Heidegger

In a message dated 8/21/2006 1:33:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
GEVANS613 at aol.com writes:
All the Stoics say human being is completely material. THEY ALSO SAY ALL
NATURE IS COMPLETELY MATERIAL.

There is no ontological division between the intelligible and the sensible as
is fundamental in Platonism

Dear Jud:
The above statements, however taken out of context, give a misleading notion
of what the Stoa was about. The founder of the Stoic school was Zeno of Citium
in Cyprus, who was of semitic extraction. At an early age he arrived in
Athens and came under the influence of the Cynic philosophy. His students were
referred to as “Zenonians” but later changed to Stoics, a name dervied from the
pillared porch, Stoa Poikile, that served as their meeting place. He originated
the Stoic tradition of volunatary death or suicide, a practice apparently
common among the Eleatic philosophers of Southern Italy and Sicily, e.g.,
Parmenides ended his life by jumping into a volcano. Zeno was much influenced by
Herakleitos’ idea of continuous change and its regulation by the prime substance
as the everliving fire (that dwindled, went out and rose up again). Zeno
pioneered the use of the term Logos and from which is derived the Stoic notion of
the *Logos spermatikoi,* or germs or seeds of Logos generated by The One.
Although monistic and antagonistic to the dualisms of Plato, the logos spermatikoi
are much akin to the Platonic “intelligibles” or archetypal forms (or ideas) as
the generating factor of creation, in the Platonic case, of Mind and soul.
Following Herakleitos and his notion of the ever living fire the Stoic creation
myth was essentially steeped in a notion of Ekpyrosis (Creation by fire and
The End as conflagration). This not only has some kinship with the ancient
Teutonic idea of Ragnorak but the Christian idea of world’s end by fire. Thus it
is a gross abreviation to qualify the Stoic philosophy because essentially
empiricist as simply “materialists” an interpretation invented by Hegel and which
trivializes the pre-Socratic idea of physis not simply as “matter,” or
Aristotle’s reductions to a radix prima materia, but as a term for “nature.” Thus
the pre-Socratic *physiologoi* of Meletos were known (as scientists of Nature).
Unfortunately some clumsy doxologists on the way referred to them as
“materialists” as opposed to the more epistemically rigorous Eleatic schools of Zeno
and Parmenides.
Sincerely;
Bernard
(bxbovasso)

Posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 4:05 am
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