Sotion seems to have been the intermediate link in which the Stoic morals were brought into union with the
Alexandrian
Pythagoreanism, and given that religious turn which characterises them in the time of the Empire.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
The last century b.
c.
to be designated as the time in which the one gradually passed over into the other.
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CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PERIOD.
Thk two schools of the great masters of Attic philosophy, the Academic and the Peripatetic, followed the tendency of the time which separated science into the two branches, ethical philosophy and learned investigation. While in the first generation of the
Academy — that contemporary with Aristotle — a Pythagoreanising metaphysics had predominated, this made room in the next period (or fiopular moralising (cf. p. 101). In the Lyceum, indeed. Then- pkmrtua, and after him, Strato, held fast to the development and re-shaping of the Aristotelian metaphysics, but the associates of Theoprastus, Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and others, as well as Theo- phrastus himself, turned to literary-historical studies and to natural science. Later, the Peripatetics had a great share in the Alexan drian erudition, and the history of philosophy especially found in them its most industrious workers. But in philosophy itself they played only the conservative r61e of defending the system of their school against the attacks of the others, especially upon the ethical domain, and the new edition of the Aristotelian works by Androni- nu gave new stimulus for a zealous reproduction of his teaching. Paraphrases, commentaries, excerpts, and interpretations formed the chief occupation of the later Peripatetics.
The Academy and Lyceum were, however, injured in their work ing by the two schools which were founded toward the end of the fourth century, and which owed their great success to the fact that they formulated the tendency of the time toward the practical wis dom of life with the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness : namely, the Stoic and the Epicurean.
The first was founded in the Sroa touuXi; by Zeno, a native of Cithtm in Cyprus, and had, both in his time and in that of his suc- ecsaor, Geanthes, more likeness to Cynicism than in the time of its third head, Chrysippus, who succeeded in turning the school into a more scientific course. Epicurus, on the contrary, founded a society which made the Hedonistic principle, in a refined and intellect
IN
160 Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. [I'art 1L
oalised form, its centre, but developed only a slight degree of scientific vitality. While numerous adherents were won to its social-ethical principle then established, and to the view of the world connected with as these were continued through antiquity and especially in the Roman world, the school remained decidedly more unfruitful scientifically than the others, as well in the special sciences as in philosophy. Its doctrines have been presented in an interesting manner by the Roman poet, Lucretius.
These four schools continued side by side in Athens for centuries, and in the time of the Empire they were still maintained in various chairs of instruction, and formed there a sort of university but only in the Academy, and here only with great gaps, can succes sion of heads of the school be traced; while the tradition in the case of the Stoa and the Epicureans breaks off with the first cen tury B. C. , and for the Lyceum soon after that time.
At first, however, these four schools contended with each other in the liveliest fashion during the third and second centuries B. C. , and
was especially in ethical questions, and in metaphysical, physical, and logical questions only in so far as connected with the ethical, that they sought to bear away the palm from one another. 1
But, moving along side by side with the dogmatic doctrines during the whole period was another tendency, which, like the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, originated in the teaching of the Sophists namely, Scepticism. It did not, indeed, take on the form of an association in school, but too, was brought together into a system atic form, and found an ethical culmination. Such concentration, in accord with the spirit of the times, of the negative results of the teaching of the Sophists, was achieved by Pyrrho, whose doctrines were set forth by Timon. This Sophistical scepticism had the triumph of obtaining possession of Plato's grove for time; for, the Middle Academy did not make this doctrine fully its own, made
weapon for combating Stoicism and grounding its own ethics. In this phase of the development of the Academy appear the two heads of the school, Arcesilaus and Carneades, who were separated by about century. In after time, when the Academy again rejected Scepticism, this doctrine met with sympathy principally among the empirical physicians, among whom, even at the end of this period, jEnesidemus and Agrippa are to be mentioned. complete collec tion of the doctrines of the Sceptics, made at much later time,
preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus.
Cicero in his philosophical dialogues gives vivid pictures of these school con- ioveraie. * with dextrous use of the original sources.
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But the deeper significance of this Scepticism was that it brought to expression the fundamental frame of mind which had seized the entire ancient civilisation as it had once seized that of Greece, — a frame of mind at variance with the true ideal import and content of that civilisation ; and the same lack of the spirit of decided convic tion found only another form in the Eclecticism which began to develop in the second half of the second century. With the exten sion of the schools in the great relations of the life of the Roman Empire, the school-spirit disappeared, polemic was crippled, and the need of adjustment and fusion made itself felt instead. The teleo- logical view of the world, especially, formed the basis upon which
Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism could agree in a common opposition against Epicureanism.
The tendency toward such a fusion, toward syncretism, first awoke in the Stoic school, and found its most efficient supporters in Pance- tius and Posidonius. who supplemented the doctrine of the Stoa on all sides by borrowing Platonic and Aristotelian elements. In opposition to them stood the Neio Academy, which, after Philo of Larissa had made an end of the sceptical episode in the develop ment of the school, made the attempt, through Antiochus, to unite philosophy, then so disunited, upon those doctrines in which Plato and Aristotle agree.
Less important, because more devoid of principles, but not, there fore, the less significant historically, was that sort of eclecticism which the Romans employed in taking up Greek philosophy. This consisted in piecing together, from an essentially practical point of view, the different school systems which met their approval. This was the case with Cicero, Varro, and in part with the school of the Sextians.
Of the Peripatetic School (the Lyceum), the co-founder himself is primarily to be noticed, Tneophrastus of Erebus in Lesbos (about 370-287), a somewhat Toaager friend of Aristotle, who through his teachings and writings won great regard for the school. Of his works, the botanical, also a fragment of the MftapAyrfes, extracts from his Characters, from the treatise concerning percep tion, from his history of physics, and some isolated fragments are preserved
edited by P. Wimmer, Breslau, 1842-4)2).
With him appear Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, who
studied music historically and theoretically {Element* der Musik, German by R Weatphal, Leips. 1883), Diceearchua of Messina, a learned polyhistor who wrote a history of Grecian civilisation (piot'EWiSot), and Btrato. of I. ampsncus, •ho was head of the school (287-269) and had as surname "The Physicist. "
Among the Peripatetic doxographers, Ilermippus, Sotion, Satyrus, Heracleides Lcmboa (in the second century n. c), and among the later commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 a. d. in Athens) are to be mentioned.
The Middle Academy begins with Arceailaua of 1'itane in . -Kolia (about 31V241). whose teachings were recorded by his pupil Lacydes, and ends with Caneatdea (in Rome, 166) and his successor Clitomachus, who died 1 10. Noth- af remains of their writings. The sources are, beside Diogenes Laertiua, prin cipally Cicero and Sextus Empiricus.
102 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
Just as indirect and general in its character is our knowledge of the New Academy. Philo of Larissa was still in Rome in 87. His successor, Antio- chua of Ascalon, was heard by Cicero in Athens in 78. To the supporters of eclectic Platonism in this first, essentially ethical form belong among others Alius Didymus, who inclined strongly to Stoicism (in the time of Augustus), and Thrasyllus (under Tiberius), who prepared an edition of the works of Democritus and Plato, arranged according to subjects. An extensive literature of paraphrase and commentary connected with Plato's works also developed in the Academy.
When we consider the personality of the Stoic School, we are struck by the frequency of the descent of its members from the Hellenistic mixed races of the Orient. Thus the founder, Zeno (about 340-265), came from his Cyprian home as a merchant to Athens, and there, taken captive by philosophy, is said to have absorbed the doctrines of the different schools, to found his own in the year 308. His principal pupil was Cleanthes of Assos in Troas, from whose writings a monotheistic hymn to Zeus is preserved, Stub. Eel. I. 30 (Wachs- muth, p. 25). The scientific head of the school was Chrysippus (280-209) of Soli or Tarsus in Ciiicia. He is said to have written an extraordinary amount, but, aside from the titles, only very unimportant fragments of his works are preserved. Cf. G. Bagnet (Loewen, 1822). Among the literary-historical savants of the Stoic School, Diogenes of Babylon and Apollodorus are to be mentioned ; Aristarchus and Eratosthenes stood in close relation to the school.
Panaetius (180-110), who was strongly influenced by the Academic scepticism and who maintained a close relation with the Roman statesmen, began the syn- cretistic development of the Stoa, which was completed by Posidonius of Syrian Apamea (about 135-60). The latter was one of the greatest polyhistors of antiquity, especially in the geographico-historical domain. He taught in Rhodes, and was heard by many young Romans, among whom was Cicero.
Concerning the Stoics of the time of the Empire, cf. the following chapter. Sources for the Stoic doctrines are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, Book VII. , in part also the extant writings of the Stoics of the time of the Empire, and the discoveries at Herculaneum.
D. Tiedmann, System der stoischen Philosophie (3 vols. , Leips. 1776) ; P. Weygoldt, Die Philosophie der Stoa (Leips. 1883) ; P. Ogereau, Essai sur le Systime Philosophique des Stoiciens (Paris, 1885) ; L. Stein, Die Psychologie der Stoa (2 vols. , Berlin, 1886-88) ; [Capes, Stoicism, Lond. 1880].
Epicurus (341-270), born in Samos, the son of an Athenian schoolmaster, had already made attempts at teaching in Mitylene and in Lampsacus, before founding in Athens, in 306, the society which is named after his "gardens"
(ktjjtoi, horti, as also the other schools were named after the places where they
He was much loved as a teacher, on account of his companionable qualities. Of his numerous writings lightly thrown off, the proverbs (iciptat Sdjai), three didactic letters, parts of his treatise rtpl tpiacus (in the discoveries at Herculaneum), and besides only scattered fragments are preserved ; collected and arranged systematically by H. Usener, Epicurea (Leips. 1887).
Among the great mass of his followers, antiquity brings into prominence his closest friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus ; also Zeno of Sidon (about 150) and Phtedrus (about 100 h. c. ). Philodemus of Gadara in Coele-Syria has become a somewhat more distinct figure to us since a part of his writings has been found at Herculaneum (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt, first series, Naples, 1793 ff. ; second, 1861 ff. ) ; the most valuable, repl <riituiui» koX viDieiiictu* (cf. Fr. Bahusch, Lyck, 1879 ; H. v. Arnim, Philodemea. Halle, 1888).
assembled).
The didactic poem of Tit. Lucretius Cams (98-54), De Natura Rerum, in six books, has been edited by Lachmann (Berlin, 1850) and . lac. Bernays (Leips. 1862) ; [Eng. ed. with tr. of the poem by Munro, Lond. 1886. Cf. The Atomic
Theory of Lucretius, by J. Masson, Lond. 1884].
Further sources are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, in the tenth book.
Cf. M. Guyau, La Morale <f Epicure (Paris, 1878); P. v. Gizycki, Ueber das
Leben und die Moralphilosophie des Epikur (Berlin, 1879) ; W. Wallace, Epi cureanism (Lond. 1880); [Wallace, Art. Ep. in Enc. Brit. ; W. L. Courtney, Ep. in Hellenica].
Cmap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage. 163
Scepticism, as accords with the nature of the case, makes its appearance, not as a close school, but in looser form. 1 It remains doubtful whether the sys- temsaiser of Scepticism, Pyrrho of El is (perhaps 366-276), had any intimate relations with the Socratic-Sophistic school of his native city. A certain Bryso, who passes for the son of Stilpo, is looked upon as an intermediate link. He accompanied Alexander on his journey to Asia, together with a follower of Democritos, Anaxarchus by name. The Sinograph, Timon of Phlius (320-230, the latter part of the time at Athens) from Pyrrho's standpoint derides philoso phers. Fragments of his writings in C. Wachsmuth, Dr. Timone Phliasio
(Leips. 1859). Cf. Ch. Waddington, Pyrrhon (Paris, 1877).
The external relations of later Scepticism are very obscure and uncertain.
. Enesidemus from Cnossus taught in Alexandria, and composed a treatise, WvfaimuH Xiya. of which nothing remains. His life falls probably in the first
century b. c, yet it has also been set almost two centuries later. Of Agrippa, nothing in detail can be established. The literary representative of Scepticism is the physician Sextua Emplricus. who lived about 200 a. d. , and of his writ ings there are extant his Outline Sketches of Pyrrhonism (UvfipumoL {nrorvwiivtii), m<i the investigations comprehended under the name Adversus Mathematicos, of which Books VII. -XI. contain the exposition of the sceptical doctrine, with many valuable historical notices (ed. by J. Bekker, Berlin, 1842).
Cf. K. Stiudlin, Gesch. und Geist des Skepticismus (Leips. 1704-06) ; N. Maccoll, The Greek Sceptics (London, 1869) ; L. Haas, De Philosophorum Srrpticorvm Successionibus ( Wttrzburg, 1875) ; [Owen, Evenings with the Scep tics (Lond. 1881) ; A. Seth, Art. Scepticism, tn Enc. Brit. ].
Among the Romans, the admission of philosophy at first encountered violent resistance ; but by the beginning of the first century b. c. it was the general custom for the young Romans of superior rank to study in Athens or Rhodes, and to hear the lectures of the heads of schools, for the same end as that for which the Athenians bad formerly heard the Sophists. The literary activity of Marcus Tullius Clo«ro (106-43) must be judged from the point of view of his purpose, which was to awaken among his countrymen an inclination for general scien tific culture and a comprehension of its meaning, and from this standpoint his work is to be highly prized. Skill in composition and grace of form excuse the '. aek of proper philosophising ability, which is shown in a selection of doctrines based on no philosophical principle. The main treatises are De Finibus, De
Ofirii: Tuseulanot Disputationes, Academica, De Natura Deorum, De Fato, If Divination*. Cf. Herbart, Ueber die Philosophic des Cicero ; in Works, XII. 167 fl. [Trans, of the above writings of Cicero in the Bohn. Lib. ]
His friend, M. Terentius Varro (116-27), the well-known polyhistor and prolific writer, was more learned, but of his labours toward the history of philos ophy only occasional notes are extant.
Qulntus Bextua and a son of the same name and Botion of Alexandria are naaaed as Sextians.
Sotion seems to have been the intermediate link in which the Stoic morals were brought into union with the Alexandrian Pythagoreanism, and given that religious turn which characterises them in the time of the Empire. Some of their Sentences, discovered in a Syrian translation, have been edited by r. ildemeister (Bonn. 1873).
On the literary conditions of this whole period cf. R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen r* Cvjtro's philosophischen 8chr\flen (3 vols. , Leips. 1877-83).
§ 14. The Ideal of the Wise Man.
The fundamental ethical tendency of the philosophising of this entire period is still more precisely characterised by the fact that it is throughout individual ethics that forms the centre of investiga tion in this time of epigones. The elevation to the ideals of ethical
' Hence all reckonings by the successions of heads of the school, attempted a order to fix the chronology of the later Sceptics, are illusory.
164 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
community, in which morals culminated with both Plato and Aris totle, was a glorification that had become foreign to its time, of that through which Greece had become great, viz. the thought of an active, living state. This had lost power over the hearts of men, and even in the schools of Plato and Aristotle it found so little sympathy that the Academicians, as well as the Peripatetics, brought into the foreground the question of individual happiness and virtue. What is preserved from the treatise of the Academi cian Crantor, On Grief,1 or from the works of Theophrastus under the title of Ethical Characters, stands wholly upon the footing of a philosophy that esteems the right appreciation of the good things of life to be its essential object.
In the endless discussions on these questions in which the schools engaged in the following centuries, the successors of the two great thinkers of Attic philosophy found themselves in an attitude of common opposition to the new schools. Both had pursued through the entire circuit of empirical reality the realisation of the Idea of the Good, and in spite of all the idealism with which Plato especially strove to transcend the world of the senses, they had not failed to appreciate the relative value of this world's goods. Highly as they prized virtue, they yet did not exclude the view that for the complete happiness of man * the favour of external fortune, health, prosperity, etc. , are requisite also, and they denied espe cially the doctrine of the Cynics and Stoics that virtue is not only the highest (as they admitted), but also the sole good.
At all events, however, they too laboured to determine the right conduct of life which promised to make man happy, and while individual members of the schools pursued their special researches, the public activity, especially that of the heads of the schools in their polemic with their opponents, was directed to the end of drawing the picture of the normal man. This it was that the time desired of philosophy : " Show us how the man must be constituted who is sure of his happiness, whatever the fortune of the world may bring him ! " That this normal man must be called the able, the virtuous, and that he can owe his virtue only to insight, to knowledge, that he therefore must be the "wise" man, — this is the presupposition arising from the Socratic doctrine, which is recognised as self-evident by all parties during this entire period ; and therefore all strive to portray the ideal of the wise man, i. e. of the man whom his insight makes virtuous, and so, happy.
» Cf. F. Kayser (Heidelberg, 1841}.
* This Aristotelian view was completely assented to by Speusippus and Xen- ocrates of the Older Academy.
Chat. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Epicurus. 165
1. The most prominent characteristic in the conception of the " wise man," as determined in this period, is, therefore, imperturba bility (ataraxy, arapaiia). Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics are un wearied in praising this independence of the world as the desirable quality of the wise man : he is free, a king, a god ; whatever hap pens to him, it cannot attack his knowledge, his virtue, his happi ness; his wisdom rests in himself, and the world does not trouble him. This ideal, as thus portrayed, is characteristic of its time; the normal man, for this period, is not he who works and creates for the sake of great purposes, but he who knows how to free him self from the external world, and find his happiness in himself alone. The inner isolation of individuals, and indifference toward general ends, find here sharp expression : the overcoming of the outer world conditions the happiness of the wise man.
But since he has no power over the world without him, he must overcome it within himself; he must become master of the effects which it exercises upon him. These effects, however, consist in the feelings and desires which the world and life excite in man ; they are disturbances of his own nature — emotions, or passions
(nAp, affectus). Wisdom is shown, therefore, in the relation which man maintains to his passions. 1 It is essentially freedom from passions or emotions, emotionlessness (apathy, iraBtia, is the Stoic expression). To rest unmoved within one's self, this is the blessing of this " wisdom. "
The terms with which this doctrine is introduced in the case of Epicurus and Pyrrho point immediately to a dependence upon Aristippus and Democritus. It corresponds to the gradual trans formation which took place in the Hedonistic school (cf. § 7, 9) that Epicurus,1 who made its principle his own, and likewise designated pleasure as the highest good, nevertheless preferred the permanent
frame of satisfaction and rest to the enjoyment of the moment. The Cyrenaics also had found the essence of pleasure in gentle motion; but — Epicurus held — that is still a "pleasure in motion"; and the state of painless rest, free from all wishes (17801^ kutqcttt/- *arun;), is of higher value. Even the zest and spirit of enjoy ment has become lost; the Epicurean would indeed gladly enjoy
1 The ancient conception of the passions (Affrrt), extending into modern ate (Spinoza), ia accordingly wider than that of the pr-sent psychology. It is ben denned by the Latin translation " perturbationes animi," "emotions," and tarludea all states of feeling and will in which man is dependent upon the outer
' As Intermediate links, the younger followers of Democritus. strongly tinc tured with Sophistic doctrine, are named; especially a certain Xausiphams, •horn Epicurus heard.
166 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
all pleasure, but it must not excite him or set him in motion. Peace of soul (yaXr/vwr/xos, cf. § 10, 5) is all that he wishes, and he anxiously avoids the storms which threaten i. e. the passions.
Epicurus therefore recognised the logical consistency with which the Cynics had characterised absence of wants as virtue and happi ness but he was far from seriously renouncing pleasure, as they did. The wise man must, to be sure, understand this also, and act accordingly, as soon as becomes requisite in the course of things. But his satisfaction will be greater in proportion as the compass of the wishes which he finds satisfied fuller. Just for this reason, he needs the insight (^pdviyo-is) which not only makes possible to estimate the different degrees of pleasure "and pain as determined through the feelings, which are to be expected in particular case, but also decides whether and how far one should give place to indi vidual wishes. In this aspect Epicureanism distinguished three kinds of wants some are natural (<f>wra) and unavoidable, so that, since not possible to exist at all without their satisfaction, even the wise man cannot free himself from them others, again, are only conventional (voiuo), artificial, and imaginary, and the wise man has to see through their nothingness and put them from him between the two, however (here Epicurus opposes the radically one-sided nature of Cynicism), lies the great mass of those wants which have their natural right, but are not indeed indispensable for existence. Hence the wise man can in case of necessity renounce them but since the satisfaction of these gives happiness, he will seek to satisfy them as far as possible. Complete blessedness falls to his lot who rejoices in all these good things in quiet enjoyment, without stormy striving.
On the same ground, Epicurus prized mental joys higher than physical enjoyments which are connected with passionate agitation. But he seeks the joys of the mind, not in pure knowledge, but in the aesthetic refinement of life, in that intercourse with friends which pervaded by wit and sentiment and touched with delicacy, in the comfortable arrangement of daily living. Thus the wise man, in quiet, creates for himself the blessedness of self-enjoyment, independence of the moment, of its demands and its results. He knows what he can secure for himself, and of this he denies himself nothing but he not so foolish as to be angry at fate or to lament that he cannot possess everything. This his " ataraxy," or im- passiveness an enjoyment like that of the Hedonists, but more refined, more intellectual, and — more blase".
Pyrrho's Hedonism took another direction, inasmuch as he sought to draw the practical result from the sceptical teachings of
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Chap. 1, $ 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Pyrrho, Stoics. 167
the Sophists. According to the exposition of his disciple, Timon, he held it to be the task of science to investigate the constitution of things, in order to establish man's appropriate relations to them, and to know what he may expect to gain from them. ' But accord ing to Pyrrho's theory it has become evident that we can never know the true constitution of things but at the most can know only states of feelings (iraOi}) into which these put us (Protagoras, Aristippus). If, however, there is no knowledge of things, it cannot be determined what the right relation to them and what the success that will result from our action. This scepticism
the negative reverse side to the Socratic-Platonic inference. As there, from the premise that right action not possible without knowledge, the demand had been made that knowledge must be possible, so here the argument that because there no knowl edge, right action also impossible. .
Under these circumstances all that remains for the wise man
to resist as far as possible the seducements to opinion and to action, to which the mass of men are subject. All action proceeds, as Socrates had taught, from our ideas of things and their value all foolish and injurious actions result from incorrect opinions. The wise man, however, who knows that nothing can be affirmed as to things themselves (i<fxuria), and that no opinion may be assented to (iMmmXijifiia)' restrains himself, as far as possible, from judgment, and thereby also from action. He withdraws into himself, and in the suspension (iwoxn) of judgment, which preserves him from
passion and from false action, he finds imperturbability, rest within himself, ataraxy.
This the Sceptical virtue, which also aims to free man from the world, and finds its limit only in the fact that there are, never theless, relations in which even the wise man, withdrawn within himself, must act, and when nothing else remains for him than to act according to that which appears to him, and according to tradition.
3. A deeper conception of the process of overcoming the world in man was formed by the Stoics. At the beginning, to be sure, they professed quite fully the Cynic indifference toward all goods of the oater world, and the self-control of the virtuous wise man remained stamped upon their ethics also as an ineradicable feature but they
Euseb. Pnep. St. XIV. 18, 2. The doctrine of Pyrrho shown by this to be ia exact coincidence with the tendency of the time asks, " What are we
IB do, then, there no knowledge
An expression which was probably formed in the polemic against the Stoic
conception of raraX^tt cf. {17. "]
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168 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
soon dulled the edge of the radical naturalism of the Cynics by a penetrating psychology of the impulsive life, which shows a strong dependence upon Aristotle. They emphasise, still more than the Stagirite, the unity and independence of the individual soul, as con trasted with its particular states and activities, and so, with them, personality first becomes a determinative principle. The leading- power, or governing part of the soul (to -qyifioviKov) , for them, not only that which makes perceptions out of the excitations of the individual organs in sensation, but also that which by its assent (ovyKaToBtcris) transforms excitations of the feelings into activities of the will. This consciousness, whose vocation to apprehend and form its contents as unity, according to its proper and true nature, reason (ww? ) the states, therefore, in which conscious ness allows itself to be hurried along to assent by the violence of excitement contradict, in like measure, its own nature and reason. These states (affectus) are, then, those of passion (nddrj) and dis ease of the soul; they are perturbations of the soul, contrary to Nature and contrary to reason. 5 Hence the wise man, he cannot defend himself from those excitations of feeling in presence of the world, will deny them his assent with the power of reason he does
not allow them to become passions or emotions, his virtue
absence of emotions (anAOiui). His overcoming of the world his overcoming of his own impulses. It not until we give our assent that we become dependent upon the course of things we with hold our personality remains immovable, resting upon itself. If man cannot hinder fate from preparing for him pleasure and pain, he may, nevertheless, by esteeming the former as not good, and the latter as not an evil, keep the proud consciousness of his self- sufficiency.
Hence, in itself, virtue for the Stoics the sole good, and on the other hand, vice, which consists in the control of the reason by the passions, the sole evil, and all other things and relations are regarded as in themselves indifferent (a&idfopa) But in their
This assent, to be sure, even according to the Stoics, rests upon the judg ment in the case of passion, therefore, upon false judgment, but yet at the same time the act of the will which bound up with the judgment. Cf. 17.
Diog. Laert. VII. 110: ri rdffoi — 4X070S icol iropd ipiaiv fvxrjt <tfn)<rit ipni) T\cord{ovtra. The psychological theory of the emotions was developed especially by Chrysippus. Zeno distinguished, as fundamental forms, pleasure and pain, desire and fear. As principles of division among the later Stoics there seem to have been used, partly characteristics of the ideas and judgments which call out the emotion, and partly the characteristics of the states of feeling and will which proceed from it. Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. Ill ff. Stob. Eel. II. 174
By reckoning even life in this division, they came to their well-known defence or commendation of suicide (l(ayuy/)). Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. 130 Seneca, Ep. 12, 10.
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Cba*. 1, { 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Stoict. 169
doctrine of goods they moderate the rigour of this principle by the distinction of the desirable and that which is to be rejected (vprnty- poa and ijroirpoijy/ieVu ) . Strongly as they emphasised in this con nection that the worth (i$ia) which belongs to the desirable is to be distinguished strictly from the Good of virtue, which is a good in itself, there yet resulted from this, in opposition to the Cynic one- sidedness, an at least secondary appreciation of the good things of life. For since the desirable was valued for the reason that it seemed adapted to further the Good, and, on the other hand, the demerit of that which was to be rejected consisted in the hindrances which it prepares for virtue, the threads between the self-sufficient
individual and the course of the world, which the Cynic paradoxical theory had cut, were thus more and more knit together again. The mean between what is desirable and what is to be rejected, the abso lutely indifferent, survived ultimately only in that which could be brought in no relation whatever to morality.
As these distinctions, by repression of the Cynic element, gradu ally made Stoicism more viable and, so to speak, better able to get on in the world, so we may see a like modification, by means of which it became more usable pedagogically, in the later removal of the abrupt contrast which at the beginning was made between the virtuous wise and the vicious fools (dwiCAoi, pupot ). The wise man, so it was said at the beginning, is wise and virtuous entirely, and in everything the fool is just as entirely and universally foolish and sinful; there is no middle ground. If man possesses the force and soundness of reason, with which he controls his passions, then he possesses with this one virtue all the individual particular virtues ' at the same time, and this possession, which alone makes happy, cannot be lost; if he lacks this, he is a plaything of circumstances and of his own passions, and this radical disease of his soul commu nicates itself to his entire action and passion. According to the view of the Stoics, therefore, the few sages stood as perfect men over against the great mass of fools and sinners, and in many decla mations they lamented the baseness of men with the Pharisaic pessimism which thus gratifies its self-consciousness. But over against this first opinion, which looked upon all fools as to be rejected alike, the consideration presented itself that among these fools there were always noticeable differences with regard to their departure from the ideal virtue, and thus between wise men and fools there was inserted the conception of the man who is progres sive and in a state of improvement (rpoKomay). The Stoics, indeed,
' Tbe Stoics also made the Platonic cardinal virtues the basis for their sy» development of their doctrine of the virtues. Stob. Eel. II. 102 ff.
170 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
held fast to the view that no gradual transition takes place from this process of improvement to true virtue, and that the entrance into the condition of perfection results rather from a sudden turn about. But when the different stages of ethical progress (npoKon^) were investigated and a state was designated as the highest stage, in which apathy is indeed attained, but not yet with full sureness and certainty,1 — when this was done, the rigorous boundary lines were in some measure effaced.
4. Yet in spite of these practical concessions, the withdrawal of the individual personality within itself remained ultimately an essential characteristic in the Stoic ideal of life ; on the other hand, this which these Greek epigones in common regarded as the mark of wisdom, was nowhere so valuably supplemented as among the Stoics. Scepticism, so far as we can see, never desired such a pos itive supplementation — consistently enough ; and Epicureanism sought it in a direction which expressed in the sharpest form the restriction of ethical interest to individual happiness. For the positive content of the wise man's peace of soul, hidden from the storms of the world, for Epicurus and his followers, at last only pleasure. In this they lacked, indeed, that spirited joy of the sensuous nature with which Aristippus had exalted the enjoyment of the moment and the joys of the body to be the supreme end, and we find, as already mentioned, that in their doctrine of the highest good the blase, critically appreciative epicurism of the culti vated man, declared to be the content of the ethical life. To be sure, in his psycho-genetic explanation Epicurus reduced all pleasure without exception to that of the senses, or, as they said later, to that of the flesh but, combating the Cyrenaics, he declared* that just these derivative and therefore refined joys of the mind were far superior to those of the senses. He recognised very properly that the individual, upon whose independence of the outer world all hinges, is much surer and much more the master of mental than of material enjoyments. The joys of the body depend on health, riches, and other gifts of fortune, but what afforded by science and art, by the intimate friendship of noble men, by the calm, self- contented and free from wants, of the mind freed from passions, — this the sure possession of the wise man, almost or wholly un touched by the change of fortune. The aesthetic self-enjoyment of the cultured man hence the highest good for the Epicureans.
Cf. the account (probably with regard to Chrysippus) in Seneca, Ep. 75, 8fl.
Athen. XII. 646 (Us. Fr. 409) Plut. Ad. Col. 27, 1122 (Us. Fr. 411) id. Contr. Epic. Oral. 1088 (Us. Fr. 429). Diog. Laert. X. 137.
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Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Saye : Epicurean*, Stoict. 171
Thus, to be sure, the coarse and sensuous in Hedonism fell away, and the Gardens of Epicurus were a nursery of fair conduct of life, finest morals, and noble employments; but the principle of indi vidual enjoyment remained the same, and the only difference was that the Greeks, in the old age of the national life, together with their Roman disciples, enjoyed in a more refined, intellectual, and delicate manner than did their youthful and manly ancestors.
Only the content had become more valuable, because it was the content presented to enjoyment by a civilisation more richly developed and deeply lived out; the disposition with which life's cup was
smilingly emptied, no longer in hasty quaffing, but in deliberate draughts, was the same egoism, devoid of all sense of duty. Hence the inner indifference of the wise man toward ethical tradition and rules of the land, which we find here also, though with greater cau tion ; hence, above all, the putting aside of all metaphysical or religious ideas that might disturb the wise man in this self-compla cent satisfaction of enjoyment, and burden him with the feeling of responsibility and duty.
5. To this, the Stoic ethics forms the strongest contrast.
in the thought reminding us of Aristotle (§ 13, 11), that the soul exercises its own proper nature in the rational power with which it refuses assent to impulses, we may recognise the peculiar antago nism which the Stoics assumed in the human psychical life. For just what we now are likely to call the natural impulses, viz. the excitations of feeling and will called forth by things of the outer world through the senses, and referring to these things, — just these seemed to them, as above mentioned, that which was contrary to nature (,-rapa <£uro>).
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CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PERIOD.
Thk two schools of the great masters of Attic philosophy, the Academic and the Peripatetic, followed the tendency of the time which separated science into the two branches, ethical philosophy and learned investigation. While in the first generation of the
Academy — that contemporary with Aristotle — a Pythagoreanising metaphysics had predominated, this made room in the next period (or fiopular moralising (cf. p. 101). In the Lyceum, indeed. Then- pkmrtua, and after him, Strato, held fast to the development and re-shaping of the Aristotelian metaphysics, but the associates of Theoprastus, Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and others, as well as Theo- phrastus himself, turned to literary-historical studies and to natural science. Later, the Peripatetics had a great share in the Alexan drian erudition, and the history of philosophy especially found in them its most industrious workers. But in philosophy itself they played only the conservative r61e of defending the system of their school against the attacks of the others, especially upon the ethical domain, and the new edition of the Aristotelian works by Androni- nu gave new stimulus for a zealous reproduction of his teaching. Paraphrases, commentaries, excerpts, and interpretations formed the chief occupation of the later Peripatetics.
The Academy and Lyceum were, however, injured in their work ing by the two schools which were founded toward the end of the fourth century, and which owed their great success to the fact that they formulated the tendency of the time toward the practical wis dom of life with the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness : namely, the Stoic and the Epicurean.
The first was founded in the Sroa touuXi; by Zeno, a native of Cithtm in Cyprus, and had, both in his time and in that of his suc- ecsaor, Geanthes, more likeness to Cynicism than in the time of its third head, Chrysippus, who succeeded in turning the school into a more scientific course. Epicurus, on the contrary, founded a society which made the Hedonistic principle, in a refined and intellect
IN
160 Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. [I'art 1L
oalised form, its centre, but developed only a slight degree of scientific vitality. While numerous adherents were won to its social-ethical principle then established, and to the view of the world connected with as these were continued through antiquity and especially in the Roman world, the school remained decidedly more unfruitful scientifically than the others, as well in the special sciences as in philosophy. Its doctrines have been presented in an interesting manner by the Roman poet, Lucretius.
These four schools continued side by side in Athens for centuries, and in the time of the Empire they were still maintained in various chairs of instruction, and formed there a sort of university but only in the Academy, and here only with great gaps, can succes sion of heads of the school be traced; while the tradition in the case of the Stoa and the Epicureans breaks off with the first cen tury B. C. , and for the Lyceum soon after that time.
At first, however, these four schools contended with each other in the liveliest fashion during the third and second centuries B. C. , and
was especially in ethical questions, and in metaphysical, physical, and logical questions only in so far as connected with the ethical, that they sought to bear away the palm from one another. 1
But, moving along side by side with the dogmatic doctrines during the whole period was another tendency, which, like the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, originated in the teaching of the Sophists namely, Scepticism. It did not, indeed, take on the form of an association in school, but too, was brought together into a system atic form, and found an ethical culmination. Such concentration, in accord with the spirit of the times, of the negative results of the teaching of the Sophists, was achieved by Pyrrho, whose doctrines were set forth by Timon. This Sophistical scepticism had the triumph of obtaining possession of Plato's grove for time; for, the Middle Academy did not make this doctrine fully its own, made
weapon for combating Stoicism and grounding its own ethics. In this phase of the development of the Academy appear the two heads of the school, Arcesilaus and Carneades, who were separated by about century. In after time, when the Academy again rejected Scepticism, this doctrine met with sympathy principally among the empirical physicians, among whom, even at the end of this period, jEnesidemus and Agrippa are to be mentioned. complete collec tion of the doctrines of the Sceptics, made at much later time,
preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus.
Cicero in his philosophical dialogues gives vivid pictures of these school con- ioveraie. * with dextrous use of the original sources.
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But the deeper significance of this Scepticism was that it brought to expression the fundamental frame of mind which had seized the entire ancient civilisation as it had once seized that of Greece, — a frame of mind at variance with the true ideal import and content of that civilisation ; and the same lack of the spirit of decided convic tion found only another form in the Eclecticism which began to develop in the second half of the second century. With the exten sion of the schools in the great relations of the life of the Roman Empire, the school-spirit disappeared, polemic was crippled, and the need of adjustment and fusion made itself felt instead. The teleo- logical view of the world, especially, formed the basis upon which
Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism could agree in a common opposition against Epicureanism.
The tendency toward such a fusion, toward syncretism, first awoke in the Stoic school, and found its most efficient supporters in Pance- tius and Posidonius. who supplemented the doctrine of the Stoa on all sides by borrowing Platonic and Aristotelian elements. In opposition to them stood the Neio Academy, which, after Philo of Larissa had made an end of the sceptical episode in the develop ment of the school, made the attempt, through Antiochus, to unite philosophy, then so disunited, upon those doctrines in which Plato and Aristotle agree.
Less important, because more devoid of principles, but not, there fore, the less significant historically, was that sort of eclecticism which the Romans employed in taking up Greek philosophy. This consisted in piecing together, from an essentially practical point of view, the different school systems which met their approval. This was the case with Cicero, Varro, and in part with the school of the Sextians.
Of the Peripatetic School (the Lyceum), the co-founder himself is primarily to be noticed, Tneophrastus of Erebus in Lesbos (about 370-287), a somewhat Toaager friend of Aristotle, who through his teachings and writings won great regard for the school. Of his works, the botanical, also a fragment of the MftapAyrfes, extracts from his Characters, from the treatise concerning percep tion, from his history of physics, and some isolated fragments are preserved
edited by P. Wimmer, Breslau, 1842-4)2).
With him appear Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, who
studied music historically and theoretically {Element* der Musik, German by R Weatphal, Leips. 1883), Diceearchua of Messina, a learned polyhistor who wrote a history of Grecian civilisation (piot'EWiSot), and Btrato. of I. ampsncus, •ho was head of the school (287-269) and had as surname "The Physicist. "
Among the Peripatetic doxographers, Ilermippus, Sotion, Satyrus, Heracleides Lcmboa (in the second century n. c), and among the later commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 a. d. in Athens) are to be mentioned.
The Middle Academy begins with Arceailaua of 1'itane in . -Kolia (about 31V241). whose teachings were recorded by his pupil Lacydes, and ends with Caneatdea (in Rome, 166) and his successor Clitomachus, who died 1 10. Noth- af remains of their writings. The sources are, beside Diogenes Laertiua, prin cipally Cicero and Sextus Empiricus.
102 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
Just as indirect and general in its character is our knowledge of the New Academy. Philo of Larissa was still in Rome in 87. His successor, Antio- chua of Ascalon, was heard by Cicero in Athens in 78. To the supporters of eclectic Platonism in this first, essentially ethical form belong among others Alius Didymus, who inclined strongly to Stoicism (in the time of Augustus), and Thrasyllus (under Tiberius), who prepared an edition of the works of Democritus and Plato, arranged according to subjects. An extensive literature of paraphrase and commentary connected with Plato's works also developed in the Academy.
When we consider the personality of the Stoic School, we are struck by the frequency of the descent of its members from the Hellenistic mixed races of the Orient. Thus the founder, Zeno (about 340-265), came from his Cyprian home as a merchant to Athens, and there, taken captive by philosophy, is said to have absorbed the doctrines of the different schools, to found his own in the year 308. His principal pupil was Cleanthes of Assos in Troas, from whose writings a monotheistic hymn to Zeus is preserved, Stub. Eel. I. 30 (Wachs- muth, p. 25). The scientific head of the school was Chrysippus (280-209) of Soli or Tarsus in Ciiicia. He is said to have written an extraordinary amount, but, aside from the titles, only very unimportant fragments of his works are preserved. Cf. G. Bagnet (Loewen, 1822). Among the literary-historical savants of the Stoic School, Diogenes of Babylon and Apollodorus are to be mentioned ; Aristarchus and Eratosthenes stood in close relation to the school.
Panaetius (180-110), who was strongly influenced by the Academic scepticism and who maintained a close relation with the Roman statesmen, began the syn- cretistic development of the Stoa, which was completed by Posidonius of Syrian Apamea (about 135-60). The latter was one of the greatest polyhistors of antiquity, especially in the geographico-historical domain. He taught in Rhodes, and was heard by many young Romans, among whom was Cicero.
Concerning the Stoics of the time of the Empire, cf. the following chapter. Sources for the Stoic doctrines are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, Book VII. , in part also the extant writings of the Stoics of the time of the Empire, and the discoveries at Herculaneum.
D. Tiedmann, System der stoischen Philosophie (3 vols. , Leips. 1776) ; P. Weygoldt, Die Philosophie der Stoa (Leips. 1883) ; P. Ogereau, Essai sur le Systime Philosophique des Stoiciens (Paris, 1885) ; L. Stein, Die Psychologie der Stoa (2 vols. , Berlin, 1886-88) ; [Capes, Stoicism, Lond. 1880].
Epicurus (341-270), born in Samos, the son of an Athenian schoolmaster, had already made attempts at teaching in Mitylene and in Lampsacus, before founding in Athens, in 306, the society which is named after his "gardens"
(ktjjtoi, horti, as also the other schools were named after the places where they
He was much loved as a teacher, on account of his companionable qualities. Of his numerous writings lightly thrown off, the proverbs (iciptat Sdjai), three didactic letters, parts of his treatise rtpl tpiacus (in the discoveries at Herculaneum), and besides only scattered fragments are preserved ; collected and arranged systematically by H. Usener, Epicurea (Leips. 1887).
Among the great mass of his followers, antiquity brings into prominence his closest friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus ; also Zeno of Sidon (about 150) and Phtedrus (about 100 h. c. ). Philodemus of Gadara in Coele-Syria has become a somewhat more distinct figure to us since a part of his writings has been found at Herculaneum (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt, first series, Naples, 1793 ff. ; second, 1861 ff. ) ; the most valuable, repl <riituiui» koX viDieiiictu* (cf. Fr. Bahusch, Lyck, 1879 ; H. v. Arnim, Philodemea. Halle, 1888).
assembled).
The didactic poem of Tit. Lucretius Cams (98-54), De Natura Rerum, in six books, has been edited by Lachmann (Berlin, 1850) and . lac. Bernays (Leips. 1862) ; [Eng. ed. with tr. of the poem by Munro, Lond. 1886. Cf. The Atomic
Theory of Lucretius, by J. Masson, Lond. 1884].
Further sources are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, in the tenth book.
Cf. M. Guyau, La Morale <f Epicure (Paris, 1878); P. v. Gizycki, Ueber das
Leben und die Moralphilosophie des Epikur (Berlin, 1879) ; W. Wallace, Epi cureanism (Lond. 1880); [Wallace, Art. Ep. in Enc. Brit. ; W. L. Courtney, Ep. in Hellenica].
Cmap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage. 163
Scepticism, as accords with the nature of the case, makes its appearance, not as a close school, but in looser form. 1 It remains doubtful whether the sys- temsaiser of Scepticism, Pyrrho of El is (perhaps 366-276), had any intimate relations with the Socratic-Sophistic school of his native city. A certain Bryso, who passes for the son of Stilpo, is looked upon as an intermediate link. He accompanied Alexander on his journey to Asia, together with a follower of Democritos, Anaxarchus by name. The Sinograph, Timon of Phlius (320-230, the latter part of the time at Athens) from Pyrrho's standpoint derides philoso phers. Fragments of his writings in C. Wachsmuth, Dr. Timone Phliasio
(Leips. 1859). Cf. Ch. Waddington, Pyrrhon (Paris, 1877).
The external relations of later Scepticism are very obscure and uncertain.
. Enesidemus from Cnossus taught in Alexandria, and composed a treatise, WvfaimuH Xiya. of which nothing remains. His life falls probably in the first
century b. c, yet it has also been set almost two centuries later. Of Agrippa, nothing in detail can be established. The literary representative of Scepticism is the physician Sextua Emplricus. who lived about 200 a. d. , and of his writ ings there are extant his Outline Sketches of Pyrrhonism (UvfipumoL {nrorvwiivtii), m<i the investigations comprehended under the name Adversus Mathematicos, of which Books VII. -XI. contain the exposition of the sceptical doctrine, with many valuable historical notices (ed. by J. Bekker, Berlin, 1842).
Cf. K. Stiudlin, Gesch. und Geist des Skepticismus (Leips. 1704-06) ; N. Maccoll, The Greek Sceptics (London, 1869) ; L. Haas, De Philosophorum Srrpticorvm Successionibus ( Wttrzburg, 1875) ; [Owen, Evenings with the Scep tics (Lond. 1881) ; A. Seth, Art. Scepticism, tn Enc. Brit. ].
Among the Romans, the admission of philosophy at first encountered violent resistance ; but by the beginning of the first century b. c. it was the general custom for the young Romans of superior rank to study in Athens or Rhodes, and to hear the lectures of the heads of schools, for the same end as that for which the Athenians bad formerly heard the Sophists. The literary activity of Marcus Tullius Clo«ro (106-43) must be judged from the point of view of his purpose, which was to awaken among his countrymen an inclination for general scien tific culture and a comprehension of its meaning, and from this standpoint his work is to be highly prized. Skill in composition and grace of form excuse the '. aek of proper philosophising ability, which is shown in a selection of doctrines based on no philosophical principle. The main treatises are De Finibus, De
Ofirii: Tuseulanot Disputationes, Academica, De Natura Deorum, De Fato, If Divination*. Cf. Herbart, Ueber die Philosophic des Cicero ; in Works, XII. 167 fl. [Trans, of the above writings of Cicero in the Bohn. Lib. ]
His friend, M. Terentius Varro (116-27), the well-known polyhistor and prolific writer, was more learned, but of his labours toward the history of philos ophy only occasional notes are extant.
Qulntus Bextua and a son of the same name and Botion of Alexandria are naaaed as Sextians.
Sotion seems to have been the intermediate link in which the Stoic morals were brought into union with the Alexandrian Pythagoreanism, and given that religious turn which characterises them in the time of the Empire. Some of their Sentences, discovered in a Syrian translation, have been edited by r. ildemeister (Bonn. 1873).
On the literary conditions of this whole period cf. R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen r* Cvjtro's philosophischen 8chr\flen (3 vols. , Leips. 1877-83).
§ 14. The Ideal of the Wise Man.
The fundamental ethical tendency of the philosophising of this entire period is still more precisely characterised by the fact that it is throughout individual ethics that forms the centre of investiga tion in this time of epigones. The elevation to the ideals of ethical
' Hence all reckonings by the successions of heads of the school, attempted a order to fix the chronology of the later Sceptics, are illusory.
164 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
community, in which morals culminated with both Plato and Aris totle, was a glorification that had become foreign to its time, of that through which Greece had become great, viz. the thought of an active, living state. This had lost power over the hearts of men, and even in the schools of Plato and Aristotle it found so little sympathy that the Academicians, as well as the Peripatetics, brought into the foreground the question of individual happiness and virtue. What is preserved from the treatise of the Academi cian Crantor, On Grief,1 or from the works of Theophrastus under the title of Ethical Characters, stands wholly upon the footing of a philosophy that esteems the right appreciation of the good things of life to be its essential object.
In the endless discussions on these questions in which the schools engaged in the following centuries, the successors of the two great thinkers of Attic philosophy found themselves in an attitude of common opposition to the new schools. Both had pursued through the entire circuit of empirical reality the realisation of the Idea of the Good, and in spite of all the idealism with which Plato especially strove to transcend the world of the senses, they had not failed to appreciate the relative value of this world's goods. Highly as they prized virtue, they yet did not exclude the view that for the complete happiness of man * the favour of external fortune, health, prosperity, etc. , are requisite also, and they denied espe cially the doctrine of the Cynics and Stoics that virtue is not only the highest (as they admitted), but also the sole good.
At all events, however, they too laboured to determine the right conduct of life which promised to make man happy, and while individual members of the schools pursued their special researches, the public activity, especially that of the heads of the schools in their polemic with their opponents, was directed to the end of drawing the picture of the normal man. This it was that the time desired of philosophy : " Show us how the man must be constituted who is sure of his happiness, whatever the fortune of the world may bring him ! " That this normal man must be called the able, the virtuous, and that he can owe his virtue only to insight, to knowledge, that he therefore must be the "wise" man, — this is the presupposition arising from the Socratic doctrine, which is recognised as self-evident by all parties during this entire period ; and therefore all strive to portray the ideal of the wise man, i. e. of the man whom his insight makes virtuous, and so, happy.
» Cf. F. Kayser (Heidelberg, 1841}.
* This Aristotelian view was completely assented to by Speusippus and Xen- ocrates of the Older Academy.
Chat. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Epicurus. 165
1. The most prominent characteristic in the conception of the " wise man," as determined in this period, is, therefore, imperturba bility (ataraxy, arapaiia). Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics are un wearied in praising this independence of the world as the desirable quality of the wise man : he is free, a king, a god ; whatever hap pens to him, it cannot attack his knowledge, his virtue, his happi ness; his wisdom rests in himself, and the world does not trouble him. This ideal, as thus portrayed, is characteristic of its time; the normal man, for this period, is not he who works and creates for the sake of great purposes, but he who knows how to free him self from the external world, and find his happiness in himself alone. The inner isolation of individuals, and indifference toward general ends, find here sharp expression : the overcoming of the outer world conditions the happiness of the wise man.
But since he has no power over the world without him, he must overcome it within himself; he must become master of the effects which it exercises upon him. These effects, however, consist in the feelings and desires which the world and life excite in man ; they are disturbances of his own nature — emotions, or passions
(nAp, affectus). Wisdom is shown, therefore, in the relation which man maintains to his passions. 1 It is essentially freedom from passions or emotions, emotionlessness (apathy, iraBtia, is the Stoic expression). To rest unmoved within one's self, this is the blessing of this " wisdom. "
The terms with which this doctrine is introduced in the case of Epicurus and Pyrrho point immediately to a dependence upon Aristippus and Democritus. It corresponds to the gradual trans formation which took place in the Hedonistic school (cf. § 7, 9) that Epicurus,1 who made its principle his own, and likewise designated pleasure as the highest good, nevertheless preferred the permanent
frame of satisfaction and rest to the enjoyment of the moment. The Cyrenaics also had found the essence of pleasure in gentle motion; but — Epicurus held — that is still a "pleasure in motion"; and the state of painless rest, free from all wishes (17801^ kutqcttt/- *arun;), is of higher value. Even the zest and spirit of enjoy ment has become lost; the Epicurean would indeed gladly enjoy
1 The ancient conception of the passions (Affrrt), extending into modern ate (Spinoza), ia accordingly wider than that of the pr-sent psychology. It is ben denned by the Latin translation " perturbationes animi," "emotions," and tarludea all states of feeling and will in which man is dependent upon the outer
' As Intermediate links, the younger followers of Democritus. strongly tinc tured with Sophistic doctrine, are named; especially a certain Xausiphams, •horn Epicurus heard.
166 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
all pleasure, but it must not excite him or set him in motion. Peace of soul (yaXr/vwr/xos, cf. § 10, 5) is all that he wishes, and he anxiously avoids the storms which threaten i. e. the passions.
Epicurus therefore recognised the logical consistency with which the Cynics had characterised absence of wants as virtue and happi ness but he was far from seriously renouncing pleasure, as they did. The wise man must, to be sure, understand this also, and act accordingly, as soon as becomes requisite in the course of things. But his satisfaction will be greater in proportion as the compass of the wishes which he finds satisfied fuller. Just for this reason, he needs the insight (^pdviyo-is) which not only makes possible to estimate the different degrees of pleasure "and pain as determined through the feelings, which are to be expected in particular case, but also decides whether and how far one should give place to indi vidual wishes. In this aspect Epicureanism distinguished three kinds of wants some are natural (<f>wra) and unavoidable, so that, since not possible to exist at all without their satisfaction, even the wise man cannot free himself from them others, again, are only conventional (voiuo), artificial, and imaginary, and the wise man has to see through their nothingness and put them from him between the two, however (here Epicurus opposes the radically one-sided nature of Cynicism), lies the great mass of those wants which have their natural right, but are not indeed indispensable for existence. Hence the wise man can in case of necessity renounce them but since the satisfaction of these gives happiness, he will seek to satisfy them as far as possible. Complete blessedness falls to his lot who rejoices in all these good things in quiet enjoyment, without stormy striving.
On the same ground, Epicurus prized mental joys higher than physical enjoyments which are connected with passionate agitation. But he seeks the joys of the mind, not in pure knowledge, but in the aesthetic refinement of life, in that intercourse with friends which pervaded by wit and sentiment and touched with delicacy, in the comfortable arrangement of daily living. Thus the wise man, in quiet, creates for himself the blessedness of self-enjoyment, independence of the moment, of its demands and its results. He knows what he can secure for himself, and of this he denies himself nothing but he not so foolish as to be angry at fate or to lament that he cannot possess everything. This his " ataraxy," or im- passiveness an enjoyment like that of the Hedonists, but more refined, more intellectual, and — more blase".
Pyrrho's Hedonism took another direction, inasmuch as he sought to draw the practical result from the sceptical teachings of
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Chap. 1, $ 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Pyrrho, Stoics. 167
the Sophists. According to the exposition of his disciple, Timon, he held it to be the task of science to investigate the constitution of things, in order to establish man's appropriate relations to them, and to know what he may expect to gain from them. ' But accord ing to Pyrrho's theory it has become evident that we can never know the true constitution of things but at the most can know only states of feelings (iraOi}) into which these put us (Protagoras, Aristippus). If, however, there is no knowledge of things, it cannot be determined what the right relation to them and what the success that will result from our action. This scepticism
the negative reverse side to the Socratic-Platonic inference. As there, from the premise that right action not possible without knowledge, the demand had been made that knowledge must be possible, so here the argument that because there no knowl edge, right action also impossible. .
Under these circumstances all that remains for the wise man
to resist as far as possible the seducements to opinion and to action, to which the mass of men are subject. All action proceeds, as Socrates had taught, from our ideas of things and their value all foolish and injurious actions result from incorrect opinions. The wise man, however, who knows that nothing can be affirmed as to things themselves (i<fxuria), and that no opinion may be assented to (iMmmXijifiia)' restrains himself, as far as possible, from judgment, and thereby also from action. He withdraws into himself, and in the suspension (iwoxn) of judgment, which preserves him from
passion and from false action, he finds imperturbability, rest within himself, ataraxy.
This the Sceptical virtue, which also aims to free man from the world, and finds its limit only in the fact that there are, never theless, relations in which even the wise man, withdrawn within himself, must act, and when nothing else remains for him than to act according to that which appears to him, and according to tradition.
3. A deeper conception of the process of overcoming the world in man was formed by the Stoics. At the beginning, to be sure, they professed quite fully the Cynic indifference toward all goods of the oater world, and the self-control of the virtuous wise man remained stamped upon their ethics also as an ineradicable feature but they
Euseb. Pnep. St. XIV. 18, 2. The doctrine of Pyrrho shown by this to be ia exact coincidence with the tendency of the time asks, " What are we
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168 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
soon dulled the edge of the radical naturalism of the Cynics by a penetrating psychology of the impulsive life, which shows a strong dependence upon Aristotle. They emphasise, still more than the Stagirite, the unity and independence of the individual soul, as con trasted with its particular states and activities, and so, with them, personality first becomes a determinative principle. The leading- power, or governing part of the soul (to -qyifioviKov) , for them, not only that which makes perceptions out of the excitations of the individual organs in sensation, but also that which by its assent (ovyKaToBtcris) transforms excitations of the feelings into activities of the will. This consciousness, whose vocation to apprehend and form its contents as unity, according to its proper and true nature, reason (ww? ) the states, therefore, in which conscious ness allows itself to be hurried along to assent by the violence of excitement contradict, in like measure, its own nature and reason. These states (affectus) are, then, those of passion (nddrj) and dis ease of the soul; they are perturbations of the soul, contrary to Nature and contrary to reason. 5 Hence the wise man, he cannot defend himself from those excitations of feeling in presence of the world, will deny them his assent with the power of reason he does
not allow them to become passions or emotions, his virtue
absence of emotions (anAOiui). His overcoming of the world his overcoming of his own impulses. It not until we give our assent that we become dependent upon the course of things we with hold our personality remains immovable, resting upon itself. If man cannot hinder fate from preparing for him pleasure and pain, he may, nevertheless, by esteeming the former as not good, and the latter as not an evil, keep the proud consciousness of his self- sufficiency.
Hence, in itself, virtue for the Stoics the sole good, and on the other hand, vice, which consists in the control of the reason by the passions, the sole evil, and all other things and relations are regarded as in themselves indifferent (a&idfopa) But in their
This assent, to be sure, even according to the Stoics, rests upon the judg ment in the case of passion, therefore, upon false judgment, but yet at the same time the act of the will which bound up with the judgment. Cf. 17.
Diog. Laert. VII. 110: ri rdffoi — 4X070S icol iropd ipiaiv fvxrjt <tfn)<rit ipni) T\cord{ovtra. The psychological theory of the emotions was developed especially by Chrysippus. Zeno distinguished, as fundamental forms, pleasure and pain, desire and fear. As principles of division among the later Stoics there seem to have been used, partly characteristics of the ideas and judgments which call out the emotion, and partly the characteristics of the states of feeling and will which proceed from it. Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. Ill ff. Stob. Eel. II. 174
By reckoning even life in this division, they came to their well-known defence or commendation of suicide (l(ayuy/)). Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. 130 Seneca, Ep. 12, 10.
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doctrine of goods they moderate the rigour of this principle by the distinction of the desirable and that which is to be rejected (vprnty- poa and ijroirpoijy/ieVu ) . Strongly as they emphasised in this con nection that the worth (i$ia) which belongs to the desirable is to be distinguished strictly from the Good of virtue, which is a good in itself, there yet resulted from this, in opposition to the Cynic one- sidedness, an at least secondary appreciation of the good things of life. For since the desirable was valued for the reason that it seemed adapted to further the Good, and, on the other hand, the demerit of that which was to be rejected consisted in the hindrances which it prepares for virtue, the threads between the self-sufficient
individual and the course of the world, which the Cynic paradoxical theory had cut, were thus more and more knit together again. The mean between what is desirable and what is to be rejected, the abso lutely indifferent, survived ultimately only in that which could be brought in no relation whatever to morality.
As these distinctions, by repression of the Cynic element, gradu ally made Stoicism more viable and, so to speak, better able to get on in the world, so we may see a like modification, by means of which it became more usable pedagogically, in the later removal of the abrupt contrast which at the beginning was made between the virtuous wise and the vicious fools (dwiCAoi, pupot ). The wise man, so it was said at the beginning, is wise and virtuous entirely, and in everything the fool is just as entirely and universally foolish and sinful; there is no middle ground. If man possesses the force and soundness of reason, with which he controls his passions, then he possesses with this one virtue all the individual particular virtues ' at the same time, and this possession, which alone makes happy, cannot be lost; if he lacks this, he is a plaything of circumstances and of his own passions, and this radical disease of his soul commu nicates itself to his entire action and passion. According to the view of the Stoics, therefore, the few sages stood as perfect men over against the great mass of fools and sinners, and in many decla mations they lamented the baseness of men with the Pharisaic pessimism which thus gratifies its self-consciousness. But over against this first opinion, which looked upon all fools as to be rejected alike, the consideration presented itself that among these fools there were always noticeable differences with regard to their departure from the ideal virtue, and thus between wise men and fools there was inserted the conception of the man who is progres sive and in a state of improvement (rpoKomay). The Stoics, indeed,
' Tbe Stoics also made the Platonic cardinal virtues the basis for their sy» development of their doctrine of the virtues. Stob. Eel. II. 102 ff.
170 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
held fast to the view that no gradual transition takes place from this process of improvement to true virtue, and that the entrance into the condition of perfection results rather from a sudden turn about. But when the different stages of ethical progress (npoKon^) were investigated and a state was designated as the highest stage, in which apathy is indeed attained, but not yet with full sureness and certainty,1 — when this was done, the rigorous boundary lines were in some measure effaced.
4. Yet in spite of these practical concessions, the withdrawal of the individual personality within itself remained ultimately an essential characteristic in the Stoic ideal of life ; on the other hand, this which these Greek epigones in common regarded as the mark of wisdom, was nowhere so valuably supplemented as among the Stoics. Scepticism, so far as we can see, never desired such a pos itive supplementation — consistently enough ; and Epicureanism sought it in a direction which expressed in the sharpest form the restriction of ethical interest to individual happiness. For the positive content of the wise man's peace of soul, hidden from the storms of the world, for Epicurus and his followers, at last only pleasure. In this they lacked, indeed, that spirited joy of the sensuous nature with which Aristippus had exalted the enjoyment of the moment and the joys of the body to be the supreme end, and we find, as already mentioned, that in their doctrine of the highest good the blase, critically appreciative epicurism of the culti vated man, declared to be the content of the ethical life. To be sure, in his psycho-genetic explanation Epicurus reduced all pleasure without exception to that of the senses, or, as they said later, to that of the flesh but, combating the Cyrenaics, he declared* that just these derivative and therefore refined joys of the mind were far superior to those of the senses. He recognised very properly that the individual, upon whose independence of the outer world all hinges, is much surer and much more the master of mental than of material enjoyments. The joys of the body depend on health, riches, and other gifts of fortune, but what afforded by science and art, by the intimate friendship of noble men, by the calm, self- contented and free from wants, of the mind freed from passions, — this the sure possession of the wise man, almost or wholly un touched by the change of fortune. The aesthetic self-enjoyment of the cultured man hence the highest good for the Epicureans.
Cf. the account (probably with regard to Chrysippus) in Seneca, Ep. 75, 8fl.
Athen. XII. 646 (Us. Fr. 409) Plut. Ad. Col. 27, 1122 (Us. Fr. 411) id. Contr. Epic. Oral. 1088 (Us. Fr. 429). Diog. Laert. X. 137.
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Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Saye : Epicurean*, Stoict. 171
Thus, to be sure, the coarse and sensuous in Hedonism fell away, and the Gardens of Epicurus were a nursery of fair conduct of life, finest morals, and noble employments; but the principle of indi vidual enjoyment remained the same, and the only difference was that the Greeks, in the old age of the national life, together with their Roman disciples, enjoyed in a more refined, intellectual, and delicate manner than did their youthful and manly ancestors.
Only the content had become more valuable, because it was the content presented to enjoyment by a civilisation more richly developed and deeply lived out; the disposition with which life's cup was
smilingly emptied, no longer in hasty quaffing, but in deliberate draughts, was the same egoism, devoid of all sense of duty. Hence the inner indifference of the wise man toward ethical tradition and rules of the land, which we find here also, though with greater cau tion ; hence, above all, the putting aside of all metaphysical or religious ideas that might disturb the wise man in this self-compla cent satisfaction of enjoyment, and burden him with the feeling of responsibility and duty.
5. To this, the Stoic ethics forms the strongest contrast.
in the thought reminding us of Aristotle (§ 13, 11), that the soul exercises its own proper nature in the rational power with which it refuses assent to impulses, we may recognise the peculiar antago nism which the Stoics assumed in the human psychical life. For just what we now are likely to call the natural impulses, viz. the excitations of feeling and will called forth by things of the outer world through the senses, and referring to these things, — just these seemed to them, as above mentioned, that which was contrary to nature (,-rapa <£uro>).
