wills become tense when one tries to defeat or break them; but gentleness can
persuade
them.
Hadot - The Inner Citadel The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
What other beings do "naturally," man must do "rationally"; yet in the last analysis this is the same r him as acting " naturally, " since his nature is reason and eedom.
Mankind there re has the strange power (VIII, 34, 3-5) to be able, by means ofhis intentions, his eedom, and his reason, to separate himself om the
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Whole by re sing his consent to what happens, and by acting egotisti cally. He thus has the uncanny power, in a sense, to annihilate himself spiritually. And yet, says Marcus, by means of an even more marvelous power, mankind can return to the Whole a er having cut himself o om it. He can convert and trans rm himsel and change om egotism to altruism.
Action and value; justice and impartiality
In his de nition of the discipline of action which is cited by Marcus Aurelius (XI, 37), Epictetus enumerates three characteristics which dis tinguish active impulses (hormai), if they are good. First, they must be accompanied by a "reserve clause," and their goal must be the service of the common wel re. I have already discussed these rst two points. They must also, says Epictetus, be in accordance with value (kat' axian).
This terminology seems vague and imprecise; are we talking about the value of the objects upon which our action is exercised, or about the people a ected by such action? Marcus himself often uses the term kat' axian; in ct it is a terminus technicus, current in the Stoic schools of Marcus' time. Its meaning was obvious to contemporary initiates, but today we must try to explain it.
The Stoics had long since developed a rather elaborate theory of "value. "27 To summarize this doctrine-albeit in simpli ed rm-we may say that they distinguished three degrees ofvalue. First came those things which are an integral part of"li according to nature"-that is, of virtue- r instance, the exercises consisting in the examination of con science and in attention to oneself, which contribute to the practice of moral li . The value of these things was considered to be absolute. In second place came those things which could help the practice ofvirtue in a secondary way. Taken by themselves, these things are neither good nor bad, but are indi erent with regard to moral good. Possessing them and exercising them, however, allows us to practice better the virtuous life. Examples would include health, which makes it possible r us to do our duty; and wealth, if it allows us to come to the aid of our fellow man. These second-rank values do not have the absolute value which pertains only to the moral good, but they can be ranked in hierarchical order according to the closeness oftheir relationship to the moral good. Finally, in last place came those things which, under certain circumstances, could be use l to virtue. Such things have no value in and ofthemselves, but can be exchanged r some good.
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To recognize the exact value of a thing was thus a very important exercise, and a part of the discipline of judgment. Not only must we always try to see each object as it appears in its naked reality, says Marcus (III, rr, r-2), but we must also become aware ofits place within the universe, and of
the value it has in relation to the Whole and in relation to mankind, inso r as mankind is a citizen of the highest City, of which the other cities are like mere households.
As we have seen, the discipline ofjudgment is intimately linked to the discipline of action. Once we have seen the value of things in this way, we must act in consequence (VIII, 29):
I see things as they are, and I use each of them in accordance with its value (kat' axian).
What Marcus means by this is that, when ced with each event and each situation, he tries to recognize the bene t he can derive there om r his moral life, and thus to use it in the best possible way (VIII, 43):
What brings me joy is to keep the guiding principle within me healthy, so that it has no aversion r any human being, nor r anything that can happen to them, but can look at all things with benevolent eyes, and know how to receive and to utilize each thing in accordance with its value.
The discipline of actions thus demands that we be able to recognize the value of objects, and be able to distribute the intensity of our acts proportionately. Seneca28 had de ned the discipline ofaction as llows: in the rst place, judge the value of the matter in question; then adjust our active impulses to this value; nally, bring active impulse and action into harmony, so that we may always remain in accord with ourselves.
This, then, is the rst meaning that can be given to Epictetus' phrase kat' axian. Yet the consideration ofvalue is not situated only on the level ofindividual conduct, but also at the level ofsocial life.
It is here, moreover, that a grave problem arises r the Stoic, r he does not have the same scale ofvalues as other people. Others attribute an absolute value to things which, to the Stoics, are indi erent, and there re can only have a relative value. Conversely, the Stoic attributes
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an absolute value to moral good, which is ofno interest to most people. Marcus seems to allude to this con ict when he writes, a propos ofthe topic of helping others (V, 3 6) :
Don't let yourself be completely carried away by their repre sentation. 29 Instead, help them as r as possible, and in accordance with the value of the matter at hand. If they incur a loss in the domain of indi erent things, do not say to yourself that they have su ered harm, r that is a bad habit.
What is needed is to help others, and there re also to help them in the domain ofindi erent things, which seem so important to them. Yet we must still bear in mind the real value of things-their moral nality without sharing other people's judgments about the value of things. Nor must we pity them, as ifwhat happens to them were a genuine mis r tune.
This is the problem that Marcus ced as Emperor: he had to seek the happiness of his subjects in the domain of indi erent things, which had no value in his eyes. Yet by so doing, he would be imitating the divine example:
The gods help mankind in every possible way: through dreams and through oracles; and yet it is in order to obtain things which have value only in the eyes ofmankind (IX, 27, 3).
The gods themselves wish the best r mankind, r such is their goodness that they o en help them to obtain health, wealth, and glory (IX, II, 2).
Thus, the gods place themselves within mankind's reach, and provide them with that which, in itself, has only a very relative value. The same thing must there re apply to the Emperor. When de ning his attitude to his llow human beings-whom Marcus declares to be his relatives and his associates, even if they do not practice virtue-Marcus declares (III, II, 5):
I behave with benevolence andjustice toward them, in con rmity with the natural law which unds the human community. At the same time, however, I share their quest r what has value among indi erent things.
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In addition to one's inner dispositions ofbenevolence, then, we here have concrete action, which obliges the Emperor to occupy himselfwith things which people consider to be values. In his eyes, too, they can have a certain value: inso r as they allow r eventual moral progress.
Such, then, is the second meaning we can attribute to the allusion to axia, or value in Epictetus' de nition ofthe discipline ofaction.
There is, however, another meaning of the word "value. " Here, the word no longer designates the value ofan object, but that ofa person, and it is synonymous with his or her merit. For Marcus, as r the Stoics in general, justice consists in giving to all people what they deserve according to their value or merit. 30 We cannot, however, assert that this new sense ofthe word "value" could also be reconciled with Epictetus' de nition of the discipline of action, as discussed above. Curiously enough, we nd very few allusions to the virtue ofjustice in the dis courses of Epictetus as recorded by Arrian, and no de nition of it. In Marcus, by contrast, the virtue ofjustice is so important that it is some times su cient to de ne the discipline of action, as r instance in VII, 54: "To conduct oneselfwithjustice with regard to the people present. "
Is it because Marcus was conscious of his responsibilities as Emperor that he attributed such importance to justice? In any event, he alludes to the de nition of this virtue when, speaking about the emperor Anton inus Pius, his adoptive ther, Marcus says (I, r6, 5) that "he distributed goods to each person, without letting himselfbe in uenced. " This means in particular that he distributed duties and responsibilities without vor itism, taking into consideration only the individual's merits and value, as well as his ability to carry out the tasks in question. It certainly also means that he renderedjustice with impartiality.
"Value" and "merit," moreover, do not necessarily mean Stoic moral value, but can mean either the ability to carry out a speci c task, or else, injudicial matters, guilt or innocence. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Marcus did not demand perfection ofthose to whom he entrusted a miss10n:
If someone did something good, he praised him r it, and he used him in the task in which he excelled; but he did not take the rest of his conduct into consideration. He used to say that it was impossible to create men the way one would like them to be, but that it was tting to use men such as they are r the tasks in which they are use l. 31
The Discipline ofAction 219
The people who have value are those who carry out their "duties" conscientiously. They are those who, in the domain of political and everyday li -which is also the domain of indi erent things-do what needs to be done, even if they do not do it in a Stoic spirit (that is, considering that the only absolute value is the moral good).
The model of this justice which distributes goods as a nction of personal merit, without voritism, and in impartiality, is divine ac tion. There is nothing surprising about this, r mankind's moral action proceeds om his rational nature, which is a part of or an emanation om divine rational nature. Marcus says ofthis divine nature (VIII, 7, 2):
It has no obstacle; it is intelligent and just, since it carries out a distribution-equal and in accordance with value (kat' axian)-of time, of substance, of causality, of activity, and of the conjunctions ofevents.
One might think that an "equal" distribution cannot be "in accord ance with value"; but we must recall that, since Plato and Aristotle,32 political equality had been a geometrical equality-in other words, it had been a proportion in which it was tting to attribute a superior good to a superior value, and an in rior good to an inferior value. Distribution was proportionate to a te, which once designated aristocratic nobility, but which r the Stoics meant nobility of the soul, or virtue. Stoic justice, then, was aristocratic: not in the sense that it consisted in giving wealth and power-that is, indi erent things-to the aristocratic class, but in the sense that it made the consideration of value and of moral responsibility enter into every decision of political and private life. The historian Herodian relates that when it came time r Marcus Aurelius to marry o his daughters, he did not choose patricians or rich personages r them, but men of virtue. Wealth of the soul, Herodian continues, was, in Marcus' eyes, the only genuine, proper, and inalienable wealth. 33
Divine action, then, is "without obstacle" and "just" because it is supremely rational, which means that it imposes an order upon itsel In the rst instance, such an order subordinates particular goals to one unique end: the intention to ensure the good ofthe Whole. This is why divine action has no obstacles: because it aims at one thing only through out the particular goals, and knows how to make all the obstacles which seem to oppose it cooperate toward this unique end. Divine action also introduces an order and a hierarchy of values among the particular goals it assigns to itsel Inferior beings-minerals, plants, and
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animals-are at the service of rational beings, and rational beings them selves are ends r one another. From the perspective ofsuch a hierarchy ofvalues, then, divine action distributes time, matter, and causality as a nction of the value of each thing. That is why it is just.
The justice of rational Nature is at the same time the justice of the Intellect ofthe Whole (V, 30), "which has introduced subordination and coordination into the Whole," and which "distributes to each its por tion, in accordance with its value. " It is, moreover, the justice of the Nature ofthe Whole (IX, I , 1), "which has shioned rational beings r each other's sake, so that they may help each other mutually, in accord ance with their value and their merit. "
Everyday experience could, of course, inspire doubts about such a divine justice. Indeed, experience seems (IX, I , 6)
to carry out a distribution which is contrary to merit ar' axian) in the case of good and of evil men, r evil men often live in pleas ures, and obtain the means to do so, while the good encounter only misery, and that which causes misery.
This, however, is the judgment ofpeople who consider pleasures to be good, and who do not understand that li and death, pleasure and pain, glory and obscurity, are neither good nor bad, when what one is search ing r is the moral good. On the contrary, says Marcus (IV, I O) :
Everything that happens, happens in a just way. If you examine this attentively, you will see that it is true. I am not just saying that "that happens by way ofnecessary consequence," but that "that happens in accordance withjustice,"just as ifit was brought about by some one who distributed to each his portion, in accordance with his merit.
In the context of the discipline of desire, we have already caught a glimpse of the problems posed by the mode of action of Nature or universal Reason. Did the latter start the cosmic process in motion by one unique initial impulse, with all things then happening by way of "necessary consequence"? Or rather, did Nature or Reason pay attention to each individual, "distributing to each his portion, in accordance with his merit" (IV, rn)? We saw that, in the nal analysis, these two hypothe ses did not exclude each other, since the general law of the universe somehow assigned to each person the role he or she had to play within
The Discipline ofAction 221
the universe. Divine action is a unique action, which seems to adapt itself marvelously to each particular case. It is, then, as if"it was brought about by someone who distributed to each his portion, in accordance with his merit" (IV, ro). This holds true r the lower beings, which, as Marcus said (VIII, 7, 2), receive their portion ofduration, substance, and causal ity in accordance with their value in the hierarchy ofbeings. Yet it is still more true in the case of rational beings. Destiny distributes to each person that which corresponds to his or her being and value. Each event is in perfect con rmity with the person to whom it happens:
Love only the event which happens to us, and which is linked to us by Destiny. A er all, what could be better suited to us? (VII, 57).
Such-and-such an event happened to you, was coordinated with you, was set in relation to you, was woven together with you, om the beginning, starting om the most ancient of causes (V, 8, 12) .
Has something happened to you? Good! Every event that comes your way has been linked to you by Destiny, and has been woven together with you, starting om the Whole, since the beginning (IV, 26, 4).
Whatever happens to you was prepared r you in advance om all eternity, and the network of causes has woven together your sub stance and the occurrence of this event r time (X, 5) .
Everything that happens, then, happens in a just way, because every thing that happens to us brings us that which belongs to us and was owed to us-in other words, that which suits our personal value-and there re also contributes to our moral progress. Divinejustice is an educator. The end it aims r is the good ofthe Whole, as ensured by the wisdom ofreasonable beings.
The Stoic Diogenes ofBabylon34 said that, in the de nition ofjustice as that virtue which gives to each person the portion corresponding to his or her value, the word "value" (axia) meant "the portio due to each person" (to epiballon). The myste of divine justice shows itselfin such nuances of vocabulary. Marcus Aurelius, r instance, speaks (X, 25) of "He who administers all things," that is to say, he adds, "who is the Law (nomos) which distributes (nemon) to each person that which is due to him (to epiballon). " "What is distributed according to the laws is equal r all"
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(XII, 36, r). When, there re, the divine Law gives to each person the portion which corresponds to his value, this means at the same time the portion which is due to that person as a nction ofhis merit and ofwhat he is, and the portion which lls to his lot or is given to him by te or Destiny. It is thus at the same time what people choose to be their own moral decision, and what the w, by means ofits initial decision, chooses that they should be. In the same way, the daimon (that is, individual destiny), which according to Plato is attached to each soul, is assigned to it by te, and yet is chosen by it. 35
Such, then, was the ideal ofjustice which his Stoic ith proposed to Marcus, and ifhe could, he would certainly have realized on earth such a justice which takes only moral value into consideration, which has no other objective than human moral progress, and r which "indi erent" things have value only as a nction ofthe assistance they may provide r moral progress. We shall see that Marcus did not have many illusions
about the possibility of what he ironically called "the realization of Plato's Republic. "
Such an ideal ofjustice could, however, inspire an overall inner dispo sition, which imitated both the impartiality of universal Reason, which imposes the same law upon all, and the attentive solicitude of provi dence, which seems to adapt itselfto each particular case and take care of each individual, taking into consideration the individual's particular strengths and weaknesses.
In order to describe this attitude, one might quote a passage om Louis Lavelle,36 who, without wishing to give an account of Stoic doc trine, gives quite exact expression to the spirit ofjustice according to the Stoics:
There is a sacred indi erence: it is that which consists in according no preference to any of the beings upon our path, but in giving them our entire presence, and responding with precise ith lness to the call they utter to us. This is positive indi erence, which is the converse ofnegative indi erence, with which it is often con sed. Positive indi erence only requires us to reserve r all the same luminous greeting. We must keep the balance between them equal: may there be in us neither prejudice, nor predilection to cause the beam to sway. It is then that, in our conduct toward them, we become capable of introducing the most subtle di erences; all the while giving to each person what he expects, requires, and is tting
The Discipline ofAction 223
r him. Here, the most perfectjustice becomes one with the purest love, and we cannot tell whether it abolishes all choice, or whether it is everywhere the same loving choice.
We all know that "not making any distinction" is the same thing as being just; it means applying the same rule to all, without intro ducing any exception or vor into our judgment. It is to place ourselves in the point of view of God, who embraces all beings in the simplicity ofone single glance. Yet this glance is the opposite of an insensitive glance; it is a loving ance which distinguishes, within each individual being, precisely what he or she needs: the words that touch him, and the treatment that he deserves.
Pi , gentleness, and benevolence
In the context ofthe discipline ofjudgment, we have seen that although the Stoics held that the majority of humanity was in an evil state, they were in this state against their will, simply out ofignorance ofthe de ni tion oftrue good and true evil. This is the great Socratic tradition, which thus extends, through Plato and Aristotle, as r as Stoicism. "No one is voluntarily evil. "37 Such Platonic assertions are based upon the Socratic idea that virtue is a "science"; in other words, that it consists essentially in knowing, with all one's soul, where the good is and what the true good is. After all, the human soul naturally desires the good, and spontaneously tends toward that which seems to it to be good. If it seems to become evil, this is because it allows itselfto be deceived by the appearance ofthe good; but it never desires evil r evil's sake. It was all the more easy r the Stoics to take up this doctrine, in that r them, "everything is a matter ofjudgment, " and the passions themselves are judgments. In his treatise On Becoming Aware efPsychic D cts,38 the physician Galen gives excellent expression to this Stoic doctrine: "The principle ofmany de cts is the false judgment which is brought to bear upon the goal which ought to be assigned to one's own life. "
The great Socratic tradition which runs om Platonism and Stoicism through Neoplatonism is united by its ith in the eminent dignity of human nature, which is based on the natural and unconscious desire r the good which every human being possesses.
Epictetus also ts within this tradition, as he makes an explicit allusion (I, 28, 4 ) to the teachings ofPlato:
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When someone gives his assent to error, know that it was not done on purpose, r " every soul is deprived of the truth against its will, " as Plato says. Rather, what was lse seemed to him to be the truth.
Epictetus goes on to remark that what corresponds to truth and error in the area ofaction is duty and its contrary, as well as the advantageous and its contrary. We cannot not choose what we think is duty, or what is advantageous. The mistake is there re an error, and as long as the soul has not been shown the error of its ways, it cannot behave otherwise. Why, then, should we be angry at it?
Shouldn't you rather have pity r those who are blind and muti lated with regard to what is most important, as we have pity r the blind and the lame?
This gives Epictetus the opportunity to describe the ideal attitude which the Stoic must exhibit toward his fellow man (II, 22, 36):
With regard to those who are di erent om him [by the principles oftheir life], he will be patient, gentle, delicate, and rgiving, as he would toward someone in a state of ignorance, who missed the mark when it came to the most important things. He will not be harsh to anyone, r he will have per ctly understood Plato's words: "Every soul is deprived ofthe truth against its will. "
Following Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius also lt tremendous respect r the unconscious desire r the truth and the good, which constitutes the most pro und wellspring r mankind's rational nature. Marcus takes pity on the i ness ofthose souls which, against their will, are deprived of what they obscurely desire:
"Every soul, " says Plato, "is deprived of the truth against its will. " And the same holds true ofjustice, temperance, benevolence, and all such virtues. It is there re absolutely necessary to remind your self of this constantly. Thus, you will be more gentle with others (VII, 63).
If they do not act rightly, it is obviously against their will and out of ignorance. For "every soul is deprived, against its will, oftruth" just
The Discipline ofAction 225 as much as ofthe possibility ofbehaving toward others in an appro
priate way (XI, 18, 4-5).
Here, Marcus reveals himself as a ith l student of Epictetus. As he quotes Plato, he does not llow the text ofPlato, but instead he repeats the literal rm ofthe quotation in the de rmed state in which it is to be und in Epictetus. Above all, he draws the same moral consequences om it.
This ignorance ofgenuine values in which people are submerged, says Marcus, is "in a sense, worthy ofpity" (II, 13, 3). We will el this ifwe attempt to understand the error in judgment which explains their mis deeds (VII, 26, 1). "In a sense, worthy ofpity": this quali cation is an allusion to the traditional Stoic critique ofpity, which the Stoics consid ered a passion. "Pity," said Seneca,39 "is an illness ofthe soul produced by the sight of the su ering of others, or a state of sadness caused by the mis rtunes of others. But no illness a ects the soul of the sage, who always remains serene. "
Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus remain ith l to Stoic doctrine, inso r as what they call "pity" is not a passion or an illness ofthe soul, but is instead de ned negatively as the lack of anger and hatred toward those who are ignorant of genuine values. It is not enough, however, to have pity on people or to be indulgent with them. We must above all try to help them, by in rming them about their error, and teaching them genuine values (IX, 42, 6):
In general, it is within your power to instruct the mistaken person so as to make him change his mind, r whoever commits a misdeed is a person who misses what he was aiming at, and goes astray.
We must, then, try to reason with the mistaken person (V, 28, 3; VI, 27, 3; VI, 50, 1; IX, 11). Ifwe il in our ef rts, then it will be time to practice patience, rgiveness, and benevolence. Marcus likes to present our duty toward our fellow men in the rm of a dilemma:
People were made r one another; so either instruct them or put up with them (VIII, 59) .
Ifhe is wrong, instruct him to that e ect with benevolence, and show him what he has overlooked. Ifyou do not succeed, then be mad at yoursel or rather not even at yourself (X, 4) .
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Epictetus (II, 12, 4; II, 26, 7) had said that we must, like good guides, set those who have gone astray back on the right track again, without mocking them or insulting them. If we do not succeed, we must not make n of the person who has gone astray, but rather must become aware of our own inability and accuse ourselves, rather than the person whom we cannot persuade. As we have just seen, Marcus adds to this that we must not even be upset with ourselves, r it could be that some people are incorrigible, and "it is necessary that there be some such people in the world" (IX, 42, 2).
Be that as it may, we must try to convert those who go astray and are ignorant ofgenuine values. Above all, however, we must do this without getting angry (VI, 27, 3; V, 28, 3). What is more, we must display an in nite delicacy. It seems as though Marcus was extremely sensitive to the tact and gentleness with which souls must be treated, and with which we must try to change their way ofperceiving the world and the things within it. I must address others
without humiliating them, and without making them feel that I am merely putting up with them, but with genuineness and goodness (XI, 13, 2).
. . . without irony, without humiliation, but with a ection, and a heart ee om bitterness; not as one would act in school, nor in order to be admired by some bystander, but truly one on one, even ifothers are present (XI, 18, 18).
There is a great wealth ofpsychological observation in these remarks, and a remarkable sense of the purity of intention. The paradox of gentle ness is that it ceases to be gentleness ifwe make an e ort to be gentle: any arti ce, a ectation, or feeling ofsuperiority will destroy it. Delicacy only acts inso r as it does not seek to act, with an in nite respect r beings, and without any shadow ofviolence, be it only spiritual. Above all, we must not do violence to ourselves in our attempt to be gentle. Gentleness must possess an almost physiological spontaneity and sincerity. Marcus expresses this in a striking way (XI, 15), as he satirizes those people who begin their conversation by saying, "I've decided to be ank with you. " What good are these words? asks Marcus:
If you are sincere, it must be written on your rehead, ring out instantly in your voice, and shine om your eyes, just as a beloved person immediately sees his lovers' feelings in their eyes . . . The
The Discipline ofAction 227 person who is good, without duplicity, and gentle, has these quali
ties in his eyes, and everybody can see them.
Even more strikingly, Marcus states that goodness can be sensed when one approaches a good person, just as, whether one likes it or not, one immediately smells the odor of someone who smells bad. This pure gentleness and delicacy have the power to change people's minds, to convert them, and to make those who are unaware of genuine values discover them:
Goodness is invincible, ifit is sincere, without a phony smile, and w i t h o u t a e c t a t i o n ( X I , 1 8 , 1 5 ) .
Far om being a weakness, goodness is a strength:
It is not anger that is manly, but gentleness and delicacy. It is because they are more human that they are more manly; they possess more strength, more nerve, and more virility, and this is precisely what is lacking in the person who gets angry and loses his temper (XI, 18, 21).
What underlies its strength is the ct that gentleness is the expression of a pro und urge of human nature, which seeks harmony between people. In addition, its strength resides in the ct that it corresponds to the domination ofreason, whereas anger and ill-temper are mere illnesses ofthe soul.
In the words ofLouis Lavelle,
Gentleness is so r removed om weakness that it alone possesses genuine strength. . . .
wills become tense when one tries to defeat or break them; but gentleness can persuade them. Only it can triumph without a combat, and trans rm an enemy into a iend. 40
One might say that only gentleness has the power to reveal to people the good ofwhich they are unaware, although they desire it with all their being. It acts both by its persuasive rce and by the unexpected experi ence that encountering it represents r those who know only egotism and violence. It brings with it a complete reversal ofvalues, by making those who are its object discover their dignity as human beings, since they el themselves to be deeply respected as beings who are ends in themselves. At the same time, gentleness reveals to them the existence of
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a disinterested love of the good, which inspires gentleness and which addresses itselfto them.
Despite this, gentleness toward others must not be allowed to exclude rmness (VI, 50, l):
Try to persuade them, but act even against their will, when that is required by the rational order ofjustice.
Here, then, we na y discover a whole new aspect ofthe discipline of action: our duty to help our neighbor spiritually, by revealing genuine values to him, calling attention to his de cts, and correcting his lse opinions. To what extent did Marcus really l ll this role? We do not know. We can, however, suppose that he attempted to promulgate around him a Stoic vision of life and of the world. There must be an allusion to this in the llowing passage, in which Marcus imagines what will happen after his death. Someone will say (X, 36, 2):
Now that that schoolteacher is gone, we can breathe eely. Granted, he wasn't hard on any of us; but I could feel that he was criticizing us in silence.
Until now, we have looked only at the rst part ofthe dilemma which Marcus rmulated: "Instruct them. " We can now understand this as llows: "Instruct them with gentleness, and by means ofgentleness. "
Now we are in a position to complete the second part of the dilemma as well: "Put up with them gently. " For gentleness is not reserved r those whom we want to convert, but is also intended r those whose minds we have not succeeded in changing:
Ifyou can, make them change their minds. Ifnot, remember that it is precisely r such situations as these that benevolence was given to you. Besides, the gods themselves are good to such people (IX, ll, l).
There is one thing in this world which is of great value: to spend our li in truth and injustice, all the while remaining benevolent to liars and to the unjust (VI, 47, 6).
Do not let those who present an obstacle to you in your progress in right reason turn you away om healthy action, nor let them suc
ceed in making you lose your gentleness toward them (XI , 9, l ) .
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Liars, unjust people, and all those who persist in error nevertheless retain-at least in their essence-their rational nature and the uncon scious desire r the good which is inscribed in it. They must there re be treated with respect and gentleness:
I cannot be angry with one who is related to me, nor hate him, r we were made to cooperate (II, I, 3).
Imagine that they are akin t o you, that they sin out o fignorance and againsttheirwill(VII,22, 2).
It is just as much a sign of weakness to get angry at them as it is to give up an undertaking you have begun . . . both the man who allows himself to be ightened, and he who denies the person whom nature has given him to be a iend and a kinsman, are equally deserters (XI, 9, 2).
Such an attitude, based on the idea of the community between rational beings, nally leads to the doctrine of the love of one's neighbor, which extends even to those who commit injustices against us.
Loving our neighbors
A proprium ofhumankind is to love even those who make mistakes. This will happen ifyou realize that they are akin to you and that they sin out ofignorance and against their will (VII, 22, 1-2).
This transcendence ofjustice, not only in the direction ofpity or indul gence, but in that of love, was implied by the arguments which invited the Stoic to re ect, on the one hand, on the indestructible urge which moves each person toward the good, and, on the other, on the solidarity which unites all rational creatures together.
Thus, the discipline of action attains its culminating point in the love ofone's neighbor. All the logic ofhuman action tends to reveal that the prime motive of our activity must be the love of other people, since this love becomes sed with the deepest urges ofhuman nature (XI, I, 4):
It is aproprium ofthe soul, ifit is rational, to love its neighbor, which corresponds both to truth and to respect.
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The reason r this is that human beings, if they live in accordance with reason, become keenly aware that they belong to one great body: that of a rational beings. Inso r as he is part of this All, man is eve body else, as much as he is himself(VII, 13):
As are the limbs ofthe body in organic unities, such is the relation ship between rational beings, who, although they exist within sepa rate bodies, are nevertheless constituted in order to realize one single and harmonious activity.
This concept will impress itself better within you if you o en repeat to yourself I am a limb (melos) of the organism (sustema) rmed by rational beings. But ifyou only use the letter rho, saying that you are a part (meros), then you do not yet love mankind om the bottom of your heart. You do not yet nd your joy, without seeking anything else, in the simple ct of doing good to others. Moreover, you are acting r the sake of mere appearance, not yet because when you do good, you are doing good to yourself
This feeling ofbelonging, and ofidenti cation with a kind of"mysti cal body" which Kant was to call the kingdom of ends, joins the almost mystical feeling of belonging to the cosmic Whole. The unity of the latter, like that ofthe "body ofrational beings," is ensured by the univer sal presence of Reason-that is to say, of God himself
The Stoic's ndamental attitude is thus the love ofthose realities in whose presence he is constantly placed by the All, which are intimately linked to him, and with which he somehow identi es himself(VI, 39):
Harmonize yourself with the things to which you are linked by Destiny.
As r the people to whom you are linked by Destiny: love them, but genuinely.
For the basis ofreality is love. In order to express this idea, Marcus appeals to the grandiose mythical image of the marriage of Heaven and Earth (X, 21):
The Earth loves! She loves the rain! And the venerable Ether? It loves too! The World, too, loves to produce that which must occur. And I say to the World: I, too, lov along with you. Don't we say: " such-and-such loves to happen? "
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What scinates Marcus here is that this mythical image means that natural processes are, in the last analysis, processes of union and of love. He notes that language itselfseems to express this vision, since in ancient Greek, in order to designate a thing which habitually occurs or tends to happen, one says that it "loves" to happen. Ifthings love to happen, we too must love that they happen.
Thus, the ancient image ofthe hieros gamos allows us, in a mythic way, to glimpse the grandiose perspective ofthe universal love which the parts of the Whole feel r one another, as well as the comic vision of a universal attraction which becomes more intense the higher one climbs on the scale ofbeings, and the more conscious they become (IX, 9). The closer people get to the state ofwisdom-in other words, the closer they approach to God-the more the love which they el r one another r other human beings, as well as r all beings, even the most humble-grows in depth and in lucidity.
It cannot, then, be said that "loving one's neighbor as oneself" is a speci cally Christian invention. Rather, it could be maintained that the motivation of Stoic love is the same as that of Christian love. Both recognize the logos or Reason within each person. Even the love ofone's enemies is not lacking in Stoicism:
When he is beaten, the Cynic [ r Epictetus,41 the Cynic is a kind of heroic Stoic) must love those who beat him.
We have seen Marcus assert that it is proper, and there re essential, to human beings to love those who make mistakes. One could say, how ever, that the tonality of Christian love is more personalized, since this love is based on Christ's saying: "What you have done to the least ofmy brethren, you have done to me. "42 In the Christian view, the logos is incarnate in Jesus, and it is Jesus that the Christian sees in his fellow man. No doubt it was this re rence to Jesus which gave Christian love its strength and its expansion. Nevertheless, Stoicism was also a doctrine of love. As Seneca43 had said:
No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love r human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be use l, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.
9
VIRTUE AND JOY
The three virtues and the three disciplines
The Meditations as a whole are thus organized in accordance with a three ld structure-one could even call it a system-which was devel oped, and perhaps invented, by Epictetus. This three ld structure or system has an internal necessity, in the sense that there can be neither more nor wer than three exercise-themes r the philosopher, because there can be neither more nor wer than three acts of the soul. The exercise-themes which correspond to them are related to three rms of reality: Destiny, the community ofrational beings, and the individual's culties ofjudgment and assent. These rms, too, cannot be either more or fewer in number, and they are respectively the subjects ofthe three parts of the system rmed by philosophy: physics, ethics, and logic.
What is quite remarkable is that in Marcus Aurelius, we can see another structure, which had been traditional since at least the time of Plato, that ofthe ur virtues-prudence, justice, strength, and temper ance-take on, under the in uence of this systematic structure, a three ld structure as well, inso r as Marcus makes the virtues correspond to each of the disciplines I have mentioned.
The scheme ofthe ur virtues was very ancient. We should recall that the Greek word arete, which we translate as "virtue," originally had a quite di erent meaning om our word "virtue. " The term went back to the aristocratic ethic of archaic Greece, and consequently did not at signi a good habit or a principle which leads us to behave well. Rather, it meant nobility itsel excellence, value, and distinction. We may sup pose that this ideal of excellence and value always remained present in the mind ofthe philosophers. For the Stoics, areteis absolute value, based no longer on warrior nobility, but on the nobility of soul represented by the purity ofour intentions.
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Since very early times, it seems that there existed a model or a canon of the ur ndamental virtues. In the fth century B. c. , Aeschylus, in his tragedy The Seven Against Thebes (verse 6rn), enumerates ur basic values when discussing Amphiaraos: he is wise (sophron), just (dikaios), brave (agathos), and pious (eusebes). Wisdom consists in knowing, with reserve (aidos), one's place in society and in the world-in other words, in having a sense ofmankind's limits. Justice consists in behaving well in social life. Bravery, of course, is courage in the ce of di culties, and especially in combat. Piety, in the case of Amphiaraos, who is a seer, corresponds to the knowledge ofthings divine and also human. In the urth book ofPlato's Republic (427e ), there appears a systematization and justi cation of this enumeration of the ur virtues. Plato distin guishes three parts ofthe soul: "reason," "anger" (to thumoeides), which means that part which urges people on to ght, and "desire" (epithumia). Three virtues correspond to these three parts of the soul: prudence or wisdom to reason, courage to anger, and temperance to desire. It is up to
justice to ensure that each part of the soul carries out its nction: that reason is prudent, anger courageous, and desire temperate. The three parts of the soul, moreover, correspond to the three social classes of the Republic: reason is the distinctive feature ofthe philosophers, anger ofthe guardians, and desire of the workers. In the State as in the individual, then, justice will be realized if each class and each part of the soul l lls its nction perfectly. This systematization, which is linked to a speci c political model, and which makes justice the virtue which contains the three others, is not to be und in the rest ofPlato's dialogues, where the ur virtues are enumerated in various contexts, and without any par ticular theorization. 1
In their description of moral life, the Stoics also allude to the ur virtues. 2 Here, however, they are not subordinate to one another, but are all on the same level. They mutually imply one another, as do the parts of philosophy. It is enough to practice one in order to practice them all. Nevertheless, it is di cult to nd in our surviving summaries of Stoic doctrine the real reason why it is necessary that there be only ur ndamental virtues. The de nitions of the various virtues are rather divergent, but we may note the llowing: prudence is the science of what ought and ought not to be done; courage is the science of what ought and ought not to be tolerated; temperance is the science of what ought and ought not to be chosen; andjustice is the science ofwhat ought and ought not to be distributed. Unlike Plato, the Stoics do not appear to link the ur virtues to the parts ofthe soul.
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From this perspective, it is ofgreat interest to observe the trans rma tions which the system of three disciplines caused the classi cation of virtues in Marcus' Meditations to undergo. Let us begin by noting that the philosopher-emperor often summarizes the three disciplines-of assent, of desire, and of action-by making the names of virtues correspond to them. Thus the discipline of assent takes on the name of the virtue of "truth"; the discipline ofdesire acquires the name ofthe virtue of"tem perance "; and the discipline of action, that of the virtue of "justice. " In itself, the substitution of the notion of "truth" r that of "prudence" should not surprise us, r Plato had already once (Republic, 487a5) given t h e fo u r v i r t u e s t h e n a m e s o f " t r u t h , " " j u s t i c e , " " c o u r a g e , " a n d " t e m p e r ance. "
The substitution of"truth" r "prudence" can, however, be perfectly welljusti ed om the perspective ofMarcus Aurelius. This is shown by the llowing lengthy passage (IX, r), which must be cited r two reasons: rst, we can see in it the establishment of an exact correspon dence between the discipline ofaction andjustice, the discipline ofassent and truth, and the discipline of desire and temperance. Second, it o ers an admirable summary ofthe three exercise-themes.
Justice and the discipline of action
He who commits an injustice commits an impiety. For since universal Nature has constituted rational animals r the sake of each other, so that they might help each other in accordance with their respective merit and never harm each other, he who transgresses the will of Nature most obviously commits an impiety against the most vener able ofgods.
Truth and the discipline of assent
He who lies, moreover, also commits an impiety toward the same Goddess. For Universal Nature is the nature of beings; now beings have a relationship of a nity with true attributes [that is, with what can be truly said of them] . Moreover, this Goddess is also named truth, and she is the rst cause ofall that is true. There re, he who willingly lies commits an impiety, in so r as he commits an injus tice by deceiving. And he who lies involuntarily also commits an impiety, inso r as he is in disaccord with universal Nature, and he
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disturbs order inso r as he is in a state of incompatibility with the Nature of the world. For that person is in a state of incompatibility who, ofhis own ee will, tends toward that which is contrary to the truth. He has received om Nature dispositions to know the truth, but since he has neglected them, he is now no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse.
Temperance and the discipline of desire
Finally, the person who pursues pleasures as goods and who ees pains as evils also commits an impiety. For such a person must necessarily o en reproach universal Nature, r Nature attributes a particular lot to the bad and to the good, contrary to their merit; r the bad often live in pleasures and possess that by which they may procure them, while good people encounter only pain and that which is its cause. What is more, he who fears pain will one day come to fear one ofthe things which must happen in the world, and this is already impious. Nor will he who pursues pleasures be able to keep away om injustice; and this is clearly impious. Concerning things with regard to which universal Nature is equally disposed ( r she would not produce both, if she were not disposed toward them in an equal way) : with regard to these things, those who wish to llow Nature, and be in perfect community ofsentiments with her, must also be in a disposition of " equality. " There re, as r as pain and pleasure are concerned, death and li , glory and obscurity, which universal Nature treats in an "equal" manner, he who does not behave in an " equal " manner obviously commits an impiety.
Here it is easy to recognize the three disciplines: that of action, which ordains that people should help one another; that of assent, which con sists in distinguishing the true om the lse; and that of desire, which consists in accepting the lot which universal Nature has reserved r us. To these three disciplines correspond three virtues. In the discipline of action, we must respect the value hierarchy of people and of things, and thus act in accordance with justice. According to the discipline of assent, our discourse must be true, and the virtue particular to this discipline is truth. He who knowingly lies commits a two ld sin: in the area ofassent, since his discourse is not true, and in the area of action, since he is committing an injustice with regard to other people. As r the person
who lies involuntarily-in other words, who deceives himself-it is be cause he has not succeeded in criticizing his judgments and in becoming the master of his assent that he is no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse. Finally, in the discipline of desire, we must desire only that which universal Nature wants, and we must not desire pleasures or ee su erings. This discipline is characterized by temperance.
Here, then, Nature appears to us in three aspects. She is the principle of attraction which urges human beings to help one another and to practice justice, and is there re the basis ofjustice. She is also the basis of truth; that is to say, the principle which unds the order of discourse, and the necessary relationship which must exist between beings and the true attributes which are said about them. To speak lsely, whether voluntar ily or involuntarily, is there re to be in disaccord with the order of the world. Finally, universal Nature, since she is indi erent to indi erent things, is the basis of temperance, in other words of that virtue which, instead of desiring pleasure, wants to consent to the will of universal Nature .
Marcus here portrays universal Nature as the most ancient and august of goddesses, in such a way that any lapse with regard to the virtues justice, truth, and temperance-ofwhich this goddess is the model and the principle, is an impiety. The Stoics traditiona y identi ed God, Na ture, Truth, Destiny, and Zeus. In Marcus' time, there were hymns which presented Nature as the most ancient of goddesses. For example,
an Orphic hymn3 invokes her in the llowing terms:
Goddess, mother of all things, celestial mother, very ancient res
beira) mother.
A hymn by Mesomedes, one of Hadrian's eedmen, which also dates
om the second century A. D. , begins:
Principle and origin of all, very ancient Mother of the world,
Night, Light, and Silence. 4
In our long passage om Marcus, we can note a certain tendency to privilege the importance ofjustice as compared to the other virtues. Impiety toward Nature consists in injustice, not only if one re ses to practice justice toward other human beings, but also if one lies to them, and even i involuntarily, one cannot distinguish the true om the lse. For then one destroys the order of Nature, and introduces a discordant
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note into universal harmony. Likewise, if we accuse Nature of injustice in her distribution oflots among good and evil people, then we ourselves are committing an injustice. We nd a similar idea expressed in XI, IO, 4:
Justice cannot be preserved ifwe attribute importance to unimpor tant things, or if we are easily deceived; if we give our assent too rapidly, or if we change our mind too often.
To give importance to unimportant things is not to practice the disci pline ofdesire, and hence to sin against temperance; whereas to be easily deceived, or to be too rapid or changeable in ourjudgments, means not to practice the discipline of assent, and hence to sin against truth.
Truth, justice, and temperance can thus designate the three disciplines, asinXII, 15:
Whereas the ame of a lamp shines until it goes out, and does not lose its luster, will the truth, justice, and temperance which are within you be extinguished be re their time?
Elsewhere (XII, 3, 3), the soul's guiding principle, when it ees itself of everything reign to it,
does what isjust, wills the events which happen, and tells the truth. Nothing, says Marcus (VIII, 32, 2), can prevent us om acting
in accordance with justice, temperance, and prudence.
Sometimes, as in this last example and the llowing one, we nd some variations in the names of the virtues; yet the tripartite scheme is retained (III, 9, 2):
Absence of hurry in judgment, a feeling of kinship toward other human beings, and obedient consent to the gods.
Alongside this triad of virtues, we sometimes nd the traditional quaternium, adapted and brought into line with the tripartite structure (III, 6, l):
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Ifyou nd something in human life better thanjustice, truth, tem perance, and bravery . . .
In ct, the continuation of this passage reduces these ur virtues to the disciplines ofdesire and ofaction (III, 6, r), when it becomes appar ent that they consist
in thought which is content with itself (in those things in which it is possible to act in accordance with right reason), and which is con tent with Destiny (in those things which are allotted to us, inde pendently of our will) .
The virtues are linked to the nctions of the soul: truth and the intellectual virtues are linked to reason; justice to active impulses; and temperance to desire. Where, then, can we nd a place r courage? It seems to be shared between temperance, qua strength in adversity and su ering, andjustice, qua active rce.
We nd no trace of this theory of the virtues in the Discourses of Epictetus, as reported by Arrian. This does not prove, however, that it did not exist. As I have said, it was impossible r Arrian to have trans mitted all of the teachings of Epictetus; moreover, the discourses which he did note down do not correspond to a systematic exposition of the whole ofphilosophy.
Be that as it may, a rst sketch of this doctrine may be glimpsed well be re Epictetus. In Cicero's treatise On Duties,5 which in its rst book reproduces the teachings of Panaetius, the ancient virtue of prudence becomes "the knowledge of truth"; justice is based on the social links between human beings; strength becomes greatness of soul, linked to scorn r the things which do not depend on us; and temperance submits our desires to reason. In a way, then, Panaetian strength and temperance correspond to the discipline of desire in Marcus Aurelius. In the last analysis such comparisons are rather tenuous, but they do allow us to glimpse an evolution of the Stoic doctrine of the virtues, which culmi nates in the synthesis attested in Marcus.
Joy
In Marcus' view, these three disciplines and virtues bring to the soul the only truejoy which exists in the world, since they place the soul in the possession ofall that is necessary: the one absolute value.
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Living beings experience joy when they l ll the nction r which they are made, and act in accordance with their nature. As we have seen, man l lls his nction qua man, and llows his nature as well as univer sal Nature, when he consents to order: the order ofthe universe as xed by Destiny; the order of the City of the World and of human beings, based as it is upon the mutual attraction ofrational beings, and hence on the proper nature of mankind; and nally to the order of discourse, which reproduces the relation which Nature has established between substances and attributes, and above all between events which necessarily llow upon one another. It is there re by practicing the three disci plines that man llows Nature, and nds hisjoy:
Philosophy wants only that which your nature wants. You, how ever, wanted something else, which was not in accordance with nature. And yet, what is more attractive than what is in con rmity with nature? Is this not how pleasure leads us astray? 6 Look and see, however, if there is anything more attractive than greatness of soul, eedom, simplicity, benevolence, and piety; r what is more at tractive than wisdom itself? (V, 9, 3-5) .
You must consider the activity which it is possible r you to carry out in con rmity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible r you (X, 3 3 , 2) .
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in con rmity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words ofSeneca:7 "The e ect ofwisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy. " Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme:
To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains r you to do but enjoy li , linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
Enjoy and take your rest in one thing only: to pass om one action carried out in the service of the human community to another action accomplished in the service of the human community, to gether with the remembrance ofGod (VI, 7).
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For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain r movements based on sense-perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal Nature, and of that which happens in con rmity with its will (VIII, 26).
Joy, then, is the sign ofan action's perfection. It is only when we love human beings om the bottom ofour hearts, and not merely out ofduty, that we el pleasure in bene ting them (VII, 13, 3),just because we then have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs ofthe body ofrational beings.
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and the end of moral action: rather, virtue is its own reward. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itsel instead, r the Stoics, joy, like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in con rmity with nature, "like beauty r those in the ower ofyouth. "8 In the words of Seneca:9
Pleasure is not a reward r virtue, nor its cause, but is something added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does cause pleasure.
The j oy which arises om virtue . . . like happiness and tranquillity . . . are consequences of the greatest good, but they do not consti tute it. 10
Suchjoy is not, moreover, an irrational passion, because it is in con rm ity with reason.
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Whole by re sing his consent to what happens, and by acting egotisti cally. He thus has the uncanny power, in a sense, to annihilate himself spiritually. And yet, says Marcus, by means of an even more marvelous power, mankind can return to the Whole a er having cut himself o om it. He can convert and trans rm himsel and change om egotism to altruism.
Action and value; justice and impartiality
In his de nition of the discipline of action which is cited by Marcus Aurelius (XI, 37), Epictetus enumerates three characteristics which dis tinguish active impulses (hormai), if they are good. First, they must be accompanied by a "reserve clause," and their goal must be the service of the common wel re. I have already discussed these rst two points. They must also, says Epictetus, be in accordance with value (kat' axian).
This terminology seems vague and imprecise; are we talking about the value of the objects upon which our action is exercised, or about the people a ected by such action? Marcus himself often uses the term kat' axian; in ct it is a terminus technicus, current in the Stoic schools of Marcus' time. Its meaning was obvious to contemporary initiates, but today we must try to explain it.
The Stoics had long since developed a rather elaborate theory of "value. "27 To summarize this doctrine-albeit in simpli ed rm-we may say that they distinguished three degrees ofvalue. First came those things which are an integral part of"li according to nature"-that is, of virtue- r instance, the exercises consisting in the examination of con science and in attention to oneself, which contribute to the practice of moral li . The value of these things was considered to be absolute. In second place came those things which could help the practice ofvirtue in a secondary way. Taken by themselves, these things are neither good nor bad, but are indi erent with regard to moral good. Possessing them and exercising them, however, allows us to practice better the virtuous life. Examples would include health, which makes it possible r us to do our duty; and wealth, if it allows us to come to the aid of our fellow man. These second-rank values do not have the absolute value which pertains only to the moral good, but they can be ranked in hierarchical order according to the closeness oftheir relationship to the moral good. Finally, in last place came those things which, under certain circumstances, could be use l to virtue. Such things have no value in and ofthemselves, but can be exchanged r some good.
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To recognize the exact value of a thing was thus a very important exercise, and a part of the discipline of judgment. Not only must we always try to see each object as it appears in its naked reality, says Marcus (III, rr, r-2), but we must also become aware ofits place within the universe, and of
the value it has in relation to the Whole and in relation to mankind, inso r as mankind is a citizen of the highest City, of which the other cities are like mere households.
As we have seen, the discipline ofjudgment is intimately linked to the discipline of action. Once we have seen the value of things in this way, we must act in consequence (VIII, 29):
I see things as they are, and I use each of them in accordance with its value (kat' axian).
What Marcus means by this is that, when ced with each event and each situation, he tries to recognize the bene t he can derive there om r his moral life, and thus to use it in the best possible way (VIII, 43):
What brings me joy is to keep the guiding principle within me healthy, so that it has no aversion r any human being, nor r anything that can happen to them, but can look at all things with benevolent eyes, and know how to receive and to utilize each thing in accordance with its value.
The discipline of actions thus demands that we be able to recognize the value of objects, and be able to distribute the intensity of our acts proportionately. Seneca28 had de ned the discipline ofaction as llows: in the rst place, judge the value of the matter in question; then adjust our active impulses to this value; nally, bring active impulse and action into harmony, so that we may always remain in accord with ourselves.
This, then, is the rst meaning that can be given to Epictetus' phrase kat' axian. Yet the consideration ofvalue is not situated only on the level ofindividual conduct, but also at the level ofsocial life.
It is here, moreover, that a grave problem arises r the Stoic, r he does not have the same scale ofvalues as other people. Others attribute an absolute value to things which, to the Stoics, are indi erent, and there re can only have a relative value. Conversely, the Stoic attributes
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an absolute value to moral good, which is ofno interest to most people. Marcus seems to allude to this con ict when he writes, a propos ofthe topic of helping others (V, 3 6) :
Don't let yourself be completely carried away by their repre sentation. 29 Instead, help them as r as possible, and in accordance with the value of the matter at hand. If they incur a loss in the domain of indi erent things, do not say to yourself that they have su ered harm, r that is a bad habit.
What is needed is to help others, and there re also to help them in the domain ofindi erent things, which seem so important to them. Yet we must still bear in mind the real value of things-their moral nality without sharing other people's judgments about the value of things. Nor must we pity them, as ifwhat happens to them were a genuine mis r tune.
This is the problem that Marcus ced as Emperor: he had to seek the happiness of his subjects in the domain of indi erent things, which had no value in his eyes. Yet by so doing, he would be imitating the divine example:
The gods help mankind in every possible way: through dreams and through oracles; and yet it is in order to obtain things which have value only in the eyes ofmankind (IX, 27, 3).
The gods themselves wish the best r mankind, r such is their goodness that they o en help them to obtain health, wealth, and glory (IX, II, 2).
Thus, the gods place themselves within mankind's reach, and provide them with that which, in itself, has only a very relative value. The same thing must there re apply to the Emperor. When de ning his attitude to his llow human beings-whom Marcus declares to be his relatives and his associates, even if they do not practice virtue-Marcus declares (III, II, 5):
I behave with benevolence andjustice toward them, in con rmity with the natural law which unds the human community. At the same time, however, I share their quest r what has value among indi erent things.
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In addition to one's inner dispositions ofbenevolence, then, we here have concrete action, which obliges the Emperor to occupy himselfwith things which people consider to be values. In his eyes, too, they can have a certain value: inso r as they allow r eventual moral progress.
Such, then, is the second meaning we can attribute to the allusion to axia, or value in Epictetus' de nition ofthe discipline ofaction.
There is, however, another meaning of the word "value. " Here, the word no longer designates the value ofan object, but that ofa person, and it is synonymous with his or her merit. For Marcus, as r the Stoics in general, justice consists in giving to all people what they deserve according to their value or merit. 30 We cannot, however, assert that this new sense ofthe word "value" could also be reconciled with Epictetus' de nition of the discipline of action, as discussed above. Curiously enough, we nd very few allusions to the virtue ofjustice in the dis courses of Epictetus as recorded by Arrian, and no de nition of it. In Marcus, by contrast, the virtue ofjustice is so important that it is some times su cient to de ne the discipline of action, as r instance in VII, 54: "To conduct oneselfwithjustice with regard to the people present. "
Is it because Marcus was conscious of his responsibilities as Emperor that he attributed such importance to justice? In any event, he alludes to the de nition of this virtue when, speaking about the emperor Anton inus Pius, his adoptive ther, Marcus says (I, r6, 5) that "he distributed goods to each person, without letting himselfbe in uenced. " This means in particular that he distributed duties and responsibilities without vor itism, taking into consideration only the individual's merits and value, as well as his ability to carry out the tasks in question. It certainly also means that he renderedjustice with impartiality.
"Value" and "merit," moreover, do not necessarily mean Stoic moral value, but can mean either the ability to carry out a speci c task, or else, injudicial matters, guilt or innocence. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Marcus did not demand perfection ofthose to whom he entrusted a miss10n:
If someone did something good, he praised him r it, and he used him in the task in which he excelled; but he did not take the rest of his conduct into consideration. He used to say that it was impossible to create men the way one would like them to be, but that it was tting to use men such as they are r the tasks in which they are use l. 31
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The people who have value are those who carry out their "duties" conscientiously. They are those who, in the domain of political and everyday li -which is also the domain of indi erent things-do what needs to be done, even if they do not do it in a Stoic spirit (that is, considering that the only absolute value is the moral good).
The model of this justice which distributes goods as a nction of personal merit, without voritism, and in impartiality, is divine ac tion. There is nothing surprising about this, r mankind's moral action proceeds om his rational nature, which is a part of or an emanation om divine rational nature. Marcus says ofthis divine nature (VIII, 7, 2):
It has no obstacle; it is intelligent and just, since it carries out a distribution-equal and in accordance with value (kat' axian)-of time, of substance, of causality, of activity, and of the conjunctions ofevents.
One might think that an "equal" distribution cannot be "in accord ance with value"; but we must recall that, since Plato and Aristotle,32 political equality had been a geometrical equality-in other words, it had been a proportion in which it was tting to attribute a superior good to a superior value, and an in rior good to an inferior value. Distribution was proportionate to a te, which once designated aristocratic nobility, but which r the Stoics meant nobility of the soul, or virtue. Stoic justice, then, was aristocratic: not in the sense that it consisted in giving wealth and power-that is, indi erent things-to the aristocratic class, but in the sense that it made the consideration of value and of moral responsibility enter into every decision of political and private life. The historian Herodian relates that when it came time r Marcus Aurelius to marry o his daughters, he did not choose patricians or rich personages r them, but men of virtue. Wealth of the soul, Herodian continues, was, in Marcus' eyes, the only genuine, proper, and inalienable wealth. 33
Divine action, then, is "without obstacle" and "just" because it is supremely rational, which means that it imposes an order upon itsel In the rst instance, such an order subordinates particular goals to one unique end: the intention to ensure the good ofthe Whole. This is why divine action has no obstacles: because it aims at one thing only through out the particular goals, and knows how to make all the obstacles which seem to oppose it cooperate toward this unique end. Divine action also introduces an order and a hierarchy of values among the particular goals it assigns to itsel Inferior beings-minerals, plants, and
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animals-are at the service of rational beings, and rational beings them selves are ends r one another. From the perspective ofsuch a hierarchy ofvalues, then, divine action distributes time, matter, and causality as a nction of the value of each thing. That is why it is just.
The justice of rational Nature is at the same time the justice of the Intellect ofthe Whole (V, 30), "which has introduced subordination and coordination into the Whole," and which "distributes to each its por tion, in accordance with its value. " It is, moreover, the justice of the Nature ofthe Whole (IX, I , 1), "which has shioned rational beings r each other's sake, so that they may help each other mutually, in accord ance with their value and their merit. "
Everyday experience could, of course, inspire doubts about such a divine justice. Indeed, experience seems (IX, I , 6)
to carry out a distribution which is contrary to merit ar' axian) in the case of good and of evil men, r evil men often live in pleas ures, and obtain the means to do so, while the good encounter only misery, and that which causes misery.
This, however, is the judgment ofpeople who consider pleasures to be good, and who do not understand that li and death, pleasure and pain, glory and obscurity, are neither good nor bad, when what one is search ing r is the moral good. On the contrary, says Marcus (IV, I O) :
Everything that happens, happens in a just way. If you examine this attentively, you will see that it is true. I am not just saying that "that happens by way ofnecessary consequence," but that "that happens in accordance withjustice,"just as ifit was brought about by some one who distributed to each his portion, in accordance with his merit.
In the context of the discipline of desire, we have already caught a glimpse of the problems posed by the mode of action of Nature or universal Reason. Did the latter start the cosmic process in motion by one unique initial impulse, with all things then happening by way of "necessary consequence"? Or rather, did Nature or Reason pay attention to each individual, "distributing to each his portion, in accordance with his merit" (IV, rn)? We saw that, in the nal analysis, these two hypothe ses did not exclude each other, since the general law of the universe somehow assigned to each person the role he or she had to play within
The Discipline ofAction 221
the universe. Divine action is a unique action, which seems to adapt itself marvelously to each particular case. It is, then, as if"it was brought about by someone who distributed to each his portion, in accordance with his merit" (IV, ro). This holds true r the lower beings, which, as Marcus said (VIII, 7, 2), receive their portion ofduration, substance, and causal ity in accordance with their value in the hierarchy ofbeings. Yet it is still more true in the case of rational beings. Destiny distributes to each person that which corresponds to his or her being and value. Each event is in perfect con rmity with the person to whom it happens:
Love only the event which happens to us, and which is linked to us by Destiny. A er all, what could be better suited to us? (VII, 57).
Such-and-such an event happened to you, was coordinated with you, was set in relation to you, was woven together with you, om the beginning, starting om the most ancient of causes (V, 8, 12) .
Has something happened to you? Good! Every event that comes your way has been linked to you by Destiny, and has been woven together with you, starting om the Whole, since the beginning (IV, 26, 4).
Whatever happens to you was prepared r you in advance om all eternity, and the network of causes has woven together your sub stance and the occurrence of this event r time (X, 5) .
Everything that happens, then, happens in a just way, because every thing that happens to us brings us that which belongs to us and was owed to us-in other words, that which suits our personal value-and there re also contributes to our moral progress. Divinejustice is an educator. The end it aims r is the good ofthe Whole, as ensured by the wisdom ofreasonable beings.
The Stoic Diogenes ofBabylon34 said that, in the de nition ofjustice as that virtue which gives to each person the portion corresponding to his or her value, the word "value" (axia) meant "the portio due to each person" (to epiballon). The myste of divine justice shows itselfin such nuances of vocabulary. Marcus Aurelius, r instance, speaks (X, 25) of "He who administers all things," that is to say, he adds, "who is the Law (nomos) which distributes (nemon) to each person that which is due to him (to epiballon). " "What is distributed according to the laws is equal r all"
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(XII, 36, r). When, there re, the divine Law gives to each person the portion which corresponds to his value, this means at the same time the portion which is due to that person as a nction ofhis merit and ofwhat he is, and the portion which lls to his lot or is given to him by te or Destiny. It is thus at the same time what people choose to be their own moral decision, and what the w, by means ofits initial decision, chooses that they should be. In the same way, the daimon (that is, individual destiny), which according to Plato is attached to each soul, is assigned to it by te, and yet is chosen by it. 35
Such, then, was the ideal ofjustice which his Stoic ith proposed to Marcus, and ifhe could, he would certainly have realized on earth such a justice which takes only moral value into consideration, which has no other objective than human moral progress, and r which "indi erent" things have value only as a nction ofthe assistance they may provide r moral progress. We shall see that Marcus did not have many illusions
about the possibility of what he ironically called "the realization of Plato's Republic. "
Such an ideal ofjustice could, however, inspire an overall inner dispo sition, which imitated both the impartiality of universal Reason, which imposes the same law upon all, and the attentive solicitude of provi dence, which seems to adapt itselfto each particular case and take care of each individual, taking into consideration the individual's particular strengths and weaknesses.
In order to describe this attitude, one might quote a passage om Louis Lavelle,36 who, without wishing to give an account of Stoic doc trine, gives quite exact expression to the spirit ofjustice according to the Stoics:
There is a sacred indi erence: it is that which consists in according no preference to any of the beings upon our path, but in giving them our entire presence, and responding with precise ith lness to the call they utter to us. This is positive indi erence, which is the converse ofnegative indi erence, with which it is often con sed. Positive indi erence only requires us to reserve r all the same luminous greeting. We must keep the balance between them equal: may there be in us neither prejudice, nor predilection to cause the beam to sway. It is then that, in our conduct toward them, we become capable of introducing the most subtle di erences; all the while giving to each person what he expects, requires, and is tting
The Discipline ofAction 223
r him. Here, the most perfectjustice becomes one with the purest love, and we cannot tell whether it abolishes all choice, or whether it is everywhere the same loving choice.
We all know that "not making any distinction" is the same thing as being just; it means applying the same rule to all, without intro ducing any exception or vor into our judgment. It is to place ourselves in the point of view of God, who embraces all beings in the simplicity ofone single glance. Yet this glance is the opposite of an insensitive glance; it is a loving ance which distinguishes, within each individual being, precisely what he or she needs: the words that touch him, and the treatment that he deserves.
Pi , gentleness, and benevolence
In the context ofthe discipline ofjudgment, we have seen that although the Stoics held that the majority of humanity was in an evil state, they were in this state against their will, simply out ofignorance ofthe de ni tion oftrue good and true evil. This is the great Socratic tradition, which thus extends, through Plato and Aristotle, as r as Stoicism. "No one is voluntarily evil. "37 Such Platonic assertions are based upon the Socratic idea that virtue is a "science"; in other words, that it consists essentially in knowing, with all one's soul, where the good is and what the true good is. After all, the human soul naturally desires the good, and spontaneously tends toward that which seems to it to be good. If it seems to become evil, this is because it allows itselfto be deceived by the appearance ofthe good; but it never desires evil r evil's sake. It was all the more easy r the Stoics to take up this doctrine, in that r them, "everything is a matter ofjudgment, " and the passions themselves are judgments. In his treatise On Becoming Aware efPsychic D cts,38 the physician Galen gives excellent expression to this Stoic doctrine: "The principle ofmany de cts is the false judgment which is brought to bear upon the goal which ought to be assigned to one's own life. "
The great Socratic tradition which runs om Platonism and Stoicism through Neoplatonism is united by its ith in the eminent dignity of human nature, which is based on the natural and unconscious desire r the good which every human being possesses.
Epictetus also ts within this tradition, as he makes an explicit allusion (I, 28, 4 ) to the teachings ofPlato:
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When someone gives his assent to error, know that it was not done on purpose, r " every soul is deprived of the truth against its will, " as Plato says. Rather, what was lse seemed to him to be the truth.
Epictetus goes on to remark that what corresponds to truth and error in the area ofaction is duty and its contrary, as well as the advantageous and its contrary. We cannot not choose what we think is duty, or what is advantageous. The mistake is there re an error, and as long as the soul has not been shown the error of its ways, it cannot behave otherwise. Why, then, should we be angry at it?
Shouldn't you rather have pity r those who are blind and muti lated with regard to what is most important, as we have pity r the blind and the lame?
This gives Epictetus the opportunity to describe the ideal attitude which the Stoic must exhibit toward his fellow man (II, 22, 36):
With regard to those who are di erent om him [by the principles oftheir life], he will be patient, gentle, delicate, and rgiving, as he would toward someone in a state of ignorance, who missed the mark when it came to the most important things. He will not be harsh to anyone, r he will have per ctly understood Plato's words: "Every soul is deprived ofthe truth against its will. "
Following Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius also lt tremendous respect r the unconscious desire r the truth and the good, which constitutes the most pro und wellspring r mankind's rational nature. Marcus takes pity on the i ness ofthose souls which, against their will, are deprived of what they obscurely desire:
"Every soul, " says Plato, "is deprived of the truth against its will. " And the same holds true ofjustice, temperance, benevolence, and all such virtues. It is there re absolutely necessary to remind your self of this constantly. Thus, you will be more gentle with others (VII, 63).
If they do not act rightly, it is obviously against their will and out of ignorance. For "every soul is deprived, against its will, oftruth" just
The Discipline ofAction 225 as much as ofthe possibility ofbehaving toward others in an appro
priate way (XI, 18, 4-5).
Here, Marcus reveals himself as a ith l student of Epictetus. As he quotes Plato, he does not llow the text ofPlato, but instead he repeats the literal rm ofthe quotation in the de rmed state in which it is to be und in Epictetus. Above all, he draws the same moral consequences om it.
This ignorance ofgenuine values in which people are submerged, says Marcus, is "in a sense, worthy ofpity" (II, 13, 3). We will el this ifwe attempt to understand the error in judgment which explains their mis deeds (VII, 26, 1). "In a sense, worthy ofpity": this quali cation is an allusion to the traditional Stoic critique ofpity, which the Stoics consid ered a passion. "Pity," said Seneca,39 "is an illness ofthe soul produced by the sight of the su ering of others, or a state of sadness caused by the mis rtunes of others. But no illness a ects the soul of the sage, who always remains serene. "
Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus remain ith l to Stoic doctrine, inso r as what they call "pity" is not a passion or an illness ofthe soul, but is instead de ned negatively as the lack of anger and hatred toward those who are ignorant of genuine values. It is not enough, however, to have pity on people or to be indulgent with them. We must above all try to help them, by in rming them about their error, and teaching them genuine values (IX, 42, 6):
In general, it is within your power to instruct the mistaken person so as to make him change his mind, r whoever commits a misdeed is a person who misses what he was aiming at, and goes astray.
We must, then, try to reason with the mistaken person (V, 28, 3; VI, 27, 3; VI, 50, 1; IX, 11). Ifwe il in our ef rts, then it will be time to practice patience, rgiveness, and benevolence. Marcus likes to present our duty toward our fellow men in the rm of a dilemma:
People were made r one another; so either instruct them or put up with them (VIII, 59) .
Ifhe is wrong, instruct him to that e ect with benevolence, and show him what he has overlooked. Ifyou do not succeed, then be mad at yoursel or rather not even at yourself (X, 4) .
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Epictetus (II, 12, 4; II, 26, 7) had said that we must, like good guides, set those who have gone astray back on the right track again, without mocking them or insulting them. If we do not succeed, we must not make n of the person who has gone astray, but rather must become aware of our own inability and accuse ourselves, rather than the person whom we cannot persuade. As we have just seen, Marcus adds to this that we must not even be upset with ourselves, r it could be that some people are incorrigible, and "it is necessary that there be some such people in the world" (IX, 42, 2).
Be that as it may, we must try to convert those who go astray and are ignorant ofgenuine values. Above all, however, we must do this without getting angry (VI, 27, 3; V, 28, 3). What is more, we must display an in nite delicacy. It seems as though Marcus was extremely sensitive to the tact and gentleness with which souls must be treated, and with which we must try to change their way ofperceiving the world and the things within it. I must address others
without humiliating them, and without making them feel that I am merely putting up with them, but with genuineness and goodness (XI, 13, 2).
. . . without irony, without humiliation, but with a ection, and a heart ee om bitterness; not as one would act in school, nor in order to be admired by some bystander, but truly one on one, even ifothers are present (XI, 18, 18).
There is a great wealth ofpsychological observation in these remarks, and a remarkable sense of the purity of intention. The paradox of gentle ness is that it ceases to be gentleness ifwe make an e ort to be gentle: any arti ce, a ectation, or feeling ofsuperiority will destroy it. Delicacy only acts inso r as it does not seek to act, with an in nite respect r beings, and without any shadow ofviolence, be it only spiritual. Above all, we must not do violence to ourselves in our attempt to be gentle. Gentleness must possess an almost physiological spontaneity and sincerity. Marcus expresses this in a striking way (XI, 15), as he satirizes those people who begin their conversation by saying, "I've decided to be ank with you. " What good are these words? asks Marcus:
If you are sincere, it must be written on your rehead, ring out instantly in your voice, and shine om your eyes, just as a beloved person immediately sees his lovers' feelings in their eyes . . . The
The Discipline ofAction 227 person who is good, without duplicity, and gentle, has these quali
ties in his eyes, and everybody can see them.
Even more strikingly, Marcus states that goodness can be sensed when one approaches a good person, just as, whether one likes it or not, one immediately smells the odor of someone who smells bad. This pure gentleness and delicacy have the power to change people's minds, to convert them, and to make those who are unaware of genuine values discover them:
Goodness is invincible, ifit is sincere, without a phony smile, and w i t h o u t a e c t a t i o n ( X I , 1 8 , 1 5 ) .
Far om being a weakness, goodness is a strength:
It is not anger that is manly, but gentleness and delicacy. It is because they are more human that they are more manly; they possess more strength, more nerve, and more virility, and this is precisely what is lacking in the person who gets angry and loses his temper (XI, 18, 21).
What underlies its strength is the ct that gentleness is the expression of a pro und urge of human nature, which seeks harmony between people. In addition, its strength resides in the ct that it corresponds to the domination ofreason, whereas anger and ill-temper are mere illnesses ofthe soul.
In the words ofLouis Lavelle,
Gentleness is so r removed om weakness that it alone possesses genuine strength. . . .
wills become tense when one tries to defeat or break them; but gentleness can persuade them. Only it can triumph without a combat, and trans rm an enemy into a iend. 40
One might say that only gentleness has the power to reveal to people the good ofwhich they are unaware, although they desire it with all their being. It acts both by its persuasive rce and by the unexpected experi ence that encountering it represents r those who know only egotism and violence. It brings with it a complete reversal ofvalues, by making those who are its object discover their dignity as human beings, since they el themselves to be deeply respected as beings who are ends in themselves. At the same time, gentleness reveals to them the existence of
228 THE INNER CITADEL
a disinterested love of the good, which inspires gentleness and which addresses itselfto them.
Despite this, gentleness toward others must not be allowed to exclude rmness (VI, 50, l):
Try to persuade them, but act even against their will, when that is required by the rational order ofjustice.
Here, then, we na y discover a whole new aspect ofthe discipline of action: our duty to help our neighbor spiritually, by revealing genuine values to him, calling attention to his de cts, and correcting his lse opinions. To what extent did Marcus really l ll this role? We do not know. We can, however, suppose that he attempted to promulgate around him a Stoic vision of life and of the world. There must be an allusion to this in the llowing passage, in which Marcus imagines what will happen after his death. Someone will say (X, 36, 2):
Now that that schoolteacher is gone, we can breathe eely. Granted, he wasn't hard on any of us; but I could feel that he was criticizing us in silence.
Until now, we have looked only at the rst part ofthe dilemma which Marcus rmulated: "Instruct them. " We can now understand this as llows: "Instruct them with gentleness, and by means ofgentleness. "
Now we are in a position to complete the second part of the dilemma as well: "Put up with them gently. " For gentleness is not reserved r those whom we want to convert, but is also intended r those whose minds we have not succeeded in changing:
Ifyou can, make them change their minds. Ifnot, remember that it is precisely r such situations as these that benevolence was given to you. Besides, the gods themselves are good to such people (IX, ll, l).
There is one thing in this world which is of great value: to spend our li in truth and injustice, all the while remaining benevolent to liars and to the unjust (VI, 47, 6).
Do not let those who present an obstacle to you in your progress in right reason turn you away om healthy action, nor let them suc
ceed in making you lose your gentleness toward them (XI , 9, l ) .
The Discipline ofAction 229
Liars, unjust people, and all those who persist in error nevertheless retain-at least in their essence-their rational nature and the uncon scious desire r the good which is inscribed in it. They must there re be treated with respect and gentleness:
I cannot be angry with one who is related to me, nor hate him, r we were made to cooperate (II, I, 3).
Imagine that they are akin t o you, that they sin out o fignorance and againsttheirwill(VII,22, 2).
It is just as much a sign of weakness to get angry at them as it is to give up an undertaking you have begun . . . both the man who allows himself to be ightened, and he who denies the person whom nature has given him to be a iend and a kinsman, are equally deserters (XI, 9, 2).
Such an attitude, based on the idea of the community between rational beings, nally leads to the doctrine of the love of one's neighbor, which extends even to those who commit injustices against us.
Loving our neighbors
A proprium ofhumankind is to love even those who make mistakes. This will happen ifyou realize that they are akin to you and that they sin out ofignorance and against their will (VII, 22, 1-2).
This transcendence ofjustice, not only in the direction ofpity or indul gence, but in that of love, was implied by the arguments which invited the Stoic to re ect, on the one hand, on the indestructible urge which moves each person toward the good, and, on the other, on the solidarity which unites all rational creatures together.
Thus, the discipline of action attains its culminating point in the love ofone's neighbor. All the logic ofhuman action tends to reveal that the prime motive of our activity must be the love of other people, since this love becomes sed with the deepest urges ofhuman nature (XI, I, 4):
It is aproprium ofthe soul, ifit is rational, to love its neighbor, which corresponds both to truth and to respect.
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The reason r this is that human beings, if they live in accordance with reason, become keenly aware that they belong to one great body: that of a rational beings. Inso r as he is part of this All, man is eve body else, as much as he is himself(VII, 13):
As are the limbs ofthe body in organic unities, such is the relation ship between rational beings, who, although they exist within sepa rate bodies, are nevertheless constituted in order to realize one single and harmonious activity.
This concept will impress itself better within you if you o en repeat to yourself I am a limb (melos) of the organism (sustema) rmed by rational beings. But ifyou only use the letter rho, saying that you are a part (meros), then you do not yet love mankind om the bottom of your heart. You do not yet nd your joy, without seeking anything else, in the simple ct of doing good to others. Moreover, you are acting r the sake of mere appearance, not yet because when you do good, you are doing good to yourself
This feeling ofbelonging, and ofidenti cation with a kind of"mysti cal body" which Kant was to call the kingdom of ends, joins the almost mystical feeling of belonging to the cosmic Whole. The unity of the latter, like that ofthe "body ofrational beings," is ensured by the univer sal presence of Reason-that is to say, of God himself
The Stoic's ndamental attitude is thus the love ofthose realities in whose presence he is constantly placed by the All, which are intimately linked to him, and with which he somehow identi es himself(VI, 39):
Harmonize yourself with the things to which you are linked by Destiny.
As r the people to whom you are linked by Destiny: love them, but genuinely.
For the basis ofreality is love. In order to express this idea, Marcus appeals to the grandiose mythical image of the marriage of Heaven and Earth (X, 21):
The Earth loves! She loves the rain! And the venerable Ether? It loves too! The World, too, loves to produce that which must occur. And I say to the World: I, too, lov along with you. Don't we say: " such-and-such loves to happen? "
The Discipline of Action 23 1
What scinates Marcus here is that this mythical image means that natural processes are, in the last analysis, processes of union and of love. He notes that language itselfseems to express this vision, since in ancient Greek, in order to designate a thing which habitually occurs or tends to happen, one says that it "loves" to happen. Ifthings love to happen, we too must love that they happen.
Thus, the ancient image ofthe hieros gamos allows us, in a mythic way, to glimpse the grandiose perspective ofthe universal love which the parts of the Whole feel r one another, as well as the comic vision of a universal attraction which becomes more intense the higher one climbs on the scale ofbeings, and the more conscious they become (IX, 9). The closer people get to the state ofwisdom-in other words, the closer they approach to God-the more the love which they el r one another r other human beings, as well as r all beings, even the most humble-grows in depth and in lucidity.
It cannot, then, be said that "loving one's neighbor as oneself" is a speci cally Christian invention. Rather, it could be maintained that the motivation of Stoic love is the same as that of Christian love. Both recognize the logos or Reason within each person. Even the love ofone's enemies is not lacking in Stoicism:
When he is beaten, the Cynic [ r Epictetus,41 the Cynic is a kind of heroic Stoic) must love those who beat him.
We have seen Marcus assert that it is proper, and there re essential, to human beings to love those who make mistakes. One could say, how ever, that the tonality of Christian love is more personalized, since this love is based on Christ's saying: "What you have done to the least ofmy brethren, you have done to me. "42 In the Christian view, the logos is incarnate in Jesus, and it is Jesus that the Christian sees in his fellow man. No doubt it was this re rence to Jesus which gave Christian love its strength and its expansion. Nevertheless, Stoicism was also a doctrine of love. As Seneca43 had said:
No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love r human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be use l, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.
9
VIRTUE AND JOY
The three virtues and the three disciplines
The Meditations as a whole are thus organized in accordance with a three ld structure-one could even call it a system-which was devel oped, and perhaps invented, by Epictetus. This three ld structure or system has an internal necessity, in the sense that there can be neither more nor wer than three exercise-themes r the philosopher, because there can be neither more nor wer than three acts of the soul. The exercise-themes which correspond to them are related to three rms of reality: Destiny, the community ofrational beings, and the individual's culties ofjudgment and assent. These rms, too, cannot be either more or fewer in number, and they are respectively the subjects ofthe three parts of the system rmed by philosophy: physics, ethics, and logic.
What is quite remarkable is that in Marcus Aurelius, we can see another structure, which had been traditional since at least the time of Plato, that ofthe ur virtues-prudence, justice, strength, and temper ance-take on, under the in uence of this systematic structure, a three ld structure as well, inso r as Marcus makes the virtues correspond to each of the disciplines I have mentioned.
The scheme ofthe ur virtues was very ancient. We should recall that the Greek word arete, which we translate as "virtue," originally had a quite di erent meaning om our word "virtue. " The term went back to the aristocratic ethic of archaic Greece, and consequently did not at signi a good habit or a principle which leads us to behave well. Rather, it meant nobility itsel excellence, value, and distinction. We may sup pose that this ideal of excellence and value always remained present in the mind ofthe philosophers. For the Stoics, areteis absolute value, based no longer on warrior nobility, but on the nobility of soul represented by the purity ofour intentions.
Virtue and Joy 233
Since very early times, it seems that there existed a model or a canon of the ur ndamental virtues. In the fth century B. c. , Aeschylus, in his tragedy The Seven Against Thebes (verse 6rn), enumerates ur basic values when discussing Amphiaraos: he is wise (sophron), just (dikaios), brave (agathos), and pious (eusebes). Wisdom consists in knowing, with reserve (aidos), one's place in society and in the world-in other words, in having a sense ofmankind's limits. Justice consists in behaving well in social life. Bravery, of course, is courage in the ce of di culties, and especially in combat. Piety, in the case of Amphiaraos, who is a seer, corresponds to the knowledge ofthings divine and also human. In the urth book ofPlato's Republic (427e ), there appears a systematization and justi cation of this enumeration of the ur virtues. Plato distin guishes three parts ofthe soul: "reason," "anger" (to thumoeides), which means that part which urges people on to ght, and "desire" (epithumia). Three virtues correspond to these three parts of the soul: prudence or wisdom to reason, courage to anger, and temperance to desire. It is up to
justice to ensure that each part of the soul carries out its nction: that reason is prudent, anger courageous, and desire temperate. The three parts of the soul, moreover, correspond to the three social classes of the Republic: reason is the distinctive feature ofthe philosophers, anger ofthe guardians, and desire of the workers. In the State as in the individual, then, justice will be realized if each class and each part of the soul l lls its nction perfectly. This systematization, which is linked to a speci c political model, and which makes justice the virtue which contains the three others, is not to be und in the rest ofPlato's dialogues, where the ur virtues are enumerated in various contexts, and without any par ticular theorization. 1
In their description of moral life, the Stoics also allude to the ur virtues. 2 Here, however, they are not subordinate to one another, but are all on the same level. They mutually imply one another, as do the parts of philosophy. It is enough to practice one in order to practice them all. Nevertheless, it is di cult to nd in our surviving summaries of Stoic doctrine the real reason why it is necessary that there be only ur ndamental virtues. The de nitions of the various virtues are rather divergent, but we may note the llowing: prudence is the science of what ought and ought not to be done; courage is the science of what ought and ought not to be tolerated; temperance is the science of what ought and ought not to be chosen; andjustice is the science ofwhat ought and ought not to be distributed. Unlike Plato, the Stoics do not appear to link the ur virtues to the parts ofthe soul.
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From this perspective, it is ofgreat interest to observe the trans rma tions which the system of three disciplines caused the classi cation of virtues in Marcus' Meditations to undergo. Let us begin by noting that the philosopher-emperor often summarizes the three disciplines-of assent, of desire, and of action-by making the names of virtues correspond to them. Thus the discipline of assent takes on the name of the virtue of "truth"; the discipline ofdesire acquires the name ofthe virtue of"tem perance "; and the discipline of action, that of the virtue of "justice. " In itself, the substitution of the notion of "truth" r that of "prudence" should not surprise us, r Plato had already once (Republic, 487a5) given t h e fo u r v i r t u e s t h e n a m e s o f " t r u t h , " " j u s t i c e , " " c o u r a g e , " a n d " t e m p e r ance. "
The substitution of"truth" r "prudence" can, however, be perfectly welljusti ed om the perspective ofMarcus Aurelius. This is shown by the llowing lengthy passage (IX, r), which must be cited r two reasons: rst, we can see in it the establishment of an exact correspon dence between the discipline ofaction andjustice, the discipline ofassent and truth, and the discipline of desire and temperance. Second, it o ers an admirable summary ofthe three exercise-themes.
Justice and the discipline of action
He who commits an injustice commits an impiety. For since universal Nature has constituted rational animals r the sake of each other, so that they might help each other in accordance with their respective merit and never harm each other, he who transgresses the will of Nature most obviously commits an impiety against the most vener able ofgods.
Truth and the discipline of assent
He who lies, moreover, also commits an impiety toward the same Goddess. For Universal Nature is the nature of beings; now beings have a relationship of a nity with true attributes [that is, with what can be truly said of them] . Moreover, this Goddess is also named truth, and she is the rst cause ofall that is true. There re, he who willingly lies commits an impiety, in so r as he commits an injus tice by deceiving. And he who lies involuntarily also commits an impiety, inso r as he is in disaccord with universal Nature, and he
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disturbs order inso r as he is in a state of incompatibility with the Nature of the world. For that person is in a state of incompatibility who, ofhis own ee will, tends toward that which is contrary to the truth. He has received om Nature dispositions to know the truth, but since he has neglected them, he is now no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse.
Temperance and the discipline of desire
Finally, the person who pursues pleasures as goods and who ees pains as evils also commits an impiety. For such a person must necessarily o en reproach universal Nature, r Nature attributes a particular lot to the bad and to the good, contrary to their merit; r the bad often live in pleasures and possess that by which they may procure them, while good people encounter only pain and that which is its cause. What is more, he who fears pain will one day come to fear one ofthe things which must happen in the world, and this is already impious. Nor will he who pursues pleasures be able to keep away om injustice; and this is clearly impious. Concerning things with regard to which universal Nature is equally disposed ( r she would not produce both, if she were not disposed toward them in an equal way) : with regard to these things, those who wish to llow Nature, and be in perfect community ofsentiments with her, must also be in a disposition of " equality. " There re, as r as pain and pleasure are concerned, death and li , glory and obscurity, which universal Nature treats in an "equal" manner, he who does not behave in an " equal " manner obviously commits an impiety.
Here it is easy to recognize the three disciplines: that of action, which ordains that people should help one another; that of assent, which con sists in distinguishing the true om the lse; and that of desire, which consists in accepting the lot which universal Nature has reserved r us. To these three disciplines correspond three virtues. In the discipline of action, we must respect the value hierarchy of people and of things, and thus act in accordance with justice. According to the discipline of assent, our discourse must be true, and the virtue particular to this discipline is truth. He who knowingly lies commits a two ld sin: in the area ofassent, since his discourse is not true, and in the area of action, since he is committing an injustice with regard to other people. As r the person
who lies involuntarily-in other words, who deceives himself-it is be cause he has not succeeded in criticizing his judgments and in becoming the master of his assent that he is no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse. Finally, in the discipline of desire, we must desire only that which universal Nature wants, and we must not desire pleasures or ee su erings. This discipline is characterized by temperance.
Here, then, Nature appears to us in three aspects. She is the principle of attraction which urges human beings to help one another and to practice justice, and is there re the basis ofjustice. She is also the basis of truth; that is to say, the principle which unds the order of discourse, and the necessary relationship which must exist between beings and the true attributes which are said about them. To speak lsely, whether voluntar ily or involuntarily, is there re to be in disaccord with the order of the world. Finally, universal Nature, since she is indi erent to indi erent things, is the basis of temperance, in other words of that virtue which, instead of desiring pleasure, wants to consent to the will of universal Nature .
Marcus here portrays universal Nature as the most ancient and august of goddesses, in such a way that any lapse with regard to the virtues justice, truth, and temperance-ofwhich this goddess is the model and the principle, is an impiety. The Stoics traditiona y identi ed God, Na ture, Truth, Destiny, and Zeus. In Marcus' time, there were hymns which presented Nature as the most ancient of goddesses. For example,
an Orphic hymn3 invokes her in the llowing terms:
Goddess, mother of all things, celestial mother, very ancient res
beira) mother.
A hymn by Mesomedes, one of Hadrian's eedmen, which also dates
om the second century A. D. , begins:
Principle and origin of all, very ancient Mother of the world,
Night, Light, and Silence. 4
In our long passage om Marcus, we can note a certain tendency to privilege the importance ofjustice as compared to the other virtues. Impiety toward Nature consists in injustice, not only if one re ses to practice justice toward other human beings, but also if one lies to them, and even i involuntarily, one cannot distinguish the true om the lse. For then one destroys the order of Nature, and introduces a discordant
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note into universal harmony. Likewise, if we accuse Nature of injustice in her distribution oflots among good and evil people, then we ourselves are committing an injustice. We nd a similar idea expressed in XI, IO, 4:
Justice cannot be preserved ifwe attribute importance to unimpor tant things, or if we are easily deceived; if we give our assent too rapidly, or if we change our mind too often.
To give importance to unimportant things is not to practice the disci pline ofdesire, and hence to sin against temperance; whereas to be easily deceived, or to be too rapid or changeable in ourjudgments, means not to practice the discipline of assent, and hence to sin against truth.
Truth, justice, and temperance can thus designate the three disciplines, asinXII, 15:
Whereas the ame of a lamp shines until it goes out, and does not lose its luster, will the truth, justice, and temperance which are within you be extinguished be re their time?
Elsewhere (XII, 3, 3), the soul's guiding principle, when it ees itself of everything reign to it,
does what isjust, wills the events which happen, and tells the truth. Nothing, says Marcus (VIII, 32, 2), can prevent us om acting
in accordance with justice, temperance, and prudence.
Sometimes, as in this last example and the llowing one, we nd some variations in the names of the virtues; yet the tripartite scheme is retained (III, 9, 2):
Absence of hurry in judgment, a feeling of kinship toward other human beings, and obedient consent to the gods.
Alongside this triad of virtues, we sometimes nd the traditional quaternium, adapted and brought into line with the tripartite structure (III, 6, l):
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Ifyou nd something in human life better thanjustice, truth, tem perance, and bravery . . .
In ct, the continuation of this passage reduces these ur virtues to the disciplines ofdesire and ofaction (III, 6, r), when it becomes appar ent that they consist
in thought which is content with itself (in those things in which it is possible to act in accordance with right reason), and which is con tent with Destiny (in those things which are allotted to us, inde pendently of our will) .
The virtues are linked to the nctions of the soul: truth and the intellectual virtues are linked to reason; justice to active impulses; and temperance to desire. Where, then, can we nd a place r courage? It seems to be shared between temperance, qua strength in adversity and su ering, andjustice, qua active rce.
We nd no trace of this theory of the virtues in the Discourses of Epictetus, as reported by Arrian. This does not prove, however, that it did not exist. As I have said, it was impossible r Arrian to have trans mitted all of the teachings of Epictetus; moreover, the discourses which he did note down do not correspond to a systematic exposition of the whole ofphilosophy.
Be that as it may, a rst sketch of this doctrine may be glimpsed well be re Epictetus. In Cicero's treatise On Duties,5 which in its rst book reproduces the teachings of Panaetius, the ancient virtue of prudence becomes "the knowledge of truth"; justice is based on the social links between human beings; strength becomes greatness of soul, linked to scorn r the things which do not depend on us; and temperance submits our desires to reason. In a way, then, Panaetian strength and temperance correspond to the discipline of desire in Marcus Aurelius. In the last analysis such comparisons are rather tenuous, but they do allow us to glimpse an evolution of the Stoic doctrine of the virtues, which culmi nates in the synthesis attested in Marcus.
Joy
In Marcus' view, these three disciplines and virtues bring to the soul the only truejoy which exists in the world, since they place the soul in the possession ofall that is necessary: the one absolute value.
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Living beings experience joy when they l ll the nction r which they are made, and act in accordance with their nature. As we have seen, man l lls his nction qua man, and llows his nature as well as univer sal Nature, when he consents to order: the order ofthe universe as xed by Destiny; the order of the City of the World and of human beings, based as it is upon the mutual attraction ofrational beings, and hence on the proper nature of mankind; and nally to the order of discourse, which reproduces the relation which Nature has established between substances and attributes, and above all between events which necessarily llow upon one another. It is there re by practicing the three disci plines that man llows Nature, and nds hisjoy:
Philosophy wants only that which your nature wants. You, how ever, wanted something else, which was not in accordance with nature. And yet, what is more attractive than what is in con rmity with nature? Is this not how pleasure leads us astray? 6 Look and see, however, if there is anything more attractive than greatness of soul, eedom, simplicity, benevolence, and piety; r what is more at tractive than wisdom itself? (V, 9, 3-5) .
You must consider the activity which it is possible r you to carry out in con rmity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible r you (X, 3 3 , 2) .
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in con rmity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words ofSeneca:7 "The e ect ofwisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy. " Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme:
To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains r you to do but enjoy li , linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
Enjoy and take your rest in one thing only: to pass om one action carried out in the service of the human community to another action accomplished in the service of the human community, to gether with the remembrance ofGod (VI, 7).
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For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain r movements based on sense-perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal Nature, and of that which happens in con rmity with its will (VIII, 26).
Joy, then, is the sign ofan action's perfection. It is only when we love human beings om the bottom ofour hearts, and not merely out ofduty, that we el pleasure in bene ting them (VII, 13, 3),just because we then have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs ofthe body ofrational beings.
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and the end of moral action: rather, virtue is its own reward. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itsel instead, r the Stoics, joy, like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in con rmity with nature, "like beauty r those in the ower ofyouth. "8 In the words of Seneca:9
Pleasure is not a reward r virtue, nor its cause, but is something added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does cause pleasure.
The j oy which arises om virtue . . . like happiness and tranquillity . . . are consequences of the greatest good, but they do not consti tute it. 10
Suchjoy is not, moreover, an irrational passion, because it is in con rm ity with reason.
