Gary C. Moore
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 Zeno of Citium c. 300BC, was founder of the Greek Stoic school of Philosophy. The "Logos" was a cornerstone of the Stoic philosophical school. The Stoics spoke of the "seminal logos", which creates, sustains and permeates the Universe.

4.2
Once more Arius contains a valuable text [call it passage A]:

 Ten lines later Arius continues [passage B]:

     Stobaeus, ECLOGAE II p. 77,16-27 W. [=SVF III 16, Long and Sedley 63A, page 394.

     Engberg-Pedersen--The first of these two passages is particularly difficult since of the three uses of *telos* that it mentions the two first are apparently slightly deviant. Still, we must try to sort out the overall meaning, by [1] showing the relationship between the following three things mentioned in passage B: [a] BEING HAPPY [TOEUDAIMONEIN], [b] HAPPINESS {EUDAIMONIA] and [c] the happy life [HO EUDAIMON BIOS]---and [2] by relating the terms telos and SKOPOS to those other things. by Troels Engberg-Pedersen [1990] *Things and Predicates* [GCM: something for those who love dissections in verbal meaning] Part 4


13. THE STOIC THEORY OF OIKEIOSIS by Troels Engberg-Pedersen [1990]

*Things and Predicates* [GCM: something for those who love dissections in verbal meaning]

Part 5

     It is sufficiently clear that the Stoics aim in the two passages is to draw certain distinctions between these various items in terms of their ontological distinction between material objects and predicates. Thus from passage A it transpires that the telos belongs on the predicate side, whereas the goal [SKOPOS] is understood as a material object. For the goal is explicitly said to be *the body itself* that people seek to attain when they aim at EUDAIMONIA. As for the telos, calling the goal telos is like calling a homogous LIFE telos and since on the Stoic theory a life is a material entity this can only be done, according to the passage, by *refering*, presumably somewhat defiantly, the life to the predicate that *lies alongside* it; the predicate that is involved here must be *living homologously* [HOMOLOGOUMENOS ZEN or perhaps HOMOLOGEISTHAI] and that apparently is the PROPER form of the telos--a point that goes well with the beginning of passage B, which identifies the telos [and being happy] as LIVING in accordance with virtue, in homology and in accordance with nature; so the telos is a predicate.

     In addition to locating telos on the predicate side of their ontological distinction, the Stoics also identified it in two closely related ways: as *the ultimate object of desire, that to which everything else is referred” [third [page 29] usage of *telos* in passage A] and as *that for the sake of which everything is done, whereas it is itself not done for the sake of anything* [beginning of passage B]. We should ask, therefore, how this Aristotelian use of *telos* is connected with the other point that the telos is a predicate


     First, let us consider the relationship between the three other irems. We may already conclude that [a] BEING HAPPY [TO EUDAIMONEIN at the beginning and end of passage B] and OBTAINING happiness {TYCHEIN at the end of either passage] are both predicates. For they are identified as the telos in a context [end of passage B] in which the telos is CONTRASTED with the goal *itself*, that is, to be understood as a material entity. Being happy is not a body, but presumably something lying alongside one. [GCM: pg. 26, PARAKEIMENA: *which lie alongside*]

     Happiness [b] and the happy life [c], by contrast are bodies. They are first said [towards the end of passage B] to be *not different from* each other . But next one of the two, viz. happiness, is singled out as being the goal [itself] and hence [by the end of passage A] the body [itself] that people seek to obtain when they aim at EUDAIMONIA. Is some contrast intended here between happiness and the happy life? And if so, what could it be?

     First, it is like that the Stoics did work with some difference between happiness and the happy life, even though both belong on the same side in the Stoic ontological distinction. That at least is the impression ones gets from the remarks in passage A about the first two uses of *telos*, which imply that the Stoics drew a parallel distinction between*homology* {HOMOLOGIA] and *the homologous life* [HO HOMOLOGOUMENOS BIOS]. This impression, however, will only be of any use if it becomes possible to formulate a clear and sensible point to the supposed distinction.

     But that is possible. At the beginning of passage A, Arius says that the term telos may refer to *the perfect good*--and he then gives homology as an example. Now one much repeated Stoic account of what falls under *good* is this: virtue virtue itself and what has a share of it. What has a share of virtue is first, and most directly, the actions that express virtue and secondly, as a further extension, godd men in general and friends [if they are also good]. If we put on one side here [as we certainly may in the present context] good men and friends, the two deviant accounts in Arius of the telos as first *the perfect good*, that is, homology, and secondly as the goal, the homologous life.

The perfect good, exemplified as homology, is virtue, and the goal exemplified as the homologous LIFE, that is, homology put in action throughout a whole life, is virtuous acts. The perfect good, then, which philologists call telos [but [page 30] wrongly, as we saw] and which IS homology, is also virtue. Notice then what kind of thing virtue is according to the Stoics. It is the material mind [the PSYCHE] *in a certain state*. So the material something that is referred by *homology* is virtue understood as the material mind in a certain state. But in that case we can see that there may be a genuine point to drawing a distinction between happiness and the happy life--and one that comes out far simpler than the argument on the basis of which I have formulated it: *happiness* stands for the material state of mind from which flow all the actions that make up a whole, happy life; happiness is the state and the happy life is its actualizations. BEING happy, by contrast, and OBTAINING happiness are predicates.


     With this technical understanding of the term EUDAIMONIA the Stoics have clearly moved away from Aristotle’s understanding of the same term. Let us now return to the other part of their doctrine, where they took over and developed the Aristotelian understanding of happiness [of EUDAIMONIA as used by Aristotle] in their understanding of the telos.


14 THE STOIC THEORY OF OIKEIOSIS by Troels Engberg-Pedersen [1990]

*Things and Predicates* [GCM: These articles have been about *eudaimonia*, Aristotelian vs. Stoic, and REIFICATION as in the Stoic *fundamental ontological distinction between the world itself, which is material, and awareness of the world which is not but belongs at the level of LEKTON [*sayable*]* ] Part 6


    The telos as a predicate [non-material reification]

4.3 We saw that the Stoics understood the telos both as the ultimate object of desire [the Aristotelian heritage] and as a predicate [their own innovation] . Is there any special point to the Stoic addition here?

     In itself it is unsurprising, once one does have the Stoic ontological distinction, that the telos should belong on the predicate side of it. For even on the Aristotelian understanding, the telos [that is, Aristotelian EUDAIMONIA] is intrinsically connected with the intentional state of choosing [as we saw]: it is the end of ACTS. And on the Stoic theory whenever there is some choice going on, one will necessarily be operating on the level of LEKTA. However, there may be a special reason why the Stoics insisted on their ontological distinction in relation to the telos, one that seems reflected in a small point that distinguishes what they say of the telos in the two passages we have just discussed from what they said of PHRONESIS in the two earlier ones. There, as we saw, the direct object of choice in relation to PHRONESIS was said to be either PHRONEIN or PHRONESIN ECHEIN. In connection with the telos, by contrast, the corresponding terms are EUDAIMONEIN and EUDAIMONIAS TYCHEIN, not EUDAIMONIAN ECHEIN. Why?

     Consider it this way. *Being PHRONEMOS* and *having PHRONESIS* may be understood indicatively as expressing putative facts when they form part of the propositional content of the utterance *S is PHRONEMOS* or *S has PHRONESIS*. In this usage, as we saw, they represent predicates which if the [page 31] utterance is true *lie alongside* [pp. 25-6, *since they are predicates which lie alongside the things good*, in Arius quote] an actual material state of the world, viz. S’s actually HAVING PHRONESIS. However, when we speak of *being PHRONIMOS* [PHRONEIN] as the object of an intentional state like choice, it is no longer used indicatively to express a putative fact that is thought to lie alongside an actual state of the world for the simple reason that this state is thought to be not yet present in the world. Rather we choose to MAKE it present. Here, then PRONEIN will be most appositely translated as *becoming [as opposed to being] PHRONIMOS*: we choose to BECOME PHRONIMOI rather than to be it. We can of course say that we choose to have PHRONESIS [rather than get it] , if we wish to draw the contrast to the impossible idea of choosing the thing itself. This is what is done in the two passages I discussed first. But if we want to attend to the specific role of PHRONEIN as an object of an intentional state like choice, we must say that it means BECOMING PHRONIMOS, GETTING INTO the state at the presence of which it is true to say that S is PHRONIMOS or has PHRONESIS.