Abstract

Probably no philosopher of antiquity has occasioned more daring speculations and the expression of graver doubts than Posidonius. On the one hand it has been argued that he was purely a man of science and hardly a Stoic philosopher at all. On the other hand he has been called the first and greatest Stoic mystic who under Oriental influence spurned the body as vile and earthly. Reinhardt has of late years resolutely maintained that the importance of Posidonius in the history of thought lies in his having originated a completely new Vitalism, and that his conception of the world is one in which ‘Subjekt und Objekt, Geist und Wissen, Mensch und Gott, νος und ζω durch eine im Bewusstsein neu erwachte Kraft sich einen und durchdringen: durch die “Sympathie.”’ Among other German scholars Geffcken holds that Plotinus borrowed much from Posidonius, and Jaeger roundly declares that if Posidonius had but found a place for the Platonic Ideas, there would have been nothing left for Plotinus to find. Schmekel and Bréhier have both stated that modifying the Platonic Theory of Ideas Posidonius established an identification between the Ideas and the Spermatic Logoi of Stoicism.