Roman Stoicism: being lectures on the history of the Stoic philosophy with special reference to its development within the Roman EmpireArnold, Edward Vernon
Religion
Roman Stoicism: being lectures on the history of the Stoic philosophy with special reference to its development within the Roman Empire
Arnold, Edward Vernon
Stoics
=78.= In becoming in turn a listener to Polemo, Zeno, we may imagine,
entered a new world. He left behind the rough manners, the stinging
retorts, and the narrow culture of the Cynics and Eristics[47], to sit
with other intelligent students[48] at the feet of a man of cultured
manners[49] and wide reading, who to a love for Homer and Sophocles[50]
had, we must suppose, added an intimate knowledge of the works of Plato
and Aristotle, was himself a great writer[51], and yet consistently
taught that not learning, but a natural and healthy life was the end to
be attained. That Zeno profited much from his studies under Polemo we may
conjecture from Polemo’s good-natured complaint, ‘I see well what you are
after: you break down my garden wall and steal my teaching, which you
dress in Phoenician clothes[52].’ From this time it became a conventional
complaint that Stoic doctrine was stolen from that of the Academics: yet
the sharp conflict between the two schools shews that this cannot apply
to essentials. But in two important matters at least Zeno must have been
indebted to Academic teaching. This school had elaborated the doctrine
of Anaxagoras, which so attracted Socrates, that the world began with
the working of mind upon unordered matter. So too, according to all our
authorities, Zeno taught that there are two beginnings, the active which
is identified with the deity or Logos, and the passive which is inert
matter, or substance without quality[53]. This doctrine appears to pledge
Zeno to a dualistic view of the universe.
[Sidenote: ‘Soul is body.’]
=79.= On the other hand the Platonic teaching on the soul was reversed
by Zeno. He denied the opposition between soul and body. ‘Soul is
Breath[54],’ he taught, and ‘soul is body[55].’ With Plato’s threefold
division of the soul he would have nothing to do; rather he maintained
that the soul has eight parts[56], each displaying itself in a distinct
power or capacity, whilst all of them are qualities or operations of
one soul in various relations[57]. In this part of his philosophy Zeno
appears as a strong monist, and his debt to the Platonists is necessarily
restricted to details.
[Sidenote: Zeno studies Heraclitus.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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