Some Remarks on the History of Political Theory in Antiquity

With the help of some texts of Greek philosophers the ambivalent history of natural law philosophy is illustrated with its consequences for the rising notion of political theory and international law. Universalism and Stoic philosophy form the intellectual background for the rising Roman empire. Special attention is paid to the history of the textual transmission of some important philosophical texts, an aspect which is very often neglected.

From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting the Stoics in the German Enlightenment

From the 1670s Stoic philosophy had been closely associated with atheism and the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. However, in 1771 the historian Christoph Meiners published a short essay on the concept of apatheia that revived interest in Stoic philosophy within the German lands. Over the following years, he and his colleague Dieterich Tiedemann developed a novel interpretation claiming that Stoicism closely prefigured the philosophy of John Locke and represented a source of valuable philosophical ideas. Immanuel Kant, his allies, and later Idealists such as Hegel adopted this empiricist interpretation, despite their otherwise deep philosophical disagreements with Meiners and Tiedemann. Tracing eighteenth-century German debates around Stoicism reveals how it came to be considered a form of empiricism. As well as contributing to recent scholarship on the reception of Stoicism, the article suggests a major point of intersection between currents of the Enlightenment usually only treated separately.

MEDICAL DISCOURSE IN THE NOVEL BY YU. O. DOMBROVSKY THE MONKEY COMES FOR ITS SKULL

The article explores the poetics of Yu. O. Dombrovsky's novel The Monkey Comes for its Skull (1943–1959) through the prism of medical discourse, which occupies a prominent place in the structure of the work. Every appeal of the novel’s characters to medical discourse indicates a situation of communicative shift, the breakdown of connections between words and things. Thus, “medicalization” becomes one of the symptoms of the new paradoxical reality of occupied and post-war Europe. Contrary to the Enlightenment paradigm, a medical view of the motives of human actions does not reveal the truth, but on the contrary, leads away from it. For Dombrovsky's work, ancient Stoic philosophy with its understanding of wisdom as therapy of the soul, the completeness of self-control and absolute spiritual freedom is also important. Sooner or later, each of the characters has to remain one-on-one with his own conscience and moral dilemmas, while auxiliary discursive practices cease to be an effective means of social camouflage. The ideological composition of the work corresponds to a specific narrative technique and motive structure, which is characterized by the use of genre techniques of detective and spy novels. In general, the novel The Monkey Comes for Its Skull offers the reader an alternative to “new prose,” with its demonstrative rejection of fictionality, its accent on documentary, factography. Dombrovsky prefers to overcome the “literariness” of literature from within the prevailing genre and aesthetic conventions, synthesizing and transforming various types of discourses, including medical ones.

Corporealism as an Ontological Position and Its Involvement in the Thought of Tertullian

This paper aims to examine the meaning, role, inspirations, and place of corporealism in Tertullian’s system of thought. The extent to which corporealism is a basic philosophical belief in Tertullian’s work and to what extent it is a particular element of his theological doctrine is questioned. It presents the named ontological position as a rare specificity within the range of early Christian thought, especially in Tertullian’s works De anima and De carne Cristi. This paper makes a clear distinction between corporealism and materialism, as it tries to determine the degree of influence of Stoic philosophy, especially ontology, on Tertullian, as well as the influence of Aristotle in selected areas. In this context, his traducianism is also examined. In the ontological context, the status of the soul and God in Tertullian thought is also presented. In connection with the metaphysical problem of creation, the article also touches on the question of creatio ex nihilo as a problem on which Tertullian had to take a stand. It investigates the role of corporealism in Tertullian’s polemic against Marcion, Apelles, and the Valentinian Gnosis by mapping which elements in the teachings of these representatives and Gnosis, especially (but not exclusively) Valentinian, could provoke Tertullian to controversy. This paper holds the opinion that Tertullian’s corporealism was due to his theological views and controversy with opponents, which were used as philosophical inspiration, especially stoic inspiration, but was used mainly in the service of his theological thinking and strategic needs for argumentation.

Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and Their Relation to Ethics

This chapter introduces the various ancient Stoic theories of freedom. It investigates how, from the early Stoics via Epictetus to the Stoics of the late second century, freedom and responsibility are connected with ethics. In this context, the most important conceptual distinction is between what depends on us (eph’hēmin) and freedom (eleutheria). In Stoic philosophy the eph’hēmin is always associated with human action and intention and is located within Stoic psychology. For every human being, there are things that depend on them. Freedom, by contrast, is a notion contrasted with slavery, originating in political theory, and from there it enters Stoic ethics. For the Stoics, freedom is a character disposition—a virtue—and can be manifested only in sages. The confusion of these two quite distinct concepts and their roles in Stoic philosophy has wreaked much havoc in twentieth-century scholarship (which the essay untangles and invalidates in the process).

Applicability of Stoic Philosophy to Character Education

Character education requires an interdisciplinary approach of education, philosophy, and psychology. Philosophical school of Stoicism is well positioned to be used as an underpinning philosophical theory to reinforce and fortify the effectiveness of character education, as it resembles both virtue-based approach and shares virtues with those promoted by character education. The article contains an example of Latvia’s government regulations and approach to virtue-based character education. The aim of a study is to explore how Stoic philosophy can be instrumental for educators implementing a character education approach within school education. The study was conducted using qualitative research methods, by analysing sources of Stoicism and applying them to contemporary concepts and understanding of character education. The results of the study consist of the identified seven key insights how Stoic philosophy can make a valuable contribution, supplemented by recommendations for each key insight in a form of conclusion. Stoic philosophy emphasises teaching through context, role models, and through Stoicism itself, based on an assumption of a sustained process. Since character education in schools is a growing movement, today’s educators can draw ideas directly from these findings, as well as approaching character education through a lens of Stoicism.

The Phenomenology of Proairesis in the Stoic Philosophy of Epictetus: ‘Desire’ and ‘Aversion’

If we agree that Proairesis, and not simply Reason, is the fundamental and sovereign faculty the man is naturally endowed with, it appears appropriate to identify the actions that this reality sets in motion. With regard to them, Epictetus calls ‘deeds of proairesis’ our desires and aversions, our impulses and repulsions, our assents and dissents. The present paper is devoted to a discussion of the phenomenology of desire and aversion only. It shows how the only four basic possible attitudes of human proairesis towards both proairetic and aproairetic things generate the corresponding kinds of desires and aversions.

The ‘Age of Iron and Rust’ in Cassius Dio’s Roman History: Influences from Stoic Philosophy

This paper discusses the impact of Stoic philosophy on Cassius Dio’s imperial books of his Roman History. It is demonstrated how fundamental Stoic ideas influenced Dio’s constitutional discussions and the role of the emperor as in the Agrippa-Maecenas debate in book 52, and how Dio evaluated political environments as well as political developments in the Empire with inspirations from Stoic logic. Moreover, this paper argues that the iron age in his contemporary narrative from the emperor Commodus to Caracalla is also fundamentally an iron age on the basis of Stoic values.

Institutionalization of a philosophical school: the origins of Justus Lipsius’ neostoicism

The article is devoted to the consideration of the neostoicism of Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) in order to show that there is a set of reasons for the renovation and institutionalization of any philosophical school: the historical context, education, community, personality and biography of its leader. As for Justus Lipsius, a philologist and publisher of ancient texts (Tacitus, Seneca), the following factors influenced. Since Lipsius lived in turbulent times (the 16th century was marked by the Reformation and religious wars), he could not help but pay attention to Stoic philosophy, designed to give peace of mind in an unsettled world. Lipsius received an excellent education at a Jesuit college and at two universities – Cologne and Louvain. He was instilled in a love of ancient literature during his education, which predetermined his work. He was an outstanding person by nature and was formed in the university environment and in the intellectual circles of his time. He was, for instance, a member of the Familists, whose founder taught, among other things, the permissibility of changing denominations. Lipsius’s interpretation of the Stoic doctrine suggests that the Stoics came closest to Christianity, unlike other ancient philosophers. All these factors determined the revival of Stoicism in the 16th century.