Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Warrant and Proper Function' and 'Principle of Life and Plastic Natures'

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6 ideas

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections
Stoics say that God the creator is the perfection of all animals [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Stoics say that God is an animal immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil, having a foreknowledge of the world; however, he is not the figure of a man, and is the creator of the universe.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.72
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / a. Divine morality
The origin of justice can only be in Zeus, and in nature [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: One can find no other starting point or origin for justice except the one derived from Zeus and that derived from the common nature; for everything like this must have that starting point, if we are going to say anything at all about good and bad things.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c
     A reaction: [in lost 'On Gods' bk 3] This appears to offer two starting points, in the mind of Zeus, and in nature, though since nature is presumed to be rational the two may run together. Is Zeus the embodiment, or the unconscious source, or the maker of decrees?
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / d. God decrees morality
The source of all justice is Zeus and the universal nature [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: It is not possible to discover any other beginning of justice or any source for it other than that from Zeus and from the universal nature.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE], fr 326), quoted by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1035c
     A reaction: If the source is 'universal nature', that could agree with Plato, but if the source is Zeus, then stoicism is a religion rather than a philosophy.
Stoics teach that law is identical with right reason, which is the will of Zeus [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Stoics teach that common law is identical with that right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Zeus, who is the regulator and chief manager of all existing things.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.53
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / a. Cosmological Proof
Mechanics shows that all motion originates in other motion, so there is a Prime Mover [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: The maxim that there is no motion which has not its origin in another motion, according to the laws of mechanics, leads us again to the Prime Mover.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.194)
     A reaction: This is Leibniz's endorsement (uncredited) to Aquinas's First Way. It is hard to see how the laws of mechanics could have anything to say about the origin of movement. And doesn't the law say that the motions of God need a mover?
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
All substances are in harmony, even though separate, so they must have one divine cause [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: My system of Pre-established Harmony furnishes a new proof of God's existence, since it is manifest that the agreement of so many substances, of which the one has no influence upon the other, could only come from a general cause on which they all depend.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.192)
     A reaction: Adjacent harmony seems self-explanatory, but remote harmony is interesting evidence for God. Hence modern quantum non-locality should make us all wonder whether there is a deeper explanation.