When1: -308
When2: -200
Who: Stoic
What: philosophic school
Where: Athens, Greece
Detail: Zeno of Citium founded school {Stoic} {Stoicism} that developed from Cynic School and included Sphaerus, Dionysius, Crinus, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Philonides, Heraclides, Perseus, Cleomenes, Persion, Zeno of Tarsis, Antipater, Archedemus, Boethius of Sidon, Herillus, Diogenes of Babylon, and Apollodorus. They studied propositional logic and implication and invented a new syllogism theory.
Epistemology
Perceptions are neither true nor false, because they are not knowledge. Concepts are contents of ideas and result from perception persistence. People's perceptual contents are the same, so people have same concepts. Concepts mix object and body qualities, making impressions on soul or consciousness, which then forms will, using judgment on feelings and desires.
Imagination is a new quality mixture.
Language is material substance that assists quality mixing. Sentences are different expressions of propositions {lekta}: statements, commands, questions, or promises. Propositions are not sense qualities and are not objective reality.
Knowledge is concept and idea relations {judgment, Stoic}. People can believe or assent to judgments. When people understand a judgment, they have assent or belief, which becomes part of self. Making judgments, and abstaining from or giving in to emotions, depend only on internal factors. However, process is deterministic and causal. Because process is internal, it has certain freedom. If soul makes judgment without interference from passions, the judgment is true and real, because soul connects to universal reason.
All events are deterministic. Otherwise, people cannot know action consequences until after they happen, so no one can perform rational actions.
Ethics
People can take rationally correct actions, because everything is deterministic.
Virtue is good. Wealth, honor, and health are not necessarily good. People should seek good things, which contribute to virtue. The greatest good {summum bonum, Stoic} is to possess all virtues. Reason acts best if passions do not disturb it, so reason should eliminate emotions that arise from contact with outside world. Virtue and wisdom involve self-control.
Vice is control of reason by passion. Bad things contribute to vice and people must reject them. The senses are against true nature. Emotions are false judgments. Most people are fools and have vice.
Life should be natural. People should accept the way things are, because outside world cannot change. People then do not notice pain and suffering. People should not notice things that are neither good nor bad. Morality is harmony with nature, especially the will, because reason rules both.
The wise do not recognize good actions or things, because they are external.
One's life should be consistent, because life should express its essence, reason. It is duty to act and think virtuously using reason.
Will is part of pneuma, is basic to individual nature, is like God's will, and is free and powerful to same extent. Because everything is deterministic, the will has no free choice. However, people have responsibility, because their will participates in decision making along with environment. Responsibility does not depend on whether actions differ, any more than ethical judgment depends on possibility of alternatives. Both depend only on right and wrong.
Evil is absence of good.
Metaphysics
Universe is a deterministic, single, united, living, material, and connected whole. Gods work through air or spirit {pneuma, Stoic}, the moving vital principle of reason, which is in all things, continuously forms matter, and orders and gives purpose to everything. Pneuma affects material qualities and causes changes and interactions.
Events are necessities and have causes.
World has cycles, exactly alike.
Matter is air and moisture, which can change into water and earth. Body activities, objects, and actions are material.
Nature is for gods and people.
Universe as whole is perfect but requires some imperfection to realize this state. Bad or evil is an accidental consequence of the purposive world and is a means to something good. Eventually, all evil turns into good. For example, punishments are stimulants to moral behavior. Physical evils, such as diseases, are not evil to wise man indifferent to them and are just universe parts.
Mind
Consciousness, subjective self, and independent personality are immaterial and together make thoughts. Consciousness unifies perceptions, feelings, and will and relates to reason.
People's pneuma spirit of reason is part of, and depends on, God's universal reason. Pneuma relates to fire and warmth. Soul unifies body and holds ideas, judgments, and desires. At death, soul leaves body and rejoins universal pneuma.
Senses, speech, and reproduction are other body forces.
Politics
Society naturally results from man's nature, because reason is in each person equally. Reason unites and rules community. Duty, self-control, individual worth, obedience to law, brotherhood, love for all people, justice, and devotion to community are good.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224