Stoicism - Context and History

Stoicism, like the other Greek philosophies, can be seen as a continuation of the Socratic movement. There is no single, distinct branch of Stoic theory that we can identify as their "philosophy of education." But the Stoics produced an original and powerful set of ideas on human development, the acquisition of knowledge (especially knowledge of the good), and types of value, and these ideas are of continuing significance for modern students of the philosophy of education.

Also important in this connection are their views about the need for an integrated philosophical curriculum, the teaching of practical ethics, and the relationship between philosophical theory and conventional beliefs and practices.

Context and History
Stoicism, like its great rival, Epicureanism, emerged in Athens at the start of the third century BCE. Through the activities of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Athens had become by this date the main center of philosophy in Greece, indeed in the ancient Mediterranean world. Two major "schools" of philosophy had been established, in the Academy (by Plato and his successors) and in the Lyceum (by Aristotle and his successors). Two more schools emerged, that of Epicurus (based in his house and garden outside the city) and that of Zeno, based in the Painted Stoa in Athens.

Though intellectually sophisticated and covering complex fields of knowledge, these schools were highly informal as institutions. They functioned as research groups for likeminded independent scholars and provided public lectures and more sustained courses of teaching for interested young people and adults. The philosophical schools, alongside the rhetorical schools (their more successful and more "mainstream" rivals) offered what could be considered as higher or university-level education. The teachers and students were predominantly (though not entirely) males; the students were mostly (though not invariably) from the upper classes in the Greek-speaking world. Stoicism and Epicureanism, together with other, still more informal, groups such as the Cynics, also represented a distinct set of ethical attitudes, way of life and world view.


Zeno (c.334-262 BCE), the founder of the Stoic school, was strongly influenced, in ideas and approach, by Socrates; his decision to teach in a public colonnade near the city center represented a renewal of the Socratic style of teaching by argument with all comers. During his lifetime, Zeno was strongly challenged by others, notably Aristo, who claimed, like Zeno, to be capturing the heart of the Socratic ethical message.

After his death, Zeno was regarded as the clear leader of a new philosophical movement, and his ideas were developed and systematized by subsequent leaders of the school, notably Chrysippus, the greatest Stoic theorist (280-207 BCE). However, debate about the core doctrines and their implications continued thoughout the third and second centuries BCE; Stoicism also developed through argument with other schools, notably the Academic (Platonic) school. In the early first century BCE, Athens ceased to be the main center of philosophy, and Stoicism, like other philosophies, was taught and studied throughout the main cities of the Eastern (Greek-speaking) Mediterranean, now dominated by Rome, and at Rome itself. Stoicism, in this more widespread and diffused form, became the most influential of Greek philosophies during the first and second centuries CE. Subsequently, Stoicism was eclipsed in antiquity by revived forms of Platonism and Aristotelianism and by Christianity, though Stoic thought continued to influence all three traditions.
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Stoic Theory as a System

As formulated by Chrysippus, Stoicism is highly systematic in its teachings. The philosophical curriculum, in its full form, consists of a combination of ethics, logic (in effect, philosophical method, including epistemology), and physics (study of nature) (Long and Sedley, 1987, section 26). Wisdom, the Stoic ideal - an ideal that no Stoic teacher claimed to have attained - depends on the complete integration of these branches of inquiry.

The full understanding of core notions in Stoicism, such as reason, order, and the good (notions whose meaning is closely interconnected), depends on this combination and integration of branches of philosophy. In broad terms, the world view offered by Stoicism is both naturalistic and idealistic. It is naturalistic in rejecting the Platonic contrasts between soul and body, or forms and particulars, and in insisting that there is one (material) world that is the object of both perception and knowledge. It is idealistic in maintaining (in sharp contrast to Epicureanism) that this world is shaped by purposive, divine rationality and order (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 44-5, 53-5).

Ethics: Values and Development
Since Stoicism has this strongly unified character, "education" depends on understanding and integrating all three branches of philosophy and on putting this understanding into practice. Ethics may be the best point of access to Stoic thinking about education, though it needs to be taken with related aspects of logic and physics. Ethics was itself seen as a highly integrated set of topics, including categories of value and a theory of
development (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 56).

A core ethical claim, going back to Zeno and taken to stem, ultimately, from Socrates (Long, 1996, chapter 1), is that virtue is the only good, and that other so-called goods (such as health, wealth, and beauty) are, by contrast, "matters of indifference" which have no effect on happiness. For Aristo, this seems to have been both the beginning and the end of Stoic ethics. But Zeno, followed by the main line of Stoic thinking, maintained that things such as health are, at least, "preferable indifferents," and that we are naturally inclined to

"select" such preferable things rather than their opposites (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 58). This process of "selection" forms a key part of the way we develop as rational human beings. But a crucial part of this process lies in coming to recognize that what matters, ultimately, is not obtaining preferable things but selecting them in the right way - that is, virtuously - and, to that degree, coming to know and express the good.

Stoic concepts of value are closely bound up with their thinking about development, a distinctive feature of their theory that is clearly relevant to the subject of education. Development is analysed by them as oikeiosis, "familiarization" or "appropriation"; it consists in making the world "one's own" (oikeios) and in enabling the world (understood as a providential and rational system) to make one "its own."

This process has several different aspects and stages. At a basic level, all animals, including humans, are seen as instinctively motivated to seek those things that maintain and nurture their own distinctive character or "constitution" (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 57A). (There is a sharp and deliberate contrast with the Epicurean
view that animals, including humans, naturally pursue pleasure (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 21 A). For human beings, who are fundamentally rational, this process comes to take the form of (rationally) "selecting" such things as being "preferable" to their alternatives. If human development takes its proper course, such selection
becomes progressively more internally coherent, based on rational considerations and (in principle) open to rational justification. Also, selection is increasingly based on proper norms for "appropriate actions" (or "proper functions," kathekonta). In this respect, selection comes increasingly to exhibit the features (consistency, order, rationality) that constitute "the good" for Stoicism. But a crucial further dimension is the realization, noted above, that what matters, ultimately, for human happiness is not obtaining the "preferable" things but selecting them in a rational and ordered (that is to say, virtuous) way. One comes to realize that "virtue is the only good" and the only thing that should be chosen for its own sake (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 59D). This can also be expressed by saying that the ultimate goal of human life is living "according to virtue (or reason)," which can also be characterized as living "according to nature" (as the Stoics understand "nature") (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 63).

A second dimension of development, which is also presented as a profoundly "natural" one, is the social one. Common to all animals, and built into their physical and psychological constitution, is the capacity for reproduction and (more crucially) the motivation to care for, and nurture, their offspring. This motivation is the most obvious manifestation of a more pervasive desire to "familiarize" oneself to others by bonding with them and benefiting them. For adult human beings, this process normally takes the form of full engagement in family and communal life or in other forms of positive social relationship, such as that of teaching philosophy.

Another side of this process is the progressive extension of our concern to those outside our immediate family and community and the recognition that, as fellow rational human beings, we are also "familiarized" to them (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 57D-H). The relationship between these two aspects of development is not as fully explained in our sources as we would wish. But it seems clear that both are taken as key features of a developmental process that contributes toward, and includes, a more theoretical understanding of the good. Social engagement, both within and outside our immediate community, provides a context through which we can learn to select "appropriately" between preferable things and, thus, learn how to act virtuously and to recognize that this is, ultimately, all that matters in human life. Also, both the processes of rational discrimination and of appropriate bonding can be understood as ways of actualizing the order, rationality, and benefit that are the salient marks of the good. To that degree, both aspects of development are interconnected facets of learning to live the life "according to nature/reason/virtue" which is human happiness, as the Stoics understand this. (See further Inwood, 1985, chapter 5; Annas, 1993, chapters 5 and 12.2; Striker, 1996, chapters 12 and 13; Algra et al., 1999, chapter 21, especially pp. 677-82.)
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Stoicism - Knowing the Good

Making sense of Stoic thought about coming to know the good involves consideration of several related aspects of Stoic thought. One of these is the Stoic theory of knowledge. From a modern perspective, the Stoic theory seems to combine aspects that are characteristic of both empiricist and idealist approaches and of both "correspondence" and "coherence" theories of knowledge. On the one hand, they see knowledge as based on perceptions (not innate ideas), which enable us to form concepts and beliefs. In their terms, we "assent" to an "impression" (phantasia) and thus produce "cognition" (katalepsis), which may constitute either belief/opinion or knowledge. They also maintain that a certain kind of perception (a "cognitive impression") necessarily yields a true cognition, a claim defended through sustained argument with skeptics in the Platonic Academy during the third and second centuries BCE. On the other hand, they also maintain that we are naturally capable of forming (by inference from perception) "preconceptions" or "natural/common notions," such as those of the good or of god.

Knowledge is based on a combination of cognitive impressions and preconceptions. True propositions correspond to actual states of affair in the world but also constitute an internally consistent set of ideas (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 39-41; Everson, 1990, chapter 9; Algra et al., 1999, chapter 9).

Coming to know the good, therefore, involves both inference from perceptions and the formation of a preconception. But it is a process of a very special kind because "good" represents both the highest kind of value and one that is applicable in widely different contexts. Stoics lay special stress on the role of analogy in enabling us to recognize connections between the forms of goodness found in these different contexts.

Virtue - what we might call "ethical" or "moral" goodness - is one aspect of this notion. The recognition of our own developing virtue (if we develop as we should) and that of other people constitutes an important dimension of the process of coming to know the good. But Stoics emphasize that what we are recognizing is not just a moral notion (human virtue) but is one aspect of a broader concept. The salient marks of goodness are order, structure, harmony, and rationality. The development of virtue involves recognizing virtue as something good - that is, as manifesting order and rationality. But goodness also exists elsewhere, above all, in the universe, understood as an ordered and rational structure. Structure and rationality also, necessarily, confer "benefit," which is another of the salient marks of goodness. So coming to know the good, in the fullest sense of the word, is a matter of understanding how goodness manifests itself in these various sectors (which can be summed up as the spheres of ethics, physics, and logic) and also a matter of expressing this in your own life and character (Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 60; cf. leradiakonou, 1999, chapter 3).

Interpreting Stoic ideas about the relationship between ethical goodness and goodness in other contexts (in particular, in the universe as a whole) is a difficult matter. (For contrasting interpretations see Annas, 1993, chapter 5; Striker, 1996, chapter 12, especially pp. 221-31.) But there is no doubt that wisdom, the Stoic ideal state, includes knowledge of goodness in all these areas and of their interconnection. The goodness of the universe is displayed in the visible order and harmony of the heavenly bodies and in the regular cycles of day and night and of the seasons. It is also manifested in the way that each species is naturally adapted (in its physical and psychological capacities) to function as a unified organism and to do so within the world, which itself functions as a coherent system. These manifestations of organic system and coherence are taken as evidence of divine providence - an aspect of Stoic thought that is strongly influenced by Plato's vision of the world in the Timaeus. But, unlike Plato's craftsman god, who is distinct from the world he creates, the Stoic god is an immanent force, at once a physical entity ("designing fire") and the active cause, a principle of order and rationality working within nature (Long and Sedley, 1987, s. 54, based especially on Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book 2; also Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 44, 46). Hence, recognizing the divinity of the world (its immanent structure and coherence) is another key aspect of coming to know the good (cf. Rousseau, 1979, pp. 313-14ff).

A related subject is Stoic thinking on determinism and agency, which involves recognizing in a different way the goodness of the universe. The Stoics are usually seen as "compatibilists," who try to reconcile universal causal determinism with the idea that human beings are responsible for their actions. This reconciliation is
brought about, in part, by explaining human (and other) actions by reference to two kinds of cause: internal and external causes. The fact that (adult) human actions depend on a specific kind of internal cause (namely, assent to a rational impression) entitles us to hold human beings responsible for the actions that result from this
assent. (This kind of compatibilism does not involve the idea of "indeterminist" freedom of choice, an idea that was developed in Epicurean theories.) But there is a different, and arguably more profound, way of understanding Stoic compatibilism.

Universal causal determinism (the "seamless web" of causes) and adult human rationality are both manifestations of the order, rationality, and goodness that are fundamental to nature, as the Stoics understand this (Bobzien, 1998; also Long and Sedley, 1987, ss. 55, 62). This point helps to explain why accepting the fated outcome of events (even in cases where this seems, on the face of it, strongly disadvantageous to us as individuals or to our community or humankind) is seen as a key mark of a virtuous attitude or character. In doing so, we recognize that the universe, in the relevant respects, is good (despite apparent indications to the contrary) and we are thus expressing (at least some measure of) goodness in ourselves. This topic is another

that exemplifies the importance of integrating physics, ethics, and logic, since the proper understanding of determinism embraces aspects of all three studies.
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