Does Stoics Make Life Better?

Stoics don’t see philosophy in the way we see it today. They see it as a way of life, but for them philosophy is not about the past or even about knowledge it is a way of life. They define philosophy as a kind of practice or exercise concerning what is beneficial. What can make life better? How can it become better? Once we come to know the value of the world and nature we transforms, a sort of self-transformation. The Stoics have God is a corporeal Entity. The one who created it all and to the fine detail. The Stoic God is identified with one of the principles of the universe which is eternal reason. Everything has a plan and goes on accordingly. It all begins with fire and going through change but finally ending up with fire at the end, becoming …show more content…
The universe is a spirit in the stoic’s eyes and because of it they can agree with Aristotle in the concept of empty space. Out of nothing not can come (Parmenides) The Passive elements water and earth. The active ones being Fire and Air, the pneuma (spirit) is the main cause of all exists growth and guidance. What keeps an object from falling apart? The pneuma. The pneuma has two motions in the body an inward one that makes things connected and the outward motion which gives qualities to the body. These qualities can be set up in four categories. The first is the pneuma of inanimate objects which is called tenor (holding). The second category is the spirit of the plants which goes by the name Physique (nature). The Stoics see Physique (plant spirit, Nature) as functions of humans. For example Eating, Drinking, Growing etc. The Three category is the animal and it is called soul .The fourth and final category is the rational animal which commands. The Animal qualities are seen as impulses or desires that function due to the rational and commanding. For us today these Stoic monistic concepts of the human soul have serious problems for us. For us the sense of impressions are due to the spirit quality of the rational animal, commanding faculty, but in a mature animal impressions become thoughts. Within the rational animal's spirit there is another thing doing something and the stoics call it assent. Which means …show more content…
These are divided into two the rhetoric and dialectic. Due to these divides we have what is know as the middle law, which states that either things are true or false in logic. Stoics believe that all things happen through antecedent cause. Meaning that things are caused by events or a thing that existed before. Cronus makes statements of the past being a requirement. He gets us think about it by saying that nothing has the power to change the past. Which may seem a bit weird, but he tries to make things clear by follin up with another statement that nothing impossible follows from what is possible. Meaning what we are capable of will never be impossible. Our actions are done due to our character which means we take responsibility for them. The Stoics found the perfect excuse for things that happen outside your control, and it’s that the causes and effects do not flow through my beliefs and desires. Tripping and dropping someone's coffee. It isn’t your fault because, hopefully, your desire wasn’t for that to happen. The is an equal balance between the ignorant and the wise in the Stoics definition of knowledge.(SEP, Logic