ABSTRACT
By around 200 CE we hear very little about active Stoic philosophers. Galen, a Platonist, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, a Peripatetic, were deeply engaged with Stoic theory but hardly at all with any contemporary Stoics. By the middle of the third century, the dominance of the Platonic school meant that only there would there be found critical scrutiny of Stoicism. It is to Plotinus that we owe the most extensive and penetrating account of where Stoicism went wrong, at least from a Platonic perspective. His arguments more or less set the tone for all of the later so-called Neoplatonists. Although within two generations or so after Plotinus, some sort of rapprochement with Stoicism was beginning, particularly in the gradual incorporation of Epictetus’ Handbook into the Platonic curriculum, Plotinus’ reasons for rejecting Stoicism remain the standard ones. That, at any rate, is my justification for devoting most of this chapter to him. Porphyry in his biography of Plotinus tells us that “Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines are
blended into his writings, though they are not obvious” (14, 4-5). Clearly, this “blending” does not suggest uncritical endorsement either of Stoicism or of Aristotle’s philosophy. Plotinus is in fact relentlessly critical of all philosophical claims that he regards as incompatible with Platonism. Nevertheless, there is at the same time much in Stoicism that he admires, particularly in ethics or moral psychology, broadly speaking. As for Aristotle and for Peripatetics generally, he is prepared to treat them as dissident Platonists, mistaken regarding the precise nature of fundamental principles yet valuable contributors to the project of articulating the lineaments of the hierarchically ordered universe. Unfortunately, Porphyry does not mention any works of Stoic philosophers read by Plotinus or studied in his seminars. It seems highly unlikely, given his scholastic approach to the history of philosophy in general and his evident deep engagement with Stoicism as a challenge to Platonism, that Plotinus did not have an extensive knowledge of the Stoic sources. But, alas, this fact doesn’t help us much since so few of these sources are extant. Indeed, it is possible that some of Plotinus’s remarks about Stoicism are based on Peripatetic sources which are themselves critical of Stoic doctrine. For the most part I am going to steer clear of issues pertaining to the development of and variations on Stoic doctrine through the so-called Middle Stoa and into the Roman Stoa. “Stoicism” is for Plotinus very clearly the name of the most serious version of “anti-Platonism” still on
offer in the third century. It is difficult to imagine that Plotinus would have been content with any putative refinements of Stoic teaching that would have retained any substantive connection with the Old Stoa.1
