Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 77
JUSTUS LIPSIUS AND THE REVIVAL OF STOICISM
Stoicism was one of the great systems of ancient Greek philosophy and one that
was adopted by some of the greatest writers of the Roman world, such as Seneca
and Cicero. The Stoics believed that events in the material world were
profoundly and necessarily interconnected. They believed that there was an
underlying cause of these events but did not identify this first cause with a
providence. Wise men do not allow themselves to be dependent on the way the
world goes but seek to achieve tranquillity through recognizing the
interconnection of things.
The Renaissance revival of Stoicism is due, in particular, to the Flemish
humanist Joest Lips (1547–1606), usually known by his Latin name, Justus
Lipsius. Lipsius’s first Neostoic work was his De constantia (1584), 40 a dialogue
set during the revolt of the Low Countries against Spanish rule. The work
commends the virtue of steadfastness (constantia)—of being unmoved by
changes in external circumstances. Lipsius’s main accounts of Stoicism were his
Physiologia Stoicorum and Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam, both published
in 1604. He also produced an edition of the texts of Seneca.
Stoicism was introduced into Germany by Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649),
known by his Latin name of Scioppius, and seems to have become well
established in the Low Countries. 41 It was also influential in France, 42 thanks
partly to Guillaume Du Vair (1556–1621). Du Vair wrote several works in
French, including his De la philosophie morale des Stoïques, which he wrote as a
preface to his French translation of Epictetus’s Enchiridion in 1594. Like
Lipsius, he advocated a Christianized Stoicism. Both were translated into English
in the late sixteenth century—Du Vair’s Moral Philosophie of the Stoicks being
favoured with two translations. 43
Stoicism was highly influential at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
when it was taken to be entirely compatible with Christianity. 44 During the
century, however, this compatibility came to be questioned and its influence
declined. 45 Epicureanism, on the other hand, seems to have become regarded
more favourably. 46 For long misrepresented and dismissed as a debased
philosophy, it was revived in a Christianized form by Pierre Gassendi, who
published three books on Epicurus in 1647–9. Gassendi was able to do this by
presenting Epicurean atomism as a hypothesis and combining it with scepticism
as to whether humans are capable of arriving at definitive knowledge of the
world. 47
Stoicism and Epicureanism, together with Platonism and Aristotelianism,
comprised what were seen as the four great ‘dogmatic’ philosophical systems of
the ancient world. As we have seen, each of them was revived and defended in
the late Renaissance period. The embarrassment of choice was no doubt one
factor promoting a more persistent revival, that of scepticism, which opposed
itself to the claims of such dogmatic systems. Yet some, like Gassendi, found it
possible in practice to combine scepticism with a suitably tempered allegiance to