The Painted Porch

The man credited with founding the Stoic philosophy was Zeno of Citium who lived from 334 to approximately 262 BC. Citium is in Syria, but Zeno taught in Athens. Worth noting about this interesting, noble philosophy: it began in a time when late Greek culture, Hellenism, is said to have begun. That birth date was 323 BC, the death of Alexander the Great. Hellenism as a cultural phenomenon is dated from 323 to 146 BC, when the last Greek power was overcome by Rome, or 31 BC, the time when, with the Battle of Actium, the imperial age of Rome began. The Stoic philosophy, however, increased its hold on the Roman elites. In many important ways it matched the ethos of Christianity—which ultimately replaced it. But it was still until 529 AD when Justinian I closed the Academy of Athens and thus silenced the last effective Hellenistic influence.

This philosophy got its name from a place where it was taught, the Stoa Poikile, a columned portico or porch on the north side of Athen’s agora. Zeno used to stand there and teach his philosophy—which in many functional ways resembles the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) whom many view as being a pantheist. Technically he is not, but it is easy to read him that way. Stoicism certainly was. Stoics saw the universe as two interacting substances, a passive matter and an intelligent, primordial fire or aether ever transforming reality. The fire, this energy, never runs out. God, which is the universe, is absolutely good. All evil derives from human choices, and the power to act freely is God’s gift. Individual personalities disappear at death but the fire that carried them through life is taken up into the swirl of the greater Fire and keeps working on, creating forever. Spinoza would have agreed. If we count the years between 529 and Spinoza’s birth year, we have the return of the Stoa after a lapse of 1100 years.

At present a genuine stoicism, which carries a very strong emphasis on ethics—as a way of aligning with the laws of the cosmos, and incidentally achieving happiness to the extent possible through reason and right action—has not yet fully developed under a materialistic dispensation. And never mind embraced by the dominant cultural elite. Materialism does not recognize a minimal transcendence in matter, thus as having intelligence. And its ethics are relative. A new Stoa might eventually emerge, especially if conditions worsen. Therefore, perhaps, some people might already be mixing new paint for application to the old porch.