Chrysippus

Chrysippus was born at Soli in Cilicia about 280 B.C. Having lost his patrimony he came to Athens, and studied philosophy under the Stoic teacher Cleanthes, and possibly under his master, Zeno. He acquired much learning, which, added to his natural acuteness and subtilty, caused him to be regarded as the main pillar of the porch. Of his voluminous but obscure writings we have only fragments. Like others of his school, he regarded ethics as the only science of importance, but he does not appear to have considerably advanced Stoical doctrine by introducing a class of indifferent things between the rigid limitation of good and evil adopted by his predecessors. He conceived the physical universe, including man, to be permeated by the universal soul or God, into which at death all individual souls are absorbed. Physical evil he repudiated, and moral evil he looked on as the necessary complement of good. He devoted much attention to formal logic, drawing up a scheme of the categories, and elaborating the hypothetical syllogism, to which he gave preference as the type of reasoning. He affected much the use of the Sorites or "heap of Chrysippus." His chief opponent was Carneades. He died in 206 B.C.