139 ideas
| 20866 | Wise men participate in politics, especially if it shows moral progress [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The wise man participates in political life, especially in the sort of governments which show some moral progress. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11b | |
| A reaction: Nowadays this would probably involve belonging to a political party which offered moral progress. |
| 20854 | Wise men are never astonished at things which other people take to be wonders [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The wise man is astonished at none of the things which appear to be wonders, such as the caves of Charon or tidal ebbs or hot springs or fiery exhalations from the earth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.123 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be correct. Wise people will have thought more extensively about what is possible, and when something they had never imagined occurs, they have the humility to recognise their own limitations. |
| 20815 | No wise man has yet been discovered [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: According to the Stoics the wise man is hitherto undiscovered. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') 2.133 | |
| A reaction: This could plausibly be axiomatic for the whole of philosophy, since the subject is the 'love of wisdom', and not its acquisition. The subject is the pursuit of wisdom, which would be pointless if we already had it. |
| 20806 | Stoic physics concerns cosmos, elements and causes (with six detailed divisions) [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics divide physics into topics on bodies, principles, elements, gods, limits, place and void. The general division is into three topics, concerning the cosmos, the elements and causal explanations. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.132 | |
| A reaction: Apart from the gods, not much has changed. |
| 20839 | Ethics studies impulse, good, passion, virtue, goals, value, action, appropriateness, encouragement [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoic divisions of ethics: on impulse, on good and bad things, on passions, on virtue, on the goal, on primary value, on actions, on appropriate actions, and on encouragements and discouragements to action. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.84 | |
| A reaction: A substantial part of this is covered by modern Action Theory, rather than by ethics. This describes later stoicism, from Chrysippus onwards. I like the study of 'appropriate actions', which could do with some modern analysis. |
| 20867 | True philosophising is not memorising ideas, but living by them [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: It is not the man who listens eagerly and memorises what philosophers say who is prepared for philosophising, but the man who is prepared to carry into action what is pronounced in philosophy and to live by it. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11k | |
| A reaction: Hence stoicism was seen more as a way of life, and less as theorising. I aim to combine the two. There is a way of life which centres on theorising about life while living it. A life without enquiry is not worth living. |
| 1749 | If all laws were abolished, philosophers would still live as they do now [Aristippus elder] |
| Full Idea: If all laws were abolished, philosophers would still live as they do now. | |
| From: Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.4 | |
| A reaction: Presumably philosophers develop inner laws which other people lack. |
| 21675 | Some facts are indispensable for an effect, and others actually necessitate the effect [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics declare that there is a difference whether a thing is of such a kind that something cannot be effected without it, or such that something must necessarily be effected by it. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 16.36 | |
| A reaction: This points out that causal preconditions can be either necessary or sufficient for their effect. Because it is a very perceptive point, I surmise that it originated with Chrysippus. |
| 20775 | Stoics study canons, criteria and definitions, in order to find the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: They include the study of canons and criteria in order to discover the truth. This is to straighten out the differences among the presentations. And they also include the definitional part for the purposes of recognising the truth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42 | |
| A reaction: Might we call this categorisation, justifications and definitions? This is part of the study of logos, which comes first in the stoic view of philosophy. |
| 21393 | Stoics believed that rational capacity in man (logos) is embodied in the universe [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics believed the faculty in man which enables him to think, to plan and to speak - which they called 'logos' - is literally embodied in the universe at large. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4 Intro | |
| A reaction: This is the stage where logos becomes something dramatically more grand than the logos found in Plato's 'Theaetetus' (but see Heraclitus). It is what is meant by St John's 'In the beginning was the logos' (which is straightforward stoicism). |
| 21810 | The Stoics distinguished spoken logos from logos within the mind [Stoic school, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics distinguished between logos prophorikos ('uttered reasoning') and logos endiathetos ('reason stored within'). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.03 n7 | |
| A reaction: These seems required, since logos is often the 'giving of an account', but it is also the rational principle that rules nature. |
| 20776 | Dialectics is mastery of question and answer form [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Dialectical knowledge is about conversing correctly in speeches of question and answer form. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42 | |
| A reaction: The whole of ancient Greek philosophy seems to be aimed at speaking well. |
| 5728 | The concept of truth was originated by the senses [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The concept of truth was originated by the senses. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.479) | |
| A reaction: This is a refreshing challenge to the modern view of truth, which seems entirely entangled with language. Truth seems a useful concept when discussing the workings of an animal mind. As you get closer to an object, you see it more 'truly'. |
| 20849 | Falsehoods corrupt a mind, producing passions and instability [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Corruption afflicts the intellect because of falsehoods, and from such a mind there arise many passions and causes of instability. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.110 | |
| A reaction: In Dec 2017 this ancient wisdom perfectly fits the current President of the USA. |
| 20823 | The truth bearers are said to be the signified, or the signifier, or the meaning of the signifier [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Some located the true and the false in the thing signified (Dion himself), some located it in the utterance ('Dion'), and some in the motion of the intellect (what foreigners do not undestand when they hear 'Dion').. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Mathematicians 8.11 | |
| A reaction: [View is attributed to Dogmatists, which also includes Epicureans] I love the definition of what we might call 'meaning' as what foreigners fail to understand when they hear it. I don't think the debate has got any further today. His example is one word. |
| 20778 | Stoics like syllogisms, for showing what is demonstrative, which corrects opinions [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the study of syllogisms is extremely useful; for it indicates what is demonstrative, and this makes a big contribution toward correcting one's opinions; and orderliness and good memory indicate attentive comprehension. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.45 | |
| A reaction: The stoics also developed propositional logic. The main point is that they liked formal logic, which is not true of all the ancient schools. |
| 21400 | Stoics avoided universals by paraphrasing 'Man is...' as 'If something is a man, then it is...' [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Stoics reduced universals to thoughts or concepts, ...so in order to make universal statements which would not conflict with their metaphysics, they rephrased sentences of the form 'Man is...' as conditionals: 'If something is a man, then it is...' | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.3 | |
| A reaction: [reference to Sextus, Adv Math 9.8] Predicate logic handles this with ease. It is something like the strategy of Ramsey sentences, for eliminating metaphysical properties. |
| 20788 | The contradictory of a contradictory is an affirmation [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: A double contradictory is the contradictory of a contradictory, for example, 'It s not the case that it is not day'. It posits that it is day. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.69 | |
| A reaction: Seems like common sense to the stoics, but verifying the double negative may be a different procedure to verifying the affirmative. 'Are you happy?' 'Well ….I'm not unhappy'. 'Is it day yet?' 'Well, it's not night'. |
| 21594 | Stoics applied bivalence to sorites situations, so everyone is either vicious or wholly virtuous [Stoic school, by Williamson] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics were prepared to apply bivalence to sorites reasoning, and swallow the consequences. ...For example, they denied that there are degrees of virtue, holding that one is either vicious or perfectly virtuous. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Williamson sympathises with this view, but the virtue example suggests to me that it is crazy. One of my objections to traditional religion is the sharp (and wickedly unjust) binary judgement between those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. |
| 20824 | Stoics have four primary categories: substrates, qualities, dispositions, relative dispositions [Stoic school, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics reduce the number of primary categories, some of them new. They divide them into four: substrates [underlying things], qualities [qualified things], dispositions [things in a certain state], and relative dispositions [with respect to something]. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Categories' 1b25 8.66.32 | |
| A reaction: [a precious rare quote on stoic categories] Not sure of the status of the glosses in square brackets. I very much like 'dispositions' as a basic category. Substrates are elusive beasts. Is this list 'objects, qualities, dispositions, relations'? |
| 20817 | Platonic Forms are just our thoughts [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics said that the Ideas [Platonic forms] are our own thoughts. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 882a | |
| A reaction: That's Plato deftly kicked into touch. I'm with the Stoics. |
| 6037 | Stoics say matter has qualities, and substance underlies it, with no form or qualities [Stoic school, by Chalcidius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics distinguish matter and substance; they say that matter is that which underlies those things which have qualities; however, the primary matter of all things or their most primeval foundation is substance, which is without qualities and unformed. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Chalcidius - Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus' 290 | |
| A reaction: In this account, substance begins to sound like Kant's 'noumenon', which is a theoretical concept which has retreated beyond all experience. Stoics were under pressure to cover everything for which the Atomists offered explanations. |
| 20826 | How is separateness possible, if separated things are always said to be united? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could one avoid the inconsistency of saying that adjacent objects that can easily be separated are all the same united with each other, being coherent and never able o be separated from each other without division? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: In general my sympathies are with Alexander on this. If you abandon all principles of unity apart from unrestricted mereological composition, you save yourself a lot of bother, but you abandon the most useful concepts in ontology. |
| 20825 | How is divisibility possible, if stoics say things remain united when they are divided? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could the divisibility of bodies be preserved if division is the separation of what is united, and according to them all things stay united with each other, all the same even when they are divided? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Evidently the stoics were committed to unrestricted mereological composition (that any parts make a whole, no matter how scattered). Alexander points out that this makes the concept of 'division' of an entity meaningless. |
| 20872 | Stoics say wholes are more than parts, but entirely consist of parts [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the wholes are not the same as their parts, for a human being is not his hand, nor are they other than their parts, for they do not exist without the parts. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.170 | |
| A reaction: 'A human being is not his hand' is not much of a reason. Surely some holistic claim is needed here? The conflict of these two ideas was spotted by Plato. |
| 20790 | A proposition is possible if it is true when nothing stops it being true [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: That proposition is possible which admits of being true, if external factors do not prevent it from being true, for example, 'Diocles is alive'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.75 | |
| A reaction: Well that's different. So every unprevented possibility will occur tomorrow. Any possibility that does not occur tomorrow must have been prevented in some way. Whatever does occur prevents innumerable other things from occurring. Your turn… |
| 20789 | Conditionals are false if the falsehood of the conclusion does not conflict with the antecedent [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: A conditional is true if the opposite of the conclusion conflicts with the antecedent, and false if it doesn't conflict. Thus 'If it is day, Dion is walking' is false, because 'Dion is not walking' does not conflict with 'It is day'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.73 | |
| A reaction: For the two to conflict there must be some connection in subject matter, which is not the case if the mere falsehood of the conclusion (from a true premise) falsifies the conditional. This seems like a rather good account. |
| 20783 | Knowledge is a secure grasp of presentations which cannot be reversed by argument [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge itself, say the stoics, is either a secure grasp or a disposition in the reception of presentations not reversible by argument. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.47 | |
| A reaction: Helpful, but not enough. Fools hold secure grasps which cannot be refuted, as far as they are concerned. Consensus needed. Falsification? The truth-bearer is a 'presentation' (an appearance), which is different from modern accounts. |
| 20868 | Two sorts of opinion: either poorly grounded belief, or weak belief [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: There are two kinds of opinion: one is assent to something which is not graspable; the other is weak belief. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.11m | |
| A reaction: Strong belief usually qualifies as knowledge. The Greek 'opinion' and 'belief' don't exactly map onto the modern words. This idea covers both the subjective aspect of belief (its strength) and its objective aspect (its grounding). |
| 20784 | There are non-sensible presentations, which come to us through the intellect [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say some presentations are sensible, some non-sensible. Those received through the sense organs are sensible; non-sensible are those which come through the intellect, for example, presentations of incorporeals and other things grasped by reason. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.51 | |
| A reaction: The a priori used to be metaphysics (a world of truths), and in modern times is epistemology (a mode of justification), but here it is just a mode of experience, which is not, it seems, necessarily true. |
| 20803 | Stoics say we are born like a blank sheet of paper; the first concepts on it are sensations [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say when a human being is born, the leading part of his soul is like a sheet of paper ready for being written on. On this he inscribes every one of his conceptions. The first manner of writing on it is through the senses. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 900a | |
| A reaction: This may not be dogmatic empiricism, because later inscriptions on the sheet could be purely a priori. |
| 6025 | At birth the soul is a blank sheet ready to be written on [Stoic school, by Aetius] |
| Full Idea: When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding-part of his soul like a sheet of paper reading for writing upon; on this he inscribes each one of his conceptions. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Aetius - fragments/reports 4.11 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the origin of the concept of the 'tabula rasa', which resurfaces in empirical thought, in Locke and elsewhere. Notice that 'he' inscribes on the paper, rather than raw experience doing the job. The natural light of reason can do it. |
| 20781 | Non-graspable presentations are from what doesn't exist, or are not clear and distinct [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The non-graspable presentation is either not from an existing object or from an existing object but not in accordance with it; it is neither clear nor well stamped (i.e. distinct). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: This sounds exactly like Locke's account of secondary qualities, at least as interpreted by Peter Alexander. That is, they are genuine qualities of things, but misleading, in a way that primary qualities are not. |
| 20792 | Stoic perception is a presentation to which one voluntarily assents [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics did not make sense-perception consist in presentation alone but made its substance depend on assent; for perception is an assent to a perceptual presentation, the assent being voluntary. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.49.25 | |
| A reaction: [Stobaeus cites Porphyry's De Anima] Thus you only perceive a hallucination if you do not realise that it is false. This is more subjective than I would want to be. If you only think you perceive, but you are wrong, then I say you don't perceive. |
| 20805 | All our concepts come from experience, directly, or by expansion, reduction or compounding [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: In general one can find nothing in our conceptions that is not known to oneself in direct experience. For it is grasped either by similarity to what is revealed in direct experience, or by expansion or reduction or compounding. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Mathematicians 8.58 | |
| A reaction: Although the stoics allow for purely a priori knowledge, this quotation sounds comprehensively empirical. |
| 5702 | The senses are much the best way to distinguish true from false [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: What can be a surer guide to the distinction of true from false than our own senses? | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.700) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't say they are the only guide, which leaves room for guides such as what is consistent or self-evident or inferred. There is enough here, though, to show that the Epicureans were empiricists in a fairly modern way. |
| 5729 | If the senses are deceptive, reason, which rests on them, is even worse [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The structure of your reasoning must be rickety and defective, if the senses on which it rests are themselves deceptive. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.518) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as one of the most basic tenets of empiricism. It denies the existence of 'pure' reason, and instead asserts that it is built out of complex and abstracted sense experience, which makes it ultimately a second-class citizen. |
| 20782 | Dialectic is a virtue which contains other virtues [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic itself is necessary, and is a virtue which contains other virtues. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: Presumable the virtues which are 'contained' are the whole panoply of other intellectual virtues. These will be virtues of intellectual character (Zagzebski), not virtues of processes (Sosa). |
| 5697 | The only possible standard for settling doubts is the foundation of the senses [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If a belief resting directly on the foundation of the senses is not valid, there will be no standard to which we can refer any doubt on obscure questions for rational confirmation. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.422) | |
| A reaction: A classic statement of empiricist foundationalism. The Epicureans don't appear to have any time for a priori truths at all. I wonder if they settled mathematical disputes by counting objects and drawing diagrams? |
| 1772 | For Stoics knowledge is an assertion which never deviates from the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics define knowledge as an assertion or safe comprehension or habit, which, in the perception of what is seen, never deviates from the truth. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.25 | |
| A reaction: Sounds somewhere between Nozick's 'tracking the truth' and Goldman's 'reliable source'. If the world is a flux, then presumably it is right that knowledge should fluctuate too. |
| 5727 | Most supposed delusions of the senses are really misinterpretations by the mind [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Paradoxical experiences (such a dreams and illusions) cannot shake our faith in the senses. Most of the illusion is due to the mental assumptions we ourselves superimpose, so that things not perceived by the senses pass for perceptions. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.462) | |
| A reaction: Some misinterpretations of the senses, such as thinking a square tower round, are the result of foolish lack of judgement, but actual delusions within the senses, such as a ringing in the ears, or a pain in a amputated leg, seem like real sense failures. |
| 20779 | Demonstration derives what is less clear from what is clear [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Demonstration is an argument which by means of things more clearly grasped concludes to something that is less clearly grasped. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.45 | |
| A reaction: In Aristotle demonstration seems to concern physical sciences, but this stoic account makes it sound like pure logic proof. This is why all logic tends to start from atomic sentences, because they are clearest. |
| 5714 | Even simple facts are hard to believe at first hearing [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1022) | |
| A reaction: Hence induction is just 'drumming it in' until you come to believe it. There are good evolutionary reasons why we should be like this, because we would otherwise believe all sorts of silly half-perceptions in the gloaming. |
| 23251 | The Stoics think that soul in the narrow sense is nothing but reason [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics think that we are exclusively moved by reason, because the soul in a narrow sense is nothing but reason. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.8 | |
| A reaction: Presumably that means that desires and perceptions are not part of the 'narrow' soul. This is the culmination of Socratic intellectualism. |
| 20809 | Eight parts of the soul: five senses, seeds, speech and reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The stoics say there are eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the spermatic principle is us, the vocal part, and the reasoning part. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.155 |
| 5718 | The mind is in the middle of the breast, because there we experience fear and joy [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The guiding principle of the whole body is the mind or intellect, which is firmly lodged in the mid-region of the breast. Here is felt fear and alarm, and the caressing pulse of joy. Here, then is the seat of the intellect and mind. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.140) | |
| A reaction: Even by this date thinking people were not clear that the mind is in the brain. They paid insufficient attention to head injuries. The emotions are felt to have a location, but intellect and principles are not. |
| 5717 | The mind is a part of a man, just like a hand or an eye [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: First, I maintain that the mind, which we often call the intellect, the seat of guidance and control of life, is part of a man, no less than hand or foot or eyes are parts of a whole living creature. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.95) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Lucretius asserts this because some people were denying it. Sounds like common sense to me. The only reason I can see for anyone denying what he says is if they are desperate to survive death. |
| 23321 | Division of the soul divides a person, reducing responsibility for the nonrational part [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: According to the Stoics, the division of the soul threatens the unity of the person and obscures the responsibility we have for our supposedly nonrational desires. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
| A reaction: Does this imply the concept of a 'person', if it places great store by unity? Disagreement over mental unity is one of the great threads running through philosophy. See Nietzsche on 'drives' for the rival view. |
| 23267 | Stoics say the soul is a mixture of air and fire [Stoic school, by Galen] |
| Full Idea: The Stoic view is clear: the substance of soul comes about through some mixture of air and fire. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Galen - The soul's dependence on the body Kiv.4.784 | |
| A reaction: Most accounts seem to neglect the role of air (whatever that might be). |
| 21387 | The separate elements and capacities of a mind cannot be distinguished [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: No single element [of the soul] can be separated, nor can their capacities be divided spatially; they are like the multiple powers of a single body | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.262), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 2.7 | |
| A reaction: It is interesting that this comes from someone with a strongly physicalist view of the mind (though not, if I recall, focusing on the brain). He is still totally impressed by the unified phenomenology of mental experience. He is an empiricist. |
| 20785 | Our conceptions arise from experience, similarity, analogy, transposition, composition and opposition [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Some conceptions are conceived on the basis of direct experience, some on the basis of similarity, some on the basis of analogy, some on the basis of transposition, some on the basis of composition, and some on the basis of opposition. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.52 | |
| A reaction: These are examples of what I think of as 'philosophical faculties', probably not mentioned by either psychologists or neuro-scientists, but seen by philosophers as necessary preconditions for certain basic operations of thought. |
| 7502 | For Stoics the true self is defined by what I can be master of [Stoic school, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: For the Stoics, the true self is defined only by what I can be master of. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This ties the self to the will - indeed, it almost identifies the self with the will. Why is the self the parts that are mastered, rather than the part that does the mastering? I master my shoes, but they are not me. |
| 5709 | The actions of the mind are not determinate and passive, because atoms can swerve [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The fact that the mind itself has no internal necessity to determine its every act and compel it to suffer in helpless passivity - this is due to the slight swerve of the atoms at no determinate time or place. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.294) | |
| A reaction: No one likes this proposal much, but it is very intriguing. The Epicureans had seen a problem, one which doesn't bother me much. If, nowadays, you are a reductive physicalist who believes in free will, you have a philosophical nightmare ahead of you. |
| 23327 | Stoics expanded the idea of compulsion, and contracted what counts as one's own actions [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: With Stoics, and in its wake, we get an enormous expansion of what counts as being forced [biazesthai] or compelled or made to do something, and correspondingly an enormous contraction of what counts as an action of one's own. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 5 | |
| A reaction: The key idea seems to be setting the bar higher for being in control, which eventually leads to the idea of free will. Frede says this does not contract responsibility, because what controls us can be our own fault. |
| 7672 | The free will problem was invented by the Stoics [Stoic school, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: The free-will problem was invented by the Stoics. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Compare Ideas 6018 and 7814. There is no sign of the problem in Book 3 of Aristotle's Ethics. This is crucial, since I consider the problem to be totally bogus. |
| 23315 | The nearest to ancient determinism is Stoic fate, but that is controlled by a sympathetic God [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of antiquity nearest to physical determinism was the Stoic doctrine of fate. But their fate is the work of an agent, and is predetermined in part with regard to us, and even seems be contingent on anticipated human choices. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The gist is that this is the most determinist the ancients ever get (e.g. the swerve of Epicurus), and it is not very determinist at all, in comparison with modern Laplacean physical determinism. Late antiquity determinism was stronger. |
| 5695 | Only bodies can touch one another [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can touch or be touched except body. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.303) | |
| A reaction: This is the key objection to interactionism, and the main reason why the atomists have a thoroughly material view of the mind. It is an induction from a very large number of instances, but the argument is not, of course, conclusive. |
| 5711 | The earth is and always has been an insentient being [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The earth is and always has been an insentient being. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.658) | |
| A reaction: The fact that Epicurus needs to deny this shows that some idea close to panpsychism must still have been around in his time. He is discussing gods at the time, so maybe pantheism was the view being attacked, but that is a subset of panpsychism. |
| 5712 | Particles may have sensation, but eggs turning into chicks suggests otherwise [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: There is the possibility that particles have senses like those of an animate being as a whole, …but from the fact that we perceive eggs turning into live fledglings, we may infer that sense can be generated from the insentient. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.914) | |
| A reaction: He gives other arguments for his view. The egg example is not a strong argument, but is precisely our puzzle of how consciousness can emerge from the process of evolution, and natural selection makes dualism look unlikely. |
| 5719 | The mind moves limbs, wakes the body up, changes facial expressions, which involve touch [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Mind and spirit are both composed of matter, as we see them propelling limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face, and guiding the whole man - activities which clearly involves touch, which involves matter. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.164) | |
| A reaction: This is the inverse of Descartes' interaction problem, and strikes me as a straightforward common sense truth. However, if you believe in spiritual gods, this gives you a model for the interaction (however mysterious) of matter and spirit. |
| 5724 | Lions, foxes and deer have distinct characters because their minds share in their bodies [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Why are lions ferocious, foxes crafty, and deer timid? It can only be because the mind always shares in the specific growth of the body according to its seed and breed. If it were immortal and reincarnated, living things would have jumbled characters. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.743) | |
| A reaction: A nice argument which I have not encountered in modern times. Of course, even Descartes admits that the mind is intermingled with the body, but it seems that the essential character of a mind is dictated by the body. |
| 5713 | You needn't be made of laughing particles to laugh, so why not sensation from senseless seeds? [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: One can laugh without being composed of laughing particles, ..so why cannot the things that we see gifted with sensation be compounded of seeds that are wholly senseless? | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.988) | |
| A reaction: Lovely argument! You might feel driven to panpsychism in your desperation to explain the 'weirdness' of consciousness, but it would be mad to attribute laughter to basic matter, so comedy has to 'emerge' at some point. |
| 4014 | Stoics classify passions according to the opinion of good and bad which they imply [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics classified the passions according to the implicit (and erroneous) opinions about the good and bad that they contained. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §8 | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound very promising, since nearly all emotions can be put to either a good or a bad use |
| 23988 | There are four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear [Stoic school, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics named four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations iv.13-15 | |
| A reaction: 'Distress' sounds too vague to do the job of explaining anything. Getting them down to four suggests an extreme desire to simplify such things. |
| 6594 | Stoics said that correct judgement needs an invincible criterion of truth [Stoic school, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Stoic epistemologists held that to judge correctly, one must be in possession of a proper criterion of truth - a test that provides invincible evidence of the truth of some belief. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: It seems that the Stoics were the first to 'set the bar too high', and inevitably drew the sceptical response that there is no such criterion. The polarisation might go further back, to Parmenides' One (known for certain by reason) and Heraclitus's Flux. |
| 20804 | Concepts are intellectual phantasms [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: A concept is a phantasm of the intellect of a rational animal. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Pseudo-Plutarch - On the Doctrine of the Philosophers 900c | |
| A reaction: No doubt they assume that the brutes are devoid of all concepts, but that makes it hard to explain their behaviour. |
| 20786 | Predicates are incomplete 'lekta' [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics place predicates among the incomplete 'lekta'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.63 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the modern Fregean logician's concept of a predicate. |
| 23322 | Humans have rational impressions, which are conceptual, and are true or false [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: For Stoics, all human impressions differ from animals in that they are rational. …They are impressions that something is the case, and hence are true or false. Their formation involves the use of concepts, and are thus also called 'thoughts' [noeseis]. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michael Frede - A Free Will 3 | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty accurate account of my notion of a 'proposition'. Since many animals make judgements, I take them to entertain non-verbal propositions. I assume there are also propositions which are more internal, and thus not 'impressions'. |
| 20777 | Rhetoric has three types, four modes, and four sections [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say rhetoric is tripartite. Part is deliberative, part forensic, part encomiastic. It is divided into invention, diction, organisation, and delivery. Rhetorical speech is divided into the introduction, exposition, counterargument and conclusion. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.42-3 | |
| A reaction: The last bit is quite a good guide for a philosophical paper. |
| 23323 | 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). |
| 23305 | Stoics said responsibility depends on rationality [Stoic school, by Sorabji] |
| Full Idea: It is the Stoics who made responsibility depend on rationality. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Ethical' | |
| A reaction: Aristotle's account of responsibility in 'Ethics' needs a high degree of rationality, far beyond even a rational non-human animal. And no one thinks small children are responsible. |
| 6611 | One man's meat is another man's poison [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: What is food to one may be literally poison to others. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.638) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the origin of the well-known saying. This is not relativism of perception, but a relativism of how individuals actually respond to the world. It sums up the position with, say, the operas of Wagner. |
| 1907 | Stoics use 'kalon' (beautiful) as a synonym for 'agathon' (good) [Bury on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics used 'kalon' [fair, i.e. beautiful] as a synonym for 'agathon' [good] | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by R.G.Bury - notes on Sextus Empiricus 69:245 | |
| A reaction: I consider this to be a very important idea, which has been lost in modern moral philosophy - even in modern virtue theory. I've seen the suggestion that the best translation of 'kalon' is 'Wow!'. Imagine deeds that elicit 'Wow!'. |
| 3558 | Only the Cyrenaics reject the idea of a final moral end [Aristippus elder, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The Cyrenaics are the most radical ancient moral philosophers, since they are the only school explicitly to reject the importance of achieving an overall final end. | |
| From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 11.1 | |
| A reaction: This looks like dropping out, but it could also be Keats's 'negative capability', of simply participating in existence without needing to do anything about it. |
| 22757 | Stoics say that folly alone is evil [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say that folly alone is evil. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Ethicists (one book) II.90 | |
| A reaction: This is Socrates' intellectualist view of weakness of will. Is the evil in the succumbing to a temptation, or in the intellectual error that leads to it? 'Folly' in English is stupid action, not just stupid belief. |
| 5730 | Our bodies weren't created to be used; on the contrary, their creation makes a use possible [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Nothing in our bodies was born in order that we might be able to use it, but the thing born creates the use. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.834) | |
| A reaction: This remark (strongly opposed to Aristotle's view of human function and nature) raises the obvious question of why the body is so very useful for staying alive. Most of its uses are not random. Lucretius would abandon this view if he read Darwin. |
| 20846 | Prime values apply to the life in agreement; useful values apply to the natural life [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say one sort of value is a contribution to the life in agreement, which applies to every good. Another is an intermediate potential or usefulness (such as wealth or health) contributing to the life according to nature. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.105 | |
| A reaction: Assessing value by what it contributes to is interesting. There is also the appraiser's value. |
| 20847 | The appraiser's value is what is set by someone experienced in the facts [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Another sense of value is the appraiser's value, which someone experienced in the facts would set, as when one says that wheat is exchanged for barley with a mule thrown in. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.105 | |
| A reaction: No relativist nonsense here. Conventional values are set by experts, not by hoi polloi. |
| 20870 | The goal is to live consistently with the constitution of a human being [Stoic school, by Clement] |
| Full Idea: More recent stoics defined the goal as to live consistently with the constitution of a human being. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Clement - Stromates 2.21.129.6 | |
| A reaction: This sounds more Aristotelian than the classic stoics. The obvious problem is the nasty side of human nature. At least Aristotle adds something like 'when it is functioning well, particularly in social situations'. |
| 22238 | Stoics said health is an 'indifferent', but they still considered it preferable [Stoic school, by Pormann] |
| Full Idea: For the Stoics bodily health belongs in the 'indifferent [adiaphoron]' category: it does not matter if one is healthy. And yet, they created a subcategory of the 'preferable indifferent [adiaphoron proegmenon]', under which health falls. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Peter E. Pormann - Medical Conceptions of Health pre-Renaissance p.45 | |
| A reaction: You have to be pretty tough to consider ill-health as an indifferent. The only good may be virtue, but the platonic tradition says virtue is a sort of mental health. |
| 20861 | The health of the soul is a good blend of beliefs [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: The health of the soul is a good blend of the beliefs in the soul. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.05b04 | |
| A reaction: When I write my great book, this may well be its epigraph. I presume it means 'wisdom is the health of the soul'. |
| 5726 | The dead are no different from those who were never born [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.867) | |
| A reaction: There is a special kind of pain in being poor if you were once rich, which is not suffered by those who experience only poverty. Lucretius is right, but we are concerned with how we feel now, not with how we won't feel once dead. |
| 3553 | Stoic morality says that one's own happiness will lead to impartiality [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Stoics begin ethics with concern for one's own happiness, and end up claiming that in morality one will be indifferent between one's own interests and those of 'the remote Mysian'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 | |
| A reaction: Makes sense, if pursuing our own happiness is doomed, and the best we can manage is indifference. |
| 20851 | Virtuous men do not feel sexual desire, which merely focuses on physical beauty [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Sexual love is a desire which does not afflict virtuous men, for it is an effort to gain love resulting from the appearance of physical beauty. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.113 | |
| A reaction: That is a surprising interpretation of the slogan 'live according to nature'. I would have thought it was factually incorrect, since many objects of human lust rank fairly low in the scale of beauty. Sex is a tough duty if you don't desire it. |
| 7499 | Stoicism was an elitist option to lead a beautiful life [Stoic school, by Foucault] |
| Full Idea: Stoicism offered a personal choice for a small elite. The reason for making this choice was the will to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others memories of a beautiful existence. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - On the Genealogy of Ethics p.254 | |
| A reaction: This resurfaces in the late nineteenth century aesthetic movement ("Forget living - our servants can do that for us"). I see no reason why this should not be an ideal held up for all human beings, though pleasure-seekers will probably reject it. |
| 20843 | Final goods: confidence, prudence, freedom, enjoyment and no pain, good spirits, virtue [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that confidence and prudence and freedom and enjoyment and good spirits and freedom from pain and every virtuous action are final (as opposed to instrumental) goods. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.96 | |
| A reaction: An interesting and unusual list. I've never seen 'confidence' or 'good spirits' mentioned. 'Freedom' is also unusual, but probably just means not being enslaved. |
| 22753 | Happiness for the Stoics was an equable flow of life [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Happiness is defined by Zeno and Cleanthes and Chrysippus as 'an equable flow of life'. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Ethicists (one book) II.30 | |
| A reaction: These are the great Stoics. Sounds a bit dull. The old Chinese curse: 'may you live in interesting times'. An equable life could be achieve by never attempting anything, and never getting involved in anything. I don't agree with this idea. |
| 5835 | The road of freedom is the surest route to happiness [Aristippus elder, by Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: The surest road to happiness is not the path through rule nor through servitude, but through liberty. | |
| From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 2.1.9 | |
| A reaction: The great anarchist slogan. Personally I don't believe it, because I agree a little with Hobbes that authority is required to make cooperation flourish, and that is essential for full happiness. If I were a slave, I would agree with Aristippus. |
| 20865 | Happiness is the end and goal, achieved by living virtuously, in agreement, and according to nature [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that being happy is the goal for the sake of which everything else is done, for the sake of nothing else; and this consists in living according to virtue, in living in agreement, and (which is the same thing) in living according to nature. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.06e | |
| A reaction: The best summary I have found of the main stoic goal. Stoics are eudaimonists. The full stoic story must explain how virtue, agreement and nature fit together into a coherent whole. |
| 20840 | Stoics say pleasure is at most a byproduct of finding what is suitable for us [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that pleasure is, if anything, a byproduct which supervenes when nature itself, on its own, seeks out and acquires what is suitable to the animal's constitution. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.86 | |
| A reaction: It would be nice if pleasure were just an indicator that you are successfully living according to nature. Human refinement of alcohol and opium have rather undermined that view (but note 'on its own'). Note also the parenthetical 'if anything'. |
| 5705 | Nature only wants two things: freedom from pain, and pleasure [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Nature only clamours for two things, a body free from pain, a mind released from worry and fear for the enjoyment of pleasurable sensation. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.21) | |
| A reaction: I can't help agreeing with those (like Aristotle) who consider this a very demeaning view of human life. See Idea 99. Bentham agrees with Lucretius (Idea 3777). I think they are largely right, but not entirely. Other motives are possible than sensations. |
| 20852 | Rapture is a breakdown of virtue [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Rapture is a breakdown of virtue. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.114 | |
| A reaction: I take rapture to be judged as the highest good by many romantics. Could rapture be confined and ring-fenced by virtue? Does rapture include great art? |
| 3018 | People who object to extravagant pleasures just love money [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: When blamed for buying expensive food he asked "Would you have bought it for just three obols?" When the person said yes, he said,"Then it is not that I am fond of pleasure, but that you are fond of money". | |
| From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.7.4 |
| 1751 | Pleasure is the good, because we always seek it, it satisfies us, and its opposite is the most avoidable thing [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is the good because we desire it from childhood, when we have it we seek nothing further, and the most avoidable thing is its opposite, pain. | |
| From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.8 |
| 6895 | If humans are citizens of the world (not just a state) then virtue is all good human habits [Stoic school, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: If, as in Stoic and later systems, human beings are regarded as citizens of the world and not only of a city-state, general justice will include all the habits and dispositions of a good human being. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.289 | |
| A reaction: I like this a lot, because it addresses the key problem of virtue theory, the problem of 'the Nazi virtues'. The Nazis might be seen (by some) as 'good' Germans, but they were obviously appalling Europeans, and that is what matters. |
| 20848 | An appropriate action is one that can be defended, perhaps by its consistency. [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: An appropriate action, say the stoics, is that which, when done, admits of a reasonable defence, such as what is consistent in life, and this extends also to plants and animals. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.107 | |
| A reaction: I love [Zeno's] word 'appropriate' here, since that strikes me as greatly clarifying the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. In fact I love the whole of this idea. Appropriate actions can be defended. Cf T.Scanlon. Consistency is a good defence. |
| 20844 | Honour is just, courageous, orderly or knowledgeable. It is praiseworthy, or functions well [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Four forms of the honourable: just, courageous, orderly, knowledgeable. The honourable means what makes it possessor praiseworthy; or what is naturally suited for its function; or what adorns its possessor, since we say only the wise man is honourable. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.100 | |
| A reaction: Thus we honour successful judges, soldiers, administrators and scholars. Oh, and footballers. Paul Macartney said 'show me someone famous, and I'll show you someone who is good at their job. |
| 4012 | The Stoics rejected entirely the high value that had been placed on contemplation [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics broke with both Plato and Aristotle by rejecting altogether the value of contemplation. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §6.3 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This affects the status of philosophy, and rejects the aspiration of humans to become like gods. |
| 5073 | Stoics do not despise external goods, but subject them to reason, and not to desire [Taylor,R on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: Unlike the Cynics, the Stoics did not carry their indifference to conventional goods to outright scorn and rejection of them. They only insisted that such goods should not be the object of desire, since desire is something opposed to reason. | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: The Stoic view would appear to be derived from Aristotle, who only wants external goods insofar as they can support the life of virtue (as in needing money to be generous). Perhaps the Cynics made the Stoics a bit more puritanical than Aristotle. |
| 20862 | Crafts like music and letters are virtuous conditions, and they accord with virtue [Stoic school, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics call 'practices' the love of music, letters, horses, hunting and crafts. They are not knowledge, but virtuous conditions, and they say that only the wise man is a music lover and a lover of letters. Crafts lead to what accords with virtue. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 2.05b11 | |
| A reaction: I like the distinction between virtue and 'virtuous conditions'. It might correspond to the eighteenth century idea of good taste, or the later idea of having a liberal education. |
| 5072 | For Stoics, obligations are determined by social role [Taylor,R on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: In keeping with what was generally assumed in their culture, Stoics thought obligations are determined by role or function. | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: We still recognise our obligations as partly in what-we-are-paid-to-do, but that is a contractual obligation. We also accept obligations arising from a family role, such as 'parent'. We are merely no longer impressed by traditional aristocratic hierarchy. |
| 21396 | Man is distinguished by knowing conditional truths, because impressions are connected [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say man differs from irrational animals because of internal speech ...and in virtue of impressions created by inference and combination. Because of this man grasps 'signal', of the form 'If this, then that', which follows from the nature of man. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 4.3.1 | |
| A reaction: [In Sextus, Adv.Math 8.275-] This is unusual. The distinctive feature of humans is their ability to assert conditionals (because they see connections - or associations - among their impressions). Nice thought. |
| 1781 | Stoics favour a mixture of democracy, monarchy and aristocracy [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the best political constitution is a mixed one, combined of democracy, and kingly power, and aristocracy. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.Ze.66 |
| 21384 | The Stoics saw the whole world as a city [Stoic school, by Long] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics conceived of the world itself as a kind of city. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 1 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Not the same as a cosmopolitan acceptance of a multitude of varied cultures. The most remote and unusual culture is seen as a distant suburb of our culture. |
| 20859 | The best government blends democracy, monarchy and aristocracy [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the best form of government is a blend of democracy and monarchy and aristocracy. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.131 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like nineteenth century Britain, when democracy was more limited, and the aristocracy richer and more influential. Presumably they want rule by an elite, but with some democratic restraints. |
| 3561 | Stoics originated the concept of natural law, as agreed correct reasoning [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics are the originators of one of the most influential concepts in political philosophy, that of natural law. …It is simply correct moral reasoning, thought of as being prescriptive. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 13.3 |
| 1755 | Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Errors ought to meet with pardon, for a man does not err intentionally, but influenced by some external circumstances. We should not hate someone who has erred, but teach him better. | |
| From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.9 |
| 3046 | Stoics say a wise man will commit suicide if he has a good enough reason [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say that a wise man will very rationally take himself out of life, either for the sake of his country or of his friends, or if he suffers from bitter pain, mutilation or incurable disease. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.66 |
| 20858 | Suicide is reasonable, for one's country or friends, or because of very bad health [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The wise man will commit suicide, for a good reason, both on behalf of his fatherland and on behalf of his friends, and if he should be in very severe pain or is mutilated or has an incurable disease. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.130 | |
| A reaction: Being in a state of despair or depression doesn't seem to figure on the list. Suicide for friends, but not for family? |
| 3556 | Stoic 'nature' is deterministic, physical and teleological [Stoic school, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: 'The nature of things' matters for the Stoics because they hold strong theses about the way things are: they are determinists, physicalists, teleologists. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness Ch.5 |
| 5716 | Nature runs the universe by herself without the aid of gods [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Nature is free and uncontrolled by proud masters and runs the universe by herself without the aid of gods. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1094) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. This apparent personification of nature implies the application of laws to an essentially passive reality. See Idea 5442 and Nature|Laws of Nature|Essentialism for a different view. |
| 22743 | Unlike Epicurus, Stoics distinguish the Whole from the All, with the latter including the void [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The Stoic school say that the Whole is the Cosmos, whereas the All is the external void together with the Cosmos, so the Whole is limited but the All is unlimited. (Epicurus gives the two names indifferently to both). | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.332 | |
| A reaction: Epicurus needed the void as part of the Cosmos, into which the atoms can move. Presumably the Stoic void is infinite, but how far does the Stoic Cosmos extend? |
| 5704 | There can be no centre in infinity [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: There can be no centre in infinity. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.1069) | |
| A reaction: This is highly significant, because if we can establish that the universe is infinite (as Epicurus believes), it follows that the human race cannot be at the centre of it, as the Ptolemaic/medieval view proposed. |
| 5703 | The universe must be limitless, since there could be nothing outside to limit it [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The universe is not bounded in any direction. If it were, it would necessarily have a limit somewhere, but a thing cannot have a limit unless there is something outside to limit it. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.959) | |
| A reaction: This is a subtler argument than the mere enquiry about why you would have to stop at the end of the universe. It still seems a nice argument, though Einstein's curvature of space seems to have thwarted it. |
| 5693 | Everything is created and fed by nature from atoms, and they return to atoms in death [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate realities of heaven and the gods are the atoms, from which nature creates all things and increases and feeds them, and into which, when they perish, nature again resolves them. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.46) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right to me. Nothing in modern particle theory and string theory has refuted this claim. But what makes the atoms move, and what makes them combine in an orderly way? Is the orderliness of atoms made of atoms? Essences? |
| 5701 | If an object is infinitely subdivisible, it will be the same as the whole universe [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If there are no atoms, the smallest bodies will have infinite parts, since they can be endlessly halved. ..But then there will be no difference between the smallest thing and the whole universe, as they will equally have infinite parts. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.620) | |
| A reaction: Another argument which remains effective even now. There must surely (intuitively) be more divisions possible in a large object than in a small one? Unless of course there were many different sizes of infinity…. See Cantor. |
| 5708 | In downward motion, atoms occasionally swerve slightly for no reason [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: When atoms are travelling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.217) | |
| A reaction: Never a popular theory because it seems to breach the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Ideas 306 + 3646). This seems to be the beginning of a strong need for the concept of free will, and an underlying explanation. Most thinkers put mind outside nature. |
| 17004 | Nothing can break the binding laws of eternity [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Nothing has power to break the binding laws of eternity. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], 5.56) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be virtually the only remark from the ancient world suggesting that there are 'laws' of nature, so I'm guessing it is a transient metaphor, not a theory about nature. 'Even the gods must bow to necessity'. |
| 13296 | The cosmos has two elements - passive matter, and active cause (or reason) which shapes it [Stoic school, by Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say there are two elements in the cosmos, cause and matter. Matter lies inert and inactive, a substance of unlimited potential, but destined to remain idle if no one sets it in motion; it is cause (the same as reason) that fashions matter. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 065 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] It take this to be anti-essentialist, because the point of a scientific essence is to be the source of the activities and structures of the matter. Seneca must think matter lacks essence, in order to be moulded like this. Note 'unlimited'. |
| 5706 | Atoms move themselves [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Atoms move themselves. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.133) | |
| A reaction: Something has to move itself, I suppose, but then that could be psuché, giving us free will (see Idea 1424). Why does Epicurus need the 'swerve' if atoms are self-movers? See Idea 5708. |
| 5696 | If there were no space there could be no movement, or even creation [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: We see movement everywhere, but if there were no empty space, things would be denied the power of movement - or rather, they could not possibly have come into existence, embedded as they would have been in motionless matter. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.342) | |
| A reaction: This still seems a good argument, if reality is made of particles. People can move in a crowd until it becomes too dense. |
| 5700 | It is quicker to break things up than to assemble them [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Anything can be more speedily disintegrated than put together again. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.558) | |
| A reaction: Clearly the concept of entropy was around long before anyone tried to give a systematic or mathematical account of it. |
| 5698 | We can only sense time by means of movement, or its absence [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.465) | |
| A reaction: This seems a remarkably Einsteinian remark, though he is only talking of the epistemology of the matter, not the ontology. We are not far from the concept of space-time here. |
| 5715 | This earth is very unlikely to be the only one created [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: It is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1057) | |
| A reaction: I can only admire the science fiction imagination of this, which roughly agrees with the assessment of modern cosmologists. We think imagination was cramped in the ancient world, and now wanders free - but that is not so. |
| 20827 | The cosmos is regularly consumed and reorganised by the primary fire [Stoic school, by Aristocles] |
| Full Idea: At certain fated times the entire cosmos goes up in flames and then is organised again. And the primary fire is like a kind of seed, containing the rational principles and cause of all things and events, past, present and future. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Aristocles - works | |
| A reaction: [in Eusebius] I wonder why the stoics thought this? Is it just spring cleaning? So is each cycle different? Does that mean that the primary fire was different at each seminal event? What made it different? Or is it eternal recurrence? |
| 5694 | Nothing can be created by divine power out of nothing [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: In studying the workings of nature, our starting-point will be this principle: nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.152) | |
| A reaction: This claim seems to cry out for a bit of empiricist caution. What observation has convinced Lucretius that creation out of nothing is impossible? The early Christians switched to the view that divine creation is 'ex nihilo' - out of nothing. |
| 7815 | Early Stoics called the logos 'god', meaning not a being, but the principle of the universe [Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: Logos was also called 'god' or 'Zeus' by the early Stoics, but they did not think of this deity as a separate being, but as a principle of organization of things. As the soul is the principle of an individual life, so 'god' is the soul of the universe. | |
| From: Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]), quoted by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds not too far from Spinoza's pantheism. Interestingly, the Stoics were making God more impersonal, and it is Jesus who reverts to the much more popularly appealing personal image. |
| 5699 | If matter wasn't everlasting, everything would have disappeared by now [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If the matter in things had not been everlasting, everything by now would have gone back to nothing, and the things we see would be the product of rebirth out of nothing. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.544) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 1431, which is Aquinas's Third Way of proving God. Aquinas thinks there must be a necessary being outside of the system, but Lucretius thinks there must be some necessary existence within the system (as Hume had suggested). |
| 5707 | The universe can't have been created by gods, because it is too imperfect [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.180) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly a problem if God is 'supremely perfect', as Descartes proposed, because then the universe would also have to be supremely perfect. See Idea 2114 for a possible answer from Leibniz. Hume agrees with Epicurus about design. |
| 6038 | Stoics say god is matter, or an inseparable quality of it, or is the power within it [Stoic school, by Chalcidius] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say that god is that which matter is or that god is the inseparable quality of matter and that he moves through matter just as semen moves through the genital organs. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Chalcidius - Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus' 294 | |
| A reaction: This actually offers three different theories - of identity, of supervenience, and of omnipresence. It certainly seems close to pantheism. Such theories invite Ockham's Razor, which would shift talk to 'nature', and leave out 'god'. |
| 5710 | Gods are tranquil and aloof, and have no need of or interest in us [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: The nature of deity is to enjoy immortal existence in utter tranquillity, aloof and detached from our affairs. It is free from all pain and peril, strong in its own resources, exempt from any need of us, indifferent to our merits and immune from anger. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.652) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the seed of late seventeenth century deism - the idea of a Creator who is now absent, and ignores our prayers. At that time 'Epicurean' became a synonym for atheist, but Epicureans never quite reached that point. |
| 5731 | Why does Jupiter never hurl lightning from a blue sky? [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Why does Jupiter never hurl his thunderbolt upon the earth and let loose his thunder out of a sky that is wholly blue? | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], VI.400) | |
| A reaction: Nice question! It really doesn't take very much to see through superstition, and the fact that most people believed such things shows how staggeringly uncritical they were in their thinking, until philosophers appeared and taught them how to reason. |
| 20829 | Virtuous souls endure till the end, foolish souls for a short time, animal souls not at all [Stoic school, by Eusebius] |
| Full Idea: They say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. But the souls of the imprudent and irrational animals ae destroyed with their bodies. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Eusebius - Preparation for the Gospel 15.20.6-7 | |
| A reaction: We are half way to the Christian heaven as the reward for the good life. We just need to add hell…. |
| 6039 | Stoics say virtuous souls last till everything ends in fire, but foolish ones fade away [Stoic school, by ] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics say the soul of the virtuous man lasts until the breakdown of everything into fire, but that of fools only for a certain length of time. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by - fr 39 | |
| A reaction: This implies the existence of divine justice (such as King Lear hoped for). It is a shame that rational philosophers just invent doctrines because they would be rather nice. It brings out the logical positivist in me. |
| 5720 | Spirit is mortal [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Spirit is mortal. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.542) | |
| A reaction: This is asserted at an historical moment when immortality is beginning to grip everyone's imagination. |
| 5722 | For a separated spirit to remain sentient it would need sense organs attached to it [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If spirit is immortal and can remain sentient when divorced from our body, we must credit it with possession of five senses; but eyes or nostrils or hand or tongue or ears cannot be attached to a disembodied spirit. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.624) | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful argument against immortality. If you are going to see, you must interact with photons; to hear you must respond to compression waves; to smell you must react to certain molecules. Immortality without those would be a bit dull. |
| 5725 | An immortal mind couldn't work harmoniously with a mortal body [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: It is crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal and suppose that they can work in harmony and mutually interact. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.799) | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought, though not a terrible persuasive argument. A god would indeed be a bit restless if it were chained to a human being, but it would presumably knuckle down to the task if firmly instructed to do it by Zeus. |
| 5721 | The mind is very small smooth particles, which evaporate at death [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: Since the substance of the mind is extraordinarily mobile, it must consist of particles exceptionally small and smooth and round, ..so that, when the spirit has escaped from the body, the outside of the limbs appears intact and there is no loss of weight. | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.201) | |
| A reaction: Lucretius is wonderfully attentive to interesting evidence. He goes on to compare it to the evaporation of perfume. The fine-grained connections of the brain are not far off what he is proposing. |
| 5723 | If spirit is immortal and enters us at birth, why don't we remember a previous existence? [Lucretius] |
| Full Idea: If the spirit is by nature immortal and is slipped into the body at birth, why do we retain no memory of an earlier existence, no impress of antecedent events? | |
| From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.670) | |
| A reaction: Plato took the view that we do recall previous existence, as seen in our innate ideas. This problem forced the Christian church into the uncomfortable claim that God creates the soul at conception, but that it then goes on to immortality. |