The Daily Stoic - The Life Of Chrysippus "The Fighter" From Lives Of The Stoics

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Known as the “Second Founder of Stoicism,” Chrysippus was a philosophical giant as revered as he was controversial. Today, Ryan reads from his book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius to share the winding and often confounding story of one of the most important figures of Stoicism, and to explain why he died laughing.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another 700 books. Most of them don't survive. How great a loss that is we can't say. Epictetus once joked some student was bragging about having

read all of Craycippus' works, which were known then to be tough reads. And he said, you know, if Craycippus was a better writer, you'd have less to be proud of. But that doesn't mean Craycipus wasn't a smart guy. He was an incredibly smart guy and incredibly important in the evolution of stoicism. And then you may have heard me talk about this before, but his death was particularly interesting and certainly contradicts one of the images

that we have of the stoics, which is actually images that we have of the Stokes, which is actually why I wrote Lives of the Stokes, right? What the Stokes said in who they were is supposed to be in alignment, but it's not necessarily so, just like you and I are talking about striving to be Stoke, but then when the rubber meets the road, maybe we don't always live up to it as much as we would like or in all the ways that people might expect. And so we can learn from what the Stokes have written, but we can also learn from how the Stokes lived. And we can learn about the art of living from how these men

and women lived their lives. And so in today's episode, I'm bringing you an excerpt from Lies of the Stokes, my chapter on Chrysipus. I call him Chrysipus, the fighter. Clampy's was literally the fighter. He was trained in boxing, which you read about in that chapter. But in this chapter, we talk about more verbal and intellectual fighter that was Chrysipus. And I think you're going to find it really, really interesting. So this is me reading the audiobook chapter of Lives of the Stokes, the art of living from Xeno to Marcus Relius.

I did this in collaboration with the one and only Steve Hanselman who did the translations on the Daily Stoke. He did the translations for this book, pulled together the research on this book, and I did the writing and the reading of the audiobook. So check out Lives of the Stokes if you haven't, or just sit back now and listen to the life of Cray Cipis, the fighter. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott,

stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Christ's Sipis, the fighter, born 279 BC, died 206 BC, origin solely. It was early in life that Christ's Sipis, the man who would go on to be the third leader of the Stoic School, was introduced to running a sport that would change his life. Running in the ancient world as now is not like other sports. Wrestling is a test of strength and strategy between two evenly matched fighters who are entangled body to body. The tossing of a ball or a javelin is a feat of technique and coordination measured by distance. But running, particularly endurance running with its length predetermined and its competitors

separated by lanes, is as much a battle of one's mind and body against themselves as it is a competition against anyone or anything else. What is the connection between philosophy and running? There is none, but between stoicism, a philosophy of endurance and inner strength, of transcending one's limits and of measuring oneself against a high internal standard and distance running. Here, the overlap is profound, particularly for a young man like Cricippus, born in the port city of Solisolisha, competing for the first time in an Olympic distance race like the Dolicis, a three mile race for which there is no modern equivalent. The Dolicis was not a three mile loop

like a modern cross-country course or even a track event like the 5,000 meters, but instead consisted of approximately 24 stadium lengths, then almost like wind sprints on a basketball court. It's not hard to imagine this stoic mind forming as its molder, Cricipus, ran as hard as he could, back and forth, back and forth, not only trying to beat the other racers, but trying to convince himself to keep going as he heaved for air, and his brain told him to stop,

as he jostled for the lead in a pack of runners as he was unconsciously developing the ethical framework that would direct his life in the future of the stoic school. Runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as hard as they can, precipice would later say, but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove. So too in life it is not wrong to seek after the things useful in life, but to do so while depriving someone else is not just. But mostly it would have been on the long training runs by himself through the coastal plans of his homeland, of Solisha,

in what is today Southern Turkey, that precipice prepared himself for the challenges that life had in store for him and for the feats of intellectual and physical endurance that philosophy would demand. Indeed, like the other Stoics living in the chaos of a post Alexandrian world, Cricippus experienced little peace in his early years. His homeland was a frequent target of

deadly raids. His family relocated to nearby Tarsus in response, only to experience a raid of a different kind when the family's significant property was confiscated to swell the coffers of one of Alexander's former generals. As was Xeno, the loss of a fortune became a piece of good fortune because it drove Crescipus to philosophy. It also drove him to Athens, with little in the way of options at home and likely fearing what a tyrannical regime might come to take next. Crescipus, like Clientes, before him left home in search of something better. For generations, Athens attracted not only the best and the brightest of the Hellenistic

world in the pursuit of philosophy, but also the disenfranchised, the bankrupt, and the lost. Crescippus, like Xenos, and Clientes before him was a mix of all of these. We don't know exactly when he arrived in the shining city of learning and commerce, but by the time he did, the legacy of Xeno and Clientes had been firmly established. Their philosophy and fame had spread throughout the Greek world, and whether Xeno was still alive by the time the 17 or 18-year-old Chrysipus arrived in Athens, students would have felt their presence in every conversation, every book, and idea they studied. It is clear that Chrysipus, his name literally means gold and horse, brought with him the

energy and attitude of a fresh generation. This energy was packed in a tight package, for we know that he was of slight stature based on a statue of him erected by his nephew that once stood northwest of the Athenian Agora near the Stoa Pocule. Diogenes reports that the statue was small enough

to be completely obscured by a horse statue next to it, which led to one later philosopher to make the pun that Chrysipus was horse hidden. The statue, which stood long enough for Plutarch to write about it in 100 AD, tells us about more than his size. It's inscription red. This statue is dedicated to his uncle,

Cricypus, the cleaver to the Academy's knots. What knots? The criticism that Clientes had received from poets and satirists was not because he was not well-liked. Stoicism with its growing popularity had become the target for critics and skeptics. We can imagine the philosophical schools of Athens at this time, Epicurians, Platonists,

Aristotelians battling it out like religions, each one claiming to have access to the true God. Clientes had been content to respond with quips or stone-faced silence. When stoicism was merely the thoughts of Xeno or the teachings of Clientes, perhaps this was sufficient, but at some point the school would need to be defended. Its theories would need to be shorted up, its doctrines defined and codified. Contradictions even within the writings of those first two thinkers

would need to be clarified. And there were also Aristo's challenges and the challengers he encouraged which loomed heavily over the future of stoicism. There was Dionysus the Renegade who began as a stoic and joined arrival school that said life should be about pleasure. There was Herillius who had studied under Zeno but believed in opposition to Zeno that knowledge was more important than virtue. There were all these voices fighting questioning, contradicting. What was Stoicism to be?

What kind of instruction and guidance would it offer? Who would its leaders be? Thus fell to Cricippus, the thankless but essential role of fighting to protect this ascendant but still fledgling school. When Aristopoulos published his book against Clientes, it was Cricypus who felt compelled to write a reply. When a philosopher attempted to debate Clientes on some minor logical point,

it was Cricypus who jumped in to shout at the man to stop distracting this teacher. And then if you wanted to take up the quibble, Cricypus was ready for it, not just ready, but ready to win, it seems. Let no one think that ideas that change the world do so on their own. They must, as a wise scientist, would later say, be shoved down people's throats, or at least defend it in fought for.

Cicero would render a verdict years later on one such conflict involving the lesser known, but controversial stoic, Herilis. He has been dismissed for a long time since a row wrote, no one has directly disputed him since Chrysipus. The fighter had settled the matter and sent another early challenger to the dustbin of history. Sena could later speak of the importance of reading and studying other philosophies like a spy in the enemy camp. Indeed, we find that the early years of Christypius' career

were spent not at the elbow of the living stoic masters, but at the side of the heads of Plato's Academy. It's not that he had conflicting loyalties. It's that he knew that if stoicism was to survive, it would have to learn from its more established rivals. We can picture Christypus, the competitor, the racer wanting desperately to win. He studied the arguments of rival schools,

even taking classes in the Platonist School so he could identify weak points in their arguments. He studied the weaknesses of his own arguments to see where Stoicism had to improve. There is sometimes no better way to strengthen your defense than to learn your opponent's offense, and this is precisely what a good philosopher does. Today we call this steel manning. You don't cheat by assuming the worst about the ideas you're arguing against.

Instead you engage with them seriously and earnestly, winning by merit, not by mischaracterization, and as a fighter, Cricipus enjoyed the challenge. We're told that Cricipus was so confident in his ability to break down competing arguments that he once told Clienthys he needed only to know a person's doctrines were and he would discover the proofs, or presumably the refutations himself. Where Clienthys was slow and methodical and always charitable

in his assessment of rivals, Cricipus was proud and loved in electional combat. His competitiveness honed in the Stadia, it turns out, had transferred right over to the world of philosophy. He would never stoop to cheap tricks, aligned, unfortunately, not all the stoics would later tow, but he was in it to win. We can imagine too that he probably didn't approve of Zeno's trick on Aristos. Because to Crescipus philosophy, like life, was a battle, but it should be fought fairly.

It's strange in that way to consider the personalities and respective athletic pursuits of a teacher, and a student master and protégé. Clientes, the boxer was the plotting enduring one while Crasipus, who had excelled in a more solitary sport, was the explosive aggressive one. He added to this temperament real skill too. There was a saying popular in his time

that if the gods were to take up the science of argument, they would use Crasipus as their model. Stoicism was lucky to have such a brilliant thinker in its camp, where Euristo was using his mind to question the orthodoxy in a way that left very little standing. Cricippus in defining philosophy as the cultivation of rightness of reason was systematizing all of Stoic teaching. It's a timeless but unsung role in the history of countless philosophies, businesses, and even countries. The founding generations have the courage and the brilliance to create something new.

It is left to the generations that follow, usually younger, better prepared and far more pragmatic, to clean up the messes and excesses and contradictions that those founders created in the process. This job is hardly as glamorous as the founders work or has recognized. It's not even as rewarding as the work of the Apostle who gets to spread the gospel,

but it is in many ways the most important. The history of stoicism quietly recognizes this and in fact immortalizes the truth of it in the most famous line we have from antiquity about chrysipus. If there had been no chrysipus, it reads, there would have been no stoa. Or rather, we would likely not be talking about it the same way today. When we think of sports stories,

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You can listen to Sports Explains the World early and ad-free on Wondering Plus. When Clientes died in 230 BC, the 49-year-old Crescipus became the third leader of the Stoics. His first order of business was not only to clarify the teachings of his predecessors, but to popularize them. Whereas Xeno and Clientes taught only on the Stoepokile, Crescipus sought out the larger stage of the odion, a concert hall, as well. He was apparently also the first to deliver open air lectures in the grove of the Lyceum, the school of Aristotle's followers.

We can imagine that as a cleaver and as a fighter, he enjoyed bringing his message directly into the enemy's camp. Where Clientes had preferred the power of poetry and often used the analogy metaphor and meter to convey his truths, Crescipus insisted in both his teachings and his prose on the precision of logical argument

and formal proof. Though renowned for his passion for an acumen in argumentation, it was rare for Crescipus to simply leave a point to speak for itself, for instance, as he was fond of arguing repeatedly on the same topics and was equally known for his innovations in the field of logic and for his prodigious literary output. He boasts a body of writings exceeding 705 volumes, some 300 of them alone tackling the topic of logic.

From the titles, Diogeny's, Details, we can see nearly two dozen books on the infamous liar argument alone. You can't believe anything a liar says is true, goes the argument, but can we believe a complete liar when he says that what are you saying is false? If he's always lying, it's not false, but true, but then he wouldn't always be lying. One of his works, logical questions, was even discovered among the intumed papiré at Herculanium in a library of arrival at Pocurian. As Homer was to poetry, one ancient writer wrote, Crescipus was to logic.

He also had a passion for literature and poetry in a way that belies his reputation for logic. In one essay, Chrysipus supposedly referenced so many lines from Europeedist tragic play Medea that people joked that he had included every word of it. It was the idea of Chrysipus, they said. In fact, he was so fond of quoting other writers that their voices overshadowed his own and some of his writings. Critics of his books

called these quotations extraneous, but a better reading is that Crescipus truly loves sharing and sampling from the great thinkers and playwrights of history, and he would become notorious as a result for his diligent citation of them and other sources whenever they supported his points. But was he really that different from Clienthe's or the other Stelix? Crescipes 2 was humble, a hard worker, and unimpressed with finery. It seems he kept a simple house with only a single servant. According to her, his intellectual marathon meant he kept a steady pace of writing at least 500 lines a day. He declined invitations even from kings because it would have kept him from his work.

He rarely left home unless it was to deliver a lecture. He was reported to shy away from social gatherings and would often remain quiet at the ones he did attend. His servant reported that a drinking party's only his legs would get tipsy, presumably meaning that they were the only sign he was enjoying himself. He was once criticized for not joining a throng that attended Aristos lectures to which he simply replied that if I cared about the mob, I would not have studied philosophy. It's not that Chrysip is forsoke all pleasures and all money. It's that he was suspicious of wanting, lusting for anything. A wise man

can make use of whatever comes his way, he said, but is in want of nothing. On the other hand, he said nothing is needed by the fool, for he does not understand how to use anything, but he is in want of everything. There is no better definition of a still, to have, but not want, to enjoy without needing. From this belief came freedom and independence for Christ's sipis. He never sold his work or charge for his advice advice out of a wish to not cheap in philosophy. He didn't borrow or lend money. Diagonist notes that not a single one of Crescipes's books was dedicated to a king.

Some contemporaries saw this as arrogant, but it was actually evidence of his self-sufficiency. Unlike Xeno and Clientes who had taken money from kings, Chrysipus was not interested in patronage. If you accept money from a king, he said, then you must humor him. He didn't take the money, which meant nobody could tell him what to do. Chrysipus's independence of thought,

his love of high-minded principles and his intellectual zeal were clearly virtues, but like anything, they can be taken to excess. The smarter we are, the easier it is to fall in love with our own voice and our own thoughts. The cost of this is not just pride, but the quality of our message. Epic Titus, whose students struggled to make sense of Christypuses writing some three centuries later, would say when someone puts on errors about their ability to understand and interpret

the works of Chrysipus, tell yourself that if Chrysipus hadn't written so obscurely, they'd have nothing to brag about. Since most of Chrysipus' legendary output is lost to us except for about 500 small excerpts gleaned from other writers, it's hard to know how bad a writer he really was. It says something that despite these purported faults, his insights have endured and remain widespread, even after his death. As dedicated as he was to his work,

Crescippus was also a loving family man. He sent for his sister's sons and took them into his home and oversaw his education. He was particularly close to one of them, Aristocreon, to whom he dedicated at least three dozen of his education. He was particularly close to one of them, Aristocrion, to whom he dedicated at least three dozen of his books. And this nephew would return the favor not only with the statue and inscription over his burial site, but also by writing a book commemorating him. Yet even as a father figure, Cricypus' competitive nature was evident, a mother once asked him who

she ought to entrust her son's education to. He answered that there was obviously no better teacher than himself, because if there were, he'd be studying with them himself. For all his disputes with Eiristo who believed that only ethics mattered, they were more in agreement than they thought. Plutarch tells us that everything Cricipus wrote was for no other purpose than the different chiation of good and bad things. Virtuous living was the end all, be all. As mentioned earlier, as a runner, Crasipus had developed a philosophy of good sportsmanship. He knew that even as athletes are competing with each other and want desperately

to triumph over the rest, there remains an essential brotherhood between everyone participating from the best to the worst. Tad Brennan, the classic scholar, calls it appropriately, Christypaces' no shoving model of behavior, a model rooted in our own relatedness to each other. It was not his only contribution in this regard. Another of Christypaces' ethical breakthroughs

was to develop the Stoke idea of sympathy built on Zeno's belief that we all belong to one common community, which encourages us to meditate on the interconnectedness of all persons and our shared citizenship in the cosmos. If only the jostling rivalries of the early Stokes could have reflected this idea a little better. If they could have realized there was no winning since they were all already on the same team, since they already agreed on the big things, imagine how much trouble they would have spared themselves, what a better example they would have set for us today. Ironically, it was only from the skeptical

Platonist Carnietis who, as you will see, would become the greatest thorn in the side of the Stoics long after his death that Cricipus received one of his best compliments. For not only did Carnietis believe that without Cricipus, there would be no Stoa, he claimed that had Cricipus not existed, I would not have existed. The truest words are often spoken in jest. While Cricipus' work might endure internally internally and his face would even be minted on coins in his native land decades after his death, the man knew that he himself would not. It was after a lecture one night at the Odeon that a bunch of his students invited Crycippus out

for a drink. After drinking some undiluted sweet wine, he was struck by a dizzy spell and died five days later at the age of 73. If this is how Cricippus truly died, it would confirm the image of a man who took himself and his work seriously, and in the end died after taking the rare evening off from writing and thinking. It may be true, and if so, rather uninteresting. The other reports of Chrysipus' death are more tantalizing for they add another dimension to the man and to the image of the supposedly joyless stoic stereotype. In one recounting, Chrysipus was sitting on his porch when a lonely donkey wandered by

and began to eat from his garden. Chrysipus found the site inexplicably funny and began to laugh and laugh, give the ass some wine to wash down the figs he cried out to the owner and then laughed even harder till he literally died. And so if true, it would be Stoicism's second founder who passed away not in the heat of debate or in a sprint of writing which he had spent so much of his life doing, but from good humor and enjoyment of a simple pleasure, which is not a bad way to go. Thanks for listening to The Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in The Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized,

you can get them sent to a friend. The obstacle is away. It goes the enemy stillness is the key. The leather bound edition of the Daily Stoke, we have them all in the Daily Stoke Store, which you can check out at store Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. day or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.