Introduction

An introduction to the notion of a lekton, appraising the controversy in antiquity and in modern scholarship about its nature and status. The many different contexts in which lekta are discussed are put forward as a first indication of the complexity of the question, and the danger of misunderstanding the Stoics through overhasty preference given to one or the other text and context. Are they linguistic items? Are they mental items? Are they metaphysical items? Amongst our more reliable sources, one thing seems agreed upon, that the Stoics drew the distinction between signifiers and things signified for the first time in the tradition of Western philosophy; and lekta are signified things. The force of this distinction and its implications are crucial questions which only the most unprejudiced approach to the texts can begin to answer. A first suggestion, based on the plurality of different contexts in which lekta are discussed, challenges a too immediate association of lekta with linguistic meanings. In this introduction to the volume, key methodological issues are discussed alongside an overview of the main texts and sources, and a summary of the contents of the following chapters.

Lekta in the Stoic Ontological Framework

This chapter examines the schematic map drawn up for the logical structure of the Stoic systēma. In it, rhetoric is distinguished from dialectic and, for the first time in the history of philosophy, signifiers are distinguished from things signified. As for lekta, they are distinguished from impressions, though both belong under the heading of things signified. The position of lekta is analysed both in the light of their being a kind of thing signified and as distinct from impressions. The latter are corporeal states of the soul, whereas lekta are incorporeal and stand in a relation to impressions which both guarantees the independence of lekta from them, and determines the nature of the impressions as rational. The literature on what makes impressions rational is discussed, including the case of the reasoning dog. The verdict is that there is no such animal on the specific Stoic understanding of reasoning. The distinction between a propositional content and a proposition is broached in the analysis of impressions, laying down the foundations for an analysis of rationality as the capacity to grasp a propositional structure, in which something is attributed to something on the basis of conceptions acquired through previous experience. This propositional structure is not invented by us but is what constitutes reality.

Causation

This chapter examines the Stoic theory of causation. The Stoics say that a cause is the cause of an incorporeal katēgorēma, a kind of lekton, thereby giving an idiosyncratic account of a cause, and setting out the reality conditions for its incorporeal effect. The debates between the Peripatetics and the Stoics on the cause as a ‘because of which’ frame the analysis in a critical appraisal of the ancient historiography on the question, amongst both the generations of Stoics, and the Peripatetics, Platonists, and Early Christians. Though a consensus gathers around the necessary activity of the cause, the particular contribution of the Stoics is to posit the unicity of the active cause, which gives each body a unique causal signature, determining both the range of its capacities and what katēgorēmata it can or must actualize to be the thing it is. Causation confirms the independent reality of katēgorēmata and lekta in general, since a cause validates the actuality of the lekton it has caused. This also implies that the lekton is there ready to be actualized, and remains there once the cause, no longer active, no longer actualizes it: it thus sometimes obtains (when actualized) and otherwise subsists. The view that lekta cannot therefore depend on bodies for their susbsistence is defended against an interpretation dominant since the ancients which is shown not to have taken into account the role of lekta in causation.

Lekta

The focus of this chapter is on the sense of ‘saying’ that grounds the notion of a lekton. A first point of reference is identified in Plato’s Sophist and the distinction made there between naming and saying. The Stoics take this first distinction further by distinguishing saying from uttering, relying on the initial distinction they make between signifiers and things signified. The result is that the lekton, as that which is said, is shown to be removed from linguistic concerns. Whether it is ever uttered or not, the lekton is that which can be said, and as such is there to be said. Saying has thus more to do with ontology than with language. But language in the rational cosmos is by its very nature a reflection of ontological structure, and so all that language has to express is what constitutes that structure, namely lekta. The Stoics thus risk falling into a circularity which could trivialize their view. The critiques, ancient and modern, are assessed, from the talking parrot to the question of whether we can think without language, and the question of the unity of the lekton threatened by the plurality of words used to express it. The discussion straddles topics from the philosophy of mind, language, and metaphysics, laying out the foundations for a Stoic philosophy of language and grammar.

Rationality in Stoic Thought

This chapter focuses on lekta as the objects of ordinary teaching. What there is to teach, and what there is to learn are lekta, say the Stoics. This claim leads to affirming the mind-independence of lekta since it is what is distinct and external from us, and yet obtains as true, that we need to be taught, especially once teaching and learning are understood as necessary steps in the natural development of reason in us. There are two methods for this developement to follow its natural course: through sense-perception leading to the acquisition of conceptions on the basis of experience, and through teaching and paying attention. The methods are not only compatible but are equally necessary to enable us to fulfil our impulse to preserve what we come to understand is most characteristic of us, as rational beings in a rational cosmos, namely reason. The Stoic theory of oikeiōsis, appropriation, is discussed in relation to the teaching and learning of lekta, as also the further question of the stages of this process of instruction. The Stoics make a distinction between two ways impressions come about in our minds: hupo, by, and epi, in relation to. A suggestion is put forward that this difficult distinction expands the distinction between the two methods, sensory and through attention, which ground the natural developement of reason. In this light, the example the Stoics take of the gymnasitics teacher, often decried as incongruous, is defened as a paradigmatic case of teaching how to pay attention to lekta, expressed through a language of the body.

Lekta and the Foundations of a Theory of Language

This chapter focuses on the katēgorēma. It examines its relational nature as that which is always attributed to something else, showing that the katēgorēma is at the heart of a nuclear relation cementing the unity of every state-of-affairs in reality. Everything in reality is part of at least one relation of attribution, and therefore holds true of it, and of many which are false. The further claim is put forward that all katēgorēmata are already embedded within an axiōma in such a way that there are no incomplete lekta in reality. Incompleteness is put down to a question of language and different degrees of success in expressing what there is in reality to say. The infinitival and conjugated forms of the verbs are thus expressive only insofar as a complete lekton in reality is thereby, however partially, picked out. This introduces the question of the limits of a given language and whether translation is possible because the flexibility of one language is not paralleled in another. Three things are ‘yoked together’: the expression, the lekton, and the tunchanon, the last being an odd term for an even odder item: half and half between the case-ptōsis and the external object. This hybrid status, it is argued, results from the overlap between the ontological status of a lekton as subsisting or obtaining, and its subsequently being true or false.

Bodies and Incorporeals

This chapter focuses on the Stoic notion of a body all the better to distinguish bodies from incorporeals. It looks first at the criterion for corporeality, according to which a body is either active or passive. The questions of touch and conjunction between active and passive bodies are examined, framing further questions about differentiation between individual bodies and their roles in a causal relation. A third element is shown to be necessary to regiment these roles: it is an incorporeal whose distinct relation to one and the other body in causation determines the role of each within the causal schema. Further distinctions between bodies, incorporeals and not-somethings, which are generic concepts borne in the mind, are established thanks to an analysis of the constructive, though critical, dialogue the Stoics have with Plato, in particular through their reading of the Gigantomachia or ‘Battle of the Giants’ in the Sophist. The Stoics reject the Platonic Forms but not the presence in reality of items which are not bodies. The Stoics rise to the challenge of making room within the sensible world for non-sensible items: these are the four incorporeals, time, void, space, and lekta. These are granted a parallel mode of being real, not inferior nor superior to that of bodies, and which all four satisfy equally.

The Syntax of Lekta

This chapter focuses on the internal structure of the lekton. It traces the critical development of the notion of a sentence from Plato’s ‘shortest logos’ in the Sophist with minimal parts, a mainstay in the Platonic and Peripatetic tradition, to the Stoic perspective focused on the notion of completeness: complete is all that is necessary to get one lekton said, however many words or parts of speech may be required to do so. This debate was appropriated, and its different strands merged by the ancient Grammarians. The Stoic influence in the establishment of the discipline is brought out in the discussion. Completeness leads to considerations of incompleteness. The different kinds of complete lekta (questions, commands, exclamations) are tested against a standard of completeness by stripping away different elements to discover that there is a constant axiōmatic core within each kind. A final discussion of the relation of the katēgorēma to the case-ptōsis unfolds into an analysis of the ptōsis as nothing other than forever dependent on a katēgorēma, with no status in itself, but ensconced in a web of relations between concepts in our mind, the hybrid case-bearer (tunchanon), and the external object. Problem cases such as the conundrum of the perishing lekton and the parakatēgorēma are examined in the light of previous claims.

On the Reality of Lekta

This chapter focuses on the lekton as an independent item in ontology. It analyses the role of lekta in ordinary language, questioning the claim that lekta are separated from language. Platonic separation is distinguished from the status granted to lekta against a background of polemics and wilful simplifications from ancient critics. The place in ontology of lekta is further sharpened in a comparison with modern speech act theory, to conclude that the Stoics conceive of context and content (even for actors on a stage) in terms of ontological structure, not linguistic production. This hinders an assimilation of the Stoics to the moderns, not necessarily to the detriment of the Stoics, whose position is defended as a competing rather than an underdeveloped theory. The Stoics are shown to propose a radically different ontological framework from their rivals and predecessors. The critiques of the Peripatetics are revelatory rather than damning, their efforts at straitjacketing the Stoics laying bare fundamental incompatibilities. In comparison with the Epicureans, the status of incorporeality is fine-tuned as the differences between Epicurus’ only incorporeal, the void, and the Stoics’ four incorporeals are put in focus. Lucretius’ contribution to the debate, as also the suggestion—ultimately dismissed—of adding limits to the Stoic list of incorporeals, leads to the conclusion that lekta are foundational elements of Stoic ontology.

The Invention of the System

This chapter offers a deep critique of a commonly held view that the Stoic system of philosophy consists in the tripartition of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. The teaching of philosophy is distinguished from the transmission of doctrine, showing that whilst tripartition might be useful for the former, the latter is concerned with the transmission of an interrelated whole which the Stoics call, for the first time in the history of philosophy, a ‘systēma’, whose internal regimentation is not dependent on tripartition. Views of successive generations of Stoics are analysed, including a vindication of the orthodoxy of Zeno of Tarsus and Posidonius, which leads to a broader reappraisal of the ancient historiography on these matters, sifting through the agendas of the first generation of Platonists and the later classifications of Sextus Empiricus; a critique of modern historiography is also broached, targeting in particular the work of Pierre Hadot. The Stoic notion of a systēma is examined in detail from different perspectives as the basis for the Stoic definitions of knowledge, science, and the constitution of an argument, as also, at the macro-level, for the structure of the cosmos, describing thus the foundations of the unity of the cosmic city, supported by cosmic sympathy, so as ultimately to identify lekta as the keystones of this structure.