The Stoics II.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 19160 |
| Format | 12.5 x 19 |
| Détails | 272 p., black and white and color illustrations, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2015 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
Between the death of Chrysippus (around 204 BC) and the teaching of Seneca in the 1st century AD, a singular form of Stoicism developed. This Stoicism, long called "middle," is most often passed over in silence because of the harsh and contradictory judgments made about its representatives: they have sometimes been perceived as Stoics without originality, professing dogmas identical to their predecessors, sometimes as dissident Stoics abandoning the fundamental dogmas that were the heart of ancient Stoicism, and leaving, so to speak, the School to join Aristotle and Plato. There is no comprehensive monograph on this period. Yet it is decisive: it is the moment when the concept of the moral person was being prepared, when the new discipline of casuistry was being developed, and when the particular sciences were developing. This work aims to identify the problems faced by intermediate Stoicism by studying its three major figures: Diogenes of Babylonia, Panaetius of Rhodes (source of Cicero) and Posidonius of Apamea (source of Seneca). It takes as its guiding principle five questions on which one can measure the gap between the theses of these authors and those of Chrysippus: What is it to be happy? What is the soul? How to act? In what world do we live? What relationship does the philosopher maintain with knowledge? The answers given to these questions testify to an inventive and renewed Stoicism to which authors like Cicero will give access, thus opening up a posterity for it.
Between the death of Chrysippus (around 204 BC) and the teaching of Seneca in the 1st century AD, a singular form of Stoicism developed. This Stoicism, long called "middle," is most often passed over in silence because of the harsh and contradictory judgments made about its representatives: they have sometimes been perceived as Stoics without originality, professing dogmas identical to their predecessors, sometimes as dissident Stoics abandoning the fundamental dogmas that were the heart of ancient Stoicism, and leaving, so to speak, the School to join Aristotle and Plato. There is no comprehensive monograph on this period. Yet it is decisive: it is the moment when the concept of the moral person was being prepared, when the new discipline of casuistry was being developed, and when the particular sciences were developing. This work aims to identify the problems faced by intermediate Stoicism by studying its three major figures: Diogenes of Babylonia, Panaetius of Rhodes (source of Cicero) and Posidonius of Apamea (source of Seneca). It takes as its guiding principle five questions on which one can measure the gap between the theses of these authors and those of Chrysippus: What is it to be happy? What is the soul? How to act? In what world do we live? What relationship does the philosopher maintain with knowledge? The answers given to these questions testify to an inventive and renewed Stoicism to which authors like Cicero will give access, thus opening up a posterity for it.