Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoic souls in Stoic corpses 407
qua systasis. But my body is a part of the human being of which I am
also a part. And indeed, it sometimes looks as though I am a human
being, although this cannot be quite right, since that is a compound
and I am not.
So some of the work of persuading me to care about the right things
has simply been postponed and transformed, not really solved. When I
thought of myself as a compound thing, soul and body, then the ethical
task for the Stoics was to convince me to care about my soul rather than
my body. Now I am told that I am not a compound; my real self is simply
a pure soul. Fair enough, but now I am left wondering why I should
care about this real self instead of the human animal that is a compound
of my alleged real self and my body. After all, it is very hard not to care
about this human animal. Its demands and blandishments are very pressing
and persuasive. Indeed, according to the Stoics, I actually ought to
care about the human animal, although not in the way in which its demands
and blandishments would urge me to. Rather, I ought to take
care of its needs by pursuing the preferred indifferents that it is rational
for me to select, and keeping it in a state according to nature, without
ever falsely thinking that its welfare is a part of my good.
However, despite the many difficulties that remain in this picture, I
think this is the picture that the Stoics had, which Antiochus found so
puzzling. I think it is a picture that is consistent both with earlier, Chrysippean
views and the later Epictetan views on the relation between soul
and body, and also consistent with their shared views on the telos and the
good. They do not think that the goods of the body are any part of my
good, because they do not think my body is any part of me. The conception
of human nature underwrites the ethical conclusion, and the
evidence from ethics provides evidence for the anthropology. I am simply
a little soul, lugging around a corpse.