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| Book Chapter |
| Stoic Natural Philosophy (Physics and Cosmology) |
| Michael White |
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The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics Brad Inwood ed., Cambridge University Press 2003 |
| Library Access |
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Abstract: According to Diogenes Laertius, most of the Stoics divided philosophical doctrine into three parts: one physical, one ethical, and one logical. The Stoics held that physical doctrine stands in an intimate relation to ethics. For the Stoics, the end of human life is ‘to live comfortable with nature’. Consequently, physics – that part of philosophy that pertains to nature and that reveals the import of living ‘comfortably with nature’ – obviously has ethical import. Logically distinct from this aspect of the relation of the physical doctrine to ethics is a second point of connection between the two: the common contemporary assumption that it is both possible and desirable to undertake a ‘value-neutral’ investigation of nature is quite foreign to Stoic thought. Indeed, it is common to find what might be termed large-scale Stoic philosophical themes influencing physical doctrine –including some of the rather technical aspects of Stoic physical doctrine. In particular, the Stoic themes of the unity and cohesion of the cosmos and of an all encompassing divine reason controlling the cosmos are of fundamental importance to Stoic physics.Ethics, logic, Stoics |
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