Origin Early and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts.
Phobos, fear or an irrational shrinking from an expected evil, is one of the four principal pathe of Stoic ethics, alongside distress, desire and pleasure. Stoic sources classify particular fears, dread, terror and anxiety, as varieties of this single passion, all resting on the mistaken judgment that some future circumstance outside one's own control and character is a genuine evil worth being disturbed by.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodEarly and middle Stoa, roughly the third to first centuries BCE; the classification survives mainly through later doxographical reports rather than the school's own lost founding texts. 1 Place of OriginAthens, where Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school around 300 BCE, and later the wider Hellenistic and Roman world. 1 Origin of the NameAncient Greek phobos, fear or panic flight, from the verb phebomai, to flee in terror; also the name of the Greek personification of fear. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerSystematized within Stoic ethics chiefly by Chrysippus of Soli, the school's third head, whose own treatise on the passions survives only in fragments and later paraphrase; the fourfold scheme is best known today through Diogenes Laertius's later summary. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1 Doctrinal Status DetailStoic sources classify particular fears, dread, terror and anxiety, as varieties of this single passion, all resting on the mistaken judgment that some future circumstance outside one's own control and character is a genuine evil worth being disturbed by. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceFear, or an irrational shrinking from an expected evil; one of the four principal pathe of Stoic ethics, alongside distress, desire and pleasure. 1 Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Opposed By
Andreia is the correct disposition toward danger that phobos, fear, distorts into an irrational shrinking from it.
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Originates in Language
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Held Differently
Dvesha (Aversion), Vices Stoic phobos names fear as a mistaken judgment that a future circumstance is a genuine evil; dvesha, aversion, is the broader Sanskrit and Pali term already catalogued among the three poisons, covering fear, hatred and ill will together as one root affliction rather than fear's own separate category.
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Sources
1. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics
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