Watching A Donkey Eat Figs Is Said To Have Made A Greek Philosopher Literally Die Of Laughter
Before we look more closely at the circumstances of Chrysippus' death, let's take a look at the man himself. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Chrysippus was born in the town of Soli in what is now Turkey, sometime around 280 B.C. Before getting into philosophy, he apparently trained as a long-distance runner. But while still young, he became the student of Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school a few decades before. In the years that followed, Chrysippus went on to become one of the most important and influential philosophers of the Hellenistic era (the period following the conquests of Alexander the Great in which Greek culture and thought were spread throughout the Mediterranean world). He was subsequently considered the second founder of Stoicism, and it was a common opinion that Stoicism wouldn't have existed without him.
He is said to have written over 700 books, though only fragments of any of them remain. Over this considerable body of work, he proved himself a master of logic, physics, ethics, and dialectics, in which people with opposing viewpoints try to establish the truth of a proposition through rational discourse. He felt that our fates are predetermined, but he still had hope that we have personal agency in our thoughts and actions. Anyway, super important guy in the history of philosophy, and according to the sources we have, he died because he saw an animal eat some fruit.
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