Stoicism: The System

Logic, physics, ethics — the three parts the internet threw away, and whether the practice survives without them.

A course on the thought of The Stoics.

Course outline

1. Not a Subject: Philosophy as an Art — Before any of the doctrine, the thing the doctrine is for. Chrysippus called philosophy an art of medicine for the soul — and unlike the other medicine, it is one you can only ever practise on…
2. Three Parts, One Animal — Logic, physics, ethics. The Stoics gave three pictures of how they fit together, and quarrelled about which picture was safe — because the wrong one lets you walk off with a third of the system under…
3. Logic: Which Impressions Can Be Trusted — You were told to examine your impressions. Examine them by what? That question is logic, and without an answer the first discipline is an instruction with nothing inside it.
4. Physics: One World, and It Is Alive — The Stoic cosmos is a single living material thing, and God is not outside it. Everything the practice asks of you was resting on that — which is awkward, because it is not true.
5. Fate, and What Is Still Yours — Every cause depends on an earlier cause. So in what sense was anything ever up to you? The cylinder is Chrysippus's answer, and you should decide whether it works.
6. The Sage, and the Rest of Us — Everything the system was built to produce is one person, and the Stoics doubted he had ever existed. Chrysippus said the rest of us are drowning — and that being a cubit from the surface is no help…

Part of the Symposium course library.