The Stoics (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 245 self-striving which uncovers and reveals the Other's true Self is the very same Eros which calls me to my true nature and bids the Other to be what that Other truly is. The analysis of this dialectic, however, is not isolated to self-striving, the flight of the imperfect to a final rest in perfection. The highest mystery, we must never forget, is incarnation; "ideal perfection is copied fugitively in the flux" (p. 67), and there the true Self or Being must appear. Whether we call this side of the dialectic "incarnation" or, with Lovejoy, the "principle of plenitude" which affirms that the concept of self-sufficing perfection is transformed into a self-transcending fecundity, we must see resonance of this story, not only in the noetic vision of the Good, but also in the tacit commitment to this principle of self-manifestation or self-exemplification on the dianoetic, technic, and mythic levels of the Divided Line, on each different level of cognition. The four-fold approach to knowledge provides Plato's account of the knowledge of the real, since reality consists of different kinds of objects apprehended by different states of cognitive awareness. ROBERT HAHN Yale University John M. Rist, ed. The Stoics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Pp. viii + 295. $18.00, cloth; $4.75, paper. This collection of thirteen essays on such diverse topics in Stoic philosophy as logic, grammar, physics, cosmology, ethics, and philosophy of mind, gives the reader a good idea of some main issues in Stoic thought, demonstrates once again that historians of Greek philosophy are taking the Stoics seriously, which they failed to do in the nineteenth century and the early decades of our own century, and sets forth some bold new interpretive theses regarding this or that doctrine in Stoic philosophy. It is a valuable collection. Within the limited confines of this review I can only refer briefly to the main thrust of the individual essays, which may be of service to a reader who has not yet seen them, saving slightly more extended remarks for an interpretation which I found of particular interest. Ian Mueller's piece on Stoic logic is characteristically lucid and solid. Particularly helpful are the contrasts drawn with Aristotelian logic, Mueller's attention to the Stoics's concern (or lack of concern) with completeness, and his remarks on the long-vexed issue of the "usefulness" of Stoic logic. Michael Frede contributes a masterful prolegomena for a monograph on Stoic grammar, in which he argues lengthily, but convincingly, that there is a Stoic discipline of grammar and that it is identical with a general theory of diction which was divided into two parts, one concerned with the choice of words ('diction' in one of its modem senses) and the other with the assembling of those words (syntax). Andreas Gaeser, in an essay on the Stoic theory of meaning, defends the view that that theory is nonreferential or intensional, and then examines some inconsistencies produced by the semantic development undergone by lekton, the stoic expression for "linguistic contents." Anthony Long, in a piece called "Dialectic and the Stoic Sage," illuminates Stoic dialectic by treating it as a whole rather than dealing exclusively with those aspects of it of interest to a contemporary logician. In particular he deals in an illuminating way with the questions "how they [the Stoics] conceived of dialectic in general, where they stood in relation to other ancient philosophers, what value they attributed to it, and why, in particular, they held that 'only the wise man is a dialectician' " (pp. 101-2). G. B. Kerford attends to an interesting and important question, "What Does the Wise Man Know?" the title of his contri- 246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY bution to this volume. After considering a number of alternatives, for each of which there is some evidential base, Kerford concludes that the Stoic wise man knows what the right action to perform in every context is and how to perform it. In his "Monism and Immanence: the Foundations of Stoic Physics," Robert B. Todd, who holds that the Stoics were the first to provide a physical theory to explain their metaphysics, concentrates...