Chapter 4

Body

Although Stoicism is a philosophy which seeks to emphasise rational thought

and therefore appears to be a fundamentally “mind based” system, the concept
of body is also fundamental to Stoicism in a number of ways. Stoics have inter-
esting and at times curious things to say about the body. The body is dealt with
in Stoic literature in two main ways; firstly there is the “lived” body and how it
impinges upon our way of being in the world. Epictetus and Seneca in particu-
lar frequently allude to bodily experience in their writings. In addition, the
body is discussed in Stoicism as a broader philosophical figure. In this sense,
the body finds an important place within a philosophy that has a thoroughly
materialist bent, connecting to Stoic ontology as well as to ethical consider-
ations concerning notions of fate and determinism.
Discourses of the body occur in Stoicism in a range of contexts, so one aim
of this chapter will be to look at the body from some of these different perspec-
tives, while also attempting to advance a general and coherent position on the
body from a Stoic – or at least Stoic-informed – perspective. Below are some
initial points that I shall expand upon:

Everything that exists is a body, and only bodies exist.

Bodies are always changing.
Following from the above, we do not have (ultimate) control over our
bodies.
As human beings, we “appropriate” or claim special ownership over
our bodies, (in whatever state we find them), yet in a strict sense our bod-
ies are not truly ours.
We can use our bodies to generate affective experiences which can be
used to cultivate tranquillity of mind.
The limit of a body does not exist as such; we are always exploring our
limits. A body therefore is not predefined but is in the process of deter-
mining itself.

My intention is not to demonstrate the above point by point, but rather to de-
velop these points over the course of the chapter, and to keep them in mind
throughout the discussion, with a view to drawing out implications for think-
ing about the body in performance.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��20 | doi:10.1163/9789004409545_006

Body 85

1 Mind-Body Dualism

In his book Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach After Stanislavski

(2009), Phillip Zarrilli begins from the premise of a now pervasive view within
the context of actor-training theory, that the actor must work to free herself
from the mind-body dualism that has become entrenched in western culture
and western thought. Zarrilli puts forward the following context:

When psychology emerged as a separate discipline from philosophy in

the nineteenth century, the sciences of mind and the self were often con-
sidered separate from the science(s) of the physical body. This split re-
flected the longer term Western binary dividing mind from body that so
problematically crystallized in the mind-body dualism of the seven-
teenth-century French philosopher René Descartes.
zarrilli 2009: 13

In this context, Zarrilli identifies Stanislavski’s concept of the “­psychophysical” –

implying an equal attention to both psychology and physicality of the actor –
as a radical move, but one that continues to divide subsequent practitioners
who have perpetuated the “legacy” of Stanislavski, with some approaches
“highly susceptible to some form of mind-body dualism” (Zarrilli 2009: 17).
Bella Merlin has likewise sought to emphasise the psychophysical aspects of
Stanislavski, arguing that what she terms “psycho-physical openness” is crucial
to understanding Stanislavski and developing his ideas in a contemporary con-
text (Merlin 2007: 24).
An assumption within these and other positions/debates on actor training
is that the legacy of Cartesian dualism continues to exert a powerful influence
on contemporary thinking about the actor and the body. As both Merlin, Zar-
rilli and others attest, psychophysical techniques are many and varied but a
key underlying norm is the overcoming of Cartesian dualism and the integra-
tion of the body into the creative work of the actor. While the concept of the
psychophysical is developed in relation to theoretical positions and paradigms,
from non-western practices and concepts to phenomenology and cognitive
neuroscience, Stoic philosophy can also provide a useful point of refraction
from which to think about these notions of the body.
From the perspective of the mind-body issue, one can find a number of pas-
sages in the Discourses of Epictetus in particular, which appear to suggest that
there is indeed a dualism at work in Stoic understandings of the body. We see
for example where Epictetus personifies Zeus in the cause of discovering what