From: Gilles Prod'homme, "Preparing for happiness, The Way of the Stoïcs", Eyrolles 2008.
Another difficult notion for a contemporary thinker: the bloc-universe of the Stoïcs is not static. In effect, it evolves according to an eternal cosmic cycle: initially, the artist fire manifests the universe, which, like all that is alive, is subject to birth and death. In the view of the school of Stoïcism, the Universe appears only to disappear again in a sort of final fire. This is the universal conflagration. At the end of a cosmic night, impossible to evaluate in terms of human time, and in which God contemplates his own essence, a new reality becomes manifest. And everything begins anew since each one of us relives the same events: Socrates once more walks the streets of Athens, Plato again writes his dialogues. This is palingenesis. Let us note in passing that this cyclical form of creations and dissolutions shows deep similarities with the system of the Days of God or Manvantaras of hindu gnosticism. Nietzsche's notion of an eternal return also echoes, in certain aspects, the speculations of the pre-Socratics and first Stoïcs.
Another difficult notion for a contemporary thinker: the bloc-universe of the Stoïcs is not static. In effect, it evolves according to an eternal cosmic cycle: initially, the artist fire manifests the universe, which, like all that is alive, is subject to birth and death. In the view of the school of Stoïcism, the Universe appears only to disappear again in a sort of final fire. This is the universal conflagration. At the end of a cosmic night, impossible to evaluate in terms of human time, and in which God contemplates his own essence, a new reality becomes manifest. And everything begins anew since each one of us relives the same events: Socrates once more walks the streets of Athens, Plato again writes his dialogues. This is palingenesis. Let us note in passing that this cyclical form of creations and dissolutions shows deep similarities with the system of the Days of God or Manvantaras of hindu gnosticism. Nietzsche's notion of an eternal return also echoes, in certain aspects, the speculations of the pre-Socratics and first Stoïcs.
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