Early Stoic Eros: The Sexual Ethics of Zeno and Chrysippus and their Evaluation of the Greek Erotic Tradition (2000)
Gaca, Kathy L. (Author)
Apeiron: Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science
Volume: 33
Issue: 3
Pages: 207-238
Zeno and Chrysippus are among the most original thinkers in antiquity about human sexuality. Their early Stoic principles of sexual and procreative conduct are valuable for reflecting more deeply on the relationship between social norms and human sexuality. To put some of the questions in terms more like the Stoics' own, what kind of sexual animals are we? Are we a definable species in this respect? How have conventional ideas about human sexual nature shaped us to become the political animals that we are through our upbringing, education, and other acculturating factors? How can or should unconventional ideas modify sexual practices and their cultural outcome, at least in theory? Regarding questions such as these, the early Stoics have much to offer, not as definitive answers, but as adventurous experiments in reasoning. The socially engaged sexual principles of the early Stoa deserve greater prominence and appreciation than they have hitherto received in the philosophy and history of ethics, sexual desire, and the body. Though Schofield, Rist, and Inwood have done some valuable groundwork,1 their work often goes unnoticed in the recent stream on desire, sexuality, and the body in antiquity. In these studies the highly restrictive and marriage-oriented sexual principles of the later and largely Roman Stoics are commonly taken to represent Stoic sexual ethics as a whole. Foucault in particular has nothing to say about the early Stoics in his History of Sexuality, and he presents later Stoic sexual ethics as though it were generically Stoic.2 Early Stoic sexual ethics, as I will argue here, is distinct from its later Stoic counterpart and also from popular ancient Greek ideas about eros. All Stoics, be they early or later, agree that people should choose to refrain from eros and sexual activity to the extent that eros is a passion, for passions in the technical Stoic sense are undesirable on several grounds. Passions, as 'excessive and unnatural soul impulses', are contrary to right evaluative reasoning, lead to uncontrolled and unreflective actions, damage one's well-being, and conflict with human nature. They thereby preclude the attainment of inerrant right reasoning, which is the one virtue recognized in Stoicism.3 For Zeno and Chrysippus, eros is not inherently a passion, while two influential later Stoics, Seneca and Musonius, presuppose that eros inherently is a passion. The later Stoic position is in accord with the popular Greek conviction that eros is a passion. The early Stoics, however, dissent from this widespread conviction on the grounds that it is wrong and subjects people to passions through their ingrained beliefs about the nature of sexuality and its routine mores of dominance and submission. In an effort to reform Greek sexual mores, Zeno and Chrysippus seek to transform the human erotic experience in light of their cosmology, theology, and ethical theory. Their idea of early Stoic eros promotes practices of responsible and mutually friendly sexual conduct on a community-wide basis, not the extirpation of erotic experience or radical detachment from being sexually involved with others aside from marital reproduction. By contrast, Seneca and Musonius favor extirpation and detachment because they accept the popular view that eros is inherently a passion. I do not plan to review this later Stoic position here, for it has been soundly studied and granted a wide readership in recent scholarship on sexuality and desire.4 I concentrate instead on the early Stoic sexual principles. Toward my argument, I first discuss the valuable groundwork done thus far on early Stoic sexual ethics.
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