In existographies, Cleanthes (c.330-230BC) (IQ:165|#469) was a Greek stoic philosopher, student of Zeno of Citium (see: Greek philosophy), mentor to Chrysippus (279-206BC), noted for developing, with the addition of this "tension" theory of matter, the basic the tenets of so-called "stoic physics".
Stoicism
In 262, Cleanthes, following the passing of Zeno, became the head of the stoic school; he was succeeded by Chrysippus (279-206BC).
Cleanthes, penned some 50 works, on fragments of which survived, wherein, supposedly, he upgraded Stoic materialism, via his introduction of “tension” (tonos), which distinguished matter from being dead and inert; also outlined some type of pantheism, according to which the sun was divine, and had some type of divine fire which animated “living things”, or something to this effect; he argued that the soul was a material substance, that survived death, but that the intensity of its existence would vary according to the strength or weakness of the particular soul.
Other
Cleanthes is said to be the teacher of the stoic philosopher character “Balbus" in Cicero’s three person dialogued The Nature of the Gods (45BC); as well as later being the "deist philosopher" character "Cleanthes" in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (c.1750).
Quotes | On
The following are quotes on Cleanthes:
“Anaximander stated that the earth was like a column, Leucippus, a cylinder or war drum; Cleanthes, a cone or top; Heraclitus, a boat-shaped vessel; Democritus, a concave disc; Anaximenes and Empedocles, etc., a level table.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 3) [1]
“An essential part of the stoic theory of sense perception is the hypothesis that there exists a center of perception and consciousness, named the ‘hegemonikon’ or ‘ruling part of the soul’, which is located in a defined part of the body; most stoics identified it with the heart, which is in control of the five sensor organs, the generative part of the body, and the faculty of speech. Every stimulus from outside is conducted from the specific sense organ excited by it to the hegemonikon, which centralizes and co-ordinates the various impressions, elevates them into consciousness and then releases the impulse reacting to the sensation. The stoics regarded the movement of the pneuma as some sort of propagation of state. One of them, the ‘seven parts of the soul’, growing out of the hegemonikon and extending throughout the body are compared to the tentacles of an octopus. Cleanthes defined walking, as in choosing a particular instance of an activity directed by the mind, as pneuma emitted from the hegemonikon to the feet, whereas his disciple Chrysippus maintained that it is the hegemonikon itself which reaches the feet.
— Samuel Sambursky (1959), Physics of the Stoics [2]
Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Cleanthes:
“The fates guide the person who accepts them, and hinder the person who resists them.”
— Cleanthes (c.290BC) (Ѻ)
References
1. Guericke, Otto and Schott, Kaspar. (1672). Otto Guericke’s New Experiments: on (as they are called) on the Magdeburg vacuum space (Ottonis De Guericke Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio) (15+ diagrams, various pages) (preface, pdf) (pg. xvii). Janssonius a Waesberge.
2. Sambursky, Samuel. (1959). The Physics of the Stoics (pgs. 22-24). Princeton University Press, 2014.
External links
● Cleanthes – Wikipedia.
