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Zeno of Citium
Ancient Greek Stoic Philosopher
©2009 Firebrand

Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC), Greek philosopher, probably half Semitic, founder of the Stoic
school, born at Citium in Cyprus. He went to Athens in 305 and attached himself to the Cynic
Crates. Later he studied under Stilpo, Diodorus Cronus, and Philo of the Megarian school. He then
proceeded to the Academics, Xenocrates and Polemo, and opened a school of his own in the
'Painted Porch', Stoa Poikile. Hence his disciples were called Stoics.

Cover photo by Shakko Kitsune

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Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium was an ancient Greek philosopher. Born in Citium on Cyprus, about 336 B.C.

Probably of Phoenician origin, he was shipwrecked near Piraeus, the port of Athens, in 313 B.C.
and then settled at Athens.

After attending lectures by leading professors of the several Athenian philosophical schools and
studying their doctrines, he began about 300 to teach his own tenets in a public hall, the Stoa
Poikile (Painted Porch), whence his system was named Stoicism . Zeno's philosophy was developed
in answer to the political instability and philosophical skepticism of the day.

It emphasized that an individual should fully accept the events of life, since they are often beyond
human control. Man should use his reason to discipline his emotions and desires. In so doing, he
lives a life of goodness and virtue, in harmony with himself and the world. Zeno's philosophical
system also included logic and physics. His thought reflects the influence of Socrates and the Cynic
school.

Zeno's exemplary life was so esteemed by the Athenians that they offered him citizenship, which he
declined from fidelity to his birthplace. Another admirer, Antigonus II Gonatas, king of Macedon (r.
276-239 B.C.), invited him to transfer his activity to the Macedonian capital (Pella), a request that
Zeno refused.

Zeno propagated his doctrine also in numerous treatises, of which only brief and isolated excerpts
are extant. Among his works are recorded: On Life According to Nature, On Human Nature, On
Emotions, On Duty, On Law, On Vision, On the Whole World, On Signs, On Varieties of Style,
Ethics, Pythagorean Questions, Rhetoric Universals, and The State. Besides these, he wrote on
education and poetry and left memoirs.

Zeno's presentation was so popular that he soon attracted many auditors, and he continued to teach
there for almost 40 years, until his death in Athens, Greece, in about 262 B.C.

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Teachings
Reconstruction of what Zeno taught is extremely difficult for two reasons: (1) so little of his literary
production exists that only an imperfect and partial idea of his doctrine can be constructed; and (2)
his successors' literary activity during the century after his death, in controversy with competing
scholars of other schools, so obscured his original work that it can be determined only generally or
by conjecture how Zeno gradually achieved the original outlines of Stoicism or how far he himself
carried the school's solution of philosophical problems. Most of the extant definition, amplification,
modification, and contradiction in Stoicism must be post-Zenonic, since Stoicism passed through
three phases (early, middle, late) in its vigorous history from 300 B.C. to 200 A.D. After this the
Stoic school ceased to exist as such; but having spread beyond the professional philosophers, it
exerted an important influence in forming the philosophy of the early Christian church fathers.

Zeno created a tripartite system divided into; (1) logic, including psychology and epistemology; (2)
physics, including ontology and theology; and (3) ethics, including aesthetics and politics. He
adapted his logic from the Cynic dogma of Antisthenes (c. 455 B.C. - 360 B.C.) and the Megaric
doctrine of Diodorus Cronus (fl. 300 B.C.); borrowed his physics mostly from Heraclitus (fl. 500
B.C.) and partly from Aristotle (384-322 B.C.); and acquired much of his ethics from the Cynics. In
his and his immediate successors' hands ethical doctrine so overshadowed logic and physics that it
became the characteristic hallmark of Stoicism in antiquity and has persisted to the present as the
most prominent part of the Stoic system.

Zeno's ethical teaching appears to have been based on the axioms:

1) that absolute law admitting no exception governs nature; and...

2) that man's essential nature is reason. To the rational being the same act is both according to
nature and according to reason; hence man must live according to nature, that is, according to his
whole nature and not according to a part of it. As virtue is the life according to reason, so morality
is simply rational action; passion and emotion are essentially irrational and must be extirpated.
Virtue is the only good, vice is the only evil, everything else (poverty or wealth, health or pain, life
or death) is indifferent.

All virtues are equally good, and all vices are equally evil, there are no degrees: one is either wholly
virtuous or wholly vicious. This celebrated paradox is qualified by the profession that the prime
virtue is wisdom, whence evolve all other virtues.

The wise man is the good man, good not for the sake of pleasure, but of duty; and being secure in
his virtue, he is happy.

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Related Information
1. http://hubpages.com/_scrbd/hub/zeno
2. http://hubpages.com/_scrbd/hub/stoicism
3. http://hubpages.com/_scrbd/hub/greek-philosophy
4. http://bitesized.info/index.php?topic=philosophy

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