Abstract: Stoic philosophers have a strong inclination to look at nature in ethical contexts. Our sources on Stoic ethics abound with all kinds of references to what is, in some way or oth-er, ‘natural’. This evidence, however, points in different directions, and so scholars disa-gree on how the look at nature contributes to the ethical project of the Stoics. In particular, there is a long-standing debate on whether nature is something like the ‘standard’ of Stoic ethics / whether Stoic ethics is somehow ‘grounded’ in nature. Much progress has recently been made on that question by Christopher Gill’s Learning to Live Naturally (2023). But even this wide-ranging monograph leaves, I think, some important aspects unexplained.
The aim of my talk is hence to suggest a different approach to Stoic ethical natural-ism. This approach starts, not from the Stoic evidence itself, but from the ancient tradition of using nature as an ethical standard. The look at nature was in the ethicist’s toolkit at least since Callicles made his appearance in Plato’s Gorgias. And the most consistent use of that tool was probably made by the Cynics, whose influence on Stoic ethics is well at-tested. So my idea is to consider the Cynic look at nature and discuss how Stoic argu-ments relate to that. This will help us explain some of the peculiarities of the Stoic evi-dence; or so I will argue.
The talk falls into three parts. In the first part, I will consider the Cynic practice of imitating the behaviour of animals and children. I will show that in this practice nature is conceived as a standard of ethics in a straightforward way: you look at nature and you know what to do. I will discuss (i) how this straightforward way is linked to the revisionist agenda of the Cynics, (ii) by which implicit preassumptions it is guided, and (iii) how it is related to the Cynic refusal to do natural philosophy. In the second part, I will turn to the Stoic look at nature. At first glance, some features of the Stoic references to nature are quite similar to what we find in reports on Cynicism. So it makes sense to say, as I will argue, that the Stoics pick up a tool that is familiar from Cynic contexts. The Stoic use of that tool, however, seems to differ from the Cynic use in some respects. For one thing, the Stoic reference to nature is not meant to support a simple revisionism but a complex com-bination of revisionist and non-revisionist elements. For another, the Stoics do not combine the look at nature with a rejection of natural philosophy. On the contrary, a proper look at nature requires for them a deep understanding of the workings of the universe. After high-lighting those differences, I will reflect, in the third part, on their implications. I will indi-cate what we can learn from them about the role of nature in Stoic ethics and how some of the puzzling features of the Stoic look at nature might be due to their using a Cynic tool for non-Cynic purposes.
Workshop in Ancient Philosophy Convenors: Ursula Coope, Alexander Bown and Marion Durand.
