It was this same idea, that the world possesses a soul of sorts, like a living being, which would later be termed ‘animism’ (Latin anima, meaning soul ). This ‘cosmology’(or conception of the cosmos) was also described as ‘hylozoism’, literally meaning that matter (hyle) is analogous to what is animal (zoon): that it is alive, in other words. The same doctrine would also be described by the term ‘pantheism’ (the doctrine that nature and the physical universe are constituents of the essence of God; from Greek pan, ‘all’, and theos, meaning ‘God’): that all is God, since it is the totality of the universe that is divine, rather than there being a God beyond the world, creating it by remote control, so to speak. If I dwell on this vocabulary it is not out of a fondness for philosophical jargon (which often impresses more than it enlightens), but rather to enable you to approach these great philosophical texts for yourself, without grinding to a halt whenever you encounter these supposedly ‘technical’ terms.
From the point of view of Stoic theoria, then – and ignoring those temporary manifestations known as catastrophes – the cosmos is essentially harmonious. And, as we shall see, this would have important consequences for the ‘practical’ sphere (moral, legal and political). For if nature as a whole is harmonious, then it can serve as a model for human conduct, and the order of things must be just and good, as Marcus Aurelius insists in his Meditations:
‘All that comes to pass comes to pass with justice.’ You will find this to be so if you watch carefully. I do not mean only in accordance with the ordered nature of events, but in accordance with justice and as it were by someone who assigns to each thing its value. (IV.10)
What Marcus Aurelius suggests amounts to the idea that nature – when it functions normally and aside from the occasional accidents and catastrophes that occur – renders justice finally to each of us. It supplies to each of us our essential needs as individuals: a body which enables us to move about the world, an intelligence which permits us to adapt to the world, and natural resources which enable us to survive in the world. So that, in this great cosmic sharing out of goods, each receives his due.
This theory of justice ushers in what served as a first principle of all Roman law: ‘to render to each what is his due’ and to assign each to his proper place (which assumes, of course, that for each person and thing there is such a thing) – what the Greeks thought of as a ‘natural place’ in the cosmos, and that this cosmos was itself just and good.
You can see how, in this perspective, one of the ultimate aims of a human life is to find its rightful place within the cosmic order. For the majority of Greek thinkers – with the exception of the Epicureans whom we shall discuss later – it was through the pursuit of this quest, or, better, its accomplishment, that we attain happiness and the good life. From a similar perspective, the theoria itself implicitly possesses an aesthetic dimension, since the harmony of the universe which it reveals to us becomes for humans a model of beauty. Of course, just as there are natural catastrophes which seem to invalidate the idea of a good and just cosmos – although we are told that these are never more than temporary aberrations – so too there exist within nature things that are at first sight ugly, or even hideous. In their case, we must learn how to go beyond first impressions, the Stoics maintain, rather than remain content with appearances. Marcus Aurelius makes the point forcefully in his Meditations:
The lion’s wrinkled brow, the foam flowing from the boar’s mouth, and many other phenomena that are far from beautiful if we look at them in isolation, do neverthe less because they follow from Nature’s processes lend those a further ornament and fascination. And so, if a man has a feeling for, and a deeper insight into the processes of the Universe, there is hardly any of these but will somehow appear to present itself pleasantly to him … Even an old man or old woman will be seen to possess a certain perfection, a bloom, in the eyes of the sage, who will look upon the charms of his own boy slaves with sober eyes. (III, 2)
This is the same idea already expressed by one of the greatest Greek philosophers and model for the Stoics, Aristotle, when he denounced those who judge the world to be evil, ugly or disjointed: because they are looking only at a detail, without an adequate intelligence of the whole. If ordinary people think, in effect, that the world is imperfect, it is because, according to Aristotle, they commit the error ‘of extending to the universe as a whole observations which bear only upon physical phenomena, and then only upon a small proportion of these. In fact, the physical world that surrounds us is the only one dominated by generation and corruption, but this world does not, one might say, constitute even a small part of the whole: so that it would be fairer to absolve the physical world in favour of the celestial world, than to condemn the latter on account of the former.’ Naturally, if we restrict ourselves to examining our little corner of the cosmos, we shall not perceive the beauty of the whole, whereas the philosopher who contemplates, for example, the admirably regular movement of the planets will be able to raise himself to a higher plane through an understanding of the perfection of the whole, of which we are but an infinitesimal fragment.
Thus, the divine nature of the world is both immanent and transcendent. Again, I have used these philosophical terms because they will be useful to us later. Something that is immanent can be found nowhere else other than in this world. We say it is transcendent when the contrary applies. In this sense, the Christian God is transcendent in relation to the world, whereas the divine according to the Stoics, which is not to be located in some ‘beyond’ – being none other than the harmonious structure, cosmic or cosmetic, of the world as it is – is wholly immanent. Which does not prevent Stoic divinity from being defined equally as ‘transcendent’: not in relation to the world, of course, but in relation to man, given that it is radically superior and exterior to him. Men may discover it – with amazement – but in no sense do they invent it or produce it.
Chrysippus, the student of Zeno who succeeded Cleanthes as the third head of the Stoic school notes: ‘Celestial things and those whose order is unchanging cannot be made by men.’ These words are reported by Cicero, who adds in his commentary on the thought of the early Stoics:
Wherefore the universe must be wise, and nature which holds all things in its embrace must excel in the perfection of reason [Logos]; and therefore the universe must be a God, and all the force of the universe must be held together by nature, which is divine. (On the Nature of the Gods, II, 11, 29–30)
We can therefore say of the divine, according to the Stoics, that it represents ‘transcendence within immanence’; we can grasp the sense in which theoria is the contemplation of ‘divine things’ which, for all that they do not exist elsewhere than in the dimension of the real, are nonetheless entirely foreign to human activity.
I would like you to note again a difficult idea, to which we shall return in more detail: the theoria of the Stoics reveals that which is most perfect and most ‘real’ – most ‘divine’, in the Greek sense – in the universe. In effect, what is most real, most essential, in their account of the cosmos, is its ordonnance, its harmony – and not, for example, the fact that at certain moments it has its defects, such as monsters or natural disasters. In this respect, theoria, which shows us all of this and gives us the means to understand it, is at once an ‘ontology’ (a doctrine which defines the innermost structure or ‘essence’ of being), and also a theory of knowledge (the study of the intellectual means by which we arrive at this understanding of the world).
What is worth trying to understand, here, is that philosophical theoria cannot be reduced to a specific science such as biology, astronomy, physics or chemistry. For, although it has constant recourse to these sciences, it is neither experimental, nor limited to a particular branch or object of study. For example, it is not interested solely in what is alive (like biology), or in the heavenly bodies (like astronomy), nor is