• Streetlight
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    Thanks for participating Prof. Pigliucci, and looking forward to any light you might shed on the following questions!:

    (1) One of the more famous images associated with the Stoics is their tripartite division of philosophy into ethics, physics, and logic, each represented by parts of an egg (logic being the egg-shell, ethics being the egg-white, and physics being the yolk). I think it's fair to say that while most popular attention has been paid to the egg-shell of Stoic ethics, a lot less has been given to their account of logic and physics. With physics, I have in mind things like their distinction between bodies and incorporeals (to give just one example), and with logic, their substitution of what they called 'assertibles' in place of Aristotelian 'terms' (to give another example). Do you think that these other elements of the Stoic egg have relevance today, and if so, where they might stand with respect to both contemporary physics and logic?

    (2) There's been a noticeable uptick in the popularity of Stoic ethics in recent times, no doubt in part due to your very generous engagements and writings on the topic. However, one common criticism I see of Stoicism, in this regard, is that it just so happens to be very nicely tailored to our present-day socioeconomic conditions in which, thanks to a generalized decline in social mobility and opportunity, encourages people to 'accept their lot in life', turning 'inward' in order to steel themselves against harsh realities, rather than attempt to change those realities. In other words, the critique runs that Stoic ethics is an inherently conservative ethics whose popularity is a response to wider social and political incapacities, and which, in turn, feeds a resistance to sociopolitical change. Would this be a fair charge, and if not, what might a Stoic response to it look like?
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