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This paper discusses the (in)consistencies between the early Stoic attempts to theorize beauty and the later attempts to theorize arts, especially music and poetry, arguing that this comparison leads to a more nuanced articulation of the functionality condition in both. 

Recent scholarship has argued that the Stoics theorized beauty in general as a functional composition. Beauty depends not only on the internal proportionality of parts, but also on how this cohesion enables an object to perform the function for which it was designed (Celkyte 2020). This scholarship, however, explicitly excludes a discussion of arts, even though the case of art (such as poetry and music) presents an interesting challenge to the applications of the Stoic definition of beauty. Here I shall focus on the Stoic theory of music and poetry, which is most clearly elaborated in the fragments of Diogenes of Babylon and is well-known for the claim that music can have a direct impact on the soul and can thus be used therapeutically. 

At first glance, this claim coheres with the understanding of beauty as functional composition, yet it is far from clear what functionality amounts to in the case of art. Is it the case that the main purpose of art is therapeutic? Functionality can be meant in two different senses: a strict one and a circumstantial one. A piece of music is functional in a strict sense when it is composed or played for a specific purpose. This sense suggests that arts have a major role to play in education and therapeutics of the soul; but as Scade (2017) has pointed out, it fits uncomfortably with the idea that philosophy is supposed to be the key therapeutic instrument for the soul. If the function of art is conceived in this way, the Stoic views come close to those expounded in Plato’s Republic, despite the fact that there are significant differences between the Stoics and Plato (cf. Woodward 2010). For these reasons, conceiving of art as functional in the strict sense seems unlikely. 

By contrast, a piece of music can be described as functional in the circumstantial sense if it can have an effect in certain circumstances without having been expressly designed for that particular purpose. At first sight, this sense of functionality is at odds with the Stoic definition of beauty, because, in the latter, functionality is quite clearly used in the strict sense. I argue that this tension can be resolved by taking into account the division of activities qua goods, recorded in Stobaeus. A closer look at the axiological status of art as a ‘pursuit’ shows that the Stoics had a way of accommodating the two senses of functionality. The paper concludes with the argument that this twofold meaning of function informs both our understanding of the Stoic theory of beauty and the Stoic approach to arts, showing that these two aspects of their aesthetics are not only consistent but also mutually illuminating.