Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

400
Tad Brennan
instance I have found of the claim that a human being is composed out
of soul and body. From its role in the context – defending the consistency
of Zeno’s definition with other parts of Stoic doctrine – I have
some confidence that it is a genuinely Stoic claim rather than a piece
of skeptical mischief.
Somewhat similar is a line from Hierocles’ Elements, 18 in which he
says that the living thing (to zôion) is a composite of both soul and
body (syntheton ex amphoterôn, ek sômatos kai psychÞs). The claim is not
specifically about a human being, but it is generically about living
things, and to the extent that it supports the Sextus passage, it is starting
to look as though Epictetus is in disagreement with his predecessors in
claiming that a human being is merely a soul.
There are also places where the cosmos is said to be composed of
soul and body, and this claim is used in order to argue that the cosmos
is an animal for that reason. Dio Chrysostom 19 tells us that the constitution
of the cosmos is very similar to that of the other living things, inasmuch
as it is composed of soul and body (tote dÞ malista proseoikôs tÞi tôn
allôn systasei zôiôn, kath’ hoson ek psychÞs kai sômatos synestanai), and Plutarch
20 gives us a direct quotation from Chrysippus’ treatise On Providence,
in which he says that the kosmos is composed of soul and body
(synestanai ek psychÞs kai sômatos).
These passages make it look as though Antiochus is right to think
that Stoic axiology is inconsistent with Stoic anthropology: the Stoics
do seem to say that living things in general, and human beings in particular,
are a compound, composed of soul and body.
On the other hand, there are passages that make it look as though a
human being is the soul only – even outside of the Epictetus fragment
we began with. Consider the following rather odd passage that Galen
quotes. 21 It’s a text in which Chrysippus is arguing that the commanding-faculty
is located in the chest, by examining what happens when we
say the Greek word for ‘I’, i.e. the first person singular personal pronoun
‘egô’:
Here is what Chrysippus wrote about the word ‘egô’ in the first of his books
On the Soul, in a discussion of the commanding faculty: ‘This is also how
we say ‘egô’, pointing at ourselves (heautous), in the place in which we de-
18 Hierocl. Elementatio 4.38 – 40.
19 Or. 36.55 = SVF 2.622.
20 Plutarch, St. rep. 1053b.
21 Galen, PHP 2.2.9 – 11 = SVF 2.895 = LS 34J.