Enni's Notes

Ancient Practical 07.07.2026

Man's Place in the Universe

Aristotle's view

  • Natural world and the principles of its operation are a self-standing realm of events and facts.
  • It's a teleological world - but the teleology is inherent - it does not involve a mind that would need to activate it.
  • There is a divine mind but it is outside of this system, unconcerned with it.
  • As rational beings we are related to it, but only insofar as this divine mind is something we can grasp and understand by our own thinking and, in that way, become like it.

Stoic's view → Stoic view of the world

  • The divine planning creates and governs the world which is itself (i.e., the world) a single living thing.
  • The world is a world-animal - it has a world-soul or world-mind which thinks and directs all its "life" - i.e., all the processes in the natural world.
  • This world-animal contains as its parts all other animals, with their own bodies and souls.
  • Human beings are the sole (nondivine) possessors of the power of reason. → Stoic Psychology
  • Hence, with our minds we stand in a relation to the divine mind which is actively present in the world that is that of (potentially) cooperation and participation in the divine thought that governs the world - we do not merely become like the god (in the way Aristotle thought), but we litlerally think God's thoughts - insofar they concern us and our lives.

Stoic Ethics

→ Stoics

Topics

Stoic Psychology

Important

Every desire you have is up to you. It depends on whether you assent to the impression. You can stop be hungry by deciding not to assent to the impression of lack of food.

  • The commanding faculty (hegemonikon): the center of conscious life in which impression, assent, impulse and reason are combined.
  • Impression, assent, impulse - movents of the mind

Impression (phantasia)

(would be imagination in Aristotle)

  • External objects impress their sensory characteristics on the soul in such a way that there results an affection (state) of the soul which reaveals its cause (i.e., the external object) to the soul. Thi affection is called impression.
  • These impressions illuminate actual things - they are the means by which we observe things.
  • The can vary in clarity and distinctness.
  • (There are also imaginations or figments)

An impression is not a belief.
To have an impression is to enertain an idea, without any commitment to it.

Development of Impressions

→ Entwicklungspsychologie

  • Early infant's impressions: non-rational (pre-conceptual).
    • Children and Animals respond directly to the impression
  • Adult impressions: all are rational (i.e., all have propositional content)
    • Example: "It looks like it is going to rain;" "there is a piece of cake on the table;" "The looks freighteining;" "This is green."
    • Impressions are not raw sensory materials: rather they are already conceptual representations of objects (Stoics call these concepts "conceptions")
    • In adult human beings it is rational - there is a unique proposition (axioma) which is correlated with it.
    • Adult human beings can assent (sunkatathesis) or withhold an assent to an impression. If they assent, they acquire a belief

Assent and Impulse

  • An Impulse can present to us a certain course of action insofar as it represents something (a state of affairs) as true, desirable, and so on: "It would be nice to eat this piece of cake."

  • Assent is a mental act of committing oneself to the truth of such proposition (impression) or rejecting it.

  • Epictetus: assent is the power to use impressions.

  • All impulses are acts of assent

  • How does a mind decide whether or not to assent to a proposition (impression)?

    • By reasoning about what is best to do. Most people immediately assent to impressions automatically

  • Assent is that which is, according to the Stoics, "up to us" and that which we are primarily responsible for.

  • Once we assent to a proposition - there is an impulse for the appropriate action. This impulse is a desire.

  • An impulse is a movement of the soul - that is, a change in the pneuma of the agent.
    → Each impulse is an assent. Since it is an assent, it is also a belief

It is an assent to a practical impression (phatasia hormetike) - that is to an impression which represent things in terms of values or evaluative predicates (good, bad, and so on)

Species of impulses

Action

  • Impulse as a necessary & sufficient condition for action
  • What is action: it is this very change (in Chrysippus - the change of the commanding faculty).

Big Problem - Free Will

Stoics belief in determinism (Stoic view of the world), but aren't all assents then determined by anticedent causes.

Assents are the basis of the discussion on Free Will

Emotions according to Stoics

Comes from Stoic Psychology

Important

All Emotions are based on false beliefs. Nothing but the state of your soul is good or bad. Emotions lead to distress

Emotions are about something outside of you.

  • Emotions are one of three species of impulses.
  • They have two features:
    • They involve characterization of their objects as good and bad.
    • They are constituted by beliefs that fall short of knowledge - typically, these beliefs are false

Stoic winning the world cup

He'd be mildly pleased, but not have commitment to that feeling, because it doesn't actually matter to their soul

4 Species of Emotions

  • Desire: an opinion that some future thing is a good of such a sort that we should "reach out" for it.
  • Fear: an option that some future thing is an evil of such a sorth that we should avoid it
  • Pleasure: an opintion that some present thing is a good of such a sort that we should be elated about it.
  • Pain: an opinion that some present thing is a bad of such a sort that we should be despondent about it
    → We should never ever get angry. Rationally assess the situation. The stoic ideal/sage could do that

Eupatheiai

A type of impulse in Stoic Psychology

  • Since emotions are based on beliefs that fall short of knowledge (i.e., are false), the Stoic virtuous person (a Stoic sage) will not have any.
  • The Stoic sage has not pleasure, only joy (chara) as an impulse that relates him to his present virtue. Similarly, they have no desires (relating to future virtues), only willing (boulesis). They have no fear, but caution (eulabeia) and they have no pain at all since they have no vice.

Example

The mild joy is not about winning the game, but more of an appreciation of how the framework that Zeus has built, is working well

Selection according to the Stoics

How to choose what to do in a world of indifference.
a type of impulse in Stoic Psychology

  • The third class of impulses (besides emotions and eupatheiai) is selection (and disselection).
  • There are impulses towards things that are neither good or bad (i.e., are neither virtues or vices), but are still to be preferred.

Graph View