The End and Happiness (Section 63 The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. 1)
The advantage of studying the Hellenistic philosophies is that they don’t merely relegate themselves to academic pursuits, they are more about ways of living along with academic pursuits. Stoicism and Epicureanism are not just ways of determining Being, or determining whether the cat is on the mat, but then do not matter at all in the individual’s daily life. Stoicism, the third of the major Greek schools: the others being Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and Epicurus’ Agora; was literally created by word of mouth. The story is that Zeno taught underneath a porched a column (the stoa), attracted followers and became an established school.
Stoicism eschews devotion to the gods of the Hellenic/Roman world although it does not go as far as the disciples of Epicurus in advocating atheism. For the Stoics the divine is nature, for nature epitomizes virtue and “living in accordance with virtue is equivalent to living in accordance with experience of what happens by nature…for our own natures are part of the nature of the whole.[1]” Because we are part of nature it is living along with the rules and ways that nature has prescribed that gives us a guide to the virtuous living.
It is reason, the gift from the divine that is our tool in discovering the virtuous way. For reason is what is best in man, it is our peculiar ability which separates us from the plants and animals of the world, it makes us superior but aside from reason all of our virtues are shared with them.[2] In this we still share in Aristotle’s teleology that humans have a directed goal in life, that they have a purpose which is to pursue reason, to perfect it, and the perfected reason is man’s virtue.[3]
We know this because the animals and the plants in the world, i.e. the non-rational beings do not pay attention or take care of the world. The events of experience merely pass them by, and they give no thought to them. Because humans do take care of the world of experience, and operate beyond their mere instincts. The question then becomes of where this adherence to reason leads us.
Reason leads us to toward the good life, towards wisdom and being happy. The wise do nothing they regret, against their will, everything rightfully, honorably, and consistently. They anticipate nothing as if it were bound to happen referring to their own judgment which they stand by.[4] They forgo material happiness as those can be lost. Nothing the wise man prizes is anything that can be lost to him, he must not just be largely unafraid of the travails of life but completely unafraid.[5] This wisdom leads him toward community, which is, again revealing the influence of the Lyceum, the good that humans are directed toward.
The Stoic creed leads us to accept the whole of nature as being divine, by this we can infer that life itself is divine. By living in this we are merely a smaller part of a larger mechanism, in which all virtue is possessed.
[1] Diogenes Laertius 7.87-9
[2] Seneca Letters, 76.5-10
[3]ibid
[4] Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.81-2
[5] Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.40-1
