Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind

The philosophers of the Hellenistic schools in ancient Greece and Rome (Epicureans, Stoics, Sceptics, Academics, Cyrenaics) made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. This volume, which contains the proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, describes and analyses their contributions on issues such as: the nature of perception, imagination and belief; the nature of the passions and their role in action; the relationship between mind and body; freedom and determinism; the role of pleasure as a goal; the effects of poetry on belief and passion. Written with a high level of historical and philosophical scholarship, the essays are intended both for classicists and for non-specialists interested in the philosophy of mind.

PASSIONS & PERCEPTIONS

PASSIONS & PERCEPTIONS Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum

EDITED BY

JACQUES BRUNSCHWIG Universite de Paris i and

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM Brown University

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY IOOI 1-42 I I, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Victoria 3166, Australia and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06 © Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press 1993 First published 1993 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Passions & perceptions: studies in Hellenistic philosophy of mind : proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum / edited by Jacques Brunschwig and Martha C. Nussbaum. p. cm. Collection of papers as a result of the Symposium Hellenisticum, held at the Chateau of Syam, Aug. 17-25, 1989. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o 521 40202 6 (hardback) 1. Psychology - History - Congresses. 2. Philosophy of mind - History - Congresses. 3. Philosophy, Ancient - Congresses. I. Brunschwig, Jacques. II. Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 1947- . III. Title: Passions and perceptions. BF91.P37 1992 I28'.2'o938-dc2o 91-42510 GIP ISBN o 521 40202 6 hardback ISBN 2 7351 20450 8 hardback (France only) Transferred to digital printing 2004

Contents

Preface Av ant-prop os PART I

1

page ix xi

ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF HEDONISM

Epicurean hedonism Gisela Striker, Harvard University

2 Anniceris et les plaisirs psychiques: quelques prealables doxographiques Andre Laks, Princeton University PART II

ATOMISM AND EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY

I

3

18

51

3

Epicurus on agency Julia Annas, University of Arizona, Tucson

53

4

Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities David Furley, Princeton University

72

PART III

THE PASSIONS

95

5

Poetry and the passions: two Stoic views Martha C. Nussbaum, Brown University

6

Seneca and psychological dualism Brad Inwood, University of Toronto

7 Actions and passions: affection, emotion and moral self-management in Galen's philosophical psychology James Hankinson, University of Texas, Austin Vll

97 150

184

Vlll

CONTENTS

PART IV

STOIC PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

223

8

De la 'nature phantastique' des animaux chez les Stoiciens 225 Jean-Louis Labarriere, CNRS et Centre Louis Gernet de recherches comparees sur les societes anciennes, EHESS/Paris

9

Le concept de doxa des Stoiciens a Philon d'Alexandrie: essai d'etude diachronique 250 Carlos Levy, Universite de Paris xn, Val de Marne

10 Seneca on reason, rules and moral development Phillip Mitsis, Cornell University

285

11 Chrysippus on psychophysical causality David Sedley, Christ's College, Cambridge

313

Bib liography Subject index Name index Index of passages cited

332 344 346 351

Preface

The fifth meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum took place between 17 and 25 August 1989 at the Chateau of Syam near Champagnole in the French Jura. Following a by-now well-established tradition, to which the four previously published volumes bear witness, the papers given at the fifth Symposium underwent long and searching discussion; the texts published here have been revised in the light of those and subsequent discussions which took place in one form or another after the end of the conference. The participants in the Symposium were: Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Suzanne Bobzien, Jacques Brunschwig, Pierluigi Donini, Eyjolfur Emilsson, Dorothea Frede, Michael Frede, David Furley, James Hankinson, Brad Inwood, Anna-Maria Ioppolo, David Konstan, Jean-Louis Labarriere, Andre Laks, Carlos Levy, Geoffrey Lloyd, Anthony Long, Jaap Mansfeld, Mario Mignucci, Phillip Mitsis, Martha Nussbaum, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Richard Sorabji, Gisela Striker, Voula Tsouna. The organization of the conference was made possible by generous support from several institutions: le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; le Ministere de l'Education Nationale (Direction des affaires generates, internationales et de la cooperation); l'Universite de Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne); l'Universite de Paris x (Nanterre). We acknowledge with gratitude not only these institutions, but also those who have individually shown their interest in our project and have actively furthered its realization. We express our gratitude to Madame M. Carnot-Fernique, owner of the Chateau of Syam, the Deputy Mayor of Champagnole and his assistant, and to all those people in the region with whom we came into contact; they all worked in their various ways to make our stay in this beautiful place as pleasant as it was productive. As we send this volume to the printers, we have learned with regret of the death of Madame Carnot-Fernique. IX

Avant-propos

La cinquieme reunion du Symposium Hellenisticum s'est tenue du 17 au 25 aout 1989, au Chateau de Syam, pres de la ville de Champagnole, dans le Jura franfais. Selon une tradition deja bien etablie, et dont temoignent les quatre volumes precedemment publies, les communications presentees devant le Symposium ont fait l'objet de discussions longues et approfondies; les textes qu'on va lire ont ete revises par leurs auteurs, a la lumiere de ces discussions et de celles qui se sont encore poursuivies, sous une forme ou sous une autre, apres la fin de la conference. Etaient presents aux seances du Symposium: Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Suzanne Bobzien, Jacques Brunschwig, Pierluigi Donini, Eyjolfur Emilsson, Dorothea Frede, Michael Frede, David Furley, James Hankinson, Brad Inwood, Anna-Maria Ioppolo, David Konstan, Jean-Louis Labarriere, Andre Laks, Carlos Levy, Geoffrey Lloyd, Anthony Long, Jaap Mansfeld, Mario Mignucci, Phillip Mitsis, Martha Nussbaum, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Richard Sorabji, Gisela Striker, Voula Tsouna. L'organisation de la conference a ete rendue possible par l'aide genereuse de plusieurs institutions: le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, le Ministere de l'Education Nationale (Direction des affaires generates, internationales et de la cooperation), l'Universite de Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne) et l'Universite de Paris x (Nanterre). Nous tenons a remercier non seulement ces institutions, mais aussi les personnes qui, dans le cadre de chacune d'entre elles, ont manifeste leur interet pour notre projet et en ont favorise activement la realisation. Nous exprimons toute notre reconnaissance a Madame M. Carnot-Fernique, proprietaire du Chateau de Syam, ainsi qu'a Monsieur le Depute-Maire de Champagnole, a son assistante parlementaire, et a toutes les personnes de la region avec lesquelles XI

Xll

AVANT-PROPOS

nous avons ete en contact; ils se sont tous ingenies, chacun a sa maniere, pour rendre notre sejour dans ce bel endroit aussi agreable qu'il a ete fructueux. Au moment de mettre sous presse nous apprenons avec peine la disparition de Madame Carnot-Fernique.

PART I

Ethics and Psychology of Hedonism

CHAPTER I

Epicurean hedonism Gisela Striker

Hedonism, like pleasure, can take many forms, and its fundamental tenet, 'pleasure is the good', is notoriously open to different interpretations. Also, the advice, moral and otherwise, given to people who try to pursue this good may vary a great deal, depending on one's view of what pleasure is. To say that a certain philosopher is a hedonist, therefore, is not yet to say much about the content of his doctrine. Still, one would at least expect a hedonist's conception of happiness to be that of a recognizably pleasant life. Epicurus' form of hedonism has seemed paradoxical from the beginning, because it does not seem to meet even this modest expectation. In his own time, the Cyrenaics maintained that what he held to be the greatest pleasure was in fact more like the state of someone asleep (Diogenes Laertius n 89) or even dead (Clemens Alexandrinus Stromateis 11.21; Us. Fr. 451). Cicero was certainly not the first to argue that Epicurus' doctrine was incoherent, and his prescriptions for a pleasant life inconsistent with his principles. Plutarch devoted an entire treatise to showing that one cannot even lead a pleasant life following Epicurus' doctrine. The difficulty both ancient and modern critics have felt lies in seeing how Epicurus could present his claim that the highest good was a state of absence of pain and trouble from body and soul, as a version of hedonism. The problem is well brought out by Cicero in de Finibus n. According to Cicero, Epicurus distinguished two types of pleasures: those 'in motion', and 'static' or 'stable' ones (n. 16 hereafter, 'kinetic' and 'katastematic'). Under the first category fall Ancestors of this paper were read at the SAGP meeting in New York, the Classics Department at Harvard, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington. I am grateful for criticism and suggestions arising out of the discussion at all these places, and at the Symposium in Syam, in particular to Pierluigi Donini, Andre Laks, Mary Margaret Mackenzie, and Phillip Mitsis. Special thanks are due to Mary Mothersill for reading the last version and suggesting clarifications and stylistic corrections.

4

GISELA STRIKER

all the things that ordinary people would call pleasures - 'smooth motions that affect the senses' and analogous events in the soul; the second class consists of states of painlessness or absence of trouble. Epicurus inexplicably claimed that the latter were greater pleasures than the former, and hence should be seen as the goal of life; and he did this although his own way of arguing for the thesis that pleasure is the good seemed to appeal to sensory pleasures (n. 31-2). Why, Cicero asks in exasperation, does Epicurus wish to call such totally different things by the same name (11.9)? Is it not perfectly obvious that a state in which we feel no pain, but also no 'gentle motion' — i.e. kinetic pleasure — is one that is neutral, containing neither pleasure nor pain (n. 16)? Commentators more friendly to Epicurus than Cicero have tried in various ways to show that Cicero's criticism must rest on a misunderstanding. Cicero seems to follow a line of argument that contrasts the Cyrenaics as the 'real' hedonists with Epicurus and insists that his description of the painless state as a pleasure is either a fraud or a blunder. Now Epicurus was neither naive nor stupid, and so it is unlikely that he was as incoherent as Cicero makes him out to be. On the other hand, it seems unwise to reject Cicero's report as totally misguided, since Cicero had access to many more Epicurean writings than we do and had presumably read a fair amount, even if not very carefully or charitably. Worse, since the only longish text concerned with ethics by Epicurus himself, the Letter to Menoeceus, is a protreptic, and hence uses the doctrines without providing the arguments that lead to them, Cicero's account of Epicurean ethics in Fin. 1 is the only systematic exposition we have. Because of Cicero's evident hostility, commentators have tried to reconstruct Epicurus' theory from other sources, relying on Cicero's testimony only where parallels could be found in other authors. Such caution is no doubt advisable; but because our other sources, including Epicurus' own Principal Doctrines, consist in isolated dicta, it becomes harder to see how these bits and pieces fit into what must have been the theoretical framework of Epicurean ethics. Now while we have good reasons to be suspicious about Fin. n, it seems less clear that we must treat the first book in the same way. Cicero's strategy in attacking Epicurus in book 11 is the same as the one he uses against the Stoics in book iv. He argues that a true hedonist would have to follow Aristippus, whereas a philosopher who wishes to hold that the highest good is absence of pain and

Epicurean hedonism

5

distress would have to agree with Hieronymus of Rhodes, who did not consider pleasure even desirable (cf. 11.19, n.35). Similarly, the Stoics are said to be faced with a choice between the positions of Aristo on the one hand, the Peripatetics on the other (iv.67, iv.72). This may suggest that Cicero is following an Academic pattern of argument in both cases. It does not follow, however, that books 1 and in were written to match Cicero's lines of attack. The fact that the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasures, so prominent in book 11, is barely mentioned, and not at all explained, in book 1 seems rather to indicate that the first book was not meant just to set up a target for Cicero's subsequent criticism. I think in fact following the line of argument in book 1 that leads up to the doctrine of the highest good criticized in book 11 may help us to see more clearly how Epicurus arrives at his paradoxical views and actually suggest some replies to Cicero's objections. This is not to say that all difficulties disappear once we use Cicero as a witness against himself, but I do think that a careful study of Fin. 1 may set the contrast between the Cyrenaics and Epicurus in a different light, as raising interesting problems about the role of pleasure as the final good. I propose, then, to take a closer look at the section of book 1 that ostensibly sets out Epicurus' arguments for his conception of the goal of life. I assume that this extends from 29 to 42: an argument about the telos is formally announced at 29, and formally concluded at 42. The intervening passage is not very well organized. It seems that Cicero has both added and omitted a few things in a continuous argument. For example, the defence of Torquatus against the suggestion that it should be embarrassing for a Roman aristocrat to profess Epicureanism (34-6) is not likely to be part of an Epicurean argument - and indeed it is marked as a digression at 37. Also, the curiously feeble appeal to the imagination in the contrast between the person who leads a life filled with pleasures and the person who suffers from all kinds of pains and misfortunes does not seem to further the argument. On the other hand, there are two very abrupt transitions, at the beginning of 39 (to the alleged joke about the statue of Chrysippus) and at the end of 41, where Cicero returns to the topic of 29 - transitions that make one suspect that some link has been left out. I do not wish to claim that Cicero was paraphrasing a particular Epicurean source; all I would want to say is that he is presenting a continuous line of thought in a condensed form while adding some unnecessary but rhetorically appealing flourishes. If

D

GISELA STRIKER

one sets aside these Ciceronian embellishments, the following structure seems to emerge: (a) 29-30: Torquatus establishes that pleasure is good, pain is bad, and that these affections are nature's only guides to action. (b) 32-3: He then deals with a possible misunderstanding of the claim that one should be guided by pleasure and pain. It turns out that one has to forego some pleasures to avoid pain, and to accept some pains for the sake of subsequent pleasures. So the aim is to attain the most pleasure and the least amount of pain in the long run. (c) 37-8: All misunderstandings about the sober and admirable character of Epicureanism are finally dispelled by an explanation of what Epicurus means by 'the greatest pleasure', namely complete absence of all pain. (d) 41-2: Finally, from the claim that all 'right and praiseworthy things are referred to living pleasurably', it is to be inferred that a pleasant life must be the highest good. Notice that this conclusion is reached only after Epicurus' conception of the greatest pleasure has been introduced. This is, I believe, as it should be. For the initial argument at 29-30 merely shows that pleasure and pain should guide our choices; it does not explain what is to count as the highest good, 'what everything ought to be 1 referred to, while it itself is not referred to anything else'. Rather, from the claim that pleasure and pain are the only guides to action we need to proceed through an account of how to apply that thesis to the conclusion that the reference-point of all action is what Cicero calls 'a pleasant life', and hence that this must be the final end. I will now discuss this line of argument in slightly more detail to show how it might help to answer some of Cicero's objections. PLEASURE AS THE CRITERION OF CHOICE AND AVOIDANCE

The first part of Torquatus' exposition (29-30) offers an epistemological argument for the two propositions (i) that pleasure is good, pain is bad; and (ii) that the feelings of pleasure and pain are our 1

Cicero is using a Stoic definition of the term TEAOS, which may well have been common property between the schools at his time. However, I doubt that it is correct for Epicurus, who seems to have been, in modern parlance, a 'psychological hedonist', maintaining that people do in fact aim at pleasure in everything they do, whether they acknowledge it or not (cf. Men. 128, 129), and not that they are in some sense obliged to do so. The statement that 'all right and praiseworthy things are referred to this, that one should live pleasurably' at

Epicurean hedonism

7

only means of deciding what to pursue and what to avoid - that is, in the ancient terminology, that they are the criteria of choice and avoidance (cf. Diog. Laer. x.31, 34). Thesis (i) is supported by pointing out that the judgments 'pleasure is good' and 'pain is bad' are self-evident truths based on perception, and hence stand in no need of any proof.2 Next, it is argued that 'what is in accordance with nature or against it', that is, good or bad 3 for a living thing, must be judged by nature herself. This means, as the following sentence shows, that good or bad must be judged by the senses. But the only perceptions that can serve to guide choice and avoidance are pleasure and pain; so these must be the goods and evils that guide our decisions. I must confess that the argument for the premise that good and bad must be judged by the senses is obscure to me. The text runs: Nam quoniam detractis de homine sensibus reliqui nihil est, necesse est quod aut ad naturam aut contra sit a natura ipsa iudicari. I do not see how the fact,

if it is one, that sense perception is necessary and perhaps sufficient for life has any tendency to show that the senses must be the judges of what is good and bad. 4 One might be inclined to believe that animals that lack reason must rely on their senses to discover what to pursue or avoid; but why should this also be true of humans? Cicero rejects this claim with contempt, and at least as far as this argument goes, he may be justified. Stronger support for thesis (ii) seems to surface at the end of 41: nee enim habet nostra mens quicquam, ubi consistat tamquam in extremo, omnesque et metus et aegritudines ad dolorem referuntur, nee praeterea est res ulla, quae sua natura aut sollicitare possit aut angere.

This might be an appeal to inconceivability, saying that it is inconceivable how anything could be bad that is not either pain or a cause of pain. Presumably the Epicureans held that it is equally

2

3

4

Fin. 1.42 sounds rather ludicrous and is, I think, misleading. The Epicureans did hold that virtue is desirable because it is necessary for the most pleasant life, but this does not commit them to the view that it is also praiseworthy for that reason. This is, of course, not presented as a proof for (i), which would be self-defeating, but as an argument to show that (i) must be true, given its status. For this part of the argument, see the excellent treatment by Brunschwig (1986). For the equation of what is according to nature with what is good, see e.g. Men. 129; Fin. 11.5, and the curious 'syllogism' criticized by Alex. Aphr. (in Top. 9, Us. Fr. 404): r\ f)5ovf) Kcrra 4>UCTIV /'TO Korra <j>Gaiv aipeTov / f] fj8ovf) is not restricted to sense perception (see e.g. 1.55: 'corpore nihil nisipraesens . . . sentirepossumus; animo autem etpraeterita et future?).

9

And of course the account of pleasure is exactly parallel for body and mind. So I am inclined to think that Cicero is talking about pleasure in general, and that 'absence of all pain' covers both dTOcpo^ia and carovioc. For example, the remarks about removal of pain might be a defence of a previously stated definition of pleasure as painless affection against the objection that some pleasures involve pain. The point would be to insist that what is enjoyed in those cases is painless perception,

14

GISELA STRIKER

context of an exposition of the Epicurean doctrine about the telos is a statement about the nature of pleasure - as indeed announced by Torquatus - and not the denial of a neutral state, I am inclined to conclude that Epicurus held that all pleasure consists in absence of pain, or rather, as (6) seems to indicate, in painless affection; and that he argued from this to his definition of the end, absence of all pain from body and soul. But what, then, becomes of the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasures to which Cicero obviously alludes at the beginning of this section? Here we should note the strangely illogical contrast by which the distinction is introduced: 'not only' . . . 'but the greatest'. A passage in Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus (131) seems to draw the contrast that Cicero presumably tried to capture; and it suggests that on this occasion Cicero might indeed have missed the point. When Epicurus explains that those who say that pleasure is the end do not go for the pleasures of profligates, but for absence of pain from body and soul, he is not, I think, rejecting kinetic in favour of katastematic pleasures. The contrast is not between different types of pleasures, but rather between different conceptions of the greatest pleasure - the misguided one of the luxury-seekers and the correct one of the Epicureans. Even the profligates are ultimately seeking freedom from pain and trouble, according to Epicurus; they just have the wrong idea about how this is to be achieved. This contrast, then, is consistent with the view that all pleasure is pain-free affection. But if all pleasure is held to consist in absence of pain, clearly we can no longer take this to be the distinguishing characteristic of katastematic pleasures alone. Some scholars 10 have suggested that the kinetic pleasures are the ones associated with processes of replenishment, removal of pain or, on the level of mental pleasures, desire-satisfaction, while the katastematic ones would be those of contentment or relief. The point of the distinction would be to emphasize, against earlier enemies of pleasure like the anonymous 'subtle thinkers' of Plato's Philebus, that pleasure need not come to an end when all pain is gone, since the ensuing states of contentment and relief are pleasures just as much as the removal of pain. This 10

which does not cease when the pain is removed. According to PD 3, Epicurus held that where and when there is pleasure, there is no pain. E.g. P. Mitsis (1988), 45. I cannot try to do justice here to the many ingenious attempts to make sense of this distinction. For a judicious survey, see Gosling & Taylor (1982) chs. 18 and 19.

Epicurean hedonism

15

provides no doubt a plausible explanation, but in the context of Epicurean theory, it would leave us with a classification that is clearly not exhaustive, omitting a large class of pleasures that Cicero, for one, explicitly declares to be kinetic. Eating when not hungry, admiring a beautiful statue or enjoying a surprise party are not cases of replenishment or satisfaction of antecedently felt desires, but they also do not seem to be states of relief or contentment. If these pleasures are not kinetic, then either the distinction is not meant to produce an exhaustive classification, or we must take it that they count as katastematic, and assume that this class includes all pleasures not preceded by a felt lack or a pain. This is the line that Gosling and Taylor take (1982, 37 iff.). According to their interpretation, the distinction is not one between processes or events and states, but rather between affections that go along with replenishments or desire-satisfaction as opposed to those that occur in an undisturbed state of well-functioning. Again the proposed distinction is plausible and has some noteworthy predecessors in earlier Greek philosophy.11 But it not only contradicts Cicero's account in Fin. 11, it also does not fit the one literal quotation from Epicurus in which he seems to use the terminology, Diog. Laer. x.136, in contrasting the katastematic pleasures oi aponia and ataraxia with joy {chard) and delight {euphrosune) as being 'in motion'. The text runs: 'he men gar ataraxia kai aponia katastematikai eisin hedonai he de chara kai he euphrosune kata kinesin energeiai blepontaf; Long and Sedley translate:

'Freedom from disturbance and absence of pain are static pleasures; but joy and delight are regarded as kinetic activities.' 12 There is no good reason to think that joy is necessarily tied to the removal of pain. Since there is no indication that Epicurus recognized other kinds of pleasures besides katastematic and kinetic ones, one should perhaps try to follow the lead provided by the technical terms used, and look for a distinction between temporarily limited episodes or processes of pleasure and lasting states. But what would be the point of such a distinction? 11

12

As I understand it, the distinction coincides with Plato's distinction between 'mixed' and 'unmixed' pleasures in the Philebus. But the most impressive parallel is no doubt a passage from the Magna Moralia, 11.7. i2O5b2off.: 'eirei 5'ouv ICTTIV f\ f)8ovf) Kai Ka8ioTauevr|s TT\S 4>UCTEGOS Kai Ka6e<jTr|Kuias, otov KaOiaTauevris uev ai e£ evSeias avairAripcbaeis, Ka6eaTT|Kuias 6e ai OTTO TT\S oyecos Kai TT^S OKofis' (cf. also EN vn. 1 i52b2-6). Gosling & Taylor (p. 390) want to take X a P a a n d E0<J>poauvr| as 'terms giving the positive sides of the ataraxia and aponia coins', so that Epicurus would be 'pointing out . . . that katastematic pleasures are experienced'. This interpretation seems to me to be ruled out by

l6

GISELA STRIKER

One difference that suggest itself is this: while episodes or processes of pleasure consist in enjoying or being pleased with something, an activity or an event or an object, the states of bodily freedom from pain - the healthy state of the body, as Epicurus calls it in Men. 129 - and of peace of mind do not seem to be directed at anything in particular. Nor do they seem to be like pleasant sensations (which need not be enjoyments of anything else, but of which one would at least have to be aware for them to count as pleasures), and this makes it odd to call them pleasures in the first place. But obviously, if Epicurus is right about the pleasantness of painless affection, and life consists in being affected in one or the other way, then these states must contain innumerable pleasures of the kinetic sort, since presumably anything that affects us without disturbance would count as an object of pleasure. Thus variatio might be exactly what Cicero says it should be, Fin. 11.10: taking pleasure in a variety of different things. Indeed, one might try to justify calling the painless states pleasures by appealing to the kinetic pleasures that they necessarily contain. If the text were not so desperately difficult and quoted out of context, I would be inclined to interpret Epicurus' dictum about aponia and ataraxia in this sense: these are states of pleasure, but the joy and delight (sc. that come with them) manifest themselves in motion, that is, in particular episodes of pleasure and enjoyment. The claim that states of undisturbed perception and carefree thought are pleasures in themselves is strange, and one can see why other philosophers would have wanted to insist that one could not feel pleasure unless one were enjoying something that could be specified. But if one grants Epicurus the claim that pleasure is constituted by undisturbed affection, one might find it plausible to say that a hedonist should aim at those states of body and mind that make life enjoyable regardless of what one takes pleasure in, except for the few disturbances that will arise from unavoidable pains. And if the connection between states of freedom from pain and pleasurable experiences is as close as Epicurus' theory would make it out to be, one might also be willing to accept the terminological move of calling these states pleasures as well, albeit objectless ones. If this is correct, it would seem that there were exactly two katastematic pleasures, namely aponia and ataraxia, that together make up complete pleasure. Hence it might be misleading even to the particles (jjev . . . 8e) in the sentence, which clearly mark a contrast between and onTovioc on the one hand, X a P^ a n d eOpocruvr| on the other.

Epicurean hedonism

17

speak of different kinds of pleasure. It might be better to say that Epicurus proposed to extend the use of the word 'pleasure' to cover not only episodes, but also states of body and mind, on the ground that what makes experiences pleasurable is precisely absence of pain, which can be a lasting state. The distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasures would seem to derive from Epicurus' theory, rather than from an empirical survey of the various phenomena described as pleasures in everyday language. It was this terminological move that allowed Epicurus to identify the greatest pleasure with the good life.13 So I would suggest that he introduced the notion of katastematic pleasure in order to show that happiness can be the same as pleasure after all, provided that one is willing to accept as pleasures not only episodes of enjoyment, but also those states that, according to Epicurus, make one's life enjoyable at every moment. If we return now to Cicero's objections we can see, I think, that Epicurus' theory was not incoherent in the way Cicero maintains. The trouble is rather that both the thesis that pleasure is nothing but undisturbed affection and perhaps even more the claim that all mental pleasures are parasitic upon bodily ones are highly implausible. The Cyrenaics do seem to me to be the better hedonists in the sense that they paid more attention to the complicated and varied phenomena described as pleasures. But an impoverished account of pleasure may have been the price Epicurus was willing to pay in order to fit hedonism into the framework of Hellenistic ethics, while the Cyrenaics apparently decided to opt out of the competition. 13

Aristotle envisages a similar move at EN vn. 1153D9-14, when he says that the highest good could be considered to be a pleasure, given that it consists in unimpeded activity of a sort. Obviously, 'activity in accordance with virtue' is not on the same level as the various virtuous activities that make up a good life.

CHAPTER 2

Anniceris et les plaisirs psychiques. Quelques preatables doxographiques Andre Laks

I LE PROBLEME

Les temoignages doxographiques transmis sous le nom d'un mouvement philosophique, et non sous celui d'un auteur particulier, soulevent souvent de difficiles problemes d'attribution, d'autant plus delicats a trancher que nous possedons moins de reperes independants, dans l'histoire de l'ecole, par rapport auxquels les situer. Le cas des Cyrenaiques est a cet egard exemplaire. Les donnees sont le plus souvent presentees comme un bien commun; rinformation relative aux positions specifiques d'Aristippe l'Ancien, d'Aristippe le Jeune ou d'Anniceris est beaucoup plus rare, quand elle ne se reduit pas a un seul temoignage. La tache de la critique est alors de faire la part entre le generique et le particulier, l'originaire et le remaniement, et de reconstruire les phases d'une eventuelle evolution. De ce point de vue, la tendance de Interpretation s'est considerablement modifiee depuis E. Zeller, qui, sur la base du resume de la doctrine ethique generiquement attribute aux 'Cyrenaiques' dans Diogene Laerce, 11.86-93, avait fait d'Aristippe l'Ancien le createur d'un veritable systeme ethique.1 Au terme d'un Le document de travail presente au colloque de Syam a ete elabore au cours de mon sejour au Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C. en 1987/8. La discussion m'a permis de mieux cerner plusieurs points, en particulier grace aux interventions de Jonathan Barnes, Jacques Brunschwig, Michael Frede, Jaap Mansfeld, David Sedley, Richard Sorabji, Voula Tsouna. Je remercie tout particulierement Gisela Striker d'avoir formule, sur un etat intermediate, des critiques ecrites, dont la presente version a beneficie. Les temoignages sur les Cyrenaiques sont principalement cites d'apres la collection de Giannantoni (1983/85), par simple numero suivi de G. quand il s'agit des temoignages que Giannantoni edite sous le nom d'Aristippe l'Ancien (= iv A, selon le classement adopte), par l'abreviation complete, quand il s'agit d'autres membres de l'ecole (iv B = Arete et Aristippe le Jeune, par exemple). II est aussi fait reference a l'edition de Mannebach (1961) = M. L'abreviation D. L. suivie d'un chiffre renvoie au decoupage que je propose des §§86-91 a de Diogene Laerce 11 (cf. infra, pp. 25-6). 1

Zeller (1922), p. 344, avec la n. 1. 18

Anniceris et les plaisirs psychiques

19

long mouvement de revision, qui debute avec la dissertation d'E. Antoniades (1916), G. Giannantoni n'a laisse a Aristippe l'Ancien que la pratique d'un mode de vie, reservant l'elaboration theorique de positions doctrinales a un stade plus tardif,2 qu'un temoignage transmis par Eusebe permet d'associer au nom d'Aristippe le Jeune. 3 Dans Petude d'ensemble la plus recente sur l'ecole cyrenaique, 4 K. Doring developpe en substance une interpretation moyenne, dont l'edition d'E. Mannebach, reprenant les indications d'E. Schwartz et de K. von Fritz, peut aussi etre consideree comme le reflet:5 tout en recusant la position trop genereuse de Zeller, K. Doring fait remonter au premier Aristippe ce qu'il considere, dans la section generique de la doxographie laertienne, comme un noyau ancien.6 Simultanement, il repere, dans cette meme section, une serie de notices correspondant a ce qu'il juge etre un etat posterieur, en 1'occurrence hellenistique, et plus precisement annicerienne, de la doctrine cyrenai'que. De fait, la polemique 2

3

4 5 6

La demonstration de Giannantoni remonte a son recueil de 1958, pp. 74-115. Les conclusions en sont reprises, avec quelques ajustements, dans Giannantoni (1983/85), m no. 18, pp.164-170. Eusebe, Preparation Evangelique xiv. 18.31-32 = 173 et iv. B. 5 G (tres vraisemblablement un extrait du fTepi <j)iXoaoo;jioiou[ji6vr|v, slvai yap Aeicxv KIVTICTIV TT^V f)8ovfiv, oupicp TrapapaAAo|jevr|v dveiico]; le troisieme est un etat median, en vertu duquel nous ne souffrons ni n'eprouvons de plaisir, et qui est similaire a une mer d'huile.' Doring (1988). Mannebach (1961), appendice 111 (De ratione in placitis digerendis inita), p. 106-10; cf. Schwartz (1903), col. 741, et von Fritz (1934), cols. 1827s. Dans la premiere partie de son etude, Doring (1988) developpe une these parallele pour ce qui est de la theorie de la connaissance, en montrant qu'elle se laisse inscrire dans le contexte des discussions socratiques (voir en particulier pp. 27SS.). Je n'aborderai pas ici cet aspect de la question.

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ANDRE LAKS

anti-epicurienne dont plusieurs de ces passages, et d'autres dans la Vie d'Epicure, se font l'echo7 ne saurait preceder la fin du quatrieme siecle.8 Et une notice specifiquement consacree aux Anniceriens, que transmet Clement d'Alexandrie, recoupe parfaitement une serie de doctrines que Diogene Laerce attribue aux Cyrenaiques en general.9 Alors que le role d'Aristippe l'Ancien dans la fondation de l'ecole cyrenaique a ete abondamment discute, il n'existe que peu d'etudes sur la phase 'annicerienne' de l'ecole cyrenaique. C'est sur ce dernier probleme que portent les remarques qui suivent. Contre le point de vue 'analytique' represente maintenant par K. Doring, je defendrai une perspective que Ton peut qualifier d'unitarienne, en tentant de montrer, sur la base d'un reexamen de la structure d'ensemble de Pexpose de Diogene Laerce et de l'analyse du passage 'parallele' de Clement, pourquoi ni la logique des contenus doctrinaux, ni les mentions d'Epicure dans l'expose de la doctrine cyrenaique, n'impliquent que la doxographie de Diogene Laerce resulte, comme Doring le pense, d'une combinaison entre un etat plus ancien (ante-epicurien) de la doctrine, et une version revisee, qui tiendrait compte de la situation creee par l'enseignement du Jardin et serait a mettre au compte d'Anniceris.10 II convient d'emblee de souligner que la perspective analytique adoptee par K. Doring a au premier abord quelque chose de seduisant. De nombreux temoignages anciens situent la doctrine des Cyrenaiques a l'origine de la theorie morale d'Epicure, qui en aurait adopte le principe (le plaisir est la fin de nos actions), tout en recusant la conception du plaisir qui en etait le correlat: a cote du plaisir en mouvement (cinetique), Epicure admet un plaisir en repos (catastematique).11 Cette difference, se repercutant sur l'ensemble 7 8

9

10 11

Ils'agitessentiellementdeD.L. 4, 8, 10. Cf. Diog. Laer. x.136; Clement, .ftr077zato11.21.13o, 7-8 (cite infra, n.ioo); voir aussi infra, n.90. Sur Diog. Laer. x.136, cf. Giusta (1962/3). Les indications chronologiques concernant la phase 'hellenistique' de l'ecole cyrenaique font presque entierement defaut, sauf dans le cas de Theodore, dont on fixe la naissance autour de 340, sur la base d'une serie d'indications convergentes (voir von Fritz (1934), col. 1825). On situe generalement la naissance d'Aristippe le Jeune dans les annees 60 du quatrieme siecle (non ante annum 370, Mannebach (1961), p. 89, ad fr. 136-7). Hegesias et Anniceris semblent avoir ete plus ou moins contemporains de Theodore. Nous ne pouvons done operer que sur la base de chronologies relatives et d'une reconstruction des dependances intellectuelles. Cf. aussi infra, n. 20. La notice de Clement, qui avait deja retenu l'attention de Schwartz (1903) et de von Fritz (1934), joue pour Anniceris un role analogue a celle d'Eusebe pour Aristippe le Jeune (cf. supra, n. 3). Elle est citee et analysee infra, pp. 41-5. II ne peut ici s'agir que d'esquisser la demonstration, qui exigerait, pour etre complete, une monographic analogue a celle qu'a livree Doring. La plupart des temoignages figurent sous les rubriques 178-86, 189 dans Giannantoni (1983/85). Cf. aussi 173 (cite supra, n. 3).

Anniceris et les plaisirs psychiques

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du systeme ethique, eloigne considerablement Phedonisme d'Epicure de celui des Cyrenaiques.12 II est naturel de penser que ces derniers, face a la concurrence que representait un systeme frere, reagirent. On les voit assez bien developper, contre la notion de plaisir catastematique, des critiques du type de celles que nous a conservees Ciceron (Epicure, en nommant 'plaisir' l'absence de douleur, donne un sens arbitraire aux mots).13 Comme je l'ai deja indique, les formules doxographiques qui opposent les theses d'Epicure a celles des Cyrenai'ques sur le theme du plaisir sont certainement le reflet de cet affrontement. Comment ne serait-on pas tente d'en conclure que le resume 'generique' de Diogene Laerce, la ou il cite, ou suppose, Epicure, reproduit un etat de la doctrine cyrenai'que renouvele et modifie par la confrontation avec le Jardin? Un temoignage de Strabon semble confirmer l'hypothese, puisqu'il nous apprend qu'Anniceris passait pour avoir 'corrige' l'ecole cyrenaique et lui avoir substitue la sienne propre. 14 Cet 'amendement' ne consista-t-il pas precisement a reviser la doctrine cyrenai'que a la lumiere des objections qu'Epicure avait formulees, explicitement ou non, a l'encontre d'une version plus primitive de la doctrine? Telle est, en substance, la ligne d'argumentation developpee par Doring. 1 5 Je voudrais lui opposer (1) que la polemique anti-epicurienne d'Anniceris pouvait parfaitement se nourrir de la doctrine cyrenai'que traditionnelle, et que celle-ci est representee, de fagon consistante, dans la section generique de la doxographie de Diogene Laerce;16 (2) que par consequent la reference a la doctrine d'Epicure dans la presentation de la doctrine cyrenai'que (et inversement) est l'effet d'une construction doxographique, beaucoup plus que le 12 13 14

15 16

Au point qu'on a pu parler d'Epicure comme d'un 'hedoniste malgre lui' (M. Hossenfelder (1986)). La formule, a mon sens, indique moins une solution qu'elle ne nomme un probleme. Ciceron, de Finibus, 11.7.20 (= 183 G). Strabon, xvn. 3.22 ( = IVG, I G): (dans une liste des personalites illustres de Cyrene) 'et Anniceris, qui passe pour avoir corrige [6 SOKCOV iTravopScoaai] l'ecole Cyrenaique et avoir introduit a sa place l'annicerienne'. Sur la nuance de eTTavopSwacci et le dernier membre de phrase, cf. infra, n. 126 et 127. Doring (1988), pp. 52s. Je ne discuterai pas la question de savoir ce qui revient, dans cet etat ante-epicurien de la doctrine, a Aristippe l'Ancien et a Aristippe le Jeune. II me semble neanmoins raisonnable d'admettre, avec Giannantoni (cf. supra, n. 2), que la doctrine cyrenaique proprement dite est le fait d'Aristippe le Jeune (cf. aussi von Fritz (1934), col. 1827). Par ailleurs, le fait que le contenu des notices dans Diogene Laerce remonte a ce dernier n'empeche pas la presence dans le resume de termes hellenistiques (en particulier stoi'ciens), s'il est vrai que nous avons affaire a une construction doxographique (cf. infra, n. 17). C'est par exemple le cas de 5iao-Tpof|, D.L. 9 (cf. SVF 11 228ss). Pour oiKeioOcrSai (D.L. 6a) et d'autres termes, cf. Mannebach (1961), pp. 111—13.

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ANDRE LAKS

reflet direct du debat (qui dut en tout etat de cause voir lieu); 17 (3) enfin que le renouvellement annicerien dont parle Strabon a toutes les chances de s'enraciner non dans la polemique anti-epicurienne, mais plutot dans une reaction a Pheresie, interne a l'ecole cyrenaique, d'Hegesias. Cette derniere hypothese s'appuie sur les indications que nous livrent les deux sections specifiquement consacrees, chez Diogene Laerce, a Hegesias et a Anniceris. II LA COMPOSITION DE LA SECTION CYRENAiQUE CHEZ DIOGENE LAERCE

II sera ici utile de rappeler la structure d'ensemble de la section du livre 11 que Diogene Laerce consacre aux Cyrenai'ques. La vie d'Aristippe (65~85a) est presque exclusivement composee d'anecdotes illustrant le mode de vie du disciple de Socrate (66-83a). Elle se clot sur la definition de la fin (la seule phrase theorique de cet ensemble): 'il affirmait qu'est lafinle mouvement lisse qui parvient a la sensation'.18 La doctrine cyrenai'que, du moins pour ce qui est de sa partie ethique, a laquelle Diogene Laerce se limite,19 n'est developpee qu'en relation avec les disciples. Apres un paragraphe de transition (85b-86a) qui dessine l'arbre des successions,20 sont 17 18

19

20

J e reprends en cela l'hypothese formulee par Bollack (1975), pp. 147s, a la suite de Giusta (1962/63), pp. 121, 172, et (1964/67), 1, pp. 137s. TEAOS 8'&TT6<j>aiv£ TT)V AEiav KIVT|O"IV sis aiaSriaav ava6i5o|i£vr|v. L'emploi technique du terme TEAOS indique tres vraisemblablement qu'il s'agit d'une attribution retrospective, au pere fondateur, du principe fondamental (parler avec Giannantoni (1983/85), in, Note 18, p. 166, d"erreur ou de confusion' ne suffit sans doute pas). C'est ce que confirme le temoignage d'Eusebe quand il prete a Aristippe l'Ancien de n'avoir dit qu"en puissance' (6uvd|i£i) ce que son petit-fils devait efTectivement dire (cf. supra, n. 3). Dans la formule pretee a Aristippe l'Ancien, 'mouvement lisse' doit designer le plaisir, comme le montre D.L. 1. La precision eis aiaSi^aiv voucp yAvKU, vopcp TriKpov', eiTrcbv, 'ITETJ 6' onroua KCCI KEVOV') and Sextus ( = D K 68.B.9 'voucp' y d p (j>r|<Ti 'yAuKU, [KOU] vouco TTiKpov, vouco Oepuov, vouco yuxpov, vouco XPOI11» £T6 tl S £ cxTOjia Kai KSVOV') . I n line 2 of

Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities

77

The true sense ofnomoi in this fragment, as Westman (1955) saw, is suggested by the well known fragment DK B 9 of Empedocles about generation and destruction, also quoted by Plutarch in this same essay: When they [the elements?], mingled, come into the air in the form of a man, or of the kind of wild beasts, or of bushes, or of birds, then they say it was a birth; and when they are separated, then again they name baneful death. They are (?) right; I myself follow the convention too. (Plutarch,

Against Colotes xi. 1113.AB)8

Whatever the reading in the last line, where the MS text does not scan and editors commonly insert a negative, Empedocles' meaning is on the whole clear enough. There is no real birth, but only rearrangement of the elements in new patterns. But no harm will come from using the language of birth and death, so long as we realise what each of them really means: that is to say, how each of them is to be analysed. I think we can understand Democritus along similar lines, although the situation is more complicated in this case. The compound called honey is a mass of atoms and void; its components have no taste. The sensation of taste is an affect of the taster's sense organs produced by the shapes and distribution of the component atoms. By convention, we call honey sweet, but it is really of course just atoms and void. The convention does not consist in the creation of a the above quotation from Plutarch, Sandbach (1941) suggested that iriKpov should be read, for the MS auyxpiaiv: 'It is absurd to say,' wrote Sandbach, 'there is anything "conventional" about combination (of atoms, presumably) . . . Perhaps the error was due to a marginal note KOCTOC ovyKpiaiv (sc. sori XP°lWTOC uiyevT' eis cciOep' I(KCOVTCCI) (?)

f\ KOCTOC 8-npwv dypoTEpcov yivos f\ Konrd ©auvcov f)6 KOCT' oicovcov, TOTS UEV TO (Aeyoucn) ysv£cr6ai, eOTg 5' 6rrroKpiv6cb(Ti, TO 6' au 5v<j8aiuova TTOTUOV f) ? OEUIS ? KaAeouat, vouco 5' eirtyriui KCCI OCUTOS.

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DAVID FURLEY

name for something that is merely imagined: it consists in taking this name to be the name of some property of a collection of atoms - a property like shape, size, or weight. 'By convention there is colour [in the object] . . . ' 9 Neither Democritus nor Epicurus doubted that terms denoting sensible qualities have a use, and that whatever it may be that they denote can be identified and reidentified. We all know what we mean by black and white; we can in general agree with each other where to find in our shared visual field objects that produce the same appearances in each of us. Although this is true in general, at least of human beings, it is not always true: people in good health have different pathe from sick people, in circumstances that are otherwise the same. Animals may certainly be thought to e x p e r i e n c e d ^ that are different from those of humans. This is a principal reason why Democritus held that perceptible qualities are not elementary. But what the theory reported by Theophrastus clearly aims to explain is how it comes about that there is a regular and normal association between certain external objects and certain pathe. That the pathe of perception are determinate according to Democritus is explicitly testified by Theophrastus: And yet, even if all don't experience the sweet and the bitter from the same things, still the nature of the sweet and the bitter appear the same to all.

This even he himself would appear to attest. For how could what is bitter to us be

sweet or astringent to others, unless these [qualities] had some determinate nature? (Theophrastus de Sens. 70)10

Democritus claimed that the honey is not sweet: the sweetness is an epiphenomenon, which occurs in some way when it touches the sense organs. But the epiphenomenon in this case is rightly called 'sweetness', and it would be wrong and perverse to call it 'bitterness'. If we take Democritus' saying along these lines, we can understand why he offered the elaborate analysis of sensations reported by Theophrastus in On the senses. There is no point in analysing some9

10

M. Mignucci, in a written note to me, suggests that there is a difference between Empedocles and Democritus in the use of vouco. 'Birth' is used metaphorically according to Empedocles. Sweet is predicated truly of honey according to Democritus, but the use is conventional in the sense that 'sweet' has no denotation. KOUTOI 6i |if) KOU Sia TCOV auTcbv yiveTai TTOCCTI TO yAuxu KCCI TO mKpov, aAA' f\ ye 4>0<JIS TOO

TTiKpoO Koci TOO yAuxeos T) auTf) <j>aiv£Tai Traaiv. OTrep KOU OCUTOS av 86£ei6v STnuapTUpeTv. TTCOS yap dv TO TJIJITV mKpov aAAois r\v yAuKU KOCI orpuv6v, el \ir\ TIS r\v cbpta|i£vr| opi£ouai, TTATJV 6 |iev OOK orTTOorepcov TCOV aicr6r|Tcbv Tr\v (J>UCTIV, ArmoKptTos 5e iravTa TTOOTI THS aicr0f)CTecos TTOICOV.

TTEpi [xkv < ouv > papeos KOCI KOUOU KCCI 0aiv, aAAa TravTa Tr&8r| Tfjs aicj6f|avTaaiav... armsTov 8' cos OUK eicri uorei TO [xr\ TOUTOC TT&CTI <j>aivecr6ai TOIS £COOIS, dAV 6 f|nfv yAuKu, TOOT' aAAois iriKpov KOU eTepois 6£0 KOU dAAois SpijiO TOIS 6E OTpuvdv KOU Ta aAAa 6' cbaauTcos. 2TI 6' auTous |i€Tap6AAgiv TT\ Kpaaei KOTO TOC TTOOTI Kai Tas f|AiKias- ij) Kai <j>av6pov, cos T) 6id6£ais alTia Tf^s (J>avTaaias.

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DAVID FURLEY

It is absurd also to claim that the same thing appears to everyone perceiving the same things, and to question the truth of these things, having also said previously that things are unlike to unlike dispositions and again that one person attains the truth no more than another. You'd expect the better [to attain the truth] more than the worse, and the healthy more than the sick, [the former being] more in accord with nature. (69-70)13 But it is worth noting that in describing aistheta of which it is particularly true that they appear differently to different people he says firmly (for instance) that 'The sharp [taste] is, in shape, angular and twisted and small and delicate . . . The sweet is composed of round shapes that are not too small' (65). So far as I have noticed, there is no hint in de Sens, that these same shapes produce different pathe in different people. This is important. In so far as he accounts for the differences at all, he does so by means of the thesis that each perceptible compound contains a mixture of shapes. Of all the shapes none is unblended and unmixed with the rest, but in each of them there are many, and the same [taste?] has something of the smooth and rough and round and sharp and the rest. Whatever there is most of in it, that has most strength with regard to sensation and power. Furthermore, the kind of disposition that it enters makes no small difference. For that reason the same thing produces opposite affects and opposites produce the same affect sometimes. (67)14 The theory must involve the notion of the fitting of different shapes to different dispositions of the sense organs - a theory that is amply attested for Empedocles in the earlier sections of Theophrastus' de Sens. If the shapes that produce a sweet tastefitthe structure of the sense organ, the taste is sweet; but if those shapes do notfitand some others in the mixture do, then even if the former are preponderant the taste is different.15 13

14

OTOTTOV 5E Koci TO TTaaiv d£iouv TOO/TO <J>aiv£o6ai TCOV OCUTCOV aiadavouEvois, Kai TOOTCOV TT^V aAf)6eiav IXeyxsiv, Kai TCCC/TOC eipriKOTa TrpoTEpov TO TOIS dvouoicos SIOKEIUEVOIS dvouota <J>aiv6a6ai Kai TrdAiv TO urjOlv udAAov ETEpov ETEpou TuyxdvEiv Tfjs dAr|0Eias. etKos y a p TO (3EATIOV TOO x £ ip o v °S K a l T o uyiatvov TOO KauvovTOS" KOTO (|>UCTIV y a p lidAAov. diravTGov 6e TCOV axTiuaTCOv ou5ev dxepaiov eivai Kai duiyES TOIS dAAois, dAA' EV EKOCCTTCO TTOAAOC Eivai Kai TOV OCUTOV EXEIV Aeiou Kai Tpaxeos Kai TrepiEpoOs Kai 6£eos Kai TCOV AOITTCOV. oO 5' dv £vri TTAEICTTOV, TOOTO ndAiaTa gviaxOeiv irpos TE TTJV a!a0Tiaiv Kai T-nv Suvajjiv. ETI 8E EIS OTToiav i£iv dv EIQEAOTI, 5ia£pEiv [ y a p ] OUK oAiyov. Kai 5id TOOTO TO auTO TdvavTia Kai TdvavTia TO OOTO TTOOOS TTOIEIV EVIOTE.

15

In de Causis 11.2-3, Theophrastus complains that Democritus does not, as he should, explain the effects of the sense-organs on the nature of the sensation, and he takes it for granted that the same atomic configuration can produce different affects (TO yE TOO X U ^O^ crxfiiJia TOCUTO, Kai EV dAAcp EOIKEV OU TOUTO 6Ovaa0ai TravTaxoO TTOIEIV). This is, however,

Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities

81

If this is right, then Democritus is entitled to claim from the evidence of the senses, not that the perceived external object is sweet or red or violet-scented, but that it contains atoms of such shapes and dispositions as cause these appearances. He can claim that the senses allow inferences from the pathe to the atomic composition of external objects. It is indeed by inference from sense perception that we get some (not all) of the various theses of the atomic theory. So Galen reports with approval Democritus' famous retort of the senses, after the mind has pointed out that sensible qualities have no existence at the 'real' elementary level: 'Poor mind, do you take your convictions from us, then throw us down? That throw is your fall' (Galen, Med. Exp. 15.7 = Democritus B.125).16 It is time to return to Plutarch and Colotes, and consider the Epicurean Colotes5 charges against Democritus. The first objection he [Colotes] brings against Democritus is that when he says that every single thing is no more such than such, he has thrown our life into chaos. (1 IO8.F)17 It should be clear from our reading of Theophrastus that if Democritus did indeed say this, he meant that the ordinary objects of the sensible world [pragmata) do not in themselves have sensible qualities: they are no more hot than they are cold, no more black than they are white, and so on. They differ from each other in the shapes, sizes, and distribution of their component atoms, and these cause the appearance of different qualities. We know that the appearance may change according to the disposition of the perceiver, because different dispositions of the perceiver's soul register or respond to different atomic configurations. Plutarch continues the passage by claiming, wrongly, in my opinion, that Democritus cannot have held the view that nothing is more such than such, because he attacked Protagoras for asserting precisely this. Plutarch claims that Colotes simply misread someTheophrastus' own notion of how Democritus must explain conflicting sensations. In de Causis vi.7.2 he suggests that a mix of atomic shapes in an object must be the cause of its changing its flavour: the cause cannot be a change in the atomic shapes, hence it must be a resorting of the atoms of different shapes. These are Theophrastus' speculations. They seem to indicate that Democritus' text was itself unclear about these questions. 'TdAaiva (j>pf)v, Trap' fjuecov Aa|3o0cra T&S TTICTTEIS rmsas KcrrapaAAEis; Tncoua TOI TO

16

17>

EyKaA€T 8' OCUTCO irpcoTov, OTI TCOV Trpayu&Tcov EKCCOTOV eimbv ou uaAAov TOIOV

elvoa ovyKEXVKe TOV piov.

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DAVID FURLEY

thing that Democritus wrote: namely, that 'the den is no more than t h e mederC.

There is no reason to doubt that Democritus wrote this latter phrase, meaning that what really and fully is, namely the atom, is no more than what we call 'nothing', namely the void. The actual phrase quoted by Plutarch is not confirmed by any other source, but Galen (Hipp. Elem. 1,2 = DK 68.A.49) confirms that Democritus used the odd word den to refer to atoms, and meden to refer to void. But there is no reason to think that Colotes twisted this sentence into TCOV Trpayu&Tcov eKaaTov . . . ou uaAAov TOIOV f| TOIOV eivca, since Theophrastus shows that Democritus must have made some such statement. 18 The qualities that enable us to call a thing toion e toion do not belong to things in themselves, but grow from the interaction of the atoms composing things and the sense organs of the perceiver. Admittedly, there is some remaining obscurity about the status of those properties that do belong to compounds of atoms per se, namely shape, size, and weight. But for the rest of the range of qualities, ou mallon toion e toion is a pretty accurate statement of Democritus' view. But Plutarch's objection, that this makes Democritus' position the same as that of Protagoras, whom he attacked, is invalid. If Plato was interpreting Protagoras correctly in Theaetetus I5i.e— 152.a, then Protagoras inferred from the different perceptions of one and the same thing by two different people that the object is what both of them take it to be. The wind is both hot and cold, no more one than the other, according to Protagoras; according to Democritus, it is neither. Democritus would think that Protagoras was quite wrong about the nature of sensible qualities. But Plutarch now claims that the charge levelled by Colotes against Democritus actually applies to Epicurus: he too was committed to the view, ou mallon toion e toion, and so he also threw our lives into chaos, if Democritus did. There is, of course, no statement of Epicurus that says this directly; Plutarch infers it from Epicurus' notorious claim that all sensations are true, together with the admission that people may receive different sensations from the same thing. 18

There is confirmation that Democritus used the notion of ou uaAAov TOIOV f| TOIOV in fr. 8 of Theophrastus Phys. Opin. = DK 68.A.38; but there it refers to the shapes of atoms. See further De Lacy (1958b).

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If one of two persons says the wine is dry and the other says it is sweet, and neither is wrong in his sensation, how is the wine more dry than sweet? . . . If someone says that one and the same phainomenon is this to this person and that to the other, then he has unwittingly said that it is both. (1 iog.B-c) 19

This is a very genuine problem that Plutarch has raised, and it seems to me that the Epicureans were very hard pressed to find an adequate answer. Epicurus took over from Democritus the thesis that sensation is brought about by an encounter between eidola flowing from the surface of external objects and the organ of sense: External things would not imprint their own nature in respect of colour and shape ... so [well] as when certain 'prints' enter into us, from the external objects, similar in colour and shape, according to the appropriate size either into our sight or into our mind. (Ep.Hdt. 49)20 This text begins to show both the similarity between Democritus and Epicurus, and a difference between them. Both adopt the theory of eidola; but since Epicurus says that the tupoi (presumably another term for eidola) are 'similar in colour and shape' to the external objects, he is giving to external objects and to eidola at least one property denied them by Democritus, namely colour. He stays with Democritus, of course, in denying colour to atoms. Lucretius confirms that colour is a property of the external object itself (de Rerum Natura iv.72-89), and in the following lines he implies that the same is true of smell, the tangible quality of heat, and taste. We certainly see that [objects] not only from deep inside, as we said before, throw off and distribute many [bodies] but also often from their surfaces their colour itself, (iv.72-4)21 19

20

EI y a p 8uoTv AeyovTcov TOO JJEV auor-npov eivoa TOV oivov TOO SE yAi/Kuv p yeOSEToa TTJ orio"6f)cov KaTa TO EvapiaoTTov |jiEyE8os E!S TT^V oyiv f\ TT\V Sidvoiav. nam certe iacere ac largiri multa videmus, non solum ex alto penitusque, ut diximus ante verum de summis ipsum quoque saepe colorem.

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Furthermore, the reason why smell, smoke, heat and the like come streaming out of objects in shapeless clouds is that they originate in their inmost depths, (iv.90-2)22 From certain objects there also flows a perpetual stream of odour, as coolnessflowsfrom rivers, heat from the sun, and from the ocean waves a spray that eats away walls round the sea-shore. Sounds of every sort are surging constantly through the air. When we walk by the sea-shore, a salty tang of brine enters our mouth; when we watch a draught of wormwood being mixed in our presence, a bitter effluence touches it [sc. our mouth], (iv. 218-24)23 These texts are sufficient to show that the Epicureans parted company from Democritus in allowing that perceptible qualities are properties of external objects, not merely pathe of the senses. And this is plainly an important difference. But before we return to Plutarch and the challenge he posed, it may be worth digressing to note that Lucretius' language seems to suggest some hesitation with regard to at least one of the senses, the sense of taste, when he comes to give a fuller account of it later in bookiv: When the trickling particles of the juice are smooth, they affect the palate sweetly and sweetly tickle all the moist regions of the tongue in their circuitous flow. Others, in proportion as their shape is rougher, tend to prick and tear the organs of sense by their entry. The pleasure derived from the juice does not extend beyond the palate, (iv.622-7)24 This may well suggest that the sweetness or sourness is generated only in the palate. 22

praeterea omnis odor, fumus, vapor atque aliae res consimiles ideo diffusae (e) rebus abundant, ex alto quia dum veniunt extrinsecus ortae.

23

perpetuoque fluunt certis a b rebus odores; frigus ut a fluviis, calor a b sole, aestus a b undis aequoris exesor moerorum litora circum. nee variae cessant voces volitare per auras, denique in os salsi venit umor saepe saporis, cum mare versamur propter, dilutaque contra cum tuimur misceri absinthia, tangit amarum.

24

hoc ubi levia sunt manantis corpora suci, suaviter attingunt et suaviter omnia tractant umida linguai circum sudantia templa. at contra pungunt sensum lacerantque coorta, quanto quaeque magis sunt asperitate repleta. deinde voluptas est e suco fine palati.

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But not everyone or everything derives pleasure from the same substances, and that needs explanation. First, there are 'atoms mingled together in things in many ways' (semina multimodis in rebus mixta teneri, 644). This is confirmed by other passages of Lucretius (i.8i4ff, 895-6; 11.333-80). Second, there are differences in the atomic configurations of the sense organs (differre necessest I intervalla viasque, foramina quae perhibemus, I omnibus in membris et in ore ipsoque palato, 649-51). When something sweet to some is bitter to others, it must be because its smoothest particles palpably penetrate the palate of the former, whereas those to whom the same thing is bitter inside them are evidently invaded in the gullet by particles that are rough and jagged, (iv.658-62) 25

When someone has a fever, his body is upset, and the position of his component atoms are changed, and so different particles are now filtered along the channels in his body. What used to taste sweet now tastes bitter. The exact words used by Lucretius are interesting: It happens that the bodies that previously fitted his sense now do not fit, and others are better suited, which can penetrate and generate a bitter sense; for both kinds [of bodies] are mingled in the flavour of honey, as we have often made clear to you above, (iv.668-72)26 He has not actually said before that honey has both smooth and rough atoms, but only that things in general have a mixture of atoms in them. What is interesting is that the atoms generate [progignere) the taste in the sense organ. In itself, it would seem, the honey is neither sweet nor bitter, nor both. These passages about taste might well suggest that Epicureans agreed with Democritus about the ontological status of tastes. They suggest that, strictly speaking, honey is not sweet (in spite of the famous simile in which he compares his own poetry to honey on the lip of the cup of bitter medicine, 1.936-41). Sweetness is an adverbial property of the experience of tasting something, and it depends both 25

hoc ubi q u o d suave est aliis aliis fit a m a r u m , illi, cui suave est, levissima corpora debent

contractabiliter caulas intrare palati, at contra quibus est eadem res intus acerba, aspera nimirum penetrant hamataque fauces.

26

fit prius a d sensum (ut) q u a e corpora conveniebant n u n c non conveniant, et cetera sint magis apta, q u a e penetrata q u e u n t sensum progignere acerbum. u t r a q u e enim sunt in mellis commixta sapore; id quod i a m supera tibi saepe ostendimus ante.

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on the shape of the atoms composing the food or drink and on the state of the sense organs. Such was the conclusion of Giussani and Bailey in their notes on the passages.27 But in view of the earlier passage quoted above, where tastes are treated in exactly the same way as other sensible qualities, it seems more likely that Lucretius means that there is both sweetness (consisting of smooth particles) and bitterness (rough particles) in the honey. If honey were explained in a systematically different way from the other senses, one might expect some emphasis on that fact, especially in the programmatic lines iv. 218-24, quoted above. Lucretius goes on to talk about smells, and seems to be more confident about their ontology than he is about tastes. Taste is a matter of contact on particular occasions, and it cannot easily be given a durable identity, except as experienced. But smells are explained by Lucretius in much the same way as vision, with the difference that the emanation in the case of smell is said to come from deep inside the object, rather than from its surface (DRJV iv.694 ex alto ... ex re). Without explicitly making the point, Lucretius appears to make smells, like colours, properties of the object. The impact of a smell touches the nostrils (naris adiectus odoris I tangat, iv.693) • A 'flow of

smells' (fluctus odorum) come from objects. Bees are drawn by the smell of honey. A smell is said to be 'made of larger particles than sound' (iv.699), because it can't penetrate walls as sound can. On the other hand, whether a smell is attractive or unpleasant is explained as in the case of taste: it is a matter of the 'fit' between the particles constituting the smell and the structure of the sense organ (iv.677). Epicurus said much the same as Lucretius, in fewer words (Ep.Hdt. 53). 2 8

Plutarch presses on with his criticism in the next chapter (5). There is a well-known Epicurean theory, he says, of summetriai and harmoniai of the ducts associated with the sense organs, and there are polumixiai 27

28

I n the presentation I m a d e to the Symposium, I followed the line taken by Giussani (1896-8) a n d Bailey (1947). I have been persuaded b y David Sedley's comments o n that occasion to look at the whole m a t t e r again, a n d I have concluded t h a t Giussani and Bailey are probably wrong, a n d Lucretius does not intend to make a difference between taste a n d the other senses. Lucretius concludes this section with a thoroughly confusing passage (706-21). I t m a y possibly be out of place: L a c h m a n n (1860—6) bracketed it, Giussani (1896—8) moved it u p twenty lines, Bailey (1947) calls it a digression. T h e passage picks u p the idea of tastes a n d smells being good for one species a n d b a d for another, a n d applies it to visible forms a n d

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of the seeds dispersed in all the flavours and smells and colours; together, these account for the different appearance of things to different people. He challenges Colotes: 'Don't these theories compel objects in [your] view to be no more this than that?' He produces a more dangerous piece of evidence against the Epicurean theory in a later chapter. He first quotes from Epicurus' Symposium. Epicurus holds a dialogue with Polyaenus about the heating quality (to thermantikon) of wine (ch. 6, 1109.F ff), in which Epicurus concedes that there is a mixture oiphuseis in wine such that a certain amount of it may affect one person in one way and another in another. Some people, he continues, deceived by this, conclude that wine is universally cooling, others that it is universally heating. But that concession, Plutarch claims, should have made him grant that everything is no more this than that. Well, one who says that the majority have been deceived when they suppose that what is heating is heating and what is cooling is cooling has been deceived himself if he denies that 'everything is no more this than that' follows from what he has said. (11 IO.A-B) 29 Plutarch is wrong. It does not follow, because wine has different heating effects on some people from others, that wine does not have other properties that are intrinsic to it. But Plutarch finds better ammunition in chapter 7, in Epicurus' book Reply to Theophrastus, and it has to be quoted. Unfortunately it is not agreed among commentators where the quotation from Epicurus ends. This has to be discussed, so for convenience I print the agreed quotation with single quotes and the dubious part with double quotes. Now Epicurus himself, in the second book oi Reply to Theophrastus, says that colours are not inherent in the nature of bodies but are generated according to certain arrangements and position in relation to the sight; and with this statement he concedes that a body is no more uncoloured than coloured. And he has already written earlier on (and I quote): 'But also, quite apart from this section, I don't know how one should say that these things have colour when they are in the dark.'

29

colours. He produces the weird example of lions that are said to be turned offby the sight of roosters, because there are certain seeds in roosters that slash the pupils of lions when they penetrate them (Bailey quotes someone who tried to confirm this by experiment; but the lion ate the chicken). 6 Sf] Aeycov I^TiTrorrnaOai TOUS TTOAAOUS TO OepuaTvov OepiJiavTiKov f^ TO vyOxov yuKTixov UTToAau|3avovTas, si |ifi voui£oi TO *jjir| IJCXAAOV eivai TOTOV f\ TOIOV iKccorov' &KoAou6eTv ois 6ipr|K6v,

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"Yet often, when the surrounding air is of the same degree of darkness, some perceive a distinction of colour and others don't, because of weakness of sight; moreover, on entering a dark house we see no sight of colour, but after a short interval we do." So each of these bodies will be said not to have colour any more than it has. But if colour is relative, white will be relative, and dark-blue, and if these, then also sweet and bitter, so that in truth 'it no more is than it isn't' will be predicated in respect of every quality. For to those so affected it will be such, to those not so affected, not. (i i IO.C-D) 30 Plutarch concludes that by attacking Democritus for the thesis 'no more this than that' Colotes has shot himself in his own Epicurean foot. Westman31 argued that the sentence in double quotes belongs to Epicurus, and he is followed by Einarson and De Lacy. Westman's argument is that without the text within double quotes Plutarch has no basis for concluding that Epicurus is committed to 'no more this than that', and he could not understand why Plutarch should introduce the example of entering a dark room. We have confirmation that the Epicurean theory included the thesis that objects have no colour in the dark from Philodemus On Methods of Inference 25 and Aetius 1.15.9, but most of all from Lucretius DRN11.795-809. Lucretius' aim is to show that atoms have no colour; he does not directly discuss whether or not compound objects have colour, which is Plutarch's concern. But in passing I think he makes it clear what Plutarch's argument must be. Lucretius first outlines the argument: colours cannot exist without light; but atoms individually never emerge into the light; so there cannot be colours in atoms. Then he returns to the first premiss and produces arguments for it. Things change colour according to the 30 OOTOS y a p oOv 6 'EiTiKoupos ev TCO 8euT6pcp TCOV Trpos 0e6pacTTov OUK eivai Aeycov TCC Xpcbiiorra auiJiun TOIS acbpacnv, aAAa y6vvdcj8ai KCCTCC TTOIOCS TIVOCS TCC^EIS xai GECTEIS Trpos TT)V ovyiv, o u paXAov 4>r|ai Korrd TOUTOV TOV Aoyov a x p c o i i d n a T o v acona eivai f\ x p & p a £Xov. avcoTEpco 8E KOTOC M ^ I V TCCC/TOC yEypa£v 'dXXd Koct x ^ p f c TOUTOU TOO pepous OOK O ! 6 ' OTTGOS 8et TOC IV TCO CTKOTSI TOUT' OVTOC <j>fi|jiEv." ou liaAAov ouv EXEIV f\ \xr\ syew xP&Ma j^TidfjaeTai TCOVCTCOMOTCOVEKacrrov. £i 8E TO x p " ^ a TTpOS T l , KOCt TO XEUKOV E Q T a i TTpOS T l KOI TO KUOCVOUV, fit 8 E TOCUTa, KOI TO y X U K U KOI TO

TTiKpov. COOTE KOTOC TraoTjS TTOI6TT|TOS 6:XT|6COS TO [xi] ^aX^ov Eivai f\ \xf\ ETVCCI Korrr|yopETCT6aiTOIS y a p OUTGO 7T6CCTXOUCTIV l o r a i TOIOUTOV, OUK i a T a i 8E TOTS (if) Tra 31

Westman (1955) p p . 141-3-

Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities

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direction from which the light falls on them - for example, a dove's neck-feathers, or a peacock's tail. And since these colours come into being because of a certain blow of light, plainly we must hold that they cannot come to be without it. (11.808-09)32 The language suggests that the colour is created in the object by the 'blow of light'. It has already been explained that colour is generated from uncoloured atoms by the shape and arrangement of the atoms on the surface. The theory of light seems to be that it is itself an atomic compound which strikes compound bodies in such a way that a rearrangement takes place in their surface atoms. Nothing in the Lucretian passage shows that colour is generated as an interaction between the external object and the seeing eye. To return to Plutarch. What is said by Epicurus in the passage in single quotes is that bodies have no colour in the dark. The sentence in double quotes adds that in the same light conditions perception of colour differs. The object in a dark interior is seen as coloured by one person, uncoloured by another. It cannot be an effect of the light, since the light is the same. So the object itself, Plutarch concludes, must be no more uncoloured than it is coloured: the perception of colour must be in the mind or sense-organ of the beholder. This would be a severe blow to Epicurean theory, if that conclusion could be sustained. Colour is the proper object of vision. That is made clear in the very interesting papyrus fragment by an anonymous Epicurean, brought to our attention by Long and Sedley: We hold that vision perceives visibles and touch tangibles, that the one is of colour, the other of body, and that the one never interferes with the other's sphere of discrimination ... If, then, visible shape is nothing but the external positioning of the colours, and visible size is nothing but the positioning of the majority of the colours in relation to what lies outside, it is perhaps possible for that whose function it is to register colours themselves to perceive the external positioning of the colours. (PHerc 19/ 698 = Long & Sedley 16c, their translation)33 32 33

qui quoniam quodam gignuntur luminis ictu, scire licet, sine eo fieri non posse putandum est. TT)V \xk[v] y[6c]p [6]vfiv 6pccT& KOTa[A]a|i|3|a]v6iv fjyoOiaeSa, TTJV 8E f]v dorra, KCC[I] TT|V nsv xp^MocTolils, TT)V 51 (TCOMCXTOS, Koci [T]T)V Prepay TOO TT\S trkpas [xp]i|ja[Tos] |ir|8£v Tr[oA]uTrpayM[o]veTv- . . . [et]-TT6p oOv oO0ev §Tep6[v] icrri TO axfj^a TO 6pa[Tdv] f| T « V Xpco|j&Tco[v] ^l [£5GO]TOTCO 06CTIS, oG8e TO MJsJyeOos TO opaTov f| TW[V] TrAeiovcov XP°°lionxo[v] f] KOTOC TO §£[co] 06or[is, TCJJGOS SUVCCTOV TT)V CC[0T]CC>V xpcd\xcrTG3V OUCTOCV [&]VTI-

Ar|TmKf)v [TT)V] Ibarra™ Oiaiv TQ[V] XP 0 0 ^ 0 7 1 0 ^ KOTaXa|j[pd]v6iv.

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If, then, Plutarch could show that colour is not a real property of the object of vision, but an interactive experience in the mind or sense-organ of the beholder, he would have gone a long way towards making his case, and saddling the Epicureans with the fatal proposition, ou mallon toion e toion. His case would then be the following: Epicurus concedes that objects have no visible colour in the dark; but some people see colours in bad light, when others do not; hence colours must be nothing but subjective experiences. But as a matter of fact, Epicurus would not need to concede this conclusion: weak vision can account for failure to see objectively existing colour, just as poor hearing can account for failure to hear real noises. Epicurus could defend himself against Plutarch's charge on these lines: in total darkness there is no colour; a little light generates some colour in the illuminated objects by its effect on their surfaces, but this is sometimes not perceived by those with weak vision, or perceived only gradually as their eyes adjust to the poor light. It appears, then, that Epicurean theory gave to the sensible properties corresponding to each of the senses the status of real properties of objects in the external world. And they claimed that all sense impressions are aletheis. But it is notorious that objects appear differently to different people or animals, even without special conditions such as the darkness postulated in the passage just considered. So the problem must be faced: do objects in the external world have contradictory properties simultaneously? Or, to phrase the question as Plutarch does, was Epicurus committed, as Democritus was, to conceding that the object is ou mallon toion e toion? Three methods of saving Epicurus have commonly been tried. The first is to read the word alethes as meaning 'real' rather than 'true'. The claim that all sense impressions are aletheis then has the force of denying that they can be imaginary: they are events that happen in fact. This reading gets its main support from passages like the following Epicurean summary by Diogenes Laertius: Our seeing and hearing are facts, just as having a pain is ... The figments of madmen and dreaming are true. For they cause movement, whereas the non-existent does not move anything, (x.32, trans. Long & Sedley)34 34

0eaTT|K6 S E T O TE 6 p a v fjiaocs KOCI OKOVEIV w o r r E p T O d A y e l v . . . T & TE TGOV JJOUVOHEVGOV <j>avTdCTpocTa KCCI (TOC) KOTT' o v a p a A r | 8 f i , KIVE! y a p - T O 8 E \xr\ 6 v o u KIVET.

Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities

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Several moderns have adopted this interpretation. 35 But this interpretation takes Epicurus out of the main stream of the epistemological debate of his period, and is inconsistent with the sense given to his theory by his supporters and opponents in antiquity. He was generally taken to be asserting that sense impressions report something true - i.e. some true propositions about the external world.36 There are still (at least) two lines of interpretation designed to rescue Epicurus from an apparently impossible position. One is to suppose that the aistheta are not (or not in all cases) the external objects themselves, but the eidola that flow from external objects to the sense organs and cause sense impressions.37 The main support for this is Sextus Empiricus [Math, vii.206-10). He explains, on behalf of Epicurus, that although there is a colour that belongs to the solid body itself, there is also a colour that is 'outside the solid body and adjacent to it'. 38 The large square tower in the distance appears small and round because the eidola have been changed by travelling through the intermediate space. And it is the peculiar function of sensation to grasp only what is present to it and moves it, such as colour, but not to distinguish that the object here is one thing and the object there another. Hence for this reason all sense impressions are true. [Math, vii.210)39 The outstanding difficulty in this interpretation seems to be that it makes it impossible that we should have any access to the sensible properties of external objects themselves without inference, except in the case of touch and taste. In these cases, there is no opportunity for eidola to be altered: they must preserve the features of the object itself. But in all cases of sight, hearing, and smell, we would have to make an inference from what we perceive - the eidola - to the object 35 36 37

38

Myself w h e n y o u n g e r (Furley, 1971). Also R i s t (1972). See Striker (1977) a n d T a y l o r (1980) for a r g u m e n t s t o this effect. Since writing a n d revising this p a p e r I h a v e r e a d S t e p h e n Everson's defence of the thesis t h a t t h e objects of p e r c e p t i o n i n E p i c u r e a n t h e o r y a r e EiScoAoc (Everson 1990). Sometimes T a y l o r (1980) a n d L o n g & Sedley (1987) seem to take this view. I still think the thesis is refuted b y the objection set o u t below. TOO 8E xpwuocTos TO UEV EOTIV E*TT' OCOTOO TOO aTEpEuviou, KaOairgp e m TCOV aOveyyi/s KOCI EK [TOO] lAETpiOU 6iaOTf||JO:TOS (3AETTOUEVG0V, TO 8 ' EKTOS TOO CTTEpEUVlOV K&V TOIS i ^ E ^ S TOTTO1S UTTOKeifJEVOV.

39

aia6f|CT6cos 5E TSIOV uirnpxE ( T O ) TOO TrapovTos |i6vov Kcci KIVOOVTOS CCUTTJV &VTIAOCU|3&VECT8O:I, olov xpcbuorros, ouxi 8E TO SiaKpivEiv OTI aXXo UEV EOTI TO EVOOCSE OCAAO 5E TO £V©&5E C/TTOKEIUEVOV. SioiTEp a ! UEV avTaaiai 6 i d TOCOTOC T r a a a i EICTIV *1 insciis

nobis oriuntur ( I I . I . I ) ; and it extends to the end of chapter 4. The question seems a simple one: does anger begin with a judgment (i.e. a rational, and therefore controllable decision) or with mere impulse (horme, for which Seneca's Latin term is the familiar impetus)? What makes the question more difficult is the explication of it introduced by id est: I take it that the arrangement of what follows is chiastic, with sua spontefleshingout mere impulse and the rest of 39

40

41

I n 1.17.2-3 even reason is externalized in this way: nil aliis instrumentis opus est, satis nos instruxit ratione natura. hoc dedit telum,firmum perpetuum obsequens, nee anceps nee quod in dominum remitti posset, non ad providendum tantum, sed ad res gerendas satis est per se ipsa ratio . . . quid quod actiones quoque, in quibus solis opera iracundiae videtur necessaria, multoper se ratiofortior est? nam cum iudicavit aliquidfaciendum, in eo perseverat. Consider too the stance Seneca takes in Ep. Mor. 113 o n the early Stoic thesis that the virtues are animals. Note too how Galen tries to get dualistic conclusions out of the r u n n e r example used by Chrysippus: PHP iv.2.28-38 (pp. 372-375 K ) also iv.5.12 (p. 394 K ) a n d see D e Lacy's commentary on p . 643 of his edition. If even Chrysippus c a n be smeared with the t a r of dualism because of his use of a vivid illustrative image, how much easier is it to treat Seneca this way. This supplement, which clearly makes a major difference to the rest of the discussion, seems inevitable in view of the a r g u m e n t in the rest of 11.1-4. But Holler (1934) p . 16 n. 40 prefers to delete sua a n d avoid the chiasmus.

Seneca and psychological dualism

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the sentence giving further description of mental events which occur by rational decision. If this is so, then the distinguishing mark of merely impulsive mental events is their causal autonomy; they happen 'of themselves'; and the mark of 'decisions' is the fact that they happen 'in the manner of most mental events which occur non insciis nobis\ accompanied by 'our' awareness. The 'F must be reason, which is at the core of personal identity for any Stoic. We do not, then, have a tidily exclusive set of properties to describe the main contrast between impulsive and decided action. The most I would want to conclude from this introductory sentence is this: to preserve consistency with the general thrust of book 1, Seneca should clearly opt for the second choice; the spontaneous and possibly unselfconscious character of impulsive mental events runs counter to the whole Stoic account of anger in book 1. In 11.1.3 Seneca moves on to a statement of the uncontroversial: the first stimulus of anger is a perception of unfairness, a presentation {species) oiiniuria. Hence the incipiat of I I . I . I is not referring to the first stimulus, but to the first decisive internal component of the complex event known as anger. The contrast of impulsive and decided action is redescribed again: does anger follow immediately on the presentation once it is received, without the consent of the mind (non accedente animo), or is it set in motion by the mind's assent, i.e. is it rational^ Seneca follows the Stoic view (nobis placet: 11.1.4), that anger does not 'dare' to do anything on its own but needs the approval of the animus*2 The reasons he gives for accepting the orthodox view are interesting - and it is important to see that at this point Seneca is giving reasons for staying with the orthodox view, not simply stating that view. There is, in Seneca's opinion, an impulse which is set going without our voluntas, but it is not able to do the kind of processing and quasi-reasoning which is characteristic of a genuine anger-response: for in anger we receive the presentation that we 42

It seems that Mam must take ira as its antecedent, rather than species; so once again we may note the reification of a mental state. Contrast the comment of Holler (1934) pp. 21-2; for

him, this treatment of anger is ieine der wenigen Stellen in de ira, aus denen klar hervorgeht, dafi Seneca ein besonderes thumoeides . . . neben der animus . . . annimmt\ This, he says, is something new: 'halb altstoisch, halb peripatetisch-akademisch.'1 And he asks, 'Sollte diese Synthese Senecas eigenes Werk sein? Oder ist sie die unbekannte mittelstoische aus dem Suntagma peri orges des

PoseidoniosV Once one acknowledges the importance of Seneca's use of literary techniques, this sort of fancy becomes impossible. Time and again Holler loses his grip on good judgment because of his simplistically doxographical pursuit of Posidonian phantoms.

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have been treated unfairly and then long for vengeance and then link together the two views: that we ought not to have been harmed and that we ought to fight back. This is a complicated impulse indeed, whereas the other sort, the sort which can occur without our voluntas, is simple.43 The complexity of cognitive structures which the anger-response requires, including understanding, resentment, adverse moral judgment, revenge, simply cannot occur without the assent of the mind to the experiences and thoughts by which it is affected. The contrast is pursued in the next section (11.2). After clarifying what is at stake in this theoretical debate, namely that if anger can occur without our 'will' it will be immune to rational control (i.e. will be irrational^, Seneca gives a wealth of examples of each kind of mental event. The general principle at issue is clearly stated: omnes enim motus qui non voluntate nostrajiunt invicti et inevitabiles sunt.^ He will

allow that there are reactions which are not voluntary, but not that any such reaction could count as genuine anger. To do otherwise would conflict with the stance taken by the early Stoics and reaffirmed in book 1. These 'inevitable' reactions are interesting. Shivering when splashed with cold water and a creepy feeling when touching certain objects seem to me to be strictly bodily reactions. But the bristling of our hair when frightened by bad news and blushing at improper language - these reactions clearly involve considerable cognitive and social sophistication. Feeling dizzy when looking down from a height seems to fall between the two extremes. A physiological fear reaction to hearing (and understanding) bad news and blushing seem to be rational phenomena; recall Mark Twain's observation that man is the only animal which blushes, or needs to. 45 Clearly Seneca's criterion for 'rationality' z in the reaction to potentially passionate stimuli is not that reconstructed for the earlier Stoics, i.e. expressibility in or reliance on lekta (rationality 3 ). 46 His 43

44

45

46

T h e simple impetus is n o t impulse proper; note that in 11.3.4 impetus without qualification is used of a reaction which is always accompanied by assent. This reflects early Stoic use of the term. This is compatible with t h e view attributed to Zeno in 1.16.7, that even a sage will have some faint traces of passions - these being inevitable a n d i m m u n e to t h e perfect rational control of a sage - b u t no passions. These examples from de Ira 11 a r e worth c o m p a r i n g to those mentioned at Ep.Mor. 57.4; even the sage has certain reactions in his soul which a r e n o t pathe: non est hoc timor, sed naturalis adfectio inexpugnabilis rationi. Cf. de Ira 1.16.7. In wood (1985) p p . 66 ff.

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own criterion is much narrower and, to our surprise, leaves many clearly cognitive and verbally expressible phenomena on the other side of the line, as irrational or pre-rational reactions. For Seneca the criterion appears to be susceptibility to change by a conscious rational decision. And one might reasonably conclude that Seneca thinks that the complexity he is describing here gives a better foothold for conscious control than does mere expressibility in lekta. And conscious control is evidently quite important to Seneca. It follows that 'being in our power' is used in a different sense from what we are used to in earlier Stoic discussions. Quorum quia nihil in nostrapotestate est, nulla quominusfiant ratiopersuadet (11.2.1). W h e n a n early Stoic talks of things being ephy hemin he does not have such a narrow notion in mind. 47 There is no reason to believe that orthodox Stoics ever propounded the sort of distinction Seneca is outlining here between two kinds of impulse (simple and complex). 48 Of course, they may have done so, or some of them may have at some time; but the relatively tidy reconstruction which makes the most of our scattered sources does not suggest it. Hence my suggestion here is that Seneca himself is offering the distinction in an attempt to justify his retention of the essential element of the early Stoic analysis of anger, i.e. the claim that the passion is rational!. But does this innovation commit Seneca to any sort of psychological dualism? If we look closely at what Seneca says in these chapters, 47 48

Inwood (1985) p p . 8 9 - 9 1 , Appendix 4; Sorabji (1980) p p . 86, 245, 252. However, the idea of there being a n impulse before assent, the assent being a confirmation for the preliminary impulse, does occur in two places in the Latin tradition: Cicero de Fato 40 and Ep.Mor. 113. I n the de Fato the theory of an adpetitus preceding assent is attributed to anonymous philosophers, neither Stoics n o r Antiochean veteres, in the context of a polemic about choice a n d necessity. I n Ep.Mor. 113 Seneca is discussing the Stoic thesis that the virtues are animals, expounding arguments pro a n d con, b u t essentially dismissing the idea as ridiculous. I n 113.18, part of a n a r g u m e n t against the thesis, he presents a n analysis of rational action involving impulse preceding assent a n d confirmed b y it - t h e point being that any rational animal must be capable of this sort of action a n d that the virtues are not. Earlier in t h e letter (113.2) Seneca uses the inapplicability of action to the virtues for t h e same purpose. Here Seneca accepts a n analysis of action not attested for the earlier Stoics in order to refute a n early Stoic theory - a n i m p o r t a n t indication of his independence of mind. A n d yet the general result of his theory is still very m u c h in line with Stoic doctrine. W h e n we shift o u r minds to the de Ira, it is clear that the theory of Ep.Mor. 113.18 is compatible with it, though the de Ira text is much less clear-cut and neat. It is h a r d to tell whether the de Fato text presents the same theory, or whether it is meant to present a theory at all. T h e r e may be some hint of the origin of Seneca's theory of impulse before assent in Cicero's text, but I d o u b t it; certainly nothing in Cicero suggests that we tie it to Posidonius or to a n y form of psychological dualism. For Adversus Colotem 1122D-C, see Inwood (1985) p p . 8 7 - 8 and above n. 29.

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we do not find him indirectly positing a distinct and non-rational part of the soul. The soul he describes is unitary; the complexity which Seneca introduces centres not on parts or powers, but rather on a temporally dynamic process. Chrysippus (SFFm.462) described a passion by means of a comparison with the body in motion, so over-committed to its trajectory by its own inertia that it cannot regain self-control and balance; and there are other hints in early Stoicism of what we might call psychological inertia, all readily explicable within the framework of monistic psychology. 49 In book 1 Seneca accepted that comparison and made it his own. In book 11 Seneca goes beyond the Chrysippean theory, but he does so by the enrichment of this essentially Chrysippean insight and by a reasonable reappraisal of the concept of assent. Assent now involves conscious rational control: implicit assent is not good enough for moral improvement - it is probably significant that Seneca shows little interest in the problem of determinism and responsibility which provides the most congenial focus for implicit assent in earlier Stoicism. And the idea of a preliminary, almost mechanical response which is unstoppable and so not subject to the strict moral appraisal which attaches to assented actions grows smoothly out of the idea of psychological inertia already found in early Stoicism. The criterion which Seneca uses to draw a distinction between a passion and a non-passion is rationality in a new sense, not rationality!, but voluntariness in his own sense. What he asks is: can this mental event be stopped or altered by our rational powers if we consciously suspend the process and apply critical scrutiny to the presentation which sets it in motion? In his view, anything not subject to this procedure is in an importantly different moral category. Thus in 11.2.2 he says that the 'voluntary' vices of the soul are those which can be eliminated by the application of moral precepts. Those which come with the human condition and which no one can avoid are not subject to any conscious control and so are, in the relevant sense, involuntary. 50 Involuntary vices, though they are not discussed here, would seem to be less grave and certainly less amenable to immediate action by the agent. Character flaws which do not yield to the assertion of will would, on this theory, be exempt from a significant kind of moral blame. 49 50

See Inwood (1985) p p . 146 ff. on the 'fresh opinion' a n d the fading of passion with time. This latter class also afflicts the sage; see de Ira 1.16.7, a n d discussion above.

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That is why the most important thing to Seneca here is not what I think Chrysippus would have called the mere rationalityr of the presentation and our response to it, but whether it is consciously controllable. Hence the primus ictus animi51 which affects us after we get an opinionem iniuriae can be put in the class of involuntary things, even if it is only possible through what I would have to describe as rational mental processes, since they require lekta. The linkage between rationality3 and rationality! is being weakened, but the linkage between rationality r and morally significant actions is not.52 For the psychology of action the most important non-passions in 11.2 are the preliminary passions, the emotional responses which if left unchecked will actually lead to a full blown passion. But from our point of view the most interesting application of this distinction comes in what follows (11.2.3-6). Here Seneca exempts our emotional responses (for so they must be called) to literary and dramatic experience from voluntariness and so from moral judgment, apparently (and justifiably) on the grounds that the artificiality of the experience causes us to suspend our critical faculties. If we read about moving historical events or see them on the stage, or if the musical accompaniment stirs passions in our souls, or even if a painting with grim subject matter upsets us, still our reactions are not judged in the way that reactions to events in real life are judged. This sort of detachment is, it seems to Seneca, what makes possible that imaginative sympathy with the feelings of portrayed characters which is such an important part of artistic experience (11.2.5). In his view these emotional reactions are no more passions than is the emotion of the actor in expressing himself or the frisson of fear which a reader feels in reading of the impending Hannibalic attack. From a moral point of view they have more in common with shivers and involuntary blushes. quae non sunt irae, non magis quam tristitia est quae ad conspectum mimici naufragii contrahit frontem, non magis quam timor qui Hannibale post Cannas moenia circumsidente lectorum percurrit animos, sed omnia ista motus sunt animorum moveri nolentium, nee adfectus sed principia proludentia adfectibus. sic enim militaris viri in media pace iam togati 51 52

By this point Seneca is becoming reluctant to describe this non-rational emotional response as a n impulse. By 11.3.4 he will have a b a n d o n e d that description. Similarly the reactions of the sage described in de Ira 1.16.7 seem to involve rational 3 mental states b u t not rational , assent. This suggests that the doctrine in both books is meant to be the same a n d that its orthodoxy focusses on the connection between rationality, a n d actions or passions, rather t h a n on the connection between rationality 3 a n d rationality,.

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aures tuba suscitat equosque castrenses erigit crepitus armorum. Alexandrum aiunt Xenophanto canente manum ad arma misisse (11. 2.5-6). Clearly the theory of aesthetic emotional response which Seneca is invoking here is of considerable interest and might bear comparison with Aristotelian views on tragedy (especially Poetics i455a3O-~4) and with Horace's claims in the Ars Poetica (101-5). But what is curious and crucial for us is the originality of Seneca's psychological position. He has grouped together a striking range of phenomena under one description: what they all have in common and what justifies grouping them together53 is that they do not involve what Seneca would consider to be voluntary commitment: they are not the sort of emotional responses which it is reasonable to expect will be brought before the court of reason for approval or rejection.54 The range of these phenomena is remarkable: mere bodily shivers, engaging only the body or the vegetative level of the soul; unavoidable responses to sudden bad news or improper behaviour; vertigo; the emotional response one tends to feel in performing or viewing drama, or in reading history or fiction, or in viewing powerful graphic art, or in our emotional responses to music and sound effects; he is even willing to include the involuntary response to martial stimuli of soldiers, even in peacetime. These phenomena are all 'involuntary' in a reasonable sense of the word. But it is striking to find a Stoic willing to take them out of the ambit of the passions. At least some of these phenomena express character very clearly; and as expressions of character they are highly relevant to passions and to the moral evaluation of that character. In earlier Stoicism as normally understood we would not 53

54

N o t all of these should be called preliminary passions, since so m a n y of these responses a r e not exempted o n the grounds that they are too early in their development to merit description as passions; many are privileged by their context a n d would never develop into passions. Some might well be preliminaries to passions, others are merely analogues to them, a n d others are merely bodily. See Holler (1934) p p . 18-19 f ° r m s summary of what these phenomena have in common. H e seems to find their grouping less remarkable than I do. W h a t they have in common, according to Holler, is (1) that even the sage is exposed to them, (2) that they are stimulated directly by the phantasia, (3) that they are passive not active, a n d (4) that they are only treatable by habituation and, in short, belong to the irrational part of man. His fourth point is the most problematic. For habituation will have little or no effect on the strictly bodily responses. Moreover, there is no attribution of these phenomena by Seneca to a n irrational part of man; that is a contribution from Holler's own theory. N o r does Holler distinguish here between the irrational body a n d the irrational part of the soul, a fuzziness which helps him in his justification of Seneca's grouping of non-rational responses.

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find all these reactions grouped with morally irrelevant bodily shivers; there, the criterion of moral relevance lies in the relation of action and thought to character. Moreover, in early Stoicism we find no insistence that the assent given to a stimulus must be voluntary in our and Seneca's sense - that is, a consciously chosen response55 to a stimulus. For earlier Stoics it is enough if it is a response to a rational 3 stimulus in a rational animal. 56 In 11.3 the demarcation between passion and action is revisited: the stimuli which do not entail a passion are described as happening fortuito, i.e. non-voluntarily. When subject to these, the soul does not act - and that is what is required for a passion to occur. The emotional response which no one can help is afortuitus motus, and simply having that is not very important. What matters morally is yielding to that and confirming it by a voluntary judgment and assent. Again, the examples of involuntary responses are strikingly different from what one would expect of the old Stoa: paleness, tears, sexual arousal, deep sighs, excited gaze (11.3.2), involuntary manifestations of fear or nerves even in a brave soldier, general or accomplished orator (11.3.3). Some of these Seneca is surely right to describe as purely bodily, and so even an early Stoic would be happy dismissing them as non-passionate. But others strike us too much as character-related and cognitively significant to write off as merely bodily. Yet that is just what Seneca does in 11.3.2: fallitur nee intellegit corporis hos esse pulsus.57

Seneca's position is that anger is different from all of these because it is a deliberate acceptance and confirmation of a starting point which is of this character; it is not just a response (moveri) but an excessive one, a runaway response (excurrere) - with this Seneca is once again invoking the Chrysippean idea of'psychological inertia'. That is because anger is a genuine impetus (Jiorme) and so is dependent on assent - as the first or primitive emotional/bodily response (now called an agitatio, not an impulse) is not. And since it needs assent, it must come under conscious mental control (11.3.4). For the soul would be aware of the sort of activity needed for anger: the sort of quasi-inference we met above. Here Seneca is integrating his new criterion of conscious voluntariness with the earlier Stoic idea of assent. At 11.3.4-5 anger is presented as a response of the reason to 55 56

T h o u g h we start to see this in the phrase tes sunkatatheseos kath' hormen ouses, which occurs in some of our sources for early Stoicism (see I n w o o d (1985) A p p e n d i x 4 ) . 57 I n w o o d (1985) ch. 3. Cf. Ep.Mor. 71.29.

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the soul's prior response to a stimulus, and that prior response is no more anger than the stimulus itself [species) is:58 ira non moveri tantum debet sed excurrere; est enim impetus; numquam autem impetus sine adsensu mentis est, neque enim fieri potest ut de ultione et poena agatur animo nesciente. putavit se aliquis laesum, voluit ulcisci, dissuadente aliqua causa statim resedit: hanc iram non voco, motum animi rationi parentem: ilia est ira quae rationem transiliit, quae secum rapit. ergo prima ilia agitatio animi quam species iniuriae incussit non magis ira est quam ipsa iniuriae species; ille sequens impetus, qui speciem iniuriae non tantum accepit sed adprobavit, ira est, concitatio animi ad ultionem voluntate et iudicio pergentis. numquam dubium est quin timor fugam habeat, ira impetum;59 vide ergo an putes aliquid sine adsensu mentis aut peti posse aut caveri. Anger occurs by assent, by which Seneca means a consciously voluntary concession to a pre-existing emotional or at any rate non-responsible reaction. In ii.4 Seneca summarizes his causal account of anger, and distinguishes three distinct motus or psychological reactions. First is the primus motus non voluntarius, the proto-passion which Seneca has been carefully isolating. Second is the conscious judgment that one ought to act, which he calls assent. It is cast in Stoic form as a hormetic judgment (the alter motus) mentioned in 11.4.1). The uncontrolled form of this (tertius motus is the passion of anger. This passage also gives a justification for regarding the primus motus as non-rational and involuntary, a justification which can be put into the form of an inference. (1) The first response, Seneca says, cannot be changed by judgment. (2) But what is produced by judgment can be cured by it (11.4.1—2): tertius motus est iam impotens, qui non si oportet ulcisci vult sed utique, qui rationem evicit. primum ilium animi ictum effugere ratione non possumus, sicut ne ilia quidem quae diximus accidere corporibus, ne nos oscitatio aliena sollicitet, ne oculi ad intentationem subitam digitorum comprimantur: ista non potest ratio vincere, consuetudo fortasse et adsidua observatio extenuat. alter ille motus qui iudicio nascitur iudicio tollitur. 58

59

See above on the idea of a n impulse before assent, which is confirmed or rejected by it. While Seneca has no hesitation about calling this preliminary response an impetus in Ep. Mor. 113, in this text he shows a more proper a n d orthodox caution: he at first calls this response an impulse, a n d then withdraws the label in favour of something quite vague. I n de Fato 40 the impulse before assent is called a n appetitus. At this point impetum is not a translation of 6puf| b u t means 'attack' (compare/ttgam above); I thank D. Konstan for this observation.

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(3) Therefore the first response must be classified as non-rational. And this will hold good just as long as Seneca maintains (1), i.e. that the emotional responses put into the class of simplex impetus or primus motus are totally immune to change by rational judgment, and so resemble bodily events more closely than they do rational responses. And it seems that Seneca will do that just as long as he maintains that 'will' rather than expressibility in lekta is the crucial mark of rationality. This is the most spare and clear elaboration of the theory Seneca has been discussing. The three motus are distinct: the relationship between the first and third cannot entail dualism because reason has nothing at all to do with the first. And while the third does oppose reason [rationem evicit), it is itself a product of judgment and the reason it defeats is not the agent's own, but the right reason which is abandoned by anyone who yields to a passion (i.e. it is rational but irrational 2 ). There is novelty in Seneca's theory. But as far as I can see there is nothing which commits him to psychological dualism or which need owe anything to Platonic or Posidonian influence. The goal of the discussion is the maintenance of Stoic theses in ethics, and the changes have considerable independent interest and merit. We might ourselves want to pursue Seneca's obvious interest in widening the class of emotional experience which is exempt from the strictest moral relevance; that is something anyone concerned about the moralistic constraints of earlier Stoicism would want to do. We may also want to consider the merits of his decision to alter the concept of assent; he does so by linking it to his own notion of voluntas, which is a fruitful and original contribution to the development of the Stoic tradition. 60 But this is not the place for a full consideration of Seneca's contributions. What we have to consider in closing is one last doubt: is there not one respect in which we might detect the cloven hoof of eclecticism? If one thing, reason, is in a position to sit in judgment on something else, which has a kind of life of its own in the soul, do we not find ourselves on the doorstep of dualism? 60

See Kahn (1988), esp. 251-5 on Epictetus and Seneca. Kahn offers a larger view of the evolution of the notion of'will' than I could hope to do, and he puts particular stress on the importance of the shift from early to late Stoicism (typified by Epictetus and Seneca). But he does not provide an account of the philosophical motivations Seneca may have had for the shift towards 'the intense preoccupation with the inner life' (p. 253); this description is,

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The answer I give is obviously no, and for familiar reasons. The tendency to speak of reason as distinct from what it is judging is part of the literary apparatus Seneca uses throughout: he is reifying the psychological forces which are the building blocks of his theory. He is no more committed to dualism by this device here than he is anywhere else. The temporally dynamic process which Seneca invokes owes much to Chrysippus' comparison with the runner, which is used effectively in the orthodox theory. When appraising Seneca's orthodoxy, we should pause to reflect that one of the implications of Seneca's runner example - as an illustration - is, as Galen points out with some satisfaction,61 that there is a difference between the self which tries to check the inertial drift of the bodily movement and the body itself; it suggests a distinction between reason and the rest of the soul; indeed, Galen insists that the example proves that Chrysippus is committed to accepting not just a separate, but even an irrational part of the soul. One suggestion which I make is that part of Seneca's innovation is rooted in Chrysippean ideas of psychological inertia, ideas which Chrysippus would have wanted to claim were compatible with his fully rationalistic monism. Seneca, I think, develops some of these ideas in his own way, and certainly drops the commitment to a fully rationalistic account of such experiences. But he does not thereby drop his commitment to monism. What follows for Seneca is that his theory is no more dualistic than Chrysippus'.62 If, as is so often alleged, we are on the doorstep of dualism with Seneca, then we were already there with Chrysippus. It is quite possible that we should be re-examining the early Stoic theory for its adequacy; it may, as Galen alleged, contain internal inconsistencies which undermine its integrity (though I personally

61 62

I think, meant to refer to what I see as Seneca's interest in consciously controllable assent and his reduced interest in overall character. See above n. 40. T h e same might be said about the use of medical parallels in de Ira m. 10; for these are well documented in the early Stoa, a n d it is h a r d to see that Seneca's use of them is unorthodox. Holler, however (1934) p p . 23-4, takes the language of 111.10, with its emphatic use of personification and reification, as being paradigmatically dualistic, so m u c h so that he uses it to cast d o u b t on the monistic character of 1.8, with its clear enunciation of monism (1.8.3, see above). As usual, the main effect of Holler's technique is twofold: Seneca becomes self-contradictory a n d his internal contradictions become crucial evidence in the quest for Posidonian doctrine. Seneca's integrity as a philosopher, even as a writer, is readily sacrificed on the altar of Quellenforschung.

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do not think that it does). But if it does, then Seneca will naturally reflect that situation; and the resulting theory will then not properly be described as eclectic or Platonizing: we will simply have discovered more about the Platonic roots of Stoic psychology.

CHAPTER 7

Actions and passions: affection, emotion, and moral self-management in Galen's philosophical psychology James Hankinson

Galen is remembered mainly as a doctor; and it is on his fame as a medical theorist and practitioner that his reputation principally rests. Yet he was no mere physician; he thought of himself as equally a philosopher,1 and if the tradition has been less kind to his strictly philosophical works than to his medical writings (here as elsewhere interest has to a large extent dictated survival), none the less enough This paper has benefited greatly from the helpful comments supplied by friends and colleagues both at the Symposium and elsewhere; I should like to thank Julia Annas, Michael Frede, David Gill, David Sedley, and Dolores Iorizzo for useful remarks; my colleague Bob Kane for a helpful discussion of the intricacies of freedom and responsibility; and in particular Jonathan Barnes for his prompt and incisive editorial remarks. Note on citations. Referring to Galen is problematic. The only edition of the greater part of his work done in modern times is that of Kiihn (1821-33, re-issued 1965). Kiihn's work is invaluable; but it was done in a hurry, with the needs of doctors rather than scholars in mind and is consequently riddled with errors of both a trivial and a substantial kind. In some cases later and better texts of Galen exist, particularly in the Teubner series (notably the three-volume Galeni Scripta Minora [SM], edited by Marquardt, Helmreich and Miiller, Leipzig, 1884-93), a n d the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (CMG: Berlin): the latter was begun with high hopes and comprehensive aims at the end of the last century, and work proceeded relatively rapidly until the First World War; but since then publication has slowed to a trickle (although the stream shows recent signs of revival). However, it has seemed best for brevity's sake to refer principally to Kiihn even where later and better editions are available, since they all cross-refer to it. At the first mention of any Galenic text, I give its full title, followed by an abbreviation which is standard for the rest of the article (there is as yet, unfortunately, no general orthodoxy in these matters), followed by a Roman numeral indicating Kiihn volume, and an Arabic numeral for the page; and, also on its first appearance, I refer to the later, better editions of the work, if any exist. 1 In the autobiographical parts of his work, he emphasizes the catholicity of his philosophical education. He imbibed Platonism under a pupil of Gaius: see On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Affections oj the Soul v.41 (AffDig., = SM 1 1-44 Marquardt [1884], = CMG v.4.1 1 De Boer [1937]; Aff.Dig. is translated into English in Harkins & Riese, [1963]). Galen studied at Smyrna under another important Platonist, Albinus: de Libris Propriis (Lib.Prop., = SM 2 91-124 Helmreich [1891]) xix.i6fT. In Rome he hobnobbed with Peripatetics: Eudemus, upon whom he performed a famous cure early in his Roman career: see de Praenotione (Praen., = CMG v.8.1, Nutton [1977]) xiv.605-19; and Alexander of Damascus, with whom he had a not untypically violent quarrel (ibid. 627-9): see de Anatomicis Administrationibus (AA) 11.217-18. As a boy, he learned Stoic logic from a Chrysippean: de Ordine Librorum Propiorum (Ord.Lib.Prop., = SM 2 80-90 Helmreich [1891]) xix.43.

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of his philosophical temper shines through his medical oeuvreforus to be able to judge his claims to that title. For Galen, fortunately (although at times infuriatingly), was not a dry and merely technical writer. On the contrary, his massive corpus abounds with digressions, asides, interludes; irrelevant hares are started, pointless chimerae chased. If Galen insists (as he does to the point of tedium) that his wordiness is the direct result of the idiocy of those whom he has to refute, he himself cannot be acquitted of the charge of prolixity and verbosity; even when hymning the philosophical and literary advantages of brevity, he does so at extravagant length. Galen loved the sound of his own voice. And it is lucky for us that he did. For it is in those asides and irrelevances that we find a pot-pourri of scattered remarks and fragments of enormous philosophical importance. It is to Galen's exuberant largesse that we owe much of our knowledge of the schools of later Greek philosophy; and that debt has long been acknowledged. But it is less frequently recognized just how important and incisive a thinker Galen was in his own right; and it is to the originality of his contributions to the field of philosophical and moral psychology that this paper is principally devoted. The range of Galen's philosophical interests was wide; he wrote on logic2 and epistemology,3 on proof,4 on the nature of science;5 he elaborated a powerful teleological conception of the structure of the natural world;6 he developed a sophisticated account of causation and explanation; 7 and his work in the philosophy of science led him to sketch a tantalizing theory of individuation, natural kinds, properties and reference.8 However, it is with his work in ethics and the philosophy of mind that we shall be mainly concerned. Elsewhere I have analyzed Galen's philosophical and physiological account of the structure and functions of the soul; 9 its principal purpose was to show how Galen manages to develop, by 2 3 5

6 7 8 9

See Barnes (forthcoming). Barnes' paper deals with all aspects of Galen's philosophical view of science; and see also Barnes (1985b) and Hankinson (forthcoming 3). 4 Frede (1981). See Barnes (forthcoming). See Barnes (forthcoming). See also my translation and commentary of the first two books of Galen's De Methodo Medendi (MM: x 1-1024), Hankinson (1991a); Hankinson (forthcoming 1) and Hankinson (1991c). See Hankinson (1988a) and Hankinson (1989). See Hankinson (forthcoming 4) and (forthcoming 5) and Hankinson (1988b). See Barnes (forthcoming) and Hankinson (1991a, 1991c, forthcoming 1,3). Hankinson (1991b).

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judicious selection from a variety of sources,10 a powerful analysis of the physiological bases for psychological activity. He marries a methodology drawn ultimately from Aristotle (one starts with a description of the functional phenomena, and then proceeds to investigate their causal bases), 11 but given an injection of empirical legitimacy by Galen's own deep conviction of the necessity for persistent anatomical inquiry. It is anatomy that will uncover and unlock the mysteries of the transmission of neural influence; and will serve to show the locations of the various psychic powers (rational in the brain, spirited in the heart, desiderative in the liver: the account is, substantially, Plato's of the Timaeus supported by detailed empirical investigation). I further suggested that Galen's wedding of philosophy and physiology, of conceptual analysis and neuroscience, was not simply a marriage of convenience, but rather the outcome of a sophisticated and self-conscious reflection on the proper nature of any scientifically and phenomenologically satisfying account of the mind; that Galen, in effect, was engaged in the enterprise that Fodor has called 'speculative psychology'.12 He attempts, then, to chart a via media between a purely empirical approach to psychology (which runs the risk of conceptual sterility), and an excessively aprioristic and rationalistic philosophy of the mind carried through with no regard for empirical adequacy. Naturally, in order to discover a Galen of this sophisticated sort, one needs both to show him engaged in neuro-science (or a recognisable antecedent of it) at a relatively high level, and to give an account of the way in which he tries to integrate this with his picture of the phenomenology of mental life, and with an overall analysis of the nature of psychological causation and of its relation with the physical. The other paper tried to accomplish the first of these tasks, discerning a broadly (but cautiously) materialist Galen, committed 10

11

12

His principal acknowledged sources are Hippocrates in medicine and Plato in philosophy: indeed, he wrote On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (PHP = CMG v.4.1.2, De Lacy [1978-84]) to demonstrate their agreement on all major issues, pre-eminently the nature of the soul; but he also owes a debt to the work of others, notably Aristotle and the eclectic Stoic Posidonius. PHP was also edited for CMG by von Miiller (Leipzig, 1874); von Miiller's text is a huge advance on Kiihn, but is no substitute for the magnificent new CMG edition of De Lacy (3 vols., including English translation, commentary and indices) 1978-84; 'De Lacy, 1984' refers to the third volume of commentary and indices. For Aristotle, see PA 1.1, 639b7ff.; 640a i4ff.; for Galen, see On the Natural Faculties (Nat.Fac.) 11.9-10; On the Substance of the Natural Faculties (Sub st.Nat.Fac.) iv.760. This methodology perhaps found its way into the medical tradition via Herophilus, the great third-century BC Alexandrian physician: see von Staden (1989) pp. 1 i8ff. See Fodor (1975), p. vii.

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to a functionalist account of psychology coupled with the claim that psychological events were (in some sense left perhaps deliberately vague) 13 dependent upon physiological ones. In this study, I try to undertake the second of those projects, and to show how his views on psycho-physical relations, and on the nature of causation, can be reconciled with his account of human mental life, human responsibility, and our status as agents. The starting-point will be Galen's contribution to the protracted Hellenistic and Later Greek debate on the status and management of the emotions, and of the proper attitude to be taken towards them. I THE STATUS OF THE EMOTIONS

Emotions, for the Greeks, arepathe, affections: things that happen to us. Their very name suggests that they are somehow beyond our control - and the literary history of eros, the most powerful emotion of them all, tells strongly in favour of this cultural donne: it is an alien force, anikate machan, according to Sophocles (Antigone 78iff.); a compulsive, uncontrollable force, in the plays of Euripides (notably Medea: see e.g. 530-1; but see also Hippolytus 443);14 a sort of madness according to Plato (Phaedrus 244a ff.). In Gorgias' Defence of Helen (sections 15-19), it is something so outside an agent's control that it can absolve them of all responsibility for their actions;15 and 13 14

15

See Lloyd (1988) esp. pp. 33-9; see also Hankinson 1991b. Euripides' Medea became in Hellenistic times perhaps the principal post-Homeric literary quarry from which philosophers mined their examples: Chrysippus was so prone to this that one work of his was referred to ironically as 'the Medea of Chrysippus'; and Herillus of Carthage even wrote a Medea (Diog.Laer. vii.166, = SVF 111.409), although we know nothing of its contents. At PHP v.403-24, Galen discusses a sequence of quotations made by Chrysippus in his On Passions from various plays of Euripides: Alcestis 1079-80 (413); 1085 (419), Andromache (629-30: 405), and Electra (15-6: 423) as well as Medea (1078-9: 408, also quoted at 307 and mentioned at 372), in addition to citations from the Dictys, Oeneus, Phrixus, and Stheneboea, which have not survived; the common thread to the discussion is that the passages chosen by Chrysippus are as a matter of fact inconsistent with his account of a unified soul, and indicate clearly that the affections are separate and distinct from the reason. In particular, Galen notes that the Chrysippean doctrine of passion being identical with judgment is difficult to make consistent with the evident fact that the judgment in accordance with which the passion was originally aroused can remain quite unaltered long after the passion itself has subsided (the anesis tes lupes: 419, = SVF in.466) - Chrysippus' account of passion as a 'fresh opinion' (doxa prosphatos: 416—7, = SVF HI.481) simply will not do in Galen's view: 416-24; for a discussion of this issue, and a defence of the Chrysippean position, see Nussbaum (1987) pp. 144-58; and see also Gill (1983). On the concept of distress (lupe), see n. 80. Fr. 82.B.11 DK: in spite of the fact that Gorgias himself styles the Helen a paignion, or rhetorical plaything, it seems reasonable to conclude that nevertheless it embodies elements of a serious contemporary debate on the issue.

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Aristotle feels constrained to argue against the view that 'acts due to appetite or anger' 16 can be removed from the sphere of the voluntary, acutely aware that any such concession to the mitigating force of the passions will threaten the coherence of the entire structure of his account of voluntary action and responsibility (Nicomachean Ethics in. i, 1111 a22fif.; cf. 111 obgff). Galen spends much time attacking the Stoic (Chrysippean) conception of the structure of the soul; and he hopes to demonstrate thereby that the Stoic notion that the emotions are simply excessive alterations of the reasoning part of the soul is false (PHP v.26gff.: = SVF n.887ff., 2g4ff.). No amount of poetic witness will serve to establish Chrysippus' claim; but more importantly it is simply false to hold, as Chrysippus does, that we can feel thought taking place in the chest. We are perhaps aware of anger and fear as involving localized strong sensations in that region (indeed, much of the evidence of the poets goes to suggest that) - and that perhaps justifies the belief that anger and the other emotions have a cardiac location (270-1); but no special motion of the heart is evident in the act of thinking, learning and teaching, even though such a motion is clearly apparent in the case of the emotions [pathe].11 (Pi/Pv.271) And Galen proceeds to demonstrate the truth of his contentions at great length, forced to do so, he tells us, by his opponents' prolixity and obtuseness, and by their habit of invoking arguments that are ... completely worthless ... introducing the testimony of women, non-experts, etymologies, motions of the hands, upward or downward movement of the head, or poets. (PHP v.327 = SVF 11.884)18 16 17 18

For anger as a source of actions outside the agent's control, see Medea 1078-9, and the passages in which Galen discusses Chrysippus' discussion of it cited in n. 14. De Lacy translates 'pathos' neutrally as 'affection' - but the denotation is clear enough here. Women, according to Chrysippus, point to their chests and say 'that doesn't sit well here' when they disagree with something {PHP v.323: = SVF 11.892): this presumably is the reference to 'the motions of the hands' (cf. 224-5); on the futility of etymologies as a guide to facts, see 213-18 ( = SVF 11.883, 895), anc * the case of 'ego*: when you pronounce it, your jawbone points to your chest, indicating, according to Chrysippus, the cardiac location of the personality (cf. 224-5, 227-8, 327-9: = SVF n.896). On non-experts and poets, see 214, 227-8, and in general book m. See also 315-16: what could be more anile, more tedious, more like a schoolmaster [cf. 339], or further removed from the sort of demonstration that a philosopher ought to use, than to mention right at the outset the Platonic view, then to disregard it and reject it completely, not mentioning how it was supported by his followers, and to neglect also to answer the arguments set forth by these people, or present a refutation, in which he should have

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In fact, almost everything that Chrysippus says is consistent with anger and fear arising in the heart, but desires and intellectual activities having different locations. It is only by begging the question at issue ('is the soul unitary or divided?') that Chrysippus can move from the claim that the heart is the evident seat of the emotions to the assertion that it is also the location of the rational and controlling part of the soul, the hegemonikon. Galen also accuses Chrysippus of equivocation, at times denying the existence of the spirited and appetitive parts, at times 'assigning them to a single locality in the body' (364: = SVF111.461). And perhaps most importantly, he accuses Chrysippus of being misled by an equivocation in the term 'irrational' (alogon). Something can be alogon (a) if it makes no sense to predicate rationality of it, like a stone; or (b) if it is of such a class as to possess reason, but fails in this instance to do so. Emotions, according to Galen are aloga (a); but Chrysippus treats them as being aloga (b), and hence locates them in the reasoning part of the soul (378-89: = SVF 111.441, 462, 464, 476). I shall not assess the force of Galen's objections here, nor discuss the extent to which they are fairly raised against Chrysippus.19 What we need to do now is to examine Galen's concept of a pathos, and to see what sort of work it can do within a general theory of the rational and the irrational in human conduct. Galen distinguishes rigorously between errors (hamartemata) and affections (pathe); indeed, he devotes separate books to the treatment of their diagnosis and cure (AJf.Dig. v. 1-58; On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Errors of the Soul [Pecc.Dig.] v.59-103). 2 0 Sometimes in fact Chrysippus does likewise:

he very properly distinguishes affections from errors. For errors are faulty judgments and reason that has been mistaken about the truth has erred. But affection, on the other hand, is not something that has erred, or makes a mistake in reasoning; it is a motion of the soul disobedient to reason. (PHP v.371-2) confirmed his own doctrine with scientific demonstrations, b u t instead to quote poets a n d to call in a multitude of non-experts as witnesses, a n d to record the expressions used by women, a n d to have no success even with t h e witnesses he invokes? 19

20

A n d cf. 358-9. Although I think that Galen is both fairer a n d less disingenuous in his treatment of the Stoic position than Inwood, for instance, allows in his recent account: Inwood (1985), esp. ch. 2; for more on the alleged Stoic self-contradiction here, see n. 54. O n this, see Donini (1988b) a n d Vegetti (1984).

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Galen offers an example: A man who scorns his children's life in order to save his country ... acts as he does because it seems to him noble . . . and he engages in a certain reasoning. Medea on the other hand was not persuaded by reasoning to kill her children. Quite the reverse ... she says she understands how evil are the acts she is about to perform, but her anger is stronger than her deliberations ... her affection ... does not obey reason ... but departs and disobeys the command, implying that it is the work or result of some power other than the rational. For how could anything disobey itself or reject itself or fail to follow itself? (372) The last point is of great importance: Galen is asserting that certain two-place relations are self-evidently irreflexive; and that, in conjunction with empirical data establishing the fact of such psychic conflict, will for Galen no less than Plato logically entail the separability (at least in analysis) of the psychic faculties. Chrysippus' own example of the downhill runner carried away by his own momentum and unable to stop at will {PHP v.369-70: = SF.F111.462 [part]) is, Galen thinks, grist to his own mill; people in such a condition are clearly moved by two different causes, their will qua human being, but their momentum qua physical body - and the latter is quite distinct from, and hence potentially in conflict with, the former (Galen dissects the downhill runner case at length: PHP v.372-7). Applying the model which Chrysippus has so helpfully, if unwittingly, supplied, we get the following story. If the affections are not kept in check, they take over and dominate the reason. What happens then is not a failure of reasoning or an error, but something altogether different - the normal channels which link deliberation to action are somehow short-circuited, and for that to happen the factor which renders them impotent must be logically and causally separate from them. Chrysippus' model, in fact, simply fails to account for the basic facts of psychic conflict. Of course more can be said in Chrysippus' defence. He may be right to think that psychic conflicts of this sort never actually occur: rather the soul simply oscillates rapidly between two incompatible sorts of 'hormetic presentation', 21 and it is a general tendency of those who oppose the Stoics on this question that they are too easily inclined to think that obvious facts of experience are on their side. 22 21 22

O n this concept, see I n w o o d (1985) p p . 56, 59, 76-7, 78-9; Gosling (1987) esp. p p . 181-6; on oscillation, see N u s s b a u m (1987) esp. p p . 155-8. See Gosling (1987) p p . i86ff.

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But whatever one thinks of that, Galen has a point when he castigates the Stoics for dithering as to just what the appropriate description of the soul in a state of affection really is. They can't hold reason responsible (for then there would be no such thing as an irrational act); but if reason isn't responsible, something else must be, or they will be committed to uncaused events (389-91: = SVF m.476):23 They ebb andflowlike the Euripus.24 After making reason and opinion the cause of the affections, they change to the position that when the soul moves in a certain way without a cause it falls into the affections; and again from this random and uncaused motion they return to the view that the movements of the affections are rational. For the refutation of either answer is at hand, and it allows them to persist in neither: when they claim the movements of the affections are produced by reason, they cannot distinguish error from affection; and when they remove reason as the cause, they are driven to the view that some motion is uncaused. (391) Galen's language of akrasia, akolasia, and sophrosune is strikingly Aristotelian,25 and he clearly sees himself as upholding the Peripatetic view of the nature of psychic conflict (one for which, given his general syncretist tendencies, he will discern a Platonic antecedent) against the psychologically incredible account of Chrysippus and his followers,26 one broadly in line with Posidonius' revisionist account. However, there are some points of contact between Galen and his Chrysippean opponents, notably in the notion that the passions of the soul are like diseases of the body, both structurally and in their requiring treatment (Nussbaum (1987) details the history and deployment of this account). 27 Still, it remains to be seen precisely 23

This is a n o t h e r passage in which Galen evinces his a d m i r a t i o n for Posidonius (see n. 10): - 8 3 , 99, 59 E K ; see further Galen's approval of Posidonius' rejection of the Chrysippean account of a. pathos as a type ofj u d g m e n t : PHP v. 4 2 4 - 6 , 429-30: T.95 E K , F.152, 157, T.98, 62 E K ; a n d also Galen's extended discussion of the n a t u r e of psychological illness a t PHP v . 4 3 2 - 5 4 , esp. 4 3 2 - 5 : F.I 59, 163, T.64 E K . A favourite image of Galen's: cfMM x.35, On the Function of the Parts (de Usu Partium [UP]) 111.454; it is owed ultimately to Plato: Phd. 90c. UP was edited by Helmreich (1907-9) for the Teubner series. />///> v . 3 7 5 - 6 . F o r a recent more sympathetic account of the Chrysippean position, see Gill (1983). A n d see H u t c h i n s o n (1988) for the early history of this connection; the idea of philosophy as the t h e r a p y for t h e ills of the soul is of course paradigmatically Platonic: see e.g. Phd. 82C-83C; Rep. x . 6 o 8 e - i ia; b u t it is not confined to the Platonic tradition: cf. e.g. Aristotle, EN 11.4, iiO5bi2ff; the connection is later a commonplace: cf. Nussbaum (1986b). It should be stressed that Galen takes issue with Chrysippus' view that it is the disposition to anger or grief or whatever that should be considered the disease; Galen makes it clear that these dispositions are akin to the bodily weakness which predisposes individuals to physical sicknesses, and hence are not themselves identical with the sickness: PHP v.439-42; cf.

T

24

25 26 27

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what the substantial differences between the two views amount to. I propose to approach that issue from two different angles. First of all, I shall consider Galen's philosophical analysis of the distinction between errors and passions (or more generally affections: the ambit is clearly at least potentially broader than that of the emotions here, as well as being directed at a particular sub-class of affections in general, namely the detrimental ones). Having done that, I shall turn to Galen's recipe for the proper treatment of each condition, and contrast it with the Stoic views on the same issue. II ERRORS AND PASSIONS

We have already seen what Galen's differentiation between hamartemata and pathe amounts to. And, of course, given the Platonic tripartition of the soul that he claims to have established, plus the assimilation of the rational to the brain and the source of the motor functions, and of the emotional to the heart and the arterial functions,28 that Galen should consider the two psychological affects to be more than merely accidentally distinct is hardly surprising (in a sense of course it is clear that they are distinct no matter what view of the soul you choose to adopt). At the beginning of Aff.Dig. (v.2), Galen notes (in connection with the work of one 'Antonius the Epicurean' On Controlling One's Own Passions; ibid. 1) that passions and errors are easily confounded, and that both are 'commonly called errors in a more general sense'.29 However, he insists that a proper analysis should keep them distinct, in the manner of PHP v.371: an error arises from a false belief, while a passion results from an irrational power within us which refuses to obey reason. {Aff.Dig. v.2-3; cf. 7)30 The Stoics, pre-eminently Chrysippus, dispute this, holding that properly analyzed passions really are errors, immoderate beliefs. The Stoic view has one apparent advantage over traditional accounts of psychic conflict, in that the identity of the agent is never in doubt 28 29 30

448-51, 451-3; compare Seneca's careful distinction between anger (ira) and irascibility (iracundia): de Ira 1.2.1-3. See Hankinson (1991b). H e sometimes speaks of errors when he means passions (Aff.Dig. v.3—6, 34); on this, see Donini (1988b) p p . 66f. Here I disagree with the suggestion of L. G. Ballester (1988) in his learned a n d thoughtprovoking article, p p . 140-1, that Galen makes all errors the result of passions (which would reverse the Stoic order of dependence): see further n. 49.

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(one is tempted, in the case of tripartitional accounts, to ask just who it is within whom the warring factions contend); 31 but it buys that advantage (if it is one) at the expense of what Galen takes to be an intolerable inadequacy to the phenomenology of the passions themselves. Nevertheless, the problems with the identity of the subject involved in any decompositional account of the structure of the soul, such as that adopted by Galen, do occasion a certain sensitivity in the use of the language of affection. After all, in its original sense a pathos is simply something that happens to something,32 and the traditional Greek conception of love is consistent with this. Indeed, we need not confine ourselves to love: consider Achilles' response to the embassy in book ix of the Iliad (644-55), where Achilles having listened to the ambassadors' speeches replies that his reason agrees with what they have said, but his thumos compels him otherwise.33 But if that is right, how can we do justice to the internal sense of our own involvement that a pathos invariably carries along with it? The phenomenology of passion does not seem to be the affective equivalent of the phenomenology of sickness, for example: it is we who are angry, while our bodies (or parts of them) are sick; or perhaps even if we want to say that we too are ill, it generally makes sense in the case of physical illness, as it apparently does not in the case of psychological affect, to ask what part of us feels ill.34 Furthermore, if we emphasize the external nature of passion, if we assimilate pathos to the pathological, how can we reasonably hold the agent in 31

32

33

34

A n d in general a n y account that decomposes t h e psychological functions into a variety of c o m p o n e n t parts must explain both how the different bits can function as a coherent whole, a n d how it can seem to the individuals that they are individuals, a n d not collections. This is just as true for c o n t e m p o r a r y neurophysiological accounts as it was for Aristotle, p e r h a p s the first writer in the western tradition to b e a w a r e of the problem: see de Anima in. 1-2. I t is cognate with the general verb of causal patiency paschein; G a l e n discusses the origin a n d development of the sense of the word a t PHP v . 5 0 5 - 1 3 ; On the Differences of Symptoms (Symp.Diff) vii.44-7; MM x.89—91. I n these passages, he generally wants to reserve t h e term pathos for some u n n a t u r a l alteration to the body's n o r m a l condition, although h e is well aware that this was not by any means its only original use (cf. Tim. 6id-66c, where sense perception is described as a kind of pathos); in Symp.Diff. vn.44-7, Galen holds (invoking Plato), that properly speaking, a pathos is still in a state of development, contrasting it with a disease (nosos) which is established - this connotation is not directly relevant in our contexts, but Galen will stress, in connection with affections, that a pathos is a kinesis - something actually has to be going on. thumos is a difficult concept here - it is something akin to w o u n d e d pride, a sense of d a m a g e d amour-propre; it seems, at a n y rate in H o m e r , to be self-regarding (or at least its a m b i t is confined to one's immediate philoi). See usefully M a n u l i (1988). She remarks, not without justification, that the word thumos is 'quasi intraducibiW (pp. 185, 188). This m a y b e controversial: Achilles, in t h e passage just referred to, does speak as though anger affects a part, the phrenes; a n d cf. Aristotle de An. 1.

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the grip of passion responsible at all? Passion, if it really is the uncontrollable alien force depicted in tragedy and epic, not merely diminishes responsibility - it removes it altogether.35 Here again, as Nussbaum (1987) has emphasized, the Stoics have something on their side: allow passion that degree of independence from the agent, and you run the risk of making praise, blame, and the ascription of responsibility, at least in certain cases, at best vacuous or metaphorical, at worst positively false and unjust, as indeed Aristotle clearly saw. Consider E.N. m.1-5: our very practices of praise and blame indicate that individuals are as a matter of fact responsible for their actions (except in extremis); and hence any acceptable moral theory needs to take that fact into account.36 The theory of responsibility must show how it is that we are, as our evaluative practices indicate we are, responsible for what we do. 37 So the existence of powerful pathe threatens to undermine the coherence of our ordinary notions of responsibility, provided that the following conditions, or something very much like them, hold: (1) it is beyond the agent's control whether or not the agent suffers from pathos P at time t\ and (2) if an agent suffers from P at /, then his actions are beyond his control. Those conditions are strong (and (2) certainly needs refining); and any weakening of them will require that they be supplemented from other sources if the threat to responsibility is to be a serious one. How might such difficulties might be overcome? Broadly speaking, it seems that such a project can adopt one of four strategies. Either (Si) you can hold that the will is unconstrained, that in some sense to be explicated our actions flow from original events internal to us which are themselves uncaused, or self-caused (that is, at least if David Sedley is right, the Epicurean 35 36

37

Gorgias' jeu d'esprit the Helen involves perhaps the earliest surviving explicit recognition of this fact, a n d its i m p o r t a n c e for forensic matters; see Barnes (1979) vol. 2, p p . 221-8. A n d Aristotle is quite clear that if you allow actions done as a result of appetite a n d emotion to fall outside the scope of the voluntary (and hence for h i m outside the scope of responsibility as well), the resulting restrictions o n the class of actions for which h u m a n beings can be held responsible will be so great as to fail conspicuously to preserve anything like our ordinary moral intuitions on the issue of legitimate praise and blame: EN in. 1. 1111 a24ff. For a clear and philosophically rich analysis of Aristotle's theory of responsibility, see Irwin (1980). These remarks do not do justice to the subtlety of Aristotle's discussion, a discussion which set the agenda for all subsequent inquiry into human responsibility: but they will do for now. I have more to say about the Aristotelian position at the end of this paper; and see n- 39-

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view),38 even if at times this internal freedom is over-ridden by the passions (such a position runs the risk of allowing, however, that in the latter cases we are indeed acting under duress, and hence are not responsible for what we do). Alternatively (S2) you can try to show that in some suitably strong sense we are causally in control of those of our actions and of our dispositions for action which are ultimately evaluatively relevant (including our susceptibility to the passions), even though our actual acts may themselves be directly and ineluctably caused by those dispositions (in addition of course to suitable sense-impressions: this is essentially Aristotle's strategy). 39 Or (S3) you can attempt to show how, appearances notwithstanding, the passions are deeply grounded within the individual, and hence part of the individual's personality, and justify holding the individual responsible in that way: although I am acting under the influence of anger, it is none the less my anger. This is, I think, the view of the Stoics40 and of Hume; and perhaps it is partially at least Aristotle's 38

39

40

See Sedley (1989); it was also, as I u n d e r s t a n d it, the view of K a n t : Critique of Pure Reason A-534-

Developed in ZsjVm.1-5; Aristotle's subtle, b u t ultimately unsatisfactory, account of how our actions can still be free even if they are now ineluctably determined b y the combination of a d a m a n t i n e disposition a n d external circumstances just in case at some time in the past the development of our dispositions was u p to us (see in particular his discussion of the

p r o p e r analysis of addiction at EN v. n i 4 a 3 f f . ; cf. 11.1-3), has been adopted by some modern writers on the subject, notably P. van I n w a g e n - b u t it is still unsatisfactory (crudely, because the idea that our past development of dispositions was u n d e r our control requires that it be shown how the dispositions can have arisen as a result of genuinely open decisions on the p a r t of the agent which were not themselves either merely r a n d o m , or else constrained by desires, information-states, a n d so on, whose own existence requires antecedent causal explanation). For the necessity of having the right type of impressions (phantasiai: evaluatively-laden sensory impressions), see 111.5, 1114a32ff.; and see H a n k i n son (1990a). I should add here that it is by no means clear that Aristotle's theory is exclusively of the (S2) type (as I remark below, the strategies are neither rigidly d e m a r cated, nor in all cases necessarily exclusive). Irwin (1980) indeed elaborates a n account for Aristotle which is a good deal closer to the (S3) c a m p , such that I a m responsible for x just in case I a m capable of deciding rationally a b o u t *, and I d o # voluntarily (i.e. without external coercion a n d not as a result of mitigating ignorance); the account ties the theory of responsible action closely to the idea that one is responsible for w h a t one does w h e n one's reasons for action are p a r t of the causes of one's action (for this type of analysis, see Davidson (1980) p p . 6 3 - 8 2 ) . Irwin rightly notes (against some recent commentators) that this sort of account is quite indifferent as to the t r u t h or falsity of determinism. However, it seems clear that even if this type of (S3) m a n o e u v r e can explain how we can act responsibly even w h e n there is now no genuine causal possibility of our acting otherwise, it will not serve to show that our dispositions themselves are suitably free from external influence - and to that extent, Aristotle is pretty clearly an (S2) theorist. I a m grateful to J u l i a Annas for discussion of these points. For the Stoic account of responsibility, see Stough (1978), a n d particularly Ioppolo's recent penetrating study (1988) on the internal development of the Stoic view (which was shared by Spinoza) from Zeno through Cleanthes to Chrysippus.

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too: see note 39. Effectively to adopt (S3) is to deny that anything other than the immediate causes of the action need be evaluatively relevant (so the question of how my disposition arose need not matter). Finally (S4) you can try to explain how it is that, even if the passions are in some clear sense beyond the individual's control, and perhaps even outside the individual's ambit altogether, none the less individuals must be held responsible for their outcomes: that is, one can simply deny that causal issues have anything necessarily to do with the case. This is Strawson's position41 and, I think, it is Galen's too. All four strategies pose notorious problems; and the lines between them are not sharply drawn (at the limits they tend to shade into one another). I shall return to them in the final sections of this essay. But for the time being, I want to turn briefly to Galen's account of the relation between passion and activity, pathos and energeia, to show how sensitive he was to the difficulty of even getting one's descriptive language right in this area. At the beginning of book vi of PHP, Galen writes: it is essential that the meaning of every term be accurately defined. Indeed, some of the questions that we earlier deferred are solved by this means ... [e.g.] whether desire, anger and the like are to be called energeiai or pathe. (PHP v.506) and he continues by remarking that an energeia is an active motion, i.e. one that comes from the moving object itself, while a pathos is a motion in one thing that comes from something else. Thus [the two] can often be combined in one and the same basic situation, differing not in reality but in definition. (PHP v.506-7)42 Galen's example is that of cutting: the dividing by the cutter and the being separated in the object cut are one and the same thing, but it is an energeia of the cutter, a pathos of the thing cut. In the same way anger is an energeia of the thumoeides, but apathema43 of the other two parts, and indeed of our whole body, when our body is forcibly driven to act by anger. (PHP v.507)44 41 42

43 44

Strawson (1962). I a m grateful to Bob K a n e for pointing out this m o d e r n parallel. T h e final r e m a r k owes something of course to Aristotle; for examples of things that are on his account the same in n u m b e r but different en tot einai, see de Insomn. 1. 459a 15-22 (which refers back to de An. 11.3. 429a iff.): a n d particularly in this type of causal context, Phys. 111.3. 2O2a22ff. N o t h i n g turns o n the use oipathema in place of pathos here: see Symp.Diff. vii.45. Note in this context Galen's de Causis Contentivis 9 ( = CMG S u p p . O r . 11, p . 140.23-37) where Galen urges care lest in causal contexts a mere re-description in active terms of the

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Let us label those senses energeial and pathosY. Galen then distinguishes two different senses (energeia2 andpathos2), where one denotes a motion according to, the other one contrary to nature; thus the heart's beating is an energeia^ while any palpitation is a pathos2 of it. 45 But even given that, certain types of pulse are not energeiai2 since they are preternatural, although they are energeiail (nothing else is moving the heart). Thus, given this second distinction between activity and passion, it is not surprising that a single thing may happen to be called both a pathos and an energeia (e.g. a pulse which is weaker than normal), but not with the same meaning. It is an energeiax for the movement in this pulsation too is active; but it is not an energeia^ but a pathos^ since the movement is not in accordance with nature. The same applies to anger and the other pathe: they are all energeiai^ of the affective part of the soul; but insofar as they are runaway and immoderate (ekphoroi te kai ametroi) motions and not according to nature, they would be said to be not energeiai2 butpathe2. (PHP v.509) Galen develops this line of thought, borrowing imagery from Plato, 46 in order to illustrate the variety of different possible combinations of energeiai and pathe. But what matters for us is the care Galen devotes to his choice of language here: he is aware that our analysis can go wrong at the very outset if we are unclear about the precise senses in which we are applying our descriptive terms. We have, then, two related claims about the terms we use to describe affects of this type: first of all we should distinguish pathe from hamartemata; and secondly we need to take care as to precisely which sense ofpathos we are employing when we describe affects like anger, grief, and fear.

45

46

effect be mistaken for the cause of that effect: see Hankinson (1987); a n d cf. Nat.Fac. 11.70: 'they have not given an answer to the question, b u t have simply reported what happens, thinking that by so doing they have assigned a n explanation to it.' For Galen's distinction between heart-beat a n d palpitation, which he thinks Hippocrates confused, see in Hippocratis Prognosticum (Hipp.Prog., = CMGv.9.1 [Heeg] 1915) XVIIIB 87-9; and On the Differences of Pulses (Diff.Puls.) vm.497; see also de Crisibus (Cris. [Alexanderson] 1967) ix.760. Galen was extremely proud of his sphygmatology, on which he wrote four major works: Diff.Puls. vm.493-765; Dig.Puls. vm. 766-961; de Causis Pulsuum (Caus.Puls.) x. 1-204; de Praesagitione ex Pulsibus (Praes.Puls.) ix.205-430; and two abstracts (the second of doubtful authenticity) de Pulsibus ad Tirones (Puls.) vn.453-92; and Synopsis de Pulsibus (Syn.Puls.) ix.431-549; s e e Hankinson (forthcoming 2), section 7. For the connection between pulsation a n d the faculties of the soul, see Praes.Puls. ix.421-30 (given Galen's account of the location of the parts of the soul, a n d of the mechanisms for the transmission of psychic power, such a connection should not come as a surprise). T h e charioteer and his horses, Phdr. 253c—64a: ibid. 510, 513; the m a n with the lion a n d the m a n y headed beast, Rep. ix.588c-d: ibid. 513.

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JAMES HANKINSON III THE THERAPY OF THE PASSIONS

The Galen who has emerged so far is a figure with a deep sense of intellectual history, of the tradition of ideas and of his own place in it; he is deliberately backward-looking, seeking the basis for his syncretist view of the soul in his distant Hippocratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian forebears. He has also set himself up in implacable opposition to the Chrysippean picture of the soul's structure, and of the proper analysis of its workings. Of the Stoics, only Posidonius, who on Galen's account at least was a syncretist of his own temper, bent on reviving the Platonic picture of the soul (and whom Strabo described as 'Aristotelizing': 11.3.8 = T85 EK), comes through with credit as being scientifically-minded, and not committed to the defence of the doctrines of his school at all costs (PHP v.390; That the Powers of the Soul Depend upon the Temperament of the Body

(QAM)47

iv.819-20).

However, Galen's position is not entirely incompatible with that of the Stoics - and the extent to which he owes them a debt 48 depends at least in part how far he believes that the passions must be extirpated altogether rather than simply reduced and domesticated. 49 The treatise Aff.Dig. outlines his programme for psychotherapeutic control of the strong and destructive emotions. The first stage in developing self-control involves us realizing that we are prone to error (in the broad, generic sense of the word); everyone minimizes their own faults, and is blinded by self-love (Aff.Dig. v.3-6). 50 Moreover, it is better to get rid of the passions first, 'since it is probably as a result of these as well that we form false opinions' (ibid. 7).51 Given the difficulty of discovering our own faults, we 47 48

49

50

51

Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequuntur iv. 767-822: it appears in SM 2 32-79, Muller (1891). A n d perhaps to the Epicureans as well, although he himself would be loth to acknowledge such a debt: cf. e.g. DRN in.48-93, although of course for the Epicureans the ultimate cause of all psychological ills is the groundless fear of death. Nussbaum (1987) p p . i6iff., emphasizes the differences between the Stoic a n d Peripatetic outlooks - for the Stoics merely moderating the passions is not enough: they have to be eradicated root a n d branch. Galen refers to Aesop's fable of the two sacks suspended from our necks: 'the one in front is filled with the faults of others, the one behind with our own' (Halm (1889) P- 359) 5 an( ^ t o Plato's remark at Laws v . 7 3 i e that the lover is blind with regard to the object of his own love. H e returns to this theme later in Aff.Dig. v.35-6. I a m grateful to P. Donini for pointing out to me the force of the kai ('as well') here, which is a further reason for rejecting Ballester's view: see n. 30.

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must rely on someone whose judgment we trust to point them out for us (ibid. 8-14).52 Galen emphasizes the difficulty and lengthiness of the task ('each of us needs almost a lifetime of training to become a perfect man' (ibid. 14)); and the limitations imposed by our individual natures: we can't all be like Hercules - nor can we all achieve perfect mental calm; but almost all of us are amenable to some extent to training, in mind as well as body (ibid. 15-16). The emphasis on training forms the very heart of Galen's programme. We need first of all to become aware that there is something wrong with us (which may prove difficult for readily understandable psychological reasons); then we need to develop in consequence of that realization a strong desire to become better people, either from a sense of shame, or for some other motive (ibid. 16), a desire reinforced by constant verbal repetition of the goal in mind, both by ourselves (ibid. 30), and others (7-14, 30). 53 All of these ideas have clear modern psychotherapeutic resonances,54 and are paralleled in later Stoicism. Galen writes: when I was still a youth and pursuing this training, I watched a man trying desperately to open a door. When things did not turn out to his satisfaction, I saw him bite the key, kick the door, blaspheme, glare wildly like a madman, and all but foam at the mouth like a wild boar [cf. 22]. When I saw this, I conceived such a hatred for anger that I was never thereafter seen behaving in an unseemly manner because of it. At present this will be enough to keep you from blaspheming, from kicking and biting stone and wood, from looking wild looks; this will be sufficient motive for you to hide your anger and keep it within you. A man cannot free himself from the habit of anger as soon as he resolves to do so, but he can keep in check the more unseemly manifestations of his passion. If he does this frequently, he will discover that he is less prone to anger than he formerly was. Things which are unimportant will not rouse his wrath; and even if he does become angry over supremely important matters, his anger will be slight, (ibid. 16-17, trans. Harkins, with alterations) 52

53

54

Galen outlines the qualities such counsellors must have, a n d w h a t o u r attitude towards them should be: someone who frequents the rich a n d powerful is n o good; equally the rich and powerful have themselves little chance of finding a Diogenes w h o will point out their faults for them (Aff.Dig. v. 13-14). O n the importance of verbal repetition to the therapy of the soul, see Ballester (1988) p . 145; Ballester draws attention to the parallel between Galen's prescription a n d that of Plato Charm. 157a. F o r a very brief general history of psychotherapy, see Riese (1951).

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That the irrational acts provoked by passion are absurd and grotesque is an ancient commonplace, particularly in the Stoic55 and Epicurean 56 tradition; as is the view that they can on occasion become more than merely ludicrous and undignified. Galen recounts the story of a friend, whose ungovernable temper caused him to injure a slave in a moment of passion by bringing a sword (albeit in a scabbard) blade-down on his head (ibid. 17-21). He concludes as follows: that friend of mine, then, took thought for himself, and in a year had become a much better man. Even if you should not become much better, be satisfied if in the first year you have advanced and shown some small measure of improvement. If you continue to withstand your passion and to soften your anger, you will show a more remarkable improvement during the second year; then . . . you will notice a great increase in the dignity of your life in the third, fourth, and fifth years, (ibid. 20-1; cf. 53-4, 55-6)

The dominating motifs of these passages are (1) that self-control requires long practice; (2) that it is easier first of all to control the manifestations of the emotion than the emotion itself; (3) that if the manifestations are controlled, gradually the emotions too begin to wither; (4) that the gains in self-control increase exponentially. Moreover (5) one should attempt always to wait until the initial burst of passion has subsided before attempting to act in accordance with it, and that one should try as far as possible (at least in the case of slaves) to get someone else to exact the appropriate punish55

Seneca, de Ira 1.3-7; Chrysippus (SVF 111.478, ap. PHP v.414-15) indeed describes t h e effects of passions using some of the same examples as Galen does (a fact which perhaps suggests that Galen's purportedly historical story is in fact merely a literary device): we take such leave of ourselves a n d get so far outside ourselves a n d a r e so completely blinded in our frustrations that sometimes if we have a sponge or wool in our hands we lift it u p and throw it, as if we would thereby accomplish anything. If we h a d h a p p e n e d to have a knife or some other object, we should have used it in the same way . . . Often in this kind of blindness we bite the keys a n d beat against the doors when they a r e not quickly opened, and if we stumble on a stone we take punitive measures, breaking it a n d throwing it somewhere, a n d all the while we use the strangest language . . . F r o m such actions a person would get a notion of the irrationality in the affections, a n d would perceive how we are blinded o n such occasions, as though we were n o longer the same persons w h o h a d earlier engaged in philosophical conversations.

56

Galen takes these remarks as further instances of Chrysippus' tendency towards self-contradiction in his account of the effects of the passions: see p p . 188-90. Note, however, t h e tantalizing hint in the last sentence of an awareness on Chrysippus' part of the implications of the passions for questions of personal identity, although t h e precise nature of his views here seems impossible to determine. Philodemus, de Ira (Wilke 1914), p p . xlii—xliii.

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ments. 57 Finally (6) Galen insists on the importance of frequent repetition of the appropriate moral maxims and exhortations (see note 53). It becomes apparent that the relation for Galen between passion and judgment is a complex one. Not merely is the first frequently responsible for errors in the second, 58 the second, properly applied, can control the first. One of the evil effects of passion is precisely that it dulls the judgment, and promotes false beliefs as to the appropriateness of certain courses of action (particularly in the case of punishments: this theme is taken up several times in Aff.Dig.; e.g. v.21-2); and false evaluations of the importance of certain external goods and of things that affect us. 59 At 37-52, Galen tells a long story about a young acquaintance who, in spite of advantages of wealth and birth, was malcontented; Galen, having hymned the virtues of frugality (which includes among other things being satisfied with one pair of shoes, instead of fifteen: 47), remarks that 'you have twice as much as I, and are in possession of your citizen's rights - so I don't see what could be the cause of your grief except insatiate desire and greed' (44). This is a type of mis-evaluation, a form of erroneous judgment: but it is important that Galen does not identify the passion (in this case greed - which he views as a sort of Ur-passion: ibid., 48-93 51? 53) with a judgment (cf. Nussbaum (1987) pp. 142-4, for an analysis of the relations between passion and belief); rather, the passion causes a mistaken judgment, which in its turn fuels the passion. So Galen quite clearly exhibits the relation between passion and judgment as involving a type of feedback; the more a passion is indulged, the greater it waxes (and conversely, the more it is starved, the more manageable it becomes); but equally, the more a passion is indulged, the stronger become the associated judgments and the stronger they become, the harder it is to achieve the state of reflective self-awareness appropriate to beginning the therapy designed to reduce the passions (cf. ibid. 28, 32). Hence the importance of involving others in the process, both as monitors of one's behaviour and as executors of one's wishes. And there is a further 57

58 59

Galen praises his father's example in both these regards: Aff.Dig. v.17, 4 0 - 4 1 ; a n d h e tells the story of the emperor H a d r i a n w h o blinded a slave in a fit of passion. F o r anger as a cause of excessive behaviour a n d cruelty in punishment, see Seneca, de Ira 1.2.5, 3- I - 2 >

5.2-3, 6.1-5, 9.4, 18.3-6, 19.2-4.

See n n . 30, 51 above. For the various types of distinction that Galen makes, see Donini (1988b) p p . 68-72.

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refinement: we can distinguish between the person who has managed to prevent the passion spilling over into action, and the person who has extirpated the passion altogether: 60 do not consider him wise who only stands acquitted of the action, namely kicking, biting and stabbing bystanders. Such a man is, it is true, no longer a wild beast, but he is not yet indeed wise - he is somewhere between the two. (ibid. 23) This is of interest for three reasons. Firstly, Galen thinks that there is a way to short-circuit the normal routes that connect passion to anger, presumably for empirical reasons - we know that we can have the anger, but control it, bottle it up with an effort of the will. Here again Galen is attempting to be faithful to the phenomenology of affect. Secondly, he considers the short-circuiting to be part of the means of attaining genuine freedom from the passions (although it should not be mistaken for the attainment itself). Even if it has been short-circuited, we still have the passion, considered as the disposition to behave in a certain sort of way; but the very cutting off of the route to its expression contributes, Galen thinks, to the process of causing it to atrophy altogether. Thirdly, this is a case of someone who is able to give an appearance of being of a certain type, while not really being so, like Plato's unjust man who gives the impression of justice. 61 And like Plato he holds that anyone satisfied with this condition is in serious error: for they do not understand the nature of mental health: anger is 'a sickness of the soul',62 and no one who understands health and sickness could genuinely prefer the appearance of health to the genuine article. 60 61 62

This distinction mirrors Aristotle's between the enkrates a n d the sophron: EN 1.13. iiO2b25ff.; VII.I. 1145a35ff.; vn.2. 1 i46agrT.; vii.9. 11510321! First considered at Rep. 1.345a; worked out in detail by Glaucon at the beginning of book 11:

358e-6id.

Aff.Dig. v.24; cf. 35, 37, 52. Ballester (1988) p p . 142-6, distinguishes between 'diseases of the soul' a n d 'mental diseases', where the latter are to be described (and hence treated) in purely physiological terms. For diseases of the type Ballester has in mind, see On the Affected Parts (Loc.Aff.) viii.i3iff., 156, 160—6, 173, 178, i95ff., 226-7, 327; see also Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates' 'Prorrhetics' [Hipp .Prorr.) xvi.517-18, on phrenitis; see also in this context the article of Pigeaud (1988) esp. pp. 157-66 (and Pigeaud (1981) pp. 55-70). While there no doubt is such a distinction to be made, and while in the case of 'diseases of the soul' the 'therapy of the word' (Ballester (1988) pp. i4off.: see Lain Entralgo (1957)) was particularly important, it is essential not to lose sight of the fact that they, too, are dependent on physiological states: cf. Pigeaud (1981) p. 59: len sommepour Galien, les maladies de Vame sont des maladies du corps'.

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The reference to the 'wild beast' in the last quotation is not mere rhetoric either - Galen views the desiderative soul as essentially untameable, 'not like dogs or horses, but befitting the wild boar and goat and any of the wild beasts which cannot be domesticated' (ibid. 28); the best you can do with it is beat it down: the chastisement of the desiderative power consists in not furnishing it with the enjoyment of the things it desires. If it does attain this enjoyment, it waxes great and strong; if disciplined and corrected, it grows small and weak. (ibid. 28) By contrast, the passionate soul can be domesticated - here Galen leans away from the Stoics and towards Plato and Aristotle. The thumoeides is not seen as a radically destructive tumour on the soul to be excised as completely as possible, but rather as a source of force and energy that can be directed into the right channels: I described at length in my work On Characters63 how someone might make his soul excellent, and how it was not necessary to dissipate its strength, any more than in the case of the dogs and horses that we use, but rather that we need to cultivate obedience in it, just as in them. The same work showed no less how you can employ the power of the thumoeides against the other part, called the epithumetikon by the philosophers of old, which carries us unreasoning towards bodily pleasures, (ibid. 27) But Galen's account is not as lucid as it might be - and indeed it seems in danger of breaking down under the combined weight of the separate phenomena (and traditions) that he is trying to integrate. On the one hand, strong emotions can be ungovernable, and are destructive; and they are closely connected with (at times apparently identical with) out-of-control desires (for wealth, for power, for sensual enjoyment); on the other hand the emotional part can be reason's ally. However, Galen soft-pedals the latter Platonic aspect — and the tamed thumoeides seems, for him, to have a merely decorative capacity, rather like the tame lion which it is supposed to resemble (on domesticating the passions, see Aff.Dig. v.26-7). Finally, did Galen side with Plato and Aristotle, thinking that the passions should be moderated, or with the Stoics, believing that only their total eradication could ensure mental health? It seems to me that there is no clear answer to be found in our texts, possibly for the 63

Peri ethon (not to be confused with On Habituations {Peri ethori)) does not survive in Greek (Galen refers to it at Lib.Prop, xix.45), although we have an Arabic epitome of it - Kraus (1937); an English version was published by Mattock in Stern et al. (1972). On this see the useful article of Walzer (1949).

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excellent reason that Galen himself had no clear answer. But one might tentatively suggest something like the following to be his account, based upon the distinction between the two senses of pathos.^ An uncontrollable anger will be a pathos^ of the affective part of the soul, in that it will be contrary to nature. In that sense, it must be entirely extirpated. But that does not entail that the smooth functioning (energeia^ of the affective part is to be eradicated as well - rather it is a proper function, and as such needs maintaining and fostering.65 Of course, that smooth functioning itself can be viewed as a pathosl of the individual taken as a whole (or perhaps of the reasoning part); but that will not in itself show that it is something pathological (for that would be to treat it as though it were a pathos^). So, what needs eradicating (on the Stoic model) is the excessive, preternatural pathos2; but that eradication takes the form of moderating the impact and influence of what is, under other circumstances, a perfectly natural and healthy part of the psyche, of bringing the restless horse under control, and allowing it to take up its proper role in the overall well-ordering of the soul. Galen differs from the Stoics precisely in that what will be left for him in the well-ordered soul will still be passions - controlled, channelled, constructive, but passions nonetheless, psychological drives capable of supplying a bloodless disengaged reason with the fire and commitment of motivation. These will not be the pale, desiccated husks of the Stoics' eupatheiai.66

IV PASSIONS, DESIRES, AND THE STRUCTURE OF LIFE

But, however successful we think Galen has been in describing the various types of mental affect, it is clear that he has an account of a type of practical psychotherapy which is more than negligible. And it is clearly one that depends upon there being such a thing as weakness of the will. For, in order for Galen's account to be success64 65

66

I a m indebted in w h a t follows to discussions with Dolores Velkley. There is more to be said regarding the notion of a proper function, a n d of the connection of that conception with Galen's strongly teleological ontogeny (see Hankinson 1988a a n d 1989); b u t crudely, if you think that nature does nothing in vain (at t h e level of organogenesis), a n d you think also that you have identified a distinctly functioning part (in this case the affective part), your general teleology will prevent you from thinking that it could be entirely useless, indeed positively harmful, for the proper functioning of the organism of which it is a part. F o r the eupatheiai, see Diog.Laer. vii.115 ( = SVF 111.431; cf. 432, 438-9); see Nussbaum (1987) a n d Inwood (1985) ch. 5, esp. p p . 173-5.

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ful, there has to be a genuine distinction between first- and secondorder desires,67 and one which is such that the object of the secondorder desires may be a desire-set different from that actually constituted by the first-order desires. One needs to be able to reflect upon one's own life, and be able to decide rationally that it would be better if in certain respects the structure of one's dispositional psychological relationship with the world were different. Hence, one will be in a position where one wishes not to be angry, say (i.e., one wishes not to be the type of person who angers easily), thinks it better that one be not angry, and yet one is as a matter of fact enraged. Clearly Galen's own version of faculty psychology is wellequipped to deal with this case; it is less clear, however, that the Stoic unitary account of the soul simply could not do so. Indeed, this sort of weakness of the will looks as though it can be handled perfectly well on the unitary model; to have meta-desires whose objects do not correspond to one's actual desires may be unfortunate, distressing, damaging to one's sense of psychological integration and so on - but it does not entail that one need have quite distinct concurrent incompatible views. If 'x desires f (for some suitably non-behavioural notion of desire) entails 'x believes t h a t j is desirable', then being in the condition of wanting something but wishing one didn't (because it's harmful, or married to someone else, or whatever) will turn out to have the following structure: (1) x believes thaty is desirable; and (2) x believes that it is desirable that x does not believe that y is desirable; and (1) and (2) are perfectly consistent. But psychological peace is not to be won, for Galen any more than Aristotle, simply by ensuring that one's first- and second-order desire sets are somehow compatible, and hence securing a measure of psychological integration, of accord between one's view of oneself, and one's actual actions - for the akolastic meets that basic criterion,68 and the akolastic is not someone whose psychological condition is emulable: indeed, as Galen drily notes any man is glad to make progress in that which he loves; so it is that drunkards are glad when they outstrip their companions in drinking; gluttons are happy to surpass those who delight in the abundance of foods; 67 68

F o r the development of this concept see Frankfurt (1971). As Aristotle himself points out: EJVvu.y, 1 i5oai5fF; 8, 11500291!.

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the voluptuary in eating rejoices when he outdoes those who find their joy in cakes ... And I have known some men who were conceited about the great number of their sexual exploits. (Aff.Dig. v.32) What Galen needs is a way of grounding the claim that a life in which the contribution of the passions is reduced to the role of supporting and providing commitment to the deliverances of reason on the Platonic (Rep. iv.439c—42c) model, while the desiderative element is starved and forced to wither away, is somehow obviously rationally preferable to that of the akolastic. The key notion here is self-mastery. Again, this idea has a long philosophical pedigree; it is common to the Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean traditions, and is consequently one of the few genuine commonplaces in ancient moral thought. Galen repeatedly adopts the language of slavery to describe a man in the grip of passions;69 and equally, he describes anger as 'a sickness of the soul' (Aff.Dig. v.24, 35, 37, 52), albeit one that is not always recognized as such.70 The combination of these two styles of description yields an answer to the question of how Galen can commend the life of someone who has eradicated their passions as being objectively the better life for human beings. As we have seen, Galen thinks it unthinkable that anyone who recognized the truly pathological nature of anger and the passions should want merely to give the impression of having dealt with them - that would be like painting over the spots, treating the symptoms. It might be objected that there's nothing inconsistent in holding both that it's wrong to act on one's pathe (and hence that they should be resisted), and that it is none the less a good thing to have pathe (because you might hold that to struggle successfully against temptation was virtuous - or perhaps even, bizarrely, that it was fun). That is, I think, the standard Christian view, in which moral heroism turns out to be something desirable. It is, however, profoundly un-Greek (witness Aristotle's suggestion that sophrosune is to be preferred to enkrateia); and in any case if Galen really can show that pathe in this sense are properly to be regarded as diseases, he is on firmer ground — it is surely a mark of a certain psychological aberrance to think that struggle against 69

70

Aff.Dig. v . 2 3 , 24; QAM iv.778; cf. ibid. 782, 787; a n d That the Best Doctor Be Also a Philosopher (Opt.Med.) 1.59; the metaphor is of course venerable: see Nussbaum (1987) pp. 162-71, esp. p . 165, n. 71. For the difference between Galen's view of the nature of the sickness, a n d that of Chrysippus, see PHP v.432-54: = .SKF111.471-3; on the concept of a 'sickness of the soul', see n. 62.

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disease, however successful, is to be preferred to health. But to justify the claim that anger and its congeners really are diseases of the soul, Galen needs to show how they fit into his own general pathological scheme. For Galen disease consists in damage to or destruction of one of the essential activities (energeiai) of the body;71 hence for anger and the like to be diseases of the soul, they must involve or consist in damage to some essential psychic function. And there is an obvious candidate for such a function, namely reason. Galen agrees with Aristotle that reason is the supremely human quality: Man alone as compared with other things has the special gift of reason; if he casts this gift aside and indulges in anger, he is living and acting like a wild animal rather than a man. {Aff.Dig. v.22-3) Abrogate reason, and you destroy your own humanity. Here a problem surfaces: Galen's language suggests that we are strongly responsible (i.e. both causally and morally) for our submission to passion. Yet that picture does not seem to square with the idea of passion as a disease, or as something external to us. None the less, it is reasonably clear how Galen wants to conceptualize the pathological nature of passion: passions interfere with, and render impotent, our reasoning abilities, causing us to do things that we would never have done on cool reflection, such as inflicting incurable injuries72 and berating inanimate objects like doors, stones and keys (ibid. 22).73 The first step in combatting this infection is to prevent the passion from issuing in action, as it does in the case of those fully in its grip. But that is only the first stage — following that, we have to eradicate it. Galen assigns, traditionally enough, the power of voluntary action to the rational part of the soul;74 what happens in the grip of passion is precisely that that normal function gets diverted or usurped altogether. What is needed, then, is the re-establishment of the proper lines of communication between the rational soul, the brain, and action. Part of the physiological theory he needs to ground this can be found in his account of the separate location of the passions in the 71 72 73 74

See e.g. MM x. 78-81; and see Hankinson (1991a) ad loc; this is part of his reason for rejecting Chrysippus' dispositional account: see n. 27. W h i c h G a l e n considers ' t h e act of a m a n insane o r of a wild a n i m a l ' : ibid. 22; cf. Seneca, de Ira 1.1.3—7, 19.1-4. See nn. 55, 57. PHP v.600; Symp.Diff. vii.55-6; MM x.636; see Hankinson (1991b); see also Pigeaud (1988) pp. 170-1, and the references collected there.

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heart, and of their mediation via the arteries. Of course, that in itself will not fully explain the causal mechanisms involved in the usurpation of the role of reason by the passions, and indeed such an account is difficult to square with his neurophysiology (if one can call it that). More precisely, Galen can show how the passions might interfere with the dictates of reason, causing a type of paralysis; 75 it is much harder to give an account of how the passions might not merely prevent rational action, but actually promote conflicting types of action; and although such an account can be sketched on Galen's behalf, he does not himself attempt one. 76 We nevertheless now have a reasonably clear account of how control of the passions relates to Galen's notion of the good human life, construed on the broadly Aristotelian model. For Galen, just as for Aristotle, the good man is autarkes (E.N. x.7. 1177a! iff.); and autarkeia is defined by Galen as being the condition in which one's actions are under one's rational control, where one genuinely acts as opposed to simply being affected; thus, in the case of the good man, Galen can adopt a type of (S3) justification, in which one is responsible because one's reasons for action are part of the action's causes (see note 39). Galen will sometimes use the phrase erga kai pathe as though nothing turned on the distinction between them; 77 but 75 76

77

Although he never in fact does so, all the necessary material is contained in his remarks on the difficulty of making precise neural sections in the spinal column: PHP v.235ff. We could begin to generate an account for Galen if we allowed that the boiling blood in the arteries penetrated the brain and caused alterations of its normal functioning, which in turn caused non-normal neural signals to be sent out from it. This would be to adapt and adopt a theory Galen considers and then rejects on the Stoics' behalf, namely one in which the brain is the source of the nerves, but only mediately the source of psychic power, which itself originates in the heart and proceeds via the brain: PHP\. 255-6, 261-4; see Hankinson (1991b) for a full discussion. Note that Galen's reasons for rejecting the Stoic theory explicitly do so only as an explanation of normal functioning (the body could not be so constructed with regard to its normal functions, for teleological reasons: see Hankinson (1988b) and (1989) and n. 65); but that, of course, makes it quite coherent for him to view this as a possible type of abnormal functioning. But it must be stressed that, tempting as this is, it is all speculative. Thus he describes the 'unseemliness of behaviour due to erotic desire, gluttony, drunkenness, and luxurious eating' as lerga and pathe of the desiderative power of the soul': Aff.Dig. v.27-8. But perhaps Galen does not mean to suggest that erga and pathe have the same sense here - rather an analysis akin to that given for pathos and energeia is in order: gluttony and the like are indeed actions of the desiderative soul; but they are emphatically not (or at least are only incidentally and not in any genuine sense) the actions of the whole man, but are at best pathe of that. The association of erga and pathe in discussions of the soul goes back at least to Plato (Phdr. 245c); and cf. Aristotle, de An. 1.1, 403b 12: 'the natural scientist is concerned with all the erga and pathe of this body, and of this type of matter'. The distinction is between what the soul can do and how it can be affected, in a quite general way; that is, with its causal powers broadly construed.

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elsewhere he puts them in pointed contrast - thus at Aff.Dig. v.41, he writes: when I compared the noble deeds [erga] of my father with my mother's disgraceful passions [pathe], I decided to embrace and love his deeds and to flee and hate her passions. The father78 is described as performing actions, whereas the mother is not - and the reason for that distinction should now be obvious. Galen, then, leans towards the notion of a disinterested, hegemonic principle of rationality quite distinct from desires and interests that was a central part of the philosophical tradition from Plato through Descartes until Hume. But reason for Galen has that privileged position precisely because in its untrammelled condition it is able to take the long view, and to work out the correct course of action from the point of view of a life taken as a whole in which each element is accorded its proper value. And for Galen, unlike the Stoics, that does not require literally valuing at naught the ordinary comforts of life, treating them at best as preferred indiflferents - rather it involves evaluating them accurately, for the overall contribution they make to a life well-lived. Now, such positions are notoriously prone to charges of circularity — surely one can only make such strategic determinations about life plans and the like when one has already sketched a rough conception of what the good life for oneself is to consist in: but that is entirely up for grabs. Such charges can be levelled against Aristotle too, but in both cases they miss the mark; for Galen, like Aristotle, thinks that there is a determinate, non-subjective way of determining the best life available to a human being, a method founded upon biological analysis. Broadly, there are two ways in which one might seek to justify the claim that a certain way of life is objectively better for human beings, irrespective of their incidental beliefs about it. The first (Strategy A) consists in showing that a life lived in a particular manner, articulated by a particular set of desires and goals, will as a matter of fact issue in a greater level of satisfaction for the liver than any of the alternatives; Strategy A does not seek to show that a particular set of articulating principles, or guiding second-order desires if you prefer, 78

Whom Galen lauds as being 'mild-mannered, just and kind': Aff.Dig. v.40, in sharp contrast with his mother, whom he represents as a Xanthippe prone to biting her housemaids.

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is better independently of the effects they may have on one's life, but rather that they are to be preferred precisely because a life lived in accordance with them is better from the inside than one that isn't. Such accounts raise interesting but not insuperable difficulties centred around the concept of identity - but this is not the place to follow them out. The second strategy, B, is quite different from A, although because of certain structural similarities it bears to A (principally in that both strategies make use of the concept of'a better life' which is in both cases to be explicated in partially non-subjective terms),79 the two are sometimes confused. Strategy B involves attempting to ground the view that a certain type of life is superior, and superior for everybody, without direct reference to what it is like to live that or any other type of life at all. Proponents of Strategy B, Aristotle among them, regularly claim that as a matter of fact, the superior life will be a better one subjectively for the agent to live: but they do not have to do so. In the ancient world, the Epicureans are the principal representatives of strategy A;80 nowadays most people are, I think, A-strategists. Galen was clearly in the B-strategy camp. Of course he does hold that the life in accordance with reason will 79

I should perhaps clarify what I mean by 'partially non-subjective' here - and the difference between Strategies A a n d B is principally to be located in the different ways in which they are non-subjective. Strategy A is 'partially non-subjective' (or 'weakly objective', if you prefer), just because it is taken that the fact that one (Lj) out of a sequence of possible lives < L n L 2 , . . . L n > is as a matter of objective, absolute a n d non-relative fact better for /,, where ' I , ' picks out some individual; b u t that is of course compatible with some other life from the set Lj being better for I 2 . Strategy B is 'totally non-subjective', (or strongly objective) just because it allows the individual indices to be dropped: or alternatively because it holds that, if it is true that some life L; is as a matter of fact better for some individual I, then it is better for any individual you care to mention. A, then, entails that (1) (x) (3/,) (Z, is best for*); B entails the stronger

80

(2) (3Z,)(*)(Lisbestforx); and the quantifier marks the difference between partial and total non-subjectivity. (i) and (2) are not, however, intended to be full analyses of the difference between A and B. Actually, this claim is controversial: whether or not it is strictly true depends, I think, on whether for the Epicureans it is a merely contingent fact that certain types of life are actually more pleasant than others - it is certainly true that the Epicureans are naturalists about h u m a n nature. I suppose the answer to that question depends on whether they would reject the counterfactual claim that a life consisting in the satisfaction of only natural and necessary desires would be better even if as a matter of fact it was not the (only) way to secure a m a x i m u m of pleasure over pain; I assume they would, hence my enrollment of them as A-strategists; but the case is unclear. I a m grateful to David Gill for useful discussions on this topic.

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be subjectively a better life - it will be less turbulent, and not prone to chronic and unalleviable dissatisfactions (Aff.Dig. v.45-56), dissatisfactions which stem from the very nature of the structure of desires that such a life involves (51-2); in these passages there is almost an Epicurean ring to his moral exhortation (cf. Lucretius de Rerum Natura m.48-93; note 48): the man who hates insatiate desire and greed loves to be self-sufficient and independent. If, then, being free from grief lies in this alone, and this lies in our power, we can now be entirely free from distress (lupe)81 by keeping the doctrines on greed and independence ready at hand. (Aff.Dig. v.52) But crucially, this fact in itself is not the reason for avoiding one life and choosing the other - that choice can be justified simply by appeal to the greater nobility of the life of reason, a nobility that is the direct expression of its greater intrinsic worth as a life for a human being, and these goods (principal among them being freedom from distress: alupia)82 are derivative goods.83 Galen stresses, as does Aristotle, that pleasure is not something specifiable independently of a description of character and way of life, and hence cannot serve as an independent point of reference and justification for a choice of life.84 Rather, we find pleasant those types of things that are as a matter of fact in accordance with the sort of life to which we are committed; if our second-order desires to have a desire-set with a certain structure are realised, then our pleasures will consist precisely in the satisfaction of those desires. 85 Galen 81

82

83

84 85

lupe is translated by Harkins (1963) as 'grief, which is a general Greek meaning of the term - here, however, it is being used in its semi-technical sense of'any unpleasant mental disturbance' - hence 'distress' seems the appropriate translation. The Stoics have a great deal to say about lupe, defining it as 'an opinion that some recent {prosphatori) evil is present' {PHP v.416, = SFFi.2i2, 2.463; cf. /WPv.332, = SVF i.2io, 3.481; SFF1.211); Galen, though, will dispute the identification of distress directly with beliefs (on the importance of the qualification that the beliefs be 'recent' or fresh, see n. 14). T h e Stoics classed alupia as one of the 'final goods {telika agatha)\ i.e. things that were good in themselves: Diog. Laer. vii.96 ( = SVF111.107; c^- 112)> along with confidence, thought, freedom, joy, good-disposition a n d all actions in accordance with virtue; a n d given the close connection between alupia a n d ataraxia, it is clear that both the Epicureans a n d the Sceptics would agree with them here: cf PH 1. 25ff., M 11. 1 ioff., 1416°. At this point it is worth noting that, although Galen stresses the aesthetic advantages of such a life over its competitors (passions a n d desires make one ridiculous a n d ugly), for Galen, aesthetics itself should be functionally-based - something is beautiful just in case it fulfills its function well (see UP m.897-9; an 3 3 5 I L 8-13; Resp. in.33). This latter evidence casts doubt as well on Dihle's claim that Seneca's account depends crucially on Posidonian innovations (1973) p . 50 ff. A view defended by Rist (1969) p p . 63 ff; Kidd (1978) p p . 252-4; a n d White (1985). T o anticipate a bit, the problem of too many (or conflicting) rules does not explicitly feature in this dispute. Since this would be such a n obvious move for someone wishing to deny the usefulness of rules it seems to me that this m a y furnish further evidence against viewing the question in quite these terms. White (1985). W h i t e (1985), citing Ep. Mor. x c i v . 3 5 , claims that Seneca 'just flatly denies' t h a t there are no exceptionless praecepta a n d thinks t h a t 'we can include e n o u g h qualification in o u r rules to make t h e m i m m u n e to exceptions' p . 301. (Cf. de Officiis 1.33, for Cicero's general suspicions a b o u t such procedures.) T h i s offers t h e Stoics t h e very u n h a p p y prospect of m a i n t a i n i n g a c o m m i t m e n t to exceptionless rules only by continually qualifying t h e m to fit exceptions. A n d it is h a r d to see w h a t the point of calling such rules exceptionless is supposed to be o r h o w they can h o p e to continue qualifying a rule without m a k i n g it look trivial. Moreover, even if such saws as 'Greed is never satisfied' or 'Expect from others w h a t you d o to t h e m ' c a n escape the charge of triviality, it does not take too m u c h ingenuity to think u p exceptions.

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precise moral guidance. Indeed, it is difficult not to view the entire dispute as being somehow misguided. Characterizing Stoic conceptions oipraecepta in this way, however, misconceives both the terms and goals of their overall argument. Part of the problem is that it can be fairly tempting to assimilate the Stoics' account to a rigorist model of rules33 in which exceptions take on paramount importance. If we view praecepta as rules specifying and enjoining obligations to perform certain actions, it becomes necessary, as in the Kantian tradition, to handle exceptions by arranging rules into hierarchies and articulating further principles of priority. 34 Although it is fairly clear that Seneca is committed to classifying praecepta?5 and showing how they are connected to basic features of human agency and rationality, 36 he nowhere implies that they are ranked in hierarchies or ordered along some fixed grid of priorities. Moreover, he appears to be relatively untroubled about problems of exceptions37 or conflict. From the perspective of a rigorist all this would be very puzzling; so it is perhaps worth 33

34 35 36

37

By 'rigorism' I m e a n the view, often attributed to K a n t , that morality is structured by rules that admit of no exceptions. See D o n a g a n (1977) for a recent defence of rigorism on the basis that all possible exceptions are implicitly implied in a rule when it is properly understood. I see no evidence for such a move a m o n g the Stoics, however. O r , as in Rawls, precepts might be lexically ordered with the rider that no precept c a n be followed if it violates a precept higher in the series (1971) p . 4 3 . H e does so at Ep. Mor. xcv.47 ff, classifying praecepta with respect to gods (47-50), m e n (51-3), a n d things (54). I t is easy to get the impression from recent discussions that praecepta are mostly limited to expressions such as 'Nothing in excess' or 'Greed is never satisfied'; this is very misleading, however. Seneca argues, for instance, that there a r e basic precepts concerning attitudes towards others which revolve a r o u n d certain natural conditions of h u m a n agency, i.e. that agents have a common share in reason, are particles of god, share natural kinship, etc. (Ep. Mor. xcv.51 ff; cf. Off 1.7). At Ep. Mor. x c i v . 3 5 - 6 Seneca attempts to meet Aristo's objection that praecepta are infinita, thus useless in practice: 'Inftnita' inquit 'praecepta sunt.} Falsum est; nam de maximis ac necessariis rebus non sunt infinita; tenues autem differentias habent quas exigunt tempora, loca, personae, sed his quoque dantur praecepta generalia. This might suggest a rigorist model of rules that handles exceptions either by (a) subsuming them under various sub-rules until a complete and detailed code of rules is explicitly laid out, or by (b) developing a practical science for qualifying and interpreting rules. The latter alternative suggests a casuistic model in which agents are trained to make moral judgments by arguing about hard cases. Again, Seneca's emphasis is different from either of these alternatives. Praecepta can help an agent pick out morally relevant features of a situation; but in doing so they do not need to encompass a whole battery of possible exceptions or qualifications since they are not rules for making judgments. Judgment proceeds from decreta and it is when the question ofjustification arises that exceptions and qualifications need to be weighed. (On a similar issue, cf. Herman (1985) p. 420.) Seneca's point is that praecepta can lead agents to see that a particular situation needs moral attention and judgment, and they do so in particular situations without being endlessly qualified or becoming 'infinita'.

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questioning whether such a model is adequate for understanding the Stoic conception of praecepta. We can situate problems about praecepta somewhat differently, I believe, and perhaps account for what might look to a rigorist like odd omissions by looking more closely at Seneca's explanation of the manner in which rules enter moral experience and how they function in moral development. His most basic disagreement with Aristo is over the way that individuals come to acquire an awareness of the requirements of particular moral situations. He maintains, against Aristo, that even someone acquainted with the fundamental principles of morality {deereta) needs the help of praecepta in order to learn to recognize what particular moral situations demand. 38 Without developing this kind of moral awareness, agents will not be able to act in ways appropriate to particular circumstances.39 Praecepta, he claims, teach us to recognize morally salient features of individual situations; moreover, by enabling us to recognize that particular situations have moral characteristics, they give us a starting point for moral development.40 To be sure, praecepta cannot provide us with the reasons or justifications for our actions. But they lead us to recognize what should be done and how it should be done. 41 In 38

Seneca's claim that praecepta are necessary for discovering 'quid quaeque res exigaf (Ep. Mor. xciv.32) is ambiguous between types a n d tokens, b u t the contrast d r a w n a t Ep. Mor. x c v . 12 more strongly suggests action tokens. A n d in a n y case, although the content of a praeceptum is not a particular, adoptions a n d assertions of a praeceptum are. Cf. Nell w h o suggests comparing how the fact that a sentence, e.g. ' T h e world is round', is not a particular in no w a y prevents m y belief that the world is round from being one. (1975)

39

Ep. Mor. x c i v . 3 2 - 3 ; cf. x c v . 12 where this claim is repeated about someone who has ratio. I a m using 'starting points' for the sake of contrast with Aristotle b u t also to capture what Seneca calls 'prima fundamental {Ep. Mor. xcv.35), i.e. the initial cognitive starting points or foundations of virtue. T h e Stoics talk about aphormai (cf. Diog. Laer. vii.89; SVF in.264 = £c/.ii.6o.g; SFF1.566 = Ed. 11.65.7 W) m t n e sense of natural inclinations to virtue, and these might in some sense be characterized as starting points. Presumably, aphormai are built-in propensities to encounter experience in certain ways; however, without the right cognitive input a n d instruction, they are insufficient to provide a secure starting point for the acquisition of virtue. For a general discussion of Stoic claims about innateness, see Scott (.988). Cf. Ep. Mor. xciv.23 • • • auid ei quemadmodum debeamus facere, discendum est (i.e. by means of praecepta). Cf. Burnyeat (1980) pp. 71 ff for a discussion of'starting points' at EN iO95b213 and Aristotle's view of the role that non-cognitive elements have in their acquisition. Aristotle claims that someone who has acquired the requisite starting points already loves virtue (cf. Burnyeat, p. 75 on EN 1179b4~31). Seneca makes a similar claim at xcv.35: . . . ita in his quos velis ad beatam vitam perducere prima fundamenta iacienda sunt et insinuanda virtus. Huius quadam superstitione teneantur, hanc ament; cum hac vivere velint, sine hac nolint. I hope it becomes clear in the ensuing discussion in what sense this process can be viewed as being strictly cognitive. White argues (1985, p. 303) that praecepta pick out purely descriptive, factual conditions for evaluative claims. But this is too schematic and relies on the notion

40

41

P- 1 3 - •

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addition, Seneca maintains, unlike Aristotle, that this kind of moral sensitivity can be acquired and developed strictly through cognitive means. Seneca provides a richly detailed catalogue of the cognitive methods by which praecepta structure and develop our moral awareness, but for present purposes it will perhaps be sufficient to touch on only a few of the most significant. He argues that praecepta are necessary because our beliefs have become corrupted and we have consequently become blind to the moral aspects of our actions. In an account reminiscent of Plato's in the Republic, he traces the sources of corruption to the bad advice and example of those who glorify power, wealth, and pleasure.42 What is needed, he claims, are therapeutic praecepta that can counteract such influences and restructure our beliefs by removing the obstacles to our moral vision.43 A significant attraction of praecepta, Seneca claims, is that they are not merely coercive;44 unlike laws, they sometimes can persuade solely by reminding us or by calling our attention to things that we have forgotten.45 At the same time, they can help us bring coherence to the moral views that we already have and also make

42

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that rules act as a n externally imposed, normative grid that can be mapped on to o u r experience in order to discover the relevant factual instances. T h e picture that emerges from Seneca is quite different. Praecepta alert us to the moral characteristics of a situation not by showing us that it answers to an appropriate factual description, b u t by calling our attention to its morally salient features. For corresponding reasons, I think it is misleading to claim, as White does (pp. 304-5), that the Stoics are attempting to respond to openquestion arguments a n d thus to difficulties about moving from factual premisses to evaluative conclusions. Nulla ad aures nostras vox impune perfertur; nocent qui optant, nocent qui execrantur. Nam, et horum inprecatio falsos nobis metus inserit et illorum amor male docet bene optando; . . . Non licet, inquam, ire recta via. t r a h u n t in p r a v u m parentes, t r a h u n t servi. (Ep. Mor. x d v . 5 3 - 4 ) Cf. Diog. Laer. v n . 89 for Ghrysippus' claim that rational beings are led astray by the instruction or communication of companions (ten katechesin ton sunonton). Cf. SVF 111.519; also Sedley, p p . 313-31 in this volume. Multis contra praeceptis eget animus ut videat quid agendum sit in vita. (Ep. Mor. xciv.19) T h r o u g h o u t these two letters Seneca sustains a n elaborate medical analogy between saving a n d restoring one's sight a n d saving a n d restoring one's ability to recognize moral requirements. This is not to say that Seneca thinks, as some particularists have argued, that moral j u d g m e n t is actually a kind of'vision'; but he shows a similar concern with capturing the individuality of moral experience. 'Leges' inquit ' u t faciamus quod oportet n o n efficiunt, et quid aliud sunt q u a m minis mixta praecepta?' P r i m u m o m n i u m o b hoc illae n o n persuadent quia minantur, at haec non cogunt sed exorant; deinde leges a scelere deterrent, praecepta in officium a d h o r t a n tur. (Ep. Mor. xciv.37) I t a q u e subinde ad m e m o r i a m reducendus es; n o n enim reposita ilia esse oportet sed in

promptu. Quaecumque salutaria sunt saepe agitari debent, saepe versari, ut non tantum nota sint nobis sed etiam parata. Adice nunc quod aperta quoque apertiora fieri solent. (Ep. Mor. xciv.26)

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them more explicit.46 Similarly, they enable us to look at things in new ways, correct corrupt beliefs,47 and banish disturbing passions.48 In short, through these and similar cognitive techniques, praecepta help us recognize that particular situations have morally salient characteristics. They do so by altering the structure of our beliefs and developing a new framework for our moral awareness.49 We still need to ask, of course, how plausible it is for the Stoics to maintain that we can develop this sort of moral awareness through cognitive methods alone. But at this point, we can at least defend their view from some common complaints against intellectualist and rule-governed theories of morality.50 As Seneca makes clear, rules do not enter into our moral experience as sources of abstract and inflexible authoritarian guidance (Ep. Mor. xciv.37). Praecepta call our attention to the particular, changing circumstances of our moral experience; therefore, moral recognition is built up both from within particular situations and in response to their specific features. The moral awareness that we acquire through Stoic praecepta is not, therefore, like an abstract or inflexible moral viewpoint imposed from without. Nor is it in any way remote from individual and collective experience. Stoic praecepta offer a concrete and flexible strategy for acquiring the starting points necessary for further moral development. They do so, however, without offering a completely 46

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Praeterea q u a e d a m sunt quidem in animo, sed p a r u m prompta, q u a e incipiunt in expedito esse c u m dicta sunt; q u a e d a m diversis locis iacent sparsa, quae contrahere inexercita mens non potest. Itaque in u n u m conferenda sunt et iungenda, ut plus valeant a n i m u m q u e magis adlevent. (Ep. Mor. xciv.29) Cf. Inwood (1985) p p . 83 ff. o n the notion of agents making explicit to themselves propositions to which they have assented. Ingenii vis praeceptis alitur et crescit novasque persuasiones adicit innatis et depravata corrigit. (Ep. Mor. xciv.30) Q u o d si est, non t a n t u m scita sapientiae prosunt sed etiam praecepta, quae adfectus nostros velut edicto coercent et ablegant. (Ep. Mor. xciv.47) In other words, praecepta help us to restrain a n d remove emotions, though they themselves are not coercive (cf. note 44 above). I t is not that praecepta help us to acquire patterns of relevant factual information in order to guide us when we are faced with a particular moral situation. T h e y help to create an overall framework for moral j u d g m e n t a n d action. See H e r m a n (1985) p . 419 w h o provides an account of the ways that a 'practical framework' for action is created on a K a n t i a n model of rules. I a m much indebted to her general account of the mechanisms of 'moral salience'. It should be clear that their theory escapes from the following general defect in intellectualist theories described by Burnyeat (1980) p . 70: 'Intellectualism, a one-sided preoccupation with reason a n d reasoning, is a perennial failing in moral philosophy. T h e very subject of moral philosophy is sometimes denned or delimited as the study of moral reasoning, thereby excluding the greater part of what is important in the initial - and, I think, continuing - moral development of a person.'

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codified set of moral priorities or by requiring practice in the purely theoretical complexities of casuistry.51 We might reasonably wonder, of course, about the efficacy and reliability of the cognitive techniques described by Seneca and why he is convinced that sound moral perception can develop in the face of so many sources of corruption.52 It might be objected, for instance, that whatever his account gains in flexibility and attention to moral detail it threatens to lose in structural clarity and objectivity. That is, if agents at this stage are not guided by some external grid of priorities, what is there to guarantee that their moral perception will not develop in ways that are completely idiosyncratic? For instance, at Ep. Mor. xcrv.26, Seneca describes the case of someone who adheres to a sexual double-standard. 53 Praecepta presumably can bring to one's attention the asymmetry of treatment that such conduct involves together with its moral dissonances. Yet, even if we concede to the Stoics their denial of akrasia, incorrigible desires, and so forth, what prevents individuals from revising their beliefs about such cases in the wrong way and, hence, developing defective moral attitudes? That is, we need an account not only of the formation of our attitudes, but also some way of further justifying the acquisition and the content of those attitudes. Seneca is aware of this potential problem with praecepta and through a series of images and arguments attempts to explain why decreta are necessary for a solution. But what are decreta and how do they function?54 It sometimes is claimed that decreta are merely general and more inclusive kinds of praecepta. And in fact, Seneca 51

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This is not to deny that a kind of casuistry ever m a d e a n a p p e a r a n c e in the Stoa (cf. Cicero's report about the disputes between Diogenes of Babylon a n d Antipater {Off. in. 51 ff; 91) a n d Hecato's q u a n d a r y about whether in a storm one should toss overboard a n expensive horse or a cheap slave {Off 111.89)). But Cicero does not take a n y of these to be h a r d moral cases, since they all involve a conflict between utilitas a n d moral good a n d are thus easily resolvable in favour of the latter. Nulli nos vitio natura conciliat: ilia integros ac liberos genuit. {Ep. Mor. xciv.56) Part of the answer is that there is a natural presumption in favour of developing the right kind of moral awareness (cf. D L vii.53 a n d Long & Sedley (1987) 1 p . 375 for discussion). Scis i n p r o b u m esse q u i a b uxore pudicitiam exigit, ipse alienarum corruptor uxorum; scis u t illi nil c u m adultero, sic tibi nil esse debere cum paelice, et n o n facis. Seneca uses 'decreta', iscita\ and iplacita> to translate 'dogmata' {Ep. Mor. xcv.io), on which see Barnes (1982) and Caizzi (1986) p. 154. Presumably, dogmata correspond to (or more precisely, are justified by) what Chrysippus calls koina theoremata {SVF 111.295; 2I4> 2 7^)See Ep. Mor. xcv.63-4 for general connections between decreta and ratio and xcv.io for connections between decreta and the governing principles (presumably connected to theoremata) in contemplative and practical crafts. On theoremata in general, see Schofield (1984) p. 91. Cf. Galen /W> v.324.

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himself provides an explicit textual basis for such a view.55 However, he also characterizes decreta in enough other ways to suggest that this is at best only part of the story. At Ep. Mor. xcv.59, for instance, he offers an illustration of the organic connections he sees between decreta and praecepta.56 He emphasizes their mutual dependence by likening decreta to branches and praecepta to leaves of a tree (an image he completes at xcv.64, by comparing reason to its sustaining roots). This suggests an overall relationship that fits rather awkwardly with the claim that decreta are just generic praecepta. At Ep. Mor. xcv.64, moreover, he likens praecepta to hands, and decreta to the hidden, directing powers of the mind. If we take this analogy at all seriously, it suggests that decreta somehow embody active, dynamic principles of reason and judgment. 57 Again, however, it is hard to see how this claim plausibly can be reduced to a question of their respective generality. Elsewhere, as well, Seneca makes several other claims on behalf of decreta: they provide reasons and justification for moral actions {Ep. Mor. xcv.5); 58 they lend both stability and coherence to our lives (xcv.44—6); they enable one to attain a fixed and unchanging understanding of life and nature as a whole.59 All of these claims suggest differences between decreta and praecepta that are not solely a matter of degrees of inclusiveness. We still need to inquire further into the actual mechanisms of decreta, though, in order to see how 55

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Quid enim interest inter decreta philosophiae et praecepta nisi quod ilia generalia praecepta sunt, haec specialia? U t r a q u e res praecipit, sed altera in totum, particulatim altera. (Ep. Mor. xciv.32) O n the basis of this passage, White (1985) argues that ' T h e Stoics think that the contrast [between praecepta a n d decreta] is merely between general a n d more specific injunctions, that is, that decreta are really just praecepta of a general sort . . . ' p . 303. I agree with Kidd, however, that 'this is a puzzling line for them to take . . . ' (1978) p . 254 and try to offer some ways of reading this distinction based o n evidence in Ep. Mor. x c v as well, which, after all is specifically devoted to discussing decreta. Note, however, pace White, that this passage does not in a n y case commit the Stoics to a n ascending grid of ranked priorities; it only draws a general contrast between the universality of decreta a n d the particularity of praecepta. Cf. Ep. Mor. x c v . 12 for the comparison of decreta to membra and praecepta to elementa which suggests n o t so m u c h a contrast between general a n d particular b u t a similar kind of organic (sine radice, 12.22) and causal connection (ilia et horum causae sunt et omnium, 12.27). T o take just o n e example of a claim that h e repeats in several places: Iustum autem honestumque decretorum nostrorum continet ratio (Ep. Mor. xcv.63). Cf. Leg. 1.18. I n this respect they correspond to katorthomata. T h e relationship between decreta and praecepta differs from that of katorthomata a n d kathekonta, however, since not every decretum is also a praeceptum. At Ep. Mor. xciv.33-4, Seneca discusses the relation between praecepta and officia: officia praeceptis disponuntur . . . U t r a q u e enim inter se consentiunt: nee ilia possunt praecedere ut non haec sequantur, et haec ordinem sequuntur suum; unde apparet ilia praecedere. Decreta sunt quae muniant, quae securitatem nostram tranquillitatemque tueantur, quae totam vitam totamque rerum n a t u r a m simul contineant. (Ep. Mor. xcv. 12)

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they enter into our moral development and shape our moral judgment. Unfortunately, Seneca does not provide a list of such decreta, but if what we expect are very high-level evaluative principles, a decretum will presumably be something on the order of'One always should be virtuous' or, perhaps, 'One who is virtuous always acts in accordance with nature'. 60 If we think of decreta only in terms of their generality and their immunity to exception, we may, as in the case of praecepta, be somewhat disappointed. White, for instance, thinks that the Stoics are faced with the dubious prospect of mapping these kinds of very general evaluative principles onto particular factual instances. In so far as he finds such general principles uninformative and empty, he questions whether such a procedure would be of any use to agents faced with making particular moral judgments. 61 We need to be careful, however, about what kinds of tests we are asking these principles to pass. First of all, it is not clear on what grounds such general principles are held to be uninformative. We might reasonably claim, for instance, that 'One always should be virtuous' informs us exactly what to do in a particular moral situation: it informs us that we should be virtuous.62 The problem seems not to be so much one of information, but of our needing further help in the form of more determinate principles to recognize particular actions that are in fact virtuous. But this need for further determination hardly demonstrates that general principles are uninformative, unless we assume that a principle provides information only if we apply it directly to an individual situation without the help of more determinate principles. It is not at all clear, however, what makes this latter requirement a reasonable test for principles. In the same way, general principles illuminate the connections between our actions and set significant restraints on them. Take the following example. Suppose that a friend of mine is depressed and that I advise him that hard work is the best cure for depression. This 60 61

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I t is not clear whether decreta need to be in the form of imperatives. See Ep. Mor. xcv.63. Cf. D L VII. 109 = SVF in.496 for corresponding examples of aei kathekonta. White (1985). I see no evidence that the Stoic account of decreta is responding to problems about moving from factual to evaluative claims (cf. note 41). Inwood (1986) a n d V a n d e r W a e r d t (1989) make use of a similar claim about the triviality of general principles to support their claim that the early Stoa believed that katorthomata cannot be captured in general rules. T h e y merely assume, however, that general principles are trivial. For further defence of these claims about general principles see Nell (1975) p p . 59—93.1 a m indebted to T . Irwin and J . Whiting for further clarification about these issues.

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general recommendation is informative and makes a whole network of associations intelligible in a way markedly different from my telling him that to cure his depression he should get up in the morning and shovel snow, paint his garage, refinish his piano, etc. Offering a list of instances in this case is less informative in important respects than giving a general recommendation. By the same token, Seneca plausibly maintains that decreta are to be augmented by praecepta not because decreta are uninformative, but because praecepta help to convey the special information provided by decreta to the requisite moral contexts. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to see, at least at first glance, what justifies Seneca's claim that decreta are in any sense dynamic principles of reason and judgment. If we take Seneca's descriptions of the benefits of decreta as well as his supporting imagery seriously, however, we can begin to see why Stoics think that decreta have such a central, dynamic role in individual moral development. 63 At this point, it will be helpful to return to the difficulties with praecepta that Seneca thinks can be solved by appealing to decreta. A central worry is that, by themselves, praecepta may not be able to prevent us from developing merely idiosyncratic modes of moral perception. To meet such objections, Seneca gives an account of the governing conditions used for administering praecepta and discusses methods for properly guiding and testing them. For instance, he develops an elaborate contrast between the moral prospects of those living in a city, surrounded by vice, and those who are leading solitary, selfsufficient lives in the country. 64 He argues that only the right kinds of praecepta will begin to strip away the layers of worldly distraction that prevent us from viewing ourselves as utterly self-sufficient and independent moral agents. 65 As Seneca repeats again and again, vice needs a stage on which to act, and we can regain our health only by seeking retirement and retreating into ourselves. 66 A limiting condition on praecepta, then, is that they must help us to regard ourselves as approximating an ideal. Seneca's controlling idea here 63

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Limiting the discussion to questions of individual development is somewhat artificial. I t is clear that decreta also m a y have a role to play as social principles, as instruments of social change, etc. Ep. Mor. XGIV.59-74. Nussbaum (1987) p . 135 for other i m p o r t a n t dimensions of Seneca's tactic of getting us to view ourselves as radically detached from t h e world a n d entirely self-sufficient. Cf. Ganss (1952) a n d Trillitzsch (1962) for the general background. O r as Seneca says robigo animorum effricanda est (Ep. Mor. xcv.37). Cf. Ep. Mor. xciv.71—2: Ambitio et luxuria et inpotentia scaenam desiderant: sanabis ista si absconderis.

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is in some ways an interesting anticipation of one of Kant's formulations of the categorical imperative.67 Kant argues that one categorical limitation on the permissibility of our maxims is that we view ourselves as ideal moral agents, regardless of our moral defects or those of others. Seneca, too, thinks that one of the requirements governing praecepta is that they lead us to a correspondingly ideal vision of ourselves. Of course, Seneca is not explicitly laying down a categorical restraint here precisely in the manner of Kant. 68 Yet, he clearly is concerned to elicit the limiting conditions and rational requirements that underwrite effective uses of praecepta; thus, a comparison with Kant, when properly qualified,69 can be instructive. A similar Kantian parallel70 occurs in Seneca's discussion of the general principles guiding our dealings with others. He argues that the praecepta concerned with various helping actions are governed by a decretum enjoining that we respect other persons as mutually related parts of God and nature. 71 Thus, Seneca thinks that by means of the underlying rational constraints provided by decreta, this class of praecepta can be prevented from becoming merely a haphazard collection or heap and our moral perception of individual helping actions can be similarly protected from developing in ways that are merely idiosyncratic. Seen in this light, it becomes easier to understand why Seneca insists that decreta and praecepta are mutually 67

68 69

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Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Beck, p . 54 ff). T h e r e are some questions about the extent to which this counts as a separate formulation of the categorical imperative; I follow A u n e (1979). Both K i d d (1978) p . 253 a n d Kerferd (1978) p p . 134-5 a r e rightly cautious about this. K i d d says that decreta ' a r e more like categorical imperatives' (thanpraecepta are). T o forestall possible misunderstandings, it should be noted that the way K a n t i a n agents are sometimes thought to test the permissibility of their maxims against the categorical imperative is very different from the m u t u a l functioning of Stoic praecepta a n d decreta. Decreta elicit rational requirements from within a set of moral characteristics that have been perceived by agents using praecepta. At least on some readings of K a n t , agents approach the categorical imperative with no prior independent moral awareness. (For further discussion, cf. Nell (1975) ch. 3.; for the possibility of K a n t i a n agents having prior recognition of moral features see H e r m a n (1985) p . 416.) I.e. K a n t ' s second formulation in FMM. Long points to a similar parallel between K a n t ' s first formulation of the categorical imperative a n d the Stoic's conception of right reason, (1974) p . 208. T h e r e are hints of this as well in Seneca's account at Ep. Mor. xcv.48 ff. N a t u r a nos cognatos edidit, c u m ex isdem et in eadem gigneret; haec nobis a m o r e m indidit m u t u u m et sociabiles fecit. Ilia a e q u u m iustumque composuit; ex illius constitutione miserius est nocere q u a m laedi; ex illius imperio p a r a t a e sint iuvandis manus. {Ep. Mor. xcv.52-3) Cf. xciv.67 ff. ( I n this section ofEp. Mor. x c v , Seneca is discussing the decreta that guide our relations to gods a n d men.)

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supporting and necessary for moral development. Praecepta enable us to grasp morally salient features of individual situations. They are therefore able to give us our initial purchase on the world of concrete moral experience. Decreta, in turn, provide us with the rational constraints necessary for further articulating and guiding these moral perceptions. But without our initial grasp of the particular textures of moral experience, decreta would be like branches without leaves or a mind powerless to make contact with the world. Moreover, as suggested in Seneca's images, praecepta and decreta are mutually strengthening. As we develop, our cognitive grasp of both begins to deepen and their mutual connections are gradually reinforced.72 Accordingly, induction from particulars and deduction from principles have mutually supportive and overlapping roles to play in our ongoing development as well. 73 What emerges from Seneca's discussion of moral rules is something very different, then, from the static, grid-like conception of morality that is often ascribed to rule-based moral theories. The Stoics envision a process that is both flexible and tied to particulars, while giving agents a way of progressively articulating and assessing their moral experience both from within their own individual circumstances and with the help of rationally grounded principles. No doubt, difficult questions remain about the adequacy of this account, even as a plausible story about cognitive development; but, at the very least, we can perhaps begin to acquit the Stoics of some of the more flagrant charges commonly levelled at rule-based theories. in

It is difficult, nonetheless, not to notice how much of what we intuitively might find important has dropped out of Seneca's account. We might reasonably wonder, for instance, whether our 72

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This developmental picture perhaps begins to provide part of an answer to Long's worry that, since only sages can truly understand Nature's rules, 'Nature provides a destination which is approachable by no known road.' (1970) p. 102. By emphasizing the role of praecepta in helping agents to recognize morally salient features, I do not mean to imply that they are formed strictly inductively from responses to individual situations. It is not that decreta serve only to provide rational constraints for praecepta once we have already acquired praecepta non-deductively. There are certainly other deductive relations between decreta and praecepta from the very beginning, since grasping the Tight, praecepta will require the right Stoic conception of human nature, nature as a whole, etc. At the same time, however, moral development and judgment are not just a matter of mechanically deducing the relative instances from general axioms. It might be that, as argued by Striker (1987), moral justification is strictly deductive. But the account

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grasp of particular moral situations through praecepta might not be helped rather than merely undermined by various kinds of feelings or settled habits. Or we might be worried about the possibility that, in a particular situation, morally salient features might come into conflict. These two problems - the role of non-cognitive elements in morality and the possibility of moral conflict - obviously raise a wide variety of serious challenges to the Stoics' account of rules and moral development. To give a fully satisfactory defence of the Stoic position, one would have to show, for example, why the Stoics are justified in thinking that moral values are uniform and commensurable, hence not prey to irreducible conflicts. Similarly, it would be necessary to defend the Stoics' moral psychology on a wide variety of fronts. Since I cannot pursue these larger questions here, what I propose to do is to concentrate on just one argument, albeit one that unites elements of both of these basic challenges to the Stoics in a particularly telling way. Obviously, such a procedure will leave important questions about rules untouched; nevertheless, it may at least suggest further contours of the Stoics' general position and give some indication of its potential strengths and weaknesses. In the course of discussing whether it is ever right to break common moral rules such as rules that we should keep promises, tell the truth, and so forth, W. D. Ross makes a claim that has attracted much attention: When we think ourselves justified in breaking, and indeed morally obliged to break, a promise in order to relieve someone's distress, we do not for the moment cease to recognize a prima facie duty to keep our promise, and this leads us to feel, not indeed shame or repentance, but certainly compunction, for behaving as we do; we recognize, further, that it is our duty to make up somehow to the promisee for the breaking of the promise.74 Many have objected that there is an element of contradiction in Ross's overall account. 75 On the one hand, Ross thinks that in conflict situations, we can reach clear-cut and completely justified solutions. In this passage, however, he maintains that overridden duties still retain some residual emotional influence and moral force. 74

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given by Seneca of moral development relies on the continuous interplay of inductive and deductive elements. Ross (1930) p . 28. F o r a representative range of criticism, see Phillips & M o u n c e (1970) p p . 79 ff; Williams (1973) p p . 175 ff; N u s s b a u m (1986a) p p . 47 flf; G o w a n s (1987); Santurri (1987) p p . 41 ff. Santurri (1987) pp. 47 ff sets out the range of contemporary responses to this issue in great detail; I am indebted to his discussion in what follows.

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Yet, if an overridden duty still holds any emotional or moral claim on us, so it is claimed, it remains both a genuine and persisting obligation. A potential contradiction thus arises for Ross,76 since we might ask how a decision can be described as unequivocally justified (i.e. morally obliged), if it has violated what is still viewed as a genuine and persisting obligation. To avoid contradiction, one might claim that reaching an unequivocal solution just means that, all things considered, there is no residual moral claim; hence agents should feel no compunction or remorse over the obligations they set aside.77 For many, however, the intuitive costs of such a move have seemed too high and they insist that it is an inescapable feature of taking 'seriously the fact that we are human persons, and not (even potentially) some kind of gods' 78 that we have such feelings as regret or compunction in situations of conflict and that we regard these feelings as important components of human value. If we take such feelings to reflect a continuing obligation, however, we will be forced to deny that conflicts admit of unambiguous solutions. In a corresponding discussion of whether it is ever permissible to break a promise (de Officiis ni.92-5), 79 Cicero, reflecting a Stoic position, gives the following example: What of the case of Agamemnon, when he had vowed to Diana the most beautiful creature born that year in his realm and was brought to sacrifice Iphigenia, for in that year nothing was born more beautiful than she? He 76

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As Santurri points out (1987), Ross may have the means, from within his own theory, to escape contradiction. He might claim that we can feel regret for the loss of a moral good represented in the action set aside, without thinking there is any loss of a moral right. My action overall is right, though I can still feel regret at the loss of a moral good; what I feel in this case is not compunction, however, since compunction and remorse are reactions to a moral wrong. Thus, it might be claimed that in this passage Ross misdescribes the emotional phenomenology of conflict situations in terms of his own theory. It makes a difference here whether we view conflicts in terms of beliefs or desires. Those who argue that there is a moral remainder when one of two conflicting obligations is put aside often liken moral conflicts to conflicts of desire rather than to conflicts of belief. 'When we act on one of two conflicting desires . . . the rejected desire is not thereby abandoned; this can show itself in the regret we feel for what is missed. On the other hand, when we accept but one of two conflicting beliefs, the rejected beliefs abandoned; there is no regret in losing what we now regard as false.' Gowans (1987) p. 14. The Stoics' moral psychology constrains them to see conflicting obligations in terms of conflicts of beliefs. C o o p e r (1989) p . 36. It is unclear, however, exactly how precise the correspondence is between Ross's and Cicero's views, since Ross's view of prima facie obligations commits him to a strongly particularist moral epistemology, whereas Cicero's view in this passage seems compatible with either a particularist or non-particularist account.

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ought to have broken his vow rather than commit so horrible a crime. [Offic. in.95) (trans. Miller, adaptation)80 Cicero, like Ross, has no doubt that there is a correct solution to Agamemnon's perplexity. At the same time, it is clear that Stoics can ascribe no value to any accompanying emotions of regret in such situations. Throughout his account of conflicts in de Officiis in, Cicero repeatedly emphasizes the Stoic claim that no matter what kind of sacrifice is involved in making the right choice, there are no reasons for regret. Indeed, to see the extremity of the Stoics' attitude on this issue, we need only look at a brief passage from Seneca. In describing the many goods bestowed on us by philosophy, he claims that perhaps its chief benefit is that it enables us never to regret our own conduct.81 For the Stoics, Agamemnon's choice and his attitude towards his choice should be unambiguous. Admittedly, Cicero's account is not exactly the stuff of tragedy. However, before dismissing it as yet another instance of Stoic insensitivity to fairly obvious features of our ordinary emotional and moral experience, we need to see how well it fares against competing accounts. First, it is important to notice that, by itself, the Stoics' emphatic rejection of the value of regret does not mean that they could not allow for residual moral claims in cases of conflict. If a particular moral conflict were in agreement with the rational order of the universe,82 a Stoic might accept and value its competing 80

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This is one of the very few instances of conflict in de Officiis that might qualify even as a n apparent moral dilemma, since the dilemmas Cicero discusses regularly involve conflicts between morality a n d utility. Cicero believes that morality consists of a uniform set of principles, though he allows that in following moral rules one m a y face conflicts among nonmoral values; thus, while practical dilemmas may occur, there can be no genuine moral dilemmas since any a p p a r e n t conflict between morality a n d utility can be resolved in favour of morality. By severely limiting the scope of what is morally relevant, Cicero a n d the Stoics are far less inclined to see a n y possibilities of conflict. See Gowans (1987) p p . 16 ff for general discussion of this issue. Itaque hoc tibi praestabit, quo equidem nihil maius existimo: numquam te paenitebit tui. Ep. Mor. cxv. 18. Cf. Andronicus peri Pathon 2 = SVF 111.414 for metameleia: Metameleia de lupe epi hamartemasi pepragmenois hos di hautou gegonosin. Also, SVF HI.563; Seneca de Benef. 4.34 (describing the wise man) ideo numquam ilium poenitentia subit, quia nihil melius Mo temporefieri potuit, quam quodfactum est, nihil melius constitui, quod quam constitutum est. Cf. EN ix.4 for a corresponding view in Aristotle. Notice as well that whereas non-Stoics might locate their regret in the fact that they are faced with a particular decision (and not in their actual decision), Stoics can feel no regrets of this sort either. I doubt, however, that the Stoics can concede the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas (as opposed to merely a p p a r e n t ones), given their view of N a t u r e as providential, rational, a n d morally coherent. T h e possibility of genuine a n d irresolvable moral dilemmas would involve, in a certain sense, the repugnant spectacle of God a n d N a t u r e deconstructing themselves. At the same time, given the connections that Stoics see between eudaimonia a n d

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claims without feeling the emotional pangs of remorse. Within their own theory, the Stoics could attribute to agents caught in such conflicts a corresponding 'reasonable emotion' based on a recognition of the value of the actions that are set aside.83 That the Stoics ever made such a move is no doubt entirely unlikely; but even its theoretical possibility should alert us to how they can resist arguments that make any straightforward inferences to moral realities from feelings or emotions. For the Stoic, our emotional states depend on (or are) our rational judgments about value; they are not separate or competing sources of motivation, action, or knowledge. Accordingly, the Stoics think that, taken by themselves, emotions have no independent explanatory force, nor can they give us any reliable indications about the status of moral realities. In order to show that the emotions of agents who feel caught in a dilemma reflect anything about the actual metaphysical status of dilemmas,84 critics of the Stoic position need to explain how emotions of regret, remorse, and so forth, can be described without merely presupposing a prior belief in the reality of moral dilemmas. Similarly, they need to demonstrate that the affective elements in these emotions give us reliable or determinate indications about the status of moral realities. It is not clear how either of these claims can get off the ground, however, without merely begging the question in favour of the existence of dilemmas. One might attempt, for instance, to specify certain kinds of observable behaviours or dispositional characteristics indicative of remorse. But then several well-known problems quickly arise. Sartre's budding young Resistance fighter, for instance, might be groaning aloud, wringing his hands, and cursing the horrible choice that he must make between helping his country and tending to his sick mother. But, then again, he might really only be play-acting; perhaps he is greatly relieved to be finally getting away from her apron-strings. What can be observed, in any straightforward sense of this term, is behaviour, not remorse. Moreover even if, like many behaviourists, we were to

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morality, a genuine moral dilemma might put into j e o p a r d y the Stoic claim that happiness consists in following N a t u r e , since a genuine moral dilemma would make it impossible to know h o w one c a n rationally follow N a t u r e . For some further connections between eudaimonist a n d theological considerations, see Long (1989) p p . 77 fF. Admittedly, this is not a very lively option, since I take it that, unlike for fear, pleasure, a n d desire, there is n o evidence for a n y rationally reconstructed forms oflupe. O n eupatheiai, cf. Frede (1986) p . 9 3 . Here I pass over problems associated with the arguable claim that such emotions accomp a n y conflict situations as a matter of course.

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extend behavioural criteria to include non-observable mental states and dispositions, any determinate account of our hero's disposition to feel remorse still must include some reference to his belief that he is faced with a moral dilemma. 85 By the same token, it is unclear how we can specify behavioural or affective criteria for distinguishing remorse from regret, for instance, without making reference to agents' beliefs (or disposition to believe) that they are still under some unfulfilled obligation. Yet, any reference to agents' beliefs that they are in a dilemmatic situation merely begs questions about moral dilemmas. Thus, no matter how elaborately or carefully we attempt to catalogue the emotional phenomenology of agents who take themselves to be caught in conflicts, the Stoic can point out that in order to be in the required emotional state of remorse, agents must believe that they are caught in a genuine dilemma. And it is precisely such a belief in the existence of genuine moral dilemmas that is at issue. Thus, we are brought back full circle to the Stoics' claim that there are no separate affective routes to moral realities. By the same token, it might be objected that, whatever the difficulties in explaining the remorse of others, we have direct introspective access to our own remorse. We just know what it feels like to be caught between clashing obligations. Here the Stoics can agree that our remorse perhaps may feel to us like some sort of gnawing distress. But it is open to them to claim that our distress is irrational or pathological unless we really are caught in a genuine dilemma. It may be, for example, that I have an entirely mistaken belief about my obligations or a mistaken belief that they are in conflict. Or perhaps my remorse indicates deeper pathological problems. Suppose that I believe that I am obliged both to keep promises and to kill cats. In what I take to be an appropriately dilemmatic circumstance, I am forced to make a choice between these conflicting obligations and choose to keep a promise. I also, however, feel great remorse in setting aside my perceived obligation to kill cats. Clearly, my remorse is pathological and my perceived dilemma spurious. In terms of its phenomenological feel as a kind of gnawing distress, however, it is not at all clear how my remorse in this instance differs in any way from other, less pathological, episodes of remorse. But then it also is unclear how affective elements in my 85

Cf. McDowell (1979) pp. 346-7 for some parallel problems in specifying what a disposition is a disposition to. Also, Santurri (1987).

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remorse can, on their own, indicate anything about the status of moral realities. None of these considerations demonstrates, of course, whether genuine moral dilemmas exist or whether remorse is ultimately a proper human response to moral conflict. Such larger issues about the nature of moral reality are better answered at the appropriate metaphysical level. But they do show how difficult it is to construct a convincing argument defending the possibility of separate non-rational paths to such moral realities. One still might object, nevertheless, that even if non-rational elements fail to offer an independent route for approaching these metaphysical issues, the emotions offer important support both for correct beliefs and for our ongoing development. The Stoics, though, can use a similar strategy to challenge the usefulness of non-cognitive elements even as supports for moral judgment and development.86 For instance, if I am urged to develop and make habitual my feelings of remorse, the Stoic can rightly ask for more precision about what this habituation consists in and what value it has. If my remorse indicates nothing about moral reality or if it provides me merely with an occasion for wallowing in self-reproach and for admiring the depths of my own sensibilities, I might be better off not making remorse a habit. If, on the contrary, the purpose of habituating me in remorse is to provide me with a deeper awareness of moral demands and to furnish me with moral motives for my future actions, this arguably begins to sound more like a cognitive story, and it is unclear why the cognitive regimen prescribed by the Stoics is not a more reliable method for developing the requisite kind of awareness and for acquiring the right sorts of motives. 86

Cf. Nussbaum (1987) p. 165 for a discussion of emotional motives. It is worth making the following distinction, however, with respect to emotional motives. In talking about the human value of regret, remorse, etc. we can distinguish: (a) valuing an emotion for itself or as an indication of personal emotional sensitivity, sensibility, etc. (b) valuing an emotion as a means to moral action or as an indication of moral awareness. Whereas (a) is self-referential and may turn out to be self-indulgent, (b) is likely to be other-directed, more helpful, etc. (Cf. Herman (1986) pp. 424 ff for a Kantian defence of (b).) Kant's suspicion that (a) does not provide reliable motives for virtue in many ways resembles Stoic worries. Moreover, if what we value is (b), the Stoics might plausibly argue that what we are isolating is a cognitive element, and hence not a separate non-cognitive element at all. Moreover, this distinction might help to absolve the Stoic account from the charge of circularity (cf. Nussbaum, p. 165); in the case of an emotion like regret, for instance, it may be that Stoics can get their opponents to agree that what they are valuing in seemingly affective responses is really (b).

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IV

I want to conclude by looking at an argument in Seneca apparently meant to combat scepticism about rules. In discussing the Stoics' view of morality, a number of scholars have been attracted to an analogy between moral rules and game rules.87 In some ways this analogy has been helpful, but it also can be seriously misleading. It is helpful because games offer a relatively uncontroversial model for activities in which our immediate strategic aims are not identical or strictly instrumental to our ultimate goal in playing games. Thus, it can be argued that games offer a suitable model for capturing the Stoic distinction between the skopos and the telos of moral actions. At the same time, however, this analogy is potentially misleading because it fails to capture both the realist and normative elements that rules have for the Stoics. Game rules are conventional and can be changed to some extent whenever players agree to do so. When analogies are made between games and social mores, linguistic practices, and so forth, it is usually for the purposes of showing the conventional nature of these practices and the purely descriptive nature of their rules. Clearly, the Stoics need and want something more from moral rules than mere communal agreement. In many ways, the difficulties they face with rules correspond to their problems in defending the objectivity of their general moral notions. It is fairly clear that the so-called consensus omnium arguments used by Stoics to generate moral preconceptions can at best demonstrate that such preconceptions have several admirable uses88 either in moral inquiry or in the moral lives of individuals and communities. On their own, however, such arguments are insufficient to establish the objective and normative validity of moral preconceptions without relying on some questionable inferences to nature and to divine providence. Yet, without some kind of objective and normative backing, Stoic moral claims become much more vulnerable to attack. So the question arises, can the Stoics give any defence of the objectivity and normativity of their moral rules? As is well known, their answer here relies in part on a series of parallel inferences to 87 88

Cf. K i d d , (1971) p p . 157, 170 a n d (1978) p . 253 a n d in more detail by Striker (1986) p p . 185 ff. K i d d draws attention to Epictetus Diss. 11.5, 15 for a possible ancient analogue. Cf. Long & Sedley (1987) 1 253 on Adversus Mathematicos v i n . 3 3 i a - 3 3 2 a n d on Epictetus' defence at Diss. 1.22 1-3, 9-10; also Schofield (1980) p p . 283 ff.

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Nature and to divine providence. I want to look at an argument, though, that suggests some further possibilities. At Ep. Mor. xcv. 60-1, Seneca sets out the following argument: Praeterea non intellegunt hi qui decreta tollunt eo ipso confirmari ilia quo tolluntur. Quid enim dicunt? praeceptis vitam satis explicari, supervacua esse decreta sapientiae [id est dogmata]. Atqui hoc ipsum quod dicunt decretum est tarn mehercules quam si nunc ego dicerem recedendum a praeceptis velut supervacuis, utendum esse decretis, in haec sola studium conferendum; hoc ipso, quo negarem curanda esse praecepta, praeciperem. Seneca maintains that both decreta and praecepta are inescapable features of our linguistic and conceptual framework. If we attempt to deny that there are decreta, we will violate the pragmatic and logical requirements of any argument for that denial. Corresponding attempts to do away with praecepta are similarly self-refuting. Although it is fairly clear that his argument is aimed primarily at those who think they can dispense with either decreta or praecepta, it can be pressed into service against a more general kind of scepticism about rules. Seneca claims that denials of moral rules somehow must invoke further moral rules. Consequently, they are not just a matter of conventional agreement, since they are an inevitable structural feature of any thought or talk about morality. 89 Even if we grant Seneca the force of this argument, 90 however, it would only show that some rules are inevitable; it fails to secure for the Stoics a justification of their own particular brand of moral rules. Nonetheless, this argument potentially contains a stronger normative and realist defence against sceptical challenges than that of consensus omnium arguments. If moral rules are shown to be part of the intrinsic framework of all thought and talk about morality, they might have a normative and objective status that goes beyond mere agreement. For the Stoics, of course, any talk about the intrinsic structure of logos will still involve inferences to Nature and God. But compelling arguments about the objective and normative credentials of logos and its structuring rules may not rest only in the lap of God. 89 90

See Winch (1958) p p . 57 ff for a similar attempt t o show how denials of rules are self-refuting. See Williamson (1989) for an extremely dismissive attack on such claims. H e argues that the use o f ' r u l e ' to describe what the sceptic relies on in denying rules is a 'mere pun'. I n any case, the sceptic about rules can perhaps avoid self-refutation in much the same way as the sceptic about knowledge, i.e. by refraining from following a rule on each particular occasion without dogmatically rejecting rules. Nevertheless, there remains the question of whether such a non-dogmatic sceptic is still acting in accordance with a rule.

CHAPTER I I

Chrysippus on psychophysical causality David Sedley

INTRODUCTION

This chapter will in effect be an extended commentary on a single passage, Cicero, de Fato 7—9, which indirectly attributes to Chrysippus a strong thesis of psychophysical causality. I shall hope to show what that thesis amounts to, and how it fits into the teleological structure of the Stoic causal nexus. At the same time, I shall be offering reasons for seeing the Stoic theory in question as largely a development of Platonic psychology. This last point needs some qualification. Chrysippus himself was openly opposed1 to at least one feature of Plato's psychology, namely the tripartition of the soul, as expounded in the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus. But equally, he was sympathetic to, and almost certainly deeply influenced by, the more 'Socratic' psychology to be found elsewhere in Plato's dialogues - the monistic theory presupposed in the Protagoras, developed in the Phaedo,2 and arguably still observed in the Theaetetus - according to which the soul is in itself a purely intellectual faculty. Given the further fact that Socrates, unlike Plato, was from the start revered as an absolute authority by the Stoics,3 it is probably most correct to locate the background to Stoic psychology not in Platonic but in Socratic psychology.4 At the In revising this paper I have had the benefit of comments from many sources, including extensive criticisms and suggestions from Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Susanne Bobzien, Nicholas Denyer, Jaap Mansfeld, the late Paola Manuli, Richard Sorabji, Robert Sharpies, and Robert Wardy. I am most grateful for all the help received, although I am of course entirely to blame for whatever uses I have put it to (or failed to put it to). 1 See Galen, PHP IV.I.6, where, as M. Schofield has pointed out to me, eiircbv cos KTA, probably means 'having said that Plato believed that . . . ', not that Chrysippus 'takes the Platonic position that . . . ' (De Lacy); cf. in.i. 14—15. (The contradiction which Galen claims to find in Chrysippus is made explicit not in this sentence but first at iv.1.14.) 2 3 Cf. B. Inwood's remarks, pp. 158-9. See Long (1988). 4 Even Posidonius' reinstatement of the tripartite thesis, although inspired by Plato, was not presented as replacing Socrates' authority with Plato's, but as reverting to the more ancient

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same time, it would be misleading to imply that any ancient reader of Plato operated with an entirely clearcut distinction between historically Socratic texts on the one hand and Platonic texts on the other. Even if, as seems likely, the Stoics' preference for a monistic psychology was influenced in part by the belief that it was more authentically Socratic, it would be unwise to assume that they never used the less obviously Socratic dialogues, 5 wherever these latter were useful for supplementing the ideas contained in the former. BIOGRAPHICAL TELEOLOGY

In the lacuna between chapters 4 and 5 of Cicero, de Fato much is lost, including an argument of Chrysippus' whose only echo comes in the following words at 7-9: Let us return to Chrysippus' snares, and reply to him first about the world's interconnexion itself [de ipsa rerum cognatione],6 then pursue the rest later. We see how great the differences are between the natures of places. Some are healthy, some disease-ridden. In some the people are phlegmatic to the point of overflowing, in others they are utterly dried out. And there are many other immense differences between places. At Athens the atmosphere is rarefied, resulting in the Attics' reputedly sharp wits; while at Thebes it is heavy, so that the Thebans are stout and tough. Yet neither will that rarefied atmosphere bring it about whether someone attends Zeno's lectures or those of Arcesilaus or of Theophrastus, nor will the heavy atmosphere bring it about that someone competes at the Nemean rather than the Isthmian games. Carry the distinction further. What can the nature of the place do to make us walk in Pompey's colonnade rather than on the Campus? Or to walk with you rather than with someone else? Or on the Ides rather than the Kalends? Just as the nature of the place has a bearing on some things but not on others, so too let the influence of the stars [qffectio astrorum] have power over some things, if you like: it certainly will not have power over everything. But, he will say, given that men's natures differ, so that some love sweets while others love savouries, some are passionate while others are irascible

5

6

authority of Pythagoras (Posidonius F151, 165.168-72 Edelstein/Kidd (1989)), whose follower Plato was taken to be in this matter. Thus Plato was for the Stoics never the ultimate authority, but always the spokesman or interpreter of some higher authority. Even the Timaeus need not have been regarded as entirely un-Socratic: Socrates is at least a willing listener to Timaeus' discourse. The lack of early Plato commentaries makes it hard to make a confident guess at Hellenistic views on this matter, but note, at least, that Socrates' similar role in the Sophist was seen by Proclus (In Platonis Parmenidem 622.24, 629.37-630.1) as sufficient reason for attributing to him the ideas of the dialogue's main speaker. The reading of some MSS reported by Turnebus, cognatione, is well defended against the more favoured contagione, in both this passage and ib. 5, by Luck (1978).

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or cruel or arrogant, and others shrink from such vices - given, he says, such gulfs between different natures, why should it occasion surprise that these dissimilarities are the products of different causes? In arguing this, he does not see what is at issue, and on what the cause rests.7 For it does not follow, if some people are more inclined to some things because of natural antecedent causes, that there are natural antecedent causes even of our volitions and impulses. For if that were so, nothing would be in our power. But as it is, while we admit that it is not up to us whether we are clever or stupid, strong or weak, anyone who thinks it necessarily follows that even whether to sit or walk is not a matter for our own volition does not see what follows from what. For granted that both gifted people and dim-witted people are born that way through antecedent causes, and likewise the strong and the weak, it still does not follow that even sitting and walking and performing some given action are marked out and established by principal causes [principalibus causis]. Apparently, Chrysippus has appealed to the causal influences of native environment and of the stars to establish the pervasive power of 'natural' causes in human psychology. There are points in this text to which we will need to return, but the first issue I want to raise is how this natural causation is supposed to square with Stoic providentialism. To allow the automatic determination of character by non-rational causes may sound like an incautious concession to a mechanistic world-view. The nature and magnitude of this problem can best be grasped by turning directly to chapter 30, where Stoic causality can be viewed from the opposite pole. Chrysippus is responding to the Lazy Argument, according to which decisionmaking is superfluous if just the same outcome is fated to ensue regardless: Some events in the world are simple, he says, others are complex. 'Socrates will die on such and such a day' is simple: his day of dying is fixed, regardless of what he may do or not do. But if what is fated is 'Oedipus will be born to Laius', it will not be possible to add 'regardless of whether or not Laius has intercourse with a woman'. For the event is complex and 'co-fated'. 7

No doubt the primary sense of 'in quo causa consistaf is 'the point with which the argument is dealing' (Rackham [1942]), *ce quifait lefond du debaf (Yon [1933]), or 'worin der Streitgegenstand bestehf (Bayer [1963]) - cf. Cicero, Pro Quinctio 32, 79 for the expression. But in context I find it hard to avoid seeing a punning second sense: 'what a cause consists in'. For Cicero's ensuing objection is precisely to what he sees as a muddle about what constitutes a cause; cf. his own (Carneadean) more rigid notion of cause, developed below (especially Fat. 34, 36), as that which produces its effect efjicienter or sua vi. Hence a looser but more apposite translation might be 'he is fighting a lost cause'.

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While the doctrine of'co-fated' events has attracted a good deal of discussion, little attention seems to have been paid to Chrysippus' example of 'simple' fate, the death of Socrates. Given Chrysippus' well advertised belief that no event escapes the causal nexus of fate, it is at first sight hard to make sense of his distinction between simple and complex. Surely the route to Socrates' death is just as fated as the event itself. It is not enough to respond that the distinction is one between outcomes fated via an individual's actions and those fated independently of them. It might have some superficial plausibility that someone with a terminal illness, or living in an earthquake zone, will die at such and such a time regardless of anything he does or fails to do. But it will hardly do for Socrates' death. Was it not famously the case that Socrates need not have died on that day, if he had yielded to Crito's entreaties to escape? If the problem has gone unnoticed hitherto, it is no doubt because 'Socrates' has been assumed to play his role, familiar in Aristotle and elsewhere, as a mere specimen individual - the role usually assigned to Dion in Stoic texts, although occasionally also to Socrates.8 I find this hard to believe. The examples used in the de Fato debate are far from haphazard. They constantly recur to carefully chosen and exploited stories, such as the death of Scipio, the behaviour of philosophers, and the Oedipus story, which is here directly juxtaposed with the Socrates example. To throw in, casually and without awareness of its significance, that uniquely important event in the history of philosophy, the death of Socrates, would be an astonishing departure from the pattern. 9 The answer, I suggest, lies rather in Plato, Crito 44a—b (already cited by Cicero's Stoic spokesman at de Divinatione 1.52, the preceding work in the trilogy), where we hear of Socrates' prophetic dream while in prison that he would die on the third day. To a Stoic, it will have seemed that Socrates' decision to stay and die was to a large extent guided by the revelation that he was bound in any case to die on that day - a divine indication that it was morally preferable for him to do so willingly. (This is the kind of consideration which underlies the Stoic analogy of man as a dog tied to a cart, who, willing or unwilling, must follow regardless,10 and Chrysippus' 8 9

10

E.g. by Diogenes of Babylon at Diog.Laer. vii.58. That the examples used in this passage are Chrysippus' own is demonstrated by Barnes (1985a). SVF 11.975 = LS 62A (LS = Long & Sedley (1987)).

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assertion that 'If I actually knew that I was fated now to be ill, I would even have an impulse to be ill.') 11 The moral rightness of Socrates' willingly drinking the hemlock was intimately bound up with his understanding of fate: he had had, but declined, the opportunity to die z/wwillingly on that day. Hence, in Stoic eyes, his death on that day had to be unconditionally fated. Thus Socrates' death brings out a feature of Stoic causality which can easily go unnoticed, and which makes it look as distant from mechanistic determinism as it could conceivably be. There is not just a single-stranded causal chain leading from Socrates' birth to his death as a result of drinking hemlock, but one which repeatedly branches out into hypothetical alternative strands, such as Socrates' escaping from prison but thereafter being re-arrested, or falling ill in flight, or whatever, and thus dying on that very same day on which he in actuality drank the hemlock. For both logical and causal reasons, only one of these chains of events was ever going to be realized. But although it was true all along that things would in fact turn out thus, it was not necessary that they should,12 and the very meaning of Socrates' moral achievement depended on an intelligently planned network of diverging but ultimately re-converging alternative opportunities, 13 only one of which represented a willing acceptance of what fate had ordained as the final outcome. If this is right, the Stoic causal nexus, far from being mechanical, exhibits to a quite astonishing degree the meticulous workings of an intelligent teleology. The choice of Socrates' death as an example has already suggested that the Crito and Phaedo were crucial texts in the Stoic hagiography. This is confirmed by the manifest importance of the Phaedo to Stoics as a guide to the proper attitude to suicide. 14 Socrates' declaration at Phd. 62C6-8 that one should not kill oneself until god sends some necessity evidently influenced, among others, Zeno's own suicide 11

12

13

14

SVFHI . I 9 I = L S 5 8 J .

For the importance to Chrysippus of severing future truth from necessity by establishing the existence of counterfactual possibilities, cf. Fat. 13 = LS 38E 3.1 would take these to be, in essence, opportunities (LS 1.235). It may seem odd to use simplicia, of all words, for events which are determined by a complex web of interlocking causal chains. But the term merely represents the designation of such events as 'absolutely' (frrrAcos) fated (SVF 11.998, p. 292,31). (On 2 July 1990, 1,426 pilgrims died in a stampede at Mecca. King Fahd blamed them for disobeying traffic instructions, but added, 'It was fate. Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere, and at the same predetermined moment.') Well documented by Rist (1969), ch. 13, and Griffin (1986).

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story,15 in which he was said to have recognized a divine sign that the proper time for his departure had arrived. But the Stoics' debt to the Phaedo runs deeper than that. Even the teleological causal network within which Chrysippus located Socrates' decision to drink the hemlock is likely to have arisen through reflection on the causal theories of the Phaedo.16 Socrates maintains at Phd. 96-9 that no cosmic state of affairs is adequately causally explained until one has isolated the good end served and thus related it properly to the controlling intelligence. To make his point, he appeals to the analogy of the cause of Socrates' sitting there in prison (98b-99b). No amount of talk about the position of his bones and sinews will reveal the true cause of his sitting there. That will only emerge when attention is drawn to certain decisions by the Athenians and Socrates himself as to what it is best to do. The chosen example is, at least on the surface, only an analogy for the operations of cosmic intelligence. But you hardly have to be a Stoic to be left wondering whether this series of events surrounding Socrates' death is not to be understood as itself due ultimately to the teleological workings of the cosmic intelligence. 17 That the operations of the cosmic intelligence do indeed include subordination of the details of individual lives to the overall good is affirmed with sufficient emphasis in the Laws18 to make this a quite natural reading of the Phaedo.19 We are thus left with the likelihood that the Chrysippean worldview, where the explanation even of individual human decisionmaking requires a teleological causal framework which extends vastly beyond the individual's internal psychology to a kind of 15

16 17

18 19

Diog.Laer. vii.28 (cf. Cleanthes' death, ib. 176); Rist (1969), pp. 242-3. Seneca, Ep. 104.21 confirms that Zeno's death was compared to Socrates', but adds a subtle distinction: 'Socrates will teach you how to die if you must, Zeno how to die before you must.' The point, I take it, is that while Socrates knew he was bound to die on that very day, Zeno recognized no more than that the time for his death was approaching. Frede (1980) notes how the Stoic distinction between amov and ocma takes up the usage found in the Phaedo. I have in fact been asked this very question by a (non-Stoic) member of a lecture audience. It gets a little backing from Phd. 62D-C, where Socrates links his own conduct concerning his death with the gods' superintendence of his life. Laws 9O3b-d; cf. Long (1974), p. 151 for its relevance to Stoicism. Stoicism differs from Aristotelianism in not calling final causes causes. Plato is less clear on this point, but it is certainly easy enough to read both the Phaedo and the Timaeus as making Intelligence the true cause, and explanations of the form 'because it is best' no more than a shorthand for the causal role of Intelligence. Read in this way, Plato is in close agreement with the Stoics, who regard the cosmic principle god as in a way the ultimate cause (S.E. M ix. 75-6 = LS 44c, Sen. Ep. 65. 2 = LS 55E).

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cosmic super-psychology, is a direct descendant of the Phaedo. I shall shortly be trying to trace the Phaedo's influence even further. We are now ready to return to de Fato 7—11. The example of 'natural' causation discussed there looked surprisingly mechanistic in tone. If you are born at Thebes, the heavy atmosphere makes you intellectually dense but physically tough. If you are a native Athenian, the rarefied atmosphere makes you sharp-witted. It may well all sound like a matter of blind luck, and quite foreign to the intensely rational causality of the Stoic world.20 But it is actually quite straightforward to incorporate this environmental causation into the rational causal nexus. To a Stoic, after all, it will hardly be an accident that Socrates was born at Athens and not at Thebes. I shall amplify this observation shortly. The atmospheric differences between Athens and Thebes reflect on a small scale a crucial feature of the overall arrangement of the cosmos. Cicero's Balbus in the de Natura Deorum puts the point as follows (ND 11.17), m a n argument possibly deriving from Chrysippus:21 Again, don't we even understand that all higher things are better, whereas the earth is the lowest, surrounded by the densest air? Hence it is through this very cause that what we see happen in certain zones and cities namely that people's intellects are duller because of the fuller nature of the atmosphere - this very same thing has befallen the human race, because they are located on the earth, which is the world's densest zone? In context, this is an argument for the Stoic conclusion that the world exists not just for us but for higher and better beings too, the gods. Once again, its basic idea is drawn from the Phaedo — this time from the myth, in which our own wretched habitations in coarse air, although better than the even denser atmosphere of water in which fish are condemned to live, are vastly inferior to the aetherial realm up above, in which purified souls can dwell in wisdom and happiness, close to the gods. It is important here to remember that the Stoics themselves likewise held that at least virtuous souls enjoy after 20

21

O f course, the tenet that physical environment influences intellect a n d character was in itself a commonplace - cf. the Hippocratic Airs, waters and places 12, 24; Plato, Tim. 24.c4.-cl3, Laws v.747d2-e2; Aristotle, Politics vn.6. W h a t occasions surprise is the degree of influence attached to it by Chrysippus, in view of the absolute centrality Stoic ethics assigns to rationality in moral development. Chrysippus is named as author of the argument quoted in 11.16, a n d it is left unclear precisely where the citation from h i m ends.

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death a discarnate survival in the upper atmosphere22 - yet another sign of the Phaedo's decisive importance for them. 23 As in the Phaedo, so too in Stoicism, atmospheric variations form part of a teleological structure in which souls are assigned to regions with a degree of atmospheric density or rarefaction appropriate to the moral or intellectual character they are to possess.24 If we now return to de Fato 30 (translated above), we may observe that it can be no accident that the first two examples of fated events chosen by Chrysippus are the death of Socrates and the birth of Oedipus. 25 Socrates was a native Athenian, who, as we have seen, had the intellectual understanding to respond in the right way to the promptings of fate with regard to his death. Laius, born in the dense atmosphere of Thebes, was intellectually disadvantaged. It is therefore only to be expected that he should have responded as he did, in the wrong way, to the promptings of fate concerning his own death, by disregarding the oracle which warned him that if Jocasta bore him a son the son would kill him, and also perhaps by subsequently exposing the infant Oedipus in a vain attempt to thwart the oracular warning. 26 (That this oracle featured in the debate is proved by Carneades' use of it in his retort at Fat. 33.) 22 23

24 25

26

Cf. S F F 11.774, 809-22; H o v e n (1971). T h e Phaedo m y t h itself is, strictly speaking, a b o u t reincarnation, n o t discarnate survival. But it emerges a t the e n d (114.C2-6) t h a t fully purified souls d o achieve discarnate existence, a n d it is a n easy inference t h a t the almost discarnate life of the aether-dwellers is primarily a didactic myth pointing forward to the soul's total escape from the body. T h e evidence of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations makes it clear that Hellenistic interest in Plato's views on the afterlife played d o w n reincarnation in favour of discarnate survival. I argue this, with regard to the Phaedo, in Sedley (1989). For the Stoics, see Hoven (1971), pp. 66ff. Against m y attempt to pair off the examples at Fat. 30 with those at Fat. 7—11, it has been urged by one critic that Fat. 30 adds a third example, Milo's wrestling at Olympia, which has a m u c h less exact match with the earlier passage. But (as N . Denyer has helpfully pointed o u t to me) Milo came from Croton, a town proverbial for its healthy climate, which was considered to account for the numerous successful athletes it produced (Strabo vi. 1.12); hence it is entirely plausible that Chrysippus h a d mentioned Croton along with Athens a n d Thebes in the lost passage between Fat. 4 a n d 5. I n the debate between the Stoics a n d their opponents reported at Alexander, de Fato 202, the focus is on Laius' mistake of getting d r u n k and sleeping with Jocasta, in disregard of the oracle's warning (see Euripides, Phoenissae 13-31 for the version of the story followed; on the Stoic treatment of conditional oracles, see Sharpies (1983), p p . 166-7); b u t a t SVF 11.939 Chrysippus is interested in Laius' attempt to kill the infant Oedipus. (We need not be bothered by the fact that a Stoic might not consider Laius' d e a t h at the hands of Oedipus an 'evil': within the framework of the myth his decision was, uncontroversially, a mistaken one.)

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PRINCIPAL CAUSES

All this puts us in a better position to understand Chrysippus' argument alluded to at de Fato 7-9, to which I now return. It is an argument for cosmic sumpatheia (represented by Cicero's 'rerum cognatione'),27 the total interaction of all parts of the world, which Chrysippus adduced in favour of his fate doctrine. 28 In the preceding chapters (5-6), we have had the tail end of Cicero's retort to the arguments of Posidonius for fate, all of them apparently appealing to the evidence of amazing coincidences. Cicero is there inclined to accept those cases which can be attributed to natural sumpatheia (naturae cognatio, 5) without any added idea of rational destiny, i.e. cases where a purely natural explanation is available, but to reject as mere flukes those in which rational destiny would otherwise have to be involved, such as the uncanny fulfilment of prophecies. Thus sumpatheia has already been marked off by Cicero as a thesis which restricts itself to the natural causal interaction of the world's parts, and need not include any element of rational destiny. So when in chapter 7 he turns to Chrysippus' arguments on the same issue of sumpatheia, we should expect the cases to emphasize mechanical rather than purposive causation, as indeed they do. They are, specifically, the influence of atmosphere on intelligence and physique, the influence of the stars,29 and the congenital origin of character traits. Cicero's response is not outright rejection, but an insistence that there is no proper further inference from a general causal influence of such factors on character to the conclusion that they determine even agents' individual decisions. This might give the impression of substantial common ground between Chrysippus 27

28 29

Translated 'coniunctio naturae\ 'concentus' and 'consensus' at Div. 11.34, an(^ ' convenientia et coniunctio naturae" at ib. 11.124. But there is no reason to doubt that 'cognatio rerumlnaturae' in Fat. is another translation, introduced in the lost part. For the reading, see note 6 above. SFF11.912. Discussions of the role of astrology in Stoic arguments (especially those a t Fat. 11-16) sometimes fail to take account of the fact that stellar conjunctions at the moment of birth are for the Stoics causes of subsequent events in a person's life, a n d not, as other omens are (see e.g. Div. 1.118), merely god-given signs. For Posidonius, see Augustine, Civitas dei v.2 = Posidonius F H I Edelstein-Kidd (1989) (deriving from the lost portion of de Fato), 'vim ... siderum quaefuerat quo tempore concepti natique sunC\ for Chrysippus, 'affectio astroruirC at Fat. 8; cf. also, for the general point, Div. 11.89, Manilius iv.105. This very feature that astrological signs are causally untypical compared with dreams, oracles etc. seems sufficient explanation of the fact (if it is a fact: pro, see Long (1982a), contra, see Ioppolo (1984)) that Chrysippean Stoicism gave astrology a low profile in its treatment of divination.

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and Cicero on sumpatheia. But what we have now learnt about Chrysippus' world view shows how misleading that impression would be. The material influences on human psychology are exploited by Chrysippus as integral features of the purposive working of rational destiny in individual lives. If Chrysippus did, as Cicero could be thought to suggest, conclude that such material influences were individually sufficient to determine the outcomes of individual decision-making processes, that was indeed unjustified. But if my earlier reconstruction is correct, that is not Chrysippus' point. The rarefied atmosphere of Attica was, taken by itself, far from being a sufficient condition of Socrates' choosing to drink the hemlock. After all, Crito was another native of Attica, but he would not have made the same decision if caught in the same predicament. Even so, Chrysippus evidently held that, as a major contributory factor to Socrates' intellectual powers, the atmosphere of Attica was in some sense a salient cause of his action. Chrysippus' claim does, in fact, seem to have been along these lines. What Cicero denies, and hence presumably what Chrysippus asserted, is that these congenital influences on character are causae principales of individual decisions {Fat. 9, translated above). 30 What are causae principales? The answer can, I hope, be squeezed out of de Fato 41-3. In apportioning the responsibility for human actions, Chrysippus distinguished two classes of cause: (a) perfectae et principales, and (b) adiuvantes et proximae. When a cylinder is rolled, the initial push falls into class (b), its roundness or 'rollability' (volubilitas) into class (a). And when a human agent responds to an impression by acting, the impression belongs to class (b), the agent's psychological character to class (a). Chrysippus' object is to argue that, while the main responsibility for any event lies in causes belonging to class (a), the causal chains that constitute fate belong to class (b). This much is familiar, and widely discussed.31 But what can we 30

31

This passage has not generally been recognized as alluding to a specifically Chrysippean usage of principales causae. It is, I suppose, conceivable that Cicero has himself supplied the term in his response to Chrysippus, but I doubt it. I t is no part of Cicero's own causal terminology, in Fat. or elsewhere, a n d it is after all explicitly attributed to Chrysippus at Fat. 41. I prefer not to tackle here the various controversies surrounding this text. I shall simply affirm my belief that it is an authentic report of one particularly interesting Chrysippean treatment of fate. That it seriously distorts Chrysippean doctrine is impressively argued by Donini (1975). But I do not, at least, feel prepared to endorse his complaint that it is

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infer from it about causae principales? First, it is crucial to realise that the two terms within each class are non-synonymous. That in class (b) the 'auxiliary' and 'proximate' causes are non-synonymous is relatively easy to argue. The proximate causes seem to be 'procatarctic', 32 i.e. initiating or triggering causes, while auxiliary causes (sunerga aitia) are known to be those which intensify or facilitate effects.33 It would be natural to group the two kinds together in a single class, not only because both constitute secondary causal factors, but also because one and the same item will often serve in both guises: one push starts the cylinder rolling, a second push makes it roll faster.34 Again, in class (a), causaeperfectae must translate the Greek aitia autotele and these are known to be sufficient conditions:35 the effect lasts precisely so long as the 'complete' cause is present. Now it should be obvious36 that Chrysippus' examples of the cylinder rolling and the agent's response to an impression cannot be invoking either the cylinder's roundness or the agent's character as causae perfectae, since evidently the cylinder does not roll for the entire time that it is round, nor does the agent perform the same action for the entire time that he has his present character (otherwise he would not need the stimulus of an initial impression). Rather, these must be taken to be salient causes, which determine the object's or agent's behaviour only when combined with a set of further necessary or appropriate conditions. And since, on the model of class (b), we by

32

33 34 35 36

unStoically indeterministic in tendency: its principal novelty, compared with other Stoic accounts, seems to m e to lie in its restriction of the n a m e 'fate' to one part of the (fully deterministic) causal nexus. This seems the natural inference to d r a w from the fact that in Fat. Chrysippus identifies fate with proximate causes, while at Plutarch, de Stoicorum repugnantiis 1056B = LS 55R it is maintained by his apologists that h e identifies fate with procatarctic causes. Cf. Frede (1980) p . 241, for the same conclusion. I agree with those who take it that at Cicero, Topics 59 ''alia autem praecursionem quandam adhibent ad efficiendum\ which corresponds to the role of the 'proximate' causes in Fat., accurately conveys the meaning of 'procatarctic'. I have been unconvinced by the attempt of Gorier (1987) to identify 'procatarctic' causes with Cicero's principales, largely because I find myself in disagreement with h i m as to w h a t a procatarctic cause is. But I owe to Gorler's article the realization that perfectae a n d principales must be distinct species of cause, for which he rightly cites Fat. 42, 'non . . . perfectae neque principals' (comparing also Academica 11.99 f °r Cicero's use of genera). I can see few merits in the suggestion of D u h o t (1989), p p . 170-2, that it may be Cicero, not Chrysippus, w h o is responsible for adding principales a n d adiuvantes. Cf. L S 551, a n d commentary; S.E. PH in. 15. Cf. L S 551 5, a n d commentary, 1.342. L S 551 2, echoing Zeno's original very strict notion of cause (LS 55A 1-3). Although it seems not to have been to most scholars writing about this text. W h a t follows is a partial retraction, or modification, of remarks at L S 1.341-2.

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now expect principales in class (a) to differ fromperfectae, it is hard to resist the view that causa principales are salient causes — those which bear a major share of the responsibility for the effect without however being sufficient to bring it about unaided. 37 (Indeed, unless something fills that role, there will be a massive gap in the Stoic classification of causes.)38 Returning to de Fato 9, we can now interpret Chrysippus' thesis that material influences on human psychology are causae principales. The atmospheric conditions which fostered Socrates' intellectual powers did not by themselves determine that he should willingly drink the hemlock. Nor however were they mere 'procatarctic' or 'auxiliary' causes. They played a leading causal role. This, however, should not be taken to mean that such a causal factor, even taken individually, is causa principalis of your every action. If your native environment were the salient cause of your present behaviour, that would exclude such other crucial factors as your moral education from a comparably important role. It is hard to imagine any Stoic countenancing that. Rather, we had better suppose Chrysippus' position to be that it is the entire set of these external or antecedent causal influences, including congenital character, stars, environment and upbringing, that jointly constitute the causae principales oi your every action. Most discussions of the two classes of cause at Fat. 41-3 equate the perfectae et principales with 'internal' causes, although this is not explicit in the text. It must now be clear that such a characterization is misleading, since atmospheric influences on character, although undeniably external, still count among the causae principales of action 37

38

I t is h a r d e r to decide w h a t Greek term principales translates. Michael F r e d e (1980) suggests e.g. KupicbTccTa. D o r o t h e a F r e d e h a s urged o n m e t h e merits of TrporiyoCueva, which certainly seems to fit the use of the term in Alexander, Fat. 173.14 (chance events lack a TTporiyounevn ocmcc: see further, Sharpies (1983), p p . 132-3), a n d which is a p p a r e n t l y a t h o m e in C h r y s i p p e a n causal terminology (SVF11.912). But if so, two other uses of the same term must be distinguished - 'antecedent cause', common in Galen, a n d 'antecedent internal cause', attributed to the Pneumatic doctor Athenaeus: see Hankinson (1987). T h e equation of principales with irporiyoOuEva actually goes back at least to Y o n (1944), xxix n. 1, although h e takes a different view of w h a t a irporiyoOuevov a r n o v is. Principalis certainly makes a very natural translation of irporiyoOuevos, combining its senses 'primary' and 'leading'; cf. Seneca's translation of fjyeuoviKOV as principale. See also Sharpies (1975), P- 49If even the agent's entire moral character falls short of being the 'complete' cause of a n action, how c a n there be a n y role for complete causes in Stoic theory of action sufficient to justify Chrysippus' inclusion of them in his classification? A plausible answer (for which I thank A n n a M a r i a Ioppolo) is that assent, itself the inevitable product of character plus impression, is in turn the complete cause of the ensuing action.

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for Chrysippus. By seeing this, we can avoid treating the Stoics as if they isolated internal character as an autonomous entity and simply overlooked the fact that on their theories character will itself be causally predetermined by factors external or antecedent to itself. Rather, the Chrysippean theory takes it as obvious from the start, in true Stoic spirit, that the self which is causa principalis of your every action is not a hermetically sealed intellect pitted against the external world, but you in the broadest sense, incorporating your entire genetic and environmental background. PSYGHOPHYSIGS

The de Fato has helped us to tie down the teleological role of material factors in Stoic psychology. But that leaves us in the dark as to just how material and mental factors interact causally. It is to this that we must now turn. To start with the historical background, it might be thought that here at least we have an issue on which Stoicism radically rejected the tenets of Platonic psychology. After all, Platonic minds are incorporeal - leaving it desperately unclear how they interact with bodies - while Stoic minds are emphatically corporeal. But I doubt, at least, whether the Stoics saw it that way. The first manifestation of their corporealism was in the doctrine of the twin physical principles, 'matter' and 'god': god is a corporeal cause, present throughout matter and causally acting upon it.39 And far from being an outright rejection of Platonism, this was almost certainly seen as a development or interpretation of it. By Zeno's day, there was a current reading of the Timaeus, accepted by Theophrastus, 40 according to which Plato posits two principles, (a) 'matter', and (b) 'a moving cause which he connects with the power of god'. Although the origins of this interpretation remain obscure (at least to me), 41 it seems clear that the Stoic corporealization of the active cause was, relatively speaking, a minor further development of it, rather than a rejection. The Stoics' own grounds for identifying all existing things with bodies turn largely on the supposed dependence of causal properties on corporeality. And even here the prin39 41

40 LS 44-5. Physic, opin. fr. 9, Diels, Dox. pp. 484-5. I assume that the identification of god with an immanent causal principle is inferred at least in part from 77m. 34D3-9.

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ciple has a well recognized origin in Plato's debate between the materialists and the idealists in the Sophist.42 The corporealization of the soul is founded on this same thesis about causality.43 Soul is a specially attuned portion of pneuma44 pervading the passive elements of the body (earth and water). This identification has no obvious Platonic background, but reflects one strand of current medical thought in Zeno's own day. Significantly, it seems to have had the backing of Zeno's contemporary the doctor Praxagoras,45 whose canonical standing for the Stoics is attested by Chrysippus' later appeal to his support regarding the location of the soul's commanding-faculty in the heart. 46 Thus we are at liberty to read the Stoic adoption of the pneuma theory not as a rejection of Platonic psychology, but as an attempt to update it in the light of the latest science. This is borne out by the fact that the Stoics' pneumatic soul is capable of very much the same discarnate survival as Plato had defended in the Phaedo. Indeed, the inherent cohesiveness of pneuma in Stoic physical theory provides them with a new theoretical underpinning for Socrates' confidence, in the Phaedo, that the soul can survive death intact and not disperse like a puff of wind.47 Leaving aside many issues associated with this doctrine, I shall turn directly to its causal implications. As pneuma, the soul stands as a special kind of 'quality' to the material 'substrate' (hupokeimenon) or 'substance' (ousia)48 This gives rise to a temptation to look for an Aristotelian-type distinction between the roles of mind and matter. For example, at de Anima 1.1 Aristotle observes that both material and formal analyses may be available for one and the same psychological event, e.g. anger either as a boiling of the blood around the heart, or as a desire for revenge.49 And one can then go on to reconstruct Aristotle's position on the precise explanatory relationship that obtains between the material and the formal aspect - e.g. 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

Esp. Soph. 246a-b; see further, L S 45, a n d Brunschwig (1988), p p . 64ff. Esp. Cleanthes, SFF1.518 = LS 45c. I a m persuaded by Sorabji (1987), p p . 8 5 - 9 that Stoic pneuma need not be a n a m a l g a m of fire and air b u t can be either one of them individually. But I remain convinced that psychic pneuma, at least, is always a n a m a l g a m of the two, both w a r m t h and breath being integral to animate life (cf. SKF1.135,11.786—7; Cic. Tusc. 1.42). See Harris (1983), ch. 3; S a n d b a c h (1985), p . 47; for similar ideas in Hippocratic texts, see Flat. 15, Nat.puer. 17. Galen, PHP i.y.i. S.E. M i x . 7 1 - 2 . Cf. Plato, Phd. 70a, 77d-8oc, a n d below p . 328 on the soul's 'strength'. 49 LS 28F. Aristotle, de Anima

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that the material change does not in any way necessitate the formal change, but is hypothetically necessary for it. But any attempt to perform a similar dissection between quality and matter in Stoic psychology seems to get nowhere. It is perhaps only with regard to the problem of individual identity over time that the Stoics exploited such a distinction. (Chrysippus insisted that identity is preserved despite changes in an individual's constituent matter, so long as there is the right kind of qualitative persistence, located in the lifelong 'peculiar quality'.) 50 When it comes to such topics as behavioural explanation, the pneuma carries the role of causal agent with respect to a purely passive substrate,51 the latter being simply that in which all the changes are effected. Even a primitive physical change, such as heating or cooling, is just as much the action of the qualitative pneuma on or in the substrate as is a fully 'psychological' change like impulse or assent.52 Thus in Stoic psychology we should not be looking for any kind of dualism between material and intentionalist description. All psychological changes alike will be pneumatic changes, and none material. Since pneuma is in its nature an intelligent causal agent, there is in principle no puzzle about where the psychic pneuma's distinctively mental properties come from. If anything, we are owed an explanation of how pneuma can come to lack those properties when it characterizes plants (as phusis) and stones (as hexis).53 There is, of course, a physical difference between psychic pneuma and the other two pneumatic states, one regularly described in terms of its greater tension, warmth, dryness etc. But this carries with it a further difference. Mental states are analysable partly in terms of the lekta which are correlated with them. A 'rational' impression, for example, although itself a physical modification of the pneuma (see below), is rendered significant by its propositional content.54 A desire, likewise, must be directed at something; and that something is the predicate which one wishes to become true of oneself. These 50 52

53 54

51 L S 28; amplified in Sedley (1982). L S 47, 55F-G. T o w h a t extent bodily changes are regarded as the work of £§is a n d Ocris, a n d to w h a t extent the functions of these a r e subsumed u n d e r yvxT), is debatable (see Long (1982b)). But the answer should not affect the general point I a m making here a b o u t causality. LS 47. I leave aside the difficult question whether the same applies in some indirect w a y to the impressions of non-rational animals. Cf. the p a p e r of Labarriere in this volume, a n d Sorabji (1990).

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propositions, predicates etc. are lekta, which thus have a crucial role in marking the difference between a mere physical state on the one hand and a significant thought on the other. Is this the ontological basis for some kind of psychological dualism? Against any such possibility, it should be stressed that, unlike mental states, these lekta are incorporeal and hence causally inert. Although the structure and content of thoughts are analysed by mapping them onto lekta, the lekta themselves can have no active role in the structuring of the thoughts,55 let alone be thoughts. And such conformity with lekta is not even an exclusive hallmark of mental entities: it is equally a property of sentences.56 The lekton is as important a component of Stoic psychology as it is of Stoic theory of language, but it does not introduce any kind of dualism of the mental and the physical. This non-dualism is, I think, further borne out by much of the terminology of Stoic psychology. To start with a simple example, a soul's 'strength5 is its moral health; but that very same strength can be cited as the basis of its durability, which enables it to survive outside the body.57 This kind of usage defies any attempt to drive any sort of wedge between psychological and physical analysis. It is instructive to see Galen 58 trying hard to do just that. He quotes Chrysippus as regularly attributing moral failures of resolve to the soul's 'weakness' or 'slackness', defects which make it too readily influenced by external threats and temptations. These conditions, Galen argues, must surely be irrational ones, separate from judgment. But it is striking that, despite extensive verbatim quotation from Chrysippus in a bid to prove the point, he comes up with no such assertion of dualism. And our evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Chrysippus would have equated 'weakness' and 'slackness' with imperfect intellectual states. For example, the list of the nontechnical Stoic virtues juxtaposes the definition of the soul's 'health' as 'a good blending of the doctrines in the soul', with that of the soul's 'strength' as 'sufficient tension in judging and in acting and refraining from acting'. 'Tension' and 'blending' are physical properties of the pneuma, but the definitions are framed with the expectation that no 55 57 58

56 L S 27E, 45. Cf. also t h e role of lekta in t h e analysis of causation, L S 55. SVF 1.563,11.810. PHP iv.6. On the background to this insensitivity, on Galen's part, to the niceties of Stoic linguistic usage, see Manuli (1986).

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category mistake will be involved in applying these terms directly to the soul's intellectual properties themselves.59 The same applies, in Stoic discussions of the passions, to such key terms as eparsis (swelling), sustole (contraction), tapeinosis (lowering), diachusis (melting), ptoia (fluttering), epitasis (intensification), and dexis (biting). Although some of these nouns, or at least the corresponding verbs (e.g. epairesthai, diacheisthai), had an established metaphorical use as terms for psychological states, the Stoics' predilection for them undoubtedly reflects their physical analysis of pneuma as conditioned by its varying 'tension'. To Galen's ear, at least, they clearly designated irrational physical events.60 But for the Stoics themselves, it is not that each is a purely physical term, matched by some purely psychological counterpart. They are themselves integral to the language in which psychological analysis of passions is carried out, and sit comfortably enough among unambiguously intentionalist terms, without apparent discrimination. For example:61 Pleasure is an unreasonable swelling [eparsis] at something that seems to be choiceworthy. Under it are ranked enchantment [kelesis], gloating [epichairekakia], delight [terpsis], and melting [diachusis].

Here the two emphasized terms, both of which embody the notion of pneumatic tension, are used to designate the genus and one of the four species, without any suggestion that we have crossed a boundary between two alternative modes of analysis. Another area of Stoic psychology in which it is hard, and probably mistaken, to separate physical from intentionalist language is the analysis of phantasia. Zeno's definition of this as a tuposis led Cleanthes, the most physicalist of the Stoics, to interpret it as a literal printing, as in wax62 - which does, if nothing else, confirm the term's origin in Plato's celebrated image at Theaetetus i()iaff. of the soul as a wax tablet suitable for receiving imprints. 63 But Chrysippus 59

60 62 63

Stobaeus n.62.20-6 = SVF 11.278, cf. 279. See Galen, PHP v.2.2off. for the Chrysippean origin of this material. Chrysippus, as cited by Galen, speaks of a n 'analogy' between bodily a n d mental states, b u t without a n y indication that 'tension' etc. a r e only used metaphorically in the case of the mental. 61 Galen, P//P1V.3.2, v.1.4 = SVF 1.209. Diog. Laer. VII.I 14. Gf. Cic. Tusc. iv.66-7. S.E. Afvn.227ff. T h e complex influence of the Theaetetus on the d e b a t e between Zeno a n d Arcesilaus about the cognitive impression is the subject of Ioppolo (1990), which I h a d the good fortune to

read in draft.

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rejected this in favour of a metaphorical 64 reading of tuposis as an 'alteration' (heteroiosis) of the soul, a term which again eludes any straightforward differentiation between the physical and the mental. 65 A heteroiosis is just a shift from one quality to another, and 'quality', as we have seen, covers all pneumatic states. The language of tuposis survived this debate and remained integral to Stoic psychology, for example in the standard definition of the cognitive impression as 'moulded and impressed' in accordance with its object. One likely instance of it as a concept which importantly spans, or rather unites, the physical and the mental is in the production of speech from the hegemonikon. Galen, in book n of On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (PHP), has a long tirade

against Zeno's notorious syllogism about the location of the hegemonikon. Zeno argued as follows: Voice comes [chorei] through the windpipe. If it were coming from the brain, it would not come through the windpipe. Where speech [logos] comes from is where voice also comes from. But speech comes from the mind. Therefore the mind is not in the brain. (PHP 11.5.8) Galen's critique of this turns largely on the charge of equivocation: 'comes from' has to mean 'comes out of5 in the second premise, 'is produced by' in the fourth. But he recounts how he once met a Stoic who thought he could rescue Zeno by denying that his term 'comes' (chorei) describes locomotion at all (ibid. 11.5.22-3). Clearly this Stoic understood the transmission of speech from the mind in a way which erased any possible distinction between its causal and its local origin. Galen claims that the Stoic, asked what this special sense of chorein could be, was unable to answer him. But Galen's own text contains the materials for reconstructing a suitable answer, when a few pages earlier he dismisses the unattributed view that the voice is produced 'when pneuma in the lungs is imprinted [tupoumenou] in a certain way by the pneuma in the heart, and then imprints in accordance with itself [suntupountos] the pneuma in the windpipe' (PHP 11.4.40). This sounds like a Stoic elaboration, in terms of tuposis, of Zeno's definition66 of voice as 'pneuma stretching from the hegemonikon to the windpipe, the tongue, and the appropriate 64 65

66

Cf. Diog. Laer. vii.46, Chrysippus' objection to Cleanthes' reading (S.E. loc. cit.; Diog. Laer. vii.50), that several imprints cannot coexist in the same wax, is perhaps best interpreted as exposing the excessive crudity of so narrowly physicalist a n analysis of a mental event. SVF 1.150.

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organs'. Nothing actually travels from the hegemonikon to the outer air, but an 'imprint' is passed along from one portion ofpneuma to the next. So far the description seems purely physical. But there is one link in the chain still to supply. Diogenes of Babylon, amplifying Zeno's syllogism with the help of Plato's Theaetetus,67 suggested that speech itself is 'impressed [ensesemasmenon — or 'made significant'?] and, as it were, imprinted [ektetupomenon], by the conceptions [ennoiai] in the mind' [PHP 11.5.12). There is nothing absurd about this: although conceptions are the very stuff of rationality,68 they are also themselves a kind of phantasia, and hence a kind oftuposis.69 But it seems clear that the smooth chain of transmission from mental impression, perhaps via internal speech,70 to an eventual vocal imprint on the external air requires us to obey the spirit of Stoic psychophysics and to refuse to impose any division between physical and mental imprinting. From the first stage to the last, the tuposis is a rational articulation of the pneuma. And we can glimpse here a theoretical foundation of the extraordinarily close link forged by the Stoics between rationality and speech.71 Returning one last time to de Fato 7-9, in view of what we have seen to be an uninterrupted transmission of imprints from the rational mind to the outer air, it should by now be quite clear that Chrysippus would not feel any special difficulty about what is in effect the reverse process - how such physical factors as the local atmosphere can causally act upon a person's psychological condition. A psychological condition is a pneumatic state. And what could have a closer bearing on your pneumatic state than the air you breathe? 72 67

68 70 71 72

Diogenes' words closely echo the definition of speech (Aoyos) at Tht. 2o6d as 'making one's own thought manifest through the voice, with descriptions a n d names, imprinting (EKTU7ToO|iEVov) one's belief into the stream that flows through the m o u t h as if into a mirror or water'. 69 LS 39E, 53V. Plutarch, de Communibus Notitiis 1084F. See S.E. M v m . 2 7 5 = L S 53T - a n o t h e r legacy of the Theaetetus (189c). See L o n g (1982b), p . 5 1 . F o r t h e c o n t r i b u t i o n of b r e a t h i n g to t h e psychic pneuma, cf. SVF 11.782 (for whose Stoic p r o v e n a n c e see L S vol. 2, note o n 53E), 783, 792 (p. 219, 43), 879 a n d 885 (p. 238, 3 3 ) . Native atmosphere is an especially important determinant of character, because, as J. Mansfeld has pointed out to me, it is the pneuma's 'cooling' (yO^is, from which Stoic etymology derives yuxr)) at the moment of birth that makes it a soul (SVF 11.804-8, Philo, Somn. 1.32, Iamblichus, de Anima ap. Stob. 1.366.15-16).

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Strawson, P. F. (1962). 'Freedom and resentment', Proceedings of the British Academy 48, reprinted in Free Will ed. G. Watson, Oxford, 1982 Striker, G. (1977). 'Epicurus on the truth of sense-impressions', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 59, pp. 125-42

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(1986). 'Antipater on the art of living' in The Norms of Nature, ed. M. Schofield & G. Striker, Cambridge (1987). 'Origins of the concept of natural law', in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 3, ed. J. J. Cleary, Lanham Stroux, L. (1966). 'Vergleich und Metapher in der Lehre des Zenon von Kition', Diss. Heidelberg Tarrant, H. (1985). Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth

Academy, Cambridge Taylor, C. C. W. (1980). 'All sensations are true', in Doubt and Dogmatism, ed. M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, & J. Barnes. Oxford Thompson, G. R. (1941). 'Theophrastus on Plant Flavors and Odors: Studies on the Philosophical and Scientific Significance of De Causis Plantarum vi', Diss. Princeton Trillitzsch, W. (1962). Senecas Beweisfuhrung, Berlin Tynan, K. (1964). 'Bertolt Brecht', in Essays in the Modern Drama, ed. M. Freedman, Boston Usener, H. (1977). Glossarium Epicureum, ed. M. Gigante & W. Schmid, Rome Vander Waerdt, P. A. (1988). 'Hermarchus and the Epicurean Genealogy of Morals', Transactions of the American Philological Association, 118

pp. 87-106 (1989). 'The Stoic Theory of Natural Law', Diss. Princeton Vegetti, M. (1984). 'La terapia dell'anima. Patologia e disciplina del soggetto in Galeno', in Le Passioni e gli Errori del Anima ed. M. Menghi & M. Vegetti, Venice Vlastos, G. (1985). 'Socrates' disavowal of knowledge', PhQ 35, 139 pp.1-31 Voelke, A.-J. (1973). Videe de volonte dans le stoicisme, Paris Walzer, R. (1949). 'New light on Galen's moral philosophy' CQ 43, 1, pp. 82-96 Watson, G. (1971). 'The natural law and Stoicism', in Problems in Stoicism, ed. A. A. Long, London (ed.) (1982). Free Will, Oxford

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Subject index

Abderitians, 47 Academicians, 72, 225-6, 232, 242, 259, see also New Academy; Old Academy action, Stoic theory of, 165-6, see also agency actions, and passions in Galen, 196-222 advice, good, 285-6, 290-1 aesthetic emotional response, Senecan theory of, 177-82 aesthetic pleasure, 37-9 affection, emotion and moral self-management (Galen), 184-222 agency, Epicurean concept, 53-71 allegorical interpretation, Stoic, 133-6 altruism, 29, 35-6, 48-9 anger, 164-83, 196, 202, 206-7 animals: assent in, 240-2, 243-9; consciousness/conscience of, 238-43; reason of 65-9; Stoic idea of fantastic nature, 225-49; w ^ 61-2 Annicerians, 28-30, 34, 35-6, 39-49 anti-Epicureanism, 18-49 anticipation, 27 aponia, 15-16 arbitrary qualities, 75-9 assent, 166, 170, 173-6, 179-81, 292; in animals, 240-2, 243—9 ataraxia, 15-16, 66, 67 atmospheric influences on character, 319-20, 321-5 atomism, 51-94; criticisms of, 72-93 atoms, 55, 57, 58-9, 66; properties of 79—84 behaviourism, 308-9 being and not being (Plato), 93 belief, see doxa beliefs: and agency, 70; corrupt, 297-8, 309 biographical teleology, 314-20 body-mind relationship, see mind-body relationship categorical imperative (Kant), 303

causality: Epicurean 54, 62-3; psychophysical (Chrysippus), 313-331 causation: direction of psychological (Galen), 186-7, 220-2; natural 315-19, 321-5 causes, principal, 315, 321-5 censorship, 100, 131-2 children, compared with animals, 225, 237 choice, and constraints, 64-5 cognitive view of passions (Stoic), 100-4, 121-2

colour, perception of, 76, 83, 87-90 constitution, 55, 58, 60-3; of animals, 225, 231, 238-9 convention, 76—8 corporealism, Stoic, 325-6 Cyrenaics, 3, 4, 5, 9, 17, 18-49, see a^so Annicerians, Hegesians; evolution of beliefs, 30-6; orthodox and dissident, 24-30; versus Epicureans, 18-49 decreta, 291, 293, 299-304, 312 desires: necessary and unnecessary, 10; passions and the structure of life, 204-12 detachment, Stoic critical, 136-45 determinism, and freedom, 64-5, 315-17, 319, 321-5 developments, 55-7, 60-3 Dogmatists (Stoic), 226, 235 doxa: concept in Stoic philosophy, 251-60; mixed, 279—84 dualism, Platonic, 159—60, 161-4, 276; see also psychological dualism education: Posidonian, 109-14; role of poetry in, 100, 102-4, 106-7 egoism, 34-5 eidola theory, 83-4, 91-3 Eleatic philosophy, 93 emotions, status of for Galen, 187-92 Epicurean hedonism, 3-17 Epicurean psychology, 51-94, 268

344

Subject index epiphenomena, 78 errors, 254-5; an 115~i9> 120 movement, 25, 26, 30, 43 nature: and divine providence, 311-12; Epicurean concept, 57-8; and sense perception, 7-8 Neo-Pyrrhonism, 251, 277, 284 New Academy, 250-1, 260-74, 277, 283 New Comedy, 142 non-cognitive view of passions (Stoic), 100-4, 109-21 objectivity of moral values, 311-12 Old Academy, 275-6 passions, 95-222; and actions in Galen, 196-222; desires and the structure of life, 204-12; and errors (Galen), 189—97; anc ^ poetry in Stoicism, 97-149; Seneca's theory of the, 150-83; therapy of the 198-204, 260 patriotism, 36, 37, 38, 43 perception, see sense perception Peripatetics, 5, 72, 171-2, 191 pessimism, 35-6, 49 philosophy, kinship with poetry for Stoics, 107-8, 122, 125, 126-30, 146-9 pleasure: as absence of pain, 3, 4, 6, 9—10, 11-13, 21, 25; bodily and mental, 25-6, 27-8, 36-9, 40-1, 45; as the criterion of choice and avoidance, 6-10; denial of possibility of, 35, 48; as goal of actions, 20, 22, see also telos; and happiness, Cyrenaic beliefs, 25, 27, 30-6, nature of, 11—17; see also katastematic; kinetic pleasure; and reproduction, 281; as state of someone asleep or dead, 3, 25, 41-2,

43-5

poetry: Aristotle on, 107-8; benefits for Stoics, 126-30; dangers for Stoics, 123-5; and passions in Stoicism, 97-149; role in education, 126-30; Stoic reform of spectatorship, 108, 130, 131-45, 146—9; Stoic rewriting and new, 132—3 poietike, 102-4 praecepta, 291, 293-9, 300, 304, 312 pregnancy, 112-13 Providence, doctrine of, 226, 230, 232, 244, 246, 249, 315-19, 321-5

Name index

346

psychological causation, direction of (Galen), 186-7, 220-2 psychological concepts, Stoic, 223-331 psychological dualism, 150-83, 328 psychology: Galen's philosophical, 184-222; Platonic, 313-14, 316-20, 325-6, 331 psychology of hedonism, ethics and, 1-49 psychophysics, 325-31 punishment, 217-20 Quellenforschung, 153-4, i82n rationality, human, 67-71 reason: of animals, 67-9; in the heart (Chrysippus), 115; and the passions, 166-83; a n d responsibility (Galen), 194-6, 212-20; rules and moral development, 285-312 representation, 25, 38—9 reproduction, and pleasure, 281 responsibility, 54; and causation, 322-4; and reason (Galen), 194-6, 212-20 rhythms of the soul, 109-14 rules: hierarchy of, 295-6; moral and game, 311; reason and moral development, 285-3* 2 scepticism, 231, 251, 270-4, 283, 291-2; about rules, 311-12 self-control, 194-222, 280-1 Senecan drama, 148 sensations, truth of, 82-4, 90-3

sense perception: nature and, 7-8; value difference between Epicurus and Democritus, 72-94 smell, 86 soul: dunamis doxastike of, 252-60; and joy, 37-8; nature of the (New Academy), 260-74; pneumatic, 326-31; poetry and health of, 97-8; rhythms of the 109-14; Seneca on the, 150-83; tripartite (Plato), 104-7, I 0 9~ r l-> 3*3 spectatorship, critical Stoic, 130, 136-49 speech, and rationality, 330-1 Stoic dogma, according to Philo of Alexandria, 250-84 Stoic poetry, paradox of, 98-101 Stoic psychological concepts, 223-331 Stoicism, Seneca and orthodox, 150-3 Stoics, 4-5, 8; cognitive and non-cognitive views of the passions, 100-22; poetry and the passions 97-149 substratum, and quality (Aristotle), 93 suicide, 316-20 taste, ontological status of, 77, 78, 80, 84-6, 9^92-3 teleology, biographical, 314-20 telos, 5-6, 9-10, 29, 31, 47-8 theatre, dramatic and epic, 144-5 time, and happiness, 32-3 touch, 91-3 tragedy, 108, 128-30, 136-7

Name index (Names of philosophical schools can be found in the subject index) Aelianus, Claudius, 226n Aenesidemus, 283 Aesop, ig8n Aetius, 88, 235, 237, 237n, 238 Aithiops, 22n, 23n Albinus, i84n, 282 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 7n, 2i3n, 226, 229, 244, 244n, 245-8, 248n Alexander of Damascus, 184n Anaxagoras, 47 Andronicus, 3O7n Annas, J., I95n, 227n, Anniceris, 18-49 Antiochus, 241, 242, 262 Antipater, 22n, 23n, 116, 232,

Antiphon, Antisthenes, 47n Antoniades, E., 19, 23n 'Antonius the Epicurean', 192 Apollodorus of Cyzicus, 47 Apuleius, Lucius, 282 Arcesilaus, i66n, 251, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266-7, 268, 269, 273, 274, 283, Arete, ign, 22n, 23n Aristippus of Cyrene, the Elder, 4, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32n, 35, 40, 48 Aristippus the Younger, 18, 19, 2on, 22n, 32,40 Aristo, 5, 261, 293, 294-6

Name index

346

psychological causation, direction of (Galen), 186-7, 220-2 psychological concepts, Stoic, 223-331 psychological dualism, 150-83, 328 psychology: Galen's philosophical, 184-222; Platonic, 313-14, 316-20, 325-6, 331 psychology of hedonism, ethics and, 1-49 psychophysics, 325-31 punishment, 217-20 Quellenforschung, 153-4, i82n rationality, human, 67-71 reason: of animals, 67-9; in the heart (Chrysippus), 115; and the passions, 166-83; a n d responsibility (Galen), 194-6, 212-20; rules and moral development, 285-312 representation, 25, 38—9 reproduction, and pleasure, 281 responsibility, 54; and causation, 322-4; and reason (Galen), 194-6, 212-20 rhythms of the soul, 109-14 rules: hierarchy of, 295-6; moral and game, 311; reason and moral development, 285-3* 2 scepticism, 231, 251, 270-4, 283, 291-2; about rules, 311-12 self-control, 194-222, 280-1 Senecan drama, 148 sensations, truth of, 82-4, 90-3

sense perception: nature and, 7-8; value difference between Epicurus and Democritus, 72-94 smell, 86 soul: dunamis doxastike of, 252-60; and joy, 37-8; nature of the (New Academy), 260-74; pneumatic, 326-31; poetry and health of, 97-8; rhythms of the 109-14; Seneca on the, 150-83; tripartite (Plato), 104-7, I 0 9~ r l-> 3*3 spectatorship, critical Stoic, 130, 136-49 speech, and rationality, 330-1 Stoic dogma, according to Philo of Alexandria, 250-84 Stoic poetry, paradox of, 98-101 Stoic psychological concepts, 223-331 Stoicism, Seneca and orthodox, 150-3 Stoics, 4-5, 8; cognitive and non-cognitive views of the passions, 100-22; poetry and the passions 97-149 substratum, and quality (Aristotle), 93 suicide, 316-20 taste, ontological status of, 77, 78, 80, 84-6, 9^92-3 teleology, biographical, 314-20 telos, 5-6, 9-10, 29, 31, 47-8 theatre, dramatic and epic, 144-5 time, and happiness, 32-3 touch, 91-3 tragedy, 108, 128-30, 136-7

Name index (Names of philosophical schools can be found in the subject index) Aelianus, Claudius, 226n Aenesidemus, 283 Aesop, ig8n Aetius, 88, 235, 237, 237n, 238 Aithiops, 22n, 23n Albinus, i84n, 282 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 7n, 2i3n, 226, 229, 244, 244n, 245-8, 248n Alexander of Damascus, 184n Anaxagoras, 47 Andronicus, 3O7n Annas, J., I95n, 227n, Anniceris, 18-49 Antiochus, 241, 242, 262 Antipater, 22n, 23n, 116, 232,

Antiphon, Antisthenes, 47n Antoniades, E., 19, 23n 'Antonius the Epicurean', 192 Apollodorus of Cyzicus, 47 Apuleius, Lucius, 282 Arcesilaus, i66n, 251, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266-7, 268, 269, 273, 274, 283, Arete, ign, 22n, 23n Aristippus of Cyrene, the Elder, 4, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32n, 35, 40, 48 Aristippus the Younger, 18, 19, 2on, 22n, 32,40 Aristo, 5, 261, 293, 294-6

Name index Aristocles, 2911 Aristotle, i2n, 1711, 30-1, 38, 3911, 64, 73, 93, 101, 104-8, io8n, 122, 123, 140, 141, 143, 145, 147-8, 152, 178, 186, 188, 194, 195, 20211, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211-12, 213-15, 2i6n, 245, 247, 24811, 249, 252-3, 280, 283, 286-90, 297, 316, 31911, 326-7 Aristotle of Cyrene, 2311 Aristoxenus, 117 Arius Didymus, 154, 158-9, 23 m Arnim, J. von, 11911, 24211, 255 Arrighetti, G., 5411, 5511, 5611, 5711, 5811, 5911, 6on, 6in, 64n Arthur, E. P., Asmis, E., 6 Athenaeus, Attalus, 160-1, Augustine, Saint, 27m, 32 m Aune, B., Bailey, C , 86, 86~7n Ballester, L. G., ig2n, i98n, iggn, 2O2n Barnes, J., 57n, i85n, i94n, 227n, 299n, 3i6n Bayer, K., Beck, 3O Bellincioni, M., Blackburn, S., 29 m Bollack, J., 22n, 23n, 24n, 34n, 4111, 46n Brecht, B., 97, 144-5, l4^» J 4^ Brehier, E., 24 m, 275 Brunschwig, J., 7n, 2i5n, 326n Burnyeat, M., 236, 269n, 286~7n, 287, 288, 289, 296n, 2g8n Calcidius, 23m, 237n, 277 Cancik, H., 293n Carneades, 33n, 242, 260, 261, 262, 264, 266, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274, 283, 320 Cato, 271 Catullus, 272-3 Cebes, 23n Chrysippus, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105-6, n o , i n , 112, 113, 114, 115, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 131-2, I33-5. i36> 140-1, 142-3, 145, 146-7, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, i66n, 168, 169, 170, i72n, 176, 177, 182, i87n, 188-9, I 9 ° J I9I> X92> 2oon, 2o6n,226, 231, 232, 237, 238, 240, 253-4, 260, 297n, 299n, 313-31 Cicero, 3, 4—6, 8, 9, ion, 11—17, 21, 33, 35n, 106, 116, 121, 123, 154, i66n, i75n, 231, 235> 237n, 241, 242, 244, 251, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260-1, 262, 263-5, 268, 270-1,

347

272, 278, 293n, 294n, 299n, 306-7, 313, 314-16, 319-20, 321-5 Classen, C. J., 29n Cleanthes, 99, 100, 101, i n , 115, 122, 126, 128, 132, 151, 156, i66n, 226n,232, 3i8n, 326n,329, 33on Clement of Alexandria, 3, 20, 24, 3on, 32n, 37n, 38n, 39, 41-8 Colotes, 72, 73, 81-3, 87, 267 Cooper, J., i55n, 3o6n Couloubaritsis, L., i58n Critias, 115 Crito, 23n, 322 Crouzel, H., 228n Damon, 117 Dancy, J., 29m Daremberg, C , 2i8n Davidson, D., i95n, 212 Decleva Caizzi, F., 279n, 299n De Lacy, P., 77n, 82n, 83n, 88, 98n, 109, 122, 131, i6gn, i72n, i86n, i88n, 267^ 3i3n Democritus, 47, 72-94 Dennett, D. C , 62 Denyer, N., 32on Denys the Dialectician, 23n Descartes, R., 63n, 209, 230, 244 Diano, C , 54n Diels, H., 69n, 325n Dierauer, U., 6gn Dihle, A., 294n Diogenes of Babylon, 99, 100-1, 103-4, 115-21, 237, 3i6n, 331 Diogenes Laertius, 3, 7, 8, 9, 18, 20, 21, 22-6, 29-30, 34, 36, 37-8, 39, 40-1, 42, 46, 48-9, 90, 93, 99, 103, 134, 154, 225, 232, 234, 235, 285, 286n, 296n, 297n, 3i8n

Diotimus, 47 Donagan, A., 295n Donini, P., 150, i59n, 16in, i63n, i89n, ig2n, i98n, 20m, 322n Doring, K., 19, 20-1, 23n, 24, 27n, 3on, 3m, 32n, 37n, 39, 40-1, 43n, 45-6

Duhot, J. J.,

Edelstein, L., 32 m Einarson, G., 77n, 83n, 88 Empedocles, 77, 78n, 80, 99, 115 Epictetus, 99, 100, 101, 106, 121, 122, 127, 128-30, 132-3, 136, 138-9, 141, 142-3, 145, 146, 151-2, 18m, 226, 227, 230, 231, 259, 286n, 31 in Epicurus, 3-17, 20, 21, 25, 27-8, 3m, 34n, 37, 41, 44-5, 46, 48, 49, 53-71, 72-94,

348

Name index

Epiphanes, 3211, 3511 Epitimides, 2211, 2311 Euclid, 2311 Eudemus, 18411 Euripides, 99, 109, 123, 124, 128, 132, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142-3, 145, 147, 148, 15611, 158, 187, 32011 Eusebius, 19, 2211, 2611, 32, 4311, 23111 Everson, S., 91 n Fillion-Lahille, J., 153-6, 16511

Fodor,J., 186 .

Frankfurt, H., 20511 Frede, D., 32411 Frede, M., i68n, 18511, 21 in, 234n, 25m, 270, 3o8n, 3i8n, 323^ 324n Fritz, K. von, 19, 2on, 2in, 23n, 41 Fronto, Marcus Cornelius, 133 Gaius, i84n Galen, 76n, 81, 82, 99, 100, 104, 109, n o , i n , 112, 113, 115, 117, 121, 126, 128, 134-5, 142, 154, 155, 156, i69n, i72n, 182, 184-222, 28m, 299n, 3i3n, 324n, 326n, 328, 329, 330 Ganss, W., 3O2n

Gellius, Aulus, i66n, 168 Giannantoni, G., i8n, 19, 2on, 2in, 22n,

Herophilus, i86n Hesiod, 99, 132, 134-5, 2 ^ 5 , 286, 288n Hierocles, 237n, 239-40, 241 Hieronymus of Rhodes, 5 Hippobotos, 25 Hippocrates, i86n, ig7n, 2i7n, 3i9n Holler, E., 153, 157, 16m, 164-5, I 7 2n » i73n, i78n, i82n Homer, 99, 109, 123, 124, 126, 139, 147, 193 Horace, 178 Hossenfelder, M., 2in Hoven, R., 32on Huby, P., 67n Hume, D., 195, 209 Hutchinson, D. S., 19m Iamblichus, 253, 33 m Imbert, C , 233n Indelli, G., 68n Inwagen, P. van, i95n Inwood, B., i8gn, igon, 2O4n, 2i3n, 227n, 23on, 23 m, 234n, 239^ 24m, 244, 245, 248n, 29on, 293n, 298n, 30 m, 3i3n Ioppolo, A. M., 33n, 15m, i66n, i95n, 2i3n, 253n, 255n, 256n, 259n, 26on, 267^ 26911, 273n, 28m, 285^ 32m, Irwin, T., i95n, 289^ 30 m

Gigon, O., Gill, Christopher, ioon, 142, i87n, 191 n Gill, David, 2ion, 22on Giussani, C , 86 Giusta, M., 2on, 22n, 24n, 2gn Glaucon, 23n Glucker, J., 270, 271 Goldschmidt, V., 7on Gorgias, 187, i94n Gorier, W., 252n, 255n, 323n Gosling, J. C. B., i4n, 15, i5-i6n, igon Gowans, C , 3O5n, 3o6n, 3O7n Griffin, M., 3i7n Grilli, A., 43-4, 47n Hadot, I., 16m Halliwell, S., io8n Harkins, P. W., i84n, 21m Harris, C. R. S., 326n Hecataeus of Miletus, 47 Hegesias, 2on, 22, 23, 24, 28, 2gn, 34-5, 37n, 42, 48, 49 Helmreich, G., i84n, 19m Heraclitus, 47 Herillus of Carthage, i87n Herman, B., 29m, 295n, 298n, 3O3n, 3ion Hermarchus, 67-8, 7on

James, Henry, 97 Jerome, St, 127 Johnson, M., I57n Joseph,275-84 Kahn, C. H., i59n, 18m Kane, R., i96n Kant, L, i95n, 295, 303, 3ion Kenny, A. J. P., 2i9n Kerferd, G., 3O3n Kidd, I. G., 293n, 294n, 3oon, 3O3n, 31m, 32m Knox, B., 142 Konstan, D., i8on Kramer, H. J., 25 m Kraus, P., 2O3n Krevelen, D. A. van, 1 i6n, 119 Kuhn, C. G., i84n Labarriere, J.-L., 327n Lacan, J., 281 Lachmann, C , 86n Lactantius, 16m Lafrance, Y., 252n Lain Entralgo, P., 2O2n Lakoff, G., i57n

Name index Laks, A., 711, 1311, 5611 Lamprias, 268 Langer, S. K., 120, 12011 Laursen, S., 53-4, 5611, 5711, 5911, 6on, 6in, 6511 Lear, J., 29211 Leibniz, G. W., 2i5n Lloyd, G. E. R., i87n, 2i6n, 2i8n, 22m Locke, J., 2i5n Long, A., 15, 53n, 54n, 55n, 56n, 57n, 58n, 59n, 6in, 89, 90, 9 m , i65n, i68n, 227n, 228n, 233n, 236, 238, 244, 245n, 253, 255n, 257, 266n, 27on, 29gn, 3O4n, 3o8n, 31m, 3i3n, 3i6n, 3i8n, 32m, 327n, 3 3 m Longo Auricchio, F., 67n Lucan, 132

Lucilius, Gaius, 160 Luck, G., 3i4n Lucretius, 59n, 66-7, 69, 69n, 83-6, 88-9, 92, 98, 211 McDowell, J., 29m, Mackenzie, M. M., 2ign, 22on Maconi, H., 253n Manilius, 32 m Mann, T., 280 Mannebach, E., i8n, 19, 2on, 2in, 29n, 38n Mansfeld, J., 25on, 33m Manuli, P., i93n, 328n Marcus Aurelius, Marx, Karl, 145 Mattock, J. N., Melissus, 93 Menander, 99, 109, 139, 140, 141-2 Metrodorus, 271, 274 Mignucci, M., 78n Mitsis, P., i4n Montaigne, M. E. de, 268 Mounce, H. O., Miiller, I., i86n,

Natorp, P., 45n Nausiphanus, 47 Nell, O., 296n, 30 m, Nemesius, 244 Neubecker, J., 116, Nikiprowetzky, V., 25on, 279n, 280 Numenius, 242n Nussbaum, M. C , 33n, i87n, i9on, 191, 194, I98n, 201, 2O4n, 2o6n, 289n, 29 m, 3O2n, 3O5n, 3ion Nutton, V., Origen, 23m, 226, 227, 228-9, 230, 231, 245-6, 248

349

Orpheus, 99 Panaetius, 25, 40, 16m, i65n, 260 Paraibates, 22n, 23n Parmenides, 94 Phillips, D. Z., 3O5n Philo of Alexandria (Judaeus), 225n, 226, 229, 23m, 233, 234, 237, 238, 250-84, 33in Philo of Larissa, 264, 270, 271, 273, 274 Philodemus, 6gn, 88, 10m, 116-17, IJ8> 119, 120, 121, 2oon Pigeaud, J., 2O2n, 2O7n, 2i8n Pindar, 104, 109, 117 Plato, 10, i2n, 14, i5n, 23n, 36n, 41, 73, 74, 79,82,93, 100, 101, 104-8, 109, I I O - I I , 112—13, 114, 116—17, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 131, 133, 135, 146, 152, 157-9, 163-4, 186, 187, 197, 202, 203, 206, 2o8n, 209, 2i9n, 22on, 251, 252-3, 261, 262, 263, 265-6, 269, 273, 278, 283, 297, 313, 316, 317-20, 325-6, 329, 331 Plutarch, 3, 29n, 38n, 39, 72, 73, 74, 76-7, 77n, 81-3, 86—90, 97, 101, 103, 121, 122, 124-5, I2&5 130, 131, 133? 136, 137-8, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 149, 154, i66n, 2i5n, 225n, 226n,229, 232n, 233, 237n, 240, 251, 254, 267, 268, 269, 323n, 33m Pohlenz, M., 16m, 24on, 293n Polystratus, 68, 6gn, 70 Porphyry, 225n, 227n, 229, 233, 237n, 242, 244, 248n Posidonius, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104-5, 109-14, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 153, ! 54» !55> J56> 164-5, I91* J98> 259> 260, 276, 277, 281, 3i3-i4n, 321 Praxagoras, 326 Proclus, 285n, 3i4n Protagoras, 81, 82 Publilius Syrus, 109, 126-7 Putnam H., 28gn Pythagoras, 47, 218, Rackham, H., Radice, R., 25on Rawls, J., 295n Reesor, M. E., Reynolds, L. D., 291 Riese, W., i84n, i99n Rist, J. M., 9m, 15m, i53n, i64n, 240, 294n, 31711, 3i8n Rodier, G., 236 Rolke, K.-H., i56n, 276n, 277n Ross, W. D., 305-7 Runia, D., 25on, 275, 277, 28m

350

Name index

Sandbach, F. H., 7711, 24m, 26511, 32611 Santurri, E., 30511, 30611, 30911

Sartre, J.-P., 308

Saunders, T. J., 22011 Schofield, M., 29911, 31 in, 31311 Schwartz, E., 19, 2011, 3911, 41 Sedley, D., 15, 53, 5411, 5511, 5611, 5711, 58, 58-911, 6in, 64n, 67n, 68-9n, 75n, 77n, 86n, 89, 90, 9 m, 159, i65n, i68n, 194-5, 228n, 233n, 236n, 238, 244, 245n, 266n, 27on, 297n, 299n, 31 in Seneca, 99, 100, 101, 106, 121, 122, 123-4, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 138, 139, 140, 144, 148, 150-83, 2oon, 20in, 2O7n,

2i8n, 237, 239, 285-312, 3i8n, 324n Sextus Empiricus, 26n, 2gn, 72n, 91, 160, 161, 225, 226, 227n, 23m, 232n, 233, 234, 235, 238, 241, 242-3, 257n, 259, 26gn, 27m, 280-1 Sharpies, R. W., 245n, 32on, 324n Sherman, N., 289n Shields, C , 289n Sifakis, G. M., 39n Simmias, 23n Simon, 23n Simonetti, M., 228n Simonides of Ceos, 104, 109, 117 Socrates, ign, 22, 76, 106-7, 129, 135, 218, 261, 273, 286n, 287-90, 313-14, 316-18, 320,322,326 Solon, 3 m Sophocles, 132, 140, 187 Sorabji, R., i75n, 233-4^ 326n, 327n Speusippus, 23n Spinoza, B., i95n Staden, H. von, i86n Stern, S. M., 2O3n Stesichorus, 99 Stilpon, 23n Stobaeus, 3m, 158-9, 2i9n, 23m, 242, 253, 255> 257n, 258, 32gn, 33m Stough, C , i95n, 245n Strabo, 21, 22, 4on, 48, 4gn, 99, 122, 126, 127-8, 130, 149, 198, 249, 32on Strawson, P. F., 196 Striker, G., 3m, 34n, 47n, 49n, 9m, 24on, 267n, 26gn, 288n, 29on, 294n, 304-5^ 31m Stroux, L., i56n

Tarrant, H., 25 m Taylor, C. C. W., i4n, 15, i5-i6n, 9In Theagenes the Cynic, 215n Themistius, 285n Theodorus 2on, 22n, 23, 24 Theophrastus, 23n, 72-3, 74-5, 78-80, 80-1 n, 82, 93, 249, 325 Thillet, P., 247n Thompson, G. R., 75n Timon, 99 Timotheus, 99 Trillitzsch, W., 3O2n Turnebus, Tynan, K., Tyrtaeus, 99 Usener, H., 56n, 5 van Straaten, M., Vander Waerdt, P. A., 68n, 293n, 294n, 30m Varro, 237, 255-6 Vegetti, M., i8gn Velkley, D., Vlastos, G., Voelke, A. J., 16m, 253 Wachsmuth, 255 Walzer, R., Watson, G., Westerink, L. G., Westman, R., 77, 83n, 88 White, N., 294n, 296-7^ 3oon, 301 Whiting, J., 30m Williams, B., 3O5n Williamson, C., 3i2n Winch, P., 3i2n Xenocrates, 73, 261 Xenophon, 26 m Yon, A., Zeller, E., 18, 19, 16in Zeno Stoicus, 99, 100, 103, n o , i n , 115, 132, 151, 156, i66n, i74n, 250, 253, 254, 255-8, 274, 285-6, 290-1, 317-18, 325? 326, 329, 330-1

Index ofpassages cited

Aelian NA vi.50

Aristocles fr.3 Heiland

22611.2

Aetius

Aristotle

Placita I-I5-9 iv. 11.3

4 iv. 12.1-3 1-4

de Anima

88 237

19311.34, 32611.49

403b12 42 9a iff. 425012

23711.22 238 235

427D24-27

in. 1-2

Albinus Alexander of Aphrodisias

EE 1127012-16 11.8