Seneca, Physics, and the (Teaching of the) Parts of Philosophy

Last time, we saw that Ilsetraut Hadot argues that the Stoic conception of philosophy, with its three parts of physics, ethics, and logic, prevents any simple hierarchization between the different philosophical studies. Each is thoroughly co-dependent on the others.

This is one of those subjects where a word like “co-dependent” can do a lot of work, and it is useful to make some distinctions. The Stoic claim is opposed by different philosophical positions which argue that physics or metaphysics is “prior” to ethics. So, we can see what’s at stake indirectly, by understanding the different philosophical senses in which a discipline or study could have “priority” over others:

• We could hold a discipline to be ontologically prior, if (as with Plato and Aristotle) we hold that some disciplines study objects (unchanging, non-physical, lawlike) which are “superior” to others, and even make “lesser” things possible — as the Ideas for Plato would, on almost all reckonings, make possible the intelligible, ordered forms of physical objects.
• Then there is human or ethical priority: which is almost the opposite kind of “priority”, since it takes practical effects in the changing world of human experience as the orienting point. Mapping the course of planets isn’t as urgent as feeding your young for embodied mortals; the latter has practical priority.
• Then there is pedagogical priority: which would assign an order to teaching different…