The Stoic theory of categories

The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics

Taught only by reality can reality be changed. Bertolt Brecht, The Measures Taken I. Introduction: Metaphor and Exemplum Metaphor and exemplum are, to use a metaphor, two sides of the same coin in the prose of Seneca, philosopher and politician. In action, these exempla look like this: singula vicere jam multi, ignem Mucius, crucem Regulus, venenum Socrates, arilium Rutilius, mortem ferro adactam Cato: et nos vincamus aliquid (Many have conquered individual things a long time now--Mucius conquered fire, Regulus torture, Socrates poison, Rutilius exile, and Cato death at the point of the sword: let us also conquer something, Ep. 98.12). A series of examples illustrates a proposition and culminates in a pragmatic or executive injunction to do (vincamus). (1) What is the result of such a complex of proposition, illustration, and injunction? In Epistle 6, the first letter of the Moral Epistles to deal with exempla, Seneca answers this question: "I feel, Lucilius, that I am not only improved [emendari] but transformed [transfigurari]." (2) Why? A proposition: "Long is the road through precepts, but fast and effective through exempla" (longum iter est praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla, Ep. 6.5). So it is that Seneca both enacts and explains the force and function of exemplum--enacts, writing "let us also conquer something" (et nos vincamus aliquid); explains, comparing precept to exemplum in order to isolate the latter's efficacy. While it is generally recognized that Seneca uses exempla as a means of illustration or representation and of effecting change (efficax), even transformation (transfigurari), (3) it is little recognized that Seneca's metaphors function similarly. (4) Moreover, few scholars have noted that Seneca actually explains the similarity of metaphor and exemplum himself. At the beginning of Ep. 38, Seneca provides a practical inventory of speech genres, explaining language through metaphor and expressing a conception of it similar to his conception of exemplum; he does this with reference to its efficacy (the first block quotation below) and by likening it to something else (the second): plurimum proficit sermo, quia minutatim inrepit animo: disputationes praeparatae et effusae audiente populo plus habent strepitus, minus familiaritatis ... philosophia bonum consilium est ... aliquando uten-dum est et illis, ut ita dicam, contionibus ... ubi vero non hoc agendum est, ut velit discere, sed ut discat, ad haec submissiora verba veniendum est. facilius intrant et haerent; nec enim multis opus est sed efficacibus. (Ep. 38.1-2) Conversation helps the most because it steals in the soul bit by bit: disquisitions prepared and developed on the listening crowd after much noise, but less intimacy. Philosophy is good advice ... Sometimes one must make use of those, so to speak, public lectures ... But when it isn't a matter of making one want to learn but to actually learn, one must resort to this lower register of language. It gets in easier and sticks; nor, indeed, is there a need for many words, but for words that work [efficacibus]. The stylist conducts a survey of language as it functions in various genres of discourse (sermo, disputatio, contio). As with exemplum in Ep. 6, efficacy is also the aim of the various functions here, as eicacibus in Ep. 38.1 answers eicax in Ep. 6.5. Seneca further explains the way in which this particular speech situation (haec submissiora verba) achieves the efficacy that he earlier associated with exemplum; he does so through that figure of likeness or metaphor called simile: (5) seminis modo [verbal spargenda sunt, quod quamvis sit exiguum, cum occupavit idoneum locum, vires suas explicat et ex minimo in maxi-mos auctus diffunditur. idem facit ratio. (Ep. 32.2) [Words] are scattered in the manner of seed, which, however scant it is, unfurls its capacities when it has taken hold of a suitable place and spreads from the littlest to the greatest dimensions. …

"You Must Change Your Life": Theory and Practice, Metaphor and Exemplum, in Seneca's Prose

Abstract With the use of a particular metaphor, which appears at the end of the Cratylus and is taken up with perfect symmetry at the beginning of the Theaetetus, Plato certainly wanted to indicate the succession of Cratylus–Theaetetus as an order for reading the two dialogues, which Trasillus faithfully reproduced in structuring the second tetralogy of Platonic dialogues. The claim of the theory of ideas, with which the Cratylus ends, must therefore be considered the background in which to place not only the analysis of the name carried out in the Cratylus, but also the discussion and criticism of the epistemological theories examined and refuted in the Theaetetus. The transition from the discussion of the name to that of the logos is another important theoretical element that connects the two dialogues. Another one is the theory of knowledge, already precisely elaborated in the Cratylus, and taken up and deepened in the Theaetetus. Finally, the theme of false and error is a third theoretical element common to the two dialogues, which, starting from Euthydemus, finds its solution in the Sophist.

Il Teeteto e il suo rapporto con il Cratilo

Abstract The present paper studies a family of Stoic proofs of the intelligence of the cosmos, i. e. of the thesis that the cosmos is intelligent in the strong sense that it is, as a whole, something that thinks. This family, ‘F2’, goes back to a proof, ‘XP’, found in Philebus 29a9–30 a8 and Xenophon Mem. 1.4.8. F2 infers the intelligence of the cosmos, as XP does, from (i) the general idea that our intelligence proceeds from the cosmos, which is the ultimate cause of why we are intelligent, and (ii) the further claim that, since this is so, the cosmos itself must be intelligent. They differ from one another, however, in how they account for (i). In this paper, I present a new reason for why the accounts are different, that complements those given by David Sedley in a recent and important study of Stoic cosmology (Sedley 2007). Based on the analogy between intelligence and the four elements, XP puts forward the idea that the intelligence currently present in us is a portion of cosmic intelligence that has separated from it at some point in the past, and that has travelled from the outside cosmos to us. In contrast, the theory used by F2 to explain the generation of human intelligence is grounded not in the notions of separation and locomotion, but in that of transmission of a state. As I argue in some detail, the separation-locomotion model and the transmission model are not only different from each other, but also logically independent from one another: in general terms, neither entails the other. This transmission model used by the Stoics in a proof of the intelligence of the cosmos, I submit, is a major innovation in ancient cosmological and metaphysical thinking.

Why is the Cosmos Intelligent? (1)

Any thoroughgoing physicalist is challenged to give an account of immaterial entities such as thoughts and mathematical objects. The Stoics, who eagerly affirmed that only bodies exist, crafted an elegant solution to this challenge: not everything that is Something ( ti ) exists . Rather, some things have a derivative mode of reality they call subsistence : these entities are non-existent in that they are not themselves solid bodies, but they are nonetheless Something physical because they depend on bodies for their subsistence. My dissertation uncovers the unifying principles of Stoic subsistence, and shows how they can account for thoughts and other immaterial entities without running afoul of their physicalist commitments. While all commentators agree that the Stoics posited Something as the highest category of being, they have failed to find a coherent physicalist account of Stoic ontology. For instance, (1) a canonical set of incorporeals (time, place, void, and what is sayable ( lekton )) is well attested, but there is little agreement as to what these entities have in common as incorporeals, which makes the category look like an ad hoc collection of left-over entities. (2) It is also contentious whether the Stoics recognized other non-existent Somethings besides the incorporeals, namely a third category of Somethings that are neither corporeal nor incorporeal . (3) Finally, many commentators take the Stoics to countenance an additional class of Not-Somethings between Something and nothing at all, rendering Something incoherent as highest and most comprehensive genus. I argue first that the Stoics developed a criterion for subsistence that applies to all immaterial Somethings, admitting only objective particulars. Further, I show that the Stoics recognized not just one but two kinds of subsistence: one that defines the incorporeals as a class, and the other what is neither corporeal nor incorporeal . The incorporeals can all be seen as body-less : entities that depend on body without themselves being bodies, much as the flow of traffic depends on cars without being identical to the cars. They are immaterial but still physical; in modern parlance, one might say the Stoics take incorporeals to supervene on bodies. How such a thesis can apply to the Sayables, or lekta (roughly, the meanings of our words) is an especially thorny issue (for the Stoics as for contemporary philosophers of mind). If lekta subsist according to rational impressions ( logikai phantasiai ), themselves mental and corporeal, it is not clear how these novel semantic entities get the objectivity they need to do their hefty dialectical duties. How can mind-dependent entities be the propositional content shared in communication, have logical properties and play the role of facts? I argue that the Stoics had on offer a certain doctrine of meaning as use that can address these challenges without running afoul of the principle of body-less subsistence that unifies the incorporeals as a category. Stoic incorporeals are thus not a mere ad hoc collection of left over entities (as impasse (1) above suggested), but a principled segment of reality. What is neither corporeal nor incorporeal, which includes mathematical entities and creatures of fiction, is also a principled ontological category. Adducing broad textual evidence, I show that the Stoics recognized a mode of subsistence unique to products of thought, and that they categorized centaurs and points, for example, accordingly. Since the thoughts, texts and illustrations that give rise to such entities are themselves corporeal, the account remains true to their physicalist commitments. This second mode of subsistence, previously unnoticed by commentators, underwrites a comprehensive tripartite ontology, settling problems (2) and (3) above. The result is an elegant, modern-minded ontology with principled responses to problems that continue to engage physicalists today.

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The Stoic theory of categories

Citations

The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics

"You Must Change Your Life": Theory and Practice, Metaphor and Exemplum, in Seneca's Prose

Il Teeteto e il suo rapporto con il Cratilo

Why is the Cosmos Intelligent? (1)

The Coherence of Stoic Ontology

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