The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it as (...) the Giants do. The substance of Stoic corporealism, however, has not been fully appreciated. This paper argues that Stoic corporealism goes beyond the dunamis proposal, which is simply an ontological criterion for being, to the metaphysics of body. This involves, first, an account of body as metaphysically simple and hence fundamental; second, an account of body as malleable and continuous, hence fit for blending (krasis di’ holou) and composition. In addition, the metaphysics of body involves a distinction between this composition relation seen in the cosmology, and the constitution relation by which the four-fold schema called the Stoic Categories proceeds, e.g. the relation between a statue and its clay, or a fist and its underlying hand. It has not been appreciated that the cosmology and the Categories are distinct — and complementary — explanatory enterprises, the one accounting for generation and unity, the other taking those individuals once generated, and giving a mereological analysis of their identity and persistence conditions, kinds, and qualities. The result is an elegant division of Plato’s labor from the Battle of Gods and Giants. On the one hand, the Stoics rehabilitate the crude cosmology of the Presocratics to deliver generation and unity in completely corporeal terms, and that work is found in their Physics. On the other hand, they reform the Giants and “dare to corporealize,” delivering all manner of predication (from identity to the virtues), and that work is found in Stoic Logic. Recognizing the distinctness of these explanatory enterprises helps dissolve scholarly puzzles, and harmonizes the Stoics with themselves. (shrink)

When examining the role of Stoic ethics within Stoic philosophy as a whole, it is useful for us to look at the Stoic view of the way in which philosophy is made up of parts. The aim is a synoptic and integrated understanding of the "theoremata" of all the parts, something which can be achieved in a variety of ways, either by subsequent integration of separate study of the three parts or by proceeding through 'mixed' presentations, which can be made (...) at varying levels of understanding. In two presentations of Stoic ethics we find initially baffling claims about the life of virtue being 'the same as' or 'equivalent to' the life according to nature. These indicate approaches in which understanding of ethical concepts was enlarged and enriched by study of physics. Interpretation which makes physics in these passages into ethical foundations answers poorly to the ancient texts and raises severe difficulties as an interpretation of Stoicism. Two texts which have been taken to commit Stoics to a foundationalist view of the relation of ethics and physics do not in fact do so; rather, they fit well into the holistic view of philosophy and its parts. (shrink)

The concept of consciousness in ancient Greek philosophy, concerns the internal autonomy and philosophical freedom from the condemnation of ignorance of both the foreign and the domestic world. The ancient Greek philosophers pointed out the value of the dialectic with the inner self to the problem of moral conscience and handed us a legacy of values and the primacy of reason. The concept of moral consciousness in ancient Greek philosophy. The article examines the concept of moral consciousness in ancient Greek (...) philosophy. The purpose of the article is to investigate the moral question related to whether moral concepts have a subjective or an objective basis. In addition, the article demonstrates the unaffected by time significance of the concept of moral consciousness, as well as its connection with the reality of moral concepts, moral propositions, moral judgments, moral man, moral law, moral idealism, moral naturalism and moral relativism. Moral consciousness is the mirror of our self-knowledge. (shrink)

The conception of philosophy we have inherited from ancient Greek tradition, and especially from Hellenistic Stoicism proves to be insightful even today. On the one hand, philosophy was considered as inseparable from life in terms of good life, thus ethically oriented and corresponding to virtue – perspective which still dominates the current interpretation of Stoicism. On the other hand, philosophy was connected to life through a specific link to logos. In this paper, I address the issue of the relationship between (...) language and virtue in Stoicism. I will suggest that, with the Stoics, “logic” can coincide with ethics, and that the seal of their reconciliation is to find in the human language. (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)

An attempt to answer four unsettled questions about the Stoic definition of passions. (I am no longer working on this paper, but have incorporated some of its thoughts into subsequent work.).

This paper argues that despite prima facie impressions, the first Stoics (the 3rd c. bc) put forward a conception of rhetoric of similar if not of equal importance as that of Plato and Aristotle, who represent two landmarks in the earliest development of what we may call ‘philosophical rhetoric’. The paper shows that the Stoics built upon their predecessors’ ideas, and that once we see this continuity, common features in Plato’s, Aristotle’s and the Stoics’ conception of rhetoric come to the (...) fore. For all of them argumentation, logical or dialectical, is at the core of philosophical rhetoric. The paper also addresses passages in Plutarch which accuse the Stoics of contradiction in their approach to rhetoric. (shrink)

La contribución de Ricardo Salles se centra en la interpretación peripatética de Alejandro en contra de la tesis estoica de que la lógica no es “instrumento”, sino “parte” de la filosofía. Según Alejandro, si la lógica fuera parte de la filosofía, como pretenden los estoicos, la filosofía no podría ocupar el lugar más elevado en la jerarquía del conocimiento; pero esto sería, en cierto modo, paradójico, argumenta Salles, pues todos –tanto estoicos como peripatéticos– consideran, por diversas razones, que la filosofía (...) es, por su objeto, la disciplina más elevada. De acuerdo con Salles, sin embargo, esta aguda crítica no es lo suficientemente penetrante para poner de manifiesto una verdadera inconsistencia en el estoicismo. Salles cree que esto sería paradójico, pues todos –tanto estoicos como peripatéticos– consideran, por diversas razones, que la filosofía es, por su objeto, la disciplina más elevada. De acuerdo con Salles, sin embargo, la aguda crítica de Alejandro no es lo suficientemente penetrante para poner de manifiesto una verdadera inconsistencia en el estoicismo. Su principal debilidad, en su opinión, radica en el hecho de que el razonamiento sobre el cual descansa depende de supuestos aristotélicos que los estoicos rechazan. (shrink)

Este artículo reconstruye panorámicamente la posición de Agustín de Hipona con respecto a la filosofía en la obra De civitate Dei. Sostiene que la valoración y el reproche que le hace Agustín a los platonici descansan en último término en un concepto de filosofía tomado del mismo platonismo y reinterpretado según textos bíblicos que enfatizan la centralidad de la mediación y el culto para alcanzar la beata vita.