The tradition Stoicism flourished during the Greek period of philosophy and was developed by Zeno of Citium. This tradition covers a wide range of philosophical subjects such as ethics that was related to the way one should spent one’s life, physics that combined both natural science as well as metaphysic and logic that include the discussions over today’s logic, epistemology, cognitive science and philosophy of language.
Ethics for the stoics was the name of practice that one should follow to live a good life. This way it can be said that ethics was not a theory for Stoics but an actual practice of life. They believed that human beings have natural propensities that should be morally developed. There is need of refinement of these propensities once the boy acquires the faculty of reason and should continue it throughout one’s life. There were four cardinal virtues for the Stoics. These included temperance, courage, justice and practical wisdom. The virtue of temperance included the sense of honor, self-control and courage contained the virtues of confidence, perseverance, and magnanimity that are necessary to achieve one’s personal goals. The notion of justice included kindness, sociability and piety to show the ever-extending concern of an individual for the other people, whereas the practical wisdom trains an individual for a good judgment and discretion to deal with the general events of life. This way, Stoics encouraged the practice of developing the natural concerns for their fellow beings that must follow the notion of justice.
For stoics the most important things in life was the development of necessary virtues. In this regard they encouraged the idea of apatheia which meant a sort of freedom from the passions. However, the Stoics did not use the passions in the ordinary sense which means emotions for us. They divided the passions into two categories; the healthy and unhealthy passions. In terms of healthy passion for Stoics it was believed that pain is the state when we fail to avoid something that we mistakenly judge as bad. In the similar way the notion of fear is the non-rational expectation of some bad or harmful thing. In the same way, craving is also the passion that one should avoid as it is the misjudgment of bad considered as good. For Stoics the passion of pleasure is also ignorable as it brings an irrational delight over something that does not deserve to be chosen.
Moreover, Stoics believed that practice of ethics should necessarily be supported with logic and physics. This can be understood in the context of the idea that for the Stoics philosophy was practice that encourages a good life following the necessary virtues that need the help of logic as well as physics. For them logic also included the today’s field of epistemology and for them physics was a sort of combination of metaphysics as well as natural science. Further, it can be explained that for them logic was the faculty of using reason about the external world whereas the physic referred to study that world with the help of reason. They put the condition of logic and physics as necessary for ethics because their tradition belonged to the naturalistic philosophy. The stoics treated all the things in this entire universe as the physical entities that also included the beings such as God and also soul. They identified everything with the rational principles that already exist in this universe. They believed that these are the same principles that are reflected in the human rationality as well. In order to explain more the relation between ethics, logic and physic the Stoics would use the analogy of egg. For them the shell of egg was logic, ethics was the white part of egg and yellows part was physics. This way, all these three parts supported each other and none was complete without the two other parts.
In the context of logic that also included epistemology the Stoics believed that that there is difference between opinion, apprehension and knowledge. An opinion may be weak as well as false and knowledge is something that is founded on the strong impression that even the reason cannot alter. Moreover, in the field of logic they argued that there were two types of propositions; sayables and assertibles. The sayables is the category of propositions that include questions, curses, oaths, imperatives as well as invocations. On the other hands, the assertible propositions are the self-complete sayables that human beings use to produce their statements. Further, for Stoics the validity of propositions was more important than their logical foundations. This was because they needed logic to protect the practice of ethics.
The next important branch of their interest was physics that for Stoics was the study of metaphysics, natural science as well as theology. In the context of natural science the Stoics argued that we should live following nature for which, first of all, it is necessary to make an understanding of nature. They believed in the corporeal existence of all that exists in this universe that also includes God and soul. However, for them there were some incorporeal being as well that included time and void. In the context of metaphysics, Stoics followed the traditions of determinism which means the previously existing causes determine the events and there is no possibility of changed effects. However, at the same time they also argued about the element of chance in the sense that such events are those about which human beings fail to understand their causes.
It can be concluded in the light of above arguments that for Stoics philosophy was the name of ethical practice that one needs to lead a good life; however ethic needs the help of logic and physics and without these two it is incomplete.
