Zeno of Citium (together with Chrysippus of Soli, both Phoenicians) was
the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, which (along with its rival,
Epicureanism)
came
to dominate the
thinking of the Hellenistic world, and later, the Roman Empire,
with some elements of Stoic thought even influencing early Christianity.
For a long time the stoics have had a bad press, Stoicism being
associated in the popular imagination with a grim and pessimistic
world-view, in contrast to the jolly Epicureans. Fortunately,
however, Stoicism is now being re-evaluated by groups as diverse
as psychotherapists and semioticians, and it is therefore frustrating
that so little is known of the original Stoic philosophy as taught
by Zeno. None of Zeno's works have survived; all we know of him
is contained in a few quotations and anecdotes in the works of
his followers and critics. Most of these are collected in Book
VII of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers,
from which the following information is taken.
Zeno was born in 333 B.C. in Citium,
a principal Phoenician city in Cyprus, situated on the southeast coast
near modern Larnaca.
The biblical name Kittim, representing Citium, was also used
for Cyprus as a whole. A Phoenician dedication to the god "Baal
of Lebanon," found at Citium, suggests that the city may
have belonged to Tyre. Citium suffered repeatedly from earthquakes,
however, and in medieval times its harbour became silted and
the population moved to Larnaca.
Zeno himself was of Phoenician
ancestry. For most of his youth he was a merchant, but, so the story has
it, at the age of thirty,
he was shipwrecked while transporting purple dye from Phoenicia
to Peiraeus. While kicking his heels in Athens, he frequented
a bookshop, where he was drawn to the works of Socrates. Asking
the shopkeeper where men like Socrates could be found, he received
the reply "Follow that man." The man in question was
Crates the Cynic, and Zeno became his pupil, later commenting
"I made a prosperous voyage when I was shipwrecked."
Crates appears to have been a hard master. Zeno was overly
conscious of social propriety (a habit which he always found
hard to shake, despite his anarchistic views), and Crates attempted
to cure this by making him carry a pot of lentils through the
streets of Athens. Like a Zen master, Crates suddenly smashed
the pot with his staff, and Zeno ran away in embarrassment with
lentil soup dripping down his legs and Crates calling after him:
'Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen
you!' It was under Crates' tutelage that Zeno wrote his greatest
work, the Republic. Eventually Zeno began to teach in
his own right, wandering up and down the arcade of painted columns
known as the 'Stoa'.
Zeno certainly seems to have inherited
the Cynics' preference for gruff speech and shocking behaviour. He was
continually making
fun of the fops of Athens, commenting on a youth who was taking
pains to avoid stepping in some mud, that it was only because
he couldn't see his reflection in it. Of another, who was given
to displays of rhetoric, he said "Your ears have slid down
and merged in your tongue.' He attempted to avoid attracting
too many followers by associating with (according to Timon) 'a
crowd of ignorant serfs, who surpassed all men in beggary",
and was also in the habit of asking passers by for small change.
Despite this, he was held in high esteem by the citizens of Athens,
and was even given the keys to the city. He was also invited
to act as an advisor to King Anigonus of Macedon, but he turned
this down, sending his pupil Persaeus, instead.
Not much is known of Zeno's personal
life. He appears to have continued his interest in trade, though by all
accounts his life
was fairly frugal, his main enjoyment being to sit in the sun
eating figs and drinking wine. In fact, contrary to the popular
image of Stoicism, Zeno seems to have liked his drink, commenting
(presumably while staggering drunkenly) that it was better to
slip with the feet than with the tongue. He was not fond of being
waited upon (possibly due to the Cynics' and Stoics' opposition
to slavery), though it was said that he occasionally had a maid-servant
wait at his parties "in order not to appear a misogynist." He probably
died in 261 B.C., striking the ground with his fist and quoting the line from Niobe, "I
come, I come, why do you call me?"
Most of what we know of Zeno's philosophy is extrapolation
from later Stoics, notably Epictetus. The Republic describes
a Stoic Utopia of rational citizens. It seems similar to the
later Utopias of the Anarchists: there is no money and it has
no temples or lawcourts, these being unnecessary for rational
beings. Zeno, like all the Stoics, preached equality of the sexes,
and also claimed that men and women should dress alike. Moreover,
he said that no part of the body should be completely covered, "modesty" being anathema to the early Stoics. He received
notoriety for his advocacy of what is generally referred to as
"community of women" or "community of wives",
though a better term would probably be "free love",
since the former terms imply that women are commodities which
should be shared freely, and this would run counter to Stoic
doctrine. In general, the early Stoics were uninterested in sexual
morality, masturbation, homosexuality and prostitution all having
been regarded as acceptable, although most Stoics drew the line
at adultery.
This last point illustrates the
essential problem of Stoicism. Zeno proposed an ideal community of rational
beings, who would
have no need of law, government or codes of morality beyond that
provided by Reason itself. However, Stoics had to live in an
imperfect society, and thus had to accept social realities; thus
while marriage was an imperfect institution, adultery was considered,
on balance, to be worse. While the Cynics tended to withdraw
from society (like their Chinese counterparts, the early Taoists),
the Stoics maintained that as social animals, it was rational
to fulfil social duties, and this included participation in politics
and administration. It is in this way that we see the apparent
contradiction of a Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, writing one
of the classics of late Stoicism. However, while Aurelius took
Stoic ideas of duty to society to extremes (he never actually
wanted to be Emperor in the first place), Zeno and the early
Stoics seem to have advocated "permanent protest":
in society but against it, as it were.
In addition to politics and ethics, Zeno, like all the Stoics,
was interested in dialectic (including semantics) and physics.
This is hardly the place for an exposition of Stoic (meta)physics;
suffice it to say that they were basically pantheists, all physical
and mental phenomena proceeding from one essential force which
they dubbed pyr technicon, "the fire which creates".
Although this force was sometimes identified with the god Zeus
(other gods and goddesses being different aspects of this primal
energy), it is a mistake to attribute proto-Christian monotheistic
ideas to Zeno or the other Stoics. What is referred to in Stoic
writings as "Zeus" in one place, may be referred to
as "Nature" elsewhere. While some Stoics divided the
universe into an active, rational principle and a passive, elemental
principle, there is still little distinction between creator
and created, or between physical and spiritual. The Stoic worldview
is thus closer to that of Taoism, Vedanta or some varieties of
Sufism than to orthodox Christianity or Islam. The famous Stoic
acceptance of fate is nothing more than that; what happens, happens,
and there is no point in moaning about it. Since we are animals,
we are impelled to seek pleasure and avoid pain, but inordinate
desire or revulsion are unnecessary and irrational. Similarly,
as social animals, we are impelled to engage in social activities,
but we do not need to overly concerned about what our fellow
citizens think about us. Zeno's philosophy thus offers a middle
way between the Cynics' rejection of society and the later Stoics'
obsession with duty.
