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Cleanthes was born in Assos in the Troad, about 330 BC. [a] According to Diogenes Laërtius, [2] he was the son of Phanias, and early in life he was a successful boxer.With but four drachmae in his possession he came to Athens, where he took up philosophy, listening first to the lectures of Crates the Cynic, [3] and then to those of Zeno, the Stoic.
Cleanthes is an "experimental theist"—"an exponent of orthodox empiricism" [6] —who bases his beliefs about God's existence and nature upon a version of the teleological argument, which uses evidence of design in the universe to argue for God's existence and resemblance to the human mind.
The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes described the world soul in his "Hymn to Zeus", where he praises Zeus (a personification of the logos) for harmonizing the cosmos and ensuring its rational order. [16] Chrysippus , another prominent Stoic, further developed the idea of the world soul, arguing that it is the animating principle that ensures the ...
[11] He succeeded Cleanthes as head of the Stoic school when Cleanthes died, in around 230 BC. Chrysippus was a prolific writer. He is said to rarely have gone without writing 500 lines a day [ 17 ] and he composed more than 705 works. [ 18 ]
The character Cleanthes, summarizing the teleological argument, likens the universe to a man-made machine, and concludes by the principle of similar effects and similar causes that it must have a designing intelligence:
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He claims that Zeno and Cleanthes were really on Plato's side, [21] but the evidence he presents is very meagre. [22] He accepts he has little evidence for Zeno, [23] and the only evidence he provides for Cleanthes is a brief versified dialogue between anger and reason which he thinks shows that Cleanthes accepted an irrational part of the soul ...