WIP in Ancient Philosophy: Robin Weiss

Works in Progress in Ancient Philosophy with guest speaker, Robin Weiss (National Taiwan University). Title: The Stoics on What a Law Is Abstract: What is a law? Do the Stoics provide a definition of law? Do they set out general criteria they think few so-called “laws” actually fulfill—explaining why, for them, the law of nature alone qualifies as a law in the true sense? I argue against the usually unquestioned assumption that the Stoics define law as what commands rightly, or what commands the right. Following a path indicated by Brittain (2002), I argue that this is not a definition (horos) of law, but a delineation (hupographē). If this were the Stoics’ definition of law, it would raise the question how the Stoics stumbled upon and proposed to defend such a, frankly, counterintuitive definition, and the Stoics’ logic would threaten to become circular: nature is the one true law because it commands the right…and what it commands is right because it is the one true law. According to yet another interpretation, a law commands, and moreover, it has the power to ensure its commands are obeyed: what makes a law law-like is basically what makes it ruler-like or king-like. But it seems to follow from this “conventionalist” interpretation that something is right or just because it is commanded by the law (i.e. by the ruler or king), rather than vice versa. Some, such as Striker (1996), have seen herein the uniqueness of the Stoic position—the Stoics’ distance from Plato and Aristotle and their proximity to monotheistic thinkers. This conventionalist view has often found support in a passage from Chrysippus’ On Law preserved in Marcianus, which contains the closest thing to a formal definition of law. Through a close reading of that same passage, I show that this misunderstanding arises from a failure to appreciate the clever spin Chrysippus is putting on Pindar’s famous words, “Law, the king of all…” (nomos ho pantōn basileus: Frag. 169). In fact, Chrysippus defines law in terms of (a.) justice, and the (b.) the prescription of what is necessary for life in a political community, and he makes this point while artfully turning Pindar’s own words against him.