Chrysippus's Joke.

Greek philosopher Chrysippus died in the year of 208 B.C in the age of 73.The cause of death was laughter!!! And he himself invented the joke that killed him.

Chrysippus, was the son of Apollonius of Tarsus, he was born at Soli, Cilicia. He is reputed to have trained as a long-distance runner. While still young, he lost his substantial inherited property when it was confiscated to the king's treasury. Chrysippus moved to Athens, where he became the disciple of Cleanthes, who was then the head (scholarch) of the Stoic school. He is believed to have attended the courses of Arcesilaus and his successor Lacydes, in the Platonic Academy. Chrysippus threw himself into the study of the Stoic system. His reputation for learning among his contemporaries was considerable. He was noted for intellectual audacity and self-confidence and his reliance on his own ability was shown, among other things, in the request he is supposed to have made to Cleanthes: "Give me the principles, and I will find the proofs myself". He succeeded Cleanthes as head of the Stoic school when Cleanthes died, in around 230 BC. Chrysippus was a prolific writer. He is said to rarely have gone without writing 500 lines a day and he composed more than 705 works. His desire to be comprehensive meant that he would take both sides of an argument and his opponents accused him of filling his books with the quotations of others. He was considered diffuse and obscure in his utterances and careless in his style, but his abilities were highly regarded, and he came to be seen as a preeminent authority for the school. He died during the 143rd Olympiad (208–204 BC) at the age of 73. Diogenes Laërtius gives two different accounts of his death.In the first account, Chrysippus was seized with dizziness having drunk undiluted wine at a feast, and died soon after. In the second account, he was watching a donkey eat some figs and cried out: "Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs", whereupon he died in a fit of laughter. His nephew Aristocreon erected a statue in his honour in the Kerameikos. Chrysippus was succeeded as head of the Stoic school by his pupil Zeno of Tarsus. Of his written works, none have survived except as fragments quoted in the works of later authors like Cicero, Seneca, Galen, Plutarch, and others. Recently, segments fromLogical Questions and On Providence were discovered among the Herculaneum papyri. A third work by Chrysippus may also be among them.

Philosophy

Chrysippus had a long and successful career of resisting the attacks of the Academy and hoped not simply to defend Stoicism against the assaults of the past, but also against all possible attack in the future. He took the doctrines of Zeno and Cleanthes and crystallized them into what became the definitive system of Stoicism. He elaborated the physical doctrines of the Stoics and their theory of knowledge and he created much of their formal logic. In short, Chrysippus made the Stoic system what it was. It was said that "without Chrysippus, there would have been no Stoa".

Logic

Chrysippus wrote much on the subject of logic and created a system of propositional logic. Aristotle's term logic had been concerned with the interrelations of terms such as "Socrates" or "man" ("all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal"). Stoic logic, on the other hand, was concerned with the interrelations of propositions such as "it is day" ("if it is day, it is light: but it is day: so it is light"). Though the earlier Megarian dialecticians – Diodorus Cronus and Philo – had worked in this field and the pupils of Aristotle – Theophrastus and Eudemus – had investigated hypothetical syllogisms, it was Chrysippus who developed these principles into a coherent system of propositional logic.