Guthrie : Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

Page 26

Zeno and Chrysippus made notable contributions to the particular disciplines of epistemology, logic and philology. For the first time, theories of the nature and use of language were being discussed by men who used the Greek language and were steeped in the tradition of Greek thought, but who were yet bilingual, with not Greek but another as their mother-tongue. They adopted the contemporary division of philosophy into logic, ethic and physic, but these elements were united, and the system integrated, by the universality of the logos. This vital cosmic force, or deity, has a twofold function as the principle both of knowledge and of causation. One is reminded sometimes of Plato's Idea of the Good, which he compared to the sun as that on which depend not only the existence and life of the natural world but also our perception of it through sight. The logos has also obvious affinities with the hylozoistic principle of several of the Presocratic cosmologists besides Heraclitus. They were fond of saying that their single principle, at once the material of the cosmos and the efficient cause of its evolution, both 'knew all things' and 'steered all things'. Yet we may say of Zeno, as of Plato, that however much he owed to his predecessors, his synthesis is infused with that new spirit which entitles it to be called in its own right one of the great philosophical systems of the world.

To trace the later developments of Stoicism is not the function of this preliminary survey. It received fresh impetus and a new direction in the second century B.C. at the hands of Panaetius of Rhodes, who was largely responsible for its introduction at Rome and its adaptation to Roman ideals and habits of thought. Regarding Socrates as the founder of all recent philosophy, he looked to Plato and Aristotle no less than to Zeno. Fitted by nature to be a man of the world, the friend of Scipio and of the historian Polybius, he emphasized the necessity of bringing Stoic principles to bear on practical affairs. His aristocratic leanings led him to abandon the earlier theory of the natural equality of all men for one of natural differences between them, and his relations with Roman society were in fact bound up with his conviction that the ideal state, which he saw as a mean between autocracy and democracy giving to each section of the population its due rights and duties but no more, came nearest to practical realization in the Roman constitution.

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W.K.C. Guthrie
A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

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W.K.C. Guthrie A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy

Learned Freeware

W.K.C. Guthrie
A Synopsis of Greek Philosophy