Of all the profound minds born of Zeno’s thought, the one who most influenced the stoic
philosophy was without question Chrysippus, for “if Chrysippus had not existed, neither
would the stoa.”
His thought is so ubiquitous in stoic doctrine that many place him alongside Zeno as honorary
co-founder of the academy.
He was born in 280 B.C.E on the southern coast of what is now Turkey in a city known as Soli.
While still a youth he journeyed to Athens and began training to become a long distance
running.
This proved to be short lived as he would soon discover philosophy and begin his ascent
to the peak of that Hellenistic age.
The then head of the Stoic academy Cleanthes would adopt him as his pupil and school him
in metaphysics, ethics, logic, ontology, and epistemology.
A few years would pass and Chrysippus would choose to venture away from the porch and
teach Stoicism elsewhere, though he would eventually return and around 230 B.C.E following
the death of his master would become the third man to lead the Stoa.
He was such a prolific writer that perhaps even the mighty Voltaire would stand reverent
at the sheer scale of his works.
Which other philosophic figure could match his 705 book library or his daily 500 line
quota?
Unusual deaths seemed to be a fashion among the stoic leaders, and in the year 207 B.C.E
Chrysippus would certainly perpetuate it.
If Diogenes Laertius is to be taken at his word, Chrysippus apparently laughed himself
to the Elysian Fields.
How might you ask?
Well, after witnessing a donkey eating some figs at the 143rd Olympiad he would add to
the situation a comical comment, after which he burst into a fit of laughter ultimately
culminating in his death, this or he just simply drank too much undiluted wine.
His philosophy defended a materialistic ontology and offered its readers an alternative to
the Aristotelian and platonic metaphysics that had up until that point dominated antiquity.
His cosmos was a deterministic one and he maintained that human felicity was achieved
through living in accordance with nature and in striving to synchronize one’s life with
virtue.
He was perhaps best known by his extensive work in the field of logic, and for this reason
I would like to begin here in exploring his contributions to the stoic philosophy.
The propositional logic developed by Chrysippus is without a question most responsible for
the logic associated with the stoics.
What would place him apart from not only his predecessors Zeno and Cleanthes, but also
from the immensely influential system of logic developed by Aristotle?
Well, Aristotelean logic concerns itself with the interrelations of terms such as when we
examine the terms car and wheel in the syllogism: If all cars have wheels, and I drive a car,
then my car has wheels.
Stoic logic, on the other hand, was concerned rather with the interrelations of propositions.
Take the proposition “it is day” and apply the logic of Chrysippus in this manner: if
it is day, it is light: but it is day: so it is light.
Along with his work on propositional logic he was also said to have completed 12 works
on the liar paradox, 7 works on amphiboly, and another 9 on various other logical quandaries.
Clement of Alexandria would even name him master of logicians and Diogenes Laertius
said “if the gods use dialectic, they would use none other than that of Chrysippus.”
Unfortunately with the Neoplatonist’s preference to Aristotle his form of logic would fall
out of style until modern propositional calculus proved what the stoics already knew, that
Chrysippus had achieved something momentous.
Let us move on to his ethics.
If you’re familiar with Stoicism then without question you’re familiar with the ethics
of Chrysippus; one where the goal of life is to live in complete accordance with nature.
The difficulty arises when one is confronted with the task of how to achieve this vague
ideal.
It seems to Chrysippus, the man who lives in accordance with reason lives in accordance
with virtue, and virtue is “to live in accordance with ones experience of the things which come
about by nature.”
So in short, to achieve this stoic ideal we must place virtue above all else.
Any disruptive emotions should be cast aside as they are contrary to nature and considered
an enemy to right judgement.
Freedom is in fact obtainable, but only after one has liberated themselves from irrational
desires, and to achieve this; your emotions must be subjected to uncompromising reason.
So let us then establish a sound epistemological foundation.
For Chrysippus the soul is like that of a blank sheet of paper, prepared at any time
to have any number of impressions written upon it.
This differs from Zeno and Cleanthes in that they believed the soul only capable of receiving
one impression at a time.
Upon receiving an impression we are at once aware of not only its existence, but also
the cause of its existence, this makes up what we perceive to be reality.
Some impressions lack a corresponding impresser or an underlying real object and in order
to distinguish between those impressions that are true and those that are false Chrysippus
believed that we use a combination of memory, classification, and comparison.
With this theory of knowledge Chrysippus places heavy emphasis on the proper function of one’s
cognitive abilities and begins the transition from the theoretical into the empirical.
Without question Chrysippus stands among not only the most influential stoics, but also
among the most influential philosophers of the Hellenistic age.
And while we covered much of his philosophy here in this video, there is even more that
I was unable to get to.
With 705 books it seems that with Chrysippus I bit off more than I could chew, though I
hope you were able to gleam the essence of his teachings from what I did cover.
If you want to learn more about eastern and western philosophy consider subscribing to
the channel and as always thank you for talking philosophy with me, until next time.