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)

The aim of this paper is to explore how the cosmic soul works and how it accomplishes its providential and demiurgic tasks in Chrysippus’ system. Drawing on (i) the analogy Chrysippus establishes between the individuum and the cosmos and (ii) biological and medical theories of respiration, digestion, and pulse, I will show that the movements of Chrysippus’ cosmic soul reproduce the processes of digestion, pulse, and respiration at a cosmic level. My claim is that Chrysippus, in addition to adopting Praxagoras’ (...) notion that inhaled air nourishes pneuma—well established in the scholarship—appropriated Aristotle’s complex mechanism of respiration and digestion based on the teleological role of cold air, crucial for preserving vital heat. So understood, Chrysippus’ application of biological notions to cosmology allows him to endow the active principle with effective causation throughout the cosmos. (shrink)

RésuméCet article se propose de reconstruire une partie du livre IV du traité perdu Sur la démonstration de Galien à partir des témoignages transmis par Abū Bakr al-Rāzī dans les Doutes sur Galien, et d'une source encore jamais exploitée, la Solution aux Doutes sur Galien de Abū al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Zuhr. L'hypothèse à laquelle nous sommes parvenue est que, dans le livre IV, Galien revient sur le caractère indécidable de la question de l’éternité du monde, et critique la démonstration donnée par (...) Aristote dans le traité Du Ciel, I. Seul un des arguments d'Aristote, qui occupe le court passage I, 3, 270b12–17, lui semble pouvoir être sauvé, car il est fondé sur des indications empiriques. C'est sur ce passage que se concentre al-Rāzī. Cette reconstruction permet de réduire les contradictions entre les fragments du livre IV transmis par Philopon dans Contre Proclus sur l’éternité du monde et le compte rendu d'al-Rāzī. Enfin, cet article montre que si al-Rāzī porte autant d'intérêt à ce passage chez Galien, ce n'est pas seulement à des fins polémiques, mais afin de servir ses propres objectifs philosophico-théologiques. Les objections d'al-Rāzī montrent qu'il considère que la téléologie galénique est adossée à un arrière-fond éternaliste qui ne lui permet pas de reconnaître la primauté de la théodicée pour la cosmologie comme pour la biologie. (shrink)

Galen is well known as a critic of Stoicism, mainly for his massive attack on Stoic (or at least, Chrysippean) psychology in "On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato" (PHP) 2-5. Galen attacks both Chrysippus' location of the ruling part of the psyche in the heart and his unified or monistic picture of human psychology. However, if we consider Galen's thought more broadly, this has a good deal in common with Stoicism, including a (largely) physicalist conception of psychology and a (...) strongly teleological view of natural entities, shared features which are acknowledged in several treatises outside "PHP." Why, then, is Galen such a remorseless and negative critic of Stoicism in "PHP"? Various factors are relevant, including the shaping influence on Galen of the Platonic-Aristotelian (part-based) psychological framework. But, it is suggested here, an important underlying factor is the contrast between two ways of thinking about the part-whole relationship, a 'composition' and a 'structure' approach or an atomistic and holistic approach. This contrast is most evident and explicit in one section of "PHP" 5, where Galen, criticising Chrysippus' holistic psychology, denies that the Stoic thinker is entitled to use the concept of part at all. But the contrast is also seen as pervading Galen's response to Stoic thought more generally, in "PHP" and elsewhere, in ways that inform his explicit disagreements with Stoic theory. Stoicism is presented here as having a consistently 'structure' (or holistic) approach. Galen's approach is seen as more mixed, sometimes sharing, or aspiring towards, a holistic picture, and yet sometimes (especially in "PHP" 5), adopting a strongly 'composition' or atomistic standpoint. This (partial) contrast in conceptual frameworks is presented as offering a new perspective on Galen's critique of Stoic psychology in "PHP" and on his relationship to Stoic thought more generally. (shrink)

El embrión, para los estoicos, es un ser vivo porque es una parte del vientre que se alimenta como un fruto. La naturaleza es la tensión del hálito que da cuenta de las plantas, mientras que el alma es la tensión del hálito que da cuenta de los animales. En el nacimiento, el hálito que era vegetal se vuelve animal, porque se enfría por el aire ambiente. Los neoplatónicos Plotino y Porfirio se enfrentan a la tesis estoica, testimoniada por Hierocles, (...) de que el hálito cambia de “naturaleza” a “alma” cuando, gracias al frío, se hace más sutil. (shrink)