Introduction

To conclude our study of Stoic logic let us dwell on Deleuze's question with which we ended last chapter: how much have we yet to learn from Stoicism? We should chew on this for a few moments before starting into ‘The Shell C’.

One Stoic lesson that we might yet have to learn from Stoicism is this: Stoic philosophy must be put into action, not merely studied. We cannot just study Stoicism from a disengaged distance; we must actually do something Stoically to learn from Stoicism. In this final section of Part II we will try to do something: we will construct a Handbook of Paradoxes.

There is a long tradition of logical handbooks in the Stoa. Such handbooks are meant to train one's thinking so that students acquire the disposition and capacity for constructing concepts for living and acting. Rather than teaching propositional logic, however, our Handbook teaches the power of paradoxes. As we saw in ‘The Shell B’, paradoxes produce thought and language, the two branches of dialectics. In ‘The Shell C’ we exploit this productivity in order to generate our Handbook by combining (1) the transcendental logic from ‘The Yolk B’, (2) the four Stoic paradoxes from ‘The Shell B’, and (3) the four Deleuzian paradoxes from the ‘Fifth Series’ of Logic of Sense. Here is a table to help us stay organised through the complexities in this chapter:

Combined these form four practical acts. Acts are important because our Handbook is a field guide, and so must be used or performed, like a tool or sword. Our Handbook consists of four acts: (1) Infinite Act, (2) Singular Act, (3) Disjunctive Act and (4) Problematic Act. Performing these acts contributes to a concrete goal of Deleuze’s Stoicism: constructing concepts for living. Our Handbook of Paradoxes teaches us how constructing such concepts with each of these acts contributes to developing the disposition for affirming the necessary cosmic path of life, wherever it leads. As living itself is the domain of ethics, we will take up those themes in Part III.