Zeno and the Stoics

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Steps of the Ποικίλη Στοά, north-west corner of the Agora, the central square in Athens. In the foreground is what remains of the foundation of the Hellenistic Gate (which allowed access to the Agora from the north).
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Early Stoicism:

Zeno of Citium, late 4th to middle 3rd century BCE.
Founded the school in about 300 BCE.

Cleanthes, late 4th to late 3rd century BCE.
Succeeded Zeno as head of the school.

Chrysippus, early 3rd to late 3rd century BCE
Third and most influential head of the Stoic school.

Middle Stoicism:

Panaetius of Rhodes, late 2nd to early 2nd century BCE.
Succeeded Antipater of Tarsus in about 129 BCE to become the seventh head of the Stoic school in Athens.

Posidonius of Apameia, 2nd to middle 1st century BCE.

Late Stoicism:

Seneca, late 1st century BCE to middle 1st century CE.

Epictetus, middle 1st to late 2nd century CE.

Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 CE. Roman Emperor, 161-180. The Stoics take their name from their meeting place in the Ποικίλη Στοά ("Painted Colonnade"). A στοά ("stoa") is a roofed colonnade. This one was known for its murals. Aeschines (a 4th century BCE Attic orator) says that the Greek victory in 490 BCE over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon was pictured there (Against Ctesiphon III.186).

Almost none of the writing of the early Stoics has survived. ⊕

By the middle of the 3rd century CE, because Stoicism no longer attracted practitioners, no one had a motive to preserve the texts. The Platonists, on whom we depend for most of the texts that have survived, saw no need to preserve them since they did not think these texts helped them understand the truth they thought Plato came the closest to seeing.

This means that our knowledge of early Stoicism depends mostly on what others wrote.

The Soul in the Adult is Reason

Whereas Plato and Aristotle thought Socrates was wrong to think the soul is reason, the Stoics thought he was right. They thought that although a human being begins life with a soul without reason, this soul is transformed into reason when he becomes an adult.

So, like Socrates, the Stoics are intellectualists about desire.

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After Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE, Cicero (106-43 BCE) tried but was unsuccessful in opposing Antony. Cicero himself was murdered not long after, but in the last years of his life, he turned to writing philosophy. The dictatorship of Caesar had forced him out of public life, and his personal life was also in disarray. (In 46 BCE, he divorced his wife (with whom he had a marriage of convenience) and married a younger woman. This marriage ended in less than a year, in part because of his grief over the death in childbirth of his daughter from his first marriage.) Unable to serve the public through politics, Cicero decided he would serve them by setting out Greek philosophy in his native Latin. His writing is a primary source for much of the thought of the Hellenistic philosophers. "Whereas the ancients claimed the passions are natural and have nothing to do with reason, ... Zeno would not agree with that. He thought these commotions were equally voluntary and arose from a judgment which was a matter of mere opinion" (Cicero, Academica I.39).

The Stoic Theory of Impressions

The Stoics think that animals and human beings have "impressions" (φαντασίαι).

"An impression is an imprint on the soul" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.45).

The impression is a representation of what impressed itself, and it is easy enough to see in a general way what the Stoics mean. When someone says "I have the impression that the color of this webpage is white," we have no do not ordinarily find this hard to understand.

Impressions are not restricted to the sensory impressions. In adults, they arise in thinking too. We can have impressions about the future or about what is true in mathematics.

Impressions in adults are such that the adult sees and thinks about things as things, a shade of white as a shade of white, a human being as a human being. Animals and children do not because they lack reason. Their impressions somehow represent in terms of images.

Unlike animals and children, adults can "assent" (συγκατάθεσις) to their impressions. Assent to results in belief in the propositional content of the impression.

For the Stoics, "cognitive" and "impulsive" impressions play a special role in how human beings represent the world and act in terms of these impressions on their souls.

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"[Diocles says that] the Stoics like to give their account of impression and sense perception first, given that the criterion by which the truth of things is known is is generically an impression, and also because the theory of assent and that of cognition and thought, which precedes all the rest, cannot be stated apart from impression" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII. 49).

Diocles of Magnesia wrote a work entitled Survey of the Philosophers that Diogenes Laertius excerpts in his Lives of the Philosophers. Apart from these excerpts, nothing is known about Diocles or his work.

"Among the impressions, some are rational and others nonrational. Those of rational creatures are rational; those of nonrational creatures are nonrational" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.51).

"The Stoics say that an animal’s first impulse is to preserve itself, because nature from the start makes the animal attached to itself.... For pleasure, if it is really felt, they declare to be a by-product, which never comes until nature by itself has sought and found the means suitable to the animal's existence; it is an aftermath comparable to the condition of animals thriving and plants in full bloom. And nature, they say, regulates the life of plants too, in their case without impulse and sensation, just as also certain processes go on of a vegetative kind in us. But when in animals impulse has been superadded, whereby they are enabled to go in quest of their proper sustenance, for them the rule of nature is to follow the direction of impulse. But when reason by way of a more perfect leadership has been bestowed on the beings we call rational, for them life according to reason rightly becomes the life according to nature. For reason intervenes as the craftsman of impulse" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.85).

Some Impressions are Impulsive

The Stoics appeal to "impulsive impressions" (φαντασίαι ὁρμητικαί) in their explanation of what goes on in the soul when someone undertakes some action.

Some of the impressions in animals and children impel them and put them in motion. This happens, the Stoics think, because nature is provident. Nature constructs animals and children so that they naturally maintain themselves. Nature arranges things so when animals and children have certain impressions, they have certain "impulses" (ὁρμαί). The impressions thus cause animals and children to behave in ways conducive to their maintenance and survival. So, when they have the impression they are hungry, they naturally move to eat.

The Stoics think that when a child becomes an adult, although behavior in the adult still occurs in terms of impulsive impressions, assent becomes necessary for these impressions to issue in impulses. Assent is a function of reason. Animals and children cannot assent because they do not have reason, but they do not not need to assent. In them, nature in its providence arranges things so that impulsive impressions automatically issue in impulses.

The Stoics think that impulsive impressions in the adult are impulsive against the background of beliefs about what is good and what is bad. In this the Stoics follow Socrates. They think that these beliefs are all and only the sources of motivation in adults.

An example makes it easier to understand this Stoic view about what goes on in the soul.

Suppose that someone has the impression that the coming plunge in the overnight temperature will kill his tomato plants. If he believes that their death is bad, then this impression that the cold will kill them is impulsive for him. If he assents to this impulsive impression, then he has the impulse to take steps to prevent his tomato plants from dying because of the cold.

Some Impressions are Cognitive

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"The criterion of truth they say is the cognitive impression" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII. 54).


"When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding-part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon. On this he inscribes each of his conceptions. This begins with the senses. For by perceiving something, e.g., white, they have a memory of it when it has departed. And when many memories of a similar kind have occurred, we then say we have experience. For the plurality of similar impressions is experience. Some conceptions arise naturally in the aforesaid ways and undesignatedly, others through our own instruction and attention. The later are called conceptions only, the former are called preconceptions as well" (Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita 4.11; LS 39 E). The Stoics appeal to "cognitive impressions" (φαντασίαι καταληπτικαί) in their theory of knowledge and their explanation of the life in which we are happy.

How the Stoics understand cognitive impressions is not straightforward, but we can make some progress by first considering how they understand the development of reason.

⊕ The Stoics think that human beings naturally develop reason as they become adults. Children initially have the same kind of impressions as animals, but they eventually develop "preconceptions" of colors, shapes, and other simple perceptual features of reality. They think that more complex preconceptions arise naturally from these simple ones.

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"Reason ... is said to be completed from our preconceptions during our first seven years" (Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita 4.11).

"And reason, when it is full grown and perfected, is rightly called wisdom" (Cicero, On the laws I.7). The Stoics take reason to consist in these preconceptions and the basic truths about the world they embody. These truths form the basis for the recognition of consequence and incompatibility and thus for the ability to make inferences and hence to reason.

This is the view of reason we saw in Plato and Aristotle. Because, for example, it is part of the preconception of a human being that there is a relation of consequence between being human and being mortal, the adult can conclude that the human beings he sees are mortal.

Cognition, Opinion, and Knowledge

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"And if the impression had been grasped in such a way that it couldn’t be dislodged by reason, Zeno called it knowledge" (Cicero, Academica I.41).

"Knowledge they say is steadfast cognition or a state which in reception of impressions cannot be shaken by argument. Without the study of dialectic, they say, the wise man cannot guard himself in argument so as never to fall" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.47).

"[A cognitive impression] being plainly evident and striking, lays hold of us, almost by the very hair, as they say, and drags us off to assent, needing nothing else to help it to be thus impressive or to suggest its superiority over all others. For this reason, too, every man, when he is anxious to apprehend any object exactly, appears of himself to pursue after an impression of this kind—as, for instance, in the case of visible things, when he receives a dim impression of the object. He intensifies his gaze and draws close to the object of sight so as not to go wholly astray, and rubs his eyes and in general uses every means until he can receive a clear and striking impression of the thing under inspection, as though he considered that the credibility of the cognition depended upon that" (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians I.257).

"[A]ccording to the Stoics the cognitive impression is judged to be cognitive by the fact that it proceeds from an existing object and in such a way as to bear the impress and stamp of that existing object; and the existing object is approved as existent because of its exciting a cognitive impression" (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists 183).

"An impression is an imprint on the soul: the name having been appropriately borrowed from the imprint made by the seal upon the wax. Of impressions, some are cognitive and some are not cognitive. The former, which the Stoics say is the criterion of reality, is defined as that which proceeds from a real object, agrees with that object itself, and has been imprinted seal-fashion and stamped upon the mind: the latter, or non-cognitive, that which does not proceed from any real object, or, if it does, fails to agree with the reality itself, not being clear or distinct" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.1.45). An adult has "knowledge" (ἐπιστήμη) if he restricts his assent to cognitive impressions.

Assent to a cognitive impression issues in a κατάληψις. This word means "seizing" or "grasp." Because Cicero uses cognitio for his translation of κατάληψις in the Stoic theory of knowledge. (Academica II.17), "cognition" is a traditional English translation for this grasp.

All cognitions are true because the propositional contents of all cognitive impressions are true, but not all cognitions are knowledge. Knowledge, the Stoics think, is assent no rational means can convince one to withdraw. They took this to be what Socrates showed.

Only the wise have knowledge, according to the Stoics. Everyone else has "opinion" (δόξα).

Cicero describes how Zeno explains assent, cognition, and knowledge.

"Zeno would spread out the fingers of one hand and display its open palm, saying 'An impression is like this.' Next he clenched his fingers a little and said, 'Assent is like this.' Then, pressing his fingers quite together, he made a fist, and said that this was a grasp and gave it the name κατάληψις. Then he brought his left hand against his right fist and gripped it tightly, and said that knowledge was like this and possessed by none except the wise man-but who is a wise man or ever has been even the Stoics do not usually say" (Academica II.145).

Cognitive Impressions are Clear and Distinct

⊕ For adults, when their minds are working normally and the conditions are appropriate, nature arranges things so that the impressions they receive are cognitive impressions.

So, for example, in situations in which we determine by looking whether something is true, sufficient light is necessary for to make the determination correctly. When our minds are working normally and there is sufficient light, the impression "bear[s] the impress and stamp" of reality in a certain way. It has a certain "clarity" and "distinctness," and nature has arranged things so that the propositional content of a impression with this character is true.

The Stoics thought that every object has a set of features that separates it from all other objects. A cognitive impression represents these features. This is the "distinctness" of the impression.

The "clarity" of an impression is the persuasivness with which it represents its object. In the case of cognitive impressions, it causes a human being to assent to the impression.

The Stoic Theory of the Good Life

⊕ The Stoics think that the good life is a matter of having knowledge of what is good and what is bad, but what they think is good and is bad is not what we commonly think.

The Stoics understand the good in terms of the rationality in nature.

They think that nature is completely and perfectly rational. They do not believe in a divine craftsman, as Plato did, but they think that down to the smallest detail nature unfolds in a perfectly rational way. The Stoics think that this rationality in nature is good and the good life for a human being is the life in which we know that this is the good and act accordingly.

The Stoics think it is possible to know what is good and what is bad but that virtually no one has this knowledge. A preconception of the good is part of the reason human beings acquire, and the Stoics think that we all misapply this knowledge. When we acquire reason, we all form false beliefs about what is good and what is bad. We come to believe what human beings ordinarily believe. We come to believe that health is good, sickness is bad, and so on.

These false beliefs make us "fools."

⊕ "Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of Man) to designate as the end 'life in agreement with nature' (or 'living agreeably to nature'), which is the same as a life according to virtue, virtue being the goal towards which nature guides us. ... And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the destiny dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.87).

"If a thing is considered a portent because it is seldom seen, then a wise man is a portent; for, as I think, it oftener happens that a mule brings forth a colt than that nature produces a wise man" (Cicero, On Divination II.28.61).

"According to [the Stoics], ... of men the greatest number are bad, or rather there are one or two whom they speak of as having become good men as in a fable, a sort of incredible creature as it were and contrary to nature and rarer than the Ethiopian phoenix; and the others are all wicked and are so to an equal extent, so that there is no difference between one and another, and all who are not wise are alike mad" (Alexander of Aprodisias, De fato XXVIII).

(For the Ethiopian phoenix, see Herodotus, Histories II.73.1 and Pliny the Elder, The Natural History X.2.) The "sage," in contrast to the fool, does not have these false beliefs. He knows that the good does not apply to the world insofar as he eats when he is hungry, regains his health when he is sick, and generally gets the ends he pursues. So, because he does not attribute a value to these things they do not possess, he is not distressed if they are not part of his life.

The sage is not omniscient, but he knows that nature would not be rational if human beings generally did not eat when they were hungry, recover when they were ill, and so on. He knows, then, that he should to try to regain his health if he falls ill, but his impulse is not excessive because he does not attribute a value to his health it does not possess. Nor is not upset if he does not recover. He realizes that recovering in his circumstances is not part of the rationality in nature and hence is not an outcome he has reason to pursue.

The Stoics think the sage experiences a satisfaction the rest of us fools do not. We enslave ourselves with false beliefs about what is good and what is bad. Our lives as a result are filled with worry about whether we will get what we think is good and avoid what we think is bad, and we are distressed and unhappy when we fail to achieve or avoid these things.

When the fool assents to an impulsive impression, because he has false beliefs about what is good and what is bad, his assent issues in an "excessive impulse" (ὁρμὴ πλεονάζουσα). If, for example, you you get the impression that you are not going to recover from your illness, you find this impression extremely distressing if you wrongly believe that your death is bad. When you assent, your impulse is excessive. You struggle to avoid to recover and thus avoid your death, and you are filled with worry as you see you are not succeeding.

The sage is free from this worry and instead experiences complete satisfaction with his life.

The Stoics and their Predecessors

Perseus Digital Library:
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon:
ἀπάθεια, apatheia, noun, (ἀ "not" +‎ πάθος, noun, páthos, "passion"), "without passion,"

"[The ruler in the just city] makes the least lament and bears it most mildly when any such misfortune overtakes him" (Republic III.387e). The Platonic ideal is μετριοπάθεια, not ἀπάθεια.

δαιμόνιον, daimonion, noun, "divine"
ἐναργής , enargēs, adjective, "visible, palpable"
ἔννοια, ennoia, noun, "notion, conception"
εὐπάθεια, eupatheia, noun, "comfort, ease"
καταλαμβάνω, katalambanō, verb, "seize with the mind, comprehend"
καταληπτός, katalēptos, adjective, "capable of being seized"
κατάληψις, katalēpsis, noun, "seizing"

κατάληψις = κατά + λῆψις. κατά is a preposition (which, in κατάληψις, functions as an intensifying prefix). The noun λῆψις ("taking hold of, or seizing") comes from the verb λαμβάνω ("to take hold of, grasp, or seize").

The parts of perceptio and comprehensio correspond to the parts of κατάληψις. per- and com- function as intensifying prefixes deriving from prepositions. –ceptio and –prehensio denote the activity expressed by the verbs capio and prehendo/prendo. In this way, Cicero introduces perceptio and comprehensio as calques of κατάληψις. ⊕ The English 'calque' comes the French calque ("tracing").

ὁρμή, hormē, noun, "impulse," (Latin, impetus)
πρόληψις, prolēpsis, noun, "preconception"
συγκατάθεσις, synkatathesis, noun, "assent"

Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary:
cognitio, noun, "cognition,"
comprehendo, verb, "to take, catch hold of, seize, grasp, apprehend, comprehend,"
comprehensibilis (also -dibilis), adjective, "that can be seized or laid hold of, comprehendible,"

Cicero uses comprehendibilis for καταληπτός. "'...[Zeno] termed 'graspable' (comprendibile)—will you endure these coinages?' 'Indeed we will,' said Atticus, 'for how else could you express καταληπτόν'" (Academica I.41).

comprehensio, noun, "a seizing or laying hold of with the hands"
impetus, noun, "impulse"
perceptio, noun, "a taking, receiving, a gathering in, collecting"
percipio, verb, "to take possession of, to seize, occupy"
perturbatio, noun, "confusion, disorder, disturbance"
ratio, noun, "a reckoning, account, calculation, computation"
scientia, noun, "knowledge"
visum, noun, "appearance, impression, presentation"

"[Zeno] made some new pronouncements about sensation itself, which he held to be a combination of a sort of impact offered from outside (which he called φαντασίαν and we may call a presentation (visum)..." (Cicero, Academica I.40).

voluntarius, adjective, "willing"

Arizona State University Library. Loeb Classical Library:
Cicero, On Ends, On the Nature of the Gods. Academics
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers VII.1 Zeno


"The Stoics revert to Socrates' extreme intellectualism. They deny an irrational part of the soul. The soul is a mind or reason. Its contents are impressions or thoughts, to which the mind gives assent or prefers to give assent. In giving assent to an impression, we espouse a belief. Desires are just beliefs of a certain kind, the product of our assent to a so-called impulsive impression" (Michael Frede, "The Philosopher," 10. Greek thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, 3-16).

"[T]he distinctive mark of cognitive impressions is a causal feature in that it makes the mind react in a distinctive way and it is in this sense that the mind can discriminate cognitive and noncognitive impressions. ... But this is not to say that we cannot be aware of the fact that an impression is cognitive or noncognitive, that we cannot learn to tell whether an impression is clear and distinct or obscure and confused. In fact, the Stoic view seems to be that this is a matter of practice and that in principle one can get so good at it that one will never take a noncognitive impression to be cognitive" (Michael Frede, "Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions," 168, 169. Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 201-222).

"Galen [192-216 CE] in various places attributes to reason as a basic feature the ability to recognise consequence (ἀκολουθία) and incompatibility (μάχη). These notions play a prominent role in Stoic thought. And it is tempting to think that the idea that it is a characteristic of reason to recognise consequence an incompatibility is of Stoic origin. If we make this assumption, the following account suggests itself. To have the notion, say, of a human being is to see that a relation of consequence or implication obtains between being a human being and being mortal; it also is to see that a relation of incompatibility obtains between being a human being and being devoid of reason. Thus the ability to recognise consequence and incompatibility is part of what it is to have natural concepts or, for that matter, any kind of concepts. But by having concepts, and thus being able to recognise consequence and incompatibility, we also are in a position to reason to make inferences" (Michael Frede "The Stoic Conception of Reason," 55. Hellenistic Philosophy. Volume II, 50-63).

"[T]he Stoic sage does not gain his equanimity by shedding human concerns, but by coming to realise what these concerns are meant to be, and hence what they ought to be, namely the means by which nature maintains its natural, rational order. And we have to realize that in this order our concerns play a very, very subordinate role, and are easily overridden by more important considerations, though we may find it difficult to accept this. But it does not follow from the fact that they play a very subordinate role, that they play no role whatsoever. Nature is provident down to the smallest detail. Hence it must be a caricature of the wise man to think that he has become insensitive to human concerns and only thus manages to achieve his equanimity. Things do move him, but not in such a way as to disturb his balanced judgment and make him attribute an importance to them which they do not have" (Michael Frede, "The Stoic Affections of the Soul," 110. The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, 93-110).

"[E]ven the Stoic sage is not omniscient. He disposes of a general body of knowledge in virtue of which he has a general understanding of the world. But this knowledge does not put him into a position to know what he is supposed to do in a concrete situation. It does not even allow him to know all the facts which are relevant to a decision in a particular situation. He, for instance, does not know whether the ship he considers embarking will reach its destination. The Stoic emphasis on intention, as opposed to the outcome or the consequences of an action, in part is due to the assumption that the outcome, as opposed to the intention, is a matter of fate and hence not only not, or at least not completely, under our control, but also, as a rule, unknown to us. Therefore, even the perfect rationality of the sage is a rationality which relies on experience and conjecture, and involves following what is reasonable or probable. It is crucially a perfect rationality under partial ignorance" (Michael Frede, "Introduction," 16-17. Rationality in Greek Thought, 1-28).

"God constructs them in such a way that they can recognize for themselves what they need to do to maintain themselves (as long as they themselves are needed) and hence will maintain themselves of their own choice and understanding. He constructs them in such a way that they develop reason, and with reason an understanding of the good, and thus come to be motivated to do of their own accord what needs to be done. So, instead of constructing them in such a way that they are made to do what they need to do to maintain themselves, he constructs them in such a way that they do this of their own initiative and indeed can do it wisely, showing precisely the kind of wisdom, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity on a small scale, namely, the scale of their life, which God displays on a large scale. In this way, if they are wise, human beings genuinely contribute to the optimal order of the world, and they find their fulfillment in this. This is what the good life for the Stoics amounts to" (Michael Frede, A Free Will. Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought, 73-74).

"Human life is a matter of banal things, getting up, eating, doing one's work, getting married, having children, looking after one's family and one's household, pursuing the concerns of one's community, being in practice concerned with the well-being of other human beings. This is what life is about. If there is something non-banal about it, it is the wisdom with which these banal things are done, the understanding and the spirit from which they are done" (Michael Frede, "Euphrates of Tyre," 6. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, No. 68, Aristotle After, 1997, 1-11).