Colloquium Lecture: Reier Helle, "Self-perception and being a single animal in Stoic philosophy"

Abstract: In the later Stoic Hierocles (2nd century CE), we find a complex account of animal self-perception, according to which animals continuously perceive themselves by perceiving all of their parts. I reconstruct this account, and I argue that it provides an explanation of what it is for an animal to be a single perceptive being. The animal turns out to be a single perceptive being centrally because it is composed in such a way that it is continuously perceiving all of its parts, in its own distinctive way, and by so doing, it is perceptive of external objects. This account, recovered from Hierocles, provides an unparalleled view of Stoic thinking about animal perception and self-perception, what an animal is, and why exactly it is a single unified being of its kind, which shows careful and philosophically sophisticated engagement with these issues.