An overview of the ancient philosophers and their philosophical system (divided into the fields of logic, physics, and ethics) comprising the living, organic, enduring, and evolving body of interrelated ideas identifiable as the Stoic perspective.

This paper attempts to reconstruct the views of the Stoic Posidonius on the emotions, especially as presented by Galen’s On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato. This is a well-studied area, and many views have been developed over the last few decades. It is also significant that the reliability of Galen’s account is openly at issue. Yet it is not clear that the interpretative possibilities have been fully demarcated. Here I develop Galen’s claim that Posidonius accepted a persistent, non-rational aspect (...) of the soul that he connects with the merely animal part of humans. The aim is to begin from this testimony in answering two questions: (1) How might the possession of a non-rational element of the soul operate alongside the hêgemonikon (leading-part of the soul) as a source of impulse for Posidonius. (2) How does this persistent animal aspect conform to the Stoic ontological classification found in their scala naturae? I shall argue in response to these that (a) Posidonius distinguished the merely cognitive aspects of the soul from those that are rational, and (b) that the hêgemonikon itself is not to be identified with what is rational. Accepting a persistent non-rational source of emotional impulses allows Posidonius a richer framework for explaining human affective responses and behaviours. I also briefly address Galen’s motivation for the account he offers. It is in view of Posidonius’ approach to Plato’s Timaeus that Galen’s discussion finds its most plausible interpretation. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 293 - 350 It is widely agreed that there is a gap between the personal and the social ethics of the Stoics due to the difficulty of harmonizing personal and social _oikeiōsis_. By reconstructing Epictetus’ theory of _oikeiōsis_, this paper aims to show that, in his ethics, there is no such gap, and this for two reasons: first, his account of social _oikeiōsis_ is not meant to ground his social ethics; second, his theory (...) of personal _oikeiōsis_ is a philosophical construct designed to provide a naturalistic justification to the utopian social project of the cosmopolis rather than to ground his personal ethics. (shrink)