The Stoics and Virtue: Introduction

THE STOICS ARE THE NEXT group of philosophical thought that might profitably be looked at in terms of the development of virtue theory.  The Stoics looked not towards Plato or Aristotle for inspiration, but rather turned to Socrates, from whom, like their philosophical adversaries the Skeptics and the Epicureans, they sought answers to the question of "how should we then live?" as a title to a famous book once put it.

Skeptics took their inspiration from the Socratic aporia, the puzzlement, the "the only thing I know is that I do not know" tradition of Socrates.  This deconstruction by Socrates, of course, was a sort of intellectual unraveling of conventional knowledge so as to be put in a place where real thinking could begin.  However, what Socrates intended as a new beginning, the Skeptics apparently saw as an end.  All knowledge, the Skeptics held, is unknowable.  We are condemned not to know.  Translated into the moral life, this leads to a vicious relativism.

The Epicureans also sought inspiration from Socrates.  The Epicureans here focused on the elitism which was implicit in the Socratic manner.  It was not the many, the hoi polloi, that could be counted to provide us enlightenment as to how we should live.  The rabble is not the source of the good.  Rather, the Epicureans "found in Socrates' preference for the views of 'the few' inspiration for preferring the cultured pleasure brought by wisdom over the baser pleasures of 'the many.'"

When Christian thinkers came on the scene, they found both the Skeptic and the Epicurean schools unpalatable and not consistent or synthesizeable with the truth of the Gospel and the moral teachings of Jesus.  At root, a Christian cannot be a skeptic, for he believes in the sure footing of faith and reason.  Nor can a Christian be an epicurean or hedonist, for he would never adopt a pleasure principle as his moral pole star.

It was the last Socratically-inspired school--the Stoics--which Christians thought sufficiently aligned with their  teachings to make it an attractive complement to the teachings of Christ.

Stoicism, of course, takes its name from "painted porch," stoa poikile, the place alongside the marketplace of Athens where Socrates had spent so much time as philosophical gadfly to the consternation of the Athenian leaders who eventually found the need to condemn him to death for impiety and supposed corruption of youth.  When Plato and Aristotle founded their own schools (the Academy and the Lyceum, respectively), they abandoned to Stoa.  By re-appropriating the original teaching locus of Socrates, the Stoic philosophers manifest an intent to go back to the sources: a Socratic ressourcement.

Zeno of Citium, founder of the Stoic School

Unfortunately, much of the material of the early Stoic founders and thinkers has been lost to us.  Zeno of Citium (ca. 334-262 B.C.) has been generally honored as the founder of the Stoic school.  He authored a new Republic as a short of challenge-piece to the Platonic original.  Chrysyppus (ca. 280-226 B.C.), Zeno's disciple, carried this tradition on, authoring his own critique of Plato's Republic in his On the Republic.

One of the teachings of the Stoics that the Christians ultimately found attractive as analogous to the moral teachings of Jesus to which they were heir was the notion of Socrates's personal impetus--his daimon--a sort of spirit of universal reason that inspired Socrates, which warned him, which urged him on.  This Socratic daimon was identified by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes (died 232 B.C.) with the universal reason (logos) which was further tied to Zeus (God), the author of nature.  One can see in Cleanthes' interpretation of the Socratic daimon a compatibility with the Christian notion of a God who creates a world through the Word (Logos) and which therefore displays in some manner in that world a truth about how we should then live.  Here, a notion of created order and the notion of an inspiration that acts in accord with that created order (reason, conscience, Holy Spirit).

It was the Stoic doctrine of the Logos that drew the early Christian thinkers toward Stoicism as a possible philosophical source with which to buttress the teachings they had received from Jesus and his apostles.  After all, it would have seemed as if the Apostle John had already given them the directive.  In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.  It was this Logos that became flesh, and had dwelt in the world, full of grace and truth.

What was the relationship between the Logos of the Stoic and the Logos-made-Flesh of the Gospel of John?

To answer that question, of course, we have to understand what the Stoics thought about the Logos, and we shall spend the next few postings on just this issue.

Cleanthes' Hymn: A Stoic Knows the Eternal Law

The Hymn of Cleanthes

(E. H. Blakeney, trans.)

Most Glorious of Immortals, might God (Zeus),
Invoked by many a name, O Sovran King
Of Universal nature, piloting
This world in harmony with law (themis), – all hail!
Thee it is meet that mortals should invoke,
For we Thine offspring are, and sole of all
Created things that live and move on earth
Receive from Thee the image of the Word.
Therefore I praise Thee, and shall hymn Thy power
Unceasingly. Thee the wide world obeys,
As onward ever in its course it rolls
Where’er Thou guidest, and rejoices still
Beneath Thy sway: so strong an instrument
Is held by Thine unconquerable hands –
That two-edged thunderbolt of living fire
Which never fails. Beneath its dreadful blow
All Nature reels; therewith Thou dost direct
The Universal Reason which, commixt
With all the greater and lesser lights,
Moves thro’ the Universe. How great Thou art,
The King supreme for ever and for aye!
No work is done apart from Thee, O God,
Or in the world or in the heavens above
Or in the deep, save only what is wrought
By sinners in their folly. Nay, ’tis Thine
To make the uneven smooth and bring to birth
Order from chaos. By Thy power, great Spirit,
The foul itself grows fair; all things are blent
Together, good with evil; things that strive
Will find in Thee a friend; that so may reign
One Law, one Reason, everlastingly
O Thou most bounteous God who sittest throned
In clouds, the Lord of Lightning, save mankind
From baleful ignorance; yea scatter it,
O Father, from the soul, and make men wise
With Thine own wisdom, for by wisdom Thou
Dost govern the whole world in righteousness;
That so, being honoured, we may Thee requite
With honour, chanting without pause Thy deeds,
As is most meet; for greater guerdon ne’er
Befalls or man or god than evermore
Duly to praise the Universal Law.

Both the translation and the original Greek are taken from E. H. Blakeney, trans., The Hymn of Cleanthes (New York: MacMillan Company, 1921), 8-9. (The Greek text is found in pages 6 and 7 of the same book.)



Notes:
Cleanthes was a Stoic philosopher born at Assos in peninsular Troas, in what is now the northwestern part of Anatolia, Turkey, around 331 B.C. After a long life, he died around 232 B.C. He succeeded Zeno, who was the founder of Stoicism, and presided over the Stoa (the "Porch") for thirty years until he was succeeded himself by Chrysippus. Many years later, the Christian Lactantius was to note that Zeno had come upon many of the doctrines shared by Christians. "Zeno rerum naturae dispositorem atque opificem universitatis λόγον praedicat." ("Zeno preached that the Logos (Reason) established the order of things and framed the universe.") Divine Institutes, iv.9. Many have commented on the Stoic influence found in St. Paul's epistles and even in the Gospel of St. John (the "Word" or "Logos"). The Stoics, in particular in regard to their notion of the Natural Law, had a great influence on Roman law.

There are only scatterings of Cleanthes's teachings left, and no systematic restatement can be made from such disjecta membra, or scattered members. Like most Greeks that gravitated towards monotheism, his concept of God was pantheistic, and God was seen as in the world, sort of as its soul, the natura naturans and natura naturata sharing the same substance. To the Stoic, God was not also wholly "Other" or transcendent. And yet we see in this pagan philosopher, who had no benefit of the Jew and his Revelation, a remarkable sensitivity and grasp, however dark, of an Eternal Law, a "Deep Magic," underlying the entirety of creation, including man. Man had to hearken to that Law, and conformity to it was virtue, while disobedience to it vice.

The poem has been hailed as "the noblest expression of heathen devotion which Greek literature has preserved to us." (Blakesney, 6 (referencing Lightfoot)).