According to the ancient Greek Stoics, the cosmos regularly transitions between periods of conflagration, during which only fire exists, and periods of cosmic order, during which the four elements exist. This paper examines the cosmogonic process by which conflagrations are extinguished and cosmic orders are restored, and it defends three main conclusions. First, I argue that not all the conflagration’s fire is extinguished during the cosmogony, against recent arguments by Ricardo Salles. Second, at least with respect to the cosmogony, it (...) is not necessary to posit the existence of proto-elements. Third, while scholars such as Salles and David Hahm have argued that Cleanthes held a distinct theory of cosmogony from Zeno and Chrysippus, I argue that each of these Stoics endorse the same cosmogonic theory. (shrink)

Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print. This paper is dedicated to exploring the alleged difference between Cleanthes’ and Chrysippus’ accounts of the post-mortal survival of the souls and the conceptions of personal identity that these accounts underpin. I argue that while Cleanthes conceptualised the personal identity as grounded in the rational soul, Chrysippus conceptualised it as an embodied rational soul. I also suggest that this difference between the two early Stoics might have been due to Chrysippus' metaphysical commitments arising from his (...) response to the Growing Argument put forth by the Academics rather than the critique of his teacher. (shrink)

Stoicism was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held. Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins. The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything (...) whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them. The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so. Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the.. (shrink)

Alyssa Lowery ABSTRACT: Stoicism’s tremendous recent popularity provides an opportunity to update the tradition for a contemporary audience. In this paper, I review one such update: Stoicism’s conception as a ‘big tent,’ first as depicted by two prominent figures in contemporary Stoicism – Ryan Holiday and Massimo Pigliucci – then how it fares in light ….

Christopher Gill ABSTRACT: How much theory is enough for a complete account of ancient Stoic ethics and for modern life-guidance? Stoic ethics was presented either purely in its own terms or combined with the idea of human or universal nature. Although the combination of ethical theory with human and universal nature provides the ….