Cleanthes of Assos · Philosophy

Fire and Tension: The Physics of Soul

Cleanthes gave Stoic physics its vivid body: the soul is a warm, fiery breath, a spark of the cosmic fire; all things are held together by <em>tonos</em>, the inward tension of that breath; the ruling mind of the whole world has its seat in the sun; and the soul must be corporeal, because children inherit the characters, not just the faces, of their parents.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that for Cleanthes the soul is a fiery breath (a portion of the cosmic fire), that tonos (tension) is what holds souls and the world together, that he placed the hegemonikon (ruling part) of the cosmos in the sun, and that he argued the soul is corporeal because children inherit their parents&rsquo; charac…

Leads to Heraclitus.

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