Luhtala (5.6.0) On the Origin of Syntactical Description in Stoic Logic, “[introductory material on Stoic Physics]”, summary

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. It redoes this entry. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Paragraph enumerations are also my own, but they follow the paragraph breaks in the text. Please forgive my distracting typos, as proofreading is incomplete.]

Summary of

Anneli Luhtala

 

On the Origin of Syntactical Description in Stoic Logic

 

Ch.5 The Stoics

 

5.5 Stoic Logic

 

5.6

Stoic Physics

 

5.6.0

[introductory material on Stoic Physics]

 

 

 

 

Brief summary:

In Stoic ontology, the broadest category is ‘something’ (τί, quiddam), and it is composed of two subcategories, corporeal bodies (σώματα) and incorporeals (ἀσώματα). A corporeal body is defined as what can act and undergo action. And causality between bodies involves their physical contact. The soul, sensations, virtues and qualities, and activities like walking and dancing are all corporeal bodies, because they interact causally with other corporeal bodies. In fact, even the divine, rational mover and source of all activity is corporeal. Only corporeals are said to properly exist, while incorporeals are said to subsist (ὑπάρχειν). Sextus Empiricus gives four types of incorporeals, and it is taken to be the standard list: void (κενὸν), place (τόπον), time (χρόνον) and sayable (λεκτόν). It is notable that this and other, non-canonical lists include linguistic items. [Cleomedes: time (Χρόνος), surface (Ἐπιφάνεια), sayable (Λεκτέον) and void (κενὸν). Plutarch: time (χρόνον), predicate (κατηγόρημα), proposition (ἀξίωμα), connection (συνημμένον), and combination (συμπεπλεγμένον).]

 

 

 

Summary

 

5.6.0.1

[Stoic physics is materialist. For them, only corporeal bodies (σώματα) exist. A corporeal body is defined as what can act and undergo action, and only corporeal bodies have this feature. Causality involves physical contact between corporeal bodies. The soul, sensations, virtues and qualities, and activities like walking and dancing all interact causally with corporeal bodies. Thus all these various things are also corporeal bodies. Even the divine, rational mover and source of all activity is corporeal.]

 

Stoic physics was materialist, and in fact their materialism pervaded throughout all the other domains of their philosophy (117). The main principle of Stoic materialism is that “the only things that really exist are material bodies (σώματα)” (117). Luhtala explains that the Stoics defined bodies “primarily ... in terms of their capacity to act and undergo action,” and they excluded this property of all other things (117). The Stoics considered not simply physical objects as corporeal, but they also included a wide variety of other things, including the soul, sensations, virtues and qualities, and activities like walking and dancing (117). The reasoning for considering these things as bodies, it seems, is that they interact with bodies. This is because they understood all causation as involving physical contact. Even “the ultimate source of all activity, the divine, rational mover, was also understood as corporeal” (117).

A materialistic view of causality is a cornerstone of Stoic physics and it is a principle which pervades all domains of Stoic philosophy. Its most central tenet is that the only things that really exist are material bodies (σώματα). Bodies are primarily defined in terms of their capacity to act and undergo action. The Stoics further argued that only bodies can act and be acted upon. This strikingly original claim is based on a very wide interpretation of corporeality according to which such things as the soul, sensations, virtues and qualities, and even such activities as walking and dancing are corporeal. By claiming that these notions are bodies because they can interact with bodies, the Stoics defended a theory of causation whose only source is physical contact. The ultimate source of all activity, the divine, rational mover, was also understood as corporeal.

(117)

 

 

 

5.6.0.2

[Incorporeals (ἀσώματα) are said to not exist properly but rather to subsist (ὑπάρχειν). Sextus Empiricus lists four, and this list is taken to be the standard one: void (κενὸν), place (τόπον), time (χρόνον) and sayable (λεκτόν). There are other lists. Cleomedes has four: time (Χρόνος), surface (Ἐπιφάνεια), sayable (Λεκτέον) and void (κενὸν). And Plutarch lists five: time (χρόνον), predicate (κατηγόρημα), proposition (ἀξίωμα), connection (συνημμένον), and combination (συμπεπλεγμένον). It is notable how all three lists include linguistic items.]

 

But even though only corporeal things really exist, there are also incorporeals (ἀσώματα), “that are said not to exist properly. Instead, they are said to subsist (ὑπάρχειν)” (117). Sextus Empiricus lists the four incorporeals as “void [κενὸν], place [τόπον], time [χρόνον] and λεκτόν (‘sayable’) (Adv. math. X,218 = SVF 2.331).²²² [222. For the Stoic ontological stemma, see e.g. Long/Sedley (1987: 163) and page 85.]” (Luhtala 117. Bracketed insertions are mine and are based on guesses made from the online text and the 1914 Opera edition). Cleomedes gives a slightly different list: “time [Χρόνος], surface [Ἐπιφάνεια], λεκτόν (‘sayable’) [Λεκτέον] and void [κενὸν] (Met. I,1,16,2-3)” (117. Bracketed insertions are mine and are based on guesses made from archive.org text). Plutarch lists five: “time [χρόνον], κατηγόρημα [predicate], ἀξίωμα [axiom], συνημμένον [connection], and συμπεπλεγμέένον [combination] (De comm. not. 30, see Duhot 1991: 92ff)” (Luhtala 117. Bracketed insertions are mine and were made by comparing the English 1878 edition, p.404, and the Greek 1895 edition, p.328.] Luhtala notes how the Stoic list of incorporeals includes linguistic things:

What is extraordinary about these lists is that they contain linguistic items such as λεκτόν (‘sayable’), κατηγόρημα (‘predicate’) and ἀξίωμα (‘proposition’) alongside such traditional items of physical theories as time, place and void.²⁰³

(117)

203. Only these late sources present the four Stoic incorporeals as a unity, which perhaps fails to do justice to the different origins of these items. Diogenes Laertius discusses only traditional items of physical theories in his exposition of Stoic physics, without mentioning the notion of λεκτόν (‘sayable’).

(117)

 

 

5.6.0.3

[Corporeals and incorporeals compose the highest Stoic ontological category of ‘something’ (τί, quiddam).]

 

[Recall the chart from section 5.5.3.13 (table 1).

We see that corporeals and incorporeals compose the highest ontological category.]

Together incorporeals and corporeals make up what is the highest category in Stoic ontological hierarchy, namely the so-called something (τί, quiddam) (Sen. Ep. 58, 12-15 = SVF 2.33 2; Alexander In Ar. top. IV,301,1 9-25 = SVF 2.329).

 

 

 

 

From:

Luhtala, Anneli. 2000. On the Origin of Syntactical Description in Stoic Logic. Münster: Nodus.

 

 

 

Other texts, cited by Luhtala:

 

Alexander of Aphrodisias: In Aristotelis Topicorum libros octo commentaria. GA G. II.2. Ed. by Maximilianus Wallies. Berlin: Reimer 1891.

 

[Note, for Cleomedes, “Met.” I did not see something for it in the Bibliography, but perhaps it is Κυκλικὴ Θεωρία Μετεώρων / On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies.]

[Note, for “Duhot 1991”, I did not see it in the bibliography. It only lists for this author:
Duhot, Jean-Joel. 1989. La conception stoicienne de la causalité. Librairie philosophique. Paris: Vrin.
I see that he has an article on this topic from 1991:
Duhot, Jean-Joel. 1991. “Y a-t-il des catégories stoïciennes?” Revue internationale de philosophie 178: 220–244.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23949536
But the page numbers here are outside the ones Luhtala cites. And I do not now have access to the 1989 text to check if that might be the intended citation.]

Long, Anthony A. / Sedley, David N. 1987. The Hellenistic philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Plutarch: De Stoicis repugnantiis and De communibus notitiis contra Stoicos in Plutarchi Moralia V.1 .2. Ed. by Ma Pohlenz. Leipzig: Teubner 1972.

Sextus Empiricus: Adversus Mathematicos I-XI. Ed. with an English translation by Robert G. Bury. 4 vols. The Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press 1949.

Another version available online:
https://archive.org/details/sextiempiriciope12sext
Online text transcription at:
http://socratics.daphnet.org
[specifically here]

Seneca: Ad Lucilium epistulae morales. Ed. by Leighton D. Reynolds. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1965.

SVF: Stoicorum veterum fragmenta I-III. Ed. Iohannes von Arnim. Leipzig: Teubner 1905-24.



Texts I cite:

Cleomedes. Cleomedis de motu circulari corporum coelestium libri duo.

Online text available at
https://archive.org/details/Cleomedes-DeMotuCirculari-TheHeavens

Plutarch. 1895. Moralia, volume 6. Leipzig: Teubner.

PDF available online at:
https://archive.org/details/moralia06plut

Plutarch. 1878. Morals, volume 4. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.

PDF available online at:
https://archive.org/details/plutarchsmorals04plut

Sextus Empiricus. 1914. Sexti Empirici Opera. Vol. 2, Adversus Dogmaticos, libros quinque (Adv. Mathem. VII-XI) continens, edited by Hermannus Mutschmann. Lipsiae [Leipzig]: Teubneri [Teubner]. Available online:

https://archive.org/details/sextiempiriciope12sext
Online text transcription at:
http://socratics.daphnet.org
[specifically here]

This entry redoes the one here, made a while ago:
http://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2009/05/stoic-logic-and-semantics-stoic-physics.html


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