Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoic souls in Stoic corpses 395
living creature of any sort you like, but even if it be devoid of a body, as is
our imaginary being, nevertheless its mind will be bound to possess certain
attributes analogous to those of the body, and consequently it will be impossible
to set up for it a telos on any other line than those which I have laid
down. Now Chrysippus, in his survey of the differences between living
things, says that some of them excel by the body, and others excel by
the soul, while still others are equally endowed in respect of both; and
then he proceeds to discuss what constitutes the ultimate good proper to
each species. However, while he placed human beings in the genus that
excel in the soul, he then went on to define their summum bonum in
such a way that they seem not merely to excel by their souls, but actually
to be nothing beyond their souls. But the only case in which it would be
correct to place the summum bonum in virtue alone is if there existed a creature
consisting solely of pure intellect, with the further proviso that this intellect
possessed nothing of its own that was in accordance with nature, as
bodily health is. But it is impossible even to imagine a self-consistent picture
of what such a creature would look like. 13
We can see from this passage that Chrysippus wrote a book in which he
first talked about the nature of various species of living things, i.e. made
a “survey of the differences between living things”, and then for each
species derived from the account of its nature an account of its telos,
i. e. “he proceeds to discuss what constitutes the ultimate good proper
to each species”. 14 That this was the direction and order of argumentation
in Chrysippus’ book is secured, not only by the comment “then he
proceeds to discuss”, but also by the whole structure of Antiochus’ criticism
here.
It is extremely interesting, I think, that Chrysippus adopted this
method. He seems to have operated with the principle that in the
case of anything that can be said to have a telos, that thing will have
that telos in virtue of its nature. He applied this principle in the case
of a variety of different living things, discussing the differences in
their natures and the differences in their ends that flowed from them.
And he applied the same principle in the same way to the case of
human beings. Diogenes Laertius (7.85) tells us that in the first book
of his treatise On Ends (Peri telôn), Chrysippus said that self-preservation
is the first appropriate thing for every living thing, panti zôôi, and then
Diogenes tells us how animals differ from plants by using impulse to
13 Fin. 4.26 –29, translation modified from Rackham.
14 The introduction of the purely psychic creature is not obviously Antiochus’ innovation;
Chrysippus may have introduced hypothetical creatures of this sort
for his own purposes in developing his survey.