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Stoicism is a school of philosophy commonly associated with
such Greek philosophers as Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus and with such later Romans as
Cicero, Seneca,
Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Organized at Athens in the third century B.C.E. (310 BC) by
Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus, the Stoics provided a unified account of the world that comprised formal logic, materialistic physics, and naturalistic ethics. Later Roman Stoics emphasized
more exclusively the development of recommendations for living in harmony with a natural world over which one has no direct
control. Their group would meet upon the porch of the market at Athens, the stoa poecile. The name stoicism derives from the greek stoa meaning porch.
The Stoic philosophy developed from that of the Cynics whose founder, Antisthenes, had been a disciple of Socrates. The Stoics emphasized ethics as the main field of knowledge, but they also developed theories of logic
and natural science to support their ethical doctrines.
Holding a somewhat materialistic conception of nature they followed Heraclitus in believing the primary substance to be fire. They also embraced his concept of Logos which they
identified with the energy, law, reason, and providence found throughout nature.
They held Logos to be the animating or 'active principle' of all reality. The Logos
was conceived as a rational divine power that orders and directs the universe; it was identified with God, nature, and fate. Human reason and
the human soul were both considered part of the divine Logos, and therefore immortal.
The foundation of Stoic ethics is the principle, proclaimed earlier by the Cynics, that good lies in the state of the soul
itself, in wisdom and restraint. Stoic ethics stressed the rule "Follow where Reason leads"; one must therefore resist the
influence of the passions—love, hate, fear, pain, and pleasure.
Living according to nature or reason, they held, is living in conformity with the divine order of the universe. The four
cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy are wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, a classification derived from the
teachings of Plato.
A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism. All
people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily
help one another. They held that external differences such as rank and wealth are of no importance in social relationships. Thus,
before the rise of Christianity, Stoics recognized and advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all
human beings. Stoicism became the most influential school of the Greco-Roman world and produced a number of remarkable writers
and personalities.
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