Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

398
Tad Brennan
making tranquility one’s end. We can say this in defense of Antiochus
here: when they are talking in terms of ends, the Stoics really ought
to agree that psychic health and tranquility and irrefutability and all of
the other extensional equivalents should also be mentioned in the complete
account of the end, if indeed they play any independent roles in
our motivations. However, that clearer and more fully explicated account
still would not change the basic issues between Antiochus and
the Stoics. Even if they could convince Antiochus that this large bundle
of extensional equivalents was a coherent end for a disembodied soul,
they still would not convince him that it was an adequate account of
the end for a human being.
To sum up these last thoughts: Antiochus has presented two arguments
which purport to show that, even if we were to imagine creatures
that by nature were purely souls, still the Stoic account of the human
end would fail to do justice to their nature, i.e. that the Stoic telos is
too austere even for pure souls, much less for human beings. Both of
Antiochus’ arguments fail, and in such obvious ways that I do not
think we can even learn much about Stoicism from their failures. But
that leaves untouched the underlying complaint that Antiochus
makes, that the official Stoic account of the human telos seems more
suited to a purely psychic creature, whereas their account of human nature
apparently never denies that they are composites of soul and body.
Antiochus was clearly perplexed and puzzled by what he found in
the discussions of human nature and the human telos in Chrysippus’
treatise. From his allegation of inconsistency, it seems that what Chrysippus
said in his book left Antiochus with the following three impressions:
1) In discussing the nature of human beings, Chrysippus nowhere in so
many words said that human beings were merely souls, or that
human beings were not also bodies as well as souls, and may even
have affirmed on the contrary that human beings were in some
sense composite beings.
2) But, on the other hand, in discussing the telos for human beings,
Chrysippus spoke as though human beings were merely souls and
were in no way composed of bodies, or at any rate gave humans a
telos that, to Antiochus’ mind, would be appropriate only to creatures
that were purely souls and were in no way composed of bodies.
3) This discrepancy notwithstanding, however, Antiochus found nothing
to challenge his conviction that Chrysippus intended to derive