The Stoics on Time

The Stoics developed a fascinating and interlocking set of doctrines about time, and those doctrines stood in stark contrast to the theory developed by Aristotle and the Peripatetics. Some controversies about Stoic views of time centre on how to unpack their idea that time and the processes of the universe are cyclical. Other controversies concern their views of the nature of time, and its relationship to bodies: how are times divided, is there a present time, and are there any bodies that are found only in the past or only in the future, or are there only present bodies? This chapter will also suggest that some Stoics thought that some bodies are divided into temporal parts.