Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoics on souls and demons:
Reconstructing Stoic demonology
Keimpe Algra
1. Introduction
Demonology is among the less studied aspects of Stoic thought. To my
knowledge no comprehensive and thorough discussion is available in
the scholarly literature. 1 This may be partly due to the fact that the evidence
is scarce and scattered. Another reason may well be that, unlike
some more ‘sexy’ aspects of Stoic physics and psychology – determinism,
causation, psychological monism, emotions, selfhood – demonology
hardly connects with the contemporary, or even just modern, philosophical
concerns or discussions that to some extent determine our research
agenda. We nowadays tend to associate demons with bad movies
rather than with good philosophy, and even theologians seem to have
lost interest in the subject. Prima facie, one may also feel that demonology
is a slightly embarassing Fremdkçrper within Stoic cosmo-theology
itself. After all, in traditional religion demons usually represent the irregular,
the unexpected, the strange and the supernatural. The Stoic cosmos,
by contrast, is determinded by a single perfectly rational and provident
force, ordering everything for the best; its inherent order is intelligible
to us humans and both the source of, and the perfect example for,
human rationality. How would demons fit into such a world view? It is
tempting to compare Spinoza, whose cosmo-theology in various respects
resembled Stoicism. He and his followers in what Jonathan Israel
has labeled the radical enlightenment expressly rejected the at the time
still popular conceptions of demons, witches, devils etc., precisely because
they contradicted the basic idea that everything in the world oc-
1 More or less brief surveys can be found in Zintzen 1976, and Brenk 1986. For
an approach from the point of view of the history of religion see Smith 1978.