CLAS 196/PHIL 196
Stoicism
Prof. Bailly


Stoic Physics: notes taken largely from Sellars Stoicism chapter on Stoic Physics.

Diogenes Laertius LXVIII (our numbering):
They think that there are two general principles in the universe, the active and the passive. That the passive is matter, an existence without any distinctive quality. That the active is the reason which exists in the passive, that is to say, God. For that he, being eternal, and existing throughout all matter, makes everything. And Zeno, the Cittiaean, lays down this doctrine in his treatise on Essence, and so does Cleanthes in his essay on Atoms, Chrysippus in the first book of his Investigations in Natural Philosophy, towards the end, Archedemus in his work on Elements, and Posidonius in the second book of his treatise on Natural Philosophy. But they say that principles and elements differ from one another. For that the one had no generation or beginning, and will have no end; but that the elements may be destroyed by the operation of fire. Also, that the elements are bodies, but principles have no bodies and no forms, and elements too have forms.

• The Cosmic whole:
• The Nature of the Universe possesses voluntary movements, efforts and desires ... and its actions accord with these just like ourselves who are moved by our minds and our senses. Cicero de Natura Deorum ii.58
• Again, the world is inhabited and regulated according to intellect and providence, as Chrysippus says, in his works on Providence, and Posidonius in the thirteenth book of his treatise on Gods, since mind penetrates into every part of the world, just as the soul pervades us; but it is in a greater degree in some parts, and in a less degree in others. For instance, it penetrates as a habit, as, for instance, into the bones and sinews; and into some it penetrates as the mind does, for instance, into the dominant principle. And thus the whole world, being a living thing, endowed with a soul and with reason, has the aether as its dominant principle ... Diogenes Laertius LXX
  
• So the Cosmos is a living, conscious being.
• Some critics think this is just a way to have god without having GOD.
• Like Spinoza, who identified God with Nature: he left no special unique explanatory force to God: 'Nature' explains everything, and so in a way explains nothing in particular, because everything has a unique particular explanation, and calling explanation of everything as a whole God doesn't do any more work than just calling it nature.
  
• Cicero De Natura Deorum 2.21
• These expansive arguments of ours were condensed by Zeno like this: 'That which employs reason is better than that which does not. Now nothing is superior to the Cosmos; therefore the Cosmos employs reason.' By a similar argument it can be established that the cosmos is wise, and blessed, and eternal, for all embodiments of these attributes are superior to those without them, and nothing is superior to the Cosmos.
• sounds kind of like the ontological proof of the neessary existence of god that says 'among all the things in the world, great and small, there is something greater than everything else. God, by definition, is that than which nothing is greater. Therefore god exists.' That's not a very careful version of it: a great deal of ink and many versions of it exist.
• but this is different: it says that the cosmos is superior to everything and then starts attributing good things to it on the grounds that it is superior to everything, but everything includes certain sorts of good, and so the cosmos as a whole must have those same attributes: there's something fishy about that argument.
  
• Diogenes Laertius LXX (our numbering) (7.142-3 standard numbering)
• Again, that the world is an animal, and that it is endowed with reason, and life, and intellect, is affirmed by Chrysippus, in the first volume of his treatise on Providence, and by Apollodorus in his Natural Philosophy, and by Posidonius; and that it is an animal in this sense, as being an essence endowed with life, and with sensation. For that which is an animal, is better than that which is not an animal. But nothing is better than the world; therefore the world is an animal. And it is endued with life, as is plain from the fact of our own soul being as it were a fragment broken off from it. But Boethus denies that the world is an animal.
• It seems that most Stoics held that the world is an animal, conscious and intelligent. But at least one, Boethus, denied that.
  
• Cicero de Natura Deorum 2.22
• Nothing which is devoid of sensation can contain anything which possesses sensation. Now some parts of the cosmos possess sensation; therefore the cosmos is not devoid of sensation.
• Bailly: uh, what about my house? can it contain me? My clothes? Prolly just being a bonehead here.
  
• Sellars points out that these texts say that something that is not itself conscious/sensible/intelligent/etc. cannot give rise to something else that is conscious/sensible/intelligent/etc. and that amounts to a generic denial of emergent properties.
• Emergent properties occur when a relatively simple set of interactions gives rise to a relatively more complex system or pattern.
• A simple way to put it is that the whole can be greater than/different from the sum of its parts.
• Perhaps Boethus denied that the world is conscious because he saw that there was no need for it to be: emergent properties could explain the complexity of various things within the world.
• In sum, as Sellars (p. 95) puts it:
• "the dichotomy between reductive naturalism and theism falls apart when faced with Stoic physics ... Versions of materialism that conceive matter as something passive or inert need to give an account of the movement of matter and can be forced into admitting the existence of either transcendent causes of motion or a first cause that sets things in motion. The great virtue of the Stoic version of materialism is that it does not need to refer to anything outside of Nature in order to account for Nature's movement and order."
• The place and size of the cosmos
• The cosmos is a living being situated in an infinite void.
• While the cosmos has an edge, the void does not.
• Thus the Stoics avoid the objection of Archytas (Simplicius in Phys. 467, 26-35), who asked what would happen, if the cosmos has an edge, when someone went to the edge, leaned over the railing, and held out her arm.
• Conflagration
• At periodic intervals, the whole cosmos goes up in fire and everything is started up again after that great conflagration.
• It is not clear exactly what happens.
• The cycle continues endlessly, and each time, the "new" cosmos goes through exactly the same path as the "previous" one, because the cosmos is governed by reason and has the best possible organization.
• different Stoics had different theories about this, but that is the "standard account" you will find in most descriptions of stoic beliefs about such things.
  
• But Boethus and Panaetius held that the cosmos is eternal and indestructible!
• God and Fate
• Remember Stoic doctrine of Fate: hard determinism: everything is fated to occur by an unavoidable chain of causes. "Chance" events are not really chance: they have causes too.
• God's providential direction simply is the causal chains, and nothing more?
• In that case, how can God's providential direction itself be up to God?
• Compatibilism: remember that Stoics apparently believe that there is no problem here: Fate is compatible with responsibility: God can be responsible for the Cosmos, and yet still be a fixed unchangeable deterministic Fate.
• Calcidius (a Neoplatonic Christian) in Tim. 144
• For Providence will be God's will; and furthermore his will is the series of causes. In virtue of being his will it is providence. In virtue of also being the series of causes it gets the additional name fate. Consequently everything in accordance with fate is also the product of providence, and likewise everything in accordance with providence is the product of fate. That is Chrysippus' view.
• Some Christians did not like that, because it makes God's will necessary: she could not have acted other than she did.
• And yet, if God is completely rational and good, then there is only one course of action open to her, both because it is good and because she chooses the good: it is doubly determined: hence the cosmos is the best of all possible worlds! and God would not choose any other.
  
• God can't act in any other way, but she doesn't want to: she is like the Stoic sage who finds out what Fate has in store and therefore embraces it, not because it is what she must do, but because iit just so happens that in additon to being what she must do, it is/becomes what she wants to do, and thus it is overdetermined, or maybe the two aspects become one.
  
• Poppycock and Balderdash!
  
• What about all the EVIL things and events in the world? The best of all possible worlds indeed.
  
• Pshaw.
• Well, perhaps there is an answer to that:
• First off, God does not order the Cosmos as we would prefer it to be ordered, or in the best interest of each of us. Rather, God orders the Cosmos in its own best interest.
• Second, the events we call evil are not bad, say stoics:
• Remember indifferents!
• Those "evil" events are just not evil.
• But wait, then the question simply morphs into "what about all the vice in the world?" Stoics do believe we are all vicious, after all.
  
• Third: events we ordinarily call evil have a silver lining:
• They offer us an opportunity to test and develop ourselves and make progress.
• Without them, we could not make progress.
• This is Seneca's argument in De Providentia, a treatise on Providence:
  
• Disaster is virtue's opportunity.
• Continuous good luck is not good: it leaves one unprepared.
• Thus dispreferred indifferents provide us with essential opportunities.
  
• OK, fine, but why is this the best of all possible worlds?
• Why is it better than a world in which the sky is yellow and grass is purple?
• Sellars points out here that because the entire Cosmos is infused with God, every part of it is connected to every other part, and so the tiniest detail here might have repercussions elsewhere. Somehow that is supposed to explain why the grass is green and the sky is blue.
• I'd rather see it as a forced choice issue: some details are of the sort that they have to be x or y, but it does not matter which. Perhaps it is not so much the case that the sky has to be blue and that is the best color for it as it is the case that there is a superordinate principle that the sky has to be some color or other. It's not so much a matter that blue is the best color for skies. Rather, it's that the sky has to be a color, some color, and so it is a color, not because one is better than another, but because it's best to have a color, and it happens to be blue.
  
• That's not anything I can find in Stoics, but it seems to answer the objection.