Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps #2)

by Peter S. Adamson

Even though the greatest early Stoic was certainly Chrysippus, not Zeno, and even though it was Chrysippus who systematized the teachings that all Stoics would defend for centuries, it was Zeno who was admired as the school founder.

Antisthenes was not just a Socratic, he was a proto-Cynic. He wore his poverty like a badge of honor, claiming it was true wealth. He said it is better to be insane than to feel pleasure. The rejection of wealth and pleasure is a hallmark of Cynicism.

This became a symbol for the Cynic movement: “defacing the currency,” that is, attacking social convention. It helps here that in Greek, the word for coins, nomisma, sounds like the word for custom, nomos. Rather amazingly, by the way, archeologists have in fact found defaced

What was it about his fellow Greeks that provoked Diogenes’ disdain? One answer is that they failed to embrace poverty, and the total freedom and self-sufficiency that paradoxically came with it. If exile made him a philosopher, it was because exile gave him the priceless gift of poverty. Diogenes Laertius quotes Theophrastus, saying that Diogenes the Cynic embraced his lifestyle upon observing a mouse, and realizing that this humble creature makes do with nothing (6.22). A similar story has him already living as a Cynic, owning little more than his pouch, stick, and a cup for drinking. Seeing a little boy drinking from cupped hands, he threw away the cup, so as not to be outdone in frugality by a child

And here’s one I really like: he was seen begging from statues, and explained that he was just practicing being rejected (6.49). This being

So it seems the Cynics weren’t against pleasure as such; they were against pleasures that are not provided by nature. If pleasure can be had with no effort, then go right ahead, just as dogs do. But don’t make your happiness dependent on pleasures that are more difficult to acquire.

This brings us back to the Cynics’ quest to avoid disturbance. By refusing to desire anything that nature cannot provide, the Cynics made themselves effectively invulnerable, or as close as any human can be to that ideal. Thus Diogenes proclaimed that philosophy prepares you for any turn of fortune and makes you rich despite possessing no money.

one of these was a library, containing roll upon roll of papyrus. These books were charred into solid blocks and left buried under meters of ash and rock, where they would be discovered almost two thousand years later. In the eighteenth century archeologists dug out the papyrus rolls and began to peel them apart. Now they can be read with advanced scanners, without damaging them physically. The most sensational find among these Herculaneum papyri was a collection of books on Epicureanism. It seems to have been assembled by an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus. So, thanks to Vesuvius, we have the charred remains of many works by Philodemus, and even more excitingly, the otherwise lost work On Nature by Epicurus himself.

starting with the Sorites. 1 The title comes from the Greek word soros, which means “heap.” It’s best understood as a kind of dialectical game, where I ask you whether one grain of sand constitutes a heap. Well, obviously not. How about two grains? Presumably you’ll still say that this is not a heap of sand. But I keep going: three grains? Four? How about five?…until you admit that we now have a heap. As soon as you do that, I say, “you’re telling me adding one grain of sand turns it into a heap?” It’s absurd to suppose that adding or subtracting only one grain would make a decisive difference. Yet at some point, a heap must come into existence. So where do you draw the line? A variation, which touches on a sensitive spot for me personally, asks you to imagine plucking hairs off a man’s head one at a time until he becomes bald. It’s absurd to suppose that one hair could make the difference, yet he surely becomes bald at some point. It’s a cute little

Man is condemned to be free.” So said Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existen-tialist. 1 And perhaps only a French existentialist could think we are condemned to be free. It’s the kind of thing that would occur to you as you sit in a Parisian café on a rainy afternoon, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and feeling the enormity of existence settle upon your shoulders, as you gaze in ineffable, inexplicable horror at the glass of beer sitting on the table in front of you. But didn’t Sartre have a point? If we are truly free—free even in chains,

realizes that his life until now does not determine his next action, and this radical freedom strikes him as being like death. It’s the sort of thought that can make you sick to your stomach.

We can start with the basic observation that Pyrrho is telling us to avoid opinion or belief. The word he uses, doxa, is the same word that Plato and Aristotle use to describe the state of mind in which one takes something to be true yet lacks knowledge in the proper sense.

we’ve seen the sentiment before. Think, for instance, of Protagoras in Plato’s Theaetetus, saying that if the wind feels cold for you and warm for me, then there is no truth of the matter about whether the wind is warm or cold in itself.

Thus a key theme of Hellenistic philosophy had a deep resonance for Cicero: can philosophy offer us consolation in the face of suffering?

Relatively wealthy societies have always been the fertile soil in which philosophy has flourished. It’s no accident that Pre-Socratic philosophy first emerged in the affluent trading cities of Ionia, or that Athens became the center for philosophical activity only after becoming the center of a Mediterranean empire.

There is another reason why the monotheistic religions were able to absorb this strand of the ancient philosophical tradition: they had a lot of practice. Christians and Jews had been appropriating ideas from Greek philosophy since the time of Jesus of Nazareth. A somewhat older contemporary of Jesus, and like him a Jew, was Philo of Alexandria, who should be credited as the first representative of these faiths to engage seriously with Greek philosophy. Among Christians, the earliest Church Fathers were likewise deeply influenced by Platonism and Stoicism. Indeed, even St Paul seems to have been influenced by the philosophical ideas that penetrated the world-view of antiquity. For this reason, the rest of this book will need to trace two parallel, and intersecting, stories within the history of philosophy: not only the resurgence and triumph of Plato and Aristotle among pagan thinkers, but also the appropriation of the pagan intellectual heritage among Jews and Christians.

effectively erecting a big sign saying: “This way to happiness: no external goods or pleasure required; all copies of the Nicomachean Ethics to be left outside.”

He said to a friend sitting with him, “Try to bring back the god in us to the god in the universe” (Life of Plotinus 2). 1 As if that wasn’t good enough, a snake appeared and wriggled out through a hole in the wall just as Plotinus shuffled off his mortal coil. The

Evils are thus the holes in the Swiss cheese of the universe. They are not things in their own right that the divine causes have brought into being. Rather, they are precisely cases where the divine causes have not brought something into being, or rather, have brought less into being than we might have hoped.

This is, I would say, a breathtakingly clever and original solution to the metaphysical problem of evil. It was recognized as such by many subsequent philosophers, notably St Augustine

Even worse, it would be an actual infinity that is getting bigger all the time: the world has already existed for an infinite number of years, and each January that infinite number grows by one.

Dionysius’ theory of angelic hierarchies is represented on the Cathedral of Chartres, and his writings, suffused with images about light, even had an impact on the Gothic use of stained glass. Speaking of hierarchies, that word is another sign of Dionysian influence. He seems to have invented the Greek noun hierarchia, from which we get our word “hierarchy.”

Something else Nemesius has in common with the ascetics is the immense historical reach of his writings. His On the Nature of Man was translated into Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, and Latin. Collections of sayings about the desert mothers and fathers found their way into all these languages and more. The monastic culture that transmitted the literature of asceticism also became a crucial conduit for mainstream philosophy.

Boethius got some help that has never been offered to me. While in captivity he was visited by Lady Philosophy herself. His dialogue with her is recorded in the Consolation of Philosophy, not only his greatest work but also a work with far-reaching influence on subsequent philosophy and literature.