Epicurean and Stoic Anthropology: A Review of Anthropological Attitudes in the Hellenistic Age

Hellenism is a strange period in the history of philosophy, between the Ancient and Middle Ages. This period includes important thoughts such as Epicureanism, Stoicism and Neo-Platonic philosophy and has had considerable effects on the following centuries. Based on the books and sources available on Hellenistic philosophy, this study reviews the anthropology of the two schools: the Epicureans and the Stoics; and, in this way, it tries to review a part of the history of anthropology. The results of this paper showed that ancient Greek doctrines had penetrated the lower layers of Hellenistic philosophy (Hellenism), but Hellenistic philosophers were not just imitators and had considerable innovations. Relying on the instrument of sense and the material-atomic attitude to the world, Epicurus considered man a being consisting of a collection of atoms, so he denied life after death. Respecting moral virtues and defending responsibility, he assumed that man was free from predestination and considered his happiness to be pleasure and freedom from suffering. On the other side, by adding the element of ‘acknowledgment’ to sensory perceptions, the Stoics changed the criterion of knowledge and had been formalistic with a materialistic attitude. They considered man’s identity to be in form or pneuma. In this study, using a descriptive-analytical method, after presenting an explanation of epistemological and cosmological frameworks, the four following topics are discussed: ‘human identity’, ‘determinism and freedom’, ‘man’s relationship with Allah and life after death’ and ‘human happiness’ in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy.