ARISTO OF CHIOS

Philosopher of the Week

ARISTO OF CHIOS

Background

ARISTO of Chios (Third Century BCE) was a disciple of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. He was born on Chios (an island) and eventually traveled to Athens. There, he listened to the lectures of Zeno, the Stoic, and Polemo, from “The Academy,” another philosophical school. He died of sunstroke. after attending Zeno’s lectures, Aristo of Chios formed his school of thought, aptly called “The School" by combining aspects of Stoicism with Cynicism. Like Zeno, he accepted the Socratic and cynic principle that virtue was sufficient for happiness. But whereas Zeno identified this with living consistently. A man of persuasive eloquence; Aristo was such a good speaker that he was called the Siren. He was also called Phalanthus, from his baldness. He set up his school in the Cynosarges gymnasium. His followers called themselves 'Aristonians' and included the scientist Eratosthenes and the Stoics for example Apollophanes, Diphilus, and Miltiades.

His Philosophy.

It is important to note that Aristo of Chios’ philosophy was an unorthodox hybrid of Stoicism and Cynicism. Better put, we can of course describe his philosophy in comparison and contrast to Zeno’s ideas.  Although it is impossible to describe in full Aristo's philosophical system because none of his writings survived, but from the fragments preserved by later writers, it is clear that Aristo was heavily influenced by earlier Cynic philosophy. Aristo understood virtue as an internal consistency, where one behaved indifferently toward anything that was not virtue or vice (adiaphora). At the core of his philosophy is the view that moral values are absolute. Only virtue is good and only vice is bad; everything else that intermediates between these are indifferent and equal.

Aristo wasn't a fan of logic, regarded logic as unimportant, saying that it had nothing to do with us. Dialectic reasonings, "he said; we are like cobwebs, artificially constructed, but otherwise useless." He found logic overall irrelevant to humanity and philosophy, believing that the study of language and so on was a waste of time. He shunned Physics, particularly the study of divinity, as he thought that understanding God in any form was inconceivable (though he agreed with Zeno that one could attempt to understand nature, as it was observable in the world around him).

Finally, Aristo of Chios believed that the only worthwhile part of philosophy was the study of Ethics, and went even further in claiming that only general and theoretical issues are worth discussing in ethics and that there is only one true virtue in life, that is an intelligent, healthy state of mind.

For further readings: https://dailystoic.com/what-is-stoicism-a-definition-3-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started/?utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=convertkit&utm_campaign=aristo-of-chios