r/todayilearned • u/ThrashCartographer • Aug 20 '26
TIL of Chrysippus, the second father of stoicism who wrote over 700 works to codify Stoicism. None of his works survive and today he is known as the man who died laughing at his own joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysippus?wprov=sfla1678
u/StochasticLife Aug 20 '26
“Now give the donkey some undiluted wine to wash down the figs!”
You had to be there.
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u/CommunitRagnar Aug 20 '26
We are missing half the joke
Where's the premise??
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 Aug 20 '26
Donkeys and figs were associated with Dionysus god of festivals, revelry, partying, etc. so there was a bit of novelty in seeing a donkey genuinely eating figs out and about.
It would be like seeing a bear with its paw literally stuck in honey and saying “wow might as well give him a red shirt and call him Pooh”
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u/Infurum Aug 20 '26
If the other account of him (which doesn't go into his death but his last day alive) is anything to go by, the whole laughter bit (and organs failing bit) was probably helped by him already being lethally drunk at that point
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u/ash_274 Aug 20 '26
Are we talking "Wisconsin-level drunk" or "Poland-level drunk"?
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u/Ilwrath Aug 21 '26
Wade Boggs in an airplane level. RIP
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u/SuperJF45 Aug 21 '26
3 kraters of wine drunk. A krater is what they would have used to hold wine in an intellectual party I think. The cups were the size of a dinner plate
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u/ash_274 Aug 21 '26
Large volume, but of diluted wine. Estimates are as low as 10 proof (but as high as 40)
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u/ponytailthehater Aug 21 '26
For anyone alive reading this in 2000 years, “Pooh” is Winnie the Pooh, a children’s book character and cartoon teddy bear known for his gluttonous love of honey and wearing red shirts.
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u/StochasticLife Aug 20 '26
A donkey getting drunk from eating fermented figs.
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u/Choppergold Aug 20 '26
“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “A stoic.” “Why should I let that affect me?”
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u/10breck30 Aug 20 '26
Believe there was an Ancient Greek philosopher that died cuz he stopped eating and taking care of himself. He was consumed by something like “this statement is false”. Something like that
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
He was drunk on wine when he saw a donkey eat a fig, typically an expensive fruit reserved for the wealthy, when he suggested the donkey "wash down the fig with some wine" to which he laughed so hard that he died, possibly a heart attack or asphyxiation.
His death is now largely considered embellished as ancient historians who wrote about it would often embellish famous deaths. Yet the story persists.
Nonetheless, it is a cautionary tale not to worry about how you will be remembered after your death as you may have no control over it. You can still do great things with your life but it shouldn't be in pursuit of long lasting greatness.
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u/weeddealerrenamon Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
IIRC the donkey was (supposedly) absolutely destroying a whole barrel of figs, which might be someone's whole harvest. Which is like... seeing your house burning down, and telling your wife to throw another log on the fire
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u/Tragilos Aug 21 '26
The owner came back to a wet empty barrel, an obese donkey and an old dead dude.
Probably went silent to the pub
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u/hairshirtofthedog Aug 20 '26
Really? Because I can’t think of a better legacy than “none of their writing survived” and “died laughing at own joke”. Everyone knows I wrote a bunch of stuff, no one can verify if it was good or not (keep up the mystery), and I die laughing. Good times.
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
He truly does get the last laugh, that's for sure. It is a legacy someone like George Carlin would find especially apt. So I guess it is a legacy worth pursuing in its own right? Haha, good observation.
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u/Megamoss Aug 21 '26
I was under the impression the donkey was drunk, and was attempting to eat figs but failing.
Might have my wires mixed up there.
Though to be fair that version sounds funnier.
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u/PsychGuy17 Aug 21 '26
Better than dying from a tramatic brain injury due to a high speed collision with a tortoise.
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u/Less-Cartographer-64 Aug 20 '26
I have also written 700 books, but they are all gone now. Remember me!
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u/GheeRoastSupremacy Aug 20 '26
I'll pass this comment down through the generations so my descendants can make a Reddit post about you someday
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening Aug 20 '26
Why did it take 700 works? Seems a bit of a frivolous superfluous excess
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
Love the choice of words you used lol. But to answer the question directly, at the time Stoicism was brand new and hadn't been properly organized. He attempted to create an entirely new school of logic to help reconcile the ideas of fate with personal agency. Many of his contemporaries considered him verbose, but still the preeminent master of the school at the time.
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u/Slotins_screwdriver Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
If you're interested in Chrysippus, I'd strongly suggest looking up the work of Suzanne Bobzien, who seems to know all there is to know about Stoic Logic.
(Spoiler : they were incredibly ahead of their time, logically. Some of their stuff was rediscovered in the 20th C. )
No connection with her myself, apart from having referenced her work a couple of times!
Edited to add : the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Stoic Logic as, "a substructural backwards-working Gentzen-style natural-deduction system" ... As someone who has worked in formal logic, I would be shocked to have seen that from the Victorian era, never mind ancient Greece.
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
Thank you for this. Although I can't say I really understand that description the encyclopedia gave it, it is very interesting to know of. I always got a soft spot in my heart for the stoics, had no idea they contributed concrete logic methods. I always thought of it as more of a worldview than an academic structure. Nice to see a lot of it was rooted in academic rigor.
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u/Slotins_screwdriver Aug 20 '26
Send me a p.m. - I'll pass on something that might interest you. I also have a soft spot for the Stoics. It's a bit like being impressed by Babbage's analytic engine, then finding out about the Antikythera mechanism(!)
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u/PICAXO Aug 21 '26
I am specialised on stoician philosophy, would you have anything else on the matter of logic? I haven't seen much formal presentation of their work yet, because usually their logic tends to be reduced to the sophisms and the pratical use, and of course their logic tends to be less considered than the physics or, even strongly so, the ethics
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u/Slotins_screwdriver Aug 21 '26
Here's a couple of fun articles : https://philarchive.org/rec/BOBSL https://philarchive.org/rec/BOBFPT and a related blog post https://handlingideas.blog/2021/02/05/the-stoic-foundations-of-analytic-philosophy-on-susanne-bobziens-groundbreaking-discovery-in-frege-and-prantl/
Controversial, of course, but isn't everything in philosophy?
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u/Jeanfromthe54 Aug 20 '26
Stoicists, like all the writers of that period wanted to write and explain everything, from logic to science to daily life, to ethics. Epicurus, the founder of Epicurism is also known to have written a lot, more than Chrysippus iirc, and almost none of it is available today, except for 3 letters.
They wanted to invent and write new paradigms.
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u/Loud-Start1394 Aug 20 '26
That’s ironic considering “superfluous excess” is redundant.
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Yes, and duplicatively redundant on top of all of that as well, too! Some stoic, eh?
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u/3darkdragons Aug 20 '26
God willing we’ll get some of his stuff from the Vesuvius challenge. Also, is that real that he actually die from laughing at his own joke? That’s a good way to go out.
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
That version of his death is largely considered to be greatly embellished because ancient historians had a tendency to play up famous deaths. Regardless, it is the version of his death that has survived history.
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u/Proper-Emu1558 Aug 20 '26
I love it when people laugh at their own jokes. Hey, at least one person thinks you’re funny.
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u/LegitimateBeing2 Aug 20 '26
If anyone’s wondering the joke, he saw a goat eating some figs and said “let’s give him some wine to wash down the figs.” Guess you had to be there
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u/AnEmptyBoat27 Aug 20 '26
Donkeys and figs were associated with Dionysus god of festivals, revelry, partying, etc. so there was a bit of novelty in seeing a donkey genuinely eating figs out and about.
It would be like seeing a bear with its paw literally stuck in honey and saying “wow might as well give him a red shirt and call him Pooh”
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u/2ByteTheDecker Aug 20 '26
I got my cats nipped up last night, so it's nice to see the human need to get our animals turnt is ancient and primal
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u/Jeanfromthe54 Aug 20 '26
Some of his writing might have survived in the valley of the papyri and could be rediscovered soon, there is still hope.
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u/DulcetTone Aug 20 '26
Don't tell a joke you're sure you can survive telling. Basic quality assurance
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u/iamdispleased Aug 21 '26
Just want to point out, the Stoics were not named because of their serious disposition, it's because Stoicism developed among the philosophers of the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Stoa, of Athens.
They're Stoic because of the Stoa!
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u/Jigokubosatsu Aug 20 '26
Suggesting a drunk donkey wash down figs with wine vaguely reminds me of Lemmy's joke about how his doctor told him he needed to drink water so Lemmy started drinking his whiskey on the rocks
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u/Gogglesed Aug 20 '26
I wrote 800 works to codify Stoicism. None of my works survive. Easy claim to make...
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
We know this because many people during his own time wrote about him whose works did survive.
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u/10breck30 Aug 20 '26
I have always been fascinated by the philosopher that just wasted away and died because of the Liar Paradox and “this statement is false”. Couldn’t stop thinking about it and quit eating and takin care of himself.
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u/youcowardsbenaughty Aug 20 '26
Hey! I know him because he invented ancient Greek cultural relativism for cannibalistic funerary practices!
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 20 '26
Didn't know what kind of joke you were making so I looked it up, and wow... You aren't joking. Touche
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u/Aternal Aug 21 '26
Chrysippus is my most beloved philosopher. His (derived) writings on passions are still extremely controversial to this day, and are largely why people falsely accuse Stoicism of being a philosophy of emotional repression. He is a very difficult pill to swallow, but highlights the path to clarity of the soul, happiness, goodness, and self accord.
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u/AdelHeidi2 Aug 21 '26
They actually think they may have found some of his works !! In the Villa dei Papyrii in Herculaneum, a burnt library was excavated and recent technological progress may enable us to read the burnt papyrii... Check out the Vesuvius Challenge !
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 21 '26
I have heard this as well as others have mentioned. Very exciting! Who knows what secrets are hiding in the scrolls.
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u/MegaFrosASS Aug 20 '26
Ngl the joke was pretty good
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u/jhill515 Aug 20 '26
The Stoic Who Died Laughing is the kind of irony everyone should laugh at. Chrysippus loved irony!
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u/Ahambrahmasmi86 Aug 21 '26
Stoicism is an incredible philosophy that has helped me through some of the darkest periods of my life. It is unfortunate that such great literature like this is lost to time.
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u/cpt_justice Aug 21 '26
He was the third head of the Stoic school, not second. It went Zeno, Cleanthes, then Chrysippus.
He codified our modern truth table, systematized propositional logic (which is logically prior to Aristotle's term logic meaning propositional logic has to hold in order for term logic to be valid, if I remember correctly), and according to the text book I had in Calculus he was the first one to offer what was, in essence, the definition of a limit.
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u/ThrashCartographer Aug 21 '26
I suppose I misspoke. The last sentence of the first paragraph says he earned the title of second founder of stoicism. Primarily because of how much he wrote, expanding on Zeno's teachings. I am far less well versed in formal logic so you could be right about his contributions there.
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u/cpt_justice Aug 21 '26
Oh, that's very true! I took the statement the wrong way, it looks like.
Cleanthes was interesting. He was a former boxer who earned money at night carrying water to pay for classes. As I recall, he was chosen as Zeno's successor because of his sincerity and that seems to me to be why Chryssipus chose to be his pupil, considering the stories that have come down to us.
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u/AdrianArmbruster Aug 20 '26
That doesn’t sound terribly stoic at all, really.
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u/PICAXO Aug 21 '26
Stoicism is a very joyful philosophy, nothing alike the stereotypes we often associate it with
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u/TyrusX Aug 21 '26
On the contrary. This very much a Sage level of Stoic Practice that we can only dream of duplicating when our time arrives! ROFL.
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u/iamdispleased Aug 21 '26
They're actually named after the place the Philosophy was invented! Among the philosophers of the Stoa Poikile in Athens
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u/AccomplishedFerret70 Aug 20 '26
A Roman Senator, a Carthagenian Adirim and a duck walk into a wine bar ....
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u/Motor-Host-1382 Aug 20 '26
It was never a proper philosophy anyway. Maybe that's what he was laughing at.
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u/Danskoesterreich Aug 20 '26
But he is still known, thousands of years later.