Cicero's
dialogue
Lcelius (Z)e Amicitia) repro duces essentially the Peripatetic conception.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
' 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the world, and finds its limit only in the fact that there are, never theless, relations in which even the wise man, withdrawn within himself, must act, and when nothing else remains for him than to act according to that which appears to him, and according to tradition.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.
ffjy and 6tw\oyovfUmt
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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. • Ok. De Rep. II. 1
ff.
178 Helleni»tic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II
knew how to transform the political greatness of his people into a scientific creation.
§ 15. Mechanism and Teleology.
The practice of the schools in the post-Aristotelian period sepa rated philosophical investigations into three main divisions, — ethics, physics, and logic (the latter called canonic among the Epicureans). The chief interest was everywhere given to ethics, and theoretically the two others were allowed importance only so far as correct action presupposes a knowledge of things, and this in turn a clearness with regard to the right methods of knowledge. Hence the main tendencies of physical and logical theories are undoubtedly determined in this period by the ethical point of view, and the practical need is easily contented by taking up and re-shap ing the older teachings ; but yet in scientific work the great objects of interest, especially metaphysical and physical problems, assert their fascinating power, and so notwithstanding we see these other branches of philosophy often developing in a way that is not in full conformity with the nature of the ethical trunk from which they spring. Particularly in the case of physics, the rich development of the special sciences must ultimately keep general principles always alive and in a state of flux.
In this respect we notice first that the Peripatetic School, during the first generations, made a noteworthy change in the principles for explaining Nature which it had received from its master.
1. The beginning of this is found already with Theophrastus, who doubtless defended all the main doctrines of Aristotelianism, espe cially against the Stoics, but yet in part went his own ways. The extant fragment of his metaphysics discusses, among the aporiae, principally such difficulties as were contained in the Aristotelian conceptions of the relation of the world to the deity. The Stagi- rite had conceived of Nature (<£wn«) as a being in itself alive
(£<uov), and yet had. conceived of its entire motion as a (teleological) effect of the divine Reason ; God, as pure Form, was separated from the world, transcendent ; and yet, as animating, first-moving power, he was immanent in it. This chief metaphysical problem of the following period was seen by Theophrastus, though his own attitude toward it remained fixed by the bounds of Aristotle's doctrine. On the other hand, he shows a more definite tendency in the closely connected question regarding the relation of reason to the lower psychical activities. The vovs was regarded, on the one hand (con sidered as Form of the animal soul), as immanent, inborn; on the other hand, in its purity, as different in essence, and as having come
Chat. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Peripatetics. 179
into the individual soul from without. Here now Theophrastus decided absolutely against transcendence; he subsumed the vofc also as a self-developing activity, under the concept of a cosmic process,1 of motion (mnprtc), and set it beside the animal soul as something different, not in kind, but in degree only.
Strato proceeded still more energetically in the same direction. He removed completely the limits between reason and the lower activities of ideation. Both, he taught, form an inseparable unity ; there is no thought without perceptions, and just as little is there sense-perception without the co-operation of thought ; both together belong to the unitary consciousness, which he, with the Stoics, calls ro iyifunnxov (cf. § 14, 3). But Strato applied the same thought, which he carried out psychologically, to the analogous metaphysical relation also. The yycpwucov of the dtiovt, also, the Reason of Nature, cannot be regarded as something separated from her. Whether now this may be expressed in the form that Strato did not think the hypothesis of the deity necessary for the explanation of Nature and its phenomena, or in the form that he postulated Nature itself as God, but denied it not only external resemblance to man, but even consciousness,* — in any case, Stratonism, regarded from the stand point of Aristotle's teaching, forms a one-sidedly naturalistic or pantheistic modification. He denies spiritual monotheism, the con ception of the transcendence of God, and by teaching that a pure Form is as unthinkable as mere matter, he pushes the Platonic element in the Aristotelian metaphysics, which had remained just in the thought of the separation {\iapurnot) of reason from matter, so far into the background that the element derived from Democ- hroi becomes again entirely free. Strato sees in what takes place in the world, only an immanent necessity of Nature, and no longer the working of a spiritual, extramundane cause.
Yet this naturalism remains still in dependence upon Aristotle, in to far as it seeks the natural causes of the cosmic processes, not in the atoms and their quantitative determinations, but expressly in the original qualities {irworrjm) and powers (Swo^tw) of things. If among these it emphasised especially warmth and cold, this was quite in the spirit of the dynamic conceptions held by the older Hjlozoism, and to this, also, Strato seems most nearly related in his undecided, intermediate position between mechanical and teleological explanation of the world. Just for this' reason, however, this side- development ran its course with Strato himself without further remit, for it was already outrun at the beginning by the Stoic and
1 Stepl. Phgs. 226 a. * Cic. Acad. II. 38, 121 ; Dt Nat. Dtor. I. 13, 36.
180 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Pakt II.
the Epicurean physics. These both defended also the standpoint of the immanent explanation of Nature, but the former was as out spokenly teleological as the latter was mechanical.
2. The peculiarly involved position of the Stoics, in the de
of metaphysical and physical questions, resulted from the union of different elements. In the foreground stands the ethical need of deducing from a most general metaphysical prin ciple the content of individual morality which could no longer find its roots in state and nationality as in the period of Grecian great ness, and therefore of so shaping the conception of this principle as to make this deduction possible. But, in opposition to this, stood, as an inheritance from Cynicism, the decided disinclination to regard this principle as a transcendent, supersensuous, and incorporeal prin ciple, out of the world of experience. All the more decisive was the
force with which the thoughts suggested in the Peripatetic philos ophy of Nature came forward, in which the attempt was made to understand the world as a living being, in purposive motion of itself. For all these motives, the logos doctrine of Heraclitus seemed to present itself as in like measure a solution of the problem, and this became, therefore, the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. 1
The fundamental view of the Stoics is, then, that the entire uni verse forms a single, unitary, living, connected whole, and that all particular things are the determinate forms assumed by a divine primitive power which is in a state of eternal activity. Their doc trine is in its fundamental principles pantheism, and (in opposition to Aristotle) conscious pantheism. The immediate consequence of
however, the energetic effort to overcome the Platonic-Aris totelian dualism,1 and remove the opposition between sensuous and supersensuous, between natural necessity and reason acting accord ing to ends, between Matter and Form. The Stoa attempts this through simple identification of those conceptions whose opposing characters, to be sure, cannot by this means be put out of the world.
Hence declares the divine World-being to be the primitive power in which are contained in like measure the conditioning laws and the purposeful determination of all things and of all cosmic processes, —the World-ground and the World-mind. As actively productive and formative power, the deity the Aoyot cnrtp/xariKos,
Cf. H. Siebeck, Die Umbildung der peripatetischen Xaturphilosophie in die der Stoiker Unten. x. Philosophit der Griechen, Aufl. , pp. 181 ff. ).
We wpre obliged to conceive of the relation of Aristotle to Plato in similar manner 13, 1-4), just in this point the Stoic philosophy of Nature shows farther development in the same direction which the Peripatetic take* in Strato.
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CuAr. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Stoic*. 181
the vital principle, which unfolds itself in the multitude of phenom
ena as their peculiar, particular Kayo* o-wtpuariKoi or formative forces. In this organic function, God however, also the purposefully creating and guiding Reason, and thus with regard to all particular processes the all-ruling Providence (VpoVow). The determination of the particular by the universe (which constitutes the dominant fundamental conviction of the Stoics) a completely purposeful and rational order,1 and forms as such the highest norm (vouoi), according to which all individual beings should direct themselves in the development of their activity. '
Bat this all-determining " law " for the Stoics, as was for Heraclitus, likewise the all-compelling power which, as inviolable necessity ((WyitTj), and so, as inevitable destiny (tluapuivrj, fatum), brings forth every particular phenomenon in the unalterable succes sion of causes and effects. Nothing takes place in the world with out a preceding cause (curia a-poir/ov/tcn;), and just by virtue of this complete causal determination of every particular does the universe
possess its character of purposeful, connected whole. * Hence Chrysippus combated in the most emphatic manner the conception of chance, and taught that apparent causelessness in a particular event could mean only kind of causation hidden from human insight4 In this assumption of natural necessity, admitting of no exceptions even for the most particular and the least important occurrence, — conviction which naturally found expression also in the form that the divine providence extends even to the smallest events of life,* — the Stoic school agrees even verbally with Democ- ntus, and the only school in antiquity which carried this most valuable thought of the great Abderite through all branches of theoretical science.
In all other respects, indeed, the Stoics stand in opposition to Dnoocritus and in closer relation to Aristotle. For while in the Atomistic system the natural necessity of all that comes to pass results from the motive impulses of individual things, with the Stoics flows immediately from the living activity of the whole, and
A» the Platonic Timteus had already taught, 11, 10.
The normative character in the conception of the lngo» appeared clearly even
with HeraclitiM p. «3, note 6).
Plut. De F-Ho. 11, 574. lb. 572.
Platarch make* Chrysippus say Contm. Not. 84, 1076) that not even the
•riaeji thins can sustain any other relation than that which accords with the 4fo**of Zeus. Ct. Cic. De . Vat. Denr. II. 65, lft4. Only the circumstance tfiat the 8toa limited the immediate action of the divine providence to the pur- snaefol determination of the whole, and derived from thin that of the particular, explains *ach modes of expression as the well-known Magna dii eurant, parca
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182 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Pabt IL
as over against the reduction of all qualities to quantitative differ ences, they held fast to the reality of properties as the peculiar
forces of individual things, and to qualitative alteration
in opposition to motion in space). They directed their polemic particularly against the purely mechanical explanation of natural processes by pressure and impact ; but in carrying out their teleology. they sank from the great conception of Aristotle, who had every where emphasised the immanent purposiveness of the formations in which the Forms were realised, to the consideration of the benefits which flow from the phenomena of Nature to meet the needs of beings endowed with reason, " of gods and men. " ' In particular, they exaggerated, even to ridiculous Philistinism, the demonstration of the manner in which heaven and earth and all that in them is, are arranged with such magnificent adaptation for man*
3. In all these theoretical views, and just in these, the Epicurean* are diametrically opposed to the Stoics. With the Epicureans, em ployment with metaphysical and physical problems had in general only the negative purpose* of setting aside the religio-os ideas through which the quiet self-enjoyment of the wise man might be disturbed. Hence it was the chief concern of Epicurus to exclude from the explanation of Nature every element that would allow a government of the world, guided by universal ends, to appear as even possible ; hence, on the other hand, the Epicureau view of the world was absolutely lacking in a positive principle. This explains the fact that Epicurus, at least, had only a sceptical shrug of the shoulders for all questions of natural science from which no practical advantage was to be gained ; and though many of his later disciples seem to have been less limited, and to have thought more scien tifically, the ruts of the school's opinion were worn too deep to allow the attainment of essentially broader aims. The more the teleological conception of Nature formed, in the course of time, the common ground on which Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines met in syncretistic blending, the more Epicureanism insisted upon its isolated standpoint of negation ; theoretically, it was essentially anti-teleological, and in this respect brought forth nothing positive.
It was successful only in combating the anthropological excres cences to which the teleological view of the world led, especially
* If one might trust Xenophon's Memorabilia, the Stoics had in this no leas a man than Socrates as their predecessor; yet it seems that even in this account, which is tinctured with Cynicism if not worked over from the Stoic point of view (Krohn), the general faith of Socrates in a purposeful guiding of the world by divine providence has descended into the petty.
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.
ffjy and 6tw\oyovfUmt
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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. • Ok. De Rep. II. 1
ff.
178 Helleni»tic-Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part II
knew how to transform the political greatness of his people into a scientific creation.
§ 15. Mechanism and Teleology.
The practice of the schools in the post-Aristotelian period sepa rated philosophical investigations into three main divisions, — ethics, physics, and logic (the latter called canonic among the Epicureans). The chief interest was everywhere given to ethics, and theoretically the two others were allowed importance only so far as correct action presupposes a knowledge of things, and this in turn a clearness with regard to the right methods of knowledge. Hence the main tendencies of physical and logical theories are undoubtedly determined in this period by the ethical point of view, and the practical need is easily contented by taking up and re-shap ing the older teachings ; but yet in scientific work the great objects of interest, especially metaphysical and physical problems, assert their fascinating power, and so notwithstanding we see these other branches of philosophy often developing in a way that is not in full conformity with the nature of the ethical trunk from which they spring. Particularly in the case of physics, the rich development of the special sciences must ultimately keep general principles always alive and in a state of flux.
In this respect we notice first that the Peripatetic School, during the first generations, made a noteworthy change in the principles for explaining Nature which it had received from its master.
1. The beginning of this is found already with Theophrastus, who doubtless defended all the main doctrines of Aristotelianism, espe cially against the Stoics, but yet in part went his own ways. The extant fragment of his metaphysics discusses, among the aporiae, principally such difficulties as were contained in the Aristotelian conceptions of the relation of the world to the deity. The Stagi- rite had conceived of Nature (<£wn«) as a being in itself alive
(£<uov), and yet had. conceived of its entire motion as a (teleological) effect of the divine Reason ; God, as pure Form, was separated from the world, transcendent ; and yet, as animating, first-moving power, he was immanent in it. This chief metaphysical problem of the following period was seen by Theophrastus, though his own attitude toward it remained fixed by the bounds of Aristotle's doctrine. On the other hand, he shows a more definite tendency in the closely connected question regarding the relation of reason to the lower psychical activities. The vovs was regarded, on the one hand (con sidered as Form of the animal soul), as immanent, inborn; on the other hand, in its purity, as different in essence, and as having come
Chat. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Peripatetics. 179
into the individual soul from without. Here now Theophrastus decided absolutely against transcendence; he subsumed the vofc also as a self-developing activity, under the concept of a cosmic process,1 of motion (mnprtc), and set it beside the animal soul as something different, not in kind, but in degree only.
Strato proceeded still more energetically in the same direction. He removed completely the limits between reason and the lower activities of ideation. Both, he taught, form an inseparable unity ; there is no thought without perceptions, and just as little is there sense-perception without the co-operation of thought ; both together belong to the unitary consciousness, which he, with the Stoics, calls ro iyifunnxov (cf. § 14, 3). But Strato applied the same thought, which he carried out psychologically, to the analogous metaphysical relation also. The yycpwucov of the dtiovt, also, the Reason of Nature, cannot be regarded as something separated from her. Whether now this may be expressed in the form that Strato did not think the hypothesis of the deity necessary for the explanation of Nature and its phenomena, or in the form that he postulated Nature itself as God, but denied it not only external resemblance to man, but even consciousness,* — in any case, Stratonism, regarded from the stand point of Aristotle's teaching, forms a one-sidedly naturalistic or pantheistic modification. He denies spiritual monotheism, the con ception of the transcendence of God, and by teaching that a pure Form is as unthinkable as mere matter, he pushes the Platonic element in the Aristotelian metaphysics, which had remained just in the thought of the separation {\iapurnot) of reason from matter, so far into the background that the element derived from Democ- hroi becomes again entirely free. Strato sees in what takes place in the world, only an immanent necessity of Nature, and no longer the working of a spiritual, extramundane cause.
Yet this naturalism remains still in dependence upon Aristotle, in to far as it seeks the natural causes of the cosmic processes, not in the atoms and their quantitative determinations, but expressly in the original qualities {irworrjm) and powers (Swo^tw) of things. If among these it emphasised especially warmth and cold, this was quite in the spirit of the dynamic conceptions held by the older Hjlozoism, and to this, also, Strato seems most nearly related in his undecided, intermediate position between mechanical and teleological explanation of the world. Just for this' reason, however, this side- development ran its course with Strato himself without further remit, for it was already outrun at the beginning by the Stoic and
1 Stepl. Phgs. 226 a. * Cic. Acad. II. 38, 121 ; Dt Nat. Dtor. I. 13, 36.
180 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Ethical Period. [Pakt II.
the Epicurean physics. These both defended also the standpoint of the immanent explanation of Nature, but the former was as out spokenly teleological as the latter was mechanical.
2. The peculiarly involved position of the Stoics, in the de
of metaphysical and physical questions, resulted from the union of different elements. In the foreground stands the ethical need of deducing from a most general metaphysical prin ciple the content of individual morality which could no longer find its roots in state and nationality as in the period of Grecian great ness, and therefore of so shaping the conception of this principle as to make this deduction possible. But, in opposition to this, stood, as an inheritance from Cynicism, the decided disinclination to regard this principle as a transcendent, supersensuous, and incorporeal prin ciple, out of the world of experience. All the more decisive was the
force with which the thoughts suggested in the Peripatetic philos ophy of Nature came forward, in which the attempt was made to understand the world as a living being, in purposive motion of itself. For all these motives, the logos doctrine of Heraclitus seemed to present itself as in like measure a solution of the problem, and this became, therefore, the central point of the Stoic metaphysics. 1
The fundamental view of the Stoics is, then, that the entire uni verse forms a single, unitary, living, connected whole, and that all particular things are the determinate forms assumed by a divine primitive power which is in a state of eternal activity. Their doc trine is in its fundamental principles pantheism, and (in opposition to Aristotle) conscious pantheism. The immediate consequence of
however, the energetic effort to overcome the Platonic-Aris totelian dualism,1 and remove the opposition between sensuous and supersensuous, between natural necessity and reason acting accord ing to ends, between Matter and Form. The Stoa attempts this through simple identification of those conceptions whose opposing characters, to be sure, cannot by this means be put out of the world.
Hence declares the divine World-being to be the primitive power in which are contained in like measure the conditioning laws and the purposeful determination of all things and of all cosmic processes, —the World-ground and the World-mind. As actively productive and formative power, the deity the Aoyot cnrtp/xariKos,
Cf. H. Siebeck, Die Umbildung der peripatetischen Xaturphilosophie in die der Stoiker Unten. x. Philosophit der Griechen, Aufl. , pp. 181 ff. ).
We wpre obliged to conceive of the relation of Aristotle to Plato in similar manner 13, 1-4), just in this point the Stoic philosophy of Nature shows farther development in the same direction which the Peripatetic take* in Strato.
partment
If a
( (§
it
a
*1
it,
2
is
is
CuAr. 1, § 15. ] Mechanism and Teleology : Stoic*. 181
the vital principle, which unfolds itself in the multitude of phenom
ena as their peculiar, particular Kayo* o-wtpuariKoi or formative forces. In this organic function, God however, also the purposefully creating and guiding Reason, and thus with regard to all particular processes the all-ruling Providence (VpoVow). The determination of the particular by the universe (which constitutes the dominant fundamental conviction of the Stoics) a completely purposeful and rational order,1 and forms as such the highest norm (vouoi), according to which all individual beings should direct themselves in the development of their activity. '
Bat this all-determining " law " for the Stoics, as was for Heraclitus, likewise the all-compelling power which, as inviolable necessity ((WyitTj), and so, as inevitable destiny (tluapuivrj, fatum), brings forth every particular phenomenon in the unalterable succes sion of causes and effects. Nothing takes place in the world with out a preceding cause (curia a-poir/ov/tcn;), and just by virtue of this complete causal determination of every particular does the universe
possess its character of purposeful, connected whole. * Hence Chrysippus combated in the most emphatic manner the conception of chance, and taught that apparent causelessness in a particular event could mean only kind of causation hidden from human insight4 In this assumption of natural necessity, admitting of no exceptions even for the most particular and the least important occurrence, — conviction which naturally found expression also in the form that the divine providence extends even to the smallest events of life,* — the Stoic school agrees even verbally with Democ- ntus, and the only school in antiquity which carried this most valuable thought of the great Abderite through all branches of theoretical science.
In all other respects, indeed, the Stoics stand in opposition to Dnoocritus and in closer relation to Aristotle. For while in the Atomistic system the natural necessity of all that comes to pass results from the motive impulses of individual things, with the Stoics flows immediately from the living activity of the whole, and
A» the Platonic Timteus had already taught, 11, 10.
The normative character in the conception of the lngo» appeared clearly even
with HeraclitiM p. «3, note 6).
Plut. De F-Ho. 11, 574. lb. 572.
Platarch make* Chrysippus say Contm. Not. 84, 1076) that not even the
•riaeji thins can sustain any other relation than that which accords with the 4fo**of Zeus. Ct. Cic. De . Vat. Denr. II. 65, lft4. Only the circumstance tfiat the 8toa limited the immediate action of the divine providence to the pur- snaefol determination of the whole, and derived from thin that of the particular, explains *ach modes of expression as the well-known Magna dii eurant, parca
•sflifmmt.
Ct. 114. 4
(
** *'
it
7, 6,
<% 0, 2.
is
a
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§
is
is
a
is,
a
a
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182 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Pabt IL
as over against the reduction of all qualities to quantitative differ ences, they held fast to the reality of properties as the peculiar
forces of individual things, and to qualitative alteration
in opposition to motion in space). They directed their polemic particularly against the purely mechanical explanation of natural processes by pressure and impact ; but in carrying out their teleology. they sank from the great conception of Aristotle, who had every where emphasised the immanent purposiveness of the formations in which the Forms were realised, to the consideration of the benefits which flow from the phenomena of Nature to meet the needs of beings endowed with reason, " of gods and men. " ' In particular, they exaggerated, even to ridiculous Philistinism, the demonstration of the manner in which heaven and earth and all that in them is, are arranged with such magnificent adaptation for man*
3. In all these theoretical views, and just in these, the Epicurean* are diametrically opposed to the Stoics. With the Epicureans, em ployment with metaphysical and physical problems had in general only the negative purpose* of setting aside the religio-os ideas through which the quiet self-enjoyment of the wise man might be disturbed. Hence it was the chief concern of Epicurus to exclude from the explanation of Nature every element that would allow a government of the world, guided by universal ends, to appear as even possible ; hence, on the other hand, the Epicureau view of the world was absolutely lacking in a positive principle. This explains the fact that Epicurus, at least, had only a sceptical shrug of the shoulders for all questions of natural science from which no practical advantage was to be gained ; and though many of his later disciples seem to have been less limited, and to have thought more scien tifically, the ruts of the school's opinion were worn too deep to allow the attainment of essentially broader aims. The more the teleological conception of Nature formed, in the course of time, the common ground on which Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines met in syncretistic blending, the more Epicureanism insisted upon its isolated standpoint of negation ; theoretically, it was essentially anti-teleological, and in this respect brought forth nothing positive.
It was successful only in combating the anthropological excres cences to which the teleological view of the world led, especially
* If one might trust Xenophon's Memorabilia, the Stoics had in this no leas a man than Socrates as their predecessor; yet it seems that even in this account, which is tinctured with Cynicism if not worked over from the Stoic point of view (Krohn), the general faith of Socrates in a purposeful guiding of the world by divine providence has descended into the petty.
