Commentary on a Passage from Sextus Empiricus' Against the Physicists

Zeno used to propound this argument also: "One may reasonably honour the gods. But if they are non-existent, one may not reasonably honour them. Therefore gods exist."

I. Zeno of Citium (336 B.C.-265 B.C.), is regarded as the founder of Stoicism: in 300 B.C. Zeno started his school; it was first called the Zenonians, and later the Stoics, because Zeno used to give his lectures on Stoa Poikile in the marketplace of Athens. It is believed that Zeno, in reaction to the teaching of Epicurus (who celebrated pleasure as the heights good and randomness as the basic condition of the physical universe), set up the school, defending virtue as the only good and the law of nature or the logos as the dominating force in the universe. Zeno admired the calm, rational self-control of Socrates, and he was influenced by the Cynic Crates, the ascetic, who taught that a wise man, even though a beggar, is a king, whose sovereignty lies in his vireo, in his hegemony over his passions. From Stiplo the Megarian Zeno borrowed the subtle logic of refutation and defense - he developed not only his formal logic but also his distinctions between degrees of certainty in perceptual knowledge. But the metaphysics of Heraclitus of Ephesus had the greatest influence on Zeno - the doctrine of eternal fire, out of which all elements come, the belief in a logos or reason of the universe that gives shape to each thing and harmonizes all things amid perpetual change; and the belief in a deity identical with the logos and also with the eternal fire. This all helped Zeno set his doctrine on firm foundations. Zeno, as Diogenes Laertius has described in many stories, lived up to his philosophy.

II.If "reasonable honouring" is given an epistemological value (which "honouring" alone does not have as an unfactive verb), then the grounds for this reasonability (in honouring) can be questioned before accepting the whole at its face-value.

III. Zeno's argument can be expressed as (if we accept that exist-expressions can be put into a subject-predicate form; Kant, for example, did not think that "exist" is a genuine predicate while acknowledging that it may well be a non-genuine one ):

(1) P is reasonable (which is the same as saying that S may reasonably P)

(2) But if P is not X, then P is not reasonable (which is equivalent to if P is reasonable, then P is X)

(3) Therefore P is X

It can be objected here that the existence of gods does not necessarily follow from the possibility of a reasonable honouring (of the gods). The honouring may be unreasonable, or the not-honouring may be reasonable. If this argument was true, anything may be claimed to be honoured with reason, and anything may be claimed to exist. This Sextus expresses next:

But to this argument some construct a parallel argument: One may reasonably honour wise man. But if they are non-existent, one may not reasonably honour them. Therefore wise men exist.". This was not pleasing to the Stoics, as their "wise man" has remained undiscovered up to now.

I." . . . some construct . . ." - Sextus uses a guarded manner of expression, he might have meant either Arcesilaus, the head of the new Academy, who had adopted a sceptical anti-Stoic attitude, and (or) Carneades, his successor, who also tried to prove that the Sage holds opinions, and therefore he makes mistakes, and from here, then, he sins. Arcesilaus wanted to draw a line between Platonic dogma, he wanted to underline the spirit of investigation, like Socrates, to arouse souls and ridicule pretension and complacency. He applied Socratic irony to Stoicism in order to force it into a confession of universal ignorance. Carneaded speaks against God and the gods, against providence, against divination, against fate.

II.The Stoics desired to make the personal and social lives of men as orderly as the cosmos , to make the world a universal republic of the wise, equal men, living according to their rational grasp of nature's laws, in harmony with each other and in tranquility within themselves. In Stoic physics the individual was subordinated to the logos or law of nature (Heraclitus' influence) up to the point were they believed that everything is predetermined. The Stoics held that nature is superior to convention and power . They believed in autarekeia , or the autonomy of the virtuous man, which influenced the Stoics' ethic (Cynic's influence). Stoics' logic was known for its refutation techniques and its love of paradoxes (the influence of the Megerians). In 300 B.C. main leaders of the Stoics were Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes of Assos, and Chrisippus of Soli, who came to be called "the second founder of Stoicism, because he contributed to forming Stoicism into a system.

III. The Stoics distinguished between the Wise man (the virtuous man) and the rest (the fools). The "Wise man" was the demigod of the founders of the Stoa. The Stoic's Wise man was at first considered to be indifferent to the external world and everything that belonged to it (property, honour, and health as belonging to the the human body), because this was beyond a human being's control. The Wise man was wise simply because he knew what nature requires, and then he just had to follow his duty (kathekton was a word coined by Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoic ethics, for "duty", and it reflects the Stoic's belief that all incidents in nature are the expression of God's will and the instruments of destiny). In doing so, the Wise man is at once virtuous and possessed of spiritual well-being.

IV. The debate between Stoics and Sceptics was focused on the nature and possibility of knowledge, but the Sceptics tried to attack the Stoics on all other questions as well. Sceptics attacked other "dogmatists" too - that is Aristotelians and Epicureans, all those, who were rivals of the Platonists around 300 B.C., but the Stoic's dogmatism , being the strongest and the most original current of thought then, was dogmatism par excellence . From here the pathos of Sextus, and especially the ironizing of the Stoic's claim of the existence of the Sage as the one who possesses knowledge, as opposed to the fool, who is limited to opinion: the Sage is a mere mortal, a man like anyone else, and he does not know anything beyond the other "fools" . He is forced to weigh the pros and cons and choose. In the end Stoicism bent under these attacks, it adapted itself to the criticisms and changed, becoming itself "academic". (The Late Stoa was Roman - Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius in the I and II centuries A.D., that is current to Sextus' lifetime).

But Diogenes, the Babylonian, says in reply to this parallel argument that the second premise of Zeno's argument really means this: "But those whose nature does not imply existence one may not reasonably honour."

I. Sextus is referring to Diogenes of Seleucia and the leader of the Athenian Middle Stoa. Diogenes was Carneades' colleague on the embassy to Rome in 155 B.C.. The Stoicism of Diogenes is "eclectic", already revised and corrected to some extend by Carneades. Diogenes said that the end consists in "calculating well in the choice of that which is in accordance with nature", and this is the same as saying that it is better to be subject to misfortune after calculating well, than to good fortune, without calculating. The wisdom of the Sage is reduced to calculation, to weighing. However, adopting Carneades' criterion has this side to it, that from the elevated sphere of perfect acts the Stoics shifted to seeking ordinary duties. In the statement above, though, "to exist" for the divinity means "to exist by nature", which is referring to the natural state of things rather than the well-calculated choice. The criterion is still "apprehensive presentation pure and simple", in the "old" Stoic sense, as contrasted to the "new" Stoic criterion, which would be "apprehensive presentation that has no obstacle."

II. Diogenes here is making a move to describe God as existent by definition, because it is simply God's nature to exist. If P is reasonable to honour, then P's nature implies existence. The Stoic's God is a God who has the formative power and harmonizes all things: God is the creative fire, ether, logos, reason of the world, soul of the world, the law of nature, providence, destiny, and order. To exist, then, among all these greater things, is the most obvious thing God can do.

For when it is accepted in this meaning, it is plain that gods are of such a nature as to exist. And if this is so, then they actually do exist. For once granted that they ever were existent, they are also now existent just as, if atoms existed, they exist now also, for it is implied in the conception of such bodies that they are imperishable and uncreated . .

Sextus is falling into tautology here, the main thought goes: if they [gods] were ever existent, they are also now existent ( if X, then X). He does not accept an ontological argument for God's existence (i.e., stemming from the very idea or notion or definition of God). Then, this reflects Sextus' inacceptance of the vision that reality must be one, that it must possess unity, and that being one reality, it could not change (as it is with Parmenides and the atomists). The point Sextus is getting at is that this view is one-sided, because there also exists change. But the Stoics would have replied that all change is immanent in God and unchanging in its laws. This points to two aspects of the Stoic's notion of order - autonomy and uniformity.

These arguments then are fairly typical of the arguments brought forward by the Stoics and by representatives of the other schools to prove the existence of gods.

"Fairly typical", because most of the ancient Greeks arguments for God's existence were circular and stemming from the definition of God. For example, another similar argument of God's existence is ascribed to Chrysippus: if there exists something greater than human reason can devise, that thing must be the work of some reasoning being that is greater than man, of God or gods. The Sceptics did not accept this, again, since it assumed that there was a creative force to be identified with God (or gods).

It will be our next task to point out that on the other hand those arguments which prove the non-existence of gods are not inferior to these as far as the equal validity of their persuasiveness is concerned.

This is a typical Scepticism move: there is no good reason to accept an argument on the grounds of one thing, when we can accept an argument proving the opposite, on the grounds of another thing. Beyond experience, anything can be proved as plausible. Sextus is supporting now the pros, now the cons, by the Sceptics' method of antilogy, resulting in evenly balanced arguments. This balance comes as a result of the equally persuasive force of arguments. Everything is not apprehensible, but everything is, in a sense, persuasive. It can be said that the sceptics, playing with the truth, chase the truth away, because where the false is taken for the true, and the true for the false, they are mutually reciprocal, and therefore they do not exist as separate things. Phyrro would have said to this that the truth cannot be an ultimate goal. Eudaemonia, the true goal, is reached only by peace of mind, when we cease to feel torn apart by the contradictions of existence.

And so, now, if gods exist, they are living beings. And using the same argument with which the Stoics tried to prove that the universe is a living being, one might go on to prove that God too is a living being.

In the Stoic's physics there is no qualitative difference between God and the rest of the universe; God is only the most cohesive creative aspect of the universe.

For a living being is better than what is not a living being. But nothing is better than God. God, therefore, is a living being.

I. Sextus is basically saying: if S is not a living being, then S is not better than R. But nothing is better than S; therefore S is a living being. Again, it is taken for granted that nothing is better than S to prove that S exists: God is better than anything by definition.

II.This argument resembles Anselm's argument for God's existence:

Anselm	Sextus
1. God is something than which nothing greater can be conceived	1. A living being is better than what is not a living being
2. It is greater to exist in reality and in understanding, than only in understanding	2. Nothing is better than God
3.God really exists	3.God is a living being

I am not going to discuss Anselm's talk about that even a fool understands this definition, and that even a fool understands premise (2). Apart from the differences between Anselm in (2) and Sextus in (1), both Sextus and Anselm postulate God's perfection, and that to exist is better than not to exist, therefore God exists: if S does not exist, then S is not better than R. But on this basis the existence of Wise man and of Perfect Islands can be proved as well.

Another objection can be that the first premise, "a living being is better than what is not a living being" is false in that a living being is not better than a not-living being (in the cases of Demons, or evil human beings): it is unclear why existence should be a perfection (why should existence be a perfection was Kant's question).

An alternative conclusion can be drawn here as well: that God is better than a living being. Moreover, it can be said that God transcends human comprehension and that we cannot understand definitions about him, since he is totally unlike anything we know. It is interesting to note, that one of the Stoics' proofs for the existence of God was by consent - that there is an innate disposition to believe in God, and the universal belief in God attests to the existence of this disposition. (It is known that the Sceptics denied, though, that it is a matter of fact such common consent to God's existence).

If God exists, he is a living being. If he is a living being, he also possesses sensation. For it is precisely the fact of possessing sensation that differentiates a living being from what is not a living being. But if he possesses sensation, he hears and sees and smells and touches. And if this is so, there are certain things in the realm of each sense which attract and repel him, for example in the realm of sight, things which are symmetrical rather than otherwise, and in the realm of hearing, sounds which are harmonious rather than those which are not, and so on with the other senses. But if this is so, there must be certain things which are vexatious to God, God is subject to change for the worse, hence also to destruction. Therefore God is perishable. But this is in violation of what was the common conception of him. Therefore the Divinity does not exist . . . [Put otherwise: ] If the Divinity exists, it is perishable. But it is not perishable; therefore it does not exist.

I. All arguments here are from the nature of God, already implying at the beginning what is to be concluded at the end. Sextus is using a chain argument here, that goes simply (1) if P, then Q; (2) if Q, then R; (3) if P, then R. The conclusion at the end if S is X, then S is P, but S is not-P, therefore it is not- X is true. What can be questioned here, again, is the truth of the premises, in a number of ways:

(a) Is to exist equal to be a living being ?
(b)Is sense-perception possible for an incorporeal being (as God) in the way it is possible for a human?

A possible answer to these questions has to be looked for in the Stoic's basic understanding of what God and reality are. "God is a living being" - for the Stoics the universe is a vast rational (orderly) animal, spherical in shape, a plenum held together and shaped by the tonos (strain) that is God himself. Individual things differ by the tonos that holds them together. The lowest thing in the hierarchy would be something like a stone, with the least tonos in them, plants would have more, animals - still more, because they have a rudimentary soul (psyche ). So the living being differentiates from the not-living one not by having "senses", but by degrees of "tonos", or spirituality, which is a larger notion than mere "senses". Rational beings would be most close to the total universe of which they are a part, because they are rational beings, they have reason. For the Stoics there were two types of such beings, men on earth and gods, who take the form of stars in heaven. The ruling part of this universe is the pneuma, the creative fire (or God). God was defined by the Stoics as "a rational spirit having itself no shape but making itself into all things" - the Stoics were foundationalists, trying to find a proper stopping place. The Sceptics were asking why couldn't the structure of the universe emerge from the ordinary course of things. The Stoics answered that only a providential God could produce such beauty, such interlocking purposes as the universe revealed, and that the imperfections of detail are essential to perfection as a whole, like darkness in a picture. How can God (the logos spermatikos, the life-giving word, containing its own purposes and powers), then, be vexed by something that is his creation? All changes in God, held the Stoics, are autonomous, not stimulated or bounded from without, since space, like time, is only a dimension of the body (as opposed to the vision that things happen in time and in space). Another thing to consider is how can God be vexed if he is the most rational being of all, it surely must already possess all the orderliness, benevolence, uniformity, and autonomousness which the human being is only striving to achieve.

II. In this fragment Sextus demonstrates the thought movement of a sceptic -(1) the stage of inquiring, searching for truth (reached by the method of antilogy ); (2) the discovery that there are equally strong arguments on either side, therefore one should give up and suspend belief (epoche ); (3) only then, one can be free from the disquiet of the contradictory nature of the world, achieving ataraxia , the goal, which brings peace of mind, necessary for eudaemonia.

It is important, though, that the goal of eudaemonia (through mental detachment in the realm of things unavoidable and moderation of feeling) was shared by Stoics and Epicureans as well. The means to this goal were seen in a different way. In contrast to the Stoics (and Epicureans), Sextus announces that we attend the phenomena and live unbelievingly in accordance with Life's observance(Life's observance is fourfold: guidance of nature, compulsion of feelings, tradition, teaching of arts). Sceptics' principles were to live by appearances (our inquiry, Sextus holds, is not directed at appearance itself, but rather at what is predicted of it; appearances themselves are not subject to question as appearances), and relativity ( announced in sentences as: "No more this than that", or"I determine nothing") . Sextus' passage which I commented here is a demonstration of these central for the understanding of Scepticism principles, which the format of the commentary does not permit me to expand and interpret at length..

3 November, 1994