The Sunday Stoic

T he ancient Stoics believed that everything that exists is composed of matter and only bodies exist. Bodies can cause change in other bodies. Four things were said not to exist as independent entities, but to subsist (they are depended on things that exist), these four incorporeal things are: Time Place Void Sayables (the meaning of something said) The Stoics were monists, they believed that the universe was a cohesive singular whole. However things that exist could be active or passive. They could cause change or have change inflected upon them. These things were blended together creating our physical universe. Pneuma (breath) was an active organizing principle of the Cosmos that existed in all things. The amount of Tension that Pneuma exerted on a particular object could give it various properties including life, intelligence and rational judgement. To learn about this topic in greater detail, I highly recommend Stoicism by Dr. John Sellars. The Monad a symbol used by ancie...

  In the last post we discussed the Stoic view of the universe. The ancients believed that the Cosmos (all that is) is contained within an infinite void. This Cosmos exists until the great conflagration, when the it is consumed by fire and begins again. God is the source of and the soul of the Cosmos. The Cosmos therefore is a living, intelligent being and is the source of all other intelligence. The other gods of the pantheon are extensions of this singular intelligence or a means of personifying various attributes of nature. Each of our human souls are fragments of this universal God and from this source our human intelligence arises. 147: The deity, say they, is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect or intelligent in happiness, admitting nothing evil [65] , taking providential care of the world and all that therein is, but he is not of human shape. He is, however, the artificer of the universe and, as it were, the father of all, both in general and in that particular ...

  The philosophical system of Stoicism is divided into three parts. Physics Logic Ethics As modern Stoics typically spend most of our time studying Ethics. But if we want to get the most out of reading the ancient texts we should at least have a rudimentary understanding of their views of physics and logic. I will spend a little time over the next few posts examining Stoic physics. There are two sources that I recommend if you wish to explore these topics further. One is The Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. The other is Stoicism by John Sellers. I am not an expert on the subject but will share some basics, I highly encourage you to read into these texts if you want to know more! If you want to dig deeper here is a paper by Vanessa de Harven. If we start at the grandest scale possible in the Stoic universe we will see The All (Pan). The All consists of an infinite void and the Cosmos/World (Holon) within the void. The Cosmos is considered to be a living bei...