It may be that i'll end up posting a lot about Stoicism, but then again, maybe not.
I have a number of thoughts on this. There is the issue of Stoic physics and psychology and whether it fits with the way Western academics generally understand the nature of the physical Universe, and there is the matter of whether Stoicism is a good thing.
Firstly, the issue of Stoic physics. Some Stoics are not terribly concerned with the physics and divorce the philosophy of life quite neatly from it. Even these, though, probably assumed it. For the early Stoics, the two were inseparable.
This is roughly how i understand Stoic physics. It is physicalist and vitalist. There are no atoms or voids. The two eternal principles of Logos and Hyle are inseparable aspects of a single body, and the soul and God both exist and are physical. God is an eternal creative fire which is also found in humans, whose souls are also eternal. There is a more and a less refined fire. The distinctive human soul is pneuma, a mixture of fire and air. The less refined fire is not the eternal creative fire.
This is difficult to reconcile with contemporary Western physics. However, there may be another way, through the concept of prana. Breath is the lowest human need which can be voluntarily satisfied in Maslow's hierarchy. There are more fundamental needs such as for the heart to keep beating, but it is unusual for these to be subject to the will. Breath is special because it is both a reflex and a conscious action. Humans have, by a lucky chance, come across language, and this has made them distinctive from many other species. Human culture is based on language, and to the extent that thought is verbal, so is our special human consciousness, though not consciousness itself. Stoicism would concur if representations are seen as statements, and the Logos is rationality as the Word, that is, language. The historical basis of human language seems to be speech, though there are now other forms of language in which speech does not feature, and therefore breath is also absent, such as sign language and writing. I am therefore a little uncomfortable with this model because of the status of deaf experience.
There is another sense in which the soul is breath and fire. The central nervous system depends intimately on oxygen and differences in charge across membranes to maintain consciousness. Such a difference in charge is analogous to the refined fire known as plasma, that is, the fire of the sun and lightning rather than that of oxidation. The brain also needs a constant supply of oxygen to maintain consciousness, to a greater extent than the rest of the body. Therefore, the soul is in a very literal sense composed of fire and air.
The trouble is, what am i doing here? Am i merely painting a pretty picture of the soul, or am i saying something practically meaningful? I don't know. I do feel there is mileage in pursuing the notion of plasma as God. Another reason for disquiet is the nature of consciousness. It is reductionist and mechanistic to focus the seat of consciousness solely as within the central nervous system, and it doesn't correspond to my experience. I have irritable bowel syndrome. When i am stressed, this is expressed through my digestion. My colon contains millions of neurones. Similarly, i have gonads, a thyroid and adrenals. All of these are part of my consciousness. Therefore, I would say that my soul consists at least of a much larger portion of my body than just my brain. Although there is a blood-brain barrier, there doesn't seem to be such a firm line between my consciousness and the rest of me. Then again, the endocrine system and the enteric nerves rely on refined fire just as much as the brain does, if not on air. There is also a lot of scope in the notion of breath as the basis of the human soul through language.
Now to the other concern. Stoicism teaches indifference to the world and self-control. This means that one treats success and failure in the same way. Recently i have been very poor and found a Stoic approach helpful in coping with this. However, we recently received more money, and i found i was not particularly joyful about this, regardless of looking a gift horse in the mouth, something i'm very much in the habit of doing. Emotions are an important part of life, and i don't know that i really want to be cut off from the negative ones at the cost of also being cut off from the positive ones. Is this what Stoicism does or have i misunderstood?
