The Neo-Confucian notion of wan wu yi ti 万物一体 and Stoic oikeiôsis both come up with a motivational basis for the expansion of concern, but one of the toughest problems in them is how to elaborate on selfhood and self–other relation in moral development. This paper takes a comparative view of Hierocles’ fragments and a few other relevant Stoic texts and Wang Yang-ming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning, and argues that doing so helps eliminate some confusions concerning selfhood and self–other (...) relation. My claim is that the concept of the Stoic oikeiôsis and the concept of Wang’s ‘wan wu yi ti’ have different ideas on selfhood and the self–other relation while showing similarities in basing the ideal of self-development on the original unity between self and world. (shrink)

Teratogenesis poses a real problem for all those who wish to see the natural world as a success story, and this includes the Neoplatonists. On their view even ordinary biological reproduction is governed by principles ultimately derived from intelligible Forms. Thus, the generation of terata would seem to call into question the very efficacy of these intelligible principles in the sensible world, since these would seem to be cases in which matter has gotten the upper hand over the intelligible. Although (...) the corpus of surviving Neoplatonic works offers no systematic discussion of the problems surrounding teratology, it is possible to find a number of passages which deal with the explanation of terata. In this article these passages are collected and discussed. It is argued inter alia that, far from capitulating in the face of this putative evidence against the full efficacy of intelligible causes in the world, the Neoplatonists managed to use these phenomena to the advantage of their own views. (shrink)

En el contexto de su crítica a la fenomenomenología husserliana Michel Henry apela a la caracterización de los errores de la perspectiva hetero-afectiva remitiéndose a sus orígenes en la tradición sintetizados en los parámetros de la “gnosis griega” y su compromiso con la racionalidad entendida como comprensión de “objetos puestos a distancia”. La revisión de los alcances de esta categoría revela, sin embargo, que existen tratamientos en el pensamiento griego que apelan a la auto-afección y la inmanencia para dar cuenta (...) de elementos que exceden la dimensión ek-stática. En este trabajo se revisa el planteo henryano para mostrar sus puntos de contacto con el estoicismo, especialmente a partir de la teoría de Hierocles a propósito de la oikeîosis. Este recorrido permitirá sugerir que entre ambos planteos existe una compatibilidad estructural que hace posible apelar a claves de interpretación similares para dar cuenta de la convivencia de mecanismos de explicación que apelan a lo auto-afectivo y lo hétero-afectivo en un conjunto coherente. (shrink)

Late Stoics and, in particular, Epictetus made ample use of the notion of attention, which they understood as the soul’s vigilant focus on sense impressions and on the Stoic principles. Attention, in their view, was meant to assist our self-examination and lead to ethical progress. It was thus regarded as a Stoic good and a constitutive part of eudaimonia. Early Stoics did not seem to have invoked such a notion, whereas the Neoplatonists appropriated it into their psychology by postulating the (...) soul’s attentive part, which they introduced to explain both perceptual and intellectual attention as well as self-awareness. (shrink)

According to the Stoics, ordinary unified bodies—animals, plants, and inanimate natural bodies—each have a single cause of unity and being: pneuma. Pneuma itself has no distinct cause of unity; on the contrary, it acts as a cause of unity and being for itself. In this paper, I show how pneuma is supposed to be able to unify itself and other bodies in virtue of its characteristic tensile motion (τονικὴ κίνησις). Thus, we will see how the Stoics could have hoped to (...) account for corporeal unity by positing another body (pneuma) apparently itself in need of unification. (shrink)

In Stoic physics, blending (κρᾶσις) is the relation between active pneuma and passive matter; natural bodies from rocks and logs to plants, animals and the cosmos itself are blends of pneuma and matter. Blending structures the Stoic cosmos. I develop a new interpretation of the Stoic theory of blending, based on passages from Hierocles. The theory of blending, I argue, has been misunderstood. Hierocles allows us to see in detail how the theory is supposed to work and how it fits (...) into Stoic physics. (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)

Seneca asserts in Letter 121 that we mature by exercising self-care as we pass through successive psychosomatic “constitutions.” These are babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus). The self-care described by Seneca is 'self-affiliation' (oikeiōsis, conciliatio) the linchpin of the Stoic ethical system, which defines living well as living in harmony with nature, posits that altruism develops from self-interest, and allows that pleasure and pain are indicators of well-being while denying that happiness consists in pleasure and that (...) pain is misery. Augustine divides the narrative of his own development into the stages of babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus) in the Confessions, a text wherein he claims familiarity with more than a few works of Seneca (Conf. 5.6.11). Furthermore, he had access to Stoic accounts of affiliation not only in Seneca’s Letter 121, but also in Cicero’s On Goals, and in non-extant sources of Stoic ethical theory. After pointing out that Augustine endorsed the notion of self-affiliation outside of the Confessions, I raise the question of whether he also makes the notion of affiliation thematic in his philosophical autobiography. I argue that he does indeed present himself and some of his primary relationships – with his mother and his long-term girlfriend – in terms of personal and social oikeiōsis. In addition, his self-critiques in the early books of the Confessions can be more fully understood if compared to Stoic developmental theory. He depicts himself as failing to progress intellectually, socially, and morally: although he passed through the successive constitutions, becoming physically larger and cognitively capable, he did not mature correctly by the standards of his Stoic sources. (shrink)

Kai Whiting, Aldo Dinucci, Edward Simpson, and Leonidas Konstantakos ABSTRACT: In Stoic theology, the universe constitutes a living organism. Humankind has often had a detrimental impact on planetary health. We propose that the Stoic call to live according to Nature, where God and Nature are one and the same, provides a philosophical basis for re-addressing ….

Chuck Chakrapani ABSTRACT: Stoic Minimalism may be described as ‘just enough Stoicism.’ Just enough for what? Just enough to lead the good life. Just enough to cope with the stress of modern life. Just enough to not be rattled by the constant changes that characterize the times we live in. Just enough to be resilient ….