The three are connected in that - as in the analogy of the garden - the logic and physics are necessary to protect (from bad reasoning) and nurture (through a sound understanding of the cosmos) the ethics. This is the classic division of philosophy into three fields: logic (having to do with good reasoning), physics (understanding of the world), and ethics (how to live one’s life). Diogenes of Ptolemaïs, it is true, begins with Ethics but Apollodorus puts Ethics second, while Panaetius and Posidonius begin with Physics, as stated by Phanias, the pupil of Posidonius, in the first book of his Lectures of Posidonius. … No single part, some Stoics declare, is independent of any other part, but all blend together. They liken Philosophy to a fertile field: Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil or the trees. Philosophic doctrine, say the Stoics, falls into three parts: one physical, another ethical, and the third logical. Each section below begins with a selection of pertinent quotes from Diogenes, and ends with a mini summary and commentary of my own. I’m going to propose the passages we used here, organized by subject matter, as a handy vademecum for the Stoic practitioner. As part of the introductory session, we went through the basics of Stoic theory as reported by Diogenes Laertius in book VII of his Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, which covers the early and middle Stoa (i.e., before Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus and Marcus). We had 20 students and an amazing time up in Stony Point, on the West Bank of the Hudson River, north of New York. I just finished co-running Stoic Camp New York-2017, together with my friend Greg Lopez.
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