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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'On Copernicanism and Relativity of Motion' and 'fragments/reports'

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2 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
Earlier Stoics speak of assent, but not of choice, let alone of a will [Stoic school, by Frede,M]
     Full Idea: Stoics [before Epictetus] have a notion of assent, and hence the appropriate notion of a willing, but we do not yet have a notion of a choice [prohairesis], let alone of a will.
     From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3
     A reaction: The assent is just giving in to a desire, which is either rational or irrational. Choice implies a second-level thinking, of weighing the two desires. The will would then be a faculty which can do this (which seems to be the invention of Epictetus).
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.