Zeno Case

Zeno of citium did a lot of changes in ancient philosophy without him we wouldn't be where we are now. He was a son of merchant and a merchant himself. Zeno was a Hellenistic philosopher born in the 3rd century BC in the town of Citium. Zeno might have had Phoenician ancestry. Unfortunately none of his original writings have survived. We know his work from the accounts of others. Ofcource there are a lot of rumors, myths, and excerpts. One of the major sources was written by Diogenes Laertius who wrote "The Lives and opinions of Eminent Philosophers". He was a son of merchant and a merchant himself, it is said that he was exposed to philosophy later in his life. He had experienced a ship wreck off the coast of Attica and ended up in Greece and from there he made his way to Athens. It's also suggested that his father traveled to Greece and returned with works for his son to study, yet we will never know for sure. Around 310 BC, Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school, It was named after a Greek word "stoa" which means porch that he had taught on. His school would go on to be one of the most influential schools of philosophy in the Roman Empire during the period preceding the rise of Christianity. The school attracted many followers and flourished for centuries in Greece and Rome, where the most famous Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, followed the Stoic philosophy. The Stoic idea is split up into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. Stoic logic is basically Aristotelian logic, with one interesting addition. Stoics believed that the all knowledge enters the mind through the senses. The mind was a blank slate upon which impressions are inscribed. This is in direct opposition to Plato's belief that the mind was the source of all knowledge and that the senses fostered illusions. Yet the Stoics were not as metaphysical as previous philosophers. They denied the metaphysical reality of concepts, and instead held that the criterion of truth lies in sensation. The truth was achieved not through thought, but through feeling. The fundamental proposition of Stoic physics is that "nothing incorporeal exists." They were highly materialistic, as is evident by their sensation-based doctrine of knowledge. The stoics, who placed knowledge in physical sensation, believed reality was matter. They did not agree with Plato's concept that the reality had some ideal form. All things, even the soul and God, are

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