Chrysippus on nature and soul in animals

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 97-108

  Ju, Anna Eunyoung ^a  

^a CHRIST S COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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Indexed keywords

EID: 51249141403     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838807000080     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. On Hierocles, Elementa ethica 1.1-33 see A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley (edd.), The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1987), 1.320-1
2. G. Bastianini and A. A. Long (edd.), 'Hierocles', Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici Greci e Latini (CPF) (Florence, 1992), 1.368-451
3. J. B. Gould, The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Leiden, 1970), 102
4. D. E. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (Columbus, OH, 1977), 162
5. B. Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford, 1985), 25-9
6. There is close to a scholarly consensus that the section of Sextus 9.81-5 (and even the whole section 9.78-85) has a Posidonian source. Cf. D. N. Sedley, 'Sextus Empiricus and the Atomist criteria of truth', Elenchos 13 (1992), 19-56, at 31, n. 24
7. And the Stoic concept of nature that surfaces in the Sextus passage concurs with that at Diog. Laert. 7.86 (see n. 6). L. Edelstein, 'The philosophical system of Posidonius', AJPh 57 (1936), 286-325, at 296 attributes the Diogenes passage to 'the general Stoic dogma', contrasting it with Posidonius, because he 'must have understood these [soul's appetitive and passionate] faculties in the Platonic sense', and 'must therefore have ascribed to plants at least the appetitive soul, desire and sensation'. But where and how, exactly, did Posidonius not follow the general Stoic dogma about nature? Where did he ascribe to plants those psychic faculties in the Platonic sense? With the Sextus passage in mind, we can see that Posidonius followed his predecessors by holding to the continuation of nature in animals, and defined plants as soulless living beings sustained by nature only. No evidence supports Edelstein's interpretation
8. H. von Arnim (ed.), Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1903-24), 2.235-6, prints Calcidius, In Pl. Tim. 220 (quoted at n. 9) as the first of the fragments that belong to Chrysippus' On the Soul
9. This treatise of Chrysippus has been extensively discussed by T. Tieleman, Galen and Chrysippus on the Soul: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis II-III (Leiden, 1996)
10. and more recently by J.-B. Gourinat, 'Le traité de Chrysippe Sur l'âme', Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale: Les stoïciens et le monde (Paris, 2005), 557-77
11. Cf. Gourinat (n. 10), 569: 'les fragments du livre I de Galien rassemblés par Arnim en SVF II 897 font état d'une discussion de thèses d' Érasistrate'
12. R. Sharpies, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Supplement to On the soul (London, 2004), 240
13. A. A. Long, 'Soul and body in Stoicism', Phronesis 27 (1982), 34-57, at 41 = A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Cambridge, 1996), 224-49, at 234