Stoics

Stoics * The founder of Stoic philosophy was Zeno (333-262 B.C.). Stoics and Epicureans were in radical opposition on most subjects, but they agreed on a few things. * -Members of both philosophical schools were committed materialist. * - Both schools believed that there was nothing that existed except material things. * - Because the Stoics and Epicureans found common ground in materialism they battled the non-materialist philosophers such as Plato and his followers. * Stoics believed matter was an infinitely divisible continuum that contained no natural breaks or void spaces. Size and shape are not permanent attributes of matter. The stoics acknowledged an extracosmic void, viewing the cosmos as an island of continuous matter surrounded by and infinite void space. The only properties possessed by the epicurean atoms are size shape, and weight. * Stoics believed happiness could be obtained through living in harmony with nature and natural law. Knowledge of natural philosophy was required to live in harmony with nature. * The Stoics created a model universe, characterized by continuity and activity. * The Stoics matter had the capacity to organize passive matter into organic unity and account for its characteristic behavior. The called this principle pneuma. Pneuma has the grades, the lowest level is inorganic bodies, and this is called hexis. Plants and animals are physis. The highest grade is an object with a soul that accounts for rationality such as humans, this is psyche. They even believe there was a cosmic pneuma, or world soul. * Stoic cosmology like Plato and Aristotle’s was geocentric. However the Stoics followed the Atomists and would not come to any radical distinction between terrestrial and celestial regions. The Stoic universe was conceived to be both purposeful and deterministic.