|
2 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SCHOOLS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stoicism, a school of thought that
flourished in Greek and Roman antiquity, was one of the loftiest and most
sublime philosophies in the record of Western civilization. In urging
participation in the affairs of man, Stoics have always believed that the goal
of all inquiry is to provide man with a mode of conduct characterized by
tranquillity of mind and certainty of moral worth. |
|
|
|
|
|
For the early Stoic philosopher, as for
all the post-Aristotelian schools, knowledge and its pursuit are no longer held
to be ends in themselves. The Hellenistic Age
was a time of transition, and the Stoic philosopher was perhaps its most
influential spokesman. A new culture was in the making. The heritage of an
earlier period, with Athens as its intellectual leader, was to continue, but to
undergo many changes. If, as with Socrates, to know is to know oneself, rationality
as the sole means by which something outside of the self might be achieved may
be said to be the hallmark of Stoic belief. As a Hellenistic philosophy,
Stoicism presented an ars vitae, a way of accommodation for people to whom the human
condition no longer appeared as the mirror of a universal, calm, and ordered
existence. Reason alone could reveal the
constancy of cosmic order and the originative source of unyielding value; thus,
reason became the true model for human existence. To the Stoic, virtue is an
inherent feature of the world, no less inexorable in relation to man than are
the laws of nature. |
|
|
The Stoics believed that perception
is the basis of true knowledge. In logic, their comprehensive presentation of
the topic is derived from perception, yielding not only the judgment that
knowledge is possible but also that certain
knowledge is possible, on the analogy of the incorrigibility of perceptual
experience. To them, the world is composed of material things, with some few
exceptions (e.g., meaning), and the irreducible element in all things is right
reason, which pervades the world as divine fire. Things, such as material, or
corporeal, bodies, are governed by this reason or fate, in which virtue is
inherent. The world in its awesome entirety is so ruled as to exhibit a grandeur
of orderly arrangement that can only serve as a standard for mankind in the
regulation and ordering of his life. Thus, the goal of man is to live according
to nature, in agreement with the world design. Stoic moral theory is also based
on the view that the world, as one great city, is a unity. Man, as a world
citizen, has an obligation and loyalty to all things in that city. He must play
an active role in world affairs, remembering that the world exemplifies virtue
and right action. Thus, moral worth, duty, and justice are singularly Stoic
emphases, together with a certain sternness of mind. For the moral man neither
is merciful nor shows pity, because each suggests a deviation from duty and from
the fated necessity that rules the world. Nonetheless--with its loftiness of
spirit and its emphasis on man's essential worth--the themes of universal
brotherhood and the benevolence of divine nature make Stoicism one of the most
appealing of philosophies. (see also epistemology, materialism,
nature, philosophy of) |
|
|
Its chief competitors in antiquity were:
(1) Epicureanism, with its doctrine of a life of
withdrawal in contemplation and escape from worldly affairs and its belief that
pleasure, as the absence of pain, is the goal of man; (2) Skepticism,
which rejected certain knowledge in favour of local beliefs and customs, in the
expectation that these guides would provide man with the quietude and serenity
that the dogmatic philosopher (e.g., the
Stoic) could not hope to achieve; and (3) Christianity,
with its hope of personal salvation provided by an appeal to faith as an
immanent aid to human understanding and by the beneficent intervention of a
merciful God. |
|
|
Along with its rivals, Stoicism enabled
the individual to better order his own life and to avoid the excesses of human
nature that promote disquietude and anxiety. It was easily the most influential
of the schools from the time of its founding through the first two centuries AD,
and it continued to have a marked effect on later thought. During the late Roman
and medieval periods, elements of Stoic moral theory were known and used in the
formulation of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theories of man and nature, of the
state and society, and of law and sanctions--e.g., in the works of Marcus Cicero, Roman statesman and orator; in
Lactantius, often called the "Christian Cicero"; and in A.M.S.
Boethius, a scholar transitional to the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, Stoic
political and moral theory became more popular to theorists of natural law and
political authority and of educational reform--e.g., in Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist and statesman, and in Philipp
Melanchthon, a major Reformation scholar. More recently, Stoicism has become
popular again for its insistence on the value of the individual and the place of
value in a world of strife and uncertainty--e.g., in Existentialism and in Neo-orthodox Protestant theology.
Stoicism also plays an important role in reassessments of the history of logic--e.g.,
in Jan Lukasiewicz, a Polish logician, and in William and Martha
Kneale, mid-20th-century British logicians. |
|
|
Western Philosophical
Schools and Doctrines |
|
|
|
|
|
With the death of Aristotle (322 BC) and
that of Alexander the Great (323 BC), the greatness of the life and thought of
the Greek city-state (polis) ended. With Athens no longer the centre of worldly
attraction, its claim to urbanity and cultural prominence passed on to other
cities--to Rome, to Alexandria, and to Pergamum. The Greek polis gave way to
larger political units; local rule was replaced by that of distant governors.
The earlier distinction between Greek and barbarian was destroyed; provincial
and tribal loyalties were broken apart, first by Alexander and then by Roman
legions. The loss of freedom by subject peoples further encouraged a
deterioration of the concept of the freeman and resulted in the rendering of
obligation and service to a ruler whose moral force held little meaning. The
earlier intimacy of order, cosmic and civic, was now replaced by social and
political disorder; and traditional mores gave way to uncertain and transient
values. |
|
|
Stoicism had its beginnings in a
changing world, in which earlier codes of conduct and ways of understanding
proved no longer suitable. But it was also influenced by tenets of the older
schools. The earliest Greek philosophers, the Milesians, had called attention to
cosmic order and the beauty of nature. Later, the monist Parmenides of Elea
stressed the power of reason and thought, whereas Heracleitus of Ephesus,
precursor of the philosophy of becoming, had alluded to the constancy of change
and the omnipresence of divine fire, which illumined all things. A deeper
understanding of man himself came with Socrates, symbol of the philosophic man,
who personified sophia and sapientia
(Greek and Latin: "wisdom"). Of the several schools of philosophy
stemming from Socrates, the Cynic
and Megarian schools were influential in the
early development of Stoic doctrine: the Cynics for their emphasis on the simple
life, unadorned and free of emotional involvement; and the Megarians for their
study of dialectic, logical form, and paradoxes. |
|
|
Stoicism takes its name from the place
where its founder, Zeno of Citium (Cyprus),
customarily lectured--the Stoa Poikile (Painted
Colonnade). Zeno, who flourished in the early 3rd century BC, showed in his own
doctrines the influence of earlier Greek attitudes, particularly those mentioned
above. He was apparently well versed in Platonic
thought, for he had studied at Plato's Academy both with Xenocrates of Chalcedon
and with Polemon of Athens, successive heads of the Academy. Zeno was
responsible for the division of philosophy into three parts: logic,
physics, and ethics.
He also established the central Stoic doctrines in each part, so that later
Stoics were to expand rather than to change radically the views of the founder.
With some exceptions (in the field of logic), Zeno thus provided the following
themes as the essential framework of Stoic philosophy: logic as an instrument
and not as an end in itself; human happiness as a product of life according to
nature; physical theory as providing the means by which right actions are to be
determined; perception as the basis of certain knowledge; the wise man as the
model of human excellence; Platonic Ideas--or
the abstract Forms that things of the same genus share--as being unreal; true
knowledge as always accompanied by assent; the fundamental substance
of all existing things as being a divine fire, the universal principles of which
are (1) passive (matter) and (2) active (reason inherent in matter); belief in a
world conflagration and renewal; belief in the corporeality of all things;
belief in the fated causality that necessarily binds all things;
cosmopolitanism, or cultural outlook transcending narrower loyalties; and man's
obligation, or duty, to choose only those acts that are in accord with nature,
all other acts being a matter of indifference. |
|
|
Cleanthes
of Assos, who succeeded Zeno as head of the school, is best known for his Hymn
to Zeus, which movingly describes Stoic reverence for the cosmic order and
the power of universal reason and law. The third head of the school, Chrysippus
of Soli, who lived to the end of the 3rd century, was perhaps the greatest and
certainly the most productive of the early Stoics. He devoted his considerable
energies to the almost complete development of the Zenonian themes in logic,
physics, and ethics. In logic particularly, he defended against the Megarian
logicians and the Skeptics such concepts as certain knowledge, comprehensive
presentation, proposition and argument, truth and its criterion, and assent. His
work in propositional logic, in which unanalyzed propositions joined by
connectives are studied, made important contributions to the history of ancient
logic and is of particular relevance to more recent developments in logic. |
|
|
In physics, Chrysippus was responsible
for the attempt to show that fate and free will are not mutually exclusive
conceptual features of Stoic doctrine. He further distinguished between
"whole" and "all," or "universe," arguing that the
whole is the world, while the all is the external void together with the world.
Zeno's view of the origin of man as providentially generated by "fiery
reason" out of matter was expanded by Chrysippus to include the concept of
self-preservation, which governs all living things. Another earlier view
(Zeno's), that of nature as a model for life, was amplified first by Cleanthes
and then by Chrysippus. The Zenonian appeal to life "according to
nature" had evidently been left vague, because to Cleanthes it seemed
necessary to speak of life in accord with nature conceived as the world at large
(the cosmos), whereas Chrysippus distinguished between world nature and human
nature. Thus, to do good is to act in accord with both human and universal
nature. Chrysippus also expanded the Stoic view that seminal reasons were the
impetus for animate motion. |
|
|
He established firmly that logic and
(especially) physics are necessary and are means for the differentiation of
goods and evils. Thus, a knowledge of physics (or theology) is required before
an ethics can be formulated. Indeed, physics and logic find their value chiefly
in this very purpose. Chrysippus covered almost every feature of Stoic doctrine
and treated each so thoroughly that the essential features of the school were to
change relatively little after his time. |
|
|
|
|
|
The Middle Stoa, which flourished in the
2nd and early 1st centuries BC, was dominated chiefly by two men of Rhodes: Panaetius,
its founder, and his disciple Poseidonius.
Panaetius organized a Stoic school in Rome before returning to Athens, and
Poseidonius was largely responsible for an emphasis on the religious features of
the doctrine. Both were antagonistic to the ethical doctrines of Chrysippus,
who, they believed, had strayed too far from the Platonic and Aristotelian
roots of Stoicism. It may have been because of the considerable time that
Panaetius and Poseidonius lived in Rome that the Stoa there turned so much of
its emphasis to the moral and religious themes within the Stoic doctrine.
Panaetius was highly regarded by Cicero, who
used him as a model for his own work. Poseidonius, who had been a disciple of
Panaetius in Athens, taught Cicero at his school at Rhodes and later went to
Rome and remained there for a time with Cicero. If Poseidonius admired Plato and
Aristotle, he was particularly interested--unlike most of his school--in the
study of natural and providential phenomena. In presenting the Stoic system in
the second book of De
natura deorum (45 BC), Cicero most probably followed Poseidonius.
Because his master, Panaetius, was chiefly concerned with concepts of duty and
obligation, it was his studies that served as a model for the De
officiis (44 BC) of Cicero. Hecaton, another of Panaetius' students
and an active Stoic philosopher, also stressed similar ethical themes. (see also
Roman
Republic and Empire) |
|
|
If Chrysippus is to be commended for his
diligence in defending Stoic logic and epistemology against the Skepticism of
the New Academy (3rd-2nd century BC), it was chiefly Panaetius and Poseidonius
who were responsible for the widespread popularity of Stoicism in Rome. It was
precisely their turning of doctrine to themes in moral philosophy and natural
science that appealed to the intensely practical Romans. The times perhaps
demanded such interests, and with them Stoicism was to become predominantly a
philosophy for the individual, showing how--given the vicissitudes of life--one
might be stoical. Law, world citizenship, nature, and the benevolent workings of
Providence and the divine reason were the principal areas of interest of
Stoicism at this time. |
|
|
These tendencies toward practicality are
also well illustrated in the later period of the school (in the first two
centuries AD) in the writings of Lucius Seneca,
a Roman statesman; of Epictetus, a slave freed
by Nero; and of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman
emperor. Both style and content in the Libri
morales (Eng. trans., Moral Essays)
and Epistulae morales (Moral
Letters) of Seneca
reinforce the new direction in Stoic thought. The Encheiridion
(Manual) of Epictetus and the Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius furthered the sublime and yet personal consolation of the
Stoic message and increasingly showed the strength of its rivalry to the
burgeoning power of the new Christianity. The mark of a guide, of the religious
teacher, is preeminent in these writings. It is difficult to establish with any
precision, however, the extent of Stoic influence by the time of the first half
of the 2nd century AD. So popular had these ideas become that many specifically
Stoic terms (viz., right reason, comprehension, assent, indifference, logos, natural law, and the notion of the wise man) commonly were
used in debate and intellectual disputes. |
|
|
|
|
|
There is much disagreement as to the
measure of Stoic influence on the writings of St. Paul,
the Apostle of Christ. At Tarsus, Paul certainly had opportunities for
hearing Stoic lectures on philosophy. And it may be that his discussion of
nature and the teaching of it (I Cor. 11:14) is Stoic in origin, for it has a
parallel in the Manual of Epictetus
1.16, 10. Although not a Stoic technical term, syneidesis, which Paul used as "conscience," was generally
employed by Stoic philosophers. In I Cor. 13 and in the report of Paul's speech
at Athens (Acts 17), there is much that is Hellenistic, more than a little
tinged by Stoic elements--e.g., the
arguments concerning man's natural belief in God and the belief that man's
existence is in God. |
|
|
The assimilation of Stoic elements by
the Church Fathers was generally better
understood by the 4th century. Stoic influence can be seen, for example, in the
relation between reason and the passions in the works of St.
Ambrose, one of the great scholars of the church, and of Marcus Minucius
Felix, a Christian Apologist. Each took a wealth of ideas from Stoic morality as
Cicero had interpreted it in De officiis. In
general, whereas the emerging Christian morality affirmed its originality, it
also assimilated much of the pagan literature, the more congenial elements of
which were essentially Stoic. |
|
|
Earlier, in the 3rd century, Quintus
Tertullian, often called the father of Latin Christian literature, seems
to have been versed in Stoic philosophy; e.g.,
in his theory of the agreement between the supernatural and the human soul,
in his use of the Stoic tenet that from a truth there follow truths, and in his
employment of the idea of universal consent. Even in his polemical writings,
which reveal an unrelenting hostility to pagan philosophy, Tertullian showed a
fundamental grasp and appreciation of such Stoic themes as the world logos and the relation of body to soul. This is well illustrated in
his argument against the Stoics, particularly on their theme that God is a
corporeal being and identified with reason as inherent in matter--also to be
found in his polemics against Marcion, father of a heretical Christian sect, and
against Hermogenes of Tarsus, author of an important digest of rhetoric. Yet in
his doctrine of the Word, he appealed directly to Zeno and Cleanthes of the
Early Stoa. Another important polemic against the Stoics is found in the
treatise Contra
Celsum, by Origen, the most
influential Greek theologian of the 3rd century, in which he argued at some
length against Stoic doctrines linking God to matter. |
|
|
Also, St.
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the 3rd century, revealed the currency of
Stoic views; e.g., in his Ad Demetrianum, a denunciation of an enemy to Christianity, in which
Cyprian castigates the ill treatment of slaves, who, no less than their masters,
are formed of the same matter and endowed with the same soul and live according
to the same law. The beliefs in the brotherhood of man and in the world as a
great city, commonly found in early Christian literature, were current Stoic
themes. The Christian attitude appears in what St. Paul said of Baptism:
"You are all sons of God through Faith. For as many of you as were baptized
into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:26-27). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
During the period when Christian
institutions and doctrines were developing (AD 230-1450), Stoicism continued to
play a popular role. The De
consolatione philosophiae (524) of Boethius
(died AD 524/525) was widely known and appreciated as a discourse on the
mysterious questions of the nature of good and evil, of fortune, chance, or
freedom, and of divine foreknowledge. If the plan of Boethius was to serve as an
interpreter of Plato and Aristotle, he succeeded only in working through some
logical theories of Aristotle, together with several commentaries on those
theories. In the Consolatione, however, the themes are quite different; in the fifth
book, for example, he attempted to resolve the apparent difficulty of
reconciling human freedom with the divine foreknowledge, a problem that among
Stoic thinkers--though by no means uniquely among them--had been in general
currency for a long time. This work of emancipation from worldly travail through
the glories of reason and philosophy, which included Stoic doctrines as found in
the writings of Cicero and Seneca, was much more influential for later medieval
thought than that of Lactantius, of the late 3rd to early 4th century, who was
largely concerned with the writing of a history of religion--a summary statement
of Christian doctrine and life from earliest times. Lactantius
also wrote a not unimportant work, De ira
Dei (313), on the possibility of anger in God. It poses a problem of how to
deal with the essentially Greek, or philosophic, view that God cannot feel anger
because he is not subject to passions and that apatheia ("apathy," or "imperturbableness")
is not merely the mark of the wise man but is also a divine attribute. This
view, which had been most thoroughly developed among Stoic thinkers and
particularly by Epictetus, raised a peculiarly Christian problem, the concern of
the power of God to reward the righteous and punish the transgressor; thus, it
challenged the very idea of Providence. Other
manifestations of anthropopathism, the attributing of human feelings to God, had
also been charged against the early Christian religionists; and the writers of
the time--Lactantius and Tertullian among them--took great pains to refute the
largely Stoic formulations of these charges. Although the refutations took the
form--in St. Augustine, for example--of denying that the wrath of God is a
perturbation of the soul and of holding that it is rather a judgment, the
concept of the divine essence excludes all passions. Within the monastic
tradition, there remained more than a residue of concern over apathy as a divine
attribute and as a model for the truly religious. (see also Middle
Ages) |
|
|
Other significant Stoic influences
appeared in medieval discussions of the popular origin of political authority, res
publica and res populi, and on the distinctions made in law between jus
naturale, jus gentium, jus civile--doctrines of Stoic origin--found in
3rd-century Roman juridical texts gathered together by Isidore of Seville (died
AD 636), a Spanish encyclopaedist and theologian. The Stoic belief--as against
Aristotle--that men are by nature equal was an integral part of the knowledge
that certain rules of law are universally recognized, laws that all people might
naturally follow. In this way, the Romans--whose genius lay in organization and
in law--fostered the conception of natural, or common, law, which reason was
supposed to make evident to all men. Thus, in the second half of the 11th
century, the Stoic texts of Cicero and Seneca
became important doctrinal sources for the initial discussions of social and
political philosophy. These early theories of law, of the natural equality of
men, and of the rights of prince and populace were to become the basis for
13th-century systems of social and political privilege and obligation. (see also
Roman law, natural law) |
|
|
In the 12th century, John
of Salisbury, an English critical scholar, produced, in his Policraticus
(1159), the first complete attempt at a philosophy of the state since
Classical times. Stoic doctrines of natural law, society, state, and Providence
were important elements in his effort to construct a social philosophy on
ethical and metaphysical principles. The impact of these doctrines and the
lengthy history of their use in the earlier Middle Ages can also be found in the
views of Thomas Aquinas on the philosophy of the state and of man. |
|
|
|
|
|
If the influence of Stoic doctrines
during the Middle Ages was largely restricted to the resolution of problems of
social and political significance, it remained for the Renaissance,
in its passion for the rediscovery of Greek and Roman antiquity, to provide a
basis for the rebirth of Stoic views in logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, as
well as the documentation of the more familiar Stoic doctrines in ethics and
politics. Late in the 16th century, Justus Lipsius,
a Flemish scholar and Latin Humanist, was responsible for the first restatement
of Stoicism as a defensible and thoroughgoing (Christian) philosophy of man. His
treatises De constantia (1584) and Politicorum
sive civilis doctrinae libri V (1589) were widely known in many editions and
translations. His defense of Stoic doctrine in Manuductio
ad Stoicam Philosophiam (1604) and Physiologia
Stoicorum (1604) provided the basis for the considerable Stoic influence
during the Renaissance. Around the turn of the 17th century, Guillaume
du Vair, a French lawyer and Christian philosopher, made Stoic moral
philosophy popular, while Pierre Charron, a French theologian and Skeptic, utilized Stoic
themes in De la sagesse (1601; Eng.
trans., Of Wisdome, 1608), as did the
Skeptic Michel de Montaigne in his Essais
(1580; Eng. trans. 1603). Through the work of Lipsius, Stoic doctrines were
to influence the thought of Francis Bacon, a
precursor of modern philosophy of science, and, later, the De
l'esprit des lois (1748; Eng. trans., The
Spirit of Laws, 1750), by the political theorist Charles-Louis,
baron de Montesquieu. In the continuing and relentless war against the
Aristotelianism of the later Middle Ages, the doctrines of Stoicism influenced
many prominent figures of the Renaissance and Reformation periods. |
|
|
Pietro Pomponazzi,
an Aristotelian of early 16th-century Italy, in defending an anti-Scholastic
Aristotelianism against the Averroists, who
viewed the world as a strictly necessitarian and fated order, adopted the Stoic
view of Providence and human liberty. The 15th-century Humanist Leonardo
Bruni absorbed Stoic views on reason, fate, and free will. Pantheism,
the view that God and nature are unitary in the sense that God is an impersonal
being, and naturalism, the view that nothing is supernatural, both of which
identify God with the cosmos and ascribe to it a life process of which the world
soul is the principle, were widely held Renaissance notions. Such a pantheistic
naturalism was advocated--though from diverse standpoints--by Francesco Patrizi,
a versatile Platonist, and by Giordano Bruno,
defender of an infinite cosmos; and in both authors the inspiration and source
were fundamentally Stoic. In the development of a philosophy of public law based
upon a study of man, Stoic elements are found in the Utopia (1516; Eng. trans. 1551), by Thomas
More, and the De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; Eng.
trans. 1682), by Hugo Grotius. This latter work
is one of the most famous Renaissance treatises on the theory of natural and
social rights. |
|
|
The foremost Swiss reformer of the early
16th century, Huldrych Zwingli, who regarded justification
by subjective belief as the foundation of the new Christianity, utilized Stoic
views on the autonomy of the will, on the absolute predestination of the good
and evil man, and on moral determinism. |
|
|
Another Stoic influence of considerable
importance in the tradition of Christian Humanism
was the view that all religions have a common basis of truths concerning God--a
universal Deism. Among those who favoured such a
view were Zwingli and Desiderius Erasmus, the great Renaissance Humanist and
scholar. More and Grotius also laid special stress on this view, and its
influence was felt in the moral, social, and even the artistic life of the 16th
century. Later, Herbert of Cherbury, often
called the father of Deism, further developed the idea of religious peace and
the reduction of opposing religious views to common elements. This view became
one of the most popular ideas of the 17th century. |
|
|
Philipp Melanchthon
also cultivated Humanism and the philosophy of antiquity as a basis for a reborn
Christianity. Although Aristotle was his chief inspiration, Melanchthon made
telling use of the Stoic theory of knowledge, with its notions of innate
principles and the natural light of reason, which teach man the great truths of
metaphysical and moral order. Stoicism thus became the basis for the natural-law
theory, which holds that the state is of immediately divine origin and
independent of the church--a Protestant view opposed by Catholic writers. |
|
|
The Cartesian revolution in thought in
the 17th century brought forward several Stoic notions: that morality consists
of obedience to the law of reason, which God has deposited within man; that
ethics presupposes a knowledge of nature, because man must learn to know his
place in the world, for only then may he act rightly; that self-examination is
the foundation of ethics; and that the innateness and commonality of truths
bespeak the view that only thoughts and the will belong properly to man, for the
body is a part of the material world. Such views were particularly developed by René
Descartes, often hailed as the father of modern philosophy, in his
dualism of mind (or soul) and body. (see also Cartesianism) |
|
|
Benedict de Spinoza,
a freethinking Jewish Rationalist, made similar use of Stoic views on the nature
of man and the world. That aspect of Spinoza's thought that is debatably
labelled pantheist is essentially Stoic in character. Together with the
Cartesians, Spinoza insisted upon the importance of internal and right reason as
the sole means by which to attain to indubitable truths and to the possibility
of human freedom. |
|
|
Blaise Pascal,
a French scientist and religious writer, also was sympathetic to Cartesian
conceptions of man and nature. Though he turned his back on philosophy, his
religious thought retained the Cartesian and Stoic insistence on the
independence of human reason, holding that man is fundamentally a thinking
being, innately capable of making right decisions. There is an important and
crucial difference and conflict between Pascal's views and those of Spinoza and
the Cartesians: for Pascal, though the use of (the Stoic) right reason might
result in proofs and demonstrations that lead to the God of truth, it would
never lead to the God of love, the one true God. Thus, the Stoic exaltation of
reason to an entity in its own right--indeed, to a divine entity--as exemplified
among the Cartesians and in the thought of Spinoza, was rejected by Pascal in
the Jansenist Christianity that he finally adopted--a rejection that, because it
also repudiated free will, distinguishes Pascal from those who held Stoic as
well as alternative conceptions of human freedom and responsibility. |
|
|
Christianity in general, in spite of
striking contrasts with Stoicism, has found elements within it that parallel its
own position. As the Stoic, for example, feels safe and protected in the
rational care of some immanent Providence, so the Christian senses that a
transcendent though incarnate and loving God is looking after him. And in
general, Stoicism has played a great part throughout the ages in the theological
formulation of Christian thought as well as in the actual realization of the
Christian ideals. (see also Christianity) |
|
|
Contemporary philosophy has borrowed
from Stoicism, at least in part, its conviction that man must be conceived as
being closely and essentially connected with the whole universe. And
contemporary Humanism still contains some obviously Stoic elements, such as its
belief in the solidarity of all peoples based upon their common nature, and in
the primacy of reason. It is perhaps just because Stoicism has never become a
full-fledged philosophic system that, many centuries after the dissolution of
the Stoic school, fundamental themes of its philosophy have emerged again and
again, and many have become incorporated into modern thinking. (Ja.L.S.) |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
