Self-Causation and Unity in Stoicism

Abstract

According to the Stoics, ordinary unified bodies—animals, plants, and inanimate natural bodies—each have a single cause of unity and being: pneuma. Pneuma itself has no distinct cause of unity; on the contrary, it acts as a cause of unity and being for itself. In this paper, I show how pneuma is supposed to be able to unify itself and other bodies in virtue of its characteristic tensile motion (τονικὴ κίνησις). Thus, we will see how the Stoics could have hoped to account for corporeal unity by positing another body (pneuma) apparently itself in need of unification.

Colocation and the Stoic Definition of Blending

“…It also gives us further reason to seek a different interpretation of Stoic blending. I have defended such an interpretation (Helle 2018(Helle , 2021; see also Section 4 above), according to which blending is to be understood in terms of causal interaction and qualitative modification, and which at least provides a schema for how pneuma-matter blending could help explain the composition of unified bodies. But whether or not this particular account is accepted, interpretations that assign pride of place to strict colocation seem ill-equipped even to attempt the task at issue.…”