Thesis Format

Monograph

The 17th Century Legacy of Neo-Stoic Ethics

James Mackey, The University of Western OntarioFollow

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Philosophy

Supervisor

Hill, Benjamin D.

Abstract

Justus Lipsius was a 16th -century renaissance humanist and literary scholar who, crucially for the history of philosophy, was involved in the publication and reinterpretation of Stoic thought, primarily focusing on the works of Seneca. Despite a fair amount of scholarship on Lipsius’s contribution to the history of philosophy, the role of Stoicism in the early to mid-17th century is still not well understood. In this thesis I show, through close examination of Lipsius’s work, that Neo-Stoic ethics in the 17th century amounts to a view about the relationship between providence and human actions. After identifying ways that Stoic philosophy was used to explain this connection, I derive two key normative duties that are constitutive of a Neo-Stoic account of ethics: 1) a duty to accept the determinations of providence (whatever they may be) and 2) the duty to develop a large body of rational knowledge about the universe. In the remainder of this thesis, I map the influence of these Neo-Stoic positions on Rene Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Nicolas Malebranche’s moral philosophy. I contend that all these Cartesian-inspired thinkers draw upon the foundational components of Neo-Stoicism in their accounts of ethics. I first consider how the correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth represents a debate about the viability of certain Neo-Stoic theses. And then, I argue that Malebranche’s moral philosophy should be read as the natural progression of the Neo-Stoic “seeds” planted throughout this correspondence. In developing a conceptual framework for what constitutes a Neo-Stoic position and mapping the influence of this system on prominent Cartesian thinkers, my thesis tells a conceptual story about the history of Stoicism. My thesis particularly seeks to emphasize the way that Stoicism becomes intertwined with the history of 17th century moral philosophy based on the desire of Early Modern figures to balance voluntarist and intellectualist intuitions.

Summary for Lay Audience

This thesis represents an attempt to explain what Neo-Stoicism is when we understand Neo-Stoicism as a movement of moral philosophy stemming from the late 16^th and early 17^th century. During this period there were several people writing about Stoicism because they had rediscovered Stoic texts that had been lost for thousands of years. The idea behind this thesis is that the way that Stoic views were recovered and integrated into the philosophical discussions of the time amounts to its own philosophical movement. And if we can define more precisely than we have so far what views make up this movement, then we can better explain the influence it had on the development of ethics in the 17^th century overall.

In the first part of the thesis, I define Neo-Stoicism by looking at both classical Stoicism (the view of the original Ancient Greek Stoics) and “Neo-Stoicism” as we find it in one particularly influential Neo-Stoic commentator: Justus Lipsius. I suggest that a Neo-Stoic ethics make a couple key claims about the sorts of moral duties we have. First, a Neo-Stoic argues that we have a duty to accept whatever happens to us as the outcome of a “fate” or “fortune” which we cannot change. Neo-Stoics think that practicing this acceptance will make us happier. Second, a Neo-Stoic thinks that our ability to practice this acceptance is strongly correlated with the extent of our knowledge. So Neo-Stoics argue that we have a duty to listen to our reason and cultivate as much rational knowledge as we can. In the remainder of the thesis I show how the 17^th century philosophers Rene Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Nicolas Malebranche all adopted variations of these Neo-Stoic views. I also show how each of them did some interesting things with these Neo-Stoic concepts that they inherit from Lipsius and other renaissance commentators.

Recommended Citation

Mackey, James, "The 17th Century Legacy of Neo-Stoic Ethics" (2024). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 10307.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/10307