Stoicism

1. General Description

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.
2. Stoic Logic

Stoic logic is, in all essentials, 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 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.
3. 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.
4. Stoic Ethics

The Stoic ethical teaching is based upon two principles already
developed in their physics; first, that the universe is governed by
absolute law, which admits of no exceptions; and second, that the
essential nature of humans is reason. Both are summed up in the famous
Stoic maxim, "Live according to nature." For this maxim has two
aspects. It means, in the first place, that men should conform
themselves to nature in the wider sense, that is, to the laws of the
universe, and secondly, that they should conform their actions to
nature in the narrower sense, to their own essential nature, reason.
These two expressions mean, for the Stoics, the same thing. For the
universe is governed not only by law, but by the law of reason, and
we, in following our own rational nature, are ipso facto conforming
ourselves to the laws of the larger world. In a sense, of course,
there is no possibility of our disobeying the laws of nature, for we,
like all else in the world, act of necessity. And it might be asked,
what is the use of exhorting a person to obey the laws of the
universe, when, as part of the great mechanism of the world, we cannot
by any possibility do anything else? It is not to be supposed that a
genuine solution of this difficulty is to be found in Stoic
philosophy. They urged, however, that, though we will in any case do
as the necessity of the world compels us, it is given to us alone, not
merely to obey the law, but to assent to our own obedience, to follow
the law consciously and deliberately, as only a rational being can.

Virtue, then, is the life according to reason. Morality is simply
rational action. It is the universal reason which is to govern our
lives, not the caprice and self-will of the individual. The wise man
consciously subordinates his life to the life of the whole universe,
and recognizes himself as a cog in the great machine. Now the
definition of morality as the life according to reason is not a
principle peculiar to the Stoics. Both Plato and Aristotle taught the
same. In fact, it is the basis of every ethic to found morality upon
reason, and not upon the particular foibles, feelings, or intuitions,
of the individual self. But what was peculiar to the Stoics was the
narrow and one- sided interpretation which they gave to this
principle. Aristotle had taught that the essential nature of humans is
reason, and that morality consists in following this, his essential
nature. But he recognized that the passions and appetites have their
place in the human organism. He did not demand their suppression, but
merely their control by reason. But the Stoics looked upon the
passions as essentially irrational, and demanded their complete
extirpation. They envisaged life as a battle against the passions, in
which the latter had to be completely annihilated. Hence their ethical
views end in a rigorous and unbalanced asceticism.

Aristotle, in his broad and moderate way, though he believed virtue
alone to possess intrinsic value, yet allowed to external goods and
circumstances a place in the scheme of life. The Stoics asserted that
virtue alone is good, vice alone evil, and that all else is absolutely
indifferent. Poverty, sickness, pain, and death, are not evils.
Riches, health, pleasure, and life, are not goods. A person may commit
suicide, for in destroying his life he destroys nothing of value.
Above all, pleasure is not a good. One ought not to seek pleasure.
Virtue is the only happiness. And people must be virtuous, not for the
sake of pleasure, but for the sake of duty. And since virtue alone is
good, vice alone evil, there followed the further paradox that all
virtues are equally good, and all vices equally evil. There are no
degrees.

Virtue is founded upon reason, and so upon knowledge. Hence the
importance of science, physics, logic, which are valued not for
themselves, but because they are the foundations of morality. The
prime virtues, and the root of all other virtues, is therefore wisdom.
The wise man is synonymous with the good man. From the root-virtue,
wisdom, spring the four cardinal virtues: insight, bravery,
self-control, and justice. But since all virtues have one root, those
who possess wisdom possess all virtue, and those who lack it lack all.
A person is either wholly virtuous, or wholly vicious. The world is
divided into wise and foolish people, the former perfectly good, the
latter absolutely evil. There is nothing between the two. There is no
such thing as a gradual transition from one to the other. Conversion
must be instantaneous. the wise person is perfect, has all happiness,
freedom, riches, beauty. They alone are the perfect kings,
politicians, poets, prophets, orators, critics, and physicians. The
fool has all vice, all misery, all ugliness, all poverty. And every
person is one or the other. Asked where such a wise person was to be
found, the Stoics pointed doubtfully at Socrates and Diogenes the
Cynic. The number of the wise, they thought, is small, and is
continually growing smaller. The world, which they painted in the
blackest colors as a sea of vice and misery, grows steadily worse.

The similarities between Cynicism and Stoic ethics are apparent.
However, the Stoics modified and softened the harsh outlines of
Cynicism. To do this meant inconsistency, though. It meant that they
first laid down harsh principles, and then proceeded to tone them
down, to explain them away, to admit exceptions. Such inconsistency
the stoics accepted with their habitual cheerfulness. This process of
toning down their first harsh utterances took place mainly in three
ways. First, the modified their principle of the complete suppression
of the passions. Since this is impossible, and, if possible, could
only lead to immovable inactivity, they admitted that the wise person
might exhibit certain mild and rational emotions. Thus, the roots of
the passions might be found in the wise person, though they would
never be allowed to grow. In the second place, they modified their
principle that all else, save virtue and vice, is indifferent. Such a
view is unreal, and out of accord with life. Hence the stoics, with a
masterly disregard of consistency, stuck to the principle, and yet
declared that among things indifferent some are preferable to others.
If the wise person has the choice between health and sickness, health
is preferable. Indifferent things were thus divided into three
classes: those to be preferred, those to be avoided, and those which
are absolutely indifferent.

In the third place, the stoics toned down the principle that people
are either wholly good, or wholly evil. The famous heroes and
politicians of history, though fools, are yet polluted with the common
vices of humankind less than others. Moreover, what were the Stoics to
say about themselves? Were they wise men or fools? They hesitated to
claim perfection, to put themselves on a level with Socrates and
Diogenes. Yet they could not bring themselves to admit that there was
no difference between themselves and the common herd. They were
"proficients," and, if not absolutely wise, approximated to wisdom.