Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, and why the Stoics got it wrong — part II

defeat of Intelligent Design: David Hume, left, and Charles Darwin, right

De Natura Deorum was written by Cicero in 45 BCE. Cicero himself narrates, playing the part of a mediator in a discussion on the nature of the gods involving Gaius Velleius, representing the Epicurean school, Quintus Lucilius Balbus, arguing for the Stoics, and Gaius Cotta, speaking for Academic Skepticism, Cicero’s own preferred school of thought. Last time we have seen some of the arguments put forth by Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus — the first three heads of the Stoa — and how they were based on faulty reasoning, chiefly relying on what we today call the argument from design. I want to continue this analysis here, in order to understand why the Stoics got this part of their “physics” (that is, their metaphysics and natural philosophy) wrong. I have already discussed elsewhere the consequences (not many, really) of this failure for modern Stoics.

After having put forth arguments for the existence of god, Balbus turns to an inquiry into the nature of such god, though in fact he has already touched on that before: “As the previous idea which we have of the Deity comprehends two things — first of all, that he is an animated being; secondly, that there is nothing in all nature superior to him — I do not see what can be more consistent with this idea and preconception than to attribute a mind and divinity to the world, the most excellent of all beings. … It is certain that the world is most excellently perfect: nor is it to be doubted that whatever has life, sense, reason, and understanding must excel that which is destitute of these things. It follows, then, that the world has life, sense, reason, and understanding, and is consequently a Deity.” (II.17) As I pointed out in part I of this essay, assertions about the excellence and superiority of life over non-life, or reason over non-reason sort of beg the question. How, exactly, according to which scale, is such superiority assessed? And on what grounds do we claim that the world is perfect? What do we even mean, here, by perfection? All reasonable questions, which the Stoics don’t really address.

After having given a summary of the movements of the five “wandering stars” (i.e., the planets), Balbus comments: “I cannot, therefore, conceive that this constant course of the planets, this just agreement in such…