Who is stoic

In the end, Seneca made only minimal impact on Nero, a man whom time would shortly reveal to be deranged. Was it always a hopeless mission? But all a Stoic can do is show up and do our work. Seneca believed he had an obligation. As he would later write, the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that the Stoics felt that politics was a duty.

While Seneca would speak, with surprising relatability, about slave owners who became owned by the responsibility and management of their slaves or other Stoics would congratulate themselves for their humane treatment of their human chattel, Epictetus actually was one.

His given name is not known. As a punishment? As a sick pleasure? In a wrestling match? Trying to get a disobedient young kid to follow instructions? All we hear is that Epictetus calmly warned him about taking it too far. When the leg snapped, Epictetus made no sound, he uttered no tears. For the rest of his life, Epictetus would walk with a limp.

But Epictetus remained unbroken by the incident. Law established by Augustus in 4AD determined that slaves could not be freed before their 30th birthday. He chose to dedicate himself fully to philosophy and taught in Rome for nearly 25 years…Until the emperor Domitian famously banished all philosophers in Rome.

Epictetus fled to Nicopolis in Greece where he founded a philosophy school and taught until his death. They are the most essential values in Stoic philosophy. We have discovered a lot of things since then—automobiles, the Internet, cures for diseases that were previously a death sentence—but have we found anything better?

No, we have not. Everything we face in life is an opportunity to respond with these four traits:. If you are brave? The Stoics might have phrased this a bit differently. Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced misfortune. The world wants to know what category to put you in, which is why it will occasionally send difficult situations your way.

Think of these not as inconveniences or even tragedies but as opportunities, as questions to answers. Do I have cojones? Am I brave? Am I going to face this problem or run away from it? Will I stand up or be rolled over? Let your actions etch a response into the record—and let them remind you of why courage is the most important thing. Of course, life is not so simple as to say that courage is all the counts. While everyone would admit that courage is essential, we are also all well aware of people whose bravery turns to recklessness and becomes a fault when they begin to endanger themselves and others.

This is where Aristotle comes in. On the other, there was recklessness—too much courage. What was called for, what we required then, was a golden mean. The right amount. Doing the right thing in the right amount in the right way. In other words: Virtue and excellence is a way of living.

This is great news. Because it means that impressive results or enormous changes are possible without herculean effort or magic formulas. Daily Stoic sifted through the greatest Stoic wisdom and aimed it at one of the most challenging parts of life: habit formation and growth. Being brave. Finding the right balance. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing.

There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Countless other activists and politicians have turned to Stoicism to gird them against the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered, to guide them towards what was right in a world of so much wrong. A Stoic must deeply believe that an individual can make a difference. Successful activism and political maneuvering require understanding and strategy, as well as realism… and hope.

It requires wisdom, acceptance and also a refusal to accept the statue quo. It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition.

The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. A Stoic sees the world clearly…but also sees clearly what the world can be.

And then they are brave, and strategic enough to help bring it into reality. These are the critical virtues of life. But what situations call for courage? What is the right amount? What is the right thing? This is where the final and essential virtue comes in: Wisdom. The knowing. The learning. The experience required to navigate the world. Wisdom has always been prized by the Stoics.

Zeno said that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen more than we talk. And since we have two eyes, we are obligated to read and observe more than we talk as well.

It is key today, as it was in the ancient world, to be able to distinguish between the vast aggregations of information that lay out there at your disposal—and the actual wisdom that you need to live a good life. You cannot learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus said. Which is why we need to not only be humble students but also seek out great teachers. The goal is not just to acquire information, but the right kind of information.

Thousands of years of blazing insight are available to the world. It is likely that you have the power to learn anything you want at your fingertips. So today, honor the Stoic virtue of wisdom by slowing down, being deliberate, and finding the wisdom you need. Two eyes, two ears, one mouth. Remain a student. Act accordingly—and wisely. Give it a shot. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. Marcus stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises—reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with. You cannot read this book and not come away with a phrase or a line that will be helpful to you next time you are in trouble. Read it, it is practical philosophy embodied.

Letters From A Stoic by Seneca. W hile Marcus wrote mainly for himself, Seneca had no trouble advising and aiding others. His advice on grief, on wealth, on power, on religion, and on life are always there when you need them. Discourses by Epictetus. The Daily Stoic: Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living features not only all-new translations of brilliant stoic passages but exciting stories, examples and explanations of the stoic principles from Marcus Aurelius , Seneca and Epictetus but also some of the lesser known but equally wise stoics from Zeno to Cleanthes to Chrysippus.

The book takes the reader on a daily journey through practical, pragmatic philosophy. Each day offers a new stoic insight and exercise. Fragments of Stoic works and testimonia in their original Greek and Latin were collected into a three-volume set in —5 by H. SVF I. In , A. In Long and Sedley was followed by a collection of primary texts edited by B. Inwood and L. Gerson entitled Hellenistic Philosophy. The Inwood and Gerson collection translates many of the same texts, but unlike LS does not chop them up into smaller bits classified by topic.

Each approach has its merits, but the LS collection better serves the needs of an encyclopedia entry. For French translation of Chrysippus, see Dufour For German translation of the early Stoa, see Nickel For additional information, see also the entry on doxography of ancient philosophy. When considering the doctrines of the Stoics, it is important to remember that they think of philosophy not as an interesting pastime or even a particular body of knowledge, but as a way of life.

Once we come to know what we and the world around us are really like, and especially the nature of value, we will be utterly transformed. This therapeutic aspect is common to their main competitors, the Epicureans, and perhaps helps to explain why both were eventually eclipsed by Christianity.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius provide a fascinating picture of a would-be Stoic sage at work on himself. In it, he not only reminds himself of the content of important Stoic teaching but also reproaches himself when he realises that he has failed to incorporate this teaching into his life in some particular instance.

Today many people still turn to Stoicism as a form of psychological discipline. One of the most influential modern interpretations of means through which the Stoic philosophizing accomplished such a transformation introduces the notion of spiritual exercises. For a more general treatment covering Stoic philosophy as a whole, see Sellars For a recent discussion of the entire question of philosophy as a way — or rather as many ways — of life in antiquity, see Cooper Brunschwig There d-e , Plato asks for a mark or indication of what is real or what has being.

Thus, only bodies exist. However, they also hold that there are other ways of appearing in the complete inventory of the world than by virtue of existing. The distinction between the subsistent and the existent somewhat complicates the easy assimilation of Stoicism to modern materialism. All existent things are, in addition, particulars. But there may well have been development within the school from this conceptualist view toward a form of predicate nominalism. See Caston In accord with this ontology, the Stoics, like the Epicureans, make God a corporeal entity, though not as with the Epicureans one made of everyday matter.

But while the Epicureans think the gods are too busy being blessed and happy to be bothered with the governance of the universe Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus —4 , the Stoic God is immanent throughout the whole of creation and directs its development down to the smallest detail. The governing metaphor for Stoic cosmology is biological , in contrast to the fundamentally mechanical conception of the Epicureans.

The Stoics insistence that only bodies are capable of causing anything, however, guarantees that this cosmic life force must be conceived of as somehow corporeal. More specifically, God is identical with one of the two ungenerated and indestructible first principles archai of the universe. One principle is matter which they regard as utterly unqualified and inert.

It is that which is acted upon. God is identified with an eternal reason logos , Diog. The designing fire is likened to sperm or seed which contains the first principles or directions of all the things which will subsequently develop Aristocles in Eusebius, 46G. The biological conception of God as a kind of living heat or seed from which things grow seems to be fully intended. The further identification of God with pneuma or breath may have its origins in medical theories of the Hellenistic period.

See Baltzly On the entire issue of God and its relation to the cosmos in Stoicism, see the essays in Salles Just as living things have a life-cycle that is witnessed in parents and then again in their off-spring, so too the universe has a life cycle that is repeated.

This life cycle is guided by, or equivalent to, a developmental plan that is identified with God. This idea of world-cycles punctuated by conflagrations raised a number of questions. Will there be another you reading this encyclopedia entry in the next world cycle? Or merely someone exactly similar to you? Different sources attribute different answers to the Stoics on these questions.

For sameness of person, see Alexander 52F. For someone indistinguishable, but not not identical, see Origen 52G. The doctrine of eternal recurrence also raises interesting questions about the Stoic view of time.

Did they suppose that the moment in the next world cycle at which you or someone indistinguishable from you reads this entry is a moment in the future so time is linear or the very same moment with some notion of circular time? For a clear exchange on the issue, see Long and Hudson The first things to develop from the conflagration are the elements.

Of the four elements, the Stoics identify two as active fire and air and two as passive water and earth. The active elements, or at least the principles of hot and cold, combine to form breath or pneuma. What is a sustaining cause? The Stoics think that the universe is a plenum. Like Aristotle, they reject the existence of empty space or void except that the universe as a whole is surrounded by it. The answer is: pneuma. Pneuma passes through all other bodies; in its outward motion it gives them the qualities that they have, and in its inward motion makes them unified objects Nemesius, 47J.

VII, Perhaps as a result of this, they developed a theory of mixture which allowed for two bodies to be in the same place at the same time. It should be noted, however, that some scholars e. Perhaps instead they proposed merely that pneuma is the matter of a body at a different level of description. Pneuma comes in gradations and endows the bodies which it pervades with different qualities as a result. Pneuma in plants is, in addition, LS physique phusis , lit. Their account of the human soul mind is strongly monistic.

Unlike the Platonic tri-partite soul, all impulses or desires are direct functions of the rational, commanding faculty. This strongly monistic conception of the human soul has serious implications for Stoic epistemology and ethics. In the first case, our impressions of sense are affections of the commanding faculty. In mature rational animals, these impressions are thoughts, or representations with propositional content. To assent to an impression is to take its content as true.

To withhold assent is to suspend judgement about whether it is true. Because both impression and assent are part of one and the same commanding faculty, there can be no conflict between separate and distinct rational and nonrational elements within oneself — a fight which reason might lose. X, e. There is no reason to think that the calculating part can always win the epistemological civil war which Plato imagines to take place within us.

But because the impression and assent are both aspects of one and the same commanding faculty according to the Stoics, they think that we can always avoid falling into error if only our reason is sufficiently disciplined.

In a similar fashion, impulses or desires are movements of the soul toward something. In a rational creature, these are exercises of the rational faculty which do not arise without assent. Thus, a movement of the soul toward X is not automatically consequent upon the impression that X is desirable. The Stoics, however, claim that there will be no impulse toward X — much less an action — unless one assents to the impression Plutarch, 53S. The upshot of this is that all desires are not only at least potentially under the control of reason, they are acts of reason.

Thus there could be no gap between forming the decisive judgement that one ought to do X and an effective impulse to do X. Annas Unlike for the Epicureans, however, it does not follow from this that my soul will be utterly destroyed at the time at which my body dies.

Chrysippus alleged that the souls of the wise would not perish until the next conflagration Diog. Is this simply a failure of nerve on the part of an otherwise thorough-going materialist? Recall that the distinctive movement of pneuma is its simultaneous inward and outward motion. It is this which makes it tensile and capable of preserving, organising and, in some cases, animating the bodies which it interpenetrates. The Stoics equate virtue with wisdom and both with a kind of firmness or tensile strength within the commanding faculty of the soul Arius Didymus 41H, Plutarch 61B, Galen 65T.

Perhaps the thought was that the souls of the wise had a sufficient tensile strength that they could continue to exist as a distinct body on their own. Later Stoics like Panaetius 2nd c. BCE and Posidonius first half 1st c. Let us conclude this survey of the physical part of Stoic philosophy with the question of causal determinism, though this is an issue that will emerge again in the following section on logic.

The clear first impression of Stoic philosophy is that they are determinists about causation, who regard the present as fully determined by past events, but who nonetheless want to preserve scope for moral responsibility by defending a version of compatibilism. That characterisation is not wrong exactly, but it makes the matter sound far simpler than it in fact is since it effaces some important differences between our framework for discussing these matters and that of ancient philosophers.

One key difference is that most contemporary thinking about causation treats it as a relation between events. But ancient discussions of causation take place in a context that has no ready vocabulary for events. It just means that there is no specific piece of philosophical terminology for contrasting what happens with the things that it happens to or with truths about what happened.

When we speak of events, we speak of things that helpfully fill the gap between things and statements. Since they take place at a particular time and involve some objects and not others, events are somewhat thing-like.

On the other hand, they also have a propositional structure of sorts. The event of Seneca sitting in a bathtub contemplating a book involves such objects as Seneca, his book and his tub, but it involves them in a way that has a kind of structure. Though it involves the same objects, the event of Seneca sitting on his book and contemplating his bathtub is very different from the first event. Absent a robust concept of causation as a relation among events, Stoic analyses of causation sound very odd to the modern ear.

The propositional event-like structure of the effect in the Stoic account of causation is given by the insistence that the cause brings it about that a body has a predicate true of it. There we have just the body, the scalpel. The role of the event-like structure of the cause in the Stoic scheme is fulfilled by talking about a whole range of different kinds of causes.

The sources on the Stoic taxonomy of causes are complex and conflicting, so we can confine our attention to a few of the more important kinds: preliminary causes, sustaining causes, and proximate causes. What Aristotle does not say, however, is that the presence of these explanatory factors necessitates that which they explain. Causal processes involve a kind of generality for Aristotle.

Gellius, 55K. In On Fate Cicero sought to explain how Chrysippus attempted to avoid the conclusion that, since our actions come about by prior causes, they are not in our power. It is clear enough, at least in general terms, what outcome Chrysippus was aiming with respect to human action. It is true that the world gives us things to react to, just as a person might give the cylinder a shove.

But the cylinder rolls, rather than slides, because of its specific shape i. So too your decisions are your decisions in as much as the kind of person you are makes a difference to what you decide to do. Sure — you are the kind of person that you are in no small part because of what has happened to you previously. That sense is allegedly supplied by the distinction among the kinds of causes introduced above.

Detailed scholarly work on the question of free will and determinism in Stoicism seeks to engage with our various sources and attempts to position this very different framework for thinking about causes and causation in relation to our own.

Bobzien is longer and perhaps more difficult for the beginning philosopher, but very authoritative. The Stoics also discuss a notion of freedom that is rather more moral than metaphysical.

It turns out, for reasons that will be discussed below in the section on ethics, that only the Stoic wise man is truly free. All others are slaves. This notion of freedom and its relation to Kantian autonomy is discussed in Cooper The Stoics distinguish between the signification, the signifier and the name-bearer. Two of these are bodies: the signifier which is the utterance and the name-bearer which is what gets signified.

But it would be a mistake to assimilate this sub-class of sayables too closely to modern theories of propositions. Modern theories tend to treat propositions as untensed and time-indexed.

The tenseless and time-indexed propositions we express with our words have their truth values eternally. The Stoic theory holds invariant the identity of the sayable corresponding to my utterances on the different occasions, but allows its truth value to change Diog. The isolation of ostensive reference as a special case gives rise to another odd feature of the Stoic account of meanings and propositions. This odd feature of sayables looms large in the Stoic response to competing accounts of modality.

The examples dealt with so far are examples of simple , complete sayables or propositions. The Stoics also developed an account of non-simple propositions. This interest in non-simple propositions and their logical relations was shared with philosophers in the Megarian or Dialectical school. To put the matter very briefly and far too crudely, Aristotle had developed an account of a limited range of kinds statements e.

His theory of the syllogism sought to systematically investigate all the ways of combining pairs of such statements and to identify the combinations where the first two the premises entail a third statement the conclusion of same sort purely as a result of the form of the premises rather than their content. Focused on the connections between predicate and subject terms in such statements, it had little to say about complex statements that had complete statements as parts.

The Stoics, by contrast, made progress in what we now call propositional logic. Their accounts of the connectives joining simple propositions into complex ones also led them into questions about modal concepts possibility, impossibility, necessity and contingency.

One of the accounts they offer of the validity of arguments is that an argument is valid if, through the use of certain ground rules themata , it is possible to reduce it to one of the five indemonstrable forms Diog. These five indemonstrables are argument forms that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an introductory logic class:.

Stoic contributions to logic and philosophy of language, as well as the backdrop of Aristotelian and Megarian views in the Hellenistic period, are thoroughly surveyed in a page entry on the subject by Barnes, Bobzien and Mignucci in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy Algra et al, An abbreviated and more digestible version of this material by Bobzien appears in Inwood Though these and other developments in logic are interesting in their own right, the Stoic treatment of certain problems about modality and bivalence are more significant for the shape of Stoicism as a whole.

Chrysippus in particular was convinced that bivalence and the law of excluded middle apply even to contingent statements about particular future events or states of affairs. Aristotle had presented an argument that if it is either true or false now that there will be a sea battle tomorrow and let us suppose for the sake of argument that it is false , then our present deliberation about whether we should go out and fight tomorrow would be pointless.

This kind of reasoning seems to pose a threat to the meaningfulness of deliberation and it is reasoning that proceeds simply from considerations about the nature of propositions and their truth or falsity. The Stoic Chrysippus seems to have connected this logically-motivated pathway to fatalism with the question of causal determinism Cicero, 38G. He insisted that if there was motion without a cause, it would mean that some propositions would not be either true or false.

But in fact, every proposition is either true or false. So he concluded that there is no motion without a cause. The rational coherence of planning is not threatened by the fact that sometimes the pre-conditions for our plans to be set in motion do not eventuate. It is quite another if our deliberations are pointless because it is impossible that there should be a sea battle tomorrow.

So what then would we say if we were persuaded that all alternatives to what will actually happen in the future are similarly impossible? This would seem to pose a real threat to the rational coherence of planning. The Stoics confronted a theory of modality i. Diodorus Cronus of the Dialectical school had argued that what is possible is limited to what either is or will be true at some point in the future Boethius, 38C.

The means by which Diodorus arrived at this most unwelcome account of modality was called the Master Argument. He also claimed that 2 nothing impossible follows from what is possible. In the so-called Master Argument, he attempted to show that these two theses were incompatible with the claim that 3 there is something which is possible, but yet does not happen. The details of the Master Argument are a matter of much dispute.

We know that it was alleged to show that these three propositions formed an inconsistent triad, but exactly how it did this remains uncertain. The Stoics felt the need to preserve the thesis that there are things which are possible but which do not happen. The same source that preserves the allegedly incompatible claims involved in the Master Argument tells us that the Stoics Cleanthes and Chrysippus did this in different ways.

The antecedent is possible, since Dion will one day be dead. Hence, let us suppose it true. It once again illustrates the systematic character of Stoic philosophy. A criterion or canon of truth is an instrument for definitely determining that something is true, and the Hellenistic schools all provide some view on how it is that we are to measure or evaluate whether something is true or not.

Cicero, SVF I. First Known Use of stoic Noun 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1 Adjective 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1. Learn More About stoic. Time Traveler for stoic The first known use of stoic was in the 14th century See more words from the same century.

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