Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Philosophies of Life (Part 7)

So we turn now in our lectures to consideration of the philosophies of life that were advanced in the ancient Greek world. And as I've already indicated, we're not going to stick strictly to the chronological order of philosophers. We're skipping Plato and Aristotle temporarily, just so you can group this particular subject in philosophy, the history of philosophy. Together. We've looked at the problem of matter and the problem of motion. Monism versus pluralism. Now, how should we live our lives? What philosophies of life do we find in the ancient world? And I'm going to give you seven of them in my outline. The first one that we'll consider is Sophism or the Sophist number A. The two sophists that we pay attention to, there were many, many of them, many teachers who would be in the sophist school of thought. But the two that are outstanding or well known would be Protagoras and Gorgias. Protagoras P R O T A G O R A S. And we can assign to Protagoras a date of flourishing of about 450 BC 450 BC and Gorgias G O R G I A S. We would assign a date of flourishing of about 425bc it's hard to break old habits given in these 25 year increments. 450 and 425. But sophism is not to be restricted to the lifetime of a Protagoras or a Gorgias. This is an outlook on life, an attitude toward life that goes way beyond these teachers. It's and their disciples and other sophistic teachers down to the time of Plato and thereafter. But you should be aware, as preparation for our discussion of Plato tomorrow, the Sophists were one of the main enemies or opponents that Plato felt he had to deal with in his philosophy. Plato felt he had to deal with and refute the outlook and turn people away from the outlook of the sophist. The sophist held to the relativity of truth in the case of Protagoras, or even worse, were completely skeptical about the truth in the case of Gorgias, the relativity of truth. And in the case of Gorgias he said there is no absolute truth and if there were, nobody could know it. So he was a skeptic. Is skepticism considered a cornerstone or is that a later development that I'm going to put skepticism on the board as a school of thought in itself? But the skeptical tendency is found in other schools of thought as well. Am I confusing you? Stoicism is an attitude toward life, and many people act stoically, even though they don't buy into the whole school known as stoicism. Likewise, there are skeptical characteristics in other philosophies, even though that may not be the school of thought that we now call skepticism. And here's one of the major differences for the sophist. They may have believed truth is relative or nobody can know for sure, but you still got to get along in this world. You have to learn to be successful in this life. And so what's the best way for living? If you're a sophistication, sophist is not going to say you need to learn the truth and then get your life in line with the truth. And that would be like a Christian absolutistic approach to life, right? Sophists will say, nobody knows. You know, we got all those theories out there, all those philosophers out there arguing with each other. Fine, well, what difference does it make? You know, nobody knows for sure. The truth is relative. What seems hot to one person seems cold to another. So, I mean, it's all relative. But how do you succeed in life? Protagoras said, you need to be your own man. You need to let yourself be an individual. He stressed individualism. And the notion that man is the measure of all things. This is Greek humanism and its purest man is the measure. Evaluate everything on the basis of your own way of seeing things and how it affects you. Now, for Protagoras, if you're going to get along well in this world, you should accept social customs. Learn to fit into your society. Why? Because self preservation is a law of nature. A law of nature. And you will preserve yourself. You'll do better if you get along with others. So learn to fit in. Gorgias says, we don't know anything for sure. So it doesn't make any difference how you debate with people or how you try to persuade the assembly to see things your way, or how you use persuasive techniques on individuals with whom you speak. The only thing that's important is that you win the argument. And so the sophistication would be traveling teachers who would educate men for life, help them to be urbane, learn to get along well, learn to be successful, and in particular, to speak well. They would teach techniques for winning debates, and according to the sophist, deception and manipulation were perfectly acceptable in logic or debate, and they were justifiable because they were accomplishing what you wanted to accomplish. Deception is acceptable if it Helps you get ahead. It's a law of nature, self preservation. So learn to get along in society, but learn to get your way in society by manipulating your hearer using rhetorical skill and tricks. Who is the modern counterpart of the sophist in American culture? Don't we have a whole vocational class of sophists known as lawyers today? Seriously, I mean, the lawyer who has a matter of principle and says it's the truth and only the truth that I conform to is a rare, rare individual. So for any Christian lawyers listening to the tape or anybody out there, pardon me, I don't mean to so over generalize that I insult you all. But as a class of men and as a vocation or function within our society, law has become basically sophistic. You know, I know lawyers and I've read stories of lawyers who would argue one side of a case and later in another one, argue the different side of the case, or even within one case, change their view and write for the opposing party and so forth. You know, it isn't important whether you get to the truth. What's important is that you have the best argument, you have the most persuasive argument. And that was the sophistic. Hey, no one knows for sure. So what's going to give us the best in this life? What's going to get us ahead? Let's learn to argue in a way that we accomplish our purposes. Sophism, that is the measure of all things, learn to get along and especially master rhetorical tricks and debate skills to accomplish it. We have a reflection of the ancient sophist in our own language. When we speak of somebody like a politician, for instance, who has given kind of a really wily answer to something, or we see somebody's line of thinking is fallacious, we'll sometimes call it a sophism. All right, a sophism. And that goes back to this cultural characteristic of the sophist that they wanted to just master, getting their way by tricks of rhetoric, techniques of debate. Okay, so there's one attitude and one philosophy of life. The sophist says, no one knows for sure. Take care of yourself. Learn to manipulate people to get what you want. Another school of thought that is similar to sophism but has its lifestyle differences would be cynicism. The best known cynics are three, although obviously there were many who taught and thought in this way. These three, I'm just going to summarize their views in one clump, but you should know them individually by name. Anthisthenes A n T H I S T H E N E S One more time. A N T H I S T H E N E S and this. His dates are 445 to 365. And so we'll give him a date of flourishing of about 400. Next in line chronologically. But perhaps the best known of all the cynics in all time is Diogenes, the great speaker, the orator Diogenes. D I O G E N E S Diogenes lived from 412 to 323 BC and I'm going to arbitrarily assign him a date of flourishing of 350. And then finally we have Crates of Thebes. Crates is. Is named C R A T E s sometimes called by my students Crates. And we'll give him a date of flourishing of 325 B.C. and again, these are just the three best known cynics. There were plenty of people who followed the cynic philosophy of life. Do we have anybody today that might? I don't mean a particular class, but do you know people who seem to have an attitude toward life that you might call cynical? This was something that the ancient Greek world saw as well. The cynics emphasized independence and self control, self reliance. You should be independent, you should control yourself. You should be able to rely upon yourself. You can't count on anything else out there. The cynic said, you got to count on yourself. The sole good for man is virtue. And virtue was identified with happiness. According to the cynic, happiness. And how is happiness to be found in an intelligent life devoted to morality? Personal contentment would come with independence from society and from the world round about you. You need to be liberated from the course of the world. Since you can't control the world around you, learn to control the inner world by reducing your desires to the barest necessities. Alright, that's the general outline. Specifically, how do we intelligently attain the virtue of happiness? How do we get inner peace and tranquility and liberate ourselves from the course of the world? Well, the general cynical answer was return to nature. Return to nature and repudiate all that civilization represents. Return to nature and repudiate all that civilization represents. Repudiates Civilization's refinements, its emphasis on the family, its view of learning. Get back to nature and defy the accepted codes of behavior in society. Get back to nature and defy the accepted codes of society. Do we have any social movement in the last 30 years? Let's say that might itself be a Representation of the system, cynical philosophy of life. Get back to nature. Defy social mores, depend on yourself. Sound like the hippies of the 60s, maybe Mother Earth catalog time. Why were the cynics called cynics actually? The word kainos in Greek means dog. Why were they called the dogs or the dog like people, dog like philosophers? Because they said that dogs copulate in the open. Society says you shouldn't do that, human beings shouldn't. And so they promoted the idea that open sexual relations, copulation in the open, just like dogs, kainos was acceptable. That isn't to say that they actually did did that. Perhaps some did, but it was a point that was being made. Don't accept the mores of civilization. Live naturally. How do animals live in nature? The dogs copulate openly. And so they came to be called the dog like ones, the cynics. The difference between the cynics and the hippies of today have already seen that they alike want to return to nature and defy the mores of civilization. The difference between them is that some of the cynics taught that pleasure should be avoided. Crates of Thebes, I've already given you his dates. Crates said, pleasures is going to get you into trouble. What you need, the good life is a life of simplicity and self control. And so Krate had a saying for which he became famous. He said, happiness is poverty. Well, then maybe they aren't so different from the hippies in that sense. The hippies wanted to repudiate money, materialism. Poverty is something which, you know, was to be accepted, maybe even made a virtue. However, the hippies did not say they wanted to avoid pleasure. Obviously, there was a great deal of sexual excess and drug use in the hippie movement that would not have fit into the cynical philosophy. The cynics said, you should adjust to adversity and affliction, affliction in your life with an attitude of passive indifference. Passive indifference. If you didn't get that promotion at work, it makes no difference. Lay back, don't worry, float downstream, be happy. They may not have used drugs, but they were trying to accomplish what drugs try to accomplish for hippies too, right? It's like, hey, your parents are hassling you, so light up a joint, right? Relax, mellow out, turn off your mind, float downstream. I don't want to overdo these comparisons, but the cynics, though they didn't endorse the use of drugs or sexual promiscuity, the cynics said, that's really the way you take care of opposition and the things out there that make you unhappy is just kind of lay back from it and be passive, fatalistically accept your lot in life. And that's what the Cynics will have in common with the Stoics, what they will have in common with the Stoics. When we come to the Stoics in just a moment, I'm going to try to keep a little bit of historical order by making the next school of thought we look at skepticism. It's hard to put defining dates on skepticism because as with all of these, this is an attitude toward life, a philosophy of life that pervades the Greek world. Many people would have followed skeptical thinking. But I will take as the best known skeptic, Pyro P Y R R H O Pyro, who lived from 365 to 275 BC. 365 to 275 BC. So we'll give him a date of flourishing of 325. But we have skepticism way past the days of Plato and Aristotle, down into the days of Cicero and the Roman Empire and so forth. So don't get the wrong idea. I'm just taking you back to the earliest and best known skeptic. And really, what more do we need to say? The skeptic says, nobody can know anything for sure. Now what if you were to come along and say, now wait a minute, Mr. Skeptic, if you want to study with the brilliant philosophers of our day, go study with Anaxagoras or study with Pythagoras or study with Plato or study with Aristotle. Later names. But wouldn't the skeptic be able to turn that around and say, that's my very point. You have all these brilliant men. There are all these guys that are so intellectual and smart. You got this Heraclitus, and he's so smart, he stands above the masses and so forth. And Parmenides, master of logic and so forth. But they all come to different conclusions. Is reality one? Is reality many? Is it water? Is it air? Is it a pheiron? Is it fire? Is there motion? Is there nothing but motion? Is it roots? Is it seeds? Is it Adams? The skeptic, you see, looks out there and he says, no, I'm not going to go study philosophy because it's the philosophers who convince me that nobody knows anything. How do they know? What's that? How do they know? Okay, well, skepticism has built into it its own self contradiction, the assertion that the skeptic knows that nobody knows. Okay, so skepticism is not great. As a philosopher because it has an internal contradiction. You all have that in your notes. The skeptic has got to at least be absolute about this one thing, that nothing is absolute. I know that. Nobody knows. But even though it has that intellectual error built right into the system, I think you all realize because you've probably seen people in this world, it doesn't stop people from having that as a philosophy of life. They still have that attitude. In fact, when I have been from a Christian standpoint, arguing the Christian worldview with people that are more or less skeptics, and you point out to them skepticism, self refuting, they'll even blow that off and say, well, you don't know that for sure either. No one can know anything for sure. So you can't know what you've been saying to me for sure, because you can't prove to me your Christian point of view. So I don't have to accept the absoluteness of your logic either. Now I know how to deal with that. Apologetically and evangelistically. You have to say, now wait a minute. The very things you've just asserted, that you've just asserted cannot be known if what you've just asserted is true. So it's just really a repeat of the same problem when he says that. But you need to be aware that people still live that way. They still say, well, I just don't think anybody knows anything. It's a great excuse for intellectual laziness. Of course, you don't have to strive after the truth if you believe it's not to be attained by anybody. And nor does anyone have to worry about criticism of their lifestyle or anybody else's. That's a great social benefit to skepticism. I see that all the time. Just last night I was watching a program where they were debating pro and con rights for homosexuals in our culture. You know, and both sides, the conservative and the liberal, neither one of them wanted to say that they wanted to discriminate against homosexuals or practice, you know, that kind of, you know, attitude. Nobody wants to have to stand up in our society and say there's an absolute right and wrong that makes you very unpopular. Why? Because people want to say, well, it may not be my choice, but that's that person's choice. But who am I to say? No one knows for sure. Skepticism is an excuse for intellectual laziness and it's great for social harmony in one sense. Whereas you can turn that around. If a person is truly skeptical, then they can't say that Hitler and rapists and other abusers of Humanity are wrong. No one knows for sure. So to the skeptic you can say, you have no right to tell me it's wrong for me to steal from you, or to kill you, or to rape you, or whatever it may be. It looks like an advantage, but it can be turned to a disadvantage. However, I'm just appealing to you. You know that in our day and age there are a lot of people that embodied the attitude of skepticism. Everything's relative. No one knows anything for sure. Another attitude of life in the ancient world is that of epicureanism. Wait a minute, I got this out of order. Cyrenaic hedonism. The outline then becomes hedonism, and it's called Cyrenaic hedonism because this particular approach to pleasure as the final good comes from the area of Cyrene. That's why it's called Cyrenaic hedonism. That's Aristippus, that is best known for the development of this thinking. It A R I S T I P P U S Aristippus of Cyrene, whose dates are approximately 355 to 435. And so we will give him a date of flourishing of 400. So you have certain of the cynics and the hedonists flourishing at the same time. But again, hedonism is something that goes for ages and ages. We even have hedonists in our day and age. According to Aristippus, the virtuous man knows how to achieve happiness. Happiness is the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling your physical appetite. There's a real simple philosophy. You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get. Happiness is the satisfaction that comes from your physical appetites being fulfilled. Plenty of sex, drinking, eating, sleep, monetary advantage, whatever it may be. Pleasure is man's highest attainable good. And pleasure, according to Aristippus, is never evil. If a man is asked, why did you do that? He says, because it felt good. That can never be an answer. That is wrong. If it really did feel good to do it, then it could not be evident. And all pleasure, according to Aristippus, is sensual in nature. All pleasure is physical. And the only difference between pleasures is quantitative, that is the degree of sensual pleasure that is given. There's no qualitative difference between pleasures. It's not as though there are higher pleasures and lower pleasures. Remember Democritus? Democritus said there's the coarse atoms and the refined atoms. True happiness comes not through sensual pleasure, but through intellectual pursuits. That's what Democritus said. Aristippus said, ah, forget it. The only pleasure is sensual and the only difference between pleasures is quantitative. The only reason that we think some pleasures are wrong is because of color customs that have been imposed on us. But as Aristippus realized, different cultures have different customs. And so some cultures condemn one thing, other cultures condemn another. It's all very relative. Aristippus said, we only know our sensations. We don't know the objects of cause sensation. I can't tell you what the nature of the real world is. All I can tell you is how it feels to me. I can only tell you my sensations. For anything to count as knowledge, he said, it had to be useful. Knowledge is not going to be of some abstract speculative truth like you philosophers look for. Knowledge has got to be useful to see man in attaining happiness. And yet for all of this quantitative push for sensual pleasure, Aristippus did think that man needed to master his pleasures. Now why is that if we don't master our pleasures, they end up giving us grief rather than pleasure? Think about it. If you, if you go out partying all night, you get drunk, take drugs, engage in sexual licentiousness, then the next day, and perhaps down the line you pay the price for your excess, don't you? You have a hangover, you have diseases, sexually transmitted diseases. You have other problems that are not comfortable. So master your pleasures to maximize pleasure and not let pleasure get you down. What's the best way to master your pleasures according to Hegesias? H E G. You'll be calling all the shots then. I just want to throw that in there to point out to you that a philosophy that sense pleasure is the finest, the highest value can intellectually lead to an affirmation of suicide. As a philosophy of life in our day and age we do have people who promote suicide as taking control of your life. But usually hedonists in our day are more like Aristippus. And what they teach is if it feels good, do it. And there can't be anything wrong with sensual pleasure of any sort. That's the hedonistic philosophy. Okay, we turn from Cyrenaic hedonism represented by Aristippus to Epicureanism. Epicureanism is named after. After Epicurus, the philosopher. That should be obvious enough. Epicurus lived from approximately 341 to 370 BC and I will assign him then a date of flourishing of 300. 341 to 270, 341 to 270. So I'm taking the year 300 as a year of flourishing for him. Epicureanism. In our contemporary culture, that term epicureanism is used as synonymous with hedonism, isn't it? To lead a life of Epicurean delight is to seek sensual pleasure. Pleasure. And that is unfortunate because that gives you the wrong idea about the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicurus was a hedonist and he was an atomist. Remember back when I introduced Democritus as the key atomist? I said other well known atomists included Epicurus because Epicurus had a materialistic outlook on life, atoms falling through space. He said that man's highest good is not going to be spiritual or religious, so forth. It's going to be pleasure. However, for Epicurus, for Epicurus there's a difference within pleasures. There's a qualitative difference between intellectual pleasure and sensual pleasure. For instance, Where Aristippus the hedonist said, go for all the gusto you can. Epicurus said, avoid all the pain that you can and maximize the higher pleasures, the intellectual pursuits. So Epicureanism is not really a life of excess as we understand it today. It's a life of regulated, measured physical pleasure to avoid pain and maximizing contemplation and intellect. That's what Epicurus pushed, which of course is true to his master Democritus as well. If you remember the two types of pleasure that Democritus identified, we should seek pleasant emotions and motions and feelings within our bodies. And so that means you don't get drunk because getting drunk leads to terrible hangover and headache. That's not pleasant. Avoid pain. So you want pleasure, but you want a pleasure that helps you to avoid pain. So instead of getting drunk, have a bottle of wine and some cheese and discussion, intellectual discussion with friends. Epicurus was not a party animal. Epicurus said, have some friends over, eat moderately little cheese, model wine and have a good discussion and avoid suffering. Just try to minimize the amount of distress and pain that comes into your life. Now I can't do this because of the constraints that we have in our class. I can't do this with every single philosopher. But I'm going to take a little bit longer with Epicurus and try to give a Christian apologetical response to Epicurus because I want you to learn how to do Christian analysis of these people as we go along. I've chosen Epicurus out of all the people that we are looking at today and yesterday, because I think he is the most like modern secular thought in our own day and age. So I trust that this little discussion will be helpful to you, not just for historical information, but for modern application as well. Epicurus, I said, was an atomist. He followed Democritus in his view of reality and knowledge, and so his metaphysic was atomistic. The world is material that is broken down into undividable bits. Atoms, uncuttable. An infinite number of uncuttable little bits of matter. Even the gods are naturalized. The gods are made up of atoms, refined fire, atoms as well. As for his epistemology, Epicurus said, all knowledge is perceptual. What we know, we know because of our observations and our experience of the world. And in his ethic, as I've already told you now, he is a qualitative hedonist that stands over against Aristippus, who was a quantitative hedonist. Anyway. For Epicurus, quality of pleasure is important, and mental pleasure is higher than physical pleasure. Avoid pain, seek the simple bodily pleasures. And above all, he said, death is nothing to worry about. Death is nothing to give you mental or emotional distress. It's nothing to worry about. What do we as Christians say to a philosophy that is optimistic and materialistic, that says everything that you know is based on observation, and so live a life of pleasure, but make sure it's not pleasures that are going to ruin you and bring you pain, and don't worry about death? You know, when I put that all together, doesn't that sound extremely modern? Isn't that what most unbelievers in our culture today would say about reality, how we know what we know and how we should live our lives? Let's begin with his epistemology. He says everything you know, you know on the basis of observation. Well, we have to ask, how does he know that? How does he know that all knowledge is based on observation? Is that something which he perceived or observed? Well, if he didn't know it on the basis of observation, and he says all knowledge is observational, then he can't know what he says he knows. Did I go too fast in that? If all knowledge is perceptual, but he can't prove from perception that all knowledge is perceptual, then he can't, on his own presuppositions, cannot know that all knowledge is. Is perceptual. And how does he know things about atoms which are too small to be perceived? How does he know that all atoms are eternal? Has he been around long enough to perceive that he can't perceive the atoms, much less has he been here or has anybody been here here long enough to say that they are eternal. And so here's a man in his theory of knowledge who utterly contradicts himself. He cannot know his most basic assumptions. His own philosophy rules out his ability to know that all knowledge is perceptual, rules out his ability to know that there are atoms and that they are eternal. Let's look at his metaphysical commitment. He says that everything is material. Even the gods are material. Everything's made up of physical atoms. Well, if everything's made up of physical atoms, why should I trust what my brain leads me to think or say? That's just atoms in motion. It's not a matter of motion. My ability to understand or freely investigate and choose the truth. I just have to say and think what my brain makes me say and think. If everything's made up of matter, then we don't need to trust our brains at all. Moreover, how can man have free will? How can there be any choices if we're nothing more but matter and motion subject to the laws of atomic physics? Now, would you like to know how Epicurus justified free will? He had a strange view. He said everything is atoms that are falling through space. The atoms are falling through space, and everything's made up of these atoms falling through space. Okay, well, then how do men have free will if we're just material things subject to the laws of physics? Falling through space. According to Epicurus, there was a swerve in one of the atoms. All the atoms were falling through space, and one of the atoms swerved. And what happened is that set off a chain response, chain reaction. That one atom hit another, hit another, hit another, hit another. And that's where free will is. It comes from that irrational swerve of the one atom that sets things out of order. Does that seem like an adequate answer to anybody in the room? What's the next question going to be? Even if that does account for why I don't do everything exactly the same, that I have free will to choose to eat a burrito rather than a taco today, because the atoms that make me up have a swerve in them. And so I say burrito instead of taco when I order my lunch. Even if that made sense in itself, we have to ask the original question, what made that atom swerve? And so when you're dealing with materialists in our day as well as in Epicurus, they remember they cannot account for man's freedom and dignity apart from cheesy Explanations like, well, there was a swerve in the atoms. Yeah, and what caused that? Let's look at his ethic. Finally. He's a qualitative hedonist. Men should seek pleasure. How does he prove that they ought to seek pleasure? It's one thing to say that they do. I mean, if that's true, I'm not sure that everybody does seek pleasure. But even if it is true that everybody seeks pleasure, how does he prove that they ought to seek pleasure? We can ask why friendship and altruism have the place that they do in Epicurus system. Isn't he being arbitrary when he chooses friendship and altruism? Couldn't somebody else say, well, my pleasure is found in being alone and not being outgoing and helping other people, but living for myself. Moreover, without a justification of free will, how is it that anybody chooses to avoid pain, to pursue pleasure, to pursue refined pleasures at all? There aren't any choices, and so there can't be any ethical evaluation. Given the metaphysical views of Epicurus. Since man is nothing but matter in motion, atoms falling through space, man doesn't have free will, apart from this cheesy swerving of the atoms. And without free will, how do we choose anything? Moreover, how can mental pleasures be viewed as higher than bodily pleasures? If, on the view of Epicurus and Democritus, the mind is itself made up of atoms? Okay, so they're refined atoms. So they're fire atoms. Even if we buy into that, why should fire atoms, refined atoms, be more valuable from an ethical or moral point of view than coarse bodily atoms? That too is arbitrary. If all knowledge is perceptual, how does Epicurus know that there's no life after death? Did he perceive that there's no life after death? Did someone die and come back and tell us of that there's no life after death? You see how internally absurd it is to say everything we know is based on experience, so you don't have to worry about death. So these are some of the problems with the ethic of Epicurus. Now, if we can undermine, and I've done this, what, maybe five or ten minutes, very simply, we can undermine mind, his view of reality, his view of how we know what we know and how we live our lives. I hope that gives you some confidence as Christians, when you study philosophy, you have nothing to be intimidated by. If you listen to what these men are saying, they will finally hang themselves. They will give you the rope by which you can intellectually hang them. Epicurus is just one, I think, startling example of that. Of the absurdity and foolishness of non Christian thought. And we're going to move on now in our outline. I chose Epicurus because I think he's so much a modern man in his outlook. We've considered the sophist, lawyers of that day, the cynics, the hippies of that day, the skeptics of that day, skepticism, the grab for all the gusto you can get, people of that day, the hedonists. And now Epicurus and the sophisticated hedonism, the qualitative hedonism of that day. We have two more to look at. F on the outline is Stoicism. Stoicism is a much more noble philosophy and attitude, our philosophy of life, than the hedonists like Aristippus or Epicurus. Much more noble than the sophist and the skeptics who say, hey, nobody can know for sure, so just take advantage of people, what have you. Stoicism is a philosophy that emphasizes duty, self control, indifference to pain and passion. The most famous Stoics. This was a very popular school of thought and produced a number of scholars and famous writers. And so I'm going to give you a list of them real quickly here. Zeno. Zeno, not the Zeno. We've already looked at another Zeno. The stoic lived from 340 to 265 BC. And so we will assign him a date of flourishing of 300, which is the same general date we've assigned to Epicurus. Cleantheus. Cleanthes C l e a n t h e s date of flourishing 250 BC. You want to put down in your notes that Cleanthes is quoted in the Bible in Acts 17 when Paul goes to Athens and he says, even as some of your own poetry poets have said. He quotes a quatrain from Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher. Chrysippus C h r y s I p p u s Date of flourishing of 230 panateus P A n a e t I u s 150. Antipater a n t I p a t e r Antipater Antipater and I don't have a data flourishing for him. Arius Didymus A r I u s d I d y mus Didymus date flourishing of 25 BC. Seneca. Seneca, the Roman writer. Date of flourishing 50 AD 50 AD notice Epictetus, perhaps the best known Stoic of the later period. E p I c t e t u s Epictetus, the most articulate exponent of Stoic morality. And he is a contemporary of the New Testament, if I recall. Right. I need to look that up. And then finally, Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman emperor. That may surprise you. The one, one of the emperors was an intellect. Marcus Aurelius flourished about 150 A.D. was a stoic philosopher as well. Stoicism developed out of Cynicism. If you go back to your notes on Cynicism, you notice that I said that they had in common with the Stoics the idea that you, you should adjust to adversity in this world with an attitude of passive indifference. Fatalistically accept your lot in this world. You're trying to get home to go to a concert and you want to get home by 5:30, but you're out there on the freeways and it's bumper to bumper traffic. Adjust to adversity, adjust to affliction with passive indifference. If you think about it, there's a certain truth to that, right? As long as you keep saying, I gotta get there, I gotta get there, then your blood pressure goes up, you get angry, you honk your horn, whatever, cut people off. Then you get all this turmoil in your life and yet you can't fight it. Cars are in the way. You're just not gonna make it home by 5:30. You're not gonna get to the concert on time. But what if you, you can't adjust outward circumstances. So the Cynics and the Stoics said, adjust yourself inside. Say, I don't need to get to the concert on time, it's okay. And now all of a sudden you can sit there in traffic, listen to your radio and kind of mellow out. It's no problem. The Cynics and the Stoics share that idea that you adjust to adversity by changing your internal feelings and desires. Attain passive intelligence. It really makes no difference what happens. Everything's fine, Just smile and be happy. It's okay. Stoicism develops out of cynicism, and that's the common thesis or common principle that they share passive indifference to adversity, as you can see from the dates I that I've given you. For the Stoics, Stoicism runs for a long period of time. And in fact, if we did a special study of Stoicism, we would really break it down into the earlier, middle and later stoa. The word stoa means porch. And they got their name because they met at a porch, particularly well known porch. And so people referred to those philosophers as the Stoic, the porch meeting philosophers, the Epicureans, by the way, were known for meeting in a garden. So they were the philosophers of the garden. You have those of the Stoa and of the garden, the Stoics and the Epicurus. Okay, what does Stoic philosophy teach? Basically, self control and indifference to worldly affairs. Indifference to worldly affairs. Evil is a failure to let reason control your passions. According to the Stoics, there was a logos that permeates nature and controls everything that happens. There is a reason, a logos that pervades nature and controls what happens there. Where did they get that idea? Which philosopher did we learn about this morning that taught that there was a logos that governs or characterizes the natural world of flux and changes? Heraclitus. Heraclitus had this embryonic idea of a natural law. With the Stoics, it's much further developed. There is a law of nature, a logos that controls everything that takes place. And virtue for man amounts to living in accordance with nature, getting in tune with reason there, making sure that you live in such a way and think in such a way and have attitudes which harmonize with the logos of all things, fit into the flow of things. Or if you will, it is an accurate summary of the Stoic philosophy of life. Go with the flow. The logos makes the world what it is. Get in tune with the logos. Get in tune with reason. So evil is a failure to let reason control your passions. When your passions fight against reason, you're fighting against the nature of things. The Stoics said, don't do that. Man is to conquer the world by first overcoming, and only by overcoming his in pulses, his internal impulses. Get in touch with yourself. Get control of yourself. Let reason control your passions. And that's how you conquer the world. You conquer the world by conquering yourself. That means you show indifference, utter indifference to pleasure and to pain. If you are utterly indifferent to pleasure and pain, external things cannot control you any longer. If you are utterly indifferent, then passion will not carry you away. You'll fit into the flow of things. You'll be very rational. The world outside cannot control you or distress you. And so to be Stoic has come to mean and properly, in terms of that philosophy, to have kind of like a soldier's attitude toward life. Stiff upper lip, nothing bothers you. Pleasure doesn't pull you aside. Pain doesn't pull you aside. You just go with the flow. Whatever is, is right. You fit in. As you can imagine why the Roman emperors loved that philosophy, because that creates a very compliant people, right? And especially a class of people, soldiers that will suffer pain will not be pulled aside by passion and pleasure, and will simply do their duty. Stoicism was a philosophy that seemed noble, that supported duty and did not, like the hedonists, seek pleasure and excess, and yet was not like the skeptics in this office saying, no one knows. You're to use reason, you're to get in tune with reason, you're to get in tune with the flow of reason or logos in the natural world. Do we have people that exemplify the Stoic philosophy of life in our day and age, do you think? People who say we need to have proper lives and not live by passion, be good citizens and so forth, fit in with our duties, stiff upper lip and all that? Yeah. Be stoic about it. Sometimes we're told that if you're going to have an operation, it's going to hurt a little bit. Be stoic now. Stiff upper lip. Don't let pain bother you, but don't be pulled aside by pleasure. Yeah, I think we have people that still. That's why I've made this a separate part of the outline, and I've wanted it on one separate tape in the lectures. These philosophies of life, these attitudes toward life and the ethics that go with it, how we should live our lives are very common in our own day and age. We have people that have a sophistic approach to things. No one knows for sure. So you manipulate and get what's best for you. We have people who are cynics, people who are, let's get back to nature, not worry about civil mores or civilization. We have those who are skeptical, nobody knows for sure. We have people who seek pleasure, the party animals. We have the Epicureans, as we've talked about at some length. And we have those who want to teach a kind of natural morality not tied to God, not tied to obligation to his law, or trying to emulate his character. But just be noble, be controlled, control yourself inside, and that way you'll be the master of the world outside. It's all very modern. I don't know if you all feel the same thrust of it as I do, but it's amazing to me there's only so many variations or possibilities when it comes to how you look at this world and how you live your life. And we're seeing a pretty good summary of them all here in the ancient Greek world. There's one more G on our outline, the last one that we'll mention very briefly in closing today. The Eclectics. The Eclectics. What is Eclectic philosophy? It's the fruit salad philosophy. Now, you won't forget what it is, right? Eclecticism takes a little bit from everybody according to what seems good to you. The eclectic here's, you know, Democritus and here's Pythagoras and here's Parmenides and Heraclitus and Plato and Aristotle and all these guys. And he says, I can't buy into any one school of thought. I'll take a little bit from this that seems good, and a little bit from that that seems good. And that doesn't mean that he's formulated a new basic principle or a system of thought. He just has fruit salad. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, throws it together, mixes it up, and that's his philosophy of life. Perhaps the best known illustration of eclectic philosophy was Cicero, the Roman orator, whose dates were 106 to 43 BC 106 to 43 BC contemporary of Julius Caesar. But I'll give him a date of flourishing for your outline of 75. We'll take 75 BC as his date of flourishing. Cicero was quite an orator. He expressed things very well. He was creative, insightful, but he didn't buy into any one philosophy. He took some Stoicism, he took some Epicureanism, he took some Platonism. And there's no one principle that runs through all of it that ties it together. That, of course, is the problem with so many people in our own day and age. They just take a little bit of all these different philosophies of life and they have no consistency or system to their thinking or their philosophy.