The approach to the problem of comprehension in Roman Stoicism

Abstract

Throughout the sources that have come down to us from the Roman period of the Stoic school, we find an important number of therapeutical practices that can be clearly linked to other schools (such as Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Cynicism or Epicureanism) and can be consequently seen to constitute (part of) the common ground that enables the idea that there is a general Hellenistic approach to the problem of philosophy as therapy. I will argue that a subset of those strategies, which I will refer to as repetition, ascetic and visualization practices, can be better understood as part of an approach to the problem of comprehension, a new approach which, contrary to what may seem at first glance, is fully consistent with the intellectualist conception of human agency defended by both Early and Roman Stoics. I will further suggest that this new approach to the notion of comprehension may be interpreted as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Early Stoic excessively abstract approach to the problem of knowledge.