St. George Stock (modern guide) · 1850–1922
A Guide to Stoicism 3 ¶19 — St. George Stock (modern guide)
From “Logic”
Original English text (1908)
St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism 3 ¶19
On examining such details as are left us of the Stoic logic, the first thing which strikes one is its extreme complexity as compared with the Aristotelian. It was a scholastic age, and the Stoics refined and distinguished to their hearts' content. As regards immediate inference, a subject which has been run into subtleties among ourselves, Chrysippus estimated that the changes which could be rung on ten propositions exceeded a million, but for this assertion he was taken to task by Hipparchus the mathematician, who proved that the affirmative proposition yielded exactly 103,049 forms and the negative 310,962. With us the affirmative proposition is more prolific in consequences than the negative. But then, the Stoics were not content with so simple a thing as mere negation, but had negative arnetic and privative, to say nothing of supernegative propositions. Another noticeable feature is the total absence of the three figures of Aristotle and the only moods spoken of are the moods of the complex syllogism, such as the modus penens in a conjunctive. Their type of reasoning was-- If A, then B But A B
Cite this passage
St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism 3 ¶19 (1908)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/a-guide-to-stoicism/3.19
St. George Stock, Stoicism (1908), text of the Haldeman-Julius reprint “A Guide to Stoicism”. Text: Project Gutenberg #7514. Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesStoic logic was far more intricate than Aristotle's, concerned with arguments built from whole statements rather than terms. The passage jokes that Chrysippus's claim about how many forms ten statements could take was corrected by a mathematician, and begins to show the basic if-then pattern.
Older wording
- “modus penens”
- — the reasoning pattern: if A then B, A is true, so B
- “syllogism”
- — a formal logical argument
- “privative”
- — expressing the lack of a quality
Themes and situations
- Learning and progress
Quote cards
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