From my earlier posts on altruism in the ancient world before Christianity, a number of blog readers have asked me to say some things specifically about ancient Stoics.  Didn’t they urge altruistic behavior?  Once again, the answer is, well, yes and no.  This will take several posts to explain.

Stoicism was by far the most widespread moral philosophy at the time of early Christianity.  It was named not after its founder (as was, say, Platonism and Epicureanism) but after the place where he taught.  The movement began in the wake of Aristotle, with the teachings of a teacher named Zeno (333-261 BCE).  Zeno regularly gathered his students in the large “painted portico” (= stoa) centrally located in the Athenian forum.  The portico was a long and spacious building open on one side of its length to the outside, lined with columns to support the roof overhead.  Since these philosophers and wannabe philosophers could regularly be seen in the stoa they were called Stoics.  Over time their movement spread throughout the Greek and then the later Roman world to become the dominant philosophical perspective for centuries.

During the early centuries of the Christian era Stoic views were embraced, developed, elaborated, and expounded by a wide range of philosophers.  One mark of Stoicism’s all-around appeal can be seen from the widely diverse social standing of its best-known representatives.  One of the most famous, Epictetus (50-135 CE), had been a slave, that is, on the lowest rung of the socio-economic scale.  Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), on the other hand, was the Emperor of Rome, the single most powerful and wealthy person in the western world.  And Seneca, (4 BC – 65 CE), the most prolific and best-known philosopher of the early Roman empire, was one of the most famous and influential socio-political figures of the middle of the first century.

Part of the appeal of Stoicism to thinking people of all kinds and classes derived precisely from its claim that the world makes sense on all levels and that to understand our place in it we need to see the sense not just of our lives but of all of reality.  Reality is infused with “reason” so that the world is an inherently rational.  When we see how it actually the works we can understand how to fit in with it, that is, how we should live.

Unlike other philosophers (especially the Epictureans) Stoics did not believe that the world and humans were comprised only of matter (atoms) but maintained there was a decidedly non-material entity infused in the world and in us.  As a result they did not think we should or could trust our sense experiences to understand the truth:  sense perception can be deceptive or misinterpreted.  We therefore need to use reason/logic to understand everything around us.

Correspondingly they did not think that sense-pleasure was the goal of life, but, like Plato, insisted it was a deadly dead end.  Nor did they believe pain was to be avoided at all costs:  for one thing, it cannot be avoided and so is better dealt with realistically.  Nor did they believe in separating themselves off from the rest of society to lead contemplative lives of solitary but simple pleasures in small communities; on the contrary, they maintained that people had a duty to the world and that life was far better when everyone did the duty assigned to them.  In particular, they did not think people should pretend they could completely control their circumstances: we have no say in much of what happens to us.  And so the goal of life is to understand what we actually can control and focus on.  We should not worry about, be distracted by, or be upset about things we cannot avoid.

Stoics shared with virtually all other philosophers of their day the notion that the ultimate goal in life is to achieve eudaimonia (that is, the sense of satisfaction and contentment that comes from knowing you are doing well).  And they agreed with Aristotle that “virtue” is the key to obtaining it.  For Stoics the greatest “excellence” (= virtue) in humans is that which separates us from all other living beings: our ability to “reason.” We are superior rationally to everything else in existence, except the gods.  It is, in fact, our rationality that makes us most like the gods.  And so, for us to be godlike, we are to use our reason to the fullest extent possible.  For Stoics that simply made sense (i.e., was “rational”).  More than that, they had a metaphysical reason for emphasizing the importance of reason. This world and all it contains are not purely material objects: they are (literally/physically) infused with the entity of “reason” itself.  Reason is, in a sense, the God that dwells in all of creation..

In Greek, the term for reason is “logos,” from which we get our word “logic.”   In Stoic thought, the divine Logos was not simply an attribute or quality possessed by the gods and, to a lesser degree, humans.  It was the divine element that permeates all of creation. The world certainly has a material component: but it is not a haphazard construction of matter, as the Epicureans would have it.  It is an intentional entity with Logos/reason infused everywhere and in every way.  Among living creatures, humans have been granted more logos/reason than anything else.

Since logos/reason pervades the world, whatever exists and whatever happens in this world is, by nature, logical/reasonable.  And since humans have been allotted logic/reason they can – with some guidance, training, and hard work –understand the logic/reason of the entire cosmos.  Anyone who accepts that reality realizes that everything ultimately must make sense.  One goal, then, is to figure out how the world makes sense, even when it seems to not to make any sense at all.

This includes everything that happens to us that we have no control over, including not just personal problems and setbacks, such as losing a job, getting a bad tooth ache, or being short on money,  but also the truly awful things: an earthquake that levels our community, a military or economic disaster, or the death of a child.  There is a reason for everything in the divine/rational scheme of things, because reason is divine and divinity/reason permeates all existence. It is true that we often cannot know the precise sense of something in the short term – we are not ourselves divine, even if divinity/reason resides within us.  But if we understand who we are and what the world is, we can rest assured that in the long haul there is a reason for everything – even the bad or truly terrible things that happen to us.