowledge of sense-objects, truth is simply
the correspondence of our
impressions to things. How are we to know whether our ideas are
correct copies of things? How
do we distinguish between reality and imagination, dreams, or
illusions? What is the criterion of
truth? It cannot lie in concepts, since they are of our own making.
Nothing is true save sense
impressions, and therefore the criterion of truth must lie in
sensation itself. It cannot be in
thought, but must be in feeling. Real objects, said the Stoics,
produce in us an intense feeling, or
conviction, of their reality. The strength and vividness of the image
distinguish these real
perceptions from a dream or fancy. Hence the sole criterion of truth
is this striking conviction,
whereby the real forces itself upon our consciousness, and will not
be denied. There is, thus, no
universally grounded criterion of truth. It is based, not on reason,
but on feeling.
Stoic Physics
The fundamental proposition of the Stoic physics is that "nothing
incorporeal exists." This
materialism coheres with the sense-impression orientation of their
doctrine of knowledge. Plato
placed knowledge in thought, and reality, therefore, in the ideal
form. The Stoics, however, place
knowledge in physical sensation, and reality -- what is known by the
senses -- is matter. All
things, they said, even the soul, even God himself, are material and
nothing more than material.
This belief they based upon two main considerations. Firstly, the
unity of the world demands it.
The world is one, and must issue from one principle. We must have a
monism. The idealism of
Plato resolved itself into a futile struggle involving a dualism
between matter and thought. Since
the gulf cannot be bridged from the side of ideal realm of the forms,
we must take our stand on
matter, and reduce mind to it. Secondly, body and soul, God and the
world, are pairs which act
and react upon one another. The body, for example, produces thoughts
(sense impressions) in the
soul, the soul produces movements in the body. This would be
impossible if both were not of the
same substance. The corporeal cannot act on the incorporeal, nor the
incorporeal on the
corporeal. There is no point of contact. Hence all must be equally corporeal.
All things being material, what is the original kind of matter, or
stuff, out of which the world is
made? The Stoics turned to Heraclitus for an answer. Fire
logos) is the primordial kind of
being, and all things are composed of fire. With this materialism the
Stoics combined pantheism.
The primal fire is God. God is related to the world exactly as the
soul to the body. The human
soul is likewise fire, and comes from the divine fire. It permeates
and penetrates the entire body,
and, in order that its interpenetration might be regarded as
complete, the Stoics denied the
impenetrability of matter. Just as the soul-fire permeates the whole
body, so God, the primal fire,
pervades the entire world.
But in spite of this materialism, the Stoics declared that God is
absolute reason. This is not a
return to idealism, and does not imply the incorporeality of God. For
reason, like all else, is
material. It means simply that the divine fire is a rational element.
Since God is reason, it follows
that the world is governed by reason, and this means two things. It
means, firstly, that there is
purpose in the world, and therefore, order, harmony, beauty, and
design. Secondly, since reason
is law as opposed to the lawless, it means that universe is subject
to the absolute sway of law, is
governed by the rigorous necessity of cause and effect. Hence the
individual is not free. There
can be no true freedom of the will in a world governed by necessity.
We may, without harm, say
that we choose to do this or that, and that our acts are voluntary.
But such phrases merely mean
that we assent to what we do. What we do is none the less governed by
causes, and therefore by
necessity.
The world-process is circular. God changes the fiery substance of
himself first into air, then
water, then earth. So the world arises. But it will be ended by a
conflagration in which all things
will return into the primal fire. Thereafter, at a pre-ordained time,
God will again transmute
himself into a world. It follows from the law of necessity that the
course taken by this second,
and every subsequent, world, will be identical in every way with the
course taken by the first
world. The process goes on for ever, and nothing new ever happens.
The history of each
successive world is the same as that of all the others down to the
minutest details.
The human soul is part of the divine fire, and proceeds into humans
from God. Hence it is a
rational soul, and this is a point of cardinal importance in
connection with the Stoic ethics. But
the soul of each individual does not come direct from God. The divine
fire was breathed into the
first man, and thereafter passed from parent to child in the act of
procreation. After death, all
souls, according to some, but only the souls of the good, according
to others, continue in
individual existence until the general conflagration in which they,
and all else, return to God.