Most historians agree that philosophy first saw the light of day in Greece, some time around the sixth century BC. So sudden and so astonishing was its manifestation, it has become known as ‘the Greek miracle’. But what was available, philosophically speaking, before the sixth century and in other civilisations? Why this sudden breakthrough?
I believe that two straightforward answers can be offered. The first is that, as far as we know, in all civilisations prior to and other than Greek antiquity, religion was a substitute for philosophy. An almost infinite variety of cults bears witness to this monopoly of meaning. It was in the protection of the gods, not in the free play of reason, that men traditionally sought their salvation. It also seems likely that the partially democratic nature of the political organisation of the city-state played some role in ‘rational’ investigation becoming emancipated from religious belief. Among the Greek elite, unprecedented freedom and autonomy of thought were favoured, and in their assemblies, the citizens acquired the habit of uninterrupted public debate, deliberation and argument.
Thus, in Athens, as early as the fourth century BC, a number of competing philosophical schools came to exist. Usually they were referred to by the name of the place where they first established themselves: Zeno of Citium (c. 334–262 BC), the founding father of the Stoic school, held forth beneath colonnades covered with frescoes (the word ‘stoicism’ derives from the Greek word stoa meaning ‘porch’).
The lessons dispensed by Zeno beneath his famous ‘painted porch’ were open and free to all-comers. They were so popular that, after his death, the teachings were continued and extended by his disciples. His first successor was Cleanthes of Assos (c. 331–230 BC) followed by Chrysippus of Soli (c. 280–208 BC). Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus are the three great names of what is called ‘Early Greek Stoicism’. Aside from a short poem, the Hymn to Zeus by Cleanthes, almost nothing survives of the numerous works written by the first Stoics. Our knowledge of their philosophy comes by indirect means, through later writers (notably Cicero). Stoicism experienced a second flourishing, in Greece, in the second century BC, and a third, much later, in Rome. The major works of this third Roman phase no longer come down by word of mouth from Athenian philosophers succeeding each other at the head of the school; rather they come from a member of the imperial Roman court, Seneca (c. 8 BC–AD 65), who was also a tutor and advisor to Nero; from Musonius Rufus (AD 25–80) who taught Stoicism at Rome and was persecuted by the same Nero; from Epictetus (c. AD 50–130), a freed slave whose oral teachings were faithfully transmitted to posterity by his disciples – notably by Arrian, author of two works which were to travel down the ages, the Discourses and the Enchiridion or Manual of Epictetus (the title was said to derive from the fact that the maxims of Epictetus should be at every moment ‘to hand’ for those wanting to learn how to live – ‘manual’ coming from the Latin manualis, ‘of or belonging to the hand’); and lastly, this body of Stoic teaching was disseminated by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself (AD 121–180).
I would now like to show you how a particular philosophy – in this case Stoicism – can address the challenge of human salvation quite differently to religions; how it can try to explain the need for us to conquer the fears born of our mortality, by employing the tools of reason alone. I shall pursue the three main lines of enquiry – theory, ethics and wisdom – outlined earlier. I shall also make plenty of room for quotations from the writers in question; while quotations can slow one down a little, they are essential to enable you to exercise your critical spirit. You need to get used to verifying for yourself whether what you are told is true or not, and for that, you need to read the original texts as early on as possible.
Theory, or the Contemplation of a Cosmic Order
To find one’s place in the world, to learn how to live and act, we must first obtain knowledge of the world in which we find ourselves. This is the first task of a philosophical ‘theory’.
In Greek, this activity calls itself theoria, and the origins of the word deserve our attention: to theion or ta theia orao means ‘I see (orao) the divine (theion)’ or ‘divine things’ (theia). And for the Stoics, the-oria is indeed a striving to contemplate that which is ‘divine’ in the reality surrounding us. In other words, the primary task of philosophy is to perceive what is intrinsic about the world: what is most real, most important and most meaningful. Now, in the tradition of Stoicism, the innermost essence of the world is harmony, order – both true and beautiful – which the Greeks referred to by the term kosmos.
If we want to form a simple idea of what was meant by kosmos, we must imagine the whole of the universe as if it were both ordered and animate. For the Stoics, the structure of the world – the cosmic order – is not merely magnificent, it is also comparable to a living being. The material world, the entire universe, fundamentally resembles a gigantic animal, of which each element – each organ – is conceived and adapted to the harmonious functioning of the whole. Each part, each member of this immense body, is perfectly in place and functions impeccably (although disasters do occur, they do not last for long, and order is soon restored) in the most literal sense: without fault, and in harmony with the other parts. And it is this that theoria helps us to unravel and understand.
In English, the term cosmos has resulted in, among other words, ‘cosmetic’. Originally, this science of the body beautiful related to justness of proportions, then to the art of make-up, which sets off that which is ‘well-made’ and, if necessary, conceals that which is less so. It is this order, or cosmos, this ordained structure of the universe in its entirety that the Greeks named ‘divine’ (theion), and not – as with the Jews and Christians – a Being apart from or external to the universe, existing prior to and responsible for the act of its creation.
It is this divinity, therefore (nothing to do with a personal Godhead), inextricably caught up with the natural order of things, that the Stoics invite us to contemplate (theorein), for example, by the study of sciences such as physics, astronomy or biology, which show the universe in its entirety to be ‘well-made’: from the regular movement of the planets down to the tiniest organisms. We can therefore say that the structure of the universe is not merely ‘divine’ and perfect of itself, but also ‘rational’, consonant with what the Greeks termed the Logos (from which we derive ‘logic’ and ‘logical’), which exactly describes this admirable order of things. Which is why our human reason is capable of understanding and fathoming reality, through the exercise of theoria, as a biologist comes to comprehend the function of the organs of a living creature he dissects.
For the Stoics, opening one’s eyes to the world was akin to the biologist examining the body of a mouse or a rabbit to find that everything therein is perfectly ‘well-made’: the eye admirably adapted for ‘seeing well’, the heart and the arteries for pumping blood through the entire body to keep life going; the stomach for digesting food, the lungs for oxygenating the muscles, and so on. All of which, in the eyes of the Stoic, is both ‘logical’ and ‘divine’. Why divine? Not because a personal God is responsible for these marvels, but because these marvels are ready-made. Nor are we humans in any sense the inventors of this reality. On the contrary, we merely discover it.
It is here that Cicero, one of our principal sources for understanding the thought of the early Stoics, intervenes, in his On the Nature of the Gods. He scorns those thinkers, notably Epicurus, who think the world is not a cosmos, an order, but on the contrary a chaos. To which Cicero retorts:
Let Epicurus mock as much as he likes … It remains no less true that nothing is more perfect than this world, which is an animate being, endowed with awareness, intelligence and reason.
This little excerpt