Cleanthes of Assos · Philosophy

The Hymn to Zeus: Philosophy as Praise

Cleanthes wrote the one long text to survive whole from the early Stoa, the <em>Hymn to Zeus</em> - a poem that is also a physics, praising the <em>logos</em> that steers all things by law, casting the wicked as those who flee the common law, and weaving even evil into providence&rsquo;s single harmony.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Cleanthes&rsquo;s Hymn to Zeus is the longest surviving text of the early Stoa, that its &lsquo;Zeus&rsquo; is the cosmic logos ruling all by law, that the wicked are those who flee the common law through ignorance, and that evil is taken up into a single everlasting Reason. Explain these ideas in you…

Leads to The Psalmist.

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