Loading...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.
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I wanna be an “Epicturean”.
go for it!
Another top-notch post Bart. Love your enthusiasm for and understanding of ancient philosophy. Thanks for pointing out that ‘logos’ means ‘reason’, not just ‘word’.
When I was a Theist (not that long ago) I found great comfort in stoic philosophy because it reinforced my prior beliefs that God allows so much suffering for a very good reason (God was defined as the ultimate in rationality and wisdom and it’s foundation) and we will understand his perfect rationality after we die. Now that I find the faith, theology and especially the Bible irrational by the standards of reason and the historical method, I struggle to find a ground for my rationality. Neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, history and the sciences as a whole have amply demonstrated our collective irrationality, while much of academia, along with acts of altruism and much of what most of us do daily appears to demonstrate human rationality. As a politicized American the seeming disregard for truth, science and academia seriously depresses me. We vote to believe the lies and serial liars. Any advice out there will be greatly appreciated.
Did Stoicism influence Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer?
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.
I don’t know! He certainly knew the stoics.
It makes sense to me if there’s a universal moral code that God judges by that’s independent from their beliefs about God. The simplest explanation is that Sin doesn’t occur until murder has occurred. Something most people will never really understand until they’ve been in a war and involved with killings. The rest of the law is just business as usual, most often it doesn’t lead to Sin. When the world makes no sense it’s because Man’s law made it that way.
Bart:
In relation to your new book on ethics and Christianity, what do you think about this new book?
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-invention-of-tolerance/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=sn&utm_campaign=mgfd24_112424
Best, Ray
I’m afraid I haven’t read it.
How should we interpret the use of the term ‘logos’ in the gospel of John? Would the use of that word alone be enough to consider the author to be a stoic?
It’s a much debated topic. there may indeed be Stoic overtones, but that doesn’t make the author a Stoic; I know many hard core capitalists who are “stoic” in one sense or another (and evangelical Christians!). I think the term has resonances both of stoic philoosphy AND (especially) Genesis 1 when used in John.
Great post! I have a short article on John’s logos and the history of Philosophy: https://infidels.org/library/modern/testing-robyn-faith-walsh-hypothesis-1/
Prof Ehrman,
My question is, did the Stoics appeal more to a natural explanation for some of the phenomena cited (“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.”), or did they appeal mostly to a more supernatural understanding for such occurrences? So I guess I am asking what appealed more their logos ‘their sense of reason.’
They would probably say that super-human forces caused these things to happen, but they would not be super-“natural” since the Logos was fully infused *in* nature, it was not transcendant from it.