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.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
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. "]
The Sceptics were called also the ifrrritol Suspenders with reference
to tfcfc term, characteristic for them.
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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>). Reason, on the other hand, was for them the " nature," not only of man, but of the universe in general. When, for this reason, they adopt the Cynic principles in which the moral is made equivalent to the natural, the same expression contains in this latter case a completely changed thought. As a part of the World-reason the soul excludes from itself, as an opposing element, the determination by sensuous impulses to which the Cynics had reduced morality : the demands of Nature, identical with those of reason, are in contradiction with those of the senses.
Accordingly, the positive content of morality among the Stoics app<»ars as harmony with Nature, and thus, at the same time, as a Uuc which claims normative validity as it confronts the sensuous man (n*ux). 1 In this formula, however, "Nature "is used in a
1 With this is completed an interesting change in Sophistic terminology in •hich (f 7, 1) rivot and Writ had been made equivalent to one another, and act over against +vttt ; with the Stoics riiiot = 0i»».
Already,
172 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
double sense. 1 On the one hand is meant universal Nature, the creative, cosmic power, the world-thought acting according to ends (cf. § 15), the \oyos; and agreeably to this meaning, man's morality is his subordination to the law of Nature, his willing obe dience to the course of the world, to the eternal necessity, and in so far as this World-reason is designated in the Stoic doctrine as deity, it is also obedience to God and to the divine law, as well as sub ordination to the world-purpose and the rule of Providence. The
virtue of the perfect individual, who, as over against other indi vidual beings and their action upon him through the senses, ought to withdraw within himself, his own master, and rest within him self, appears thus under obligation to something universal and all-ruling.
Nevertheless, since according to the Stoic conception the ^yt- )iovik6v, the life-unity of the human soul, is a consubstantial part of this divine World-reason, the life in conformity with Nature must be also that which is adapted to human nature, to the essential nature of man ; and this, too, as well in the more general sense that morality coincides with genuine, complete humanity and with the reasonableness which is valid in like measure for all, as also in the special meaning, that by fulfilling the command of Nature, each person brings to its unfolding the inmost germ of his own individual essence. Uniting these two points of view, it seemed to the Stoics that a rationally guided consistency in the conduct of life was the ideal of wisdom, and they found the supreme task of life in this, that the virtuous man has to preserve this complete harmony with himself in every change of life, as his true strength of character. The political doctrinairism of the Greeks found thus its philosophi cal formulation and became a welcome conviction for the iron states men of republican Rome.
But whatever the particular terms in which the Stoics expression to their fundamental thought, this thought itself was everywhere the same, — that life according to Nature and according to reason is a duty (KaOijKov) which the wise man has to fulfil, a law to which he has to subject himself in opposition to his sensuous inclinations. And this feeling of responsibility, this strict conscious ness of the " ought," this recognition of a higher order, gives to their doctrine, as to their life, backbone and marrow.
This demand also, for a life according to duty, we occasionally meet among the Stoics in the one-sided form, that the ethical con-
« Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. 87.
. ' . * Thus the formulas 6/io\oyovnira: rj ultimately the same meaning. Stob. Eel. II. 132.
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Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Epicurean*, Stoic*. 178
sciousness requires some things on rational grounds, forbids the opposites, and declares all else to be ethically indifferent. What is not commanded and not forbidden, remains morally indifferent
(a&a<popov), and from this the Stoics sometimes drew lax conse quences, which they perhaps defended more in words than in actual intention. But here, too, the systematic development of the theory created valuable intermediate links. For even if only the Good is unconditionally commanded, yet, in a secondary degree, the desir able must be regarded as ethically advisable ; and though baseness proper consists only in willing that which is unconditionally for bidden, the moral man will yet seek to avoid also that which is " to be rejected. " Thus, corresponding to the gradation of goods, there was introduced a like gradation of duties, which were distinguished as absolute and " intermediate. " So, on the other hand, with regard to the valuation of human actions, a distinction was made on a some, what different basis between those actions which fulfil the demand of reason ' externally — these are called " befitting," conformable to duty in the broader sense (xafi^Koyra) — and such as fulfil the de mand of reason solely from the intention to do the Good. Only in the latter case* is there a perfect fulfilment of duty (Kar6p0u>fm), the opposite of which is the intention that is contrary to duty, as evinced in an action, — sin (afiaprrjua). Thus the Stoics, proceed
ing from the consciousness of duty, entered upon a profound and earnest study, extending sometimes to considerations of casuistry, of the ethical values of human will and action, and we may regard as their most valuable contribution the universally applied thought, that man in all his conduct, outer and inner, is responsible to a higher command.
6. The great difference in apprehension of the ethical life which exists between the Epicureans and the Stoics, in spite of a number of deep and far-reaching common qualities, becomes most clearly manifest in their respective theories of society and of the state. In this, to be sure, they are both at one almost to verbal agreement in the doctrine that the wise man, in the self-sufficiency of his virtue, needs the state * as little as he needs any other society ; yes, that in certain circumstances, he should even avoid these in the interest, either of his own enjoyment or of the fulfilment of duty. In this
even the Stoics, especially the later Stoics, dissuaded from
■Ira i \iyai «lp*> rowir, Diog. Uert. VII. 108.
' For the contrast here alluded to by the Stoics Kant has made customary the expressions legality and morality ; the Latin distinguishes according to CVetro's precedent, rectum and Aonrstum.
* Ipse. In Plut Dt Aud. Port. 14, 37 (L's. Fr. 648).
174 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
entrance into the family life and political activity; and for the
the responsibility which marriage and public activity bring with them was sufficient to justify a very sceptical attitude toward both, and especially to make <;he latter appear advisable for the wise man, only in the case where it is unavoidable, or of quite certain advantage. In general, the Epicureans hold to the maxim of their master, to live in quiet,1 XaOt /3i<icras, in which the inner crum bling of ancient society found its typical expression.
But a greater distinction between the two conceptions of life shows itself in the fact that, to the Stoics, human society appeared as a command of reason, which must give way only occasionally to the wise man's task of personal perfection, while Epicurus expressly denied all natural society among men,' and therefore reduced every form of social conjunction to considerations of utility. So the theory of friendship, which in his school was so zealously pledged, even to the point of sentimentality, did not find the ideal support which it had received in Aristotle's splendid exposition ; s
it finds ultimately only the motives of the wise man's enjoyment of culture as heightened in society. 4
In particular, however, Epicureanism carried through systemati cally the ideas already developed in Sophistic teaching concerning the origin of the political community from the well-weighed interest of the individuals who formed it. The state is not a natural structure, but has been brought about by men as the result of reflection, and for the sake of the advantages which are expected and received from it. It grows out of a compact (ovvOrJKt}) which men enter into with each other in order that they may not injure one another,5 and the formation of the state is hence one of the mighty processes through which the human race has brought itself up from the savage state to that of civilisation, by virtue of its growing intelligence. 6 Laws, therefore, have arisen in every particular case from a convention as to the common advantage (ovfipokov toS (ruft^epovros). There is nothing in itself right or wrong j and since in the formation of a compact the greater intelligence asserts itself to its own advantage
1 Plutarch wrote against this the extant treatise (1128 fl. ), W icoXflt X^yerai
rb \dOe (lt<i<rat.
» Arrian, Epict. Diss. I. 23, 1 (Us. Fr. 525); ib. II. 20, 6 (523).
• Cf. § 13, 12. The extensive literature on friendship is in this respect
a characteristic sign of the time which found its chief interest in the individual personality and its relations. Cicero's dialogue Lcelius (Z)e Amicitia) repro duces essentially the Peripatetic conception.
6 Cf. among the xvpuu Sifai of Epicurus the terse sentences in Diog. Laert. X. 150 f.
Epicureans,
• Diog. Laert. X. 120 (Us. Fr. 540).
• Cf. the description in Lucretius, De Her. JVat. V. 922 ff. , especially 1103 ff.
Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Stoic*. 175
as a matter of course, it is for the most part the advantages of the vise that disclose themselves as motives in the enaction of laws. 1 And as is the case for their origin and content, so also for their validity and acknowledgment, the amount of pain which they are adapted to hinder and pleasure which they are adapted to produce, is the only standard. All the main outlines of the utilitarian theory of society are logically developed by Epicurus from the atomistic assumption that individuals first exist by and for themselves, and enter voluntarily and with design into the relations of society, only for the sake of the goods which as individuals they could not obtain or could not protect.
7. The Stoics, on the contrary, regarded man as already, by virtue of the cousubstantiality of his soul with the World-reason, a being constituted by Nature for society,* and by reason of this very fact as under obligation by the command of reason to lead a social life, —an obligation which admits of exception only in special cases. As the most immediate relation we have here also friendship, the ethical connection of virtuous individuals who are united in the common employment of proving in action the moral law. 3 But from these purely personal relations the Stoic doctrine at once passes over to the most general, to all rational beings taken as an entirety. As parts of the same one World-reason, gods and men together form one great rational living structure, a toaitikov irxrrrjiia, in which every individual is a necessary member (jii\os), and from this re
sults for the human rare the ideal task of forming a realm of reason that shall embrace all its members.
The ideal state of the Stoics as it had been already delineated by Zeno, partly in a polemic parallel to that of Plato, knows, accord ingly, no bounds of nationality or of the historic state ; it is a rational society of all men, — an ideal universal empire. Plutarch, indeed, recognised * that in this thought philosophy constructed as rational that which was historically prepared by Alexander the Great, and completed, as we know, by the Romans. But it must not remain unnoticed that the Stoics thought of this empire only secondarily as a |x>litical power ; primarily it was a spiritual unity of knowledge and will.
It is comprehensible that with such a high-flying idealism the
» 8tob. Flor. 43, 139 (Us. Fr. 630).
1 tAf ♦*#« wa\iTucur fttur : Stob. Eel. II. 226 ff.
■ It was, to be sure, extraordinarily difficult (or the Stoics to bring the need,
which they were obliged to recognise *s * fact lying at the basis of the social impulse, into accord with the independence of the wise man, so baldly empha- nard bv them.
• Ptol. Dt Alex. M. Fort. I. 0.
176 Hellenistic- Roman Thouyht : Ethical Period. [Part II
Stoics retained only a very weak interest for actual political life in the proper sense. Although the wise man was permitted and indeed charged to take part in the life of some particular state, in order to fulfil his duty to all even in this base world, yet both the particular forms of the state and the individual historical states were held to be ultimately indifferent to him. As to the former, the Stoa could not become enthusiastic for any of the characteristic kinds of government, but, following the Aristotelian suggestion, held rather to a mixed system, something such as Polybius ' presented as desirable on the ground of his philosophico-historical considera tion of the necessary transitions of one-sided forms into each other. To the splitting up of mankind in different states, the Stoics op posed the idea of cosmopolitanism,, — world-citizenship, — which fol lowed directly from their idea of an ethical community of all men. It corresponded to the great historical movements of the age, that the difference in worth between Hellenes and Barbarians, which had been still maintained even by Aristotle,' was set aside by the Stoics as overcome,8 and though, in accordance with their ethical principle, they were too indifferent to the outer relations of position to enter upon active agitation for social reforms, they demanded, neverthe less, that justice and the universal love of man, which resulted as the highest duties from the idea of the realm of reason, should be applied also in full measure, even to the lowest members of human society — the slaves.
In spite of the fact, therefore, that it turned aside from the Greek thought of the national state, to the Stoic ethics belongs the glory that in it the ripest and highest which the ethical life of antiquity produced, and by means of which it transcended itself and pointed to the future, attained its best formulation. The intrin sic worth of moral personality, the overcoming of the world in man's overcoming of himself, the subordination of the individual to a divine law of the world, his disposition in an ideal union of spirits by means of which he is raised far above the bounds of his earthly life, and yet, in connection with this, the energetic feeling of duty that teaches him to fill vigorously his place in the actual world, — all these are the characteristics of a view of life which,
though from a scientific point of view it may appear rather as put together
than as produced from one principle, presents, nevertheless, one of the most powerful and pregnant creations in the history of the conceptions of human life.
1 In the extant part of the sixth book.
a Arist. Pol. I. 2, 1262 b 5.
» Seneca, Ep. 95, 62 ; cf. Strabo, I. 4, 9. The personal composition also of the
toic school was from its beginning decidedly international.
Chap. 1, { 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Stoict, Cicero. 177
8. In a concentrated form all these doctrines appear in the con ception of the law of life, determined by Nature and reason for all men equally, to <£wr« hUtuov, and this conception, through Cicero,' became the formative principle of Roman jurisprudence.
For, in his eclectic attachment to all the great men of Attic phi losophy, Cicero not only held fast objectively with all his energy to the thought of a moral world-order which determines with uni versal validity the relation of rational beings to each other, but he thought also with regard to the subjective aspect of the question — in correspondence with his epistemological theory (§ 17, 4) — that this command of reason was innate in all men equally, and that it had grown into inseparable connection with their instinct of self-
preservation. Out of this lex naturae, the universally valid natural law which is exalted above all human caprice, and above all change of historical life, develop both the commands of morality in general, and in particular those of human society, — the jus naturale. But while Cicero proceeds to project from this standpoint the ideal form of political life, the Stoic universal state takes on under his hands * the outlines of the Roman Empire. Cosmopolitanism, which had arisen among the Greeks as a distant ideal, in the downfall of their own political importance, becomes with the Romans the proud self-consciousness of their historical mission.
But even in this theoretical development of what the state should be. Cicero interweaves the investigation of what it is. Not sprung from the consideration or the voluntary choice of individuals, it is rather a product of history, and therefore the ever-valid principles of the law of Nature are mingled in the structures of its life with the historical institutions of positive law. These latter develop partly as the domestic law of individual states, jus civile, partly a» the law which the confederates of different states recognise in their relation to one another, jus gentium. Both kinds of positive law coincide to a large extent in their ethical content with the law of Nature, but they supplement this by the multitude of historical ele ments which in them come into force. The conceptions thus formed are important not only as constructing the skeleton for a new special science soon to branch off from philosophy ; they have also the tignincance that in them the worth of the historical for the first
i reaches full philosophical appreciation : and at this point Cicero
1 Two of hi* treatise*, only partly preserved, come into consideration here, Of Rtfmbliea and Dt Ltgibut. Cf. M. Voigt, Die Lrhre vom jue naturale, etc
Lripa. 1864). and K. Hildenbrand, GttchichU und Syttem der Rechtt- und
SuuitpJkaosophie, I. 523 ff.
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>). Reason, on the other hand, was for them the " nature," not only of man, but of the universe in general. When, for this reason, they adopt the Cynic principles in which the moral is made equivalent to the natural, the same expression contains in this latter case a completely changed thought. As a part of the World-reason the soul excludes from itself, as an opposing element, the determination by sensuous impulses to which the Cynics had reduced morality : the demands of Nature, identical with those of reason, are in contradiction with those of the senses.
Accordingly, the positive content of morality among the Stoics app<»ars as harmony with Nature, and thus, at the same time, as a Uuc which claims normative validity as it confronts the sensuous man (n*ux). 1 In this formula, however, "Nature "is used in a
1 With this is completed an interesting change in Sophistic terminology in •hich (f 7, 1) rivot and Writ had been made equivalent to one another, and act over against +vttt ; with the Stoics riiiot = 0i»».
Already,
172 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
double sense. 1 On the one hand is meant universal Nature, the creative, cosmic power, the world-thought acting according to ends (cf. § 15), the \oyos; and agreeably to this meaning, man's morality is his subordination to the law of Nature, his willing obe dience to the course of the world, to the eternal necessity, and in so far as this World-reason is designated in the Stoic doctrine as deity, it is also obedience to God and to the divine law, as well as sub ordination to the world-purpose and the rule of Providence. The
virtue of the perfect individual, who, as over against other indi vidual beings and their action upon him through the senses, ought to withdraw within himself, his own master, and rest within him self, appears thus under obligation to something universal and all-ruling.
Nevertheless, since according to the Stoic conception the ^yt- )iovik6v, the life-unity of the human soul, is a consubstantial part of this divine World-reason, the life in conformity with Nature must be also that which is adapted to human nature, to the essential nature of man ; and this, too, as well in the more general sense that morality coincides with genuine, complete humanity and with the reasonableness which is valid in like measure for all, as also in the special meaning, that by fulfilling the command of Nature, each person brings to its unfolding the inmost germ of his own individual essence. Uniting these two points of view, it seemed to the Stoics that a rationally guided consistency in the conduct of life was the ideal of wisdom, and they found the supreme task of life in this, that the virtuous man has to preserve this complete harmony with himself in every change of life, as his true strength of character. The political doctrinairism of the Greeks found thus its philosophi cal formulation and became a welcome conviction for the iron states men of republican Rome.
But whatever the particular terms in which the Stoics expression to their fundamental thought, this thought itself was everywhere the same, — that life according to Nature and according to reason is a duty (KaOijKov) which the wise man has to fulfil, a law to which he has to subject himself in opposition to his sensuous inclinations. And this feeling of responsibility, this strict conscious ness of the " ought," this recognition of a higher order, gives to their doctrine, as to their life, backbone and marrow.
This demand also, for a life according to duty, we occasionally meet among the Stoics in the one-sided form, that the ethical con-
« Cf. Diog. Laert. VII. 87.
. ' . * Thus the formulas 6/io\oyovnira: rj ultimately the same meaning. Stob. Eel. II. 132.
ffjy and 6tw\oyovfUmt
<pv<ra haT»
rt»
gave
Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Epicurean*, Stoic*. 178
sciousness requires some things on rational grounds, forbids the opposites, and declares all else to be ethically indifferent. What is not commanded and not forbidden, remains morally indifferent
(a&a<popov), and from this the Stoics sometimes drew lax conse quences, which they perhaps defended more in words than in actual intention. But here, too, the systematic development of the theory created valuable intermediate links. For even if only the Good is unconditionally commanded, yet, in a secondary degree, the desir able must be regarded as ethically advisable ; and though baseness proper consists only in willing that which is unconditionally for bidden, the moral man will yet seek to avoid also that which is " to be rejected. " Thus, corresponding to the gradation of goods, there was introduced a like gradation of duties, which were distinguished as absolute and " intermediate. " So, on the other hand, with regard to the valuation of human actions, a distinction was made on a some, what different basis between those actions which fulfil the demand of reason ' externally — these are called " befitting," conformable to duty in the broader sense (xafi^Koyra) — and such as fulfil the de mand of reason solely from the intention to do the Good. Only in the latter case* is there a perfect fulfilment of duty (Kar6p0u>fm), the opposite of which is the intention that is contrary to duty, as evinced in an action, — sin (afiaprrjua). Thus the Stoics, proceed
ing from the consciousness of duty, entered upon a profound and earnest study, extending sometimes to considerations of casuistry, of the ethical values of human will and action, and we may regard as their most valuable contribution the universally applied thought, that man in all his conduct, outer and inner, is responsible to a higher command.
6. The great difference in apprehension of the ethical life which exists between the Epicureans and the Stoics, in spite of a number of deep and far-reaching common qualities, becomes most clearly manifest in their respective theories of society and of the state. In this, to be sure, they are both at one almost to verbal agreement in the doctrine that the wise man, in the self-sufficiency of his virtue, needs the state * as little as he needs any other society ; yes, that in certain circumstances, he should even avoid these in the interest, either of his own enjoyment or of the fulfilment of duty. In this
even the Stoics, especially the later Stoics, dissuaded from
■Ira i \iyai «lp*> rowir, Diog. Uert. VII. 108.
' For the contrast here alluded to by the Stoics Kant has made customary the expressions legality and morality ; the Latin distinguishes according to CVetro's precedent, rectum and Aonrstum.
* Ipse. In Plut Dt Aud. Port. 14, 37 (L's. Fr. 648).
174 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II.
entrance into the family life and political activity; and for the
the responsibility which marriage and public activity bring with them was sufficient to justify a very sceptical attitude toward both, and especially to make <;he latter appear advisable for the wise man, only in the case where it is unavoidable, or of quite certain advantage. In general, the Epicureans hold to the maxim of their master, to live in quiet,1 XaOt /3i<icras, in which the inner crum bling of ancient society found its typical expression.
But a greater distinction between the two conceptions of life shows itself in the fact that, to the Stoics, human society appeared as a command of reason, which must give way only occasionally to the wise man's task of personal perfection, while Epicurus expressly denied all natural society among men,' and therefore reduced every form of social conjunction to considerations of utility. So the theory of friendship, which in his school was so zealously pledged, even to the point of sentimentality, did not find the ideal support which it had received in Aristotle's splendid exposition ; s
it finds ultimately only the motives of the wise man's enjoyment of culture as heightened in society. 4
In particular, however, Epicureanism carried through systemati cally the ideas already developed in Sophistic teaching concerning the origin of the political community from the well-weighed interest of the individuals who formed it. The state is not a natural structure, but has been brought about by men as the result of reflection, and for the sake of the advantages which are expected and received from it. It grows out of a compact (ovvOrJKt}) which men enter into with each other in order that they may not injure one another,5 and the formation of the state is hence one of the mighty processes through which the human race has brought itself up from the savage state to that of civilisation, by virtue of its growing intelligence. 6 Laws, therefore, have arisen in every particular case from a convention as to the common advantage (ovfipokov toS (ruft^epovros). There is nothing in itself right or wrong j and since in the formation of a compact the greater intelligence asserts itself to its own advantage
1 Plutarch wrote against this the extant treatise (1128 fl. ), W icoXflt X^yerai
rb \dOe (lt<i<rat.
» Arrian, Epict. Diss. I. 23, 1 (Us. Fr. 525); ib. II. 20, 6 (523).
• Cf. § 13, 12. The extensive literature on friendship is in this respect
a characteristic sign of the time which found its chief interest in the individual personality and its relations. Cicero's dialogue Lcelius (Z)e Amicitia) repro duces essentially the Peripatetic conception.
6 Cf. among the xvpuu Sifai of Epicurus the terse sentences in Diog. Laert. X. 150 f.
Epicureans,
• Diog. Laert. X. 120 (Us. Fr. 540).
• Cf. the description in Lucretius, De Her. JVat. V. 922 ff. , especially 1103 ff.
Chap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Stoic*. 175
as a matter of course, it is for the most part the advantages of the vise that disclose themselves as motives in the enaction of laws. 1 And as is the case for their origin and content, so also for their validity and acknowledgment, the amount of pain which they are adapted to hinder and pleasure which they are adapted to produce, is the only standard. All the main outlines of the utilitarian theory of society are logically developed by Epicurus from the atomistic assumption that individuals first exist by and for themselves, and enter voluntarily and with design into the relations of society, only for the sake of the goods which as individuals they could not obtain or could not protect.
7. The Stoics, on the contrary, regarded man as already, by virtue of the cousubstantiality of his soul with the World-reason, a being constituted by Nature for society,* and by reason of this very fact as under obligation by the command of reason to lead a social life, —an obligation which admits of exception only in special cases. As the most immediate relation we have here also friendship, the ethical connection of virtuous individuals who are united in the common employment of proving in action the moral law. 3 But from these purely personal relations the Stoic doctrine at once passes over to the most general, to all rational beings taken as an entirety. As parts of the same one World-reason, gods and men together form one great rational living structure, a toaitikov irxrrrjiia, in which every individual is a necessary member (jii\os), and from this re
sults for the human rare the ideal task of forming a realm of reason that shall embrace all its members.
The ideal state of the Stoics as it had been already delineated by Zeno, partly in a polemic parallel to that of Plato, knows, accord ingly, no bounds of nationality or of the historic state ; it is a rational society of all men, — an ideal universal empire. Plutarch, indeed, recognised * that in this thought philosophy constructed as rational that which was historically prepared by Alexander the Great, and completed, as we know, by the Romans. But it must not remain unnoticed that the Stoics thought of this empire only secondarily as a |x>litical power ; primarily it was a spiritual unity of knowledge and will.
It is comprehensible that with such a high-flying idealism the
» 8tob. Flor. 43, 139 (Us. Fr. 630).
1 tAf ♦*#« wa\iTucur fttur : Stob. Eel. II. 226 ff.
■ It was, to be sure, extraordinarily difficult (or the Stoics to bring the need,
which they were obliged to recognise *s * fact lying at the basis of the social impulse, into accord with the independence of the wise man, so baldly empha- nard bv them.
• Ptol. Dt Alex. M. Fort. I. 0.
176 Hellenistic- Roman Thouyht : Ethical Period. [Part II
Stoics retained only a very weak interest for actual political life in the proper sense. Although the wise man was permitted and indeed charged to take part in the life of some particular state, in order to fulfil his duty to all even in this base world, yet both the particular forms of the state and the individual historical states were held to be ultimately indifferent to him. As to the former, the Stoa could not become enthusiastic for any of the characteristic kinds of government, but, following the Aristotelian suggestion, held rather to a mixed system, something such as Polybius ' presented as desirable on the ground of his philosophico-historical considera tion of the necessary transitions of one-sided forms into each other. To the splitting up of mankind in different states, the Stoics op posed the idea of cosmopolitanism,, — world-citizenship, — which fol lowed directly from their idea of an ethical community of all men. It corresponded to the great historical movements of the age, that the difference in worth between Hellenes and Barbarians, which had been still maintained even by Aristotle,' was set aside by the Stoics as overcome,8 and though, in accordance with their ethical principle, they were too indifferent to the outer relations of position to enter upon active agitation for social reforms, they demanded, neverthe less, that justice and the universal love of man, which resulted as the highest duties from the idea of the realm of reason, should be applied also in full measure, even to the lowest members of human society — the slaves.
In spite of the fact, therefore, that it turned aside from the Greek thought of the national state, to the Stoic ethics belongs the glory that in it the ripest and highest which the ethical life of antiquity produced, and by means of which it transcended itself and pointed to the future, attained its best formulation. The intrin sic worth of moral personality, the overcoming of the world in man's overcoming of himself, the subordination of the individual to a divine law of the world, his disposition in an ideal union of spirits by means of which he is raised far above the bounds of his earthly life, and yet, in connection with this, the energetic feeling of duty that teaches him to fill vigorously his place in the actual world, — all these are the characteristics of a view of life which,
though from a scientific point of view it may appear rather as put together
than as produced from one principle, presents, nevertheless, one of the most powerful and pregnant creations in the history of the conceptions of human life.
1 In the extant part of the sixth book.
a Arist. Pol. I. 2, 1262 b 5.
» Seneca, Ep. 95, 62 ; cf. Strabo, I. 4, 9. The personal composition also of the
toic school was from its beginning decidedly international.
Chap. 1, { 14. ] Ideal of the Sage : Stoict, Cicero. 177
8. In a concentrated form all these doctrines appear in the con ception of the law of life, determined by Nature and reason for all men equally, to <£wr« hUtuov, and this conception, through Cicero,' became the formative principle of Roman jurisprudence.
For, in his eclectic attachment to all the great men of Attic phi losophy, Cicero not only held fast objectively with all his energy to the thought of a moral world-order which determines with uni versal validity the relation of rational beings to each other, but he thought also with regard to the subjective aspect of the question — in correspondence with his epistemological theory (§ 17, 4) — that this command of reason was innate in all men equally, and that it had grown into inseparable connection with their instinct of self-
preservation. Out of this lex naturae, the universally valid natural law which is exalted above all human caprice, and above all change of historical life, develop both the commands of morality in general, and in particular those of human society, — the jus naturale. But while Cicero proceeds to project from this standpoint the ideal form of political life, the Stoic universal state takes on under his hands * the outlines of the Roman Empire. Cosmopolitanism, which had arisen among the Greeks as a distant ideal, in the downfall of their own political importance, becomes with the Romans the proud self-consciousness of their historical mission.
But even in this theoretical development of what the state should be. Cicero interweaves the investigation of what it is. Not sprung from the consideration or the voluntary choice of individuals, it is rather a product of history, and therefore the ever-valid principles of the law of Nature are mingled in the structures of its life with the historical institutions of positive law. These latter develop partly as the domestic law of individual states, jus civile, partly a» the law which the confederates of different states recognise in their relation to one another, jus gentium. Both kinds of positive law coincide to a large extent in their ethical content with the law of Nature, but they supplement this by the multitude of historical ele ments which in them come into force. The conceptions thus formed are important not only as constructing the skeleton for a new special science soon to branch off from philosophy ; they have also the tignincance that in them the worth of the historical for the first
i reaches full philosophical appreciation : and at this point Cicero
1 Two of hi* treatise*, only partly preserved, come into consideration here, Of Rtfmbliea and Dt Ltgibut. Cf. M. Voigt, Die Lrhre vom jue naturale, etc
Lripa. 1864). and K. Hildenbrand, GttchichU und Syttem der Rechtt- und
SuuitpJkaosophie, I. 523 ff.
