Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (The Gifford Lectures)

Emotion and Peace Of Mind

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Emotion and Peace Of Mind From Stoic Agitation To Christian Temptation The Gifford Lectures

Richard Sorabji

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Richard Sorabji 2000 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2000 First published in paperback 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–825005–3 (hbk.) ISBN 0–19–925660–8 (pbk.)

To Grace and Jai

It is not quite certain that the man who eats cakes rather greedily is acting from passion. GALEN, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in. OLIVER EDWARDS It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept anybody from being angry. MACAULAY on Francis Bacon Those who frequently attend lectures on the disciplines of knowledge get lean and dry bodies, which results in their not easily becoming annoyed. PHILOPONUS It's not the despair I mind; it's the hope I can't stand. JOHN CLEESE, in Clockwise

Acknowledgements I have very much benefited from many conversations which I have tried to acknowledge in the relevant places in the text, and I was fortunate to have a final set of comments from Henry Chadwick. I first tried out my ideas in seminars at the Institute of Classical Studies in London at a time when John Procope was still alive, a man of immense generosity and learning. He introduced me to the work of Paul Rabbow and to a number of ancient texts, and his own writing on emotion in ancient thought was just beginning to take off (witness his ‘Epicureans on Anger’) at the time of his premature death. He is very much missed. I gave the first airing outside London as Webster lecturer at Stanford and this was followed by a number of opportunities, among others the Donnellan lectures at Trinity College Dublin, a week at Notre Dame, a week with Scandinavian graduate students at Helsinki, a visiting fellowship at the Getty Center, a seminar in Oxford, and the Prentice lecture at Princeton. I was enabled to learn a little about ancient Indian views by a visit to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Simla. In 1997 I was asked to give the Gifford lectures by both St Andrews and Edinburgh universities, who agreed to my delivering two different versions of the material, the longer version for a wider public at Edinburgh. The final revision was facilitated by a British Academy/ Wolfson Research Professorship. I am very grateful to all my hosts and sponsors. I am grateful also to George Karamanolis for preparing the index locorum. While writing the book I had the privilege and pleasure of directing the Institute of Classical Studies. It was a time of rapid change, which made it particularly important to be aware of emotions, and in some ways Seneca was an ideal companion. My thanks to the many key people who converged and helped us converge on plans to meet the future.

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In the same period our first two grandchildren were born, and I have great pleasure in dedicating this book to Grace and Jai.

Contents Abbreviations Introduction I. EMOTIONS AS JUDGEMENTS VERSUS IRRATIONAL FORCES 1. Emotion as Cognitive and its Therapy 2. The Emotions as Value Judgements in Chrysippus 3. Seneca's Defence: Third Movements as Harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno 4. Seneca's Defence: First Movements as Answering Posidonius 5. The Arts: First Movements and Controversies on Drama and Music. Aristotle, Philodemus, and the Stoics 6. Posidonius on the Irrational Forces in Emotion: Galen's Report 7. Posidonius: Judgements Insufficient for Emotion. Exhaustion and Lack of Imagination 8. Posidonius: Judgements Not Necessary for Emotion. Disowned Judgements, Animals, Music 9. Aspasius and Other Objections to Chrysippus 10. What is Missing from the Judgemental Analysis? Brain Research and Limitations on Stoic Cognitive Therapy II. VALUE OF THE EMOTIONS, COGNITIVE THERAPY, AND THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY 11. The Role of Analytic Philosophy in Stoic Cognitive Therapy 12. Stoic Indifference: A Barrier to Therapy? 13. The Case for and against Eradication of Emotion

xi 1 17 29 55 66 76 93 109 121 133 144 159 169 181

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14. The Traditions of Moderation and Eradication 15. How the Ancient Exercises Work 16. Exercises Concerned with Time and the Self 17. Physiology and the Non-Cognitive: Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion 18. Sex, Love, and Marriage in Pagan Philosophy and the Use of Catharsis 19. Catharsis and the Classification of Therapies III. EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND STRUCTURE OF THE MIND 20. Emotional Conflict and the Divided Self 21. The Concept of Will IV. FROM STOIC AGITATIONS TO CHRISTIAN TEMPTATIONS 22. First Movements as Bad Thoughts: Origen and his Legacy 23. From First Movements to the Seven Cardinal Sins: Evagrius 24. First Movements in Augustine: Adaptation and Misunderstanding 25. Christians on Moderation versus Eradication 26. Augustine on Lust and the Will Bibliography of Secondary Sources Mentioned Index of Ancient Thinkers Index Locorum Subject and Name Index

194 211 228 253 273 288 303 319 343 357 372 385 400 419 431 436 468

Abbreviations ANRW CAG CC CSEL DK Dox. Gr. FHS&G GCS LS PG PHP PL QAM SVF

Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergangder römischen Welt (Berlin and New York, in progress) Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca Corpus Christianorum Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels and W. Kranz, 7th edn. (3 vols.; Berlin, 1954) Doxographi Graeci, ed. H. Diels (Berlin and Leipzig, 1929) Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought, and Influence, ed. William W. Fortenbaugh, Pamela M. Huby, Robert W. Sharples, and Dimitri Gutas (2 vols.; Leiden, 1992) Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller The Hellenistic Philosophers, ed A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1987) Patrologiaecursus completus . . . Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (162 vols.; Paris, 1857–1912) Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, ed. and trans. Ph. de Lacy (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, V.4.2.1–4; Berlin, 1978). Patrologiaecursus completus . . . Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (221 vols.; Paris, 1844–64) Galen, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. Hans von Arnim (3 vols.; Stuttgart, 1903–5); vol. iv (indexes) by Maximilian Adler (Stuttgart, 1924)

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Introduction This is a book about emotion in ancient philosophy, not about particular emotions, but about what emotion is in general and about how to cope with one's own emotions and establish peace of mind. The Stoics were, I believe, the driving force in the whole ancient discussion, so the book will focus on them. But the Stoics had a place in a wider discussion in which all the philosophical schools took part. They reacted to their predecessors and influenced their rivals, so these too will be introduced, albeit more briefly. One issue, which is still a subject of the latest research, is whether emotions are, and should be treated as, mental judgements and attitudes, as the main Stoic tradition held, or whether they involve irrational forces including physical ones. The Stoics left a particular legacy to the Christian discussion of temptation, which will be the subject of the last part of the book. They also left a legacy to us, in that I think we can learn from the debate they inspired on emotion and peace of mind. Sometimes we celebrate our emotions; sometimes we are upset by the emotive situations of life, and our emotions may then be unwanted or counter-productive. In either case, can Stoicism really help? It certainly does not celebrate emotions. Moreover, as a word in the English language, ‘Stoicism’ suggests gritting your teeth in adversity and suppressing emotions in this manner is surely not an effective way of avoiding upset. I believe, on the contrary, that Stoicism can be very helpful in dealing with counter-productive emotion. But it is not a matter of gritting your teeth. It is about seeing things differently, so that you do not need to grit your teeth. This may require you to say things to yourself. It involves a rather intellectual approach to coping with emotions, and it contrasts, for example, with such non-intellectual techniques as diet, gymnastics, and music, not to mention breathing, posture, the reciting of mantras, or the taking of drugs. Emotional therapy had started in the fifth centuryBC with the

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Presocratic philosophers. What the Stoic approach was good at was coping with situations, with the ups and downs of life. It could be good, for example, on the rat race, disappointment in office, job insecurity, anxiety about health, road rage, the pressures of work and travel, or for that matter on sudden success or fame. On the other hand, it could not deal with what we call mental illness. Nor would it be good on moods which are not directed to a particular situation, but which, like depression, fasten themselves on whatever situation comes to hand. The Stoic techniques rather focus on a particular situation and help you to see it differently. Their approach has much less to say about children, because it is so rationalistic. Some of the other ancient philosophers, we shall see, had much more to say about moods and about children. Stoicism also has less to say than e.g. Plato and Aristotle about the emotional effect of one person on another. What is needed is a pluralism in therapy; none has the monopoly of wisdom. But Stoic therapy is very helpful in its own area of competence. There is probably much more literature now available on mental illnesses, which afflict some, than on the turns of fortune which affect us all. Modern cognitive therapy has many things in common with Stoic therapy. Stoicism was, of course, an entire philosophy, and its therapy for emotions was only a small part. But the Stoic Chrysippus offered to detach the therapy from the ethics and theology and use it for people who did not believe the latter. All you would need in order to apply the therapy to yourself is an understanding of the Stoic psychological theory about what emotions are. It was the Stoic Chrysippus (c.280–c.206BC) who developed the standard Stoic view on what emotion is. His predecessor Zeno, I shall argue, had a very different account. In Chrysippus' view, all emotion consists of two judgements. There is the judgement that there is good or bad (benefit or harm) at hand, and the judgement that it is appropriate to react in ways which he specifies precisely. It is important that emotion is not a felt inner contraction or expansion, as Zeno had supposed. Nor is it any kind of physical reaction. Such contractions and bodily changes may follow emotion. Later, Seneca pointed out they may also precede it, and they are then called ‘first movements’. But the emotion itself consists of judgements. It is further important that judgements are not, like appearances, involuntary. If it appears to you that you are in a bad situation, you cannot help the appearance. But you can help giving the assent of

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your reason to the appearance. Most people assent automatically to whatever appears, but Stoicism teaches you how you can withhold assent while you question appearances. And it gives you a lot of exercises with which to question them. The appearance does not turn into a judgement until you give assent, and it is, for Chrysippus, judgement which constitutes emotion. If he is right, there is a prospect of shedding emotions, and of doing so by rational means, precisely because they are not involuntary. It makes a huge difference that Chrysippus identifies the two judgements of which every emotion, in his view, consists. This enables you to target therapeutic exercises on them if you want to question them. The exercises help you assess whether there is really benefit or harm, or whether the specified reaction is really appropriate. I believe, contrary to some views, that the distinction of first movements is also important for Stoic therapy. The Stoics tell us to discount them. There are two kinds of first movement. If you shudder, grow pale, or shed tears, this may be an example of physical first movements. Mental first movements have proved harder to identify, but a text of Galen's reveals, I believe, that they are those sinkings or expansions that we feel in the chest when we are distressed or pleased, and other similar felt movements. First movements result from the mere appearance that there is benefit or harm, but they do not yet presuppose judgement, and hence not genuine emotion. It is very useful to be able to distinguish these reactions from emotion and discount them, because otherwise it is easy to get into an emotional state simply from observing our own reactions. As William James said, we do not cry because we are sad, but are sad because we cry. Unlike the philosophical analysis of emotions, many of the therapeutic exercises are common to different philosophical schools. They can be targeted on the judgement that it is appropriate to react (‘Your mourning makes you neglect the living’), or on the judgement that there is benefit or harm (‘You are not the only one to suffer’, ‘Is it bad in itself or merely unexpected?’). Exercises can be practised in advance or in retrospect. The poet Ovid parodies the philosophical exercise of relabelling things. You can describe the beloved as curvaceous and honey-coloured for purposes of seduction, or as fat and sallow for purposes of falling out of love. Some exercises involve further philosophical analysis of the nature of time or the self. The Stoic approach of first getting clear about what emotions are

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reveals something about the relevance of philosophy to life. Seneca discussed whether precepts on their own without philosophical theory are useful. The answer is that the little things you say to yourself in the therapeutic exercises are of some use on their own. But if you want to be able to administer Stoic therapy to yourself, however much circumstances change, you will need to know what emotions are. The idea that you can extract the exercises without knowing the theory has its parallel in Western treatments of Yoga. But at least as regards Stoicism, it would be wrong to think that the exercises or the philosophical analysis stand on their own. Stoicism involves a marriage of the two. The analysis claims that emotions can be treated, since they are not involuntary reactions but judgements which can be suspended. It identifies the judgements to be targeted, and it distinguishes and discounts first movements. The further analyses of time and the self can be deployed as part of the exercises. An example of Stoic therapy at work was provided in the Vietnam war by Admiral Stockdale, who used the Stoic Epictetus (AD 55–135) in order to survive four years of solitary confinement and nineteen occasions of physical torture. The account by himself and his wife shows how Stoic therapy can be relevant not only to the heroic situation, but also to ordinary life. Other Greek philosophers advocated quite different approaches to coping with emotion. Even within the Stoic school, Posidonius (135–51BC) initiated a debate about whether this intellectualist approach ignored the psychodynamics, or tug (holkē), of the irrational forces within us. He rejected Chrysippus' picture of a unitary soul consisting largely of reason. He appealed to Plato, who distinguished two irrational forces in the soul, which he compared with horses, and said that, in order to temper them, emotional training must start in the womb with the mother's behaviour. And once the child is born the right diet, music, gymnastics, and aesthetic environment must be provided. The debate between those who emphasized judgements and those who emphasized other aspects of emotion extended far wider than the Stoic school. Galen focused on the physiology of emotion and stressed especially strongly the role of diet. Other ancient philosophers made use of behaviour therapy (reports of Socrates), or practised redirecting their attention (Epicurus), as opposed to changing their judgements. And the Christian Evagrius, we shall see, perfected new techniques of playing emotional thoughts off against each other, before they could turn into full-scale judgements.

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Posidonius attacked Chrysippus' view that emotions consist of judgements with a series of telling counter-examples. Some examples, it will emerge, suggest that Chrysippus' two judgements are not necessary for emotion, some that they are not sufficient. Modern philosophy has also debated whether emotions are judgements, but seldom with as much rigour. This is because Chrysippus was so exact about what judgements he had in mind that Posidonius was able to launch precisely targeted counter-examples. I shall point out that the Stoic Seneca (AD 4–65) without mentioning Posidonius, seems to answer him by classifying all three of his alleged examples of emotion without judgement as not being cases of emotion at all. Your response to wordless music, when you do not judge anything good or bad to be the case, is not an emotion but at most a first movement. Similarly, when you shed tears in the theatre, another context in which you do not judge that anything bad has really happened, this too is only a first movement. Finally, when you are tempted to say that animals, who on the Stoic view make no judgements, none the less experience emotions, this too is an illusion. Seneca's discussion of first movements has implications not only for music but also for the arts in general. It is one of the mysteries of ancient philosophy why there was so little discussion of Aristotle's brilliant defence in the fourth centuryBC of tragedy and comedy by reference to catharsis. His teacher Plato, he said, was wrong to banish the poets from the ideal city for stirring up emotions. For stirring up the emotions of the audience (this is what I take him to mean) performs a most useful function in society of providing catharsis of the emotions. The apparent silence of the Stoics on this theory has seemed all the more surprising in that they are particularly interested in the role of theatre in society. The answer as regards the later Stoics is, I believe, that Seneca makes it unnecessary to discuss catharsis further. For in his view the arts do not stir up emotions, but only first movements. In that case, whatever catharsis may be, it cannot be the role of the theatre to produce it, since catharsis depends on the stirring up of emotions. The question whether the arts arouse genuine emotion is still a matter of current debate, and Seneca's side has been very skilfully argued, although I do not think it covers all the cases. A flood of light can be shed on this debate between Posidonius and Seneca through some very recent findings about the brain. Joseph LeDoux has made a very remarkable discovery about fear in rats,

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which he extrapolates to humans.1 A sound associated with danger signals its message to the brain by two routes which diverge at a fork, one route being fast, one slow. The fast route travels to the amygdala, a brain centre which immediately sets off physical alarms throughout the whole body, even before the person or animal has the faintest idea what the danger is. Even the notion of danger itself will not yet have entered into consciousness. But the person is reacting physically as if to danger, surprisingly before they know what is dangerous. Eventually, by the slower route, that knowledge may reach the cortex, and in favourable cases the human may be able to confirm or disconfirm the alarm signals and alter them accordingly. But things can go wrong. You may not recognize the sound as what triggered the alarm, nor the danger with which it is associated. Or the shell-shocked person, while recognizing that the sound was only the slamming of a door, may none the less be unable to quieten the amygdala. LeDoux's findings vindicate Posidonius in a way. Of course, as Posidonius allows, judgements are usually very important in emotion, but there is also the movement of the irrational horses. The physical reactions of the amygdala are the modern equivalent of the horses' movements. No wonder Posidonius seemed to find so many counterexamples to the idea that emotion is nothing but judgement. Disowning the judgement that a height is dangerous does not automatically calm the amygdala. Lower animals may react only through the amygdala, not through the cortex. Music may sometimes move us through a similar physical mechanism, rather than through judgement. Conversely, our judgements, when we foresee a danger by intellectual means, may fail to arouse the amygdala. It is hard to deny that the person with shell shock or vertigo, or the person moved by music, may be feeling emotion, or to insist that merely intellectual foresight constitutes fear. Fortunately, in favourable cases our judgements can send messages from the cortex which do quieten the amygdala. This is why in so many cases the Stoic therapy through judgements is worth trying and why it can work, although we can now also see some of the reasons why it may not work. We can also now understand better Seneca's first movements. Tears, trembling, and sinking feelings in the chest may well be produced by a fast track, but even earlier than Seneca said. It can happen before anyone has had time to entertain the idea of danger in

1

Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (New York, 1996; London, 1998).

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consciousness, or identify the dangerous thing. People are merely reacting as if to danger with these first movements. Seneca performed yet one more service to Stoicism, I shall argue. Chrysippus had favourably expounded the account of his predecessor Zeno, according to which emotion involves not so much mistaken judgement as going against one's own true and better judgement. Posidonius and Galen assume that Chrysippus endorses this account and point out, rightly in my view, that it is incompatible with the ‘mistaken judgement’ account. Seneca, I believe, offers a kind of reconciliation, namely, that Zeno's account represents a later stage of emotion, a third movement or escalation, in which one goes against one's initial bad judgement and indulges in an even worse one. His distinction of third movements is quite true to life, and is recognized in modern psychologists' accounts of ‘flooding’. The ancient philosophers debated not only the nature, but also the value, of emotions. A few emotions were highly valued in some schools—certain forms of love, for example. The main debate was between Aristotle's position that most emotions are useful in moderation (metriopatheia), but the art is to moderate them, and the Stoic position that most emotions are pernicious and should be eradicated (apatheia). Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, or moderation, is not the banal thing it is sometimes thought to be. It is a controversial statement in a debate that had already started before Stoicism between believers in freedom from emotion and believers in moderation. I have spoken throughout of the Stoic theory of emotions, rather than of passions, because the word ‘passions’might nowadays suggest extreme emotions. But there would have been no disagreement if the Stoics had thought merely that extreme emotions should be avoided. Stoicism as formulated by Chrysippus was opposed to nearly all emotion. We do not have to agree with this unacceptable side of Stoicism in order to learn from the Stoics how to be free of those emotions that are unwanted or counter-productive. And surely many are: anger, I believe, is counter-productive far more often than is recognized. Chrysippus had a peculiar reason of his own for rejecting nearly all emotion. He thought the value judgements involved were nearly always false, for rationality and character are the only things which are genuinely good. It may be natural and right to ‘prefer’ or ‘disprefer’ the other things which engage our emotions, but our evaluations are

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mistaken because the other things are in the end indifferent, to use the Stoic term. Epictetus adds that ordinary untutored family love easily turns into hate, just because we have not learnt to treat the things we quarrel over as preferred or dispreferred indifferents. The attitude of indifference does not exclude the most energetic pursuit of what is preferred. One Stoic, Antipater (head from c.152 to c.129BC), says it is your duty to do everything in your power to secure the naturally preferred objectives, such as health and prosperity for yourself, your family, and all mankind. But if you fail, although you were right to pursue them, you should not grieve since they are indifferent. It is just as in cricket or in American football—his own example is archery—you should do everything in your power to succeed. But what matters is not the success but the right pursuit: the game's the thing. It is not only preferred indifferents which it is right to pursue, but also the genuine good of rationality. Judging this to be good involves no mistake and will lead to no perturbation. Paul Zanker has pointed out how an early statue of Chrysippus shows him pursuing his thought and teaching with an intensity that contrasts with the bland statues of the early Epicureans.2 This intense pursuit was evidently thought compatible with the rejection of almost all emotion. Fortunately, the theory of indifference was not used by Chrysippus as an essential part of his therapy. For one thing, if you had really accepted the idea of indifference, you would be a sage already and would need no therapy. For another, Chrysippus offered to help people who totally rejected the Stoic value system. The Stoic theory of how to avoid agitation was converted by early Christians into a theory of how to avoid temptation. The idea of first movements, which we can now see was not an invention of the twelfth century, as has been supposed, was central to this development. Origen, at least in the fourth-century Latin translation of his third-century text, turns the Stoic first movements into bad thoughts. This utterly transforms the idea of first movements, because Seneca's whole idea had been that they are distinct from emotions because they do not involve thought. The distinction between first movements and emotions is now blurred, but blurred in a way that thoroughly suits the very different Christian agenda. Instead of

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Paul Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates: Das Bild des Intellektuellen in der antiken Kunst, trans. by Alan Shapiro as The Mask of Socrates (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1995).

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the very sharp distinction between first movements, which are not your fault at all, and emotions for which you are totally responsible, the Christian talk of bad thoughts allows for many intermediate degrees of sin. These degrees of sin go with all sorts of new questions which it is possible to ask about thoughts. Did you put yourself in the way of the thought? Did you let it linger? Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy the mere thinking about sin, or were you enjoying the sin itself about which you were thinking? In many cases biblical ideas are redescribed so as to represent biblical ideals as Stoic, but Stoic in a revised way. If Jesus wept, or Abraham mourned or felt fear, these are to be reinterpreted as first movements only. But first movements are often now vaguely conceived as the beginnings of emotion in such a way that it is not clear whether the Bible is endorsing a little bit of emotion or not. The most innovative Christian figure in this context is the fourth-century desert hermit Evagrius. The eight bad thoughts with which he wrestles in the desert can be shown to be first movements in a Christian disguise. They were later to turn into the seven cardinal sins. Evagrius' innovation is to provide a complete theory not of the emotions taken one by one—that had been done by the Stoics—but of their causal interrelations. He shows how the desert monk can play one bad thought off against another. Thoughts of lust and thoughts of vanity can be conjured up to defeat each other. But vanity is particularly difficult to defeat. If you have defeated the other seven thoughts, you are likely to have thoughts of vanity. And if you defeat vanity, that can itself be an occasion for thoughts of vanity. The simplest remedy is to conjure up thoughts of lust, which are so humiliating as to defeat those of vanity. But eventually, with the aid of prayer, you should hope to achieve the Stoic ideal of freedom from emotion without the support of these exercises. Evagrius gives the most telling descriptions of inner thoughts. The monk afflicted by the form of depression called akēdia will not get on with his reading, but will count the pages to see how many are left. Who can plead ‘not guilty’ to counting the remaining pages in a mood of boredom or despondency? There is a special demon for would-be fundraisers, who start with noble thoughts about how to alleviate the lot of the poor. This would require fund-raising. And this leads on to thoughts of avarice and vanity, if not of lust, in a sequence that could have been written by Trollope. We can see that bad thoughts afflict us every day, although they do

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not become sins unless we let them linger, or take pleasure in them. But this we often do, and so we can see why Augustine (AD 354–430), who would have had access to Latin translations of Evagrius, is so incensed with people who think that they have achieved freedom from sin and do not need to ask forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer every day. In fact, they are indulging in the sin of pride. Augustine also turned against the Stoic ideal of freedom from emotion as being neither practical nor desirable. Just like the defenders of freedom from emotion, the supporters of moderate emotion admitted exceptions, and Augustine makes exceptions of pride and lust, which he considers undesirable. Both in his support for moderate emotion and in his attack on lust as an exception, the Stoics' first movements become relevant, but he misunderstands them. In defending moderate emotion, he cites the Stoics' acceptance of first movements as if it proved that they really accepted emotion itself. There were many reasons why Augustine should have misunderstood Stoic first movements. First, Origen had blurred the distinction from emotion by turning first movements into thoughts. Secondly, Augustine did not believe it was possible to avoid emotion. Thirdly, he is steeped in a Platonic view of the soul, which, in contrast with the Stoic view, holds that emotion is the product of irrational forces in the soul and does not have to await the assent of reason, as the Stoics suppose. But there is another reason why Augustine is able to misunderstand the Stoic view. His main source on first movements is not Seneca, but the philosophical journalist Aulus Gellius. Gellius tells a graphic story of a Stoic philosopher who grows pale in a storm at sea, and explains with a precious quotation from Epictetus (otherwise lost) that growing pale is only a movement, not an emotion. So it is permitted to Stoics. Augustine wrongly takes it that the Stoic is allowed to feel a little emotion and that he does not really treat his life as indifferent. I shall argue that Augustine is partly misled by Gellius' change of the letters ‘ll’ to ‘v’. The Stoic is allowed to grow pale (pallescere), but Gellius adds that he is allowed to have the jitters (pavescere), a nice literary word which hovers ambiguously between merely trembling and having real fear. Gellius' choice of word enables Augustine to disambiguate it in the wrong direction and to suppose that real fear is what the Stoics are allowing. The misunderstanding of first movements breaks out again when

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Augustine makes an exception of lust. He contrasts lust with anger on the grounds that, in the male, the bodily movements it involves disobey the will. In anger, by contrast, if you hit someone, the movement of your fist is under the control of the will. Augustine has not noticed Seneca's point that involuntary first movements are common to all the emotions. In fact, Seneca gives examples for all three of the cases which Augustine discusses. The pallor of the Stoic sailor, the movement of the male organs, and the flashing eyes and quickening breath of the provoked person are all equally examples of involuntary first movements. One wonders: if Augustine had read Seneca, instead of Aulus Gellius, would he have seen that he did not here have a sufficient reason to downgrade lust in comparison with anger? For Evagrius, lust had not been one of the more dangerous temptations. It will not arise, in his view, if gluttony is under control. The pagan philosophers had taken every conceivable view about lust and its relation to love and to marriage. Every one of these three had been treated independently from every other, so that any one could be approved while the others were not. To take but one example, the Epicurean Lucretius in the first centuryBC accepted lust as natural, deplored love as a source of disturbance, and viewed marriage as normally only a means of obtaining legitimate offspring. One of the most interesting treatments of erotic thoughts in the pagan philosophers comes in the dispute between the Neoplatonists Porphyry and Iamblichus aroundAD 300. Porphyry tells the philosopher to avoid every temptation to lust, including obscene language. Iamblichus retorts by citing the phallic festivals at which obscenities were shouted and defending them, at least for ordinary people. One ground of defence is that a moderate exercise of erotic feelings can help to rid you of them through Aristotelian catharsis. This is one of the very few explicit references to Aristotle's theory of catharsis, and it comes 650 years after his death. Augustine thus had a huge range of attitudes to lust available to him. But it is rather like the question of whether it is all right to kill animals. Augustine plumped for one view, and such was his influence that the Western Christian tradition inherited a much smaller range of options than was available to the pagan philosophers. Augustine's attack on lust focuses on the idea of the will, an idea which had been developing from the time of Plato. In many pagan philosophers we find one or more components of a concept of will, but always in separation from others. It is Augustine, I believe, who

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first brings a full range of components together, and also makes the will a pivotal concept of philosophy. I do not think that we have to wait for this until Maximus the Confessor, whose preferred concept of will, I shall argue, seems to be merely a version of the Stoic concept of attachment (oikeiōsis). Augustine's central objection to lust, from which almost all his other objections flow, is that at least since the Fall of Man it has been disobedient to our wills. I believe that Augustine did not succeed in identifying the real reasons for his objections to lust. By pinning the case on disobedience to the will, he opened himself to refutation by his Pelagian opponent Julian, the bishop of Eclanum. Julian usefully distinguishes the consent of the will from the command of the will. Lust may not be under the will's command, but it can have the consent of the will every bit as much as the desire to eat and drink, the accompanying salivation, and subsequent sleep. So what is the moral difference? I do not think that Augustine finds an answer. But if he lost the philosophical battle, he won the political one. If Julian had won, our attitudes to sexuality, and to much else besides, might have been very different. The transmission of Stoic ideas to Christianity illustrates one of the things that can happen in the history of ideas. Ideas may be utterly transformed, and inevitably were so in the 900 years between the first Presocratics and Augustine. This happened to the Stoic idea of first movements, first when they were converted into bad thoughts, and then again in the Middle Ages when Evagrius' bad thoughts were turned into the seven cardinal sins, which are often pieces of behaviour. But ideas can also be revived with surprisingly little change. I think this could well happen to Stoic ideas on combating emotions, and to a certain extent it has happened in modern cognitive therapy. Ideas can be revived because, although they need a context, they can be transplanted into a new context. This means that it is equally difficult to assign a terminus post quem non and a terminus ante quem non to ideas. Not only can they be unexpectedly revived, but they can crop up before one would have expected, because the earlier appearance may have been in a context where one was not expecting them. I have pointed to examples of this elsewhere.3 None the less, the revival of ideas does seem to be related to direct chains of transmission. It is found when Greek is translated into

3

For Berkeleian Idealism see Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (London and Ithaca, NY, 1983), ch. 18; Matter, Space and Motion (London and Ithaca, NY, 1988), ch. 4.

INTRODUCTION

13

Arabic, or when texts in these languages are translated into Latin. It is not found between philosophical traditions like the Indian and the Greek, where direct chains of transmission are sparse. There, one has the impression of similar minds at work, but not quite the same ideas. It is no accident that the major protagonists in a book about the emotions should be the Stoics and then the Christians Evagrius and Augustine. All of these are people who look inwards and interrogate themselves. The Stoics even have a special word, prosokhē, for the introspective supervision of one's own thoughts and actions.4 Christopher Gill has argued forcefully in a recent book that the Greeks saw themselves primarily in an outward-looking way as participants in society.5 Certainly, all these thinkers were concerned with society, but in some of the Stoics, I believe, we find a concept of the self somewhat detached from society. I shall return to this subject, I hope, in a later book.6

4

Stobaeus Eclogae vol. 2, p. 73, line 1 Wachsmuth; Epictetus, Handbook 33. 6; Discourses 4.12; frag. 27; cf. Plutarch On How to Judge One's Moral Progress 12, 83B ; On Garrulousness 23, 514E .

5

Christopher Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy and Philosophy (Oxford, 1996). See also p. 252 below on Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self (Cambridge, 1989), for the suggestion that a genuinely inward attitude has to await Augustine.

6

Initially in ‘Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy’, in James Crabbe (ed.), From Soul to Self (The Wolfson Lectures, 1996; London, 1999), ch. 2, and I hope more fully in a book in preparation on the self.

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Part I Emotions As Judgements Versus Irrational Forces

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1 Emotion As Cognitive and Its Therapy In this chapter I shall set the scene by sketching some of the early developments: the idea of philosophy as psychotherapy and the view that emotions are cognitive. These ideas were developed in the period of the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle, although it will be clear from the following chapters that I think the subject attained new depths with the Stoics, so that Neoplatonists and Christians were able to presuppose and adapt the Stoics' work. I shall speak of ‘emotions’ rather than ‘passions’ when rendering the Greek term pathēe. This is for the reason given in the Introduction, that, in so far as there is a distinction nowadays, passion is thought of as a very strong type of emotion. Those who, like the Stoic Chrysippus, wanted to eradicate emotion hoped to eradicate not only the strong ones, but very nearly all, as I shall argue in Chapters 2 and 14. So their view would not be well expressed by saying that they were only against passions.

Philosophy As Psychotherapy: The Presocratics The idea of philosophy as psychotherapy can be traced back to the fifth centuryBC. Democritus compares philosophy to medicine. Medicine cures diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from emotions.7 There are far more surviving fragments of Democritus' writings concerned with ethics than with the atomic theory for which he is now more commonly celebrated (indeed, sometimes for the atomic bomb). Many of these fragments have been assigned to his treatise On Cheerfulness (peri euthumiēs).8 The saying ‘I have tried

7

Democritus in Diels–Kranz [henceforth DK], Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, frag. 31, from Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 1. 6.

8

The treatise is named in Democritus, frag. 2c DK. Reconstructions have been based on later works on the same theme by Seneca, De tranquillitate animi, where tranquillitas is offered as a Latin rendering of euthumia, and Plutarch, Peri euthumias. See R. Hirzel ‘Demokrits Schrift peri euthumiēs ’, Hermes, 14 (1879), 354–407; C. Gill, ‘Peace of Mind and Being Yourself: Panaetius to Plutarch’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt [henceforth ANRW ], 2. 36. 5. Democritus frags. 3 and 191 are explicitly on euthumia. The earlier edition by Mullach distinguishes 250 ethical fragments, which Hirzel subsequently assigns largely to the one treatise. The ascription of the atomic bomb I owe to the patriotic owner of a Greek sweetshop.

18

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

too in my time to be a philosopher but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking through’ represents only one of the ancient images of philosophy.9 Four hundred years later Democritus came to be contrasted as the philosopher who laughed at men's follies with Heraclitus, who wept at them.10 To cultivate cheerfulness was to avoid these follies. An ancient anecdote will throw light not on Democritus himself, since it gets attached to other philosophers too,11 but on the kind of therapy which later Greeks thought it appropriate to ascribe to him. He was supposedly consoling the bereaved Darius, king of Persia. When ordinary encouragement (paramuthia) failed, he undertook to bring his wife back to life, if Darius would find in his great kingdom three names to inscribe on her tomb of people who had not suffered grief (apenthētoi). He is then described as laughing at Darius for thinking he was alone (monos) in his suffering.12 The message is, as Cicero puts it in another context, ‘You are not the only one’.13 Democritus' contemporary Antiphon put up a notice beside the market place in Corinth offering a therapy for distress that worked through words (tous lupoumenous dia logōn therapeuein). No sorrow (akhos) was too great for him to expel it from the mind (gnōmē) by his art of banishing distress (tekhnē alupias) in pain-killing lessons (nēpentheis akroaseis).14 The subjects he covered included loss of money and marriage difficulties.15 One of our sources compares a doctor treating sick patients. At a more rhetorical level, another fifth-century figure, the sophist Gorgias, wrote a defence of Helen of Troy in which he pleads on her behalf that it is not surprising if Paris' words overcame her. For the and Being Yourself: Panaetius to Plutarch', Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt [henceforth ANRW], 2. 36. 5. Democritus frags. 3 and 191 are explicitly on euthumia. The earlier edition by Mullach distinguishes 250 ethical fragments, which Hirzel subsequently assigns largely to the one treatise. The ascription of the atomic bomb I owe to the patriotic owner of a Greek sweetshop.

9

Quotation from Oliver Edwards, in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

10

Horace Letters 2. 1. 154 ff.; Sotion in Stobaeus Florilegium book 3. 20. 53 =vol. 3, p. 550, lines 7–9 Hense; (Ps)-Hippocrates, vol. 9, p. 358 Littré; Seneca On Anger 2. 10. 5; Seneca Tranq. 15. 2; Juvenal Satires 10. 28 ff.; Aelian Var. Hist. 4. 20; Lucian On Sacrifices 15; Greek Anthology 9. 148.

11

There is an analogous anecdote even in Indian philosophy.

12

Democritus A 20 DK, from Julian Letters 201B –C .

13

Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3. 79.

14

The sources in Antiphon 87 A 6 DK, Plutarch, and Philostratus refer to the orator Antiphon; DK themselves and the majority of modern scholars, to Antiphon the sophist, if indeed he is a distinct person.

15

Antiphon frags. 54; 49 DK; cf. frags. 44; 58–61.

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

19

spoken word can on its own ‘stop fear, remove distress, create joy, and increase pity’. He compares the effect of drugs.16 Plato's references to medical care of the soul are rather different in character, because he is concerned with curing it first and foremost of vice, and only secondarily of unhappiness, and by means of what he calls a political art rather than by other kinds of therapy.17 Chrysippus the Stoic in the third centuryBC repeats that there is an art for the diseased soul which corresponds to medicine for the body.18 But despite the early start to this idea, Cicero can still in the first centuryBC contrast what he calls the medical art for the mind (animi medicina) with the art of caring for the body as something much less accepted.19 None the less, he reveals that there were books on how to deal with poverty, lack of office and recognition, exile, the ruin of one's country, slavery, infirmity, and blindness.20 Such books are needed today. One of the attractions of the subject is that everyone meets with upsets of one kind or another, so that this is a philosophy for everyone and not only for those whose emotions are, in a modern sense, pathological. It is needed in all walks of life, and by the prominent as much as the humble. Some of the remedies are startlingly up to date, such as Seneca's advice to Lucilius to take early retirement.21

The Emotions As Cognitive So far I have spoken of the control of the emotions. But before the methods of control can be understood, we must see how the emotions are analysed—what they are thought to be. From early on, philosophers thought of the emotions as cognitive. This is not yet very clear in Gorgias'Helen.22 In describing how words can produce pleasure and remove distress, he characterizes this in terms of incantations (epōidai), wizardry (goēteia), magic (mageia), and drugs (pharmaka). Incantations often depend on sound, not sense. Only once does Gorgias refer to cognition, by saying that the incantations combine with the belief (doxa) in the soul, in order to

16

Gorgias Encomium on Helen, frag.11, secs. 8, 9, 10, 14DK.

17

e.g. Plato Charmides 157A ; Gorgias 464B –C and passim.

18

Galen De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis [henceforth PHP ] 5. 2. 22, p. 298 de Lacy (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta [henceforth SVF ] 3. 471).

19

Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3. 1.

20

Ibid.3.81.

21

Seneca, e.g. Letters 14, 19, 22, 68, and the many references in Miriam Griffin, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1976), ch. 10, ‘The Philosopher on Political Participation’.

22

Gorgias Helen, frag. 11, secs. 10 and 14 DK.

20

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

soothe, persuade, and change it. But it may be striking that he gives this much recognition to belief, seeing that his aim is to represent Helen as defenceless against the verbal persuasion to which she was subjected.

Plato's Cognitive Account There is a striking development in Plato. In two early dialogues, Laches and Protagoras, he puts in Socrates' mouth, and repeats later in the Laws, the idea that fear actually is a cognition: the expectation (prosdokia) of impending evil.23 This anticipates the bold attempt by the Stoic Chrysippus to identify the emotions with judgements (Chapter 2 below). But, so far as I know, it is not repeated before Chrysippus for other emotions, not even by Plato. It might be thought that it is repeated for the case of desire in the immediately preceding passage of the Protagoras24 and in two related passages, all translated in Chapter 20 below. But these passages say more about the relation between action and thinking good than about that between desire and thinking good. The Protagoras passage does speak of being willing (ethelein), but seems to treat it not as identical with, but only as causally related to, value judgements. It is said to be not in human nature to be willing to go after what one thinks (oiesthai) bad instead of good things. This tells us only about the case in which one makes a comparative assessment that one objective is good, another bad. It is a causally necessary condition of being willing to pursue an objective that one is not making an unfavourable comparative assessment of it. This falls a long way short of identifying willingness with judging something good. The other two passages also tell us little.25 They introduce the idea of what one really wants (boulesthai), and a restriction on it, that one can only really want good, not bad. But this does not tell us about desire in general, because the opponent's view is neither confirmed nor denied that at least one can have an appetite for (epithumein) things one thinks or knows (hēgeisthai, gignōskein) to be bad and harmful. It might be thought that Plato must mean Socrates to apply to appetite what he explicitly says about action, that it is directed to what seems good (dokei), or better. But this is less than certain, because in a parallel passage26 Plato contrasts appetite (epithumia),

23

Plato Laches 198B ; Protagoras 358 D ; Laws 644 C –D .

24

Id. Protagoras 358 C –D .

25

Id. Gorgias 468 B –D ; Meno 77 E –78 B .

26

Id. Charmides 167 E .

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

21

as being directed at pleasure, with boulēsis, which is directed at good. There is an analogous acknowledgement later in the Republic, to be discussed in Chapter 20: Leontius does not think it better to look at the corpses at the moment he gives in to that appetite, even though in some sense the soul does whatever it does for the sake of good.27 But even suppose that in the early dialogues Socrates' implicit view is indeed meant to be that appetite (epithumia) is directed not only to pleasure, but also in some sense to what is good or better. Even then, we should have learnt at most a necessary condition for desire. Neither boulesthai nor epithumein would be identified with judging good. There is equally no sign in Plato of Chrysippus' further idea that the judgements involved in fear or other emotions are always false. The courageous person, according to these early dialogues of Plato, knows what is to be feared,28 which implies that sometimes at least the judgements are true. What we do repeatedly find in Plato's later dialogues is beliefs and other cognitions playing some role or other in emotional struggle. We shall see in Chapter 20 that these beliefs are sometimes, but not always, mistaken ones. The bad horse, which represents the lustful part of the soul, can think it right (axioun) to give in to temptation.29 Or one can give in to temptation through the deceit (apatē) of pleasure.30 Pleasure and distress can make mistakes about their objects because they are accompanied by (meta) a false belief.31 When Plato in Republic 604 B contrasts reason with emotion, we should not think he means emotion is irrational in the sense of involving no beliefs. For beliefs are located by Plato not only within reason, but also within the irrational parts of the soul. This is crucial, for example, to the Republic's definition of temperance as the virtue in which the rational and irrational parts of the soul all have the same belief (homodoxousin) about which of them should be in charge.32

27

Id. Republic 439 E –440 B ; 505 D –E .

28

Id. Protagoras 360 D ;cf. Laches 198 C .

29

Id. Phaedrus 255 E –256 A .

30

Id. Laws 863 B –C .

31

Id. Philebus 37 E .

32

Id. Republic 442 B –D . Beliefs in non-rational parts of the soul are found also at Rep. 574 D ; 603 A ; Laws 644 C –D ; 645 A ; counsellors (sumbouloi) at Timaeus 77 A –C . See Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals (London and Ithaca, NY, 1993), 10–12.

22

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

Aristotle and Aristotelians On Cognition Aristotle discusses the emotions in many different contexts. In the Rhetoric and Poetics he is concerned with orators and poets who want to have an effect on emotions. In his Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics he is concerned that we should avoid extremes and hit the mean in emotional dispositions. In On the Soul and biological works he takes a scientist's interest in emotions. His interest is by no means the Stoic one of removing emotion. In the Rhetoric orators are more often advised how to inflame emotion, although there is a whole chapter, 2. 3, on equability (praotēs), or how anger can be calmed. In the Poetics certain emotions are to be lightened and, as I believe, expurgated, but by first arousing them. In the Ethics emotions may need intensifying as often as quieting, if the mean is to be hit. What this does mean is that Aristotle is more concerned than the Stoics with the emotional effect of one person on another. Aristotle's accounts of emotion are shot through with cognitive terms, but they are not yet tidied in the way that the Stoics were later to tidy them. Thus in Rhetoric, book 2, ten chapters are devoted to roughly ten emotional states. But Aristotle does not bother about whether to talk of belief (doxa), appearance (phantasia), or thinking (oiesthai, nomizein). And this is in spite of the fact that he rejected Plato's identification of appearance as a kind of belief and insisted on their being distinct states.33 Aristotle also wavers between treating pleasure and distress as the genera under which emotions are classified and treating them merely as accompaniments of emotion (meta). Again, he uses very diverse prepositions for expressing the relation between emotion and cognitions: through (dia), at (epi), with (meta), out of (ek), from (apo). Only in the Topics does he introduce some regimentation, saying that anger occurs through (dia) the appearance of harm, and arguing that ‘with’(meta), a term used in Plato's account of pleasure at Philebus 37 E 10, does not sufficiently bring out the relation. It has been argued that he is here deploying his new conception of the causal relations required in science.34 The Stoic tidying up of such points may or may not have succeeded in being truer to reality. But the Stoics may have thought that, if the emotions

33 34

a

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 3, 428 18–24; a

b

3–10, correcting Plato Sophist 263 E –264 D .

Aristotle Topics 6. 13, 151 14–19; Rhet. 2. 2, 1378a 30–2. See William Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion (London, 1975), 11–16.

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

23

were to be controlled (their central interest), a much more orderly account of them would be needed. In one respect, however, Aristotle is very careful indeed, and that is concerning the content of the thoughts involved in emotion. Both the orator and the poet need to know exactly what thoughts go into various emotions if they are to act on those emotions. And it is interesting to see how far the accounts of certain emotions are co-ordinated, as between the Rhetoric and Poetics. To take some examples from the Rhetoric, anger is defined as a desire, accompanied with (meta) distress, for what will be seen as (phainomenē) revenge, through (dia) what is seen as (phainomenē) a slight directed at oneself or one's circle, when the slight was not appropriate, and it is accompanied (hepesthai) by pleasure from (apo) the hope (elpis) of revenge.35 Fear is distress or disturbance from (ek) the appearance (phantasia) of impending evil which is destructive or distressing. It is accompanied (meta) by the expectation (prosdokia) of suffering some destructive effect, so people think (oiesthai, nomizein) they are going to suffer something.36 Pity is distress at (epi) what is seen as (phainomenon) a destructive or distressing evil for someone who does not deserve to meet it, an evil which one might expect (prosdokān) oneself or a member of one's circle to suffer, and that when the suffering is seen (phainesthai) as near.37 There are corresponding definitions for equability, love, shame, benevolence, indignation, envy, and emulation.38 Aristotle's definitions are carefully designed to bring out the interconnection among these emotional states. In the law courts the orator can stop the judges feeling pity if he can convert pity to fear, indignation, or envy. The definitions make it very clear what is needed for doing this. If the expected victim is seen as exceedingly near in kinship (sphodra engus oikeiotēti), pity can turn to fear.39 If the person is seen as after all getting not evil, but undeserved good fortune, or good fortune in circumstances where he is someone very like ourselves, then pity may get replaced by indignation or envy.40 Even pleasure and distress (hēdonē, lupē), which Aristotle is sometimes wrongly supposed to be treating as non-cognitive affects, are analysed elsewhere as cognitions. For he defines them as perceptions of the good as good and of the bad as bad:

35

Aristotle Rhet. 2. 2.

36

Ibid.2.5.

37

Ibid. 2. 8.

38

Ibid. 2. 2–11.

39

Ibid.2.8, 1386 18–25.

40

Ibid.2.9–10.

a

24

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

being pleased or distressed is being active with the perceptive centre in relation to good or bad as such.41

In the Poetics Aristotle gives us his famous theory of emotional catharsis as the function of tragedy. This will be the subject of later chapters, notably Chapters 5, 18, and 19. For now I need only say that in order to produce catharsis of pity and fear, the poet must first arouse them in the audience.42 At any rate, most interpretations agree on this much. So the poet writing a tragedy needs to know what kind of plot will arouse these emotions. What I want to ask is whether Aristotle's account of pity and fear in the Rhetoric is co-ordinated with that in the Poetics. To a large extent it is. One small difference is that in the Poetics fear is felt by the audience in the first instance for others, for the characters in the play. But the similarities are more striking and they are even exploited in Aristotle's remarks on plot.43 At a stroke, Aristotle circumvents Plato's moral objection to the writers, that they show injustice succeeding and justice unsuccessful.44 On the contrary, according to Aristotle, that would be incompatible with tragedy's need to imitate fearful and pitiable events. For that purpose, the plot must not show a good man (epieikēs) brought from good to bad fortune, nor a bad man brought from bad to good fortune. Nor, for that matter, must it show a very bad man brought from good to bad fortune. For these events are not pitiable or fearful. Similarly, the plot must not be about someone outstanding in virtue or justice. And why not? Because pity is felt at undeserved misfortune, fear at misfortune for someone like oneself (homoion).45 This immediately connects with the Rhetoric, which says that both fear and pity are aroused by showing that suffering has come to someone who is like us (homoious).46 The reason given is that this makes people realize they too are liable to suffer. This allows Aristotle, unlike the Stoic Seneca, whose view will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, to hold that it is genuine fear that is aroused in the theatre audience and, moreover, fear for oneself. Aristotle's only restriction is that if fear for oneself is excessive, it will drive out the pity47 which it is the function of tragedy to produce. There are some small discrepancies between Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics. For example, when the Poetics condemns the plot in which a good (epieikēs) man is brought from good to bad fortune,

a

41

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 7, 431 10–12.

42

Id. Poetics 6, 1449b 27–8.

43

Ibid. 13.

44

Plato Republic 392 B .

45

Aristotle Poet. 13, 1452 34–1453 7.

46

Id. Rhet. 2. 5, 1383 10; 2. 8, 1386 25.

47

b

a

a

Ibid. 2. 8, 1386 18–22.

a

a

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

25

this seems to contradict the Rhetoric since the Rhetoric preserves pity especially for victims who are good (epieikeis).48 Aristotle's explanation in the Poetics of the opposite view, that such a situation would be a defilement (miaron) rather than fearful or pitiable, does not seem to pick up anything in the Rhetoric. But the important point for present purposes is that the accounts of emotion in the Poetics are just as cognitive as those in the Rhetoric, and this is in no way offset by the catharsis analogy, even if that, as I shall maintain in Chapter 19, is an analogy with such non-cognitive things as laxatives and emetics. Aristotle's treatment of the emotional mean in his Nicomachean Ethics will be discussed in Chapter 14. But when he does natural science in On the Soul a new factor comes in. The scientist must define emotions not only by their cognitive element, which constitutes the form of the emotion, but also by the underlying physiological process, which constitutes its matter. This is a very important addition, and the matter and form offer purchase to two alternative concepts of therapy, as will be brought out in Chapter 17. Emotions might be calmed either by addressing the physiological process or by addressing the cognitions. The latter is what Chrysippus advocates, since he regards the physiological processes as mere concomitants. In Aristotle's example anger is not only a desire for retaliation. That account is cognitive, because the idea of retaliation (antilupēsis) implies awareness of distress received and distress to be returned, but it describes only the form of anger. Anger is also a boiling of blood around the heart—Aristotle could have worked as well with brain mechanisms, if his science had been updated. All emotions and all mental processes, with the possible exception of thinking, are here assigned a physiological basis.49 The Aristotelian school continued to write about emotions. Aristotle's successor Theophrastus is credited with quite a few such treatises,50 as well as the extant Characters. In Characters 24 Theophrastus gives a short character sketch of pride (huperēphania), but a more detailed treatment, On Freeing from Pride, has survived from Aristo of Ceos, a slightly later Aristotelian of the third century BC.51 The very words for the proud person's attitudes are compounds of verbs for thinking and believing: philodoxein, mega phronein, kata-phronēsis,

48

Ibid. 2. 8, 1385b 34.

49

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 1, 403 25– 9.

50

Diogenes Laertius Lives 5. 43–50.

51

Aristo of Ceos On Freeing from Pride, frags. 13–16 Wehrli, taken from Philodemus On Pride, which is book 10 of Philodemus On Vices, ed. Jensen (Teubner: Leipzig, 1911).

a

b

26

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

oiēsis. These are particularly often used by the Epicurean source (Philodemus) who preserves the long fragments of Aristo. But what is most striking in Aristo is the cognitive therapy which he recommends against pride, which will be further described in Chapter 15.

The Epicureans and Cognition The view that the emotions are cognitive was shared by another post-Aristotelian school, the Epicureans. But this comes out most clearly in the works of an Epicurean of the first century BC, Philodemus. In one, On Anger, he attacks empty anger (kenēorgē).52 This has rightly been related to Epicurus' idea that there are desires (epithumiai) which are neither natural nor necessary, but due to empty beliefs (para kenēn doxan, kenodoxian).53 Empty belief is found whenever there is intense effort, despite there being no pain attached to the desire's being unfulfilled.54 Philodemus adds that anger depends on the belief that you have been harmed, but the supposition of harm is not a sufficient cause (drastikon aition) of anger.55 In another treatise, On the Gods, Philodemus contrasts animals with humans in respect of emotion. Animals have only analogues of human disturbance (tarakhē) and only numb impulse (hormē).56 That is because they lack reason, thought, belief, and apprehension (logos, noēsis, doxa, hupolēpsis) and have only analogous sense perception.57 The role of cognition in emotion is brought out by the contrast with the numbed impulse (narkōdēs hormē) of animals. According to Philodemus, So impulse in the strict sense (kuriōs) must be formulated in concepts (noein) by every animal. Yet animals cannot formulate impulse in the absence of foresight and expectation (proorasis, prosdokia), or something analogous. [The need is] because impulse in the strict sense is formulated (noeitai) in relation to something impending.58

52

Philodemus On Anger, cols. 38.1–6; 39.7–8 Indelli.

53

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 29, 30, in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10.149. The cognitive implications of Philodemus' treatise are very well brought out by Julia Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992), 191–4.

54

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 30.

55

Philodemus On Anger cols. 47.18–42; 49.28–50.8 Indelli.

56

Id. On the Gods col. 11.19–20; 28–30; 34; col. 13.20; 30–1; col. 14.6–8; 29; col. 15.23 Diels.

57

Ibid. col. 11.29–30; col. 12.10; col. 13.6–7; col. 14.17–19.

58

Ibid. col. 13.16–19.

EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

27

This is a clear statement that emotions are cognitive. The last treatise brings out that the Epicureans give a role not only to the beliefs occurring within an emotion, but also to the antecedent beliefs which make you liable to emotion if you have not absorbed Epicurus' philosophy. In a way, animals are at a disadvantage because they cannot, like humans, use Epicurus' teaching to understand and calm their disturbances.59 Epicurus' views are to be memorized, especially his views on the unimportance of death, views which are expounded both in Lucretius and in Philodemus' treatise On Death. The role of cognitions comes out also in the Epicurean therapies for emotions. Philodemus recommends in On Anger and On Frank Criticism that one should point out the bad consequences of anger, avarice, or being in love, and in On Envy the good consequences of others' success.60 But in one respect, as will be stressed in Chapter 17, Epicurean therapy is very different from Stoic, in that Epicureans think emotions can be calmed by switching your attention without changing your beliefs. Finally, the Epicureans recognize a role for unconscious beliefs in emotion. Plato had already discussed unconscious desires surfacing only in dreams, such as the desire to sleep with one's mother.61 The Epicurean Lucretius, as Martha Nussbaum has well shown, sees restless travel and the ambition to amass honours, power, and wealth as due to an unconscious fear of death and the last as due to an unconscious belief that somehow one's achievements will give one a kind of immortality.62 This would be cured by studying Epicurus' attitude to death as nothing to us, since we shall not be there to suffer anything, any more than we were before we were conceived. The Epicureans were presumably drawing on Plato, who had earlier treated the desire for offspring and fame and the production of noble deeds or works as a desire for immortality.63

Pyrrhonian Sceptics and Cognition I shall postpone to Chapter 14 a fuller account of the Pyrrhonian sceptics. But it will become clear there that they had learnt from the Stoics. They distinguished emotion sharply from the mere sensation

59

Ibid. col. 12.10–13; 17–24; col. 13.1–13; col. 14.13–17; col. 15.28–34.

60

I am grateful to Voula Tsouna-McKirahan for these examples: On Anger col. 3 Indelli; On Frank Criticism frag. 42; On Envy frag. 18 Guerra, Cronache ercolanesi, 15 (1985).

61

Plato Republic 9, 571 B –D .

62

Lucretius 3.36–67; 3.1053–70. See Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton, 1994), ch. 6.

63

Plato Symposium 506 E –509 E .

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EMOTION AS COGNITIVE AND ITS THERAPY

of pain. The latter could not be helped, but they could avoid distress by refraining from adding the belief (prosdoxazein) that the sensation is bad. A long list is given of disturbances besides distress which depend wholly on belief, and belief is distinguished, as with the Stoics, from mere appearance.

Plotinus and Cognition Plotinus maintains the long tradition which makes emotion cognitive, even though he reverts in the direction of Plato, as against Aristotle and the Stoics, in not recognizing a sharp distinction between appearance (phantasia) and belief (doxa). Emotion for him does indeed start from beliefs, but these produce an uncritical appearance (anepikritos phantasia) which is like a murky belief, and this in turn produces shock (ekplēxis) in the body, which, on the view canvassed here, is the only thing to be passively affected (pathos).64 The soul thus causes emotion rather than undergoing it, and the beliefs cause emotion rather than constituting it.

64

Plotinus 3. 6. 4 (13–38).

2 The Emotions As Value Judgements In Chrysippus The Four Generic Emotions As Value Judgements In the century after Aristotle the Stoics selected four emotions as the most generic ones under which all other emotions could be arranged as species. The four are distress (lupē, aegritudo), pleasure (hēdonē, laetitia), fear (phobos, metus), and appetite (epithumia, libido, appetitus, cupiditas).65 These four are arrived at by taking a pair of emotions directed to the present and a pair directed to the future, one of each pair involving apparent goods, one apparent evils.66 Highly similar divisions still appeal nowadays, although one modern author expands his list by including emotions directed to the past,67 while another substitutes the criterion of uncertainty for that of futurity.68 Clearly, the Stoic classification differs from that of other schools. We have seen Aristotle, for example, treating fear as a species of distress, not co-ordinate with it. The Stoics make a further exceedingly bold claim. Every emotion involves two distinctive value judgements. One is that there is good or bad (benefit or harm) at hand, the other that it is appropriate to react.69 Distress is the judgement that there is bad at hand and that it

65

The three main sources for the generic emotions and their species are Cicero Tusc. 4. 11–22; Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 110–14; Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 1–5(SVF 3. 391, 397, 401, 409, 414). The four most generic emotions are also treated at Galen PHP 4. 2. 1–4, pp. 238–9 de Lacy; Stobaeus vol. 2, p. 90 Wachsmuth. For the species see also Cicero Tusc. 3. 84.

66

Cicero Tusc. 4. 11.

67

Andrew Ortony et al., The Cognitive Structure of Emotions (Cambridge 1988).

68

O. H. Green, Emotions (Dordrecht, 1990) 82 ff.

69

Judgements other than the main two come in only indirectly. In anger, for example, the judgement that it is appropriate to react may depend on further judgements that the injury was intended or undeserved: Seneca On Anger 2.26.3; 2.28.My account sides with Ledbetter against Frede's ingenious suggestion that Chrysippus has in mind nonevaluative propositions like ‘Socrates is going to die’, and evaluative ways of assenting to them. See M. Frede, ‘The Stoic Doctrine of the Affections of the Soul’, in M. Schofield and G. Striker (eds.), The Norms of Nature (Cambridge, 1986), 93–110 at 104–5; Grace M. Ledbetter, ‘The Propositional Content of Stoic Passions’, in K. Voudouris (ed.), Hellenistic Philosophy (The 4th International Conference in Greek Philosophy), vol. 2, pp. 107-13 (Athens, 1993).

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THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

is appropriate to feel a sinking. Pleasure is the judgement that there is good at hand and that it is appropriate to feel an expansion. Fear is the judgement that there is bad at hand and that it is appropriate to avoid it. Appetite is the judgement that there is good at hand and that it is appropriate to reach for it. The two judgements can often be expressed as one complex judgement, but for some purposes, we shall see, it is important that they can be separated. The subspecies of emotion are sometimes, though not always,70 distinguished by the particular type of good or bad in question. Pity is distress at bad befalling another, anger appetite for the supposed good of revenge. The four most generic emotions, distress, pleasure, fear, and appetite, are defined in terms of generic good or bad only, not of particular kinds. When I say that the good or bad is judged to be at hand, the ‘at hand’ is short for the Stoic requirement that it is judged to be present or future. As to why the Stoics do not think it enough that the good or bad should be judged wholly past, I shall return to this question in Chapter 9. ‘Appropriate’ in ‘appropriate to react’ is a wide term, corresponding to the Greek kathēkei and a number of gerundive endings, pheukton (paired in the emended text with orekton), anupomonēton, akarterēton. The Latin renderings are oportere, rectum esse, aequum esse, ad officium pertinere, officium, debitum, ius, and intolerabile.71 It is by no means confined to judgements made on moral grounds, although it includes, for example, the case in which mourners come to think they have a moral duty to react.72 The judgement that it is appropriate to react covers two very different types of reaction.73 In pleasure and distress, the reaction

70

The subspecies can instead be distinguished, e.g. by phenomenological character (heavy, excruciating), by accompanying expectations (unforeseen, no relief expected), by effects (loss of voice), by cause (through magic), by stage of development (incipient, inveterate), by intended reaction (malice aforethought), etc. See the three main sources cited above.

71

Cicero Tusc. 3.61; 3.68; 3.74; 3.76; 4.14; 4.59; Seneca On Consolation to Marcia 1. 7; Stobaeus 2. 90 lines 11, 14, 16 Wachsmuth; Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1; Galen PHP 4. 7. 5, p. 280 de Lacy.

72

Cicero Tusc. 3. 83; Seneca Marcia 1. 7.

73

The ‘appropriate to react’ requirement is found for all four emotions at Cicero Tusc. 4. 14 (cf. for distress 3.61; 3.68; 3.72; 3.74; 3.76; 4. 59); Stobaeus 2. 90 Wachsmuth. It is given for the second definition of pleasure and distress only in Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 1(SVF 3. 391). Cf. for anger Seneca On Anger 2. 4, for distress id. Marcia 1.7, and for unspecified emotions Galen PHP 4. 7. 5, p. 280 de Lacy. We shall see in ch. 7 that it is used for distress, on one interpretation, by Chrysippus at Galen PHP 4. 7. 14, p. 284 de Lacy.

THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

31

approved is internal, present, and involuntary. It is an internal contraction (sustolē, meiōsis, tapeinōsis, Latin demitti, contrahi), or expansion (eparsis, diakhusis, Latin profusa).74 What contracts or expands is said to be the mind (animus),75 and the mind is a physical spirit for the Stoic materialists. There is no agreement at present about the psychological character of the Stoic contraction and expansion.76 But I shall argue below that the contraction is a felt sinking, is felt as being located in the heart, and finally is felt as being bad, while an expansion is a lift felt as being good. In fear and appetite, by contrast, the approved reactions are behavioural, voluntary, and directed to the future. There is an opinion (doxa) that the bad thing is to be avoided (pheukton) and is not to be tolerated (intolerabile, anupomonēton, akarterēton), or (in the text adopted by Meineke and Wachsmuth) that the good thing is to be reached for (orekton), and that its immediate presence would be of use (ex usu). In anger, for example, the idea is that it is appropriate for me to be avenged (oporteat me vindicari), or for him to be punished (oporteat hunc poenas dare).77 I need not think, in such a case, that I am myself in a position to carry out the reaction, or even that anyone else is. It is merely that punishment would be right. Although anger is classed as an appetite looking forward to revenge, the idea of vengeance imports a reference to a present evil, which makes anger akin to grief. The Stoics help us to see how easily anger and grief can slide one into the other. Inner reactions and outer (behavioural) reactions can be causally connected because, although fear and appetite take the lead (proēgeisthai), pleasure and distress follow on them (epigignesthai), according to whether we do or do not get what we desired or feared.78 The description of the two types of reaction is not always as clear-cut as it is in the main texts cited. For example, it is sometimes not

74

Galen PHP 4. 4. 24, p. 256 de Lacy; Stobaeus 2. 90. 14–18; Cicero Tusc. 4. 14; Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

75

e.g. Cicero Tusc. 3. 83.

76

Contractions and bites have, for example, been seen as impulses, affective reactions (Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford, 1985), 131, 145), compunctions (W. C. Helmbold, translating Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A ), affliction (Phillip de Lacy translating Galen PHP 4. 3. 2). Inwood's is a magisterial book from which I have repeatedly learnt, and my different view on the nature of contractions should not conceal my debt.

77

Stobaeus 2. 90 Wachsmuth; Cicero Tusc. 4. 14; Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1; Galen PHP 4. 7. 5, p. 280 de Lacy.

78

Stobaeus 2. 88. 16–21 Wachsmuth.

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THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

made clear that the approved reaction in distress is a contraction.79 But this unclarity about the precise reaction is natural, for if one thinks it right to experience an inner contraction, one may well think it right to indulge in the other phenomena of distress as well.

The Need For a Second Judgement Chrysippus needed to insist on the second ‘appropriate to react’ judgement for at least four reasons. First he thought it was the main thing that needed to be attacked in consoling the distressed. In this he differed from his predecessor Cleanthes, who simply mounted a blanket attack on the first judgement, saying that (almost) nothing was good or bad, since it was all indifferent. As Cicero complains, that was useless for therapy, since it could only be taken in by those who were already sages, and sages need no therapy.80 The second judgement is also needed in order to deal with the case of Alcibiades being exposed by Socrates as lacking in virtue. If someone like Alcibiades has not yet attained virtue, his situation is genuinely bad, so how can he be advised not to feel distress? As Stephen White has shown, Chrysippus' reply can easily be inferred: although he would be right to judge his situation bad, he would be wrong if, like Alcibiades, he added the second judgement, that inner sinkings would be an appropriate reaction.81 Presumably the most appropriate reaction would be a determination to improve. But why should not a contraction or sinking also be appropriate? I think the answer is that it can indeed be appropriate to the novice's circumstances, if it acts as a spur to improvement. And the Stoics in fact allow the novice, who is merely making progress, to indulge in such reactions. The mistake, from the Stoic point of view, is to suppose that contraction or sinking is ever appropriate absolutely. Cicero gives a reason why it is not: it detracts from constancy, gravity, and composure.82 It must, then, remove the novice still further from being a sage. I would add something closer to the novice's point of view: I have conjectured that a sinking must be felt as bad (or good),

79

It is sometimes more loosely specified as something more like the distress or grief itself (aegre ferre, aegritudinem or dolorem suscipere, dolere, luctus, lupeisthai ;cf. phobeisthai, en tois pathesin einai), or even the behaviour of weeping (loss of tears a second bereavement). See Cicero Tusc. 3.61; 3.68; 3.72; 3.74; 3.82; 4.59; Seneca Marcia 1.7; 2.4; Stobaeus 2. 90. 2–4 Wachsmuth.

80

Cicero Tusc. 3. 76–7.

81

Ibid. 3.61; 3.68; 3.70; 3.77–8; 4.61. Stephen White, ‘Cicero among the Therapists’, in G. J. F. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher (Oxford, 1995), 219–46.

82

Cic. Tusc. 4.61; 4.67.

THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

33

or there would be no question of its being judged appropriate to bad (or good) circumstances. Even the novice, then, can recognize a sinking as something it would ideally be better not to have. I shall return to this subject below when I ask why the Stoics allow the sage analogues of other emotions, but not of distress. The third reason why the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement is needed is that emotion, we shall see below, involves a particular type of judgement, namely an impulse. Now an impulse is stirred not by the first appearance that there is good or bad at hand, but only by the second appearance of how it is appropriate (kathēkon) to react: They say that what stirs impulse (hormē) is nothing other than a motivating (hormētikē) appearance of what is of itself appropriate (kathēkontos).83

The fourth reason why Chrysippus needs to postulate a second judgement will emerge in Chapter 5 in connection with emotions fading despite the retention of the first judgement, that the present situation is bad. As interpreted below, Chrysippus seeks to solve this by saying that the second judgement fades, the judgement that contraction is appropriate.84

Is the Good, Bad and Appropriate Actual Or Possible? One can feel horror at what might have happened, or might have been going to happen, and at what might yet occur. So the good and bad that one makes judgements about can be a merely possible good and bad. In Chapter 5 I shall maintain that one can also feel emotion in relation to good and bad in fiction and historical narratives, but I believe Seneca tries to disallow this. Is the judgement that pursuit or avoidance is appropriate open to similar qualification? It must be in at least two cases. One is that in which pursuit or avoidance is impossible. Then at most we could judge that it would be appropriate if it were possible. The other case is that in which the good or bad situation is merely one that might have occurred. Then pursuit or avoidance is otiose, although it was once, or could have been, appropriate. Things are different when the judgement concerns the appropriateness of our present inner expansions or contractions. We may well

83

Stobaeus 2. 86. 17–18 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 169). I presume that not every appearance of what is appropriate motivates: not, for example, the appearance that something is appropriate in relation to one of my four personae, before I have considered the other personae.

84

Galen PHP 4. 7. 14, p. 284 de Lacy.

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THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

consider those actually appropriate, even in relation to what merely might have occurred. A case in which a person could only judge that reaction would be appropriate is that in which he lacks the appropriate expansion or contraction. But below I shall offer some reason to doubt whether such a person would be thought by Chrysippus to be in a state of pleasure or distress.

Judgements, Not Contractions and Expansions The definitions of the four generic emotions as value judgements were not the only ones that the early Stoics tried out. Many of our sources give us an alternative set of definitions,85 and we are told that Chrysippus wrote out both.86 We are also told that he wrote out (gegrammenoi) definitions offered orally (eirēmenoi) by the founder Zeno.87 In some of the alternative definitions distress is an irrational contraction, pleasure an irrational expansion, appetite an irrational desire (literally, ‘reaching’: orexis, appetitio), and fear an irrational disinclination (literally, ‘leaning away’: ekklisis, declinatio). One source tells us that Chrysippus thought the emotions actually were the judgements which we have been discussing, whereas Zeno and many other Stoics thought the emotions occurred on the occasion of (epi) judgements, but (in the case of distress and pleasure at least) actually were the contractions and expansions.88 This testimony is too explicit to ignore. In contrast with Chrysippus' account of emotions as judgements, Zeno seems to concentrate on various kinds of movement, the movements being physical movements, since the soul consists of physical pneuma. Not only are the contractions and expansions movements, but so are the reachings and leanings away. One of Zeno's general definitions of emotion says that it is a movement of the soul.89 It is Zeno too who introduces the idea to be discussed below that every emotion is a fluttering (ptoia).90 The claim that Zeno did not identify emotions with judgements is not impugned by the evidence that he referred to judgements in

85

Cicero Tusc. 3. 13–14; Galen PHP 4. 2. 1–6, p. 238 de Lacy; Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 1(SVF 3. 391); Stobaeus 2. 90 Wachsmuth; for distress, appetite, and pleasure see Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7. 111–14.

86

Galen PHP 4. 2. 4, p. 240 de Lacy.

87

Ibid.4.7.2, p.280 de Lacy.

88

Ibid. 4.2.5–6; 4.3.1–2; 5.1.4, pp. 240, 246, 248, 292 de Lacy; cf. 5. 6. 42, p. 334 de Lacy.

89

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 110; Cicero Tusc. 4. 11, 47; Off. 1. 136; Stobaeus 2. 88. 9 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 205).

90

Stobaeus 2. 39. 5 Wachsmuth makes the attribution to Zeno (SVF 1. 206).

THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

35

his definitions of distress and pleasure.91 For he evidently defined them as being contractions and expansions on the occasion of (fresh) judgements of evil and good. Only once, by a form of shorthand, does he define distress as a belief, rather than the result of belief.92 This causal pattern of definition is preserved (without reference to Zeno and with some non-Zenonian additions) by Stobaeus, who presents the four generic emotions as being a contraction, expansion, reaching, or leaning away, but offers the judgements as the cause (aition).93 The same pattern is preserved by Diogenes Laertius for one of the four definitions, namely that of pleasure as irrational expansion upon (epi) the presence of something believed to be choiceworthy.94 I think, then, that Zeno, in identifying the four generic emotions with contractions, expansions, and perhaps reachings and leanings away, still brought in judgements as their cause. What Chrysippus did was to turn the cause (the judgement) into the emotion itself. I believe that turning the judgement into the emotion itself was more than a merely verbal change, and was to be important for later Stoic developments. The contrary has been argued. But Chrysippus' denial that emotions are contractions and expansions became important when later Stoics introduced contractions preceding, as well as accompanying, emotion, to serve as a pre-emotional state. They insisted most strongly that these pre-judgemental contractions were not yet the emotion. This insistence becomes virtually unintelligible if the emotion is itself a contraction. How can it then differ significantly from the contraction which is supposed to precede it? Indeed, it has been denied by ancient and modern commentators that there is any difference.95 But this is to go against the insistence on the distinction in the texts. Furthermore, it prevents us understanding the methods for controlling emotion in the later Stoics, because the claim that the preliminary contractions were not yet the emotion was supposed to help you stop the emotion itself from ever forming, and

91

Zeno is reported in Cicero Tusc. 3. 75 as adding the word ‘fresh’ to ‘judgement of present evil’ in the definition of distress. The definition is also described at Galen PHP 4. 7. 2–3, p. 280 de Lacy, as having been pronounced by Zeno and written out by Chrysippus. (It is not clear that Zeno in particular is referred to at Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 111: ‘They think the emotions are judgements.’)

92

Galen PHP 4. 7. 2–3.

93

Stobaeus 2. 90 Wachsmuth.

94

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 114.

95

Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 178, 180; Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A –B , translated in ch. 3 below; similarly Augustine City 9. 4, discussed in ch. 3. The only differences, on this view, are that the initial contractions tend to be smaller and are caused by mere appearance, not by judgement, i.e. not by assent to the appearance.

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THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

to keep control in a tight situation. This will be further explained in Chapter 11. A rearguard action might be attempted: could not Zeno have anticipated Chrysippus' view that emotions are judgements? For suppose the contractions and expansions with which he identifies certain emotions are thought by him to be impulses, and impulses to be judgements. But the links in this chain are weak. We have already seen, and the evidence will be reinforced later, that for Zeno impulse and emotion are not identical with, but merely occur on the occasion of (epi), judgements. And as for contractions and expansions, I have argued that at least Zeno's successors do not regard them as impulses.

Contractions and Expansions As Necessary Concomitants, Though Not Components, Of Distress and Pleasure When Chrysippus rejects the view that distress and pleasure are contraction and expansion, he need not be denying that they are often so accompanied, and perhaps always so. There is some evidence on this. Chrysippus said that when the opinion of evil is fresh, it both contracts (sustellei) the soul and produces distress, but after a time it does not entirely, or so much, contract it.96 The distress too, we learn, abates (aniesthai), as well as the contraction.97 Already it appears that distress and contraction are invariable concomitants. The contraction may even be necessary to the distress, in spite of not being a component. That is the most obvious interpretation of Chrysippus explaining the abatement of distress initially by reference to the contraction abating.98 To avoid concluding that contraction was necessary to the distress, we should need to resort to the more complex interpretation that it was necessary to the distress being particularly noticeable. But it is easier to suppose that contraction, though not a component, is for Chrysippus a necessary concomitant.

Cicero's Summary It will be useful to translate Cicero's account of the four definitions of emotions as judgements, after issuing four warnings. First, when Cicero uses the verb videatur (‘be seen as’), we should take him to be referring not to a mere appearance, but to a full-blown judgement.

96

Galen PHP 4. 7. 4, p. 280 de Lacy.

97

Ibid.4.7.13–14, p.284 de Lacy.

98

Ibid. 4. 7. 14, p. 284 de Lacy.

THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

37

(The distinction will be clarified shortly.) Secondly, the word ‘fresh’ (recens) is included in the definition for a reason that will be fully investigated only in Chapter 7. But roughly speaking, the word makes an important acknowledgement, that distress and pleasure can abate over time, even though the original value judgements are still in place. Thus, the judgements on this view need to be fresh, or at least refreshed, if there is to be emotion. Thirdly, pleasure ought to be defined in terms of judging it appropriate that one's soul should expand. When Cicero instead speaks of judging it appropriate to be carried away (efferri), he is borrowing a term which Seneca associates with a later stage of emotion. In Latin it is easy to confuse the two stages of expansion and of being carried away, because the past participle of efferri (‘to be carried away’) in Latin is borrowed from another root: it is elātum, originally tlātum from tollo ‘to raise’. Latin writers use the cognate elātio (our ‘elation’) to render the Greek word eparsis (rising), which is applied by the Stoics to the expansion of the soul as well as using it for carrying away. In fact, the two concepts should have been distinguished. Finally, Cicero's wording tends to obscure the judgement of appropriateness in connection with the two behavioural reactions involved in appetite and fear. However, his talk of judging something intolerable in fear corresponds to gerundives in the Greek texts: anupomonēton, akarterēton (not to be endured), and pheukton (to be fled).99 And his talk of judging something useful in appetite is a weak version of Seneca's talk of judging it appropriate (oportere) to be avenged and of the gerundive orekton (‘to be reached for’) in the emended Greek text of Stobaeus.100 So distress is a fresh judgement (opinio) of present evil, in which it is seen as appropriate for the mind to be lowered and contracted. Pleasure is a fresh judgement of present good in which it is seen as appropriate to be carried away. Fear is a judgement of impending evil which is seen as being intolerable. Appetite is a judgement of good to come such as it would be useful to have present now and here.101

Contractions and Expansions To complete the clarification of these four definitions and of the alternative set of four, I should finish saying what I believe the contractions and expansions to be. So far I have said that they are

99

Ibid. PHP 4. 7. 5, p. 280 de Lacy; Stobaeus 2. 90. 14 Wachsmuth.

100

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1; Stobaeus 2. 90. 11 Wachsmuth.

101

Cicero Tusc. 4. 14.

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THE EMOTIONS AS VALUE JUDGEMENTS IN CHRYSIPPUS

physical contractions and expansions of the mind, which was itself regarded as physical by the Stoics. But what is their psychological character? They cannot be impulses, at least in the late Stoics who contrast initial contractions and expansions with emotional impulse. And there is no sign that they are impulses in Chrysippus. I shall argue that their psychological character is that they are sensed. The crucial evidence for their physical and psychological character has, I think, been commonly overlooked, perhaps because it comes from passages not included in von Arnim's collection of Stoic fragments. In PHP books 2–3 Galen quotes Chrysippus on a wide range of movements of the mind involved in emotion.102 Contractions are not explicitly mentioned, but ‘bites’ are, and bites seem to be sharp little contractions. They are often associated with contractions or little contractions (contractiunculae),103 and like contractions are associated with distress.104 In addition, as we shall see, a sinking of the mind is connected with fear and outward rushes with anger. Chrysippus' aim is to show that the command centre of the soul is located in the heart.105 His argument is that in emotion we actually feel the bites, sinkings, and other physical movements as located there. Bites are explicitly mentioned when Galen complains of Chrysippus' cardiocentric argument: You will find that the same holds with the argument from the bite (dēxis) in cases of distress. For the bite is clearly (enargōs) in the mouth of the stomach, but they refer it to the heart.106 The sinking of the soul towards the heart is cited by Chrysippus in the following passage: For the palpitation (palsis) of the heart in fear is evident (ekphanēs) and the running together (sundromē) of the whole soul to this place. These [movements] occur not as a mere after-effect, as when one part has a natural sympathy with others. It is in virtue of people sinking (sunizanousin) into themselves and collecting themselves (sunagomenoi) towards this as being

102

Galen PHP 2.8.4; 3.1.25; 3.5.43–4; 3.7.4, pp. 158, 172, 208, 212 de Lacy.

103

Cicero Tusc. 3.82–3; 4.14–15; Galen PHP 4. 3. 2, p. 248 de Lacy.

104

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A(SVF 3. 439); Galen PHP 2.8.4; 2.8.18, pp. 158, 160 de Lacy; Cicero Tusc. 3.83; 4.15.

105

Chrysippus' arguments for this conclusion are the subject of Teun Tieleman's excellent dissertation, Galen and Chrysippus: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis 2–3 (diss. Utrecht, 1992), subsequently published as Galen and Chrysippus on the Soul (Leiden, 1996).

106

Galen PHP 2.8.4; cf. 2.8.8; 2.8.18, pp. 158 and 160 de Lacy.

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39

the command centre and at the heart as being for them the guardian of the command centre.107 The reference to our feeling the location of the movement has so far been in terms of the location being evident (ekphanēs) or clear (enargōs). But in two passages Chrysippus uses a more explicit verb for self-awareness, sunaisthanesthai: Most people seem to me to be brought to this common view, as if they were conscious (sunaisthanomenoi) of emotions (pathē) in the mind happening around their thorax and especially where the heart is arranged. This happens, for example, especially in cases of distress, fear, and anger, and most of all rage. For impressions are produced in us as if something were being vaporized from out of the heart and were being pushed out to certain parts and blowing into the face and hands.108

Why does Chrysippus say merely that it is as if (hōsanei) people were conscious? Galen, perfectly fairly in my view, makes a lot of this qualification, because he wants to show how far Chrysippus has to go, to argue from the sensed movements being in the region of the heart, to the emotions being there, to the mind being there, and finally to the command centre of the mind being there and not just (as Plato would allow) that part of the mind that is concerned with anger. Chrysippus has himself been scrupulous in saying that it is only as if people were conscious of the emotions there, because what they are directly conscious of there is the movements which in Chrysippus' view, as opposed to Zeno's, are not identical with the emotions themselves. In the next quotation from Chrysippus it is not the emotion, but the accompanying pain (algēdōn), of which people are said to be conscious, so no ‘as if ’ qualification is required:109 For just as when our foot or head hurts the pain occurs in those places, so too we are conscious (sunaisthanometha) in a case of distress (lupē) of pain (algēdōn) occurring in the thorax.110

These passages concern phenomena which the Stoics connect closely with contractions. From them I conclude that the physical

107

Galen quoting Chrysippus at PHP 3. 5. 43–4, p. 208 de Lacy.

108

Ibid. 3. 1. 25, p. 172 de Lacy. The omission of sun -from sunaisthanomenoi in the shorter version of this quotation at 2. 7. 8 is corrected at 2. 7. 9.

109

Galen does not acknowledge the similar difference at PHP 2. 7. 8 and 10, where Chrysippus switches from talk of as it were perceiving the emotion (pathē) to talk of perceiving the disturbance (tarakhē). Tieleman, Galen and Chrysippus: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis 2–3, 162–3, 233, does not take the interpretation of ‘as if ’ offered here.

110

Ibid.3.7.4, p.212 de Lacy.

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contractions of the mind are felt, and felt as being in the heart, according to Chrysippus. But there is one more question to be settled: how can the contractions be thought appropriate to one's situation, as his definitions require, if they are felt as merely neutral sensations?111 Two answers seem possible. The sensations are thought appropriate either because they have been associated with unpleasant things in the past, or because they themselves feel unpleasant. The second option fits with something that is said by Justin Gosling and Christopher Taylor on independent grounds, when they are talking about pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the Stoics more generally.112 Such sensations, even if the word ‘pleasure’ is sometimes used of them,113 must be distinct from pleasure and distress in the strict sense, since the sensations do not require the assent of the mind, whereas, according to the Stoics, pleasure and distress do. In order to distinguish them, Gosling and Taylor suggest that pleasant and unpleasant sensations for the Stoics consist in the appearance as good or bad of bodily functions, an appearance which does not require the mind's assent. It will be noticed that it is not only pleasure and distress which involve some kind of contraction or expansion. Fear involves an internal sinking, or massing of the mind at the centre (I suggest reading sunathroiseis instead of sunthroēseis in the relevant passage of Plutarch).114 And anger, which is a type of appetite, involves a felt blowing as if of vapour out of the heart.115 The Stoic appeal to contraction and expansion seems to me entirely realistic, provided we reinterpret it in physiological terms, as Galen actually does, followed by Plotinus and by Gregory of Nyssa.116

111

I thank Anthony Savile for pressing this question.

112

Justin Gosling and Christopher Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford, 1982), 426–7, interpreting the primis sensibus doloris voluptatisque (‘the first sensations of pain and pleasure’) which, according to the Platonist Taurus, a Stoic child is allowed to experience before it has reached the stage of being able to give rational assent: Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 12. 5. 8.

113

Stobaeus 2. 81. 13–15 Wachsmuth; hēdonēperisōma.

114

Cicero Tusc. 4. 15, recessus animi, rightly cited by Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 297 n. 85; Galen PHP 3. 5. 43–4, p. 208 de Lacy, translated above, sundromē, sunizanousin, sunagomenoi. At Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A , sunthroēseis (‘perplexities’) or sunorouseis (an unattested compound of orouseis, a type of impulse) in place of the unknown suneorseis are current conjectures. But ‘perplexities’ and ‘impulses’ do not fit the context, which tells us that the Stoics talk about bites and suneorseis instead of distress and fear. Sunathroiseis, ‘massing together’, would fit perfectly both with bites on the one hand and with the concomitants of fear cited by Cicero and Galen: recessus, sundromē, sunizanousin, sunagomenoi.

115

Galen PHP 3. 1. 25, p. 172 de Lacy, translated above.

116

Galen thinks the bite is due to yellow bile running down into the stomach: On Demonstration, book 3, as quoted by Nemesius On the Nature of Man ch. 21. Gregory of Nyssa On the Creation of Man 12. 4 takes the same view. Plotinus insists the expansion (diakhusis) in pleasure must belong to body, not soul, and correspondingly with distress, 3. 6. 3 (17–19).

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Emotions often involve, not indeed movements of a physical soul, but physiological movements which are felt as sinking or expansive sensations, or as bites. Moreover, we do often judge them to be highly appropriate responses to our situation.

Appearance Or Belief? The belief (doxa, Latin opinio) or judgement (krisis, Latin iudicium) involved in emotion is distinguished by the Stoics from mere appearance (phantasia, Latin species, visum, visio) by the idea that belief or judgement involves an additional mental operation. It involves assenting (sunkatathesis, Latin adsensus, consensio, consensus) with the mind or reason to the appearance.117 Strictly speaking, assent is given to propositions,118 and hence to the proposition contained in the appearance. Seneca insists that the mere appearance of injustice (species iniuriae)119 does not amount to anger without an assent of the mind (adsensus mentis),120 by which the appearance is approved (adprobare).121 The mind must agree that there really is an injustice. Plato had treated appearance (phantasia) as merely one kind of belief (doxa)—belief combined with sense perception.122 It was Aristotle who first insisted that appearance and belief were different things, although he distinguished them by something other than the Stoic assent.123 Whether emotions require belief or appearance remained controversial. Aristotle had interchanged the terms freely in his account of human emotions in the context of the law courts, where it made no difference.124 But we shall see in Chapter 9 that one Aristotelian, Aspasius, rebukes another, Andronicus, for taking what was in fact the Stoic view, that actual belief is required.125 I shall argue in Chapter 8 that, on different grounds again, not only Aspasius but also the Stoic Posidonius and the Middle Platonist treatise Didaskalikos allow emotions to occur without judgement. This too may often have been

117

Plutarch Against Colotes 1122 C .

118

Stobaeus 2. 88. 4 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 171).

119

Seneca On Anger 2. 3. 5 (three times); cf. 2. 1. 5.

120

Ibid. 2.3.4; 2.3.5.

121

Ibid. 2. 3. 5.

122

Plato Sophist 263 E –264 D ;cf. Republic 603 A .

123

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 3, 428 18–24.

124

Id. Rhet. 2. 1–11.

125

Aspasius In EN 44. 33–45. 10.

a

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on the basis of mere appearance. In those chapters I shall argue that Posidonius is right: there are examples of emotion in which assent is not given. None the less, we may overestimate how common those examples are if we do not take into account the Stoic training in evaluating appearances and withholding assent. Untrained people in an emotional state, the Stoics would say, are likely to have assented to appearances so automatically as not to recognize assent as a distinct operation. It is the Stoic training that makes one conscious of the distinction between appearance and assent. If one sees a person who is really evaluating appearance, there will not be the same temptation to suppose that they are already indulging in emotion. The idea that appearance is sufficient for emotion is partly due to the failure to notice that, in the absence of training, assent will already have taken place without being noticed. We must wait for Posidonius' objections to see why there really are cases in which appearance without assent is sufficient for emotion.

Mind Or Will? Seneca requires assent of the mind for the first of the two judgements involved in anger, that there has been an injustice. But when he comes to the second judgement, that it is appropriate to react, he speaks instead of the will (voluntas). There is an act of will to the effect that it is appropriate for me to be revenged since I have been harmed, or that it is appropriate for him to be punished since he has committed a crime.126 The switch to talking of the will is, no doubt, because the proposition has to do with action. But Seneca writes as if there was not a radical difference between assent and will. Why not? The first thing to notice is that the term ‘will’(voluntas) is not here used in its technical Stoic sense of a reasonable desire, but is used of an unreasonable desire. It seems to stand for the Stoics' main general term for desire, namely hormē, Latin impetus. The standard translation is ‘impulse’, quaintly since there need be nothing impulsive about it. De Lacy prefers ‘conation’, and ‘desire’ would also have been better, but I shall not tamper with the convention. The important point for the present is that impulse is at least sometimes equated

126

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1. When Seneca says that the second movement in anger is with, rather than just is, an act of will, this is because the act of will is only one of the two constituent judgements, the other being the judgement of good or bad.

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with assent (sunkatathesis).127 In other words, it is just another case of assent on the part of reason, but assent to an appearance about how it is appropriate (kathēkon) to act. That it is assent to an appearance about how it is appropriate to act we learn from a revealing passage which says that what stirs impulse is a motivating appearance (hormētikē phantasia) of what is appropriate (kathēkontos).128 This view of will and impulse, as assent to an appearance of how it is appropriate to act, explains a number of things. First, it explains Seneca speaking in our passage 129 as if there was no significant difference between an act of will (voluntas) and the acts of assent by the mind which he had been discussing just before. Secondly, it explains how Chrysippus can have said that impulse in humans is their reason (logos), but their reason ordering them to act (logos prostaktikos tou poiein).130 Chrysippus, I shall argue in Chapter 3, may have been correcting Zeno, for Zeno held impulse to be caused by, not identical with, judgements of reason. It is hard for us to believe Chrysippus' view. If you merely judge an action appropriate in some way (it would serve him right), it does not follow that you desire it at all. If you judge it appropriate, all things considered, it may be only under some descriptions that you want it (the medicine is horrible, but I want what will make me better). Conversely, if you desire something, e.g. an illicit action, you may think it would be, for example, exciting, but it does not follow that you think it in any way appropriate. Further, even in so far as judgements of appropriateness are correlated with desires, it does not follow that they are identical with them. The sharp divide between desire and reason that we feel strongly today was something that Aristotle believed he had to insist on against Plato. The Platonists had separated from each other will (boulēsis), anger (thumos), and appetite (epithumia), assigning the first to the rational part of the soul (logistikon) and the others to the non-rational. But in fact, according to Aristotle, the capacity for desire (to orektikon) should be recognized as having as much claim to be a distinct part in its own right as the rational part or any other. And its distinctness will be essential for explaining voluntary movement.131

127

Stobaeus 2. 88. 1 Wachsmuth.

128

Ibid. 2. 86. 17–18 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 169). I am grateful to Tad Brennan, who makes this passage central to his own interpretation.

129

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

130

Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1037 F . Cf. Spinoza Ethics part 2, proposition 49, corollary: will and intellect are the same.

131

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 9, 432a 22–b 7.

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What Chrysippus' unitary psychology is doing in effect is blurring Aristotle's sharp distinction. There is a unitary faculty of reason, and in will it simply gives its assent to a particular type of proposition. In Chapter 6 we shall see that the Stoic Posidonius once again resists the unitary character of this account. Chrysippus' unitary account also explains how emotion can on the one hand be equated with judgements in which assent is given, and on the other be defined as an impulse. Emotion is repeatedly defined as an excessive impulse (pleonazousa hormē).132 It is now clear that an impulse is simply an assent of reason to another kind of proposition. I cannot agree with Pohlenz's view that Seneca changed all this, and that for him the will ‘is not a matter of the intellect’, although this view has been the dominant one.133 No such consequence follows from Seneca's contrasting the will (voluntas) to return a benefit with a rather different piece of knowledge, viz. how to return it.134 Nor does it follow when, talking of unreflective willing (velle), he says that no one knows how it begins, certainly not from deliberation (consilium).135 In Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1 the term ‘will’, in the broad sense of impulse, most certainly is interchanged with the term ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’. I shall explain in Chapter 21 why I believe the Stoics did not formulate a fullblooded concept of will.

Impulse Not Sufcient For Action I take it that the impulse in emotion does not guarantee corresponding action. But since this goes against what I believe to be the standard view, that impulse is sufficient for action,136 I had better explain. I would find it surprising if the Stoics thought impulse guaranteed action. When I have the impulse to take revenge, the time may not be ripe, it may never be ripe, or when it is, the impulse may have changed. There is a particular reason why the impulse involved in emotion is unlikely to guarantee action. For in a passage already

132

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 110; Galen PHP 4.2.8; 4.2.14–18, pp. 240–2 de Lacy; and Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 1(SVF 3. 391).

133

Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa (2 vols.; Göttingen, 1947–9), vol. i, p. 319. For replies see John Rist, Stoic Philosophy, (Cambridge, 1969), ch. 12; Brad Inwood, ‘The Will and the Self in Seneca’, in preparation.

134

Seneca Letter 31. 18.

135

Id. Letter 37. 5. I have not seen Letter 92. 3 cited, but the possibility mentioned there of will deserting reason is only one of its deserting right reason.

136

A. C. Lloyd, ‘Emotion and Decision in Stoic Philosophy’, in John Rist (ed.), The Stoics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978), 233–46 at 237; Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 52; Troels Engberg-Pedersen, The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis (Aarhus, 1990), 175.

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mentioned137 we are told that, for the Stoics, emotion involves an oscillation between two impulses, assents or judgements, the emotional impulse and one's better judgement. It is presumably not possible for both to be acted on. A passage has been cited on the other side in which Cicero, speaking of the Stoics, says that since (quoniam) impulse follows acts of assent, action follows on assent.138 But I do not think Cicero's purposes require that impulse should guarantee action, only that it typically produces it.

Emotions As Voluntary Because Eradicable The Stoics not only talk of will, but also, relatedly, represent the emotions as voluntary,139 though for quite different reasons from those of Sartre in modern times.140 Seneca introduces his analysis of anger by saying that its whole point is to show whether anger is controllable, and it will be controllable, on his view, only if it is a judgement dependent on assent and will.141 Seneca's analysis of the stages of development in anger helps to show how they can be subjected to voluntary control. The initial appearance and the first movements or shocks do not have to lead on to emotion precisely because emotion requires acts of assent and will. It has been well pointed out that Latin is quite different from Greek in displaying an etymological connection between the words for will (voluntas) and for voluntariness (voluntarius).142 In Greek the corresponding words, boulēsis and hekōn/ hekousion, have no connection. The voluntariness is based on the idea that one is free to question appearances and withhold assent from them. If you do not bother to do so, that is your own fault. If you do, then there are many therapeutic techniques to help you cast doubt on appearances. I shall illustrate and discuss the effectiveness of these techniques in Chapters 11–12 and 15–16. But arguments for voluntariness were also provided. Emotions are due not to nature, but to our own judgement,143

137

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 446 F –447 A (LS 65 G ).

138

Cicero Academica 2. 108.

139

Id. Tusc. 3.64; 3.66; 3.80; 3.83; 4.14; 4.65; Acad. 1. 39; Seneca On Anger 2.2.2, 2.4.1; Epictetus in Aulus Gellius 19. 1, translated below in ch. 24.

140

Jean-Paul Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. Philip Mairet (London, 1962), from the French of 1939.

141

Seneca On Anger 2. 2. 1–2.

142

Charles Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine’, in J. Dillon and A. A. Long (eds.), The Question of Eclecticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 234–59. The connection is clearly exploited in Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1 and Epictetus as translated into Latin by Aulus Gellius, 19. 1. 15–16 (translated in ch. 24).

143

Cicero Tusc. 3.80; 3.82; 3.83; Seneca On Anger 1.5.2–3; 2.1; Lactantius is on the other side at Divine Institutes 6. 15.

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which on the Stoic view involves voluntary assent. Examples reveal that emotions can be inhibited, or self-induced.144 Time for reflection enables us to halt them.145 It is necessary for those who claim to be able to attain freedom from emotion to treat the emotions as in some sense voluntary. Accordingly, this happens not only with the Stoics, but with the Pyrrhonian sceptics, who also aspire to freedom from emotion (apathēs en tois doxastois).146 I shall discuss further in Chapter 14 how they contrast the sensations of pain, which the sceptic cannot avoid, with the emotions, for which one must be held responsible (aitiateon).147 Other schools reject the claim of voluntariness. The Aristotelians148 and Epicureans149 think the emotions unavoidable, although I shall suggest in Chapter 14 that the difference between Chrysippus and Philodemus the Epicurean on this point may be little more than verbal, since Philodemus believes that a kind of anger is attainable which the Stoics would consider freedom from anger. It has also been argued that which particular emotions you have is up to you, on the Epicurean view, because it is up to you which of the innumerable incoming images you select for focusing upon.150 The Middle Platonist Didaskalikos sides against Chrysippus and denies that emotions are ‘up to us’. The evidence it cites is merely that they often (pollakis) occur despite our reluctance and resistance (akousi, antiteinousin).151 But the conclusion is the more far-reaching one, that they are in general not up to us. The claim of voluntariness has been described as bizarre,152 and in the light of Freudian psychology it may seem especially so. But I hope that when we consider the ancient therapeutic techniques it will be seen to have an element of truth on its side.

144

Cicero Tusc. 3. 65–70.

145

Ibid. 3. 74.

146

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235.

147

Id. Against the Mathematicians 11. 156–7.

148

Cicero Tusc. 4. 38; Lactantius Divine Institutes 6. 15.

149

Lucretius On the Nature of Things 3. 310; Philodemus On Anger col. 39. 29–31; col. 40. 19–26.

150

C. Diano, ‘La psicologia di Epicuro e la teoria delle passioni’, in his Scritti epicurei (Florence, 1974), 129–280 at 255.

151

Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 32. 185. 27–32, as stressed by Victor Caston in a presentation to Cambridge workshop on Didaskalikos, 2 June 1995.

152

David Sachs, review of Robert Solomon The Passions, in Philosophical Review (1978), 472–5.

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Deciding To Believe The belief in voluntariness is opposed to an idea in modern philosophy that we cannot decide to believe anything.153 In effect, the Stoics are disagreeing, although the terminology is not theirs. We do decide to believe that there is good or bad at hand and that it is appropriate to react. The Stoics do not put this in terms of the will, except in contexts where the belief happens to be concerned in the relevant way with action. But we shall see in Chapter 21 that when Augustine gives his view, he makes the assent to appearance that is involved in belief to be an act of the will in every case.154 In this he is followed by Descartes, who uses the idea in order to argue that erroneous beliefs are our own fault: we have failed to use the free will we have, in order to withhold assent.155

Good Feelings: Eupatheiai There is a final task for this chapter. To see what pathē, emotions, are for the Stoics, and eventually to see what Stoic freedom from emotion is, we must understand what is not counted as emotion. In the rest of this chapter I shall consider attitudes which the Stoics treat as acceptable. First and foremost are the good states of feeling (eupatheiai) which only the sage has. Although these states are not classed as pathē, a proportion of them would be counted by us as emotions, and so they constitute exceptions to the claim which I shall explain in Chapters 13 and 14, that the Stoics reject emotions and urge their eradication. But I believe these exceptions are few, first because the two fullest Stoic lists of eupatheiai, which very nearly agree with each other, recognize only a very few types, and secondly, because only a sage would have eupatheiai, and it is unclear whether the Stoics believe that anyone has yet attained to sagehood. It is to a large extent an ideal. There are three kinds of eupatheia:joy (khara), will in the strict sense (boulēsis), and caution (eulabeia). The Latin word for will (voluntas) is used in a much looser sense when it is applied to the impulse

153

Bernard Williams in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, 1973), article reprinted from 1970.

154

Augustine The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 9. 14. 25; On the Spirit and the Letter 54.

155

Descartes Fourth Meditation. Thomas Aquinas takes a more restricted view. Consent is an act of will, but assent is an act of intellect, and intellect is only sometimes moved by will: Summa Theologiae 1.2, q. 15, a. 1, ad 3; 2.2, q. 1, a. 4; 2.2, q. 2, a. 2.

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involved in the non-sage's emotion. The fullest list of species of eupatheia reads:156 Four species of will (boulēsis) Good will (eunoia) is wishing (boulēsis) good things to another for his sake. Kindness (eumeneia) is lasting eunoia. Welcoming (aspasmos) is uninterrupted eunoia. Love (agapēsis) . . .157 Three species of joy (kharā) Delight (terpsis) is a fitting joy at one's advantages (ōpheleiai). Gladness (euphrosunē) is joy at the deeds of the temperate. Cheerfulness (euthumia) is joy at the conduct of the universe and at its leaving nothing to be desired (anepizētēsia; or at enquiry into it—epizētēsia or similar, in Grosseteste's Greek). Two species of caution (eulabeia) Modesty (aidōs) is caution about due blame. Piety (hagneia) is caution about sins towards the gods.

Joy is most obviously an emotion, caution not obviously so. What distinguishes joy from the emotion of pleasure, which is condemned, is presumably not the judgements involved. For in feeling joy, wise people evidently judge themselves to be in the presence of good things (the advantages of wisdom, the deeds of the temperate, the conduct of the universe). And since they are said to expand,158 they presumably judge that expansion is appropriate. The judgements have the same structure, but the stated difference is that the expansion is reasonable (eulogos). Reasonableness (eulogon) enters the definition of all three kinds of eupatheia. Joy is a reasonable expansion, will is a reasonable desire (orexis), in other words a reasonable impulse or assent, and caution a reasonable disinclination (ekklisis, Latin declinatio). In Chrysippus' view, I think a still more basic difference will have been that the judgements are true, whereas, for reasons I shall explain in Chapter 12, the judgements involved in emotion are thought to

156

Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 6(SVF 3. 432). The three generic kinds are also defined here, and at Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 116; Cicero Tusc. 4. 12–13. The subspecies are listed, but not defined, by Diogenes Laertius.

157

The definition of agapēsis, missing here, may be partly supplied by Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2, ch. 9, sec. 42(SVF 3. 292): complete acceptance (apodexis).

158

Joy is an expansion or lift (eparsis) : Ps.-Andronicus On Emotions 6(SVF 3. 432); Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 116; and cf. Seneca Letter 59. 2; Alexander In Top. 181. 4; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2, ch. 16, sec. 72.1, p. 466 Pott (SVF 3. 433–5).

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be false. It is a further difference that the judgements will also be rational in the sense of avoiding the kind of disobedience to reason which will be discussed in Chapter 3. Moreover, since eupatheiai are confined to the sage, the requirement of reasonableness is likely also to involve a further background of understanding which makes the judgement rational and stable. And that in turn may help to explain Cicero's rendering eupatheiai in Latin as constantiae, and calling them constant and peaceful states (placide atque constanter).159 Seneca confirms that joy does not cease or turn into its opposite,160 although there are rival reports that joy is not permanent, nor the property of all sages at all times.161 Despite these differences of reasonableness and truth, Plutarch repeats an old complaint that caution is merely the emotion of fear, and caution about blameworthiness (aideisthai) merely a species of fear, viz. shame (aiskhunesthai). He adds that instinctive inclination (prothumia), which I shall treat separately because it is not a eupatheia, is no different from the emotion of appetite (epithumia).162 It is true that some at least of the eupatheiai are what we would call emotions, but Chrysippus is entitled to treat them separately on the grounds of reasonableness and truth. What is less clear is why only the sage should be able to make the relevant reasonable and true judgements.163 The requirement of reasonableness (eulogon) is said to fall short of the requirement of knowledge (katalēpsis),164 so it does not explain the restriction to sages. But the explanation may lie in the non-sage lacking the information needed for recognizing what conduct to avoid, or what to rejoice at in the deeds of God, or of other humans. These failures of information are in turn likely to rob the non-sage of the constancy that marks the sage. Even the non-sage's desire for good character lacks the stability which would be supplied by a sufficient background of information and rational understanding. I have been presenting the types of eupatheia as few and the instances as rare. There is also an extra quite deliberate omission from the list, since there is no eupathic analogue of the emotion of distress.165 But why, it may be asked, would not the sage be absolutely

159

Cicero Tusc. 4. 12–14.

160

Seneca Letter 59. 16.

161

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 98; Stobaeus 2. 69. 3–4 Wachsmuth.

162

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A –B .

163

Cicero Tusc. 4. 12–13(SVF 3. 438); Seneca Letter 59. 2(SVF 3. 435).

164

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 177 (SVF 1. 624); Athenaeus Sophists at Dinner 8, 354 E(SVF 1. 624).

165

Cicero Tusc. 4. 14(SVF 3. 438); Lactantius Divine Institutes 6. 15(SVF 3. 437).

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right to feel distress at bad character in others? The Stoic answer has already been given in the earlier discussion of why Alcibiades, the non-sage, is wrong to feel distress at bad character in himself. Contraction, although the sage may feel it as a first movement,166 cannot be judged by him appropriate, not only because it is unpleasant, but because it detracts, to the extent it occurs, from his serenity.167 Perhaps the sage is also fortified by being able to see how bad character in others fits into the overall pattern of goodness. There is a further restriction on the range of eupatheiai in that the eupatheia of will in the strict sense seems to be very narrow, because the four species listed cover willing things for others, not for oneself. One modern interpretation sought to expand the category by treating welcoming as a welcoming of what happens, rather than of people. But it was admitted that it should then have been classified as a kind of joy.168 Will may be a little wider, in so far as it is said to include hairesis, which on one interpretation is the sage's calculated selection of indifferents as an example of genuinely good action.169 Even so, it will be confined to the sage. There may have been some small compensating expansions in the range of eupatheiai and the Stoics may themselves have added to the list. In Chapter 18 I shall consider their endorsement of Platonic homosexual love. This too is not a pathos, as I shall explain. Non-Stoics also made their preferred additions. Plotinus, for example, adds the state of mystical love.170 But he could have taken this directly from Plato, who uses the verb eupathein and the noun eupatheia.171 Proclus and Damascius call the pleasures of intellect a eupatheia172 and Philo of Alexandria, without speaking of eupatheia,

166

Seneca On Anger 1.16.7; 2.2.2; Letter 11. 1, on the sage. Id. Natural Questions 2. 59. 3: we cannot be inconcussi, free of shocks, despite our hopes. Epictetus allows that the Stoic may turn pale, a physical first movement, in the fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius 7. 19. 1 ff., to be discussed in ch. 24. For once, I am not persuaded by Adolf Bonhöffer's evidence that in Epictetus the sage is free of bites (Epiktet und die Stoa (Stuttgart, 1890), 309–10). I think the evidence only shows that it is a sign of moral progress when the occasions for bites can be reduced, not that the sage can escape them altogether.

167

Cicero Tusc. 4. 61.

168

Adolf Bonhöffer's work remains a major classic: Epiktet und die Stoa, 287; Die Ethik des Stoikers Epiktet (Stuttgart, 1894), 48, trans. William O. Stephens as The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus (New York, 1996), 79–80.

169

I am grateful to Tad Brennan for this point: Stobaeus 2.87.20–2; 2.75.1–6 Wachsmuth, with Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 239–40.

170

Plotinus 6. 7. 35 (24–6).

171

Plato Phaedrus 247 D 4; Rep. 615 A 3.

172

Proclus In Remp. 2. 303. 1–4; Damascius In Phileb. § 87.1–4; 190 (see Gerd van Riel, Pleasure and the Good: Plato's Philebus and its Influence in Ancient Philosophy (diss. Leuven, 1996)).

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calls Moses' frank speaking to God a case not of tolma, audacity, but of eutolmia, good mettle.173 Philo adds a mistaken entry to the list: finding no eupatheia corresponding to distress, he inserts bites and contractions, presumably because these, like eupatheiai, are not classified as emotions.174 But this is a mistake and whatever the additions, the list of eupatheiai remains small. Eupatheia may play a role in another context, because the Stoics say that all wise people benefit (ōphelein) each other, even if they do not know each other at all.175 This may seem surprising, for they do not depend on each other for their good character. One answer may be that they gain the eupatheia of joy from the thought of good character in others. This would be in principle possible, because although joy is not the same as the supreme good of good character, but is only an offspring (epigennēma) of that,176 it is still classed by the Stoics as a good.177 It may seem to create a further problem if sages rejoice in, and also wish for, good in other people, because that good is not under their control.178 Moreover, the Stoic sage not only welcomes good character in others, but also wishes it for others, and so wishes something not under his control. Presumably, however, he welcomes it merely in so far as he believes it exists, and wishes it merely with the reservation ‘if nothing prevents’, a reservation more frequently applied to preferred indifferents.

Emotions Temporarily Useful To the Novice, But Eventually To Be Shed Or Replaced By the Sage Four further acceptable attitudes remain to be discussed. Besides the sparse list of eupatheiai, there are some common or garden emotions which can be welcomed as useful to the novice, although they would eventually be shed or replaced by the sage. I have already given the example of the novice's yearning for good character. It has also been pointed out179 how often the novice who is progressing in character is exhorted by the Stoic Epictetus to feel distress180 or shame181 at his

173

Philo Who is the Heir 21.

174

Id. Questions on Genesis 2. 57.

175

Stobaeus 2. 101. 24–102. 2 Wachsmuth; Plutarch On Common Notions 1068 F ; 1069 A (SVF 3. 626–7).

176

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 94; Epictetus frag. 52 Schweighäuser; cf. Epictetus 3. 7. 7.

177

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 96; Stobaeus 2.58.5–9; 2.72.1–6 Wachsmuth; cf. Epictetus 3.7.7.

178

Tad Brennan has pointed out this problem to me.

179

Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, 296, 302, 304.

180

Epictetus 3.23.30 and 37; 3.19.1; 4.9.10; 4.10.3.

181

Ibid.3.7.27;id. Handbook 33. 16; frag. 52 Schweighäuser.

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present character, to rejoice182 at progress made, or to be cautious183 about mistakes. Likewise Seneca encourages hope, by presenting virtue as a prize to be won.184 The advocacy of shame and distress seems to involve a clash with Chrysippus' reaction to the story of Alcibiades distressed at learning from Socrates of his own bad character.185 There distress was the wrong reaction. Yet this is surprising, because Socrates and Epictetus alike think that self-dissatisfaction is a vital spur to improvement, and Epictetus says that the novice's reaction to his lectures should be one of agony.186 I have suggested that inner contractions in shame and distress are indeed appropriate to the circumstances, but that there is still something inappropriate about them, which the novice overlooks. For besides being unpleasant they are the antithesis of the calmness of the sage,187 who at most suffers only little preliminary contractions. Rejoicing at progress is also not altogether appropriate, for progress is not itself a good, but a preferred indifferent,188 so the joy which judges it a good is mistaken. As for the novice's caution, this, when it is an emotion at all, is one that occurs randomly and is likely to be wrong about what to avoid. If these mistaken pathē are none the less approved for pedagogic purposes, this is no more than we find with the technique of Evagrius, to be discussed in Chapter 23, who finds emotions or temptations useful at the stage when they are being played off against each other, in order to weaken them, although they are in the end to be eliminated.

Prothumia : Instinctive Inclination Another acceptable reaction was prothumia. We have noticed Plutarch complaining that prothumia (Latin desiderium naturae) was distinguished from ordinary appetite as acceptable, and Cicero agrees.189 The best interpretation of prothumia is that it is a preliminary instinctive inclination prior to an assent.190 We have a prothumia to join in play with children, to talk with responsive people, sheep have

182

Epictetus 2.5.23; 2.11.22; 2.18.12–14; 3.7.5; 4.4.45–8; id. Handbook 6, 49; frag. 52 Schweighäuser.

183

Epictetus 2.12.12; 3.16.3.

184

Seneca Letter 78. 16; On the Constancy of the Sage 15.4.

185

Cicero Tusc. 3.61; 3.68; 3.70; 3.77–8.

186

Epictetus 3. 23, 30 and 37.

187

Cicero Tusc. 4. 61.

188

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 106(SVF 3. 127); Stobaeus 2. 80. 22–81. 1 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 136).

189

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A –B ; Cicero Fin. 2. 27.

190

Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, 248–9.

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a prothumia to eat the right sort of grass.191 Our prothumia for sex can make us take up our natural duties in the family.192 Presumably prothumiai have to be allowed because they are involuntary, although development into an epithumia or appetite would be voluntary. A preliminary inclination will not yet involve assent. Perhaps it is sometimes simply an appearance that something is good. Such appearances can lead to the first movements which will be discussed in Chapter 4, including involuntary erections and reachings towards, and such first movements might also be included under the heading of prothumia.

Selection (Eklogē) : Seeing the Preferred As Preferred There is another possible attitude besides seeing the indifferent as good (emotion) and seeing the good as good (eupatheia). For one may instead see preferred indifferents for what they are: as preferred indifferents, appropriate to reach for. The Stoics have a name for this attitude, eklogē, selection, and for seeing dispreferred indifferents as dispreferred indifferents, appropriate to avoid, they use the name apeklogē, disselection.193 As I shall explain in Chapter 13, this means that the Stoic who abandons emotion still has plenty of other sources of motivation. Even without being a sage, he will employ selection and disselection, and we shall see Epictetus explaining that this attitude is the source of a more genuine kind of family affection than the untutored emotional kind.

Wanting With Reservation There is one final recommended attitude, which I shall discuss further in Chapter 15, namely, qualifying one's desires and expectations with a reservation (hupexairesis, Latin exceptio).194 The most general form of reservation is to add ‘if God wills’, or ‘if nothing prevents’. Expecting with reservation is merely recognizing that things may

191

Epictetus 2. 24. 16; cf. 1. 10. 13.

192

Epictetus 1.6.9; 2.20.20.

193

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 104–5 (SVF 3. 119); Stobaeus 2. 84. 24–85. 1 Wachsmuth (SVF 3.128; 1.192); 2. 79. 12–17(SVF 3. 118).

194

e.g. Epictetus Handbook 2, 4; Discourses 2. 6. 9–10; Seneca Ben. 4.34; 4.39; Tranq. 13. 2–3. The standard account of reservation is given by Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 119–26; 165–73. I have benefited enormously from discussion with Tad Brennan, who gives a very different interpretation in ‘Reservation in Stoic Ethics’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (forthcoming), and with Jacques Brunschwig, who takes a different view again, although I have not at the time of writing heard his paper in preparation.

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happen otherwise, and so avoiding disappointment. Wanting with reservation is less clear. I suggest it can be perspicuously represented as follows: I desire (judge appropriate): I shall avoid illness and Zeus' will shall be done, or failing that (Greek ei de mē ‘but if not’): Zeus' will shall be done. Reservation is said either to exempt the Stoic from frustration, or at least to lighten any frustration.195 How does it do so? First, all along the Stoic desires that God's will be done and this desire is satisfied. But more than that, although at present the first option is preferred, he is already on this interpretation disposed to abandon it, at latest when he finds he cannot satisfy both conjuncts in it. He would then, according to Epictetus' report of Chrysippus, even come to desire (hormān) illness. Epictetus adds that he might come to will fever, death, or torture.196 Both the continuity of the second desire and the readiness to abandon the first enhance tranquillity. Practising reservation in your desires could help you to avoid emotion, if the readiness to abandon the option you prefer led you to re-evaluate that option as something which it is natural and right to prefer, but which is actually only a preferred indifferent. Reservation, as Tad Brennan has shown, can be exercised by someone in a state of emotion who fails to make this re-evaluation. It can also be used by someone, whether a sage or not, who is merely selecting indifferents. And it may perhaps be exercised by a sage who is wishing good character, a genuine good, to other people. The attitude is not confined to the sage, although it is said that the sage desires most things only with this qualification,197 and that it is the right attitude to most things because they are indifferent.198

195

135. Stobaeus 2. 115. 5 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 564); Seneca Tranq. 13.2–3;cf. Epictetus Handbook 4.

196

Epictetus Discourses 2.6.9–10; 4.1.89–90.

197

Chrysippus in Epictetus Discourses 2. 6. 9–10; Aristo in Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 64–7; Arius Didymus in Stobaeus 2.83.14–15; 2.115.5–9 Wachsmuth; Seneca Ben. 4. 34. 4; Tranq. 13. 2–14. 1; Epictetus Handbook 2. 2; frag. 27 from Marcus Aurelius Meditations 11. 37; Marcus Aurelius 4.1; 5.20; 6.50.

198

Stobaeus 2. 83. 14–15 Wachsmuth.

3 Seneca's Defence Third Movements as Harmonizing Chrysippus and Zeno There is a problem. So far I have presented Chrysippus as identifying emotions with (mistaken) judgements of reason. But his predecessor, Zeno of Citium, takes a view which seems scarcely compatible, and according to Galen, Chrysippus endorses this view.

Zeno's Incompatible View Zeno says that emotion involves not a mistake of reason, but actual disobedience (apeithēs, Latin non obtemperans) to one's own reason.199 Ancient and modern commentators have sought to play this down, either by glossing disobedience to reason as if it meant no more than acting against right reason, i.e. against a standard which one may not know,200 or, with Pohlenz, as meaning that emotions are reason-less impulses.201 But disobedience implies going against one's own better judgement and Chrysippus himself insists on this. In his own words, Chrysippus distinguishes Zeno's disobedience to reason and his related perversion or turning away from reason (diastrophē, Latin aversa)202 from merely being misled by error (diēmartēmenōs pheresthai), from overlooking something while in accordance with reason (paridōn ti kata ton logon), from making a slip (esphaltai), and

199

Stobaeus 2. 88. 8 Wachsmuth; Cicero Off. 1. 136(SVF 1. 205).

200

Stobaeus 2. 89. 14–16, Wachsmuth, on ‘contrary to nature’; on ‘disobedient to reason’ see Inwood Ethics and Human Action, 156, 158; Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 105. David Sedley has drawn my attention to Plutarch's gloss on ‘irrational’ as ‘contrary to the dictates of reason’(para ton hairounta logon). But this too would imply a wholly unconscious mistake of reason, not disobedience.

201

Pohlenz Die Stoa, vol. 1, pp. 141–53, with nn. in vol. 2; id., ‘Zenon und Chrysipp’, Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl., Fachgruppe 1. 2 (1938), 173–210, repr. in his Kleine Schriften, vol. 1 (2 vols., Hildesheim, 1965), 187–99.

202

Themistius In DA 107. 17–18(SVF 1. 205); Cicero Tusc. 4.11; 4.47 (SVF 1. 205).

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from reasoning badly and implausibly (kakōs en tōi dialogizesthai, enantiōs pros to eulogōs).203 Galen supplies examples of such a mere mistake, probably taken from Chrysippus. One is thinking pleasure good,204 another is scorning your children's life to save your country.205 The last reference is to Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter so that the Greek fleet could sail to Troy. The examples are of erroneous value judgements, and it is precisely erroneous value judgements that, in Chrysippus' standard account, constitute emotion. But on Zeno's account more is needed for emotion—an actual disobedience to reason. Galen gives an excellent illustration of disobedience, again probably drawing on Chrysippus, namely the story of Medea, who slew her children to take vengeance on her husband Jason. Unlike Agamemnon, she says she understands how bad the result of her deed will be.206 So her judgements are partly true, which increases still further the contrast with Chrysippus' analysis of emotion in terms of mistaken judgement. What Medea lacks is not true judgement, but the ability to abide by it in the face of other judgements which the Stoics would consider false. Zeno seems further to diverge from Chrysippus' standard account in that he will not be able to class as emotion Agamemnon's desire to avenge the Greeks and his fear that they would not be able to sail, unless Agamemnon is rebelling against his own better judgement. The very different account of emotion in Zeno, as disobedience rather than mistake, explains another set of ideas which come into the Stoic discussion. Chrysippus describes emotion as involving akrasia, which Seneca renders in Latin by impotens.207 The literal meaning of akrasia is ‘being out of control’, but Aristotle had made it the standard term for going against one's better judgement.208 It is Zeno's rather unexpected idea that all emotion does involve such disobedience to one's own reason, and so Chrysippus is merely following him in making all emotion involve akrasia. There is more. Zeno said that emotion is a fluttering (ptoia) of the soul.209 Indeed, Chrysippus and other Stoics consider all emotion to

203

Galen PHP 4.2.12 and 24; 4.4.21 and 23; 5.4.14, pp. 240–2, 254–6, 316 de Lacy.

204

Ibid. 4. 4. 29, p. 256 de Lacy.

205

Ibid. 4. 2. 26–7, pp. 242–4 de Lacy.

206

Ibid. 4. 2. 27, p. 244 de Lacy.

207

Ibid. 4. 4. 24, p. 256 de Lacy; Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

208

Aristotle, esp. Nicomachean Ethics 7. 1–10. It merely reflects a shift of context that the Stoics are writing about emotion, Aristotle about action, being against one's better judgement.

209

Stobaeus 2. 39. 8 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 206).

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be a fluttering.210 This is not merely a verbal borrowing from Plato, who used the term.211 Emotion is said to involve for the Stoics an oscillation of mind, too rapid to notice.212 There is an obvious motive for the oscillation view. Emotion for Zeno and Chrysippus gives one opposed thoughts. But Plato had argued that opposed thoughts cannot be entertained in a unitary soul at the same time.213 For Chrysippus the seat of emotions is unitary, but the idea of an oscillation too rapid to notice avoids the thoughts being entertained at the same time. It fits the case of Medea, who speaks now of the supposed good (revenge), now of the bad, in what she is going to do. The problem is that Agamemnon is not presented as having opposed thoughts, so that the oscillation requirement seems strangely irrelevant to him. I should acknowledge an excellent interpretation which could solve this first difficulty, if it were an isolated one. It has been suggested that Chrysippus calls emotion disobedient to reason only in this sense, that when right reason is offered to people in an emotional state, they refuse to follow it.214 This is indeed the point that is made by Chrysippus in several passages.215 When we look at some of Chrysippus' further statements, however, I doubt if we can take it that this is all he means. How did the apparent conflict of theories in Chrysippus come about? We are told that many definitions of the emotions were pronounced orally by Zeno (eirēmenoi) and then written out (gegrammenoi) by Chrysippus.216 We are further told that Chrysippus wrote about (graphein huper) certain definitions of emotion,217 which we know to be Zeno's, and that he was an exegete (exēgeisthai) of these definitions.218 At one point Chrysippus is quoted as referring to the irrational movement which ‘he’ describes, where he is presumably Zeno. Perhaps Chrysippus originally set out merely to expound Zeno. But unfortunately he gives at least the impression of endorsing Zeno's definitions, as when he says that to call emotion contrary to nature is not inappropriate, because all such movements (the reference

210

Ibid. 2. 88. 11–12 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 206); Galen PHP 4. 5. 6, p. 260 de Lacy.

211

Plato Republic 439 D .

212

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 446 F –447 A(SVF 3. 459), translated in ch. 18 below.

213

Plato Republic 436 B –439 E , partly translated in ch. 20.

214

John Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, in Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen (eds.), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht, 1998), 71–111. An earlier version was summarized by Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 118–20.

215

Galen PHP 4. 6. 27, p. 274 de Lacy; Stobaeus 2. 88. 8–2. 90. 6 Wachsmuth.

216

Galen PHP 4. 7. 2, p. 280 de Lacy.

217

Ibid.4.2.8, p.240 de Lacy.

218

Ibid. 4. 2. 13 and 19, pp. 240–2 de Lacy.

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of ‘such’ is unclear) are disobedient (apeithēs) to reason and turn away from it (apostrephesthai), rather than merely reasoning badly and implausibly.219 Again, he says that it has been appropriate (oikeiōs) to apply the term ‘fluttering’(ptoia) to the whole class of emotions,220 adding that this is in respect of the agitated and random movements. Certainly, Galen is sure that Chrysippus was endorsing these definitions of emotion. It is no good, I shall argue in Chapter 6, pleading that they are compatible with Chrysippus' own account of emotion as mistaken judgement. The best defence of Chrysippus would be to argue that he was only expounding, not endorsing, Zeno's definitions. But Posidonius, we shall see, does not think so. There are still further clashes between Chrysippus' conception of emotion as mistaken judgement and Zeno's definitions as expounded by Chrysippus. For Chrysippus says that Zeno defines emotion as irrational in the sense of being without reason and judgement (khōris logou te kai kriseōs).221 This is not compatible with Chrysippus' idea that emotions are (mistaken) judgements of reason, and Galen, taking him to be endorsing both ideas, accuses him of selfcontradiction. Galen was writing four hundred years later than Chrysippus, but he was drawing on earlier sources. He may well have used handbooks of Stoic self-contradictions,222 and he certainly drew on the Stoic Posidonius. Posidonius, a mere hundred years after Chrysippus, makes two complaints against him on this issue. First, he takes Chrysippus to hold that people are always carried away by emotion into turning away (apostrephesthai) from reason, and objects that this fails to capture all the cases. It is important that not only Galen, but also Posidonius, made this objection. Chrysippus, the complaint is, fails to explain variations in emotional reaction. Why do some people experience emotion, think it appropriate to react and reject reason,

219

Galen PHP 4. 4. 17, p. 254 de Lacy.

220

Ibid.4.5.6, p.260 de Lacy.

221

Ibid. 4.2.8; 4.2.12; 4.2.24; 4.4.5; 4.5.4, pp. 240–2, 250, 260 de Lacy.

222

At PHP 4. 4. 1, p. 250 de Lacy, Galen says he may put Chrysippus' self-contradictions into a single treatise, if he gets the time. Von Arnim, SVF vol. 1, preface, pp. xiii–xiv, suggests that Galen was thinking of drawing on a handbook. Teun Tieleman (Galen and Chrysippus: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis 2–3, 140–1) confirms this conjecture by pointing out that the contradiction introduced at 4. 4. 1 is derived from several treatises by Chrysippus not otherwise mentioned by Galen. Since the contradiction is also not in Plutarch's treatise on Stoic self-contradictions this supports von Arnim's view that Galen was not drawing on Plutarch. Von Arnim thought that both Plutarch and Galen were drawing on an earlier treatise. On the other hand, Boys-Stones has offered evidence that Plutarch's is the earliest treatise on Stoic selfcontradictions, followed by that ascribed to Taurus at Aulus Gellius 12. 5. 5. See ‘Plutarch on koinos logos : Towards an Architecture of De Stoicorum repugnantiis ’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 16 (1998), 299–329.

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when others do not?223 Someone might say, on Chrysippus' behalf, that it depends on an estimate of size—how big the good or evil appears—or on weakness of soul. But the expected correlations, he complains, are simply unavailable. The central example is that when Agamemnon was afraid the Greeks would be defeated by the Trojans, he suffered from weakness of reason and thought himself confronted with a great evil. But none the less he did not reject reason, but actually sought the rational advice of Nestor. Or if it be urged that he was then no longer afraid, it can still be asked why some people do, and some do not, reject reason, though they have the same judgements and the same weakness of soul.224 Posidonius' second complaint is that Chrysippus had supposed appetite can (he does not say ‘must’) involve holding the conflicting beliefs that something is not advantageous or beneficial (mē sumpheron, asumpheron, ophelos), and yet that one should take it (hekteon, axion antekhesthai, dein lambanein). One should take it, he adds, as a great advantage, benefit and good. This second complaint is quoted by Galen as follows: Next, Posidonius adds this. ‘But the idea of a person's not merely turning away from reason in cases of appetite, as he [Chrysippus] says, but supposing in addition that, even if something is not advantageous (mē sumpheron), it is still to be taken (hekteon), involves a conflict: moving as if to a great advantage and because of its greatness, even if it is disadvantageous (asumphoron), and thinking it worthy of its greatness to cling to it in this way, even if it brings no benefit (ophelos), but the reverse. Let us grant that those who say it is not advantageous are turning away from reason, and that those who announce they will prove it is disadvantageous are thought to be silly, and that what is pursued is so pursued because of its great benefit. Still, it is unconvincing that, because of supposing it a great good, one thinks it necessary to take it, even if it is the greatest evil, declaiming, “Let me perish; this is now to my advantage.’ ”225

Galen later quotes a passage of Chrysippus which both confirms part of Posidonius' report and will prove very relevant to Seneca's revision of Chrysippus. Chrysippus says: And that is why we can hear utterances like this too in the case of lovers and people with other strong appetites and of angry people. They want their spirit (thumos) gratified, and they want to be left alone, whether it is better or not (eite ameinon eite mē), and they want us to say nothing to them. And

223

Galen PHP 4. 5. 26–44, pp. 264–70 de Lacy.

224

Ibid. 4. 5. 40–1, p. 268 de Lacy.

225

Ibid. 4. 5. 42–3, pp. 268–70 de Lacy.

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this has to be done (poiēteon) come what may (ek pantos ge tropou), even if they are making a mistake and it is disadvantageous (asumphoron) to them.226

A very similar view is ascribed to the Stoics generally, rather than to Chrysippus in particular, in a passage of Stobaeus already mentioned. Emotion is described as all involving disobedience (apeithēs) to reason, and it is added that often (pollakis), though not always, the disobedience is conscious. For people in an emotional state often see (horān) that it is appropriate not to do what they are doing. The same description is given of these people as Chrysippus had used, that they are carried away (ekpheromenoi). It is added that when they learn or are taught to realize (mathein, metadidaskesthai) that it is not appropriate to feel grief or fear, they still do not give up.227 Chrysippus' discussion can be further illustrated from the following quotations in Galen. Indeed, he [Chrysippus] clearly disagrees with himself not only in these respects, but also when he writes about the definitions of emotion, calls it an irrational movement of the soul contrary to nature and an excessive impulse, and then, in explication of ‘irrational’, says that what is meant is, ‘without reason and judgement’(khōris logou te kai kriseōs). He also adduces as a model for excessive impulse people who are running hard. Both of these conflict with emotions being judgements. We shall recognize this more clearly if we quote his very words. One passage goes like this: ‘First one must keep in mind that a rational animal is by nature such as to follow reason and to go by reason as a guide in action. But often it moves towards or away from things in a different direction, in disobedience (apeithōs) to reason, when pushed too much. Both definitions apply to this movement: movement contrary to nature happens with this kind of irrationality, and so does excess in impulses. For ‘irrational’ here must be taken as disobedient (apestrammenon) reason. It is in application to this movement that in ordinary usage, too, we say that some people are pushed and move irrationally without reason and judgement (aneu logou [kai]kriseōs). We are [not] referring to the case of a person who is misled by error (diēmartēmenōs pheretai) and overlooks something in accordance with reason (paridōn ti kata ton logon), but are speaking above all in application to the movement he [Zeno?]

226

Ibid. 4. 6. 27, p. 274 de Lacy.

227

Stobaeus 2.88.8–2.90.6 Wachsmuth, translated in LS 65A . There is reference also to fluttering (ptoia), to rejecting reason (apostrephesthai), and to the state not being like deception (exēpatēmenoi), although the example given of deception (believing that the atoms are first principles) is not a moral one. The further suggestion of the passage, that the people described are carried away ‘as if by a disobedient horse’, may represent Posidonius' addition. But Christopher Gill has suggested to me that it may be already anticipated by Chrysippus at PHP 4. 2. 27, p. 244 de Lacy.

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describes, when it is not in the nature of a rational animal to move in its soul in this way, but in accordance with reason’.228 Indeed, he [Chrysippus] says in addition, ‘Such states are the sort that are out of control (akrateis), as the people are not in control of themselves (ou kratountōn heautōn), but are carried away (ekpheromenōn), as those who run at full stretch are carried away and are not in control of such a movement.’229

Seneca's Third Movements As a Harmonization What I now want to suggest is that Seneca's On Anger, written a century after Posidonius, represents the earliest extant attempt to reconcile the two conceptions of emotion. The reconciliation takes the form of treating the disobedience to reason as a chronologically later stage in emotion which follows the mistaken judgements. Moreover, because it would not be plausible that everyone in a state of anger finishes up by disobeying reason in Medea's way, Seneca also has to give disobedience to reason a rather different form. There is no trace of these moves in the surviving fragments of Chrysippus himself. They look like a later device by Seneca or his source. What Seneca does is to distinguish at least three stages or ‘movements’ in anger, of which the second and third are the relevant ones here.230 In the second stage the mind assents to the appearance of injustice and there is a will to the effect that it is appropriate (oportet) for me to be avenged, or for him to be punished. The third stage is introduced as one in which emotions are carried away (efferantur). At the second stage there was a moral mistake of reason, but in this third stage one wills (vult) in disobedience even to that erroneous application of reason. For one goes on to decide, ‘I must be avenged, come what may (utique)’, and omits the ‘if it is appropriate’(si oportet) which one's reason had a moment earlier recognized. Seneca's description of this third stage as overcoming reason(evicit rationem) corresponds to Chrysippus' talk of disobeying reason and turning away from it. His ‘uncontrolled’ (impotens) corresponds to Chrysippus'akratēs. His ‘come what may’, omitting ‘if it is appropriate’, corresponds to the description given by Chrysippus of lovers and angry people who want to be left alone ‘whether it is better or not’, and who say that they do what they are doing ‘come what may (ek pantos ge tropou), even if they are wrong and it is disadvantageous

228

Galen PHP 4. 2. 8–12, p. 240 de Lacy.

229

Ibid.4.4.24, p.256 de Lacy.

230

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

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to them’.231 Finally, his ‘carried away’(efferantur) represents Chrysippus'ekpheromenoi.232 By splitting the process up into a second and third stage, Seneca shows how we can accommodate both of the two conceptions of emotion without contradiction. The mistaken beliefs that there is good or bad at hand and that it is appropriate to react come at the second stage. The disobedience to your own reason follows, but it does not take the form it has in Medea of going against a clear recognition of the case against revenge. Rather it takes the form of rejecting that residual appeal to appropriateness (oportet) which was preserved even by an erroneous application of reason at the second stage. Seneca enables us to answer Galen's question how emotion can be ‘without reason and judgement’, if it consists of judgements of reason. The answer which emerges from Seneca is that in the third stage anger lacks the judgement which reason had earlier supplied with its reference to appropriateness. There is, however, still a judgement operating at the third stage, because willing (vult) is conceived, as we saw in Chapter 2, as a kind of judgement. Only the judgement is now something like ‘I must be avenged, come what may.’233 There is a small oddity because, strictly speaking, judgements which constitute willing ought themselves to be judgements of appropriateness: it is appropriate to be avenged ‘come what may’. If Seneca had noticed this, it would simply have enhanced his account of disobedience to reason, for such a judgement would be even more obviously at odds with the earlier judgement ‘It is appropriate to be avenged, because I have been injured.’ Seneca's account even leaves room for the possibility of an oscillation or fluttering. But it will be an oscillation not like Medea's between a correct and an incorrect judgement, but between an incorrect judgement and an even more incorrect judgement. Seneca's postulation of a third movement is very true to life. An observer can even time the shift from ‘revenge is appropriate’ to ‘I must be revenged’. Modern psychologists have observed the same phenomenon,234 and it bears some relation to what they call ‘flooding’.

231

Galen PHP 4. 6. 27. I am grateful to Miriam Griffin for this last confirming comparison. Cf. Epictetus Diss. 3.24.23; 4.1.67, ex hapantos.

232

Galen PHP 4. 4. 24, p. 256 de Lacy; Stobaeus 2. 89. 17 Wachsmuth.

233

My interpretation is different from that of P. L. Donini, ‘Pathos nello stoicismo romano’, Elenchos (1995), 195–216.

234

See Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (London, 1996), esp. 60–7 (first published 1995).

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On one interpretation, Seneca makes a concession at On Anger 2. 3. 4, that disobedience to reason does not quite always follow the initial mistaken judgements (putavit, voluit), provided those judgements are retracted at once. But (on this interpretation) the account of emotion remains unaffected because the mistaken judgements will not then be called ‘emotion’, so that for emotion disobedience to reason becomes a conceptually necessary condition. It is more likely, however, that putavit and voluit are used loosely for mere appearance, so that the point is only the familiar one that appearance is not to be called emotion. For this is the point to which Seneca immediately returns in 2. 3. 5, with no hint that he has just introduced a fresh innovation, and opinio was used with similar looseness in 2. 2. 2. Seneca's distinction of second and third movements runs as follows: In order that you may know how emotions (adfectus) (1) begin, or (2) grow, or (3) are carried away (efferri), (1) the first movement is involuntary (non voluntarius) like a preparation for emotion and a kind of threat. (2) The second movement is accompanied by will (voluntas), not an obstinate one, to the effect that it is appropriate (oporteat) for me to be avenged since I am injured, or it is appropriate for him to be punished since he has committed a crime. (3) The third movement is by now uncontrolled (impotens), and wills (vult) to be avenged, not if it is appropriate (si oportet) but come what may (utique), and it has overthrown (evicit) reason.235

I have been arguing concerning Seneca's third movements that Seneca is defending Chrysippus. Before I come to his first movements, I should finish explaining how I see Zeno's relation to Chrysippus.

Chrysippus' Departures From Zeno I have claimed there is a conflict between Chrysippus' main account of emotion and Zeno's, that is, between mistaken judgement and disobedience to recognized truth. In a way, I think Pohlenz was right when he said there was a big difference between Zeno and Chrysippus, but his claim got discredited because he selected the wrong difference. He thought that Zeno distinguished an irrational part of the soul, as Posidonius claims, like that in Plato's Republic, and assigned emotional impulse to that.236 But it is not clear Posidonius

235

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

236

Pohlenz, Die Stoa, 1. 141–53, with nn. in vol. 2; id., ‘Zenon und Chrysipp’, 187–99. Pohlenz relies on Posidonius as recorded by Galen PHP 5. 6. 33, p. 332 de Lacy.

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is right, since, as others have pointed out, even Galen acknowledges that Zeno's meaning is uncertain, and he inclines to think that Zeno sided neither with Plato's division of the soul in the Republic into rational and irrational parts, nor with Chrysippus' rival insistence on the unity of the seat of emotions.237 Zeno may rather have followed Plato's earlier view in the Phaedo, in which a unitary soul is seen as opposing the body, rather than manifesting internal divisions.238 This still differs from Chrysippus, who gives no such role to the body. There probably is, then, a divergence between Zeno and Chrysippus, even if not the one Pohlenz suggested. And there are still further differences too. For one thing, the ideal of freedom from emotion (apatheia) will mean different things, if ‘emotion’ means different things. Again, Chrysippus was pioneering when he made emotions identical with judgements. For this there had been almost no parallel, except for Plato's suggestion recorded in Chapter 1 above, and confined to the case of fear—that fear is expectation of evil.239 Zeno does give a role to judgements in emotion, but the role is not one of identification. We saw in Chapter 2 that for Zeno distress and pleasure occur on the occasion of (epi) judgements.240 Such a role for judgements was already commonplace before Zeno, as seen in Chapter 1. Zeno does not even regard erroneous judgements as a sufficient cause of emotion. Not only have we seen this in the case of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, but Zeno spotted the point, which I shall address in Chapter 7, that the emotion of distress may fade over time, even though the judgement persists that you have been harmed.241 Zeno and Chrysippus differ in how they relate the various ingredients in emotion: impulse (hormē), judgement and, thirdly, contraction and expansion. They seem to agree that emotion is an impulse. For Chrysippus, appetite and fear at least are impulses to avoid or reach for something. Zeno characterizes all emotion as excessive impulse (pleonazousa hormē),242 and Chrysippus explains the excessiveness in terms of disobedience, turning away from reason,

237

Galen PHP 5. 6. 42, p. 334 de Lacy; see Inwood Ethics and Human Action, 292 n. 14; Ian Kidd, ‘Zeno's Oral Teaching’, in Dory Scaltsas (ed.), Zeno of Citium (forthcoming).

238

See Teun Tieleman, ‘Zeno of Citium and Psychological Monism: The Evidence Reconsidered’, in Scaltsas (ed.), Zeno of Citium (forthcoming).

239

Plato Protagoras 358 D ; Laches 198 B ; Laws 644 C –D .

240

Galen PHP 4.3.1–2; 5.1.4; cf. 4.2.5–6, pp. 246–8, 292, 240 de Lacy.

241

Cicero Tusc. 3. 75; Galen PHP 4. 7. 3–5, p. 280 de Lacy (SVF 1. 212).

242

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 110; Stobaeus 2.39.5; 2.44.5; 2.88.8 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 205–6).

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akrasia, and being carried away.243 But Chrysippus intellectualizes his account by identifying impulse with judgement—there is no sign of this in Zeno—and by making contractions and expansions a mere concomitant. Zeno, in contrast, is said, in passages already referred to, sometimes to define pleasure and distress as being expansions and contractions on the occasion (epi) of judgements.244 Emotions are for Zeno also excessive impulses, but how they can be impulses as well as expansions or contractions is never clarified, since later Stoics at least did not consider expansions and contractions to be impulses. Zeno's impulses are likely to occur, like the emotions with which they are identified, on the occasion of judgements, rather than in Chrysippus' manner actually being judgements. Chrysippus also intellectualizes, I shall argue in Chapter 7, when he tackles Zeno's problem about distress fading while judgements persist. I believe he argues that one at least of the judgements will have faded too. To argue this, he has to distinguish more than one judgement as being involved in an emotion, and we saw in Chapter 2 that that is indeed another of Chrysippus' innovations. Chrysippus also appears to have innovated in distinguishing eupatheiai, the sage's good states of feeling, from pathē, emotions, in spite of their having the same judgemental structure, and in introducing the idea of wanting with reservation. Chrysippus being such a radical innovator should not blind us to the fact that Zeno was in his time an innovator too. But that is something I am describing in another publication.245

243

Galen PHP 4.2.8; 4.2.14–18; 4.4.24; 4.5.10–15; 4.6.35, pp. 240–2, 256, 260–2, 276 de Lacy.

244

Ibid. 4.3.1–2; 5.1.4; 4.2.5–6, pp. 246–8, 292, 240 de Lacy.

245

Richard Sorabji, ‘Zeno and Chrysippus on Emotion’, in Scaltsas (ed.), Zeno of Citium (forthcoming). Zeno prefers the four emotions often picked out by Plato as the basic ones, and gives a unitary account of them by making them all impulse, and by making their cause to be judgement, not mere appearance. If we can trust Cicero, Ac. Post. 1. 38 (SVF 1. 207), he concluded from the role of judgement that emotion was voluntary. His spotting of the problem of emotion fading faster than judgements is noted above. Zeno is also credited with introducing the idea that everything is indifferent except character and rationality: Stobaeus 2. 57. 18 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 190). Some things are naturally preferred or dispreferred and are to be ‘selected’, though not ‘chosen’: Stobaeus 2. 84. 21 Wachsmuth; Cicero Ac. Post. 1. 37(SVF 1. 192–3).

4 Seneca's Defence First Movements as Answering Posidonius I believe that not only Seneca's third movements, but also his first movements, were offered in defence of Chrysippus. But first we must try to work out what Seneca's first movements are. Let us start with the mental ones.

First Movements In Seneca Seneca speaks seven times in the passage on three movements (On Anger 2.2.1–2.4.2) of a movement of the mind, which he calls a first shock (ictus), a first agitation (agitatio), and a first movement (primus motus).246 It has been thought that this last expression was an invention of the twelfth century,247 but here it is in the first century AD. Seneca insists four times that this first shock of the mind is not yet the emotion: These are not anger any more than what contracts the brow at the sight of a mimic shipwreck is sorrow . . . But all those things are movements of minds that do not want to be moved, and not emotions (adfectus), but preliminary preludes (principia proludentia) to emotions. None of these things which move the mind by chance ought to be called an emotion (adfectus). I do not call this ‘anger’, this movement of the mind obedient to reason.

246

Seneca On Anger : primus ictus animi 2. 2. 2; Movet mentes 2. 2. 4; animum impellunt 2. 3. 1; motum animi 2. 3. 4; prima agitatio animi 2. 3. 5; primus motus 2. 4. 1; primum animi ictum 2. 4. 2. The word impetus is uncharacteristically used for initial shock at Seneca Letter 113. 18: see John Rist, ‘Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy’, in ANRW 2. 36. 3 (1989), 1993–2012 at 2003.

247

O. Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XII et XIII siècles (6 vols.; Paris, 1942–60), vol. 2, p. 493 n. 2. ‘First movements’ feature also in the 5th-cent.-AD Ps.-Athanasius Life and Activity of Syncletica 17 (PG 28, 1487–1558, translated in Vincent L. Wimbush (ed.), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Minneapolis, 1990), at p. 272) and in Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 2 in the 3rd cent. AD .

e

e

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So that first agitation of the mind which the appearance of injustice inflicts (incussit) is no more anger than is the appearance of injustice itself.248

What are Seneca's first movements of the mind? The necessary hint comes from Cicero. We know from a number of sources, and are reminded by Cicero, that the contractions studied in Chapter 2 can follow from the value judgements in distress.249 I have argued that this was already the view of Zeno. But Cicero adds that bites and little contractions of the mind (morsus et contractiunculae animi) can also have a certain independence from the judgements (iudicium, opinio, decreverimus) and distress (aegritudo). What is still left is bites and little contractions. It is not quite clear whether Cicero is thinking of initial shocks. But the independence of the bites and little contractions gives Seneca exactly what he needs for his first movements of the mind. Seneca's new point is that his mental movements are not merely independent of judgement and emotion, but can actually occur before it. Surely his first movements of the mind are the little contractions and expansions of the mind, which Cicero has described as independent. Cicero says: But we must turn back to the same source, that all distress is far removed from the wise man, because it is empty and is engaged in to no purpose, because it does not arise by nature, but throughjudgement (iudicium), through belief (opinio), through a sort of invitation to grieve, when we have decided (decreverimus) that that is what ought to happen. If this [judgement] which is wholly voluntary is removed (hoc detracto), that grieving distress will be removed, though bites and certain little contractions of the mind (animus) will remain.250 We saw in Chapter 2 that bites are often associated with contractions251 and, like contractions, with distress,252 while expansion is associated with pleasure, sinking with fear, and outward rushes with anger. Seneca's first movements of the mind will be felt movements of this sort. It is agreed by Plutarch that the Stoics mean the preliminary bites and sinkings of the mind to be distinct from the actual emotion. He reveals this, even though he goes on to ridicule the intended distinction:

248

Seneca On Anger 2.2.5; 2.3.1; 2.3.4; 2.3.5.

249

Stobaeus 2. 90 Wachsmuth; Galen PHP 4. 3. 1–2, pp. 246, 248 de Lacy; Cicero Tusc. 4. 15; cf. Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 114.

250

Cicero Tusc. 3. 82–3.

251

Besides Tusc. 3. 82–3 see ibid. 4. 14–15; Galen PHP 4.3.2, p. 248 de Lacy.

252

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A(SVF 3. 439); Galen PHP 2.8.4; 2.8.18, pp. 158, 160 de Lacy; Cicero Tusc. 3.83; 4.15.

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But when they are refuted by their tears and tremblings and changes of colour, instead of distress and fear, they speak of some kind of bites and clusterings [I have suggested sunathroiseis, not sunthroēseis or sunorouseis, as the necessary emendation], and they euphemize appetites as instinct (prothumia). They seem to be devising, by means of names, sophistical, not philosophical, procrastinations and evasions of real things.253 It is not implied that bites are emotions when Plutarch elsewhere says that the Stoic Posidonius treats bites (dēgmoi) as psycho-physical pathē in the soul. For ‘pathē’ in this passage does not mean emotions but is being used to cover all sorts of mental and physical effects.254 Nor is it any different when the Stoic Epictetus associates suffering a bite (daknomenos) with being disturbed (tarassomenos),255 for disturbance, too, is not yet emotion. The first movement in anger, according to Seneca, is caused by (incussit) appearance, the appearance of injustice (species iniuriae).256 Seneca does not introduce the idea of appearance right away. At first, speaking more loosely, he suggests that the first blow or movement of the mind comes after belief (opinio) has been formed and after someone has thought (putavit) themselves hurt and willed (voluit) revenge.257 But then, on the most natural interpretation, it is explained that these are mere appearances.258 Epictetus seems to agree that the relation is causal: the appearances are not jolts, but that by which the mind is jolted (quibus pellitur).259 There are not only mental initial shocks. Seneca carefully distinguishes physical ones.260 He includes as examples pallor, tears, flashing eyes, and sexual irritation, all of which are going to be relevant to us below.261 He insists equally for the physical initial shock that it is not yet the emotion: For if anyone thinks that pallor and falling tears and irritation by fluid in the private parts, or deep sighs, or a sudden flashing of the eyes, or anything like that is an indication of emotion (adfectus) and a sign of the mind, he is mistaken and does not understand that these are jolts (pulsus) to the body.262

253

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A –B .

254

Ps.-Plutarch fragment, p. 48 of Moralia, Loeb edn., vol. 15, ed. Sandbach, Whether appetite and distress belong to the soul or body, translated in ch. 5 below.

255

Epictetus 4. 6. 10.

256

Seneca On Anger 2. 3. 5.

257

Ibid. 2.2.2; 2.3.4.

258

Ibid. 2. 3. 5. A less natural interpretation is mentioned above.

259

Epictetus at Aulus Gellius 19. 1. 15, translated in ch. 24.

260

Seneca On Anger 2.2.1; 2.2.6; 2.3.2–3; 2.4.2.

261

Ibid. 2. 3. 2.

262

Ibid. 2.3.2.

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The physical shock, like the mental, is not under our control (not in nostra potestate), and cannot be avoided by use of reason.263

First Movements Involuntary The first shock and movement of the mind is called by Seneca involuntary (non voluntarius). It cannot be avoided by reason, but at best only weakened,264 and it happens even to the wise.265 We can never be unshaken (inconcussi), despite our hopes, but we can be unconquered.266 Similarly with bodily first movements: even the wise may blush.267 Epictetus agrees. In the fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius, which I shall discuss in Chapter 24, he says that the mind even of the wise person has to be moved and to contract because of unsolicited movements. And similarly his body changes colour.268 The point has been misunderstood, I believe, because there are many passages in which Epictetus thinks it a sign of progress if in various circumstances you can avoid first movements, and he cites occasions on which Socrates did.269 But Epictetus warns that you may find it not in your power (not epi soi),270 and he never contradicts himself, or says that the sage can get rid of first movements altogether.

First Movements As Important To Therapy Seneca's purpose in analysing emotion, he says, is to see whether it can be controlled by reason or is involuntary.271 It is therefore important for him to distinguish the involuntary accompaniments, for which we are not to blame, from the voluntary. This is part of the case for saying that control is possible. Moreover, it actually facilitates control, because it is very steadying when you have a sinking feeling, or your teeth are chattering, your knees knocking, or you have gone white or red in the face, to be able to say to yourself, ‘This is not yet emotion, it is only a shock.’ But in order to be effective, the technique needs at the same time to cast doubt on the appearance that you are confronted with good or bad. Only then can you discount the shocks as mere symptoms of the appearance.

263

Ibid. 2.2.1; 2.4.2.

264

Ibid. 2.4.1; 2.4.2.

265

Ibid.2.2.2.

266

Id. Natural Questions 2. 59. 3.

267

Id. Letter 11. 1.

268

Aulus Gellius 19. 1 =Epictetus frag. 9 Old father (Loeb edn.).

269

Epictetus 4.8.23; 4.6.10; 4.10.23; 3.28; 3.24.117; Handbook 46.2, cited by Bonhöffer Epiktet und die Stoa, 310.

270

Epictetus 3. 24. 108.

271

Seneca On Anger 2. 2. 1.

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It can also now be seen how vital it is to control of the emotions to understand that the contractions and expansions which constitute the mental first movements are no more than sensed inner movements in the chest. This was argued for contractions and expansions quite generally in Chapter 2, and it shows how it may be possible to discount the mental first movements in a programme of keeping control. It was essential for exercising control that it should be possible to create a time-gap between the first movement and the beginning of the emotion. Plutarch is not a Stoic, and so talks in terms not of pre- passion, but of anger smoking (kapniōn) at the beginning (en arkhē), of its catching alight (diakaiomenos), or gathering (sullegomenos) and moving through us (diakinoumenos). But he too insists that anger can be stemmed at this stage, because its genesis and growth (genesis, auxēsis) are more evident (emphanē) than that of any other emotion. He rejects the view of the early Peripatetic Hieronymus of Rhodes that the genesis of anger is too quick to be detected.272

When Did the Stoics Distinguish First Movements? When were first movements distinguished by the Stoics? I have maintained in this chapter that Seneca's first movements may be alluded to by Cicero,273 and that could be the earliest reference, though Cicero does not yet present his ‘bites’ as prior to, merely as independent of, judgements. Some scholars have attributed the idea of first movements to earlier Stoics, Zeno or Chrysippus. But I doubt if we can rely on Gellius' reference to the ‘founders’(conditores) of Stoicism.274 What Zeno did say is that even the sage's mind will carry a scar (cicatrix), and Seneca uses this to explain why even the sage will still feel ‘suspicions and shadows of emotions’. But it is only the scar that is clearly attributed to Zeno, and this makes it unlikely that Zeno was discussing first movements, since scars are not in general a necessary prerequisite for experiencing first movements.275 It is not clear either that Chrysippus discussed first movements, or even the prothumiai which I argued in Chapter 2 may include certain

272

Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 454 E –455 A .

273

Cicero Tusc. 3. 83.

274

Aulus Gellius 19. 1. 3. On the other hand, since I take mental first movements to be sensed physical movements of the soul, I shall not rely on the argument that first movements presuppose Posidonius' division of the soul (Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 41). Even in the undivided soul of Chrysippus, sensations are to be found.

275

Seneca On Anger 1. 16. 7. I am grateful to Miriam Griffin for a most helpful discussion of previous treatments of Zeno.

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first movements. Prothumiai are prominent later in Epictetus, but do not seem to be explicitly associated with Chrysippus. The best case I can make for first movements in Chrysippus turns on his treatment of weeping against your will.276 He says that this is due to unlike appearances, and the appearance he has just been talking about is one directed towards contraction. Presumably, then, he is appealing to conflicting appearances as to whether contraction is appropriate. The tears are against your will because you assent to the appearance that contraction is not appropriate. But Chrysippus does not say whether your assent oscillates between both appearances, or whether the rival appearance, that contraction is appropriate, remains without assent. It is only in the latter case that Chrysippus will have postulated a physical first movement, that is, tears produced by mere appearance independently of assent. Even if he did postulate this, he will only have stumbled into the matter as a side issue. First movements did not have the centrality they acquired later. What we do find is that the physiological phenomena which later Stoics were to call first movements were already recognized by Aristotle.

Physiological First Movements In Aristotle and Galen Aristotle had spoken of how the heart or penis can be moved at a mere appearance (phanentos tinos), without the intellect (nous) giving a command.277 This can also happen when the intellect itself thinks of something frightening or pleasant, without commanding fear.278 Galen gives a physiological reinterpretation of Chrysippus' felt contractions of the soul. It is not the soul that one is feeling; rather the sensation is due to yellow bile flowing down into the stomach.279 Aristotle too would have rejected the Stoic view that the soul is physical and substituted a physiological interpretation of the phenomena. He would allow that there are physical movements and even that they can precede emotion.280 Anger itself involves the boiling of the blood or warm stuff around the heart.281 Chrysippus' concern with

276

Aulus Gellius 19. 1. 3. Chrysippus in Galen PHP 4.7.16, p. 284 de Lacy.

277

Aristotle On the Movement of Animals 11, 703 5–11.

b

278

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 9, 432 29–433 1. Philoponus (?) ad loc. (583, 16) substitutes ‘liver’ for the penis given in Aristotle On the Movement of Animals 703b 6.

279

Galen On Demonstration book 3, as quoted by Nemesius On the Nature of Man, ch. 21; cf. Gregory of Nyssa On the Creation of Man 12. 4.

280

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 1, 403 22.

281

b

a

a

b

Ibid. 1. 1, 403 25– 9.

a

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the soul's poor state of tension as making it liable to emotion282 would also be converted into physiological terms by Aristotle. In his view, bulls and boars are particularly liable to anger, because the fibres in their blood act like embers, to heat it up.283

First Movements As Answering Posidonius and Aristotle I want to suggest that the distinction of first movements was used not only therapeutically for controlling emotion, but also polemically. One reason for introducing them may have been precisely to defend Chrysippus from some of Posidonius' objections. For these objections, as I shall argue in Chapter 8, presuppose that genuine emotion, not mere shock, can be found in the absence of the relevant judgements, contrary to Chrysippus' whole position. The three examples offered by Posidonius of emotion without the relevant judgements are emotions induced in animals, emotions induced in humans by wordless music, and thirdly tears when we acknowledge them to be unjustified. It is extraordinary that Seneca picks up all three of these examples (without mentioning Posidonius) and dismisses all three as involving not emotion, but only appearance or first movements. Seneca is quite explicit. Animals experience only initial appearances, not emotion.284 Music induces only appearance and first movements.285 Tears are also examples of first movements.286 There has been an issue on the topic of first movements whether Seneca is following Posidonius, or defending Chrysippus against him.287 On both first and third movements, I take Seneca to be defending Chrysippus. A further use of the idea of first movements may have been in reply to Aristotle's rival therapy of catharsis. I shall discuss this possibility in the next chapter. My interpretation goes against the view that first movements are not central to Stoic theory.288 They are central to later Stoicism if they can be used to answer Aristotle, to defend Chrysippus from Posidonius'

282

Galen PHP 4. 6. 1, p. 270 de Lacy (=LS 65T ).

283

Aristotle On the Parts of Animals 2. 4, 651a 1–2.

284

Seneca On Anger 1. 3. 7–8.

285

Ibid.2.2.3–6.

286

Ibid. 2. 3. 2.

287

Janine Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque et la philosophie stoïcienne des passions (Paris, 1984), 167, takes the former view, as does John Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, and E. Holler, Seneca und die Seelenteilungslehre und Affektpsychologie der Mittelstoa (Kallmünz, 1934), 16–24. But Fillion-Lahille ascribes the latter view to Paul Rabbow, Antike Schriften über Seelenheilung und Seelenleitung: Die Therapie des Zorns (Leipzig and Berlin, 1914), 45 ff.

288

I am referring to Adolf Bonhöffer's still invaluable work Epiktet und die Stoa, 309.

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objections, and if they are important to the understanding of therapy. In Chapter 14 I shall trace the Neoplatonists' use of first movements and in the last four chapters of this book we shall see how influential first movements were on Christianity. I shall now quote in full Seneca's description (in On Anger) of first, second, and third movements: the initial mental and physical shock produced by the appearance of good or bad; secondly, the assent to that appearance and to the appearance that it is appropriate to react; thirdly, the movement of being carried away and judging that one must react, come what may. It will be seen that Seneca is almost always careful to avoid (or to qualify with a ‘seems’) genuine emotion words for his first movements. 2.2.1.

2.2.2. 2.2.3.

2.2.4. 2.2.5.

2.2.6.

To what, you ask, is this inquiry relevant? It is so that we can know what anger is. For if it comes to birth against our will (invitis), it will never succumb to reason. For all movements which are not brought about by our will (voluntas) are beyond control and inevitable, like shivering when sprinkled with cold water and the recoil from certain contacts. At bad news our hair stands on end, at improper words a blush suffuses us, and vertigo follows when we look at a steep drop. Anger is put to flight by precepts. For it is a voluntary vice of the mind, not something that comes out of some circumstance of the human lot, and so befalls even the wisest. Under that heading we must put that first shock (ictus) of the mind which moves us after we believe there is an injustice. This creeps in even amidst the theatrical sights of the stage or the recital of ancient deeds. Often we seem (videmur) to be angry with Clodius for exiling Cicero and with Antony for killing him. Who is not roused (concitari) against the weapons of Marius, or the proscription of Sulla? Who is not disturbed (infestus) at Theodotus and Achillas and that child who dared an unchildlike crime? Singing and quick rhythms and the martial sound of trumpets incite (instigare) us. A grim painting or the sad spectacle of punishment, however just, moves (movere) the mind. This is why we laugh with people who are laughing, while a crowd of mourners saddens (contristare) us too, and we seethe with excitement (effervescere) at contests between other people. This is not anger, any more than what furrows the brow at the sight of a simulated shipwreck is sadness, or what runs through the minds of readers at Hannibal besieging the walls after [the battle of] Cannae is fear. All those things are movements of minds unwilling to be moved, and not emotions (adfectus), but preliminary (principia) preludes to emotions. It is in this way that the trumpet excites (suscitare) the ears of a

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2.3.1.

2.3.2. 2.3.3.

2.3.4.

2.3.5.

2.4.1.

2.4.2.

military man who is now wearing his toga in the middle of peacetime and the clatter of weapons alerts (erigere) the camp horses. They say that Alexander put his hand to his weapons when Xenophantus sang. None of these things which jolt the mind by chance ought to be called emotions (adfectus), but are things to which the mind is subject, so to speak, rather than being active. So emotion is not being moved at the appearances presented by things, but is giving oneself up to them and following up this chance movement. For with pallor, and falling tears, and irritation from fluid in the private parts, or a deep sigh, and eyes suddenly flashing, or anything like these, if anyone thinks that they are a sign of emotion and a manifestation of the mind, he is mistaken and does not understand that these are jolts to the body. So very often even the bravest man grows pale as he puts on his armour, and when the signal for battle is given, the knees of the fiercest soldier tremble a little, and before the battle lines ram each other, the heart of the great commander jumps, and the extremities of the most eloquent speaker stiffen as he gets ready to speak. Anger must not merely be moved; it must rush out. For it is an impulse (impetus), but there is never impulse without assent of the mind (adsensus mentis). For it is impossible that revenge and punishment should be at stake without the mind's knowledge. Someone thinks himself injured, he wills revenge, but he settles down at once when some consideration dissuades him. I do not call this anger, this movement of the mind obedient to reason. That is anger which leap-frogs reason and drags reason with it. So that first agitation of the mind which the appearance of injustice (species iniuriae) inflicts (incussit) is no more anger than is the appearance of injustice itself. It is the subsequent impulse (impetus), which not only receives but approves the appearance of injustice, that is anger: the rousing of a mind that prosecutes vengeance with will and judgement (voluntas, iudicium). There is never any doubt that fear involves flight and anger impulse (impetus). See if you think anything can be chosen or avoided without the assent of the mind (adsensus mentis). In order that you may know how emotions (adfectus) (1) begin, or (2) grow, or (3) are carried away (efferri), (1) the first movement is involuntary (non voluntarius), like a preparation for emotion and a kind of threat. (2) The second movement is accompanied by will (voluntas) not an obstinate one, to the effect that it is appropriate (oporteat) for me to be avenged since I am injured, or it is appropriate for him to be punished since he has committed a crime. (3) The third movement is by now uncontrolled (impotens), and wills (vult) to be avenged, not if it is appropriate (si oportet), but come what may (utique), and it has overthrown (evicit) reason. We cannot escape that first shock (ictus) of the mind by reason, just

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as we cannot escape those things we mentioned which befall the body either, so as to avoid another's yawn infecting us, or avoid our eyes blinking when fingers are suddenly poked towards us. Reason cannot control those things, though perhaps familiarity and constant attention may weaken them. The second movement, which is born of judgement, is removed by judgement.

5 The Arts First Movements and Controversies on Drama and Music Aristotle, Philodemus, and the Stoics

Seneca On Drama and Catharsis Seneca's first movements may have served a further purpose. They may provide the Stoic reply to Aristotle's theory of tragic catharsis discussed in Chapter 1 above. Most interpretations agree that catharsis lightens emotions in the audience by first arousing them, whether catharsis is the analogue of purgation by laxative and emetic, or of religious purification. If the Stoics think they have a reply, this would also explain, as regards the later Stoics, what has seemed very puzzling, why despite their discussion of the theatre, they make virtually no explicit reference to Aristotle's brilliant theory. There may possibly be a reference in Diogenes of Babylon, although this is a very conjectural suggestion.289 How widely the theory is mentioned outside the Stoic school depends on what we count as catharsis. If any relief of emotion gained by arousing it is to count, then there will be plenty of references. But if we are to stick to something reasonably close to Aristotle's idea, then I shall argue in Chapter 19 that we cannot find much more than a brief mention in an Epicurean papyrus fragment possibly by Philodemus, another in the Neo-Pythagorean Tablet of Cebes, and a number of references in the Middle Platonist Plutarch until we come to the extensive discussions in the Neoplatonists. Given the Stoics' interest in emotions in the theatre, we might have expected such a striking theory to be discussed by them again and again. But if catharsis involves the arousal of audience emotion, we

289

So Richard Janko, ‘A First Join between P. Herc. 411+1583 (Philodemus On Music 4): Diogenes of Babylon on Natural Affinity and Music’, Cronache ercolanesi, 22 (1992), 123–9 at 127, interpreting On Music col. 69*, lines 1–12 Delattre.

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can find the answer in On Anger 2. 2. 3–6. Here Seneca tells us that the arts do not arouse real emotions in the audience, but only first movements. That would be fatal for Aristotle's theory of catharsis, if the emotions undergo catharsis through first being aroused. We then see why the later Stoics did not think it necessary to consider Aristotle's catharsis theory any further.

The Case Against Genuine Emotion What is the case against emotion in theatre audiences being genuine? When you see Medea on the stage, you do not believe a wrong has really been done; you know it is only an appearance. And you do not believe it would be appropriate to react by clambering on the stage to assault Jason, or rescue Medea's children.290 So by Chrysippus' two criteria your response is not fear or anger, or so it may be said. The Stoics might make this view of audience reaction plausible by pointing to the difference in feel between the case of seeing the enacted threat and seeing that there is a real fire ablaze in the theatre. Not only do we then judge that there is danger at hand and that it would be right to react, but correspondingly it feels different. To make the comparison with our attitude to Medea's children fair, we should imagine that the fire in the theatre is threatening someone else, and that we can do nothing to help. The case against tragedy provoking real emotion might be supported still further by considering Augustine's discussion of how different pity is in the theatre from pity in real life. We positively welcome there being a situation for us to pity. If we enjoy being aroused in the theatre, how can it be real pity we are experiencing, let alone real grief or fear? Pleasure from the representation of horrible things is noticed also by Plato and Aristotle.291 How, too, it has been asked, can the response aroused be one of the distressing emotions, if it is therapeutic?292 And how can we be feeling real suspense, if we feel it each time we hear the same story, even though we already know the outcome?293

290

This sort of point is made by Colin Radford, ‘How Can We be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society suppl. vol. 49 (1975), 67–80 at 71, who concludes there is no belief, and by Kendall Walton, ‘Fearing Fictions’, Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1978), 5–27, who concludes, like Seneca, that there is neither belief nor emotion.

291

Augustine Confessions 3. 2; Plato Rep. 605 C –D ; 606 B ; Philebus 48 A ;50 B ; Aristotle Parts of Animals 645 7–15; Rhet. 1. 11, 1371 5ff.; Poet. 4, 1448 10 ff. The point is also made by Walton, ‘Fearing Fictions’.

292

Walton, ‘Fearing Fictions’.

293

Ibid.

a

b

b

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In the Greek theatre there will have been plenty of occasion for ‘first movements’ if a recent theory about ancient Greek masks is correct. It has been suggested that in early Greek theatre masks acted as resonators for augmenting the many cries that punctuate Greek tragedy: io, io, aiaiai, papapa.294

The Case For Genuine Emotion There is, however, a case for the response being genuine emotion at least in many instances. And the Stoics can afford to accommodate both types of case, just so long as they can identify the relevant judgements as present when there are genuine emotions. This is not difficult when the emotion aroused concerns the real world rather than the story. Many of us will have found ourselves at some time in floods of tears at the theatre. But this is sometimes only because we are thinking, ‘This could happen (or has happened) to me.’ That, we judge, would be really bad and reaction is appropriate. The Stoics would not be embarrassed by such examples of emotion, since the expected judgements are present, although they are about real life, not about the enacted situation. But what about emotions concerning the characters in the plot? The treatment of Medea above has not yet brought out the full situation. In order to do so, we must distinguish the different judgements that Chrysippus recognizes in emotion. In distress and pleasure the relevant judgements are that inner contractions or expansions are appropriate, and this we can judge even in relation to a fictional episode. The judgement that pursuit or avoidance is appropriate is more problematic in relation to fiction. But with ghost stories we have a method of avoidance which we may judge appropriate, viz. closing the book. Of course we may also transfer our judgement of appropriate behaviour from the fictional to the real world. Thus the ghost story may lead someone to approve avoiding dark corners, the erotic story to approve selecting them. There is another possibility that has been brought out by Paul Woodruff.295 We may well judge that it would be appropriate for Medea's children to be rescued—but by someone in the play. I would

294

I refer to the work of Thanos Vovolis in privately printed brochures.

295

Paul Woodruff, ‘Trying to Care about Hecuba and Hamlet: From Mimesis to Emotion in Theater’ (forthcoming).

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add that this is not very different from our situation in real life, when we are caught as pitying or fearful, but helpless, spectators of the peril of others, although we still judge action would have been appropriate, or would be for other people. The remaining type of judgement is the judgement of good and bad. The problem with the Medea was that the audience knows nothing bad has really happened. Of course, audiences judge that something bad has happened in the play, to the fictional character Medea, so there is a judgement made. I shall come back to the effect of that qualification ‘only in the play’. There is also a special way in which our judgements of good or bad may relate to the real world, because of Aristotle's point that poetry is more universal than history.296 It may lead us to think ‘How true!’, because it shows the sort of thing that would happen, rather than the accidents of what actually happened. I have so far been talking of fiction, but I do not think the situation is very different when we see, hear, or read historical stories. It is not a difference that inner expansion or contraction can be judged appropriate. Nor is there a present opportunity of intervening. So pursuit and avoidance are unlikely to be judged any longer appropriate, although they might have been at the time. The main difference is that historical events can be judged really good or bad. But this difference should not matter to the Stoics, for they hold that emotion involves the judgement that things are now, or will be, bad or good. It is not enough to judge that they were bad once, unless the situation is still bad. The qualification ‘once upon a time’ is therefore as important as the qualification ‘only in the play’, and I shall come back to its effect too. In looking for relevant judgements, I have not so far relied on the case in which people start believing the misfortune in the story is real, and perhaps even their own. This would give rise to the relevant judgements. But it might have been less common, given the distancing effect of ancient Greek theatre production. So far I have argued that, although Seneca denies that response to fictional drama or historical narrative is genuine emotion, the Stoics could in many cases find relevant judgements at work, and so could have allowed that often there was genuine emotion. What was harder to find was judgements of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in relation to the plot, unqualified by a ‘once upon a time’, or ‘only in the play’. This difficulty

296

Aristotle Poet., ch. 9.

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is matched by some of the objections already raised to the idea that our reaction to the plot and its characters can be genuine emotion. Let us reconsider those objections. One objection I spoke about is the difference in feel from real-life emotions, even when the real-life fear is for someone else and you know that intervention is impossible. But I am not sure that there is always a difference of feel. When there is not, the audience's feeling may become unbearable, and then they can reduce it by reminding themselves that this is only a play, or only something that happened once upon a time. This suggests that something else besides judgement is important: attention. Whether our response to the dramatic predicament is genuine emotion may depend on how far we are attending to the qualification that the bad event has happened only in the play, or only once upon a time. There remain the objections about reactions to the plot being enjoyable or therapeutic, when the real emotions would merely be distressing, and the argument from the possibility of suspense despite the story being familiar. There have been attempts both modern297 and ancient to answer the first two difficulties. To take the ancient answers, one is Aristotle's theory of catharsis, which says that tragedy lightens and pleases us by catharsis of such emotions as pity and fear. Aristotle also mentions many other pleasures involved in art and drama,298 as well as this specific tragic pleasure.299 There is a further point. Even in real life, the ancients repeatedly noticed, people find pleasure in grief, in jealousy, in anger,300 and in such disgusting things as corpses,301 although Augustine dismisses the last as satisfying curiosity rather than giving pleasure.302 It was equally noticed, as I shall bring out in Chapter 15, that in real life concern with the lot of others can be therapeutic through putting your own situation into perspective. As regards suspense, I believe its character is changed once you are familiar with the plot, according to whether you know the outcome

297

A very full modern explanation, for the case of music, of enjoyment and therapy found in negative emotions is given by Jerrold Levinson, ‘Music and Negative Emotions’, ch. 13 of his Music, Art and Metaphysics (Ithaca, NY, 1990), 322–9.

298

There are pleasures of recognition: Aristotle Poet. 1448 4–19; Rhet. 1371 4–10; of rhythm and harmony: id. Poet. 1449 25–31; of wonder: id. Poet. 1460 17; Rhet. 1371b 4–10; pleasure in the craftsman's execution: id. Poet. 1448b 4–19; On the Parts of Animals 1. 5, 645a 7–15; pleasure, in the case of pictures, in the colours: id. Poet. 1448b 4–19.

299

Id. Poet. 1449 24–8; 1453 36;

300

Grief :Homer Iliad 24. 513; Seneca Marcia 2. 4. Jealousy :Plato Philebus 48 B –50 B . Anger :Homer Iliad 18. 110 (cited by Plato Philebus 47 E ; Aristotle Rhet. 2. 2, 1378 1–10).

301

Plato Rep. 439 E –440 A .

302

Augustine Confessions 10. 35. 55.

b

b

a

b

a

b

b

b

a

a

11; 1459 21; 1462 13; Politics 1342 14. b

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will be happy or tragic, and for whom. This either makes available a pleasant relief, or creates a need to cultivate resignation. In so far as the character of the suspense is not changed by familiarity, this may once again be because you are not attending to the known outcome, or reminding yourself of it. I have made three suggestions. Sometimes Seneca is right: the audience experiences only first movements. Sometimes the audience experiences real emotions about things outside the play, but that creates no problem for the Stoics since the expected judgements are there. What I think Seneca disallows, and disallows wrongly, is that there can be genuine emotions about characters in the historical or fictional plot. The stumbling-block to acknowledging this is that the judgement about the situation being bad is qualified by ‘only in the play’, or ‘once upon a time’. It is only an appearance that the actual situation is now bad, or will be. But the answer is that attention is important, as well as judgement. In so far as you do not attend to the qualifications, your mind will be focused on judgements no different from those of reallife emotion. If the resulting emotions are shorter-lived, this is because the qualifications can quickly return to mind.

Seneca On Music So much for Seneca's view that drama and literature arouse first movements rather than real emotion. But will his view apply, as he applies it, to music? Posidonius has his own justification for saying that wordless music does not affect judgements, as we shall see. But a different justification, that might have more initial appeal, would be that wordless music does not have a story line, as the play Medea does. Consequently, there is no obvious subject-matter for one to assess as good or bad, or calling for reaction, and so no obvious subject-matter for the relevant judgements. Just as with drama and literature, defenders of Chrysippus might attempt two opposite lines of defence. One would be to protest that judgements are indeed involved when we are moved by wordless music. The other would be that suggested by Seneca: admittedly judgements are not involved, but then neither are genuine emotions. The view that music does not directly produce either emotion or judgement has been maintained not only by Seneca, but by his Epicurean

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predecessor Philodemus,303 and in modern times by Eduard Hanslick and Peter Kivy.304 Others have maintained one or other of these denials without maintaining both.305 The debate is very well traced by Martha Nussbaum.306 It certainly does need to be recognized that music often expresses emotion, without arousing it. We can hear music as sad, without being saddened. We may find ourselves exploring the emotion, rather than feeling it.307 But the question is whether emotion is sometimes aroused, and if so, whether judgements are then aroused as well. There are two parts to Seneca's view: music produces neither emotion nor judgement. He chooses an example in which emotion, assent, and judgement may well be out of place. The soldier in peacetime may be stirred by the blast of a trumpet, and may even reach for his sword. But if he knows there is no enemy, he has no cause to assent to the idea that action is called for. Equally, we may well feel that there need be no emotion. But are not emotions sometimes aroused by wordless music? And if they are, can we defend Chrysippus' identification of emotion with judgement by the alternative strategy of identifying judgements? Geoffrey Madell has recently argued we cannot. Music, in his view, produces emotion, but no judgement.308 His excellent discussion, however, seems to me to support a more complex conclusion. To

303

Philodemus On Music book 4, ed. Neubecker, ch. l, p. 40, col. 3; ch. 8, pp. 56–8, cols. 14–15; ch. 8, p. 63, col. 19.

304

See Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, trans. by Gustav Cohen (London, 1891), from the 7th German edition of Vom musikalisch-Schönem (1st edn. 1854), at pp. 34–5 =trans. Geoffrey Payzant as On the Musically Beautiful (Indianapolis 1986), at p. 9, with the interpretation and endorsement of Peter Kivy, ‘What was Hanslick Denying?’, Journal of Musicology, 8 (1990), 3–18, repr. in his The Fine Art of Repetition (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 16; similarly id., The Corded Shell (Princeton, 1980), ch. 4, repr. in his Sound Sentiment (Philadelphia, 1989) as ch. 4, and there further defended in chs. 13 and 16. See also, but with his heavy qualifications, Levinson, ‘Music and Negative Emotions’.

305

That music arouses emotion is denied by Paul Hindemith, A Composer's World (New York, 1961), 44–5; John Hospers, ‘The Concept of Artistic Expression’, in id., Introductory Readings in Aesthetics (New York, 1969), 142–67 at 162. That it produces judgement is denied by Geoffrey Madell, ‘What Music Teaches Us about Emotion’, Philosophy, 71 (1996), 63–82, esp. 73.

306

See Martha Nussbaum in the forthcoming book of her Gifford lectures, Upheavals of Thought, to which I am very much indebted.

307

On exploring, rather than feeling, see the forthcoming paper by Mukund Lath, ‘Reflections on the logos of Music’, which I am grateful to him for discussing with me. An Indian commentary of the 10th cent. AD by Abhinaragupta on part of Natya sāstra, translated into English by Raniero Gudi, 2nd edn. (Chowkhambra Sanskrit Studies, 62; Varanasi, 1968), has an insightful study of the spectator's ‘tasting’ or rasa. I am grateful to Arindam Chakrabarty for bringing it to my attention.

308

Madell, ‘What Music Teaches Us about Emotion’, 73.

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develop his example, we may experience a longing for the music to reach a resolution, and something like joy at its doing so, or disappointment at its not doing so.309 These emotions which are directly about the music may cause emotions which are not about the music, by reminding us of a real-life longing, or by awakening a feeling of disappointment or joy directed beyond the music. When we long for the music to reach a resolution, defenders of Chrysippus can resort to the alternative strategy and say, contrary to Madell's conclusion, that a judgement is involved. We judge such a resolution to be good. Madell has supplied the materials we need for answering the difficulty that wordless music gives us no subject-matter about which to make a judgement. Similarly with the secondary emotions that are not about the music, if we can identify an object for them. We may then make a judgement of goodness or badness about the object of our real-life longing, or attach our disappointment or joy to an object which we judge to be good or bad. The cases in which a judgement is likely to be missing are not these, but rather those in which we do not recognize the object of our real-life longing,310 or in which we cannot attach our further disappointment or joy to a real-life object. In those cases we may, as we say, feel as if something was good or bad, and that may be enough to set up first movements. But feeling-as-if is not judging. These are the cases which threaten Chrysippus' identification of emotion with judgement. For although judgement is absent, it looks as if emotion is present. We cannot plausibly re-employ the device we used above contrasting our reaction to Medea with our reaction to a fire in the theatre, in order to show that our responses to music are not emotions in this kind of case. They feel too like emotions. We shall find cases of every type, cases where emotion and judgement are both present, both absent, or—and this is the case which hurts Chrysippan Stoicism—one present, one absent. Posidonius is looking for an example of the last when he says that wordless music can change emotion without changing judgements. When his example is repeated by Augustine and others, we find that the emotion first aroused and subsequently calmed in Posidonius' story was lust.

309

This point was already made by Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound (880; Basic Books edn. 1966), 331; ‘we are yearning, not for inexpressible things, but for the next note. ’ I owe the reference to Malcolm Budd. The idea is also in the spirit of Schopenhauer. See Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford, 1983 and 1997).

310

This is viewed as a central case in musical response by Annette Baier, ‘What Emotions are About’, in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Action Theory and Philosophical Perspectives, 4 (Rightview Publishing Co., Atascadero Calif., 1990), 1–29.

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The youths in the story were trying to break down the door of a chaste woman.311 But this emotion, Chrysippus would happily argue, involves judgements of sex as a supposed good to reach for. Indeed, on Stoic principles, the action as well as the emotion requires a judgement of appropriateness.312 So although I believe Posidonius is right to cite wordless music, because it does provide examples of emotion aroused without judgement, his own example is not the right one to show this. On the other hand, if emotion is aroused as we shall see had been suggested by Damon, Plato, and the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon, merely by some kinship between the music and an emotion, it is less likely that an object for judgement and assent will be identified. 313 Diogenes does not further analyse the kinship. But examples could be music imitating a sad voice, or the gay beat of a dancing rhythm.314 In these cases we may merely feel as if there was something good or bad and as if inner reactions would be appropriate. Certainly, we have no good reason to assent that this is really so. I conclude that Chrysippus can sometimes be defended by Seneca's strategy of showing emotion and judgement both absent, sometimes by the alternative strategy of showing them both present. But there is a residue of cases which support Posidonius, in which wordless music arouses emotion without judgement. In Chapter 10 I shall discuss the possible neurophysiological basis of this phenomenon. But I should say straight away that we might reasonably expect a neurophysiological basis, because of what others have referred to: the universal cooing exchanges with infants long before they have words, and the infant's ability to learn intonation also before words.315

Theories Designed To Make Cause and Effect Alike The problem of how music can cause emotion has been made very much harder in both ancient and modern times by the erroneous

311

Galen PHP 5. 6. 21–2, p. 330 de Lacy; Augustine Against Julian 5. 5. 23.

312

I thank Tad Brennan for the last point.

313

According to Diogenes, we shall see below, music may arouse emotion through a likeness or kinship between the music and the emotion. Diogenes refuses to call this imitation, but talk of imitation or kinship may be easier to accept than talk of likeness, judging from Madell, ‘What Music Teaches Us about Emotions’, 64–6, who mounts a powerful attack on the idea that there is a likeness between the contour of the musical notes and the behaviour of someone who has the relevant emotion.

314

I am grateful to Carolyn Wilde for these illustrations.

315

See for example the suggestive references in Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (London, 1997), ch. 1.

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assumption that cause and effect must be like each other.316 This assumption has created a difficulty for those who think about wordless music, which involves no judgements or appearances, when they confront the evidence that emotion does involve judgements or appearances. How, of two things so unlike, can one be the cause of the other? The problem, I believe, is a false one, because the causal assumption is false. None the less, it has provoked much the same permutations in the ancient and in the modern solutions.

Posidonius The erroneous causal assumption is shared both by the Stoic Posidonius and by his near contemporary, the Epicurean Philodemus. I shall postpone until Chapter 8 justifying my interpretation of Posidonius, and for now I simply assume it. I shall assume, inter alia, that the argument is Posidonius' own, even though it is voiced by Galen. I believe Posidonius supposes that cause must be like effect. Both in his argument about music and in the immediately following argument about imagination,317 he takes it that the irrational affects the irrational and the rational the rational. He is quite deliberately talking about wordless music: rhythms and scales. This does not incorporate rational judgement. Consequently, in his view, the emotions it arouses (epegeirein) or calms cannot themselves consist of rational judgements. The same view, as Nussbaum shows, has been taken in the modern literature.318 The passage runs as follows: Why was it for heaven's sake—I shall put this question too to the followers of Chrysippus—that when Damon the musician came up to a woman playing the Greek oboe (aulein, aulētris) in the Phrygian mode to some young men who were drunk and doing frantic things and ordered her to play in the Dorian mode, they immediately stopped their frenzied antics? For surely they are not taught to revise the beliefs of the rational element by the

b

316

For qualifications to the principle see Aristotle On Generation and Corruption 1. 5, 320 21; Philoponus In GC 83. 30–84. 13; Alexander In Metaph. 147. 23–6; ‘Simplicius’ In DA 120. 31–4; Plotinus 6. 7. 16 (3–14, 39–43). It has been pointed out to me that there is an unspoken qualification to the principle in the Stoic view that causes are bodies (e.g. a knife), whereas effects are incorporeal predicates like being cut, although this effect has in their view to befall another body, e.g. wood.

317

Galen PHP 5. 6. 23–6, p. 330 de Lacy.

318

Martha Nussbaum sets out the various philosophical positions with wonderful perspicacity in her forthcoming Gifford lectures book, Upheavals of Thought, ch. 4, ‘Music and Emotion’. For this type of view she cites Posidonius, Schopenhauer, Suzanne Langer, and Jerrold Levinson, although she warns that some are talking about the expression, rather than the arousal, of emotion.

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oboe music. Rather, they are aroused (epegeiresthai) or calmed in respect of the emotional element of the soul which is irrational through irrational movements. For help or harm comes to the irrational through irrational things, and to the rational through knowledge or ignorance.319

Posidonius believes that his own account can satisfy the requirement that cause be like effect. According to Posidonius, the emotional factor in the soul (to pathētikon), which corresponds to Plato's two irrational parts, engages in the emotional movements (pathētikai kinēseis), which I shall discuss in Chapter 7. Posidonius' emotional movements, I shall argue there, are spatial movements of the physical soul, just as we have seen in Chapter 2 the expansions and contractions of the physical soul postulated by Chrysippus are spatial movements. That is why Posidonius can argue that the emotional movements of the soul follow (hepesthai) the condition of the body:320 both are spatial entities. It is now easy to see how musical rhythms, which involve spatial movements of the air, could produce emotional movements in the soul via the body. In fact Plato, who is Posidonius' model, had already discussed certain analogous effects on the soul. Sensations (aisthēseis) are themselves movements which pass through the body to the soul, and when they are very violent, as they are in children, or in our first ancestors when newly created, then they can even disturb the circular movements of the rational part of the soul and stop people thinking.321 No wonder sounds can set up movements of soul. Plato defines sound in the same work as the shock (plēgē) inflicted by the air on the brain and blood through the ears, and passed on as far as the soul. Hearing, he adds, is the resulting movement starting from the head and ending around the seat of the liver.322 Melody and rhythmical rocking put babies to sleep, because the movement from outside masters the inner movement that was causing fear, and Bacchic dancing to the oboe cures patients by the same means.323 Posidonius is thinking in this same tradition and supposing that the spatial movements involved in sound set up spatial movements in the emotional part of the soul. Such causation respects the principle that effect is like cause. In fact the principle, that effect must be like cause, and be non-rational if the cause is non-rational, is erroneous. A hot water-bottle,

319

Galen PHP 5. 6. 21–2, p. 330 de Lacy.

320

Ibid.5.5.23, p.322 de Lacy.

321

Plato Timaeus 43 C –44 B .

322

Ibid. 67 A –B ;cf.64 B ;80 A .

323

Id. Laws 9, 790 D –791 B .

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which involves no rational judgements, can induce in me the rational judgement that the world is not such a bad place after all. There is also a further oversight. For if effect really did need to be like cause, Chrysippus could plead against Posidonius that the requirement is satisfied. For the musical modes and judgements are alike, in Stoic theory, in both having a physical basis, and the physical bases could interact. The physical basis of one could interfere with the physical basis of the other, thereby destroying the current judgement and perhaps leaving intact an earlier one. The like-to-like principle could also work in other ways, by reminding someone of earlier judgements made in a similar musical context.

Philodemus and Seneca Philodemus comes to a different conclusion on the basis of the same erroneous assumption that effect must be like cause. Melody is non-rational (melos alogon) and so cannot change emotions. Much less can it have stopped a civil war, as had been claimed. It is rather the words in music that arouse emotion.324 Once again, analogous views have been taken in the modern debate.325 Philodemus gives the following account. For no melody, being qua melody irrational, rouses the soul from stillness and quiet and leads it to the natural disposition of character. Nor does it calm the soul and settle it in a state of rest from thrusting and rushing to

324

Translations from Philodemus On Music book 4 follow below. Extracts from the 1884 edition by Kemke are printed in von Arnim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta vol. 3 (1903), as Diogenes frags. 54–90. Neubecker published an edition of the continuous columns from book 4 in 1986. In 1969 Rispoli edited fragments which he assigned to book 1, but which Delattre assigns to the beginning of book 4. The papyrus rolls, buried under volcanic ash at Herculaneum, were in some cases sliced open and copied in the 18th cent., but the copies were wrongly stored. Delattre's new techniques for reassembling scattered sections have given rise to a series of revisions: Daniel Delattre, ‘Philodème, De la musique livre 4, col. 40* a 109*’, Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989), 49–143; id., ‘Speusippe, Diogène de Babylone et Philodème’, Cronache ercolanesi 23 (1993), 67–86; Janko, ‘A First Join . . . ’, Cronache ercolanesi, 22 (1992), 123–9. I am very grateful to Daniel Delattre for showing the Obbink/Janko seminar at the Institute of Classical Studies the Dec. 1995 draft of relevant parts of his forthcoming edition of book 4, including parts not covered in his earlier publications, and for discussing them with us.

325

Hanslick, Vom musikalisch-Schönem ; Kivy, ‘What was Hanslick Denying?’ (see n. 16 above). Hanslick, with Kivy's approval, uses the argument that music cannot of itself produce emotion because emotion involves judgements and ideas (pp. 34–5 of Cohen's translation). Kivy adds that it is the words, not the music, that produce the effect, though at the time he is discussing the expression, rather than the arousal, of emotion, Sound Sentiment, ch. 14.

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whatever it may be. Nor can it turn the soul from one impulse to another, nor lead its existing disposition in the direction of increase or decrease.326 Nor did [Diogenes of Babylon] provide examples of that sort of thing, but of thought. He threw in melody only by way of assertion and incidentally. Nor did [Diogenes] show Ibycus and Anacreon and others like them corrupting young men by melodies, but by thoughts. For they broke the young men, if at all, by the words which Persaios327 spoke of, whereas a melody which accompanies as a vocal quality cannot be inflammatory [reading purōdēs]. So we shall not agree that lovers are pleased, if they want this, because of melodies which resemble their state. We shall say it is rather through words and thought, and that Aristophanes shows that the ancients use a weakened voice, as they called it in antiquity, and prostitute themselves with their eyes, not with melodies. If he said it was with melodies we shall assign [reading prostaxomen] him tears. For so far as concerns the power of melodies, they neither summon people to what he so confidently says they do, nor do they summon men and women to private [reading idias] copulations, nor men in the bloom of youth to womanizing. For neither has he, nor have the comic writers, shown any such thing in the case of [reading epi]the works of Agathon and Democritus. They merely claim this. Nor did the actor Nicandros provide evidence [reading tekmērion] of this through his actions, though, if anything, he did go astray. Not only is music, indeed, unable to assuage misfortune in love, since that is the task of speech only, but it distracts (makes anepiblētoi) people into switching their attention, just like sex and drunkenness.328 For indeed the philosopher ought to have written down how irrational melodies can halt a rational dispute and ought to have persuaded us in that way that the melodies of Thaletas and Terpander halted the disputes of the Laconians.329

On Philodemus' view, music effects the therapy recommended by Epicurus as opposed to the Stoics. Instead of changing people's judgements on rational questions, wordless music merely distracts people and makes them inattentive (anepiblētoi) to their emotional concerns. Already we have two permutations. There is Posidonius' view that emotion does not require judgement, and Philodemus' that melody per se does not cause emotion. Seneca would side with Philodemus.

326

Philodemus, On Music book 4, ed. Neubecker, ch. 1, p. 40, col. 3 =Delattre's forthcoming edn., col. 117. 10–23 =Delattre, ‘Philodème, De la musique livre 4, col. 40* à 109*’ (1989), p. 77 = SVF 3, Diogenes 62, from Kemke's edn., p. 65.

327

Stoic pupil of Zeno of Citium, fl. 260–256 BC ;see SVF 1, 435–62.

328

Philodemus, On Music book 4, ed. Neubecker, ch. 8, pp. 56–8, cols. 14–15 =Delattre's forthcoming edn., col. 128, line 4; col. 129, line 7.

329

Philodemus On Music book 4, ed. Neubecker, ch. 8, p. 63, col. 19.

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89

In his view, music produces first movements instead of emotion. But Seneca's own argument for this would be stymied by the assumption that effect must be like cause. For Seneca acknowledges that music produces the appearance that there is good or bad. Indeed, this appearance is needed in order to produce the first movements. And the appearance is just as propositional as a judgement, and so just as unlike the wordless music that causes it. Turning the effect into an appearance with first movements does nothing to show how it can be like its cause.330

Zeno Of Citium The Stoics, in the person of their founder Zeno, provide material for yet a third permutation. Zeno said that music is after all rational: it has logos.331 This suggests a way of accommodating the requirement that effect should be like cause. As we have seen, Zeno believed that emotions are rational, though in the sense of being caused by, rather than identical with, judgements. They can in their turn be caused by music, he could have argued, because music is also rational. As it stands, this argument is no good. For music has logos not in the relevant sense of involving judgements of reason, but in the different sense of having a structure intelligible to reason. However, in her forthcoming Gifford lectures Martha Nussbaum has argued that music is a form of symbolic representation. She sees this as showing how music can be the cause of the judgements which are involved in emotion. I must leave it to her to expound the argument, which is both subtle and fascinating.332 But what I want to say is that it is, in my view, unnecessary. For if effect need not be like cause, the music which causes judgements need not itself contain anything like judgements.

Two Reactions To Diogenes Of Babylon Philodemus is certainly and Posidonius is probably reacting to the earlier Stoic Diogenes of Babylon. Whether or not either Philodemus or Posidonius knew of the other's work, each position is a reversed image of the other. According to Posidonius, non-rational music can change the emotions, and he concludes that emotions, at any rate in

330

I am grateful to Bob Sharples for the point.

331

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 443 A .

332

Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, ch. 4, ‘Music and Emotion’.

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these cases, are non-rational. Philodemus starts from the opposite assumption, that emotions are rational, and concludes that since melody is non-rational (melos alogon), it cannot change the emotions. Philodemus, though an Epicurean, is in one way closer to Chrysippus' intellectualism than is his Stoic opponent Diogenes. Not only does he take emotions to be rational, but he insists that disagreement over harmony is due to differing beliefs (doxai).333 He accuses Diogenes in the same breath of taking a very non-intellectualist view and saying that such disagreement is due to irrational perception. In fact, this misrepresents Diogenes,334 who, following Speusippus ap. Sextum M 7. 145–6, had taken an intermediate view. It is only high and low pitch that are perceived by irrational perception. Harmony is perceived by a perception that is scientific (epistēmonikē).335 Whether or not Posidonius knew the work of Philodemus, he surely knew of Diogenes' views.336 Diogenes was to some extent the heir of Damon and Plato. Ten fragments of Damon are collected in the standard Diels–Kranz Fragments of the Presocratic Philosophers, and Damon is quoted by Plato for his views.337 It looks as if Damon had not only insisted before Plato that music affects character, but had also supplied Plato with his view that music achieves this by its imitation (mimēsis) of or likeness (homoiotēs) to character.338 Diogenes twice quotes Plato's Laws,339 and reports Plato340 and Damon341 as saying that music can be used to inculcate justice. Diogenes argues that

333

SVF 3, Diogenes 61, p. 223. 22–3 from Kemke's edn. pp. 62–3 (from P.Herc. 1497) = Philodemus On Music book 4, ed. Neubecker, ch. 1, p. 39, col. 2 =Delattre (forthcoming edn.) col. 116.

334

So David Blank, ‘Diogenes of Babylon and the kritikoi in Philodemus: A Preliminary Suggestion’, Cronache ercolanesi, 20 (1993), 55–62. This corrects the valuable discussion by Martha Nussbaum, ‘Poetry and the Passions: Two Stoic Views’, in J. Brunschwig and M. Nussbaum (eds.), Passions and Perceptions (Cambridge, 1993), 97–149 at 117.

335

Philodemus, On Music, SVF 3, Diogenes 61, p. 222, lines 35–7, from Kemke's edn., p. 11, and p. 223, lines 10–13, from Kemke p. 62 =col. 30 of Delattre's edn. in Cronache ercolanesi, 23 (1993), pp. 75–6, from P.Herc. 411/4B +1572/8; and P.Herc. 1497/1B = Neubecker, ch. 1, pp. 37–8, col. 1B =col. 115 of Delattre's edn., Cronache ercolanesi (1989), p. 77 and forthcoming edn., and Cronache ercolanesi, 23 (1993), pp. 82–3.

336

As Martha Nussbaum says, ‘Poetry and the Passions’, 120–1.

337

No. 37 in DK; Plato Republic 400 B ; 424 C .

338

See H. Koller, Die Mimesis in der Antike (Berne, 1954), 21–75.

339

Philodemus, On Music, P.Herc. 424/3 and 1572/1 =col. 41* of Delattre's edn., Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989), p. 88.

340

Philodemus, On Music, ed. Neubecker, ch. 15, col. 24, p. 70.

341

Philodemus, On Music, P.Herc. 411/9A , col. 17 in Delattre's forthcoming edn. = SVF 3, Diogenes 56, from Kemke's edn. p. 7 =Neubecker ch. 21, p. 83, col. 34 =Rispoli frag. 18, and P.Herc. 225/21B +1578/2, col. 100 in Delattre's edn., Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989), p. 133, and forthcoming edn.

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91

music can affect emotions.342Inter alia, it can affect erotic emotions and lead to erotic virtue.343 As to how music affects emotion, Diogenes' discussion could have helped to reveal to Posidonius the difficulty of defending Chrysippus' judgemental view. Diogenes holds that our dispositions can be calmed or intensified by becoming like, or akin to (homoion, oikeion), the music,344 although he appears to have conceded, presumably as a correction of Plato and Aristotle, that the likeness was not an imitative one (ou mimētikas).345 The reason, as was argued above, why such cases create a difficulty for the judgemental view is that when emotion is aroused merely through the kinship of the music to an emotion, we are not likely to be able to make a judgement. At most, we may feel as if there was something good or bad at hand.

Later History Of the Argument From Music Elements of Posidonius' argument on music also had a later history. According to Plutarch, Pythagoras' use of music to comfort the soul shows that he was aware that the soul has a non-rational ingredient.346 The story of the Greek oboist calming the youths recurs in different versions in Ammonius and Elias in Greek, and Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, and Boethius in Latin.347 Augustine uses it, as we shall see in Chapter 26, to make a quite different claim about lust: if music can calm lust, lust cannot be under the command of the will. An eighteenth-century statement by Gibbon observes the same

342

Philodemus, On Music, SVF 3, Diogenes 62, from Kemke's edn., p. 12 = P.Herc. 1497, in Neubecker's edn., col. 3, p. 40 =col. 117 in Delattre's edn., Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989), p. 77, and in forthcoming edn.

343

Philodemus, On Music, ed. Neubecker, ch. 8, cols. 13–15, pp. 55–9 =cols. 127–9 in Delattre's forthcoming edn.

344

Philodemus, On Music, cols. 10* and 14* in Delattre's edn., Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989) (= P.Herc. 411/11B and 1583/1A =frags. 9 and 13 Rispoli), reassembled by Janko, Cronache ercolanesi, 22 (1992), p. 125, and col. 69*, lines 1–12 in Delattre edn., Cronache ercolanesi, 19 (1989), both translated by Janko, loc. cit.

345

Philodemus, On Music, col. 117 in Delattre's forthcoming edn. = SVF 3, Diogenes 63, from Kemke's edn., p. 65 =Neubecker's edn., ch. 1, p. 40, col. 3.

346

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 441 D –E .

347

Ammonius In Isagogen 13. 25 (CAG 4. 3); Elias Prolegomena Philosophiae 31. 8–25 (CAG 18. 1); Augustine Against Julian 5. 5. 23 says Julian got it from Cicero's (lost) consolation De consiliis suis ; Quintilian Institutio oratoria 1. 10. 32; Boethius On Music Preface, pp. 184.10–185.11; 185.23–186.1. For repetition of such stories in medieval Islam see A. Shiloah, ‘Ibn Hindu, le médecin et la musique’, Israel Oriental Studies, 2 (1972), repr. in his The Dimension of Music in Islamic and Jewish Culture (Aldershot, 1993), ch. 5.

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empirical facts, although it does not draw the same philosophical conclusions: Experience has proved that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour.348

348

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 68.

6 Posidonius On the Irrational Forces In Emotion Galen's Report The Stoic Chrysippus regards emotions, we have seen, as consisting in evaluative judgements. There is the judgement that something good or bad is at hand and the judgement that it is appropriate to react. I want to suggest that Posidonius, writing in the same school 150 years later, offers a brilliant critique. He raises, often in sharper form, the kind of questions that have been put in the modern philosophical debate. For now, too, the thesis has been defended that emotions are evaluative judgements,349 and now, too, objections have been raised, that judgements are not necessary or sufficient,350 that something else is required in addition, perhaps desire,351 or that emotions are not reducible to judgement, desire, or anything else.352 But the ancient debate was much sharper and more thorough than most of the modern one for the simple reason that Chrysippus specified exactly which two judgements constituted emotion in his view. This made it possible for his opponents to offer precise and detailed counter-examples, and

349

Robert Solomon, The Passions (New York, 1976). Other authors cited in the critical literature as holding related views include Errol Bedford, Jerome Neu, George Pitcher, and Roger Trigg, although their views are quite varied. A revised version of Chrysippus' view is powerfully defended by Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton, 1994), ch. 10. This brilliant book is required reading on the subject, even though, if we look at Posidonius' criticisms, I believe we shall find as much truth in them as in Chrysippus.

350

David Sachs, review of Solomon in Philosophical Review, 87 (1978), 472–5; Frithjof Bergmann, review of Solomon in Journal of Philosophy, 95 (1978), 200–8; Stephen R. Leighton, ‘A New View of Emotion’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 22 (1985), 133–41; Michael Stocker, ‘Emotional Thoughts’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 24 (1987), 56–69.

351

Desire is the suggestion of O. H. Green in Emotions. This book provides a broad-brush survey of recent literature up to 1990.

352

Michael Stocker, ‘Psychic Feelings: Their Importance and Irreducibility’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61 (1983), 5–26.

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for his defenders to elaborate his analysis to meet the problems. It has been a major complaint about modern versions of the judgemental analysis that they have not specified the precise judgements they had in mind.353 Some offer only examples, some not even that. As a result, objections to them have had to be correspondingly vague. To illustrate the modern controversy, it is comparatively easy to refute the suggestion that, for example, ‘her coming will be a good thing’ expresses excitement at a friend's arrival. It might instead be a parent's unemotional assessment of the prospect of her daughter's friend visiting.354 But Chrysippus' analysis is both less easy and more easy to attack: less easy, because it is so much more subtle, involving not only a second judgement, but also reflection on the difference between goodness and preferred indifference (Chapter 12 below) and between judgement and appearance. At the same time, it is more easy to attack because it is more rigorous in form, committing itself, rightly or wrongly, to a single formula, rather than offering illustrations. Although I do not believe that the modern debate has been equally sharp, there may have been a comparable debate in the fourteenth century. Simo Knuuttila has told me of debates in Adam Wodeham which parallel those between Zeno and Chrysippus on the role of judgements and those between Posidonius and Chrysippus on the role of assent, complete with counter-examples. I look forward to his book describing these. I believe it is necessary to assess the impact of Posidonius' objections to Chrysippus' analysis if we are to assess—as I shall try to (starting in Chapter 10)—the efficacy of Chrysippus' therapy.355

Posidonius Chrysippus' fellow Stoic Posidonius (135–51 BC), writing 150 years later, offered a very different viewpoint. He thought Chrysippan intellectualism had taken a wrong turn in forgetting Plato's teaching that, besides reason and its judgements, there were irrational forces at work in the soul. Plato had spoken of two irrational parts of the

353

See Bergmann's review of Robert Solomon, The Passions (above, n. 2).

354

Stocker, ‘Psychic Feelings’ (one of the most perceptive critics) is here commenting on George Pitcher, ‘Emotion’, Mind, 74 (1965), 326–46, whose account is by no means confined to such sentences.

355

This is one way in which my account will be different from Martha Nussbaum's in The Therapy of Desire.

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95

soul. Posidonius normally calls them capacities (dunameis),356 and says that one, the thumoeides, is concerned with anger and domination, the other, the epithumētikon, with lower appetites. Stoicism would never understand the emotions if it forgot Plato's point, and the emotions were central to everything else in ethics. Plato, in an image that influenced Freud,357 had compared reason and the two irrational forces with a charioteer and two horses,358 and had used the psychodynamic language of tugging (helkein, anthelkein).359 Posidonius repeats the analogy, including the reference to the psychodynamic tug (holkē).360 Before turning in the next two chapters to Posidonius' particular objections to Chrysippus, I should sketch his general viewpoint, a subject which will recur in Chapter 17, when I consider how it may differ from that of Galen, who reports him. Only when the cause of emotions is understood can we understand what is to be desired (orekta) or avoided (pheukta), or what exercises (askēsis) should be given to children, or why the impulse in emotion depends on imagery.361 Indeed, the whole process of education depends on our understanding human psychology.362 Moreover, the emotions occupy a central position in the explanation. No other ancient philosopher makes emotions so central. In Posidonius' words: I think that the examination of things good and evil, the examination of goals (telē), and the examination of virtues depend on a correct examination of emotions.363

Posidonius' own explanation of emotions depends on his understanding of Plato's division of the soul into three. He agrees the capacities are three in number,364 and he says that understanding them binds all the doctrines of ethics as if by a single cord.365 We shall see that Posidonius is said to give Platonic names to the three capacities of soul: rational, irascible, and appetitive (logistikon, thumoeides, epithumētikon). And he calls the last two powers the emotional element (to pathētikon) of the soul. He describes Plato as divine, admires him, and ranks him first on this subject.366 In the first book of his On the

356

But parts (moria, merē) are referred to by Galen at PHP 5.5.8; 5.5.37, pp. 318, 324 de Lacy.

357

Freud, ‘The Ego and the Id’, Standard Edition, vol. 19, p. 25.

358

Plato Phaedrus 246 A –257 B .

359

Id. Republic 439 B 3; Laws 644 E 3–6.

360

Posidonius in Galen PHP 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

361

Ibid. 5. 6. 14, p. 328 de Lacy.

362

Ibid.5.5.29–35, pp.322–4 de Lacy.

363

Ibid.5.6.2, p.326 de Lacy.

364

Ibid., e.g. 5. 4. 3, p. 312 de Lacy.

365

Ibid. 4. 7. 24, p. 286 de Lacy.

366

Ibid.4.7.23, pp.284–6 de Lacy.

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Emotions he wrote something like an epitome of Plato's discussion of how to train the rational and irrational parts of the soul in children.367 Posidonius thinks that very different training is needed for the irrational and emotional elements in the soul: For it is necessary both that this [the rational element] should acquire understanding of the truth and that the emotional movements (hai kata pathos kinēseis) should be blunted through habituation to good practices, if one is going to display a person with a better character.368 The emotional movements which it is here necessary to train are described in the preceding lines as being involuntary, although we can be trained to control them. They depend on physiognomy and on the mixture of chemicals that make up our bodies.369 The implications for education are further spelt out in what immediately follows, in line with the epitome of Plato that Posidonius wrote. One must have foresight, as Plato said, about the seed from which the child springs, and then about the regimen of the pregnant mother as regards her food, drink, exercise, rest, sleep, waking, appetite, and anger.370 This will help to make the emotional element of the soul amenable to the rational. The rational should be able by age 14 to take control, following the imagery used by Plato in the Phaedrus, like a charioteer controlling the two horses of appetite and anger: This [rational element] is small at first and weak, but finishes up large and strong around the fourteenth year, by when it is right for it, like a charioteer, to take control (kratein) and rule (arkhein) over the pair of horses naturally conjoined with it, appetite (epithumia) and anger (thumos).371 From this Posidonius concludes again that two different types of training are needed: The education and virtue of this [rational] element is understanding of the nature of things, as that of the charioteer is understanding of the instructions (theōrēmata) for driving chariots. For understanding (epistēmē) does not get generated in the non-rational capacities of the soul, any more than in the horses. For these the proper virtue accrues from a kind of non-rational habituation (ethismos alogos), for charioteers from rational instruction (logikē didaskalia).372

367

Ibid. 5. 5. 32, p. 324 de Lacy.

368

Ibid. 5. 5. 29, p. 322 de Lacy; cf. 5. 5. 35, p. 324 de Lacy.

369

Ibid. 5. 5. 22–8, pp. 320–2 de Lacy.

370

Ibid. 5. 5. 30, p. 322 de Lacy.

371

Ibid. 5. 5. 34, p. 324 de Lacy.

372

Ibid. 5. 5. 35, p. 324 de Lacy.

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97

The non-rational habituation will include the musical modes which have an effect, quite independently of any words, on children with too much or too little high spirit: We shall prescribe for some people a regimen in rhythms, scales, and exercises of one sort, for others another sort, as Plato taught us. We shall rear the dull, heavy, and spiritless (athumoi) in sturdy (orthioi) rhythms, scales which stir the soul strongly, and similar exercises, but those who are too spirited (thumikōteroi) and dart around too madly in the opposite.373 An official British document of 1905 agrees, Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers. It considers that music has an effect, independently of words, on the emotional tendencies of children: By wisely chosen songs the natural play of the healthy emotions of childhood can find an expression at once ample and controlled . . . but it is not necessary that infants should understand all the words they sing, as the chief appeal is not to the intellect, the training of which is the purpose of almost every other subject in the curriculum, but through the spirit of the song to the unconscious mind of the child.

There is also, we earlier learnt from Posidonius, a kind of habituation, presumably for the rational element, of dwelling in advance (proendēmein) on the unwelcome things that might happen, so that as and when they do, we shall not find them unfamiliar. The result of this can be that the emotional movements occur not at all, or only a little. The value of familiarity is that it prevents our beliefs being ‘fresh’—something whose relevance to emotion Chrysippus left unexplained.374 The distinction of capacities enables Posidonius to draw conclusions not only for training, but for virtues, and for the end (telos) to be pursued in life.375 As regards virtues, we must distinguish, unlike Chrysippus, between the virtue of the rational element, which is understanding (epistēmē), and the virtues of the irrational capacities. Similarly with the end (telos) of life: Zeno or Cleanthes is said to have defined this as living in conformity with nature.376 But the nature with which we are to conform is the more divine element in

373

Ibid. 5. 6. 20, p. 330 de Lacy. On orthioi rhythms see Martin West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 156–9.

374

Ibid. 4. 7. 7–11, pp. 282–4 de Lacy.

375

That this is Posidonius' conclusion is clear from ibid. 4.7.24; 5.6.1, pp. 286, 326 de Lacy.

376

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 87; Cicero Fin. 4. 14; Lactantius Div. Inst. 3. 7–8; Philo, That Every Good Man is Free ch. 22. 160 (= SVF 1. 179). But according to Stobaeus 2. 76. 2–6 Wachsmuth, it was Cleanthes who added to Zeno's formula the reference to nature.

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the soul, not the more beast-like.377 Posidonius' own definition of the end, we learn elsewhere, covers both elements of the soul. It is ‘living in contemplation of the truth and order of all things . . . in no way distracted by the irrational part of the soul’.378 Other definitions of the end are attacked.379 Posidonius' distinction of capacities also enables him to clarify what is to be desired or avoided (orekta, pheukta), namely wisdom, not the pleasure and domination which are desired by the animal-like element of the soul.380 Posidonius' repeated complaint against Chrysippus is that he cannot explain things. He cannot explain impulses being excessive (pleonazousa hormē).381 He cannot explain variations in emotional reaction as between different people.382 For example, he cannot explain why the wise person is not emotional at possessing the greatest good, virtue, or why the person who is merely progressing in that direction is not emotional at lacking that good.383 He cannot explain why emotions fade with time, although judgements remain intact.384 He cannot explain the unruliness of tears, which come unbidden, or fail to come when called.385 He cannot explain how music can control emotions.386 He cannot explain why children go to the bad because he thinks that they have an affiliation (oikeiousthai) with virtue, so that moral corruption must be due to outside factors. But he overlooks the affiliations of the emotional powers of the soul387 and their emotional movements.388

377

Galen PHP 5. 5. 36–8, pp. 324–6 de Lacy.

378

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 21 (129) (=F186 Edelstein–Kidd).

379

Posidonius objects to an alternative definition of the end, which I shall consider in ch. 12, as doing everything in your power to obtain the primary natural objectives (PHP 5. 6. 9–12, p. 328 de Lacy). This definition had been given by one of his teachers, Antipater of Tarsus, and Posidonius repeats an objection originally made by Carneades, but concedes that there is an answer. The complaint is that this is like setting up as your target (skopos) such objectives as pleasure, or freedom from trouble. The answer may have been given by Antipater himself, and it turns, as I shall explain in ch. 12, on a target (skopos) not being the same as one's goal or end (telos). The goal may be aiming well, not hitting the target. All Posidonius insists on is that the answer is not available to Chrysippus, whose definition of the end was concerned with securing matters of indifference (reading adiaphorōn : Galen PHP 5. 6. 12, p. 328 de Lacy).

380

Galen PHP 5.6.14; 5.6.17–18, pp. 328, 330 de Lacy.

381

Ibid. 4.3.4; 4.3.8, p. 248 de Lacy.

382

Ibid.4.5.26–44, pp.264–70 de Lacy.

383

Ibid. 4.5.26; 4.5.28; 4.7.6; 5.6.28, pp. 264, 282, 332 de Lacy.

384

Ibid. 4.7.7–11; 4.7.24; 4.7.28; 4.7.32–3; 4.7.35, pp. 282–8 de Lacy.

385

Ibid. 4.7.19; 4.7.36–7, pp. 284, 288 de Lacy.

386

Ibid. 5. 6. 21–2, p. 330 de Lacy.

387

Ibid.5.5.3–14, pp.316–20 de Lacy.

388

Ibid. 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

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The Attack On Galen As a Source For Posidonius The main evidence for Posidonius' view comes from a much later author, Galen. In Chapter 17 I shall consider how Galen differed from Posidonius, and shall say more about both of them. But now I need to consider Galen for a different reason, that his credibility as a reporter of Posidonius has been attacked. One author says: Too many scholars have been victims of this intrepid polemicist, of his sectarianism and persuasive ardour. It is he who transforms Posidonius into a Platonic philosopher and presents as ‘contradictions’ in Chrysippus things which his successor saw only as aporiai, or puzzles to be got out of.389 Another author speaks of Galen's interpretation of Chrysippus as a highly partisan and misleading picture of the Stoic debate.390 Again Galen has been accused of ‘significant distortion’ and ‘unenlightening polemic’, so that he is ‘obviously suspect’ and only his direct quotations from Chrysippus can be used.391 Certainly, some caution is needed. Galen is a polemicist intent on attacking Chrysippus in favour of Plato. But he is an intelligent and skilful polemicist, who fastens on the details of Chrysippus' strategy and wording.392 And he is not an indiscriminate Platonizer: he doubts, for example, a central tenet of Plato's, the immortality of the soul.393 If we go too far in dismissing our main source of evidence for Posidonius on the emotions, we shall be left with only our own ideas about what Posidonius as a Stoic must have said. Indeed, I think this has happened when modern conceptions of Stoic orthodoxy have been used to decide what Posidonius must have thought.394 Criticism has also been extended to Posidonius. ‘Posidonius’ doctrines', it has been said, ‘do far less than Chrysippus' to promote understanding of what passion is and its relation to reason.’395

389

Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 153 (translated from the French).

390

Christopher Gill, ‘Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions?’, in Juha Sihvola and Troels Engberg-Pedersen (eds.), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht, 1998), 113–48.

391

Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 140. I have benefited enormously from the expanded case against Galen put by John Cooper in ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, an article full of original insight and powerfully supported by Christopher Gill (see n. 42). I have also greatly benefited from extended discussion with Christopher Gill.

392

See the informative Ph.D. dissertation by Teun Tieleman, Galen and Chrysippus: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis 2–3, esp. 136–46.

393

Galen Quod animi mores [henceforth QAM ](That the Character of the Mind Follows the Blends in the Body), in Scripta Minora (Teubner edn.), vol. 2, p. 38.

394

Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 153.

395

A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 422–3.

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The picture I should like to put in the place of this is a quite different one. Chrysippus went as far as anyone could in making plausible the idea that emotions consist in evaluative judgements. Correcting his predecessor Zeno, who made emotions result from, but not consist in, judgements, he was able to go further in one respect than his modern counterparts. He was able, drawing on Zeno, to specify precisely which two judgements are involved in all emotions, so that the theory becomes highly testable. Emotions all involve a judgement of good or bad and the judgement that it is appropriate to react. This theory has the permanent value of showing us two points at which we may seek to attack unwanted emotions. In the end, the theory will not work, partly (not only) because there are cases, at least at the margins, which will not fit. It is to the further credit of Chrysippus and Zeno that they foresaw some of these cases, brought them out, and suggested some answers. Posidonius was to put forward an importantly different view of the emotions, and at the same time to attack Chrysippus' theory at some of its most vulnerable points. Some of his attacks would raise questions for modern versions of the idea that emotions are judgements. Other ancient authors too come out of this analysis well. In Seneca we can for the first time see clearly how Chrysippus' view could be defended. Whether these clarifications are Seneca's own contribution, or whether he is making clear what had already been said, we should in either case be grateful to him. Finally, Galen himself can be taken as a polemicist who often has some basis for complaint in the text he is attacking.

First Objection To Galen: Gratuitous Fault-Finding I shall address four of the objections to Galen's reporting. The first is that his complaints against Chrysippus are gratuitous, and that this is particularly so when he accuses Chrysippus of contradicting himself on emotions occurring without judgement or reason. On one view, there is no incompatibility to be complained of.396 I have argued in Chapter 3 that on the contrary, there is a real incompatibility between Chrysippus' account of emotion as mistaken judgement and Zeno's account of it, which Chrysippus seems to present so favourably, as akratic disobedience to recognized truth. If Chrysippus is to be defended, it needs to be shown that Chrysippus was not endorsing

396

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, 103 n. 20.

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Zeno. But the quotations from Chrysippus do not make this clear, and I have argued in Chapter 3 that Posidonius thinks he was.397 Seneca's later attempt at reconciling Zeno with Chrysippus, being written in Latin, would not have been available to Galen.

Second Objection: Who Is Orthodox, Posidonius Or Chrysippus? A second objection against Galen's reporting turns on the concept of orthodoxy. It has been argued that Posidonius is too orthodox a Stoic to abandon Chrysippus' view that emotions are judgements of reason. He cannot have reverted to the Platonic view that there are two non-rational parts of the soul, called appetitive and irascible, or collectively the emotional part, which play a role. Galen, therefore, must be disbelieved.398 This objection must also be addressed. The concept of orthodoxy has a forward-looking and a backward-looking face. We tend to think of Chrysippus as representing Stoic orthodoxy, because we look forward and see how influential he was. But if we look backwards, as Posidonius would have done, to see who is most in line with preceding views, it is not necessarily Chrysippus who looks orthodox. There is a further point. The first three Stoic heads, Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, were all open to reinterpretation. Moreover, Chrysippus was thought to have wavered in his views. All this made it easier for Posidonius to think of himself as faithful to the first two. Many of the relevant points have been made by Ian Kidd.399 Posidonius thought of both Zeno400 and Cleanthes as being on the side of the Platonists. The point about Cleanthes is well known. For Posidonius argues that Cleanthes divided the soul in Plato's way, by quoting a passage in which Cleanthes represents Reason and Anger (logismos, thumos) as distinct entities talking to each other.401 Galen doubts if Zeno is equally Platonist, and admits his position is not obvious,402 which is, incidentally, another sign that Galen is not himself an indiscriminate Platonizer. But the oral character403 of Zeno's teaching on the subject may have left room for doubt.

397

Posidonius at Galen PHP 4. 5. 26–44, pp. 264–70 de Lacy.

398

Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 153.

399

I am very grateful for discussion with Ian Kidd. A number of the points in the next two paragraphs are made in the commentary on his Posidonian fragments F165, F182, and testimonia T91; T93, T99: Posidonius, vol.2. The Commentary, ed. I. G. Kidd (Cambridge, 1988).

400

Galen PHP 4. 4. 38, p. 258 de Lacy.

401

Ibid. 5. 6. 34–6, p. 332 de Lacy.

402

Ibid. 5. 6. 42, p. 334, line 23 de Lacy.

403

Ibid. 4. 7. 2, p. 280, lines 22–3 de Lacy.

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Certainly, Posidonius claims that Chrysippus was out of line with both Zeno and Cleanthes in not referring to an emotional part of the soul to explain the abatement of emotion.404 Galen implies that Chrysippus is unorthodox when he describes Posidonius as praising the ancient (palaion) view and rejecting Chrysippus' idea that the soul has only a rational, not an appetitive and an irascible, element.405 In line with this, Galen describes Chrysippus as using the arguments of an alien school (allotria hairesis), and not the hypothesis that belonged to his own (oikeia hupothesis). This illustrates how easy it is for an ancient philosopher to represent his own views as the orthodox ones, whatever he wants to say. It was standard practice to present oneself as orthodox, where modern philosophers might prefer to claim credit for novelty. As for Chrysippus, there would be no necessity to express agreement with him, since he was not viewed by the Stoics themselves as a founder figure. (David Sedley has argued that it is only with founder figures that disagreement has to be disguised.406) There is more. We find Galen and Posidonius arguing that Chrysippus after all agrees with them despite himself—another typical strategy in ancient philosophy. Galen's claim is that Chrysippus contradicted himself between different books. In his work On the Soul, as opposed to the main treatise under discussion, On the Emotions, Chrysippus is said to assign love to the appetitive capacity (epithumētikē) and anger to the irascible (thumoeides).407 In fact, this is merely Galen's interpretation. All Chrysippus actually does is to leave the distinction among the soul capacities unchallenged, while he argues that at any rate they cannot be assigned to different parts of the body.408 Posidonius also uses Chrysippus as a witness (martus) in favour of his own views. Chrysippus is quoted in order to argue that he is committed to agreeing that emotions fade because of satiety. Moreover, with satiety, reason makes its way in and finds space, as it were. This appears to treat reason as a distinct entity which is displaced by others at the height of emotional turmoil.409 Of course, we are not told the context of Chrysippus' remarks. Here too he could have

404

Ibid. 5. 6. 33, p. 332 de Lacy.

405

Ibid. 7. 1. 9, p. 430, lines 11–16 de Lacy.

406

David Sedley, ‘Philosophical Allegiance’, in J. Barnes and Miriam Griffin (eds.), Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1989), 97–119.

407

Galen PHP 4.1.6–17; 5.4.6, pp. 234–8, 314 de Lacy.

408

I thank Ian Kidd for showing me this.

409

Galen PHP 4.7.12; 4.7.25–35 pp. 286–8 de Lacy. See 4. 7. 12 and 25 for martus, 27 for reason, passim for satiety.

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avoided contradiction if he made the emotions that subside in the face of reason to be themselves acts of reason. But it is implied that he did not. Another Stoic who may have diverged from Chrysippus is Posidonius' teacher, Panaetius. There is evidence, quite widely accepted, that Panaetius treated impulse as a capacity distinct from, and opposed to, reason: For the capacity (vis) and nature of minds is twofold. One part is placed in impulse (appetitus), which in Greek is hormē, and which snatches a person hither and thither. The other part is placed in reason, which teaches and explains what is to be done and avoided. So it comes about that reason is in charge and impulse submits.410 Panaetius is also reported as saying that temperance holds in control the disturbed movements of the mind which the Greeks call pathē and makes the impulses (appetitiones) which they call hormai obedient to reason.411

Someone may object that there is nothing un-Chrysippan here. For the impulse, which in Panaetius' account is contrasted with, and subjected to, reason, may itself be viewed, in Chrysippus' manner, as an act of reason. After all, it is a Stoic orthodoxy that reason and impulse are distinct capacities.412 They must be distinct, since they develop at different ages.413 Since this in no way prevents impulse in adult humans from being an act of reason in Chrysippus, why, it may be asked, should not impulse be an act of reason in Panaetius too? Still, this is not the impression created by Cicero's silence, when he presents Panaetius' impulse as not merely distinct from reason, but opposed to it, without any hint that it is an act of reason. This is not to say that Panaetius' distinction of capacities already anticipates the much more Platonic one of Posidonius. It is a twofold distinction and makes no use, as Posidonius does, of the terminology of Plato's threefold division. But it reveals once again that considerations of orthodoxy did not require agreement with Chrysippus.

410

Cicero Off. 1.101; cf. 1.132. The evidence is still challenged by M. van Straaten, ‘Notes on Panaetius' Theory of the Constitution of Man’, in Images of Man in Ancient and Medieval Thought [Festschrift for G. Verbeke] (Leuven, 1976), 93–109. But it is accepted by Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 292–3 n. 19.

411

Cicero Off. 2. 8.

412

Iamblichus ap. Stobaeum 1. 368–9 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 143; 2. 826).

413

See Iamblichus ap. Stobaeum 1. 317 Wachsmuth (SVF 1. 149); Aëtius Placita 5. 23. 1(Dox. Gr. ed. Diels pp. 434–5; SVF 2. 764); Diogenes of Babylon, according to Diocles Magnes in Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7. 55(SVF 3 Diogenes 17).

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Third Objection: Do Emotions Involve, Or Are They Identical With, Judgements? The third objection to Galen's reporting exploits the fact that Posidonius does after all allow a major role to judgements in emotion. This is perfectly true, but the important question is whether Posidonius accepts Chrysippus' view that the emotions are simply identical with judgements. I doubt if the texts in which Posidonius gives a role to judgements go as far as this. But first we must look at Galen's report and at the evidence which has been thought to conflict with it. Galen says: Posidonius completely departed from both opinions. He does not think the emotions (pathē) are judgements (kriseis), nor supervenient (epigignesthai) on judgements, but in everything he follows the ancient account and thinks they are produced by the spirited and appetitive capacities.414 So far this might suggest that emotions never involve judgements. But according to Plutarch, or pseudo-Plutarch, if we can believe him,415 Posidonius regarded appetite, fear, and anger as based on judging and apprehending (en krisesi kai hupolēpsesin): Posidonius says that some afflictions (pathē) are (i) mental and others (ii) physical and some, (iii) though physical not mental, are found in (peri) the mind, while others (iv), though mental not physical, are in (peri) the body. (i) Mental without qualification, he says, are those based on (literally, those in) judging and apprehending (ta en krisesi kai hupolēpsesin), for example, appetites, fears, anger. (ii) Physical without qualification, fevers, chills, fattening, thinning. (iii) Physical but in the mind, lethargy, melancholy, bites (dēgmoi), appearances, expansions (diakhuseis). (iv) Contrariwise, mental, but in the body, trembling, pallor, and changes of appearance in fear or distress. Further connections between emotion and judgement are suggested by Posidonius' reference to thinking (putare) in the definition of anger which Lactantius ascribes to him, and which had probably been recorded by Seneca:

414

Galen PHP 4. 3. 3, p. 248 de Lacy.

415

(Pseudo?)-Plutarch, p. 48 of fragments (Loeb vol. 15), cited by Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 156, and Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, 104 n. 25. On the other hand, Teun Tielman (disagreeing with Kidd, Posidonius, on frag. 154) argues that the classification must be early Stoic, not Posidonian. But his stated ground is the reference to judgements, and I am arguing that Posidonius agrees with Chrysippus that, at least standardly in adult humans, emotions involve judgements.

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105

an appetite for punishing the person by whom you think (putes) you are unjustly harmed.416

The conflict in these sources is best explained, I believe, if Posidonius denied judgement in some cases of emotion, but saw judgement as being present in the standard cases. And this fits exactly with the detailed criticisms by Posidonius which Galen records, some of which cite examples where judgement is missing, but others of which presuppose the presence of judgement. If emotions are standardly characterized by judgements, this will be why Posidonius chooses this way of picking them out for contrast with bodily afflictions, like fever. As for Posidonius' definition of anger as involving thoughts about harm (putes), this word will cover the fact that anger normally involves judgement, though sometimes only an appearance, or feeling ‘as if ’. As regards Galen's description of Posidonius, it is misleading only to the extent that he is putting in a rather unqualified way the actual state of affairs, which is that for Posidonius the emotions are not identical with judgements, as Chrysippus supposes. This is not to deny that the emotions still typically involve judgements. I think that scholarship has been tempted to ask too black-and- white a question: does Posidonius regard all emotions, or no emotions, as involving judgement? If I am right, the truth is that he sees them as standardly, but not always, involving judgements, and as not identical with judgements.

Fourth Objection: Would Not an Emotional Element In the Soul Prevent Eradication Of Emotion and Viewing Indifferents As Indifferent? It may be thought that Galen must be wrong to ascribe to Posidonius Plato's two emotional powers of the soul. For Posidonius would then have to abandon the Stoic belief, to be discussed in Chapters 13 and 14, that emotion can be eradicated (apatheia), and (it might seem) the belief, to be discussed in Chapter 12, that everything except character and rationality can be viewed as indifferent. The first response to make is that we need to look at the evidence whether or not Posidonius did share these beliefs. He is against our living our whole life in accordance with emotion zēn kata pathos.417 Moreover, Galen tells us, if emotion is defined in Chrysippus' way

416

Lactantius On God's Anger, ch. 17. This definition had probably been supplied in a mutilated part of Seneca On Anger 1. 2. 3.

417

Galen PHP 5.5.28; 5.6.4; 5.6.8; 5.6.16, pp. 322, 326, 328 de Lacy.

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as an irrational movement of the soul contrary to nature, Posidonius agrees that it will not be found in the souls of refined people (asteioi).418 But it is very significant that the asteios is said to be free of emotion only if emotion is taken as something contrary to nature. For Posidonius rejects that definition, since, as pointed out above, he regards our nature as including an emotional element.419 Neither point, then, endorses Chrysippus' view that (apart from such exceptions as the eupatheiai) we should have no emotion at all, and the second point actually calls it in question. Posidonius does mention Chrysippus' view on apatheia, but again does not endorse it, in a dialectical passage directed against Chrysippus' comparison of mental and bodily health. There is no bodily analogue, Posidonius complains, of freedom from emotion (apatheia).420 But he does not say whether he shares Chrysippus' belief in such apatheia. John Cooper offers a further telling point which is more decisive still. Posidonius describes some people as lacking in anger, dull, and sluggish (athumoi, ambleis, nōthroi). They will need rhythms and scales to stir the soul up.421 This implies that Posidonius actually does not want them to be emotionless. There is more. Zeno will have wanted people to be free of pathos, because he defines pathos as excessive. But it was argued in Chapter 3 that his concept of pathos did not cover all or most of emotion, but only those Medea-like emotions which involve disobedience to reason. Posidonius would then have had a precedent in thinking that apatheia or freedom from pathos involves only freedom from emotions which are excessive. Qualifications to the ideal of freedom from emotion may also be present in Posidonius' teacher, Panaetius. Admittedly, he, far more explicitly than Posidonius, endorses some kind of freedom from emotion. For, to judge from Cicero's report, Panaetius speaks of being free (liber, vacandum) from all perturbation of the mind (perturbatio being Cicero's translation of pathos).422 Yet he also talks of making the impulses (hormai) obedient to reason, and of treating what other people think glorious as small (parva).423 Hence there is much to be said for the suggestion that for Panaetius freedom from pathos consists in no more than moderating emotion by reason. And it

418

Ibid.5.2.2, p.294 de Lacy.

419

Ibid. 5. 5. 36–8, pp. 324–6 de Lacy; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 21 (129) (frag. 186 Edelstein–Kidd).

420

Galen PHP 4. 2. 5, p. 296 de Lacy.

421

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, 27, on PHP 5. 6. 20, p. 330 de Lacy.

422

Cicero Off. 1.67; 1.69.

423

Cicero Off. 1.67; 2.18.

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turns out this is the view of Panaetius which Aulus Gellius actually takes.424 So far the evidence on apatheia actually supports Galen's attribution to Posidonius of an emotional element in the soul. But what about the evidence on indifferents? This evidence is mixed. Two reports in Diogenes Laertius, and one in Epiphanius treat Posidonius and Panaetius as dissenting from Chrysippus on indifferents. But the claim that Posidonius put wealth and health in the class of things good, not indifferent, is contradicted in Seneca's much fuller report and probably by Cicero's story about Posidonius' reaction to an attack of pain in the joints, which is in any case relevant. Discussing the general subject of indifference, Posidonius met attacks of pain by exclaiming, ‘It is no good, pain, although you are troublesome (molestus), I shall never concede that you are an evil (malum).’425 When Cicero reports that Panaetius, in a letter on enduring pain, refrained from denying that pain is an evil, we cannot accept Cicero's inference that Panaetius accepted pain as evil. For Stoics often tailor their advice to the person addressed. With grief, Chrysippus himself recommends attacking the idea that it is appropriate to indulge, rather than saying that everything is indifferent.426 And there is a more extreme example of this technique in Seneca's On Consolation to Marcia, which, not content with passing over in silence the indifference of her bereavement, actually emphasizes its magnitude by comparing the virtues of other sons who died prematurely.427 But this is done for purposes of persuasion, and in fact it provides a very effective preparation for other techniques. The further report that both Posidonius and Panaetius rejected the claim of virtue to be sufficient for happiness, and desiderated health, strength, and provisions (khorēgia) as necessary, could be true, although it gets no support from Cicero.428 But what if Posidonius did accept to a greater or lesser extent the

424

Aulus Gellius 5. 12; Rist Stoic Philosophy, 183. The latest discussion of Panaetius agrees: Francesca Alesse, Panezio di Rodi e la tradizione stoica (Naples, 1994), 156–62, cf. M. van Straaten, Panétius (Amsterdam, 1946).

425

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 103; Epiphanius On Faith 9. 46, contradicted by Seneca Letter 87.31–2, 35, and possibly by Cicero Tusc. 2. 61.

426

Cicero Tusc. 3. 76.

427

Seneca Marcia 2.3; 3.1.

428

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 128, ignored by Cicero Fin. 3. The passages are discussed by Ian Kidd, ‘Stoic Intermediates and the End of Man’ in A. A. Long (ed.), Problems in Stoicism (London, 1971), 150–72 at 158–63 (revised from Classical Quarterly, NS 5 (1955), 181–94); Griffin Seneca, 296 n. 5. Their doubts are not reflected in Alesse, Panezio di Rodi.

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view that most things are indifferent? This would in no way impugn Galen's ascription to him of an emotional part of the soul. Even the sage will need to use the spirited and appetitive powers of his soul, and not only when he engages in eupatheia. Simply in his correct selection of indifferents, he must avoid the listlessness which, we have seen, Posidonius condemns. Of course, in engaging in emotion, Posidonius' sage is not erroneously taking indifferent things to be good or bad. For Posidonius simply does not accept that Chrysippan account of what an emotion is. Nor is there any reason why he should, since, as was argued in Chapter 3, Zeno did not accept that definition of emotion either.

7 Posidonius Judgements Insufcient for Emotion Exhaustion and Lack of Imagination Posidonius has two arguments to show that Chrysippus' judgements are not sufficient for emotion, and three, which I shall postpone to the next chapter, to show they are not necessary. Two of the objections were anticipated by Chrysippus himself, who attempted replies. I believe Posidonius thinks that judgements are not ever sufficient, since the irrational powers of the soul always need to be involved, whereas he thinks, more modestly, that they are not invariably necessary, because sometimes the emotional movements, which I shall discuss further in this chapter, are sufficient to cause emotion on their own. I believe he is right that the relevant judgements are often, but not always, necessary, and right, at least for many cases, that they are not sufficient.

Objection 1: Judgement Not Sufcient When Emotions Fade Through Lapse Of Time Or Exhaustion The first objection to the sufficiency of judgements appeals to emotion abating through lapse of time or exhaustion, though the judgements remain. Chrysippus already saw the problem that, with lapse of time, distress may abate (anesis) even though the two supposedly constituent judgements may appear to remain intact. He admits that the first of his two value judgements might remain, that the present situation is bad. But he is not embarrassed by this admission, because he thinks he has two explanations, labelled (1a) and (1b) in the translation below. One explanation is that the second value judgement abates (aniesthai) with time, the judgement that it is appropriate to experience contraction. That is what is meant by Chrysippus' remark

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that the impulse towards contraction abates.429 And we shall see (p. 112) that Galen envisages a similar point about fear. The other explanation is of less obvious relevance. It is that, with time, the contraction itself may abate. For Chrysippus, unlike Zeno, contraction is a mere concomitant of distress. But if it is a necessary concomitant, its absence would indeed guarantee the absence of distress. Chrysippus' treatment of distress fading, while judgement remains, runs as follows in Galen's report: Chrysippus himself bears witness, in the second book of On Emotions, that emotions are softened (malattetai) in time, even if the beliefs (doxai) remain that something bad has come to pass (gegonenai). He writes as follows. ‘It might be asked how the abatement (anesis) of distress (lupē) comes about, whether through some belief changing, or with them all remaining, and why this will be the case.’ Then he adds, ‘It seems to me that a belief remains in the form that what is actually present is bad, but that as the belief grows older, (1a) the contraction abates (aniesthai), and, as I think, (1b) the impulse towards contraction.’430

The idea of Chrysippus that judgements fade when emotions do could be made plausible for one kind of case. You were wronged, but that was some years ago, and your present situation does not even appear bad to you. In that case, you can no longer make the relevant judgement of badness, for, on Chrysippus' view, that has to be a judgement about the present or future situation being bad. It does not count if only the past situation was bad. Nor can you make the second judgement that contraction or retaliation would now be appropriate. It might have been appropriate once, but in the new situation it would be pointless. So in this type of case Chrysippus' position is protected, for the relevant judgements—not just one, but both—have perished along with the emotion. But Posidonius seems more interested in a case which cannot be handled this way, where a kind of numbness is introduced by emotional exhaustion. He rejects as unexplanatory the plea that the judgement of badness is not fresh. And he ignores Chrysippus' plea that the judgement of contraction being appropriate has abated, perhaps because that plea was too obscurely put, or perhaps because it does not anyhow deal with the case that interests him. When you are drained of emotion by exhaustion, this need not be because any

429

So Inwood Ethics and Human Action, 150–1, interpreting Galen PHP 4. 7. 14, p. 284 de Lacy, in line with Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, 281–2; Pohlenz Die Stoa, vol. 1, pp. 146–7 with n.

430

Galen PHP 4. 7. 12–13, p. 284 de Lacy.

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judgement has ceased, although perhaps (as I shall point out) you are too weary to attend to it. There had been an alternative, and less satisfactory, attempt to solve the problem of emotion fading while judgement remains. On some accounts, the problem and the less satisfactory solution had already been anticipated by the founder of Stoicism, Zeno. This solution focuses on the other judgement, the judgement of goodness or badness. It defines pleasure and distress as involving a fresh (prosphatos, Latin recens) opinion of the presence of good or bad.431 Thus one should expect the emotions to fade, even though the belief is still there, provided it is no longer fresh. This is clearly an alternative to Chrysippus' later solution. Freshness was interpreted at some later date as not a purely chronological concept. For the belief, or the evil believed in, can be refreshed, as it was by Artemisia, who built the Mausoleum in memory of her husband.432 The idea of freshness is normally inserted only into the definitions of pleasure and distress, not into those of fear and appetite. (The one exception to this is belied on an adjacent page.433) One might have thought that fears and appetites for things without a date could fade in much the same way as distress and pleasure, while the judgement of badness or goodness remained intact. But the point may be434 that fears and appetites for something on a particular date are not likely to fade as the date approaches. The ‘freshness’ analysis is also modified by later suggestions that what needs to be fresh is not the belief itself, but the event which is believed to be good or bad,435 or, on one reading, even the motive power of the belief (to kinētikon).436 In its original version, the ‘freshness’ analysis has a serious defect, which I think Posidonius is quite right to point out. This is that

431

Ibid. 4.2.1; 4.7.2–5 (= SVF 3. 463), pp. 238, 280 de Lacy; Cicero Tusc. 3. 75 (ascribing to Zeno = SVF 1. 212); Stobaeus 2. 89. 2–3 Wachsmuth; Pseudo-Andronicus On Emotions 1(= SVF 3. 391).

432

Cicero Tusc. 3. 75. But a chronological concept of fresh as recent in time is still ascribed to Chrysippus at PHP 4. 7. 4, p. 280 de Lacy.

433

Stobaeus 2. 90. 13 Wachsmuth speaks, on Wachsmuth's reading, of the motive power in appetite and fear as fresh, but 2. 89. 2–3 show that freshness had been connected only with the contraction and expansion of distress and pleasure.

434

I am grateful to Tad Brennan for this suggestion.

435

Stobaeus 2. 90. 14–18 Wachsmuth; Cicero Tusc. 3. 55 (disguised in the Loeb translation), 3. 75 (as a later interpretation of Zeno, but insouciantly interchanged with the fresh belief interpretation); 4. 39; cf. present and urgent (urguere) evil at 3. 28; ascribed to Chrysippus 3. 61. See Rabbow, Antike Schriften über Seelenheilung und Seelenleitung, 149–55.

436

Wachsmuth, unnecessarily as I think, deleting kai at Stobaeus 2. 90. 13 Wachsmuth.

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adding the word ‘fresh’ on its own explains nothing.437 It may patch up the definitions of pleasure and distress, so that they pick out the right cases. But it does not explain why freshness is relevant. Cicero was later to explain the relevance of freshness and to explain it differently. But this development may have been due to Posidonius demanding an explanation.438 Cicero says that freshness makes what has happened seem bigger (maiora).439 The passage of time, he says, can work in two ways. It may give time for reflection (ratio, cogitatio), or for familiarity (usus). In either case, the lesson learnt is either that things are smaller (minora) than they seemed, or not great enough (tantum) to overturn a happy life, or that there is no evil at all.440 In other words, the original judgement is actually replaced, when it ceases to be fresh. Only the judgement that there is no evil at all should be able to remove distress altogether. But, as Galen points out,441 perhaps following Posidonius, the judgement that the evil is not intolerable, i.e. to be avoided, removes another of Chrysippus' judgements (the second judgement associated with fear), and would have provided a more consistent explanation of emotion fading than freshness. In the meantime, Posidonius had offered his own explanation of what happens when emotions fade.442 His explanation goes back to Plato's idea that there are two non-rational powers of the soul, which reason has to master as a charioteer may have to master two horses.443 One horse is concerned with victory and anger, one with the baser appetites. Posidonius uses the analogy of a rider as well as of a charioteer. His idea could be put by saying that what needs to be fresh, for distress or pleasure to occur, is not the beliefs, nor the events, but the horses. Posidonius puts his explanation in terms of people being sated (emplēsthēnai) and wearied (kamnein).444 Satiety can take two forms, either satisfaction,445 or exhaustion.446 For example, you have taken

437

Galen PHP 4. 7. 7, p. 282 de Lacy.

438

Rabbow, Antike Schriften über Seelenheilung und Seelenleitung, ch. 7.

439

Cicero Tusc. 3. 55.

440

Cicero Tusc. 3.54; 3.58; 3.74.

441

Galen PHP 4. 7. 5, p. 280 de Lacy.

442

Ibid. 4.7.7; 4.7.19; 4.7.24; 4.7.34–5; 4.7.41; 5.6.29–32; cf. 4.7.37–8, pp. 282–90, 332 de Lacy.

443

The charioteer analogy is given at Plato Phaedrus 246 A –257 B , and repeated by Posidonius at Galen PHP 5. 5. 34–5, p. 324 de Lacy. The rider is used at 5. 6. 31–2, p. 332 de Lacy.

444

Galen PHP 4.7.28; 4.7.32–3; 4.7.35; 4.7.41; 4.7.43–4; 5.6.31–2, pp. 286–90, 332 de Lacy.

445

Ibid. 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

446

Ibid. 4. 7. 28, p. 286 de Lacy.

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revenge, or you are exhausted in the course of looking for it. If you are satisfied, presumably the two judgements will have lapsed, but Posidonius' idea is that if you are exhausted, they need not have lapsed at all. In case anyone thinks that it is Galen who introduces talk of satiety, we should notice that it had been introduced even before Posidonius by Chrysippus.447 What gets sated or wearied is the emotional element of the soul (to pathētikon tēs psukhēs).448 This element consists of the two irrational capacities (dunameis) of the soul that Plato had called appetitive and irascible (epithumētikē, thumoeidēs). It is sated and wearied by emotional movements (pathētikai kinēseis)449 which are its own,450 or, equivalently, those of these two capacities.451 Sometimes instead it is sated with its own appetites,452 i.e. presumably with their fulfilment. When satisfied, it halts its own movement, which was controlling the animal's impulse (ekratei tēs hormēs).453 Once the emotional element is moving moderately (metria), reason (logismos) is able to take control (kratein) of it, as if it were controlling horses.454 The horses which the charioteer controls (kratein, arkhein), in Galen's report of Posidonius, are elsewhere called appetite and anger (epithumia, thumos).455 So for one thing, the emotional (pathētikon) element of the soul in time gets its fill of its own appetites, and for another, is exhausted by the prolonged movements. Thus when for both reasons it falls quiet, and moves moderately, reason is able to control it. It is as if a horse was itself carried away (ekphoros) and so carried away (exenenkai) the rider (epibatēs) forcibly, but then as it got exhausted with running and sated with what it had an appetite for, the holder of the reins (hēniokhos) again took control. This is often observed happening, and trainers of young animals let them get exhausted and sated with the movements by which they are carried away (ekphoroi; kinēseis) and then set hands to them.456

Posidonius is claiming that in these cases of emotional exhaustion the emotions abate not because the judgements do, but because the emotional element in the soul is exhausted by its own movements. A full assessment must await the discussion at the end of the chapter of what these movements are. They had better not be judgements

447

Ibid. 4. 7. 26(emplēsthēnai), 4.7.30(koros), p. 286 de Lacy.

448

Ibid. 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

449

Ibid. 4. 7. 28, p. 286 de Lacy.

450

Ibid. 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

451

Ibid.5.1.5, p.292 de Lacy.

452

Ibid. 5. 6. 31, p. 332 de Lacy.

453

Ibid. 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

454

Ibid. 5. 6. 31–2, p. 332 de Lacy.

455

Ibid. 5. 5. 34, p. 324 de Lacy.

456

Ibid. 5. 6. 31–2, p. 332 de Lacy.

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(as adult human impulses and appetites are for Chrysippus), or we would not have a case in which judgements remain intact. But it will turn out in any case that they are not. Presumably you still judge, for example, that you have been put in a bad situation, and that retaliation would be appropriate, but emotion is drained for Posidonius' quite different reasons.

Objection 2: Judgement Not Sufcient For Emotion Without Imagination Posidonius has a second objection to the sufficiency of Chrysippus' judgements for emotion. Being persuaded by reason that an unseen evil is at hand is not sufficient to produce fear or distress if you cannot imagine or picture it (phantasia, anazōgraphēsis). The point is surely a good one. Being intellectually convinced of the need to respond to a hostile foreign power will not provoke pity or fear in the absence of imagination. Some Britons may have felt like this about Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was bad for Czechoslovakia and Britain and it would have been appropriate to react. But in Prime Minister Chamberlain's words, Czechoslovakia was a distant country of which we knew little. We shall further see in Chapter 10 that modern cognitive therapy regards mental images as very important in changing the emotions of patients. Posidonius' explanation of the importance of imagery is that you cannot move the non-rational by means of reason, unless you present it with something like a picture (anazōgraphēsis) to look at.457 This looks like the erroneous assumption that cause must be like effect, but the error does not affect the plausibility of Posidonius' conclusion. The central argument runs as follows: For I think you have long since observed how people are not frightened or distressed when persuaded by reason that some evil is present or approaching them, but only when they get images (phantasiai) of those things. For how could one excite the irrational by reason, unless you present it with a sort of picture (anazōgraphēsis) like a visible one?458 Posidonius' point is that the judgements of reason are not sufficient for fear or distress without the irrational pictures of the imagination. This in turn enables Posidonius to explain what he believes Chrysippus fails to explain, that people progressing towards virtue do not normally feel distress at the thought that their lack of virtue is a great

457

Ibid. 5. 6. 23–6, p. 330 de Lacy.

458

Ibid.5.6.24–5, p.330 de Lacy.

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evil. The reason is that they are led to this thought by the rational element of the soul, not by the non-rational imagination.459 The importance of imagery is something rightly emphasized in ancient philosophy, and much more than in modern philosophy. Plotinus makes it a test of being in love whether you have an image of the other person in their absence.460 Imagery is dropped in mystical experience, according to Plotinus and Augustine, and must be dropped if we are ever to achieve that.461 Augustine deplores the power of images over him as obscuring knowledge of God.462 He singles out, as we shall see in Chapter 26, the power of sexual images in dreams.463 Imagination, we shall see in Chapter 15, is also used as a therapeutic device, when false imaginings are recommended. This is true of the relabelling technique in which one is urged, for example, to think of a crowd as a festival, or again when it is suggested one should think of one's dead son as merely absent, or one's health as secure. Posidonius' two examples of judgements being insufficient for emotion—exhaustion and lack of imagination—are not the only ones we could find. Emotion may be absent because of a failure of attention, not of judgement or imagination, as in the case of action in an emergency. A fire breaks out. One may judge that something bad threatens and that it is appropriate to flee, and yet in the excitement of the moment fail to feel fear. One's attention is gripped by the necessary steps for escape, rather than by the badness of what would happen if one didn't. When safety is reached, one feels horror at what might have happened. Attention has switched to that. But a switch of attention is not a switch of judgement.464 It may be through weakening attention that the exhaustion to which Posidonius appeals succeeds in calming emotion. And the passage of time may also produce its calming effect through a weakening of attention. Epicurus actually recommends calming emotion by switching attention to happy memories, as we shall see in Chapter 16. Besides imagination and attention, a third supplement that may be needed to produce emotion is the taking in of implications. Freud describes how calmer emotions are not immediately achieved by

459

Ibid. 5. 6. 28, p. 332 de Lacy; cf. 4.5.26; 4.5.28; 4.7.6, pp. 264, 282 de Lacy.

460

Plotinus 6. 7. 33 (23).

461

Id. 3.6.5; 5.8.11(4); 6.5.7(3–6); Augustine Confessions 7.17; 9.10.

462

Augustine Confessions 3.6–7; 4.15–16; 7.1; Letters 147.42–3; 148; On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 10. 25. I owe several of these references to Joe Sen.

463

Augustine Confessions 10. 30.

464

Switch of attention is discussed by Stocker, ‘Emotional Thoughts’.

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grasping the therapeutic facts. One has to become acquainted, or conversant, with them by working through them.465 On the other hand, a failure to take in the implications of upsetting facts does not necessarily protect one from emotion. Martha Nussbaum describes how, as the implications come to be recognized, they may keep reopening the wound.466

Posidonius' Emotional Movements It will confirm and clarify what has been said if we now try to determine what Posidonius' emotional movements are. Galen equates them simply with emotions (pathē).467 John Cooper, however, has made the excellent point that impulse (hormē), by which is probably meant the impulse that constitutes emotion, is not identified with the emotional movements, but is said to be controlled by them (kratein), or in certain cases generated upon their occurring (gennasthai epi).468 I think that soul movements in Posidonius are literally spatial movements of the soul, since this is what they are in Chrysippus and in Plato. The point about Chrysippus has been argued in Chapter 2, where we saw that Chrysippus' expansions and contractions of the soul are spatial movements of the physical soul in the chest. It is more surprising that Plato's soul movements should be spatial, because he is so keen to emphasize that the soul is not visible.469 But the point has been convincingly argued on the basis of the Timaeus.470 The world soul revolves. It is created out of the circles of the same and the different, and some circles move in opposite directions to others.471 The soul is not directly visible,472 but because the heavenly bodies are made to move with the movements of the world soul,473 we can infer its motion from theirs. The souls of the stellar gods and the rational part of the human soul are made on the same model, and in each case they too revolve.474 This is why we need a rounded

465

Sigmund Freud, ‘Repeating, Remembering and Working Through’, Standard Edition, vol. 12, pp. 147–56. I owe the reference to Prof. Sundara Rajan.

466

Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, ch. 10, p. 382.

467

Galen PHP 5. 1. 5, p. 292 de Lacy. This is why Galen can interchange talk of being sated by the movements (4. 7. 28, cf. 5. 6. 31–2, pp. 286, 332 de Lacy), and by appetites (5.6.31, p.332 de Lacy).

468

Ibid. 4.7.33; 5.5.21, pp. 288, 320 de Lacy, cited by Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’.

469

Plato Phaedo 78 B –80 C ; Timaeus 36 E .

470

By David Sedley at the Cambridge seminar on the Timaeus, May 1995. A similar view is taken by Gabriela Carone in her Ph.D. dissertation ‘Mind as the Foundation of Cosmic Order in Plato's Late Dialogues’ (London, 1996).

471

Plato Timaeus 36 C –D .

472

Ibid. 36 E .

473

Ibid. 38 C –39 E .

474

Ibid. 40 A ;41 D –42 A ;43 D ;44 A –B .

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head to accommodate the revolutions,475 and if the circles get out of true through disuse, we may be reincarnated as animals with elongated heads, to accommodate the distortion.476 This is also why the movements in the body in humans when they were first created, and nowadays in newborn babies, obstruct intelligence. They do so by shaking the circuits of the soul.477 Sound is described as a movement that passes from the body to the soul, and hearing as a movement that passes from head to liver.478 Plato's Laws takes up the same theme. The therapeutic value of nurses rocking babies and singing, and of corybantic dancing, is based on the bodily movements calming the movements of the soul.479 Given this background in Plato and in Chrysippus, we can suppose that the emotional movements of Posidonius are spatial movements of what he calls the emotional element in the soul. That is, so I argued in Chapter 5, how Posidonius thinks he can satisfy the principle that cause is like effect: the spatial movements involved in sound set up spatial movement in the emotional part of the soul. This is just what Plato had thought about hearing in general and about nurses singing to babies in the passages just cited. For Aristotle such spatial movement of the soul would be unthinkable. The soul, in his view, is a familiar set of lifemanifesting capacities,480 not the sort of thing that could move. And he devotes a long chapter to rejecting the view of his predecessors that the soul does move.481 Cooper has made a further suggestion of great interest. He takes Posidonius' emotional movements to be feelings of excited attraction to, and repulsion from, agitating objects and events.482 I am not sure that Posidonius will have worked out any further characterization of emotional movements, beyond their being spatial movements of the soul, and none is recorded. But I agree that if he had done, it would have been sensible of him to characterize the emotional movements as being, or at least as producing, feelings like those that Cooper describes. For first, if Posidonius' emotional movements are in this way directed to objects of an agitating kind, their fading through satiety or exhaustion will indeed help to explain our emotions fading.

475

Ibid. 44 D .

476

Ibid. 91 E –92 A .

477

Ibid. 43 A –44 B .

478

Ibid. 67 A –B .

479

Plato Laws 790 D –791 B .

480

Seemy ‘BodyandSoulinAristotle’, Philosophy, 49 (1974), 63–89 at 64–5, repr. in J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle vol. 4 (London, 1979), 42–64 at 43–4.

481

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 3.

482

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’.

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Secondly, the emotional movements, conceived in Cooper's way, will be well qualified to generate (gennān) and control (kratein) emotion. The following passages, speaking of the impulse which constitutes emotion, say that it is generated or controlled upon the occurrence of the emotional movements: it halts its own movement which was controlling (ekratei) the animal's (tou zōiou) impulse (hormē) and was leading [the animal] in its own direction (kath' heautēn) to wherever the animal was being diverted.483 For impulse (hormē) is generated in the animal (zōiou) sometimes on the one hand upon the judgement (krisis) of the rational element (logistikon). Often on the other hand it is generated upon the movement of the emotional element (pathētikon).484

There is another suggestion in the literature, that Posidonius' emotional movements are an anticipation of the ‘first movements’ of Seneca's On Anger.485 The suggestion may be tempting, because Posidonius' emotional movements, like Seneca's first movements, occur independently of, and before, the hormē or impulse in which emotions consist,486 and are also involuntary, since they occur of necessity (anangkaiōs),487 although we can be trained to control them.488 In my view, however, Posidonius' movements are not like Seneca's, whichever view of them we take. If Posidonius did not go beyond thinking of them as spatial movements of the emotional part of the soul, they will be too underdescribed to serve as forerunners of the first movements in the Senecan soul. On the other hand, if they are conceived as being directed towards things of an agitating kind, this too makes them unlike Seneca's first movements, as I have construed them. Clearly, they could be compared only with first movements of the soul, not of the body. But first movements of the soul in Seneca, I argued in Chapter 4, are wholly inner. They are contractions and expansions within the chest, sensed, and sensed as good, or bad; they are not directed to something else. The references to movements in Seneca's Letters which have been considered particularly Posidonian

483

Galen PHP 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

484

Ibid. 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

485

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’; cf. Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 164–7; Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, 180; E. Holler, Seneca und die Seelenteilungslehre und Affektpsychologie der Mittelstoa (Kallm ünz, 1934), 16–24.

486

Galen PHP 4.7.33; 5.5.21, pp. 288, 320 de Lacy.

487

Ibid. 5. 5. 28, p. 322 de Lacy.

488

Ibid. 4.7.7; 5.5.29; 5.5.35, pp. 282, 322–4 de Lacy.

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seem to me to be, like those in On Anger, references only to inner contractions and expansions.489 This first difference is important partly because it generates a second. If Posidonius' first movements really are directed to things of an agitating kind, this will mean they are very well adapted for generating (gennān) emotions. Indeed, a worry has been raised about how, in view of this, Posidonius can hope to control emotions.490 This point in turn makes his emotional movements very bad models for Seneca. For Seneca's whole emphasis goes in the other direction. The purpose of his discussion is to show us that we need not feel emotion. He wants us to see that a mere first movement can be discounted and that emotion need not follow. It is easier to discount Seneca's first movements, precisely because they are only sensed inner sinkings and expansions and are not directed to the agitating situations themselves, although they are caused by the appearance of good or bad in those situations. This second difference between Posidonius and Seneca generates a third. They have different techniques for preventing their movements from leading us on to full emotion. Whereas Seneca believes we can learn to prevent a first movement that has already occurred from leading on to emotion, Posidonius' aim is to inhibit the occurrence of emotional movements in the first place. Since emotional movements arise from the state of the body,491 they can be discouraged by physical measures. That is why Posidonius, following Plato, recommends a protracted regimen of food and drink from earliest infancy492 and musical rhythms of the right sort.493 I have argued that Posidonius thinks bodily movements will work because he conceives the emotional movements of the soul as being themselves spatial. I hope this does something to answer the question why he believes that emotions can be controlled. If we wish to find Posidonius anticipating Seneca to a small extent, we can do so rather in a fragment which is normally ascribed to Posidonius. This draws the distinctions which Seneca later makes among three things: (1) the emotions themselves, (2) the bites and

489

I take the impetus at Letter 113. 18 (cf. On Anger 2. 1. 1) to be an initial contraction or expansion subsequently approved as appropriate. The movement at Letter 71. 27 is explicitly called a ‘bite’, i.e. a contraction. The only Posidonian trace here is that it is said to be experienced not by a unitary soul but by an irrational part, and this last point, missing from On Anger, is admittedly in the Posidonian, not the Chrysippan, tradition.

490

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’.

491

Galen PHP 5. 5. 22–4, pp. 320–2 de Lacy.

492

Ibid. 5. 5. 30–5, pp. 322–4 de Lacy.

493

Ibid.5.6.19–20, p.330 de Lacy.

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expansions (dēgmoi, diakhuseis), and (3) the trembling and pallor (tromoi, ōkhriaseis) and change of appearance. The first are said to be mental without qualification, the second physical, but occurring in the mind, the third physical but occurring in the body. Seneca would agree on bites and expansions being physical, but in the mind. But the Posidonian fragment tells us no more, and does not point out that the bites and expansions can occur, like Posidonius' emotional movements, before emotion.494

494

(Pseudo)-Plutarch, p. 48 of fragments (Loeb vol. 15). I differ here from the excellent dissertation of Teun Tieleman, Galen and Chrysippus: Argument and Refutation in the De Placitis 2–3, p. 229, who reassigns the classification to the early Stoics instead of to Posidonius, in the belief (which I do not share) that Posidonius would not have connected class (1) with judgements, as the fragment does. I also differ if he means to treat the motions of distress, such as bites, and of anger as physical without qualification (pp. 163, 232), the pains (algēdones) in distress as different and more mental (pp. 232–3), and the trembling and pallor as physical without qualification (pp. 228–9).

8 Posidonius Judgements Not Necessary for Emotion Disowned Judgements, Animals, Music In this chapter I shall discuss Posidonius' arguments to show that judgements are not, that is not always, necessary for emotion. The first argument claims only that they are not necessary for tears, the physical symptom. But the claim was widened by a later author to distress itself, we shall see, and this may have been intended all along. Once again the problem of disowned tears was already recognized by Chrysippus himself.

Objection 3: Disowned Tears Without Judgement In fact, Chrysippus raises two difficulties together. Talking of the impulse or will in emotion, in other words of the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement, he says there can be impulse (hormē)495 without weeping and weeping without will (mē boulomenoi). Chrysippus admits that it is hard to figure out (duslogistos, asullogistos) the impulse that blocks weeping.496 But for both difficulties he suggests, at the point marked (2) in the translation below, that appearances are not (reading mē)497 like. In other words, he sticks to a cognitive account of the problem. We shed tears which we disown because there are conflicting (unlike) appearances on whether it is appropriate to react. Chrysippus does not say whether impulse and will align with only one of the conflicting appearances, or whether they oscillate between both. If the shedding (or withholding) of tears is a response to an

495

That he is talking about impulse is left unclear here at PHP 4. 7. 15, p. 284 de Lacy, until the passage is so glossed at 4. 7. 36, p. 288 de Lacy.

496

Ibid. 4. 7. 15 and 34, pp. 284, 288 de Lacy.

497

Here at PHP 4. 7. 16, p. 284 de Lacy, the manuscripts read mē, but it is omitted in the repeat at 4. 7. 37, p. 288 de Lacy.

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appearance that receives no assent, then Chrysippus will almost accidentally have invented the idea of tears as a first movement, i.e. as something resulting from appearance without assent. On the other hand, if people weep against their will because their full assent is oscillating between the conflicting appearances, the tears will not, like first movements, be independent of assent. So long as Chrysippus is only talking about tears, not distress itself, it will not matter to his theory whether assent is present or absent. Posidonius' explanation is not cognitive, if, as I have argued in the last chapter, his emotional movements are not cognitions. The emotional movements press so hard (or are so thoroughly halted) that the will (boulēsis) cannot master them (or cannot arouse them).498 It is these same emotional movements which he will invoke to show how emotion can be aroused without judgement in the case of animals, or of response to wordless music. Can distress, as well as tears, be aroused in the absence of judgement? Chrysippus is evidently not considering this at PHP 4. 7. 15–16, because after a discussion of distress in sections 13–14 he moves in 15 to ‘what comes next’ after impulse. Since distress is the impulse, what comes next can only plausibly be the tears which he goes on to mention in section 16. And when in section 16 he describes people as not willing to weep, this would not fit easily with his conception of distress, which involves, in his view, an approval of contractions. None the less, the problem of actual distress in the absence of assent and judgement is explicitly raised by a much later anti-Stoic text, the Middle Platonist Didaskalikos, around the second century AD, and the point is repeated by Plotinus.499 Sometimes we are still drawn by emotions, even when we know that what has befallen us is not grievous, nor pleasant, nor formidable. And this would not happen to us if emotions were the same as judgements. It may even be that Chrysippus intends to finish with the case of distress without judgements, when he talks of ‘those cases'. He says in 4. 7. 17: It is plausible that things of this and similar kinds should happen along with these in those cases too (kai ep’ ekeinōn suntungkhanein). What are ‘those cases’? One answer would be that Chrysippus is reverting from the discussion of weeping, the physical reaction, which

498

Ibid. 4. 7. 37, p. 288 de Lacy.

499

Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 23. 185. 32–5; Plotinus (not quoted here) 1. 1. 5 (17–21).

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runs from 4. 7. 15 to the beginning of 4. 7. 17, to the discussion of distress itself, which was the subject of 4. 7. 13–14. Certainly, Galen thinks that the discussion has illustrated the conflict of reason with emotion, if that is what he means by pathos, not just with physical reactions.500 Seneca, however, so I have argued in Chapter 4, provides a new defence of Chrysippus when he explicitly mentions the tears produced by artistic performances, and argues that they are merely first movements, and not a proof of emotion.501 The discussion of Chrysippus and Posidonius runs as follows in PHP: 4. 7. 12. Chrysippus himself bears witness, in the second book of On Emotions, that emotions are softened in time, even if the beliefs (doxai) remain that something bad has befallen. He writes as follows. 4. 7. 13. ‘It might be asked how the abatement of distress (lupē) comes about, whether through some belief changing, or with them all remaining, and why this will be the case.’ Then he adds, 4. 7. 14. ‘It seems to me that a belief remains in the form that what is actually present is bad, but that as this belief grows older, (1a) the contraction abates, and, as I think, (1b) the impulse towards contraction. 4. 7. 15. It might also happen that this [impulse] remains, but what comes next will not conform to it, and that this happens through some other kind of disposition supervening which it is hard to figure out. 4. 7. 16. For it is in this way that people both stop weeping (klaiein) and weep when they do not will (mē boulomenoi) to weep, when underlying circumstances create (2) dissimilar appearances (phantasiai), and there is something or [in the other case] is nothing that threatens. 4. 7. 17. For just as wailing and the cessation of lament come about, it is plausible that things of this and similar kinds should happen along with these in those cases too, as things cause movement more at the beginning, as I said happens in the case of what moves laughter.’ 4. 7. 37. Hence when Chrysippus says, ‘For it is in this way that people both stop weeping and weep when they do [not] will to weep, when underlying circumstances create dissimilar appearances’, Posidonius asks the reason here too why ordinary people often weep without willing to, being unable to restrain their tears, while others stop weeping before their will to weep stops. [This is clearly] through the emotional movements pressing so strongly as not to be mastered by the will, or so completely ceasing as not to be capable of being roused by the will any longer.

The case of distress without judgement is not the only counter-example

500

Galen PHP 4. 7. 38, p. 288 de Lacy.

501

Seneca On Anger 2. 3. 2.

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we could give. There are others of the same general type. Thus a person may feel embarrassed and angry at someone for embarrassing them, yet recognize that the embarrassment is not justified and not harmful, or that the person is absolutely guiltless, so that it would be inappropriate to react against them. Sometimes a time-lag can be observed. Assent is withdrawn from the appearance that things are bad, or that reaction is appropriate. But the anger or embarrassment lingers a while, until the very appearance ceases. Again, many people are really afraid of flying in aeroplanes, yet intellectually they judge that it is safe, and that it would be wrong to react by avoiding flying. At least, their normal view is that it is safe, even if they waver when they hear a change of engine noise. These examples involve merely feeling as if the value judgements were right, while knowing that they are wrong.502 I shall discuss different cases of feeling-as-if in Chapter 10. For the moment I should say I think the examples do show that Chrysippus' value judgements are not after all necessary for emotions, since mere appearance can take the place of judgement.503 Is there anything Chrysippus can salvage from his analysis? In the present examples of disowned judgements, and in Posidonius' example, to be discussed below, of animal emotion without judgement, Chrysippus might be able to say that there is at least an appearance (phantasia) that things are good or bad, even if there is not a judgement. That would be a less plausible response to Posidonius' remaining example of people moved by wordless music. Even when they merely feel-as-if things were good or bad, I doubt that that feeling amounts to an appearance. There may be other cases too of disowned judgement in which there is not even an appearance. To someone afraid of heights it may not even appear when he is up high, let alone be judged, that the bad thing, falling, is liable to happen. Rather, the judgement is ‘Wouldn't it be awful if I fell?’ The appearance of appropriate reaction can also be missing in some cases, for example, if someone thinks it not silly, but morally wrong, to react. Someone is shown a landscape by the proud owner, but finds it depressing. If they lack confidence, they may judge their inner contractions wholly (not just partly) wrong, if

502

I thank Alasdair MacIntyre for first drawing my attention to the ‘feeling as if ’ phenomenon and to Chris Hughes and Dale Jamieson for examples.

503

I thank Francesca Albini for describing to me a very successful British Airways course on fear of flying, and showing me the related book by Maurice Yaffé, Taking the Fear out of Flying (Newton Abbot, 1987).

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sufficiently impressed by the duty of sharing the owner's pleasure. And the inner sinkings may not even appear to them appropriate.

Objection 4: Emotions Without Judgements In Children and Animals The next example of emotion without judgement is drawn by Posidonius from the case of animals and children. He allows them emotions, especially appetite for pleasure (epithumia) and anger (thumos). Indeed, their natural aggression is very noticeable.504 The latter often involves in animals and children a wish for domination (ethelein nikān) for its own sake. Posidonius is described as ashamed to deny animals emotion (pathos), and he twice ascribes to them impulse (hormē), the relevant impulse being that which constitutes emotion. The passages, though introduced by Galen, nearly all mention Posidonius by name, so it would be impractical to suspect that Galen is merely stating his own view. In the two cases where Posidonius is not mentioned at once, he is relevantly mentioned in what immediately follows.505 Nor should we suspect that Galen is foisting on Posidonius his own Platonist belief in appetitive and irascible capacities of the soul, given Posidonius' own admiration for Plato, and his composition of something like an epitome of him. But if Posidonius grants emotions to animals and children, does he, like Chrysippus, deny them reason and judgement? The denial of reason is clear. He says that animals use the appetitive and irascible (epithumētikē, thumoeidēs) capacities, but that humans alone have the rational (logistikē) principle.506 And even in humans at first the rational element is small and weak.507 The main passage runs as follows: But Chrysippus does not think the emotional element (pathētikon) of the soul is different from the rational (logistikon), and he removes emotions (pathē) from the irrational animals, although animals are evidently governed (dioikeisthai) by appetite and anger (epithumia, thumos), as Posidonius also explains more fully in discussing them. He says that all those animals that are not easily moved and grow like plants on to rocks, or other such things, are governed by appetite alone. But all other irrational animals use both capacities, the appetitive and the irascible (epithumētikē), thumoeidēs). Humans

504

Galen PHP 4.7.33; 4.7.35; 5.1.10; 5.5.4–5; 5.5.21; 5.6.37–8, pp. 288, 294, 318–20, 334 de Lacy.

505

Ibid. 4. 7. 33 is followed by a relevant reference to Posidonius at 4. 7. 35, p. 288 de Lacy, as is 5. 5. 4–5 at 5. 5. 9, pp. 316, 318 de Lacy.

506

Ibid. 5. 6. 38, p. 334 de Lacy.

507

Ibid. 5. 5. 34, p. 324 de Lacy. Galen denies children any reason: ibid. 5. 5. 2, p. 316 de Lacy.

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alone use the three, for they have got the rational (logistikē) principle in addition.508

There is still a small loophole, because Plato allows that judgements can be made by the appetitive and irrational parts of the soul, as well as by the rational part.509 Might Posidonius believe the same, and so be ascribing judgements to animals? I think not. The evidence comes in a passage510 where Posidonius is talking about all animals (zōiōn), both rational human adults and irrational animals. He wants to cover both, because he is seeking to throw light on children who do not yet have reason. Some of his remarks apply only to those who do have reason, while others apply to those who do not. Posidonius says that impulse (hormē)—and I take it he means the impulse that constitutes emotion—often occurs upon the movements of the irrational element, though sometimes upon the judgement (krisis) of the rational element. If he had believed that in animals emotion involves the judgements of the irrational element, this would have been the place to say so. But here, as in a similar passage elsewhere,511 he contrasts the judgement of the rational element not with the judgements of the irrational element, but with its movements. John Cooper has suggested a very good reason why Posidonius does not want to ascribe judgements to the irrational souls of animals: this would be a gratuitous disagreement with his fellow Stoics.512 The passage tells us more. It implies that false suppositions (hupolēpseis) do not occur in any beings that lack a rational faculty, for the causes of these suppositions lie either wholly or partly in the rational faculty. This seems to imply that false suppositions do not occur in animals. What, then, happens in animals? This is revealed by the final sentence of the passage. It tells us that in the animal (zōion must here include human and non-human animals) the impulse (I presume the one that constitutes emotion) is often generated upon the movement of the soul's emotional element, instead of (‘on the one hand . . . on the other’ implies a contrast) upon the judgement of the rational element. The implication is that, at least in non-human animals (and we may guess in children), the emotional movements are causally sufficient for emotion, without judgements being needed:

508

Ibid. 5. 6. 37–8, p. 334 de Lacy.

509

Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, 9–12.

510

Galen PHP 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

511

Ibid. 5. 6. 22, p. 330 de Lacy.

512

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’.

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Indeed, Posidonius finds fault with this too, and tries to show that the causes of all false suppositions (hupolēpseis) [arise]on the one hand in the reflective [element]. . .through(dia) the emotional tug (pathētikēholkē), yet the tug is preceded by false beliefs, since the rational element (to logistikon) has grown weak in judgement. For impulse (hormē) is generated in the animal (zōion) sometimes on the one hand upon (epi) the judgement (krisis) of the rational element (logistikon), often on the other hand upon the movement of the emotional element (pathētikon).513

My interpretation diverges from certain others. One takes the passage not to be discussing animals at all, but only humans, despite the use of the word ‘animal’(zōion). On this view, the movement of the emotional element is cited only as an auxiliary, not as an alternative, to the judgement of the rational element.514 But this is not suggested by the contrast ‘on the one hand . . . on the other hand’. It might be thought, for two reasons, that after all judgements are being allowed here to irrational beings. First, like at least one other passage,515 ours implies that there are impulses (hormai) in the irrational element, and impulses in an adult human are normally judgements, as we saw in Seneca's account. But it must be replied that, according to the Stoics, impulses are not judgements in animals and there is no reason to suppose that Posidonius disagrees; so his ascription of impulse to animals is not an ascription of judgement. Secondly, the passage seems to demand emendation,516 because the first occurrence of ‘on the one hand’ is never picked up, as if there were a lacuna, and the standard emendations all assume that the missing text located some causes of false suppositions in the emotional part of the soul.517 But only Pohlenz is careful to point out that the suppositions themselves are still confined to the rational part

513

Galen PHP 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

514

Cooper, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’.

515

Galen PHP 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy. Similarly, ibid. 5. 6. 22, p. 330 de Lacy, to be discussed below, if the irrational movements there said to be aroused in the irrational element of the soul are accompanied by impulse.

516

Fillion-Lahille, Le de Ira de Sénèque, 156–7, makes no emendation, but understands in effect that the reflective element thinks the present situation intolerable, and so leads to an emotional pull. But first, ‘through’(dia) cannot mean ‘leads to’, and secondly, this leaves ‘on the one hand’ unanswered.

517

The standard emendations all balance ‘on the one hand in the reflective’ by inserting ‘on the other hand in the practical [or emotional]’: en de tōi praktikōi (Pohlenz; Edelstein and Kidd, Posidonius, vol. 1; de Lacy); pathētikōi (Kidd in Posidonius, vol.2/2, p.621).

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of the soul.518 It would in any case be possible to suggest a different emendation.519 The denial of judgement to animals implied in our passage fits very well with certain other things in Posidonius. Thus, for Posidonius the non-rational powers of soul, which are all an animal has, are not capable of understanding (epistēmē), but only of a non-rational habituation (ethismos alogos), such as might be given to horses,520 like rhythms and scales (rhuthmoi, harmoniai), for example.521 Furthermore, Martha Nussbaum has argued that Posidonius' model here is Plato's Republic, 441 E. And there Plato, talking of music, contrasts words and teachings (logoi, mathēmata) as nourishing the rational part of the soul with scales and rhythm (harmonia, rhuthmos) as merely relaxing, comforting, and taming (anienai, paramutheisthai, hēmeroun) the irascible part.522 It is worth recording the other Posidonius passages concerning emotion in animals: For as the emotional element of the soul (to pathētikon tēs psukhēs) aims at its own particular objects of desire, so also when it obtains them, it is sated (empiplatai) and at that halts its own movement, which was controlling (ekratei) the animal's (tou zōiou) impulse (hormē) and was leading [the animal] in its own direction (kath' heautēn) to wherever the animal was being diverted.523 Nothing is so clear as that there are certain capacities (dunameis) in our souls which aim naturally in one case at pleasure and in the other at domination (kratos) and victory (nikē). Posidonius says that these capacities are clearly seen also in animals, as we too showed at the very beginning of the first book.524 But where [Chrysippus] overthrows himself at the same time as conflicting with what is clearly apparent, I think a person might be ashamed and change for the better, as Posidonius did. He was ashamed to agree to the evidently false doctrine of the other Stoics, who have come to such a pitch of contentiousness as not to allow irrational animals to share in emotions

518

Max Pohlenz, ‘De Posidonii libris “Peri Pathōn ’ ”, Jahrbuch für classische Philologie [Leipzig], suppl. 24 (1898), 535–634 at 565, 621.

519

I set no store by this. But 〈 gignesthai, en de tōi pathētikōi pollakis gignesthai tēn hormēn 〉 would leave the text discussing not the causes of false supposition, but an (irrational) impulse: ‘〈in the emotional element on the other hand impulse often arises〉 through the emotional tug. Yet (even in that case) the tug is preceded by false beliefs, since the rational element has grown weak in judgement.’

520

Galen PHP 5. 5. 35, p. 324 de Lacy; cf. 5. 6. 22, p. 330 de Lacy.

521

Ibid. 5. 6. 20–2, p. 330 de Lacy.

522

Nussbaum, ‘Poetry and the Passions’, p. 105. She compares also Laws 672 C –E ; 792 A ff.

523

Galen PHP 4. 7. 33, p. 288 de Lacy.

524

Ibid. 4. 7. 35, p. 288 de Lacy.

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(pathē), because they said emotions belonged to the rational capacity. Most of them do not allow even children to share, because, obviously, children too are not yet rational.525 We see [children] being angry (thumousthai) and kicking and biting and wishing (ethelein) to win (nikān) and dominate (kratein) their own kind, like some of the animals, when no prize is offered besides winning itself. Such things are clearly apparent in quail, cocks, partridges, the ichneumon, the Egyptian cobra, the crocodile, and ten thousand others.526

Seneca's First Movements As Reply Seneca supports Chrysippus, as explained in Chapter 4, by ascribing to animals mere appearance, rather than judgement, and in the same breath denying them emotion. Evidence that they lack real emotion is that their frenzied bellowing is suddenly followed by quiet feeding.527 Further, Chrysippus' position might be made still more plausible by drawing on Seneca's distinction a few pages later of ‘first movements’. Our temptation to ascribe emotion to animals might then be explained away by claiming that what we see in animals are not emotions but only ‘first movements’. It is the inner contractions, expansions, and physiological symptoms induced by appearances which create the superficial impression that the animals are undergoing emotion. In response to Seneca, I think that our normal practice of attributing emotions to animals and infants is at least in many cases indispensable, although it may not carry all the implications of other attributions. This view would not unequivocally go against Chrysippus' insistence on the role of judgements in emotion. For I would not object to saying that in some sense certain animals are capable of judging things good or bad.528 This would not, however, be in Chrysippus' sense, according to which judging involves a double mental operation of having an appearance and assenting to it. Nor are there many circumstances in which an animal can be said to judge it appropriate to react, or even to have that appearance. (We may think of a blind person's guide dog reacting to oncoming traffic rather than obeying the handler's signal to cross the road.) As for a newborn infant, we may well want to talk of its rage, and of its seeing things as bad. This seeing is what the Stoics would call

525

Ibid. 5. 1. 10, p. 294 de Lacy.

526

Ibid. 5. 5. 4–5, pp. 316, 318 de Lacy.

527

Seneca On Anger 1. 3. 7–8.

528

Sorabji Animal Minds and Human Morals, e.g. pp. 43, 83.

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an ‘appearance’. There is no very obvious point in dignifying it as a judgement, and it is only after a little while that infants can be said to find it appropriate to react, e.g. with howling.

Objection 5: Emotion Produced By Wordless Music Does Not Require Judgement I have already given my interpretation of Posidonius' next objection in Chapter 5. Here I shall only recapitulate Posidonius' objection and defend my interpretation from objections. Arousal by wordless music, according to Posidonius, shows that judgement is not necessary for emotion, for wordless music is not rational. Effect must be like cause, so the emotion it causes cannot be rational in the way judgements are. Seneca's reply, I suggested, was that what music causes is not emotion, but only first movements. I must, however, defend my interpretation of Posidonius against four objections, and it will help if I start by repeating the passage under discussion. Why was it for heaven's sake—I shall put this question too to the followers of Chrysippus—that when Damon the musician came up to a woman playing the Greek oboe (aulētris, aulein) in the Phrygian mode to some young men who were drunk and doing frantic things and ordered her to play in the Dorian mode, they immediately stopped their frenzied antics? For surely they are not taught to revise the beliefs of the rational element by the oboe music. Rather, they are aroused (epegeiresthai) or calmed in respect of the emotional element of the soul which is irrational through irrational movements. For help or harm comes to the irrational through irrational things, and to the rational through knowledge or ignorance.529

The first objection to my interpretation turns on whether it is Posidonius or Galen who puts the question about how the wordless music changed the youths' emotions.530 The question is put in the first person: ‘I shall put this question too to the followers of Chrysippus.’ I want to reply that it makes no difference whether the question is put by Posidonius or by Galen on his behalf. For in either case it connects with Posidonius' preceding discussion, especially with the point that the training needed for the non-rational capacities involves not rational instruction, but non-rational habituation (ethismos alogos).531 And this point, that only the non-rational can effect the non-rational, is

529

Galen PHP 5. 6. 21–2, p. 330 de Lacy.

530

I thank Christopher Gill for pressing this issue.

531

Galen PHP 5. 5. 35, p. 324 de Lacy.

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repeated by Posidonius in the very next argument too.532 There is every reason, then, to think that it is Posidonius' own point, even if Galen chooses to ask it in his own person. The second issue is whether Posidonius means that the musical modes, which are said to produce excitement (epegeirein) or calm, are producing real emotion. The doubt may arise because the youths are said to be excited or calmed through irrational movements. And I have agreed in Chapter 5 that these irrational movements in Posidonius are not identical with the impulse (hormē) which constitutes emotion, since they rather control and generate (kratein, gennān) that impulse.533 But I think the excitement can be taken to be real emotion, because it is spoken of as occurring through (dia) the irrational movements, not as merely being such movements. Moreover, we know from Augustine's and other versions of the story that the excitement in question was lust. The third issue is whether Posidonius might after all be allowing, contrary to my interpretation, that the oboe music made the youths change judgements in the irrational element of their souls. But if he recognized the existence of such judgements, which I doubt, he would need to put that point by saying that the oboe music did not teach them to revise the beliefs of the rational element, but rather the beliefs of the irrational element. But instead of giving a role to beliefs of the irrational element, he says it is the movements of the irrational element that arouse the young men. Emotional impulses based on these movements, rather than on judgements of reason, had been mentioned earlier as occurring in animals.534 Here it emerges that they can occur also in humans. There is a fourth objection.535 Might Posidonius be making the opposite point, allowing that excitement is accompanied by the relevant judgements, but insisting these judgements are not sufficient for emotion, since when calmness ensues, the judgements will still be there, given that wordless music could not change them? This objection takes calmness to be an absence of emotion. What I doubt is whether Posidonius is agreeing that the youths are making Chrysippus' two judgements. When he says, ‘they are not taught to revise the beliefs of the rational element by the oboe music’, I read the reference to beliefs as part of what is being denied. For Posidonius

532

Ibid. 5. 6. 23–6, p. 330 de Lacy.

533

Ibid. 4.7.33; 5.5.21, pp. 288, 320 de Lacy.

534

Ibid. 5. 5. 21, p. 320 de Lacy.

535

I thank Verity Harte for raising the issue.

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goes on to say the youths are aroused through irrational movements, without any suggestion that beliefs also play a role.

Repairs To Chrysippus' Analysis If Posidonius' counter-examples show that Chrysippus' two judgements are not always necessary or sufficient for emotion, does this force him to present emotions as a rag-bag category, with nothing in common? I think not. There is some pattern to Posidonius' counterexamples. When emotion occurs without the judgements, there will often be an appearance (phantasia), even though there is not an assent to turn the appearance into a judgement. That already gives Chrysippus' therapy some purchase, because even when withholding assent does not directly remove emotion, it can do so indirectly by dislodging appearance. In Posidonius' other type of counter-example, where the judgements occur without emotion, what is missing is often imagination or attention, to which we might add the taking in of implications. So far, it may be said, this leaves the emotions still looking like a family of cases, although there are still further objections to be considered in the next chapter. The appeal to imagination and attention is useful for another purpose: explaining variations of intensity in emotion. To some extent, that can be explained by differences in judgement. We can judge something to be very bad, or reaction very appropriate. But the intensity of emotion may vary not only with judgement, but also with our imagination and attention. Posidonius would, admittedly, not be satisfied. He would add that the relevance of imagination is to provoke emotional movements,536 and some modern philosophers would add that we need to invoke ‘affect’.537

536

Galen PHP 5. 6. 23–6, p. 330 de Lacy, as above.

537

Where Posidonius invokes emotional movements, Michael Stocker (in ‘Psychic Feelings’) would invoke affect, as something irreducible to judgement or desire.

9 Aspasius and Other Objections To Chrysippus So far the main objections to Chrysippus' judgemental analysis of emotion have been those of the Stoic Posidonius, reinforced at certain points by the Middle Platonist Didaskalikos. But Posidonius' are not the only objections to Chrysippus' judgemental analysis of emotion. Some further possible objections have been canvassed in the examination of Posidonius, and others putatively forestalled, in the exposition of what Chrysippus meant. But there are other objections again, and I shall start with those of Aspasius.

Aspasius Vs. Andronicus On Appearance Vs. Belief Aspasius is an Aristotelian who criticizes the Stoicizing definition of emotion given by an earlier Aristotelian, Andronicus. Aristotle for his own purposes, in Rhetoric book 2, had been indifferent whether he defined emotions in terms of beliefs, appearances, or thoughts. But the Stoics had insisted that beliefs (or judgements) were required and that mere appearances were not enough. Andronicus may have been making a concession to them when he defined emotions in terms of supposition (hupolēpsis), as an irrational movement of the soul through the supposition of bad or good.538 For Aristotle had defined supposition as including three species, scientific understanding, practical understanding, and belief (epistēmē, phronēsis, doxa).539 It is belief which is relevant here. Aspasius, however, contests this. The mere appearance that there is something good can arouse emotion, without any assent to turn it into a belief or supposition. This is especially clear, he says, in the case of appetites for pleasure, for example in lust or when we are amused by a witty speech, which can amuse us even though we do

538

Aspasius In EN 44. 21–2.

539

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 3, 427b 25.

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not suppose there is anything good at hand from the speech. Some people, we may add, can even laugh at their own reverses, although that is not something that fits well with the tradition, to be discussed in Chapter 19, of connecting laughter with a sense of superiority. Aspasius goes further. The appearance that something is pleasant may be more relevant in lust and laughter than the appearance that something is good. And he uses this to support his own definition of emotion as the irrational part of the soul being moved by the pleasant or the distressing, and his idea that pleasure and distress are the two most generic emotions. Here is the passage: When Andronicus says that emotion (pathos) is due to a supposition (hupolēpsis) of good or bad, first perhaps he did not know that certain emotions are generated simply by appearances (phantasia) without any assent (sunkatathesis) or supposition. When something appears pleasant or painful simply through sense perception, an emotion sometimes results in the soul. So emotions occur not only with supposition, but also in advance of supposition. The appetites (epithumiai) reveal this especially. For one often gets an appetite for something lovely just because it is lovely, on the mere sight of it, without supposition ever having come first. Again, people often get an appetite without any supposition occurring that some good is present, as when the irrational part of the soul is stirred by a witty speech. For we do not then suppose that some good is present for us, but are just moved by pleasure. Sometimes pleasure does follow on an actual supposition of good, and distress on a supposition of bad, evidently because the soul is moved on the basis of the good being pleasant and the bad distressing. Perhaps, then, emotion is the irrational part of the soul's being moved by the pleasant or distressing. For whether emotion follows after appearance or after supposition, in any case it supervenes on the pleasant and distressing. This indicates that pleasure and distress are the most generic emotions.540

How Many Generic Emotions? Aspasius raises one more major question and several minor queries. The major question is whether the most generic emotions, under which the others can be classified, are six in number or, as the Stoics said, four or, as he himself preferred, just two, pleasure and distress, an answer he finds in Plato.541 This answer is also ascribed to Plato in the Middle Platonist Didaskalikos,542 and elsewhere to ‘the ancients’.543

540

Aspasius In EN 44. 33–45. 16.

541

Ibid. 42. 27–47. 2, citing Plato Laws 636 D . When Epicurus gave pleasure and distress as the two pathē, he need not have meant by pathē to be referring to emotions (Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 34).

542

Alcinous Didaskalikos 185. 37.

543

Anonymus Londinensis, col. 2, lines 34–8, in CAG suppl. 3, part 1.

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But the choice of two seems strange for an Aristotelian. For in book 2 of the Rhetoric, where Aristotle devotes ten chapters544 to defining (depending on how one counts) about ten emotions, he recognizes three possible genera: distress, pleasure (although in the end no examples are given of this serving as a genus), and something Aspasius neglects: desire. Though an Aristotelian, Aspasius seems unaware of this discussion.545 When Aristotle talks of desire here, in classifying anger (orgē) as desire accompanied by distress, he uses his most general word for desire, orexis,546 and in classifying love and hate, he appeals to wishing (boulesthai).547 Aspasius does not notice that he has reversed Aristotle's definition of anger as desire accompanied by distress when he defines it as a kind of distress accompanied by desire.548 And he violates Aristotle's explicit warning549 that hate does not imply distress. Aspasius does make some concessions to the role of desire, not only that anger is at least accompanied by desire, but that gratitude (kharis) is desiderative (orektikē), and that pleasure merely has to occur together with (hama) the desire. Nevertheless, he concludes that gratitude is to be classified not under desire, but under pleasure.550 Still more embarrassing is Aspasius' recognition that some instances of appetite and anger involve pleasure, some distress, and some both. So one cannot classify anger or appetite as a whole as falling under one of his two genera, either under pleasure or under distress.551 He sees it does not help that some instances fall under the one or the other. In a classification of kinds, the entire species has to fall under the genus. This problem suggests the need for a third genus under which to classify anger and appetite, most obviously Aristotle's genus of desire. But Aspasius never tackles the problem. So much for Aspasius' divergence from Aristotle. What now of his disagreements with the Stoics? They treat all emotions as desires, using for desire the broad term hormē (impulse). But for one of their four main kinds of emotion they use the term ‘appetite’ (epithumia), which had been understood by Plato and Aristotle to mean a desire for pleasure. Aspasius rebukes them for using the term on the grounds that anger, on their own account, is not a desire for pleasure,

544

Aristotle Rhet. 2. 2–11.

545

For a fuller treatment of Aspasius on this subject see Richard Sorabji, ‘Aspasius on Emotion’, in Antonina Alberti and Robert W. Sharples (eds.), Aspasius: The Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics (Berlin and New York, 1999), 96–106.

546

Aristotle Rhet. 2. 2 ad init.

547

Ibid. 2. 4.

548

Aspasius In EN 43. 30–1.

549

Aristotle Rhet. 2. 4.

550

Aspasius In EN 46. 27–9.

551

Ibid. 42.31–43.2; 42.33–44.8.

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and so not (by Platonic or Aristotelian criteria) an appetite, but a desire for revenge.552 One Stoic reply might be that they use ‘appetite’ in a wider sense, to cover all irrational desire (alogos orexis) for future things seen as good.553 But Chrysippus does offer one definition of appetite in terms of pleasure,554 and that might force him to fall back on the idea of revenge being seen as sweet. The Stoics differ not only from Aspasius, but also from Aristotle in their recognition of fear as a fourth genus. What justifies their choice? In recognizing four genera (pleasure and distress, appetite and fear), they are presumably influenced partly by Plato, who, for his own purposes, picks out this list of four emotions no less than six times.555 But they also have a rationale of their own: pleasure and appetite are concerned with good, distress and fear with bad; pleasure and distress with the present situation, appetite and fear with the future.556 Moreover, they offer some seventyodd definitions of other emotions, to show how they can be classified under the generic four.557

Why Not Generic Emotions Relating To the Past? The rationale in terms of present and future omits the past, and so immediately suggests Aspasius' remaining question: should there not be six genera? This is not how Aspasius himself arrives at the question. Rather he notices a passage in which Plato lists six emotions by adding anger and confidence, two items which he accuses the Stoics of failing to accommodate. But Aspasius does not think Plato listed these as generic emotions, merely as particularly familiar ones.558 There is a much more obvious way of pressing on the Stoics a case for six generic emotions. They recognize two emotions directed towards the future, two towards the present, but none towards the past. Indeed, it was precisely by including emotions directed towards the past that a modern author built up a larger list of basic emotions, classified by reference to good and bad for self and others in the past, present, and future.559 The Stoics by contrast treat not only anger as a

552

Ibid. 45. 31–46. 3.

553

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 113.

554

Galen PHP 4. 2. 3–4, p. 238 de Lacy.

555

Plato Laches 191 D ; Symposium 207 E ; Phaedo 83 B ; Republic 429 C ;430 A ; Theaetetus 156 B .

556

Cicero Tusc. 4. 11.

557

Ibid. Tusc. 4. 16–21; Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 111–14; Pseudo-Andronicus On Emotions 2–5 (SVF 3. 397, 401, 409, 414).

558

Aspasius In EN 46. 10–12, referring to Plato Timaeus 69 D .

559

Ortony et al., The Cognitive Structure of Emotions.

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forward-looking appetite, but also metameleia (remorse, repentance, change of heart) as a form of distress directed to the present.560 Why is this? It might be replied that the Stoics have good reason to omit emotions directed to the past, because it is only if you feel yourself still to be in a good or bad situation because of past happenings that you will have any emotion about those happenings.561 This defence of the omission is not right as it stands. In the case, already discussed, of a fire breaking out, I may feel no emotion during the emergency itself. It is only when I am out of the situation that the full horror of it dawns on me. This is a well-known phenomenon. It means that I have the emotion only when I know myself no longer to be in the bad situation. Admittedly, emotion here may be based on consideration of what my present state, or for that matter my future state, might have been. It would be rarer for it to be based on consideration solely of what my past state might have been, as when I reflect that if I had had the illness I feared, I would have had to go through a horrible operation in order to regain my present level of health. To that extent, the past in isolation may typically have less hold on our emotions. I shall return in Chapter 16 to the lesser hold of the past. For now I shall only point out that concern about bad past events depends on whether we see them as making the present or future bad, rather than on whether they are having an effect on the present or future independent of our perception. This comparative dissociation from the past is sufficient, so it was argued in Chapter 7, to protect Chrysippus at least partly from Posidonius' objection about emotions fading faster than judgements. In many cases of fading emotion (though not, I pointed out, in all), Chrysippus could have replied, the relevant judgements fade too, as his analysis requires, along with the emotions. For the judgement that lingers is only the irrelevant judgement that bad was done to you in the past, not the relevant judgement that you are still in a bad situation. I also argued in Chapter 5 that dissociation from the past explained Seneca's view that historical narratives do not arouse real emotion. I dissented only because the qualification ‘once upon a time’ may cease to hold our attention in a good piece of story-telling.

560

Pseudo-Andronicus On Emotions 2 (SVF 3. 414); Stobaeus 2. 102. 25–6 Wachsmuth.

561

As regards reference to the past, I have benefited from discussion with Michael Frede, Victor Caston, and Geoffrey Madell.

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Is Action Always Judged Appropriate In Appetite and Fear? The Stoics would object to Aspasius that in confining the generic emotions to two, pleasure and distress, he has omitted those emotions which involve judgements about the appropriateness of action. But Aspasius raises a counterobjection about the relation of anger to thoughts of retaliation. He objects that fathers can be angry with their sons without thinking that revenge would be appropriate at all.562 The same sort of point was to be made later by the Latinwriting Church Father Lactantius about people who are angry with their wife, children, or pupils.563 And earlier than either thinker, the Epicurean Philodemus had written a treatise advocating a kind of anger that seeks correction indeed, but not revenge.564 I believe these objections about anger with no desire for action are correct, and there are other cases too. In appetite or fear, action may not be judged appropriate because it seems hopeless, or alternatively immoral. This objection leads on to a more general one, and at this stage I shall pass beyond Aspasius.

Will Emotion Depart When Reaction Is Judged Inappropriate? The more general objection is this. If emotion involves judging that reaction is appropriate, would it not become too easy to rid oneself of emotion? For one would have only to drop the judgement that reaction is appropriate in order to be rid of the emotion, and is not this implausible? Indeed, no one need ever seek help with getting rid of an emotion, for in wanting to be rid of it, they would already have judged their reactions inappropriate, and so should already be rid of it. Wanting riddance is riddance—or so it might seem. A good answer565 to this version of the problem is that in wanting riddance, one may merely judge it inappropriate that one judges reaction appropriate, which is not yet to be rid of the latter judgement. But the question still remains: if one does get rid of the latter judgement, that reaction is appropriate, will one necessarily be rid of the emotion? I think the answer comes out differently for different emotions.

562

Aspasius In EN 46. 4–5.

563

Lactantius On God's Anger 17.

564

Philodemus On Anger, ed. G. Indelli (Naples, 1988).

565

I owe this answer to Peter Klein. A related one was suggested to me by Colin McGinn.

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In the case of anger, it makes a difference whether angry reaction is rejected as undignified, or as counter-productive. The Stoic advice to see how ugly anger makes you trades on indignity, and I am not sure how often this works. But if one judges angry reaction counterproductive, then one may be rid of two constituent judgements at once, not merely of one. Imagine the context of deliberation, for example on a committee, in which one hears of things one judges very bad. None the less, if one is above all committed to reaching a sensible decision and seeking revenge would get in the way of that, one may reject seeking revenge as counter-productive. And if seeking revenge is on that account rejected as inappropriate, a second judgement will also be rejected, for securing revenge will not be seen as a good. This rejection of two judgements increases the chance that one will not get angry at hearing of the bad things. At least in some cases, then, the judgement that reaction is appropriate appears necessary for anger. What about pleasure and distress? Here, too, it is harder than might be expected to confront Chrysippus with cases of emotion in which the judgement of appropriateness is missing. For his two judgements are again linked, although in a different way. This time, the ‘inappropriate to react judgement’ tends to depend on the ‘not bad’ or ‘not good’ judgement as a prerequisite. This is because the relevant reactions in these cases are involuntary and hidden expansions and contractions. It is not easy to convince oneself that this inner, involuntary reaction is inappropriate, at least so long as one does not see it harming other people. For overcoming distress, therefore, it may often be necessary for the other judgement to change, the judgement about how bad one's situation is. That may be the easiest way to make the contraction or expansion seem inappropriate. Admittedly, it is not the only way. When Seneca tells the grieving Marcia that she is neglecting her family,566 this might make her contractions seem to her inappropriate. It is intended, of course, to dispel the grief as well. But if it were to achieve only half its purpose, discrediting the contractions without dispelling the grief, then the approval of contractions would have been shown unnecessary for the persistence of grief. If we turn, finally, to the examples of lust and fear, we find a different situation again. It is here much easier than with pleasure and distress to convince oneself that it is inappropriate to react. But this is

566

Seneca Marcia 2.4; 3.3; 5.6.

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much less likely than in the case of anger to make the emotion absent itself. Augustine, we shall see in Chapter 26, gives a most graphic account of how impervious lust can be to the reflection that reaction is inappropriate. The most that could be urged on Chrysippus' behalf is that, in all cases of appetite or fear, action (flight, for example) would be judged appropriate in the absence of countervailing reasons. I do not think it plausible that in the frightened person there must persist some idea that avoidance is appropriate. They may only wish that the situation could somehow cease to confront them, or not even that—they may recognise it as inevitable. It may be protested that fear is different from appetite, for fear, admittedly, need not involve a desire for avoidance, whereas an appetite is a desire, and one who desires to act, for example illicitly, must think the action appropriate in some way, e.g. as exciting, however inappropriate he thinks it overall. But I do not think that recognizing the action would be exciting is necessarily to judge it appropriate in any way. Do these objections mean that Chrysippus ought to retreat to equating emotion with the single judgement that there is good or bad in the offing? No: Chrysippus cannot afford this, for he has four reasons for requiring a second judgement that were explained in Chapter 2.

Judgement Necessary Causally Or As Constituent Of the Concept? An extra weakness has emerged from the discussion of whether judgements of appropriateness are necessary for emotion. Sometimes they are, but it remains to be shown whether they are necessary only causally or, as Chrysippus supposes, necessary as a constituent of the concept.567 For that further supposition, he relies on our intuition, and on the difficulty of finding alternative constituents.

Desire As an Alternative Constituent? One alternative constituent that has been suggested is desire. Chrysippus agrees that all emotion involves desire (hormē), but this is because the Stoics equate hormē in humans with a judgement of appropriateness, as explained in Chapter 2.568 The modern view is that desire is distinct from a judgement of appropriateness. This opens

567

I am grateful to Sarah Broadie for urging this question.

568

Stobaeus 2. 86. 17–18 Wachsmuth (SVF 3. 169); Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

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up the possibility of trying to define emotion as a judgement of goodness and badness, coupled with a desire to react, rather than with a judgement approving reaction. There have been attempts by modern philosophers to define emotions quite generally in terms of desire.569 I have not personally been convinced. Certainly, in distress we do not desire a sinking feeling. At most, we may wish that things were otherwise. But that is a very qualified sort of desire, and need not arise at all if there is no question of their being otherwise. In pleasure, we need not necessarily desire the pleasure to be prolonged; we may think its duration just right. We may welcome it while it is there, but welcoming is not the same as desiring, which implies a lack. There is also the difficulty,570 since not all desire is emotional, of specifying which desires constitute emotions. So I shall not pursue this option further, even though it has provoked much discussion.

Does Every Decision To Pursue Or Avoid Involve Emotion? Chrysippus' analysis faces another problem: is not his pair of judgements too common? In most cases when we decide to pursue or avoid something, we judge something to be good or bad, and judge it appropriate to react—not, of course, with inner expansions and contractions, but with pursuit and avoidance. Yet these decisions do not all involve emotion.571 I believe Chrysippus would be prepared to say that they do. According to the theory of indifference, which will be more fully explained in Chapter 12, it is very different to judge something good or bad and to judge it as merely preferred or dispreferred. To see it as preferred and appropriate to reach for is merely to ‘select’ it, and this attitude, as explained in Chapter 2, involves no emotion. But the judgement of good or bad already gives you a certain emotional attachment. Similarly with the judgement that pursuit or avoidance is appropriate, you can reduce your liability to emotion, or at least to initial shock, by adding the qualification, discussed in Chapter 2, ‘if God wills’, or ‘if nothing interferes’. So the judgements involved in ordinary decisions to pursue or avoid something may very well constitute emotion. I am not sure that this Chrysippan response should remove our doubts. But at least this

569

See e.g. Green, Emotions. I am grateful to David Charles and Ram Prasad for urging on me the possibility of so revising the Stoic analysis.

570

Stocker, ‘Psychic Feelings’, arguing for a different analysis again, has raised the problem of zombie-like patients, who seem to have relevant desires without being emotional.

571

I thank Leslie Stephenson for raising this objection.

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much might be conceded to Chrysippus: the evaluative judgements involved in our ordinary deliberative decisions do make us at least liable to emotion, in a way that judgements of preferred indifference and desiring with reservation would not.

Good, Bad, and Novel? In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century accounts of the passions, there is an interest in the passion of wonder,572 omitted from the Stoic lists. It may be for that reason that the definitions of passion speak of the apprehension of something good, bad, or novel. Unfortunately, not all novelty provokes emotion, but Chrysippus' definition, as it stands, does not cover a sense of wonder, and wonder provides a case in which there need not be even an appearance of good or bad.

Plotinus' Disagreements The Neoplatonist Plotinus would take issue with Chrysippus' account of emotion on at least two points. First, he denies that judgements of good or bad are always sufficient for grief, anger, or appetite, but not because he, like Chrysippus, desiderates a second judgement that it is appropriate to react. Rather, his point is that the reference to judgement does not yet explain the contributions to emotion of body, soul, and compound, since it confines itself to a contribution of the soul.573 A further disagreement concerns not a pathos, buta eupatheia, although it is something that we would classify as an emotion: the love involved in mystical contemplation: This contemplation is intellect in love (nous erōn), when it goes out of its mind, drunk with nectar. Then it falls in love, made simple and transformed into happy feeling (eupatheia) by satiety.574 This love, according to Plotinus, can involve no judgement, because judgement involves a duality which is excluded by mystical union.575 For the Stoics, by contrast, eupatheia involves judgement just as much as pathos does. In particular, this is true of the will involved in eupathic love.

572

Jane L. McIntyre, ‘Hume's “new and extraordinary” account of the passions’, in preparation.

573

Plotinus 1. 1. 5.

574

Id. 6.7.35(24–6); cf. 1.6.7(12–28); 6.9.4(16–23); 6.7.34–5.

575

Id. 5.3.10(28–51); 5.3.13(36); 5.3.14(1–3); 6.7.35(29–30) and 43–5; 6.7.39(17–20); 6.7.40(1); 6.7.41(38); 6.9.4(1–6); 6.9.10(7–21); 6.9.11(11).

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How Much Of Chrysippus' Analysis Survives? The objections of the last three chapters have been quite enough to show that Chrysippus' judgemental analysis of emotion will not do as it stands. And yet it still contains a lot of truth. Nearly all emotion involves at least the appearance of good or bad. Typically the appearance is endorsed. Very often there is an additional appearance, or endorsement, that one of the four reactions picked out by Chrysippus is appropriate. Often this second appearance or endorsement is as necessary to the emotion as the first, whether or not the necessity in this second case is merely causal. Moreover, these truths are sufficient to ensure the utility of Chrysippus' account for therapy, by showing us what we need to be rid of if we are to free ourselves from unwanted emotion. Only in some cases will Chrysippus' oversights impair therapy—where his definition does not fit the emotion at all. But, for example, the question whether the necessity of a given judgement is merely causal will not affect the efficacy of procedures that get rid of that judgement. None the less, there are holes in the judgemental analysis and there will be corresponding failures in therapy. To understand this, we need to consider in the next chapter recent neurophysiological research on emotion.

10 What Is Missing From the Judgemental Analysis? Brain Research and Limitations on Stoic Cognitive Therapy The objections of Posidonius and others have shown that Chrysippus' two judgements are not always necessary, nor always sufficient, for emotions to occur. What, then, is missing from the judgemental analysis? The debate has continued unresolved through most of the twentieth century, with different values being attached to bodily reaction, sensation, desire, or various forms of affect. It has also become clear what a large role is played by unconscious beliefs. But I believe that fresh clarity can be brought to the subject through research on the brain performed during the 1990s by Joseph LeDoux,576 to whose work I shall come shortly. That there were forces to be considered other than judgements was evident to the Stoics, as Posidonius' appeal to Plato's horses makes clear. Already Zeno had identified distress and pleasure with contractions and expansions. But the main Stoic tendency had been to marginalize these forces as side effects. Chrysippus did so by making contraction and expansion into mere effects of emotion, Seneca through making first movements, which included physical symptoms, into mere effects of appearance. Two suggestions have recently been pressed by philosophers as alternatives to the analysis in terms of judgement. One is the analysis of emotion in terms of desire, which I mentioned briefly, but disagreed with, in Chapter 9.577 The other suggestion is that emotion involves affectivity or feeling, and that this notion is not further reducible to anything else.578 I believe LeDoux's work shows how it can be reduced.

576

LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (New York, 1996; London, 1998).

577

Green, Emotions.

578

Stocker, ‘Psychic Feelings’.

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Why the Brain's Amygdala Reactions Need To Be Added To the Role Of Judgement Brain research, we shall see, was already producing relevant results in the nineteenth century. Even concerning the part of the brain called the amygdala, on which LeDoux concentrated, much was already known about its importance for emotion.579 But for our particular purposes the extra element added by LeDoux happens to be important, because it gives the amygdala's reactions a new independence from judgements, thoughts, or ideas. The more obvious cases of emotion, and the only cases mentioned in a widely noticed book published two years before LeDoux's, are those in which the thoughts come first and the physical reactions of the amygdala and other brain systems follow as effects.580 Writing two years later, LeDoux pointed out that the order of precedence can also be the other way round. The physical reactions, so far from being mere effects of thoughts, can actually precede the emotional thoughts in time. He has as yet confirmed this precedence only for the case of fear induced in rats by sound, but he takes it the same is likely to be true for fear induced by sound in humans and that it may also be true for other signals associated with harm or benefit in the past experience of the individual or the race. LeDoux writes—but in this I cannot follow him—as if the more obvious order of precedence is not to be found at all (pp. 19, 146). What LeDoux discovered is that a sound associated with danger signals its message to the brain by two routes which diverge at a fork, one route being fast, one slow (pp. 157–65). The fast route travels to a part of the brain called the amygdala, which immediately activates a large number of bodily systems. At this stage the person knows no more than that there is some danger (p. 163), and even that information may not be conscious (pp. 64, 69). Almost any philosopher would have thought that one could not know something was dangerous unless one had at least some idea what it was. This turns out not to be so, even in ordinary people. The effect can be

579

Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (New York, 1994; London, 1995), 69–70, cites earlier work by L. Weiskranz (1956), J. P. Aggleton and R. E. Passingham (1981), Joseph LeDoux (1992), and his own colleagues (1990, 1993, 1994). LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, cites further work by Damasio's colleagues (1995). Paul MacLean cites many excisions and stimulations of the amygdala going back to the early 1950s: The Triune Brain in Evolution (New York, 1989), ch. 19, 315–41. However, the amygdala is not essential for emotional reactions, since we shall see that Ferrier's 19th-cent. experiments produced emotional reactions in decerebrate animals who had lost the amygdala.

580

This is the only type of sequence recognized by Damasio, Descartes' Error, 136–8.

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clearer still in people with brain damage. In a split-brain patient, who had lost much of the interconnection between the two hemispheres of his brain, the left hemisphere was able to say of an object presented only to the right hemisphere whether it was good or bad, but not what it was (p. 14). This apparently is the situation of all of us, at the stage when signals have only reached the amygdala. After the amygdala has been alerted, it takes about twice the time for the message to reach the cortical parts of the brain. When the message arrives, the person may then, but also may not, be able to identify what the supposedly dangerous thing is. If the thing is not dangerous, the cortex may be able to send messages to quieten the amygdala. But these mechanisms may fail to work. First, there may be no recognition. The sound of a car horn, associated with a past car crash or near miss, may have alerted the system. But one may not recognize that it is a sound that has done the alerting. After all, one is seeing a lot of things as well as hearing, so one may fail to recognize what has triggered the system (p. 203). The past trauma may even have caused the kind of physical damage that impairs memory of the past mishap and of the horn (pp. 239–45). There are other cases too in which recognition fails to occur. People subject to panic attacks may have their panic triggered by some bodily sensation associated with past danger, without being able to recognize any of these things as operating now (p. 258). In another case a brain-damaged patient, with no ability to create new memories of people, was unable to recognize her assailant. But the assailant's proffered handshake, associated with the earlier assault, alerted the amygdala system, so that the handshake was refused (pp. 180, 222). But suppose recognition does occur. The shell-shocked person may realize that it is only a door slamming, not gunfire, that he hears. But his past experience at the battle front may have been so traumatic as to damage the systems used for quietening the amygdala (p. 256). In phobias, the amygdala's response to snakes or heights may have been innately wired in, for evolutionary reasons, and so be all the harder to overcome (p. 255). The Stoics had already tried to explain, without ascribing rationality to chickens, how newborn ones can recognize the bull as safe, but the weasel or hawk as dangerous.581 Avicenna had distinguished a special estimative faculty to explain the sheep's knowledge that the wolf is

581

Hierocles Elements of Ethics, P. Berlin 9780, ed. A. A. Long, Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, vol. 1 (1992), 2. 40–3.

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dangerous.582 In a way, the hard-wiring of the amygdala provides his faculty. The reactions of the amygdala system provide the modern counter-part of Posidonius' horses. We no longer believe, like him, in spatial movements of a physical soul, but Posidonius' instinct was right. Important as judgements or appearances are to many instances of emotion, there is another factor to be considered: the physical reactions of the amygdala or other comparable brain systems and our awareness of those reactions. We can now see why there were so many examples available to Posidonius in which judgement is either not necessary or not sufficient for emotion. Disowning the judgement that a height is dangerous does not automatically calm the amygdala. When music arouses an emotional response which we cannot attach to a particular object, what may be at work is either the amygdala or some part of the brain that plays a comparable role in emotions other than fear. Some animals, non-mammals, having little or no cortex, may react standardly in this sort of way, rather than through cortical pathways. Conversely, our judgements, when we foresee a danger by intellectual means, may fail to arouse the amygdala if we are exhausted, or for other reasons inattentive, or unimaginative. No wonder Posidonius was able to find holes in the purely judgemental analysis. What, then, is missing from the judgemental analysis of emotion? LeDoux lists a huge range of reactions set up by the amygdala and another range set up by the cortical response(pp. 109–10,149, 158–9, 207, 284–5, 287–8, 290–1). Moreover, there is sometimes in addition a consciousness of some of these reactions. In fear, the amygdala may cause the animal to freeze motionless, may alter heart rate and blood pressure, reduce sensitivity to pain, release stress hormones, activate reflexes such as blinking or widening of the eyes. The animal may defecate, urinate, or have its hair stand on end—humans get goose pimples. Other reactions include sweating, fleeing, fighting, and changing facial expressions. The amygdala may also help activate a number of arousal systems, which keep various organs alert for anything important, sometimes for a matter of days, without supplying any information as to whether the importance takes the form of danger. Something which has all these reactions, according to LeDoux, will be in a state of fear, and this is surely plausible for some cases. To feel afraid, as well as being afraid, LeDoux suggests,

582

Avicenna Latinus On the Soul 86.99–3; 89.48–52 S. van Riet.

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is to be conscious of the activity of the brain's emotion system (p. 268).583 This last remark on consciousness may help to explain some of the phenomena I have called ‘feeling-as-if ’ the situation were bad without judging it bad. This might in some cases of fear be no more than consciousness of the reactions set up by the amygdala, reactions which would be appropriate to imminent harm. The idea of imminent harm need not have entered into consciousness in the case of a lower animal, or of a human moved by sad music. On the other hand, a shell-shocked person who knows he has only heard a door slam may well have entertained the idea of harm before dismissing it. Only in the last case will the idea of harm be doing much work. If we put LeDoux's findings together with the earlier discussion of judgement, we can see that in many cases fear in the human will involve both systems, both certain judgements and the automatic reactions of the amygdala system. But in many cases the judgements come a fraction later, and in some cases there is no judgement that is actually conscious, not even the rudimentary judgement of some danger. We can also understand more about the phenomenon of first movements. Tears, trembling, and sinking feelings in the chest may well be produced by an automatic quick-route system, before anyone has had time to register what exactly the situation is. LeDoux seems prepared to concede that the person may be described as already thinking there is danger, but that thought, he says, may as yet be entirely unconscious. I would prefer to express the situation by saying that talk of thinking does not really add to the description of the physical fear reactions, since the idea of danger is not yet doing the work. The first movements, then, can arise even earlier than Seneca supposed, so that there is all the more case for his claim that they do not yet constitute emotion.

583

There is a similar account of the difference between having and feeling an emotion in the earlier book by Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error (New York, 1994; London, 1995), 139, 145. But despite the great interest of his findings, that account did not include LeDoux's fast-track discoveries about the amygdala, and so could not justify the claim of primacy for physical reactions. Some of the issues left unresolved are addressed by LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, 293–5. In the following year, 1995, as LeDoux reports (p. 173), Damasio and his colleagues published important new findings on a patient whose brain damage was, exceptionally, confined to the amygdala. There are also in Damasio's book suggestions about how feeling-as-if might occur through imagination, in the absence of the normal bodily reactions (pp. 155–7), and how disowned emotions might occur through the presence of bodily reactions in the absence of an identifiable stimulus (p. 146). See now Damasio's important The Feeling of What Happens (London, 2000).

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It matters that LeDoux maintains that what the amygdala system produces, without any help from the cognitive systems of the cortex, is already to be counted as emotion. His is a rather unusual position. He appeals to a principle of economy, Occam's razor, to avoid postulating cognitive states unnecessarily, and cites Pavlov as a model (p. 143, p. 146 with n. 15). But Pavlov not only denied thoughts to the dogs who salivated on hearing the dinner bell, he also refused to describe their response as an emotion. It was only salivation, whereas LeDoux does ascribe emotion to his subjects. I think he is right to do so in many cases, though not for the reasons he gives. LeDoux sees both the amygdala system and the cognitive systems of the cortex as principally constituting a survival mechanism (p. 128). The great advantage of the amygdala system is that it is fast, so that the animal freezes even before it can tell what the danger is, although this may often be inappropriate. The advantage of the cortical system is that it enables us to act, rather than merely to react, and to respond more appropriately. But it carries the disadvantage of enabling us to foresee failure and so creates anxiety (p. 175). In LeDoux's view, the core of emotion is not provided by conscious appraisal of the situation nor by consciousness of our reaction to it (pp. 297–9). These are dispensable. It might be protested that he concedes that the amygdala system involves at least an unconscious judgement that there is danger. But I have expressed doubt whether that judgement does any work in his explanation, rather than being a mere redescription of the automatically operating mechanism. LeDoux thus reverses Seneca's verdict on whether the physical reactions are more important or the judgements. The only point of agreement is that neither attaches importance to awareness of the physical reactions (pp. 18, 125, 128). I think LeDoux is right about some cases. We do sometimes think of the non-cognitive reactions as constituting, and of the cognitive reactions as not constituting, emotion. But we need to go case by case. Like LeDoux, I would find it hard to insist that a merely intellectual foresight of danger constitutes fear. And it is hard to deny that a person with shell-shock or vertigo who disowns the idea of danger may be afraid, and that a person moved by music for unidentified reasons may be feeling emotion, even though they may not have an identifiable object to feel emotion about.584 But LeDoux's account

584

A further complication is that when the physical reactions characteristic of an emotion are artificially induced, people have been found to supply in their thoughts an object for the emotion to latch on to: S. Schachter and J. E. Singer, ‘Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional “State’ ”, Psychological Review, 69 (1962), 379–99.

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fits less well, I think, with people who have and feel the physical reactions characteristic of anxiety, but who have become accustomed to the idea that there is nothing to be anxious about and behave perfectly calmly. We may well think of them as having only feelings of anxiety, not as being anxious. LeDoux claims to throw light also on the tradition which makes emotion depend on bodily feedback (pp. 45–50, 291–6), most famously exemplified by William James's view that we do not cry because we are sad, but are sad because we cry.585 The biggest problem for James is how to explain our tears or trembling occurring in the first place, unless we are already sad or afraid. LeDoux offers an answer, although it seems to concern only feeling afraid, as opposed to being afraid (pp. 268, 295). We will not feel afraid until there has been enough feedback from the unconscious amygdala circuits for us to be aware of our bodily reactions. But this defence of James is limited because, on LeDoux's view, we will by this stage already be afraid.

Other Brain Research Reducing the Role Of Cognition LeDoux's is not the first brain research to reduce the role of cognition in emotion. The nineteenth-century neurophysiologist David Ferrier, studying animals with their cerebral hemispheres, including the amygdala, removed, commented: They start at sounds, flinch at light . . .direct their movements in relation with visual impressions; respond with movements expressive of disgust or discomfort. . .The centres of emotional expression are therefore situated below the centres of conscious activity and ideation.586

Another set of findings concerns sudden emotional experience lasting say 20 to 40 seconds at the onset of epileptic fits.587 The feelings are typically recognized by patients as baseless and, when they take the

585

William James, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1890). Other proponents are Schachter and Singer, ‘Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants’, and Damasio, Descartes' Error.

586

David Ferrier, Functions of the Brain, ch. 4 (1st edn. 1868), ed. Dan Robinson (University Publications of America: Significant Contributions to the History of Psychology, 28 vols.; Washington, 1978). I am very grateful to Dan Robinson for this reference and the next.

587

MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution, ch. 24.

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form of fear, the fear is said not to be about the impending attack. So the feelings do not consist in the kind of cognition Chrysippus postulates. There are often accompanying sensations, which, in line with Galen's observations about bites, are felt in the epigastrium, or pit of the stomach. And it is interesting that the emotional experiences have been described as ‘ictal’, from the word Seneca used for first movements, Latin ictus ‘shock or blow’.588 The very same emotional experiences were also aroused, so the patients said, during surgery to remove malfunctioning portions of the brain. The range of emotional feeling reported is enormous and the patients describe it in terms of cognition, but of cognition they recognize as baseless. There are feelings of depression, sorrow, sadness, intense fear, loneliness, a feeling of being alone, a homesick feeling, shame or guilt, anxiety, wanting someone near, or wanting to be alone, paranoid feelings, especially of there being someone behind one, a sense of futility, of unreality, a depersonalization, a sense of being far off, outside the body and watching oneself, a terrified feeling as if one were in another world, a sense of disgust, a moroseness. There are also triumphal feelings, described as feelings of completeness, contentment, elation, exhilaration, fascination, gladness, satisfaction, security, eternal harmony, immense joy, intense happiness, paradisiacal happiness, well-being of all the senses, like whisky taking effect, a relaxed feeling, a wonderful feeling. And there are feelings as of the revelation of truth, of clarity, or of conviction.

Implications Of Brain Research For Different Therapies All this brain research has implications for therapy. LeDoux suggests that the role of bodily feedback may help to explain the kind of therapy I shall associate in Chapter 17 with the figure of Socrates, and which has recently been studied by Paul Ekman, in which putting on a smile makes you more relaxed (p. 295). This bodily feedback therapy is, of course, only one. We can see from LeDoux's research how there could be many therapies. An obvious hope is that drugs might be developed for controlling the amygdala's reactions. But we can see certain other therapies, including Stoic cognitive therapy, as helping the cortex to gain control of the amygdala, or of other automatic systems (pp. 248–50, 261). The Stoic cognitive method is for people to change their judgements by

588

e.g. D. Daly, ‘Ictal Affect’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 115 (1958), 97–108.

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saying things to themselves. We can see both why cognitive therapies can often work and why they sometimes cannot. It is no use the shell-shocked person telling himself that he has only heard a door slamming, because the amygdala inhibitors have been damaged by earlier trauma. Different therapies may try to gain control of the amygdala by different means. In extinction therapy, someone who fears crowds may be brought through conditioning to see crowds as safe, first by imagining going out of doors and then by actually going, but at first only as far as the garden gate. He does not, like the Stoic, have to say things to himself, but only to experience the safety of these exercises in reassuring surroundings. LeDoux suggests that a distinct part of the cortex in the medial prefrontal region may be being used here to control the amygdala (pp. 248–50, 263–5).

Limitations On Stoic Cognitive Therapy The workings of the brain and the impossibility in some cases of controlling the amygdala system by cognitive methods provide only one set of limitations on Stoic cognitive therapy. It has other limitations of its own. I mentioned in Chapter 1 that it is not intended to cure what we should call pathological emotions, but it can be very effective with the ordinary ups and downs of life. I should now draw attention to three further limitations. First, Chrysippus is not well placed, unlike Posidonius and Galen, for dealing with moods that are not directed to a particular situation. Moods, like depression, for example, persist whether directed to a situation or not, so cannot easily be treated by Chrysippus, whose therapy, like his analysis of emotion, focuses entirely on the judgements people make about their situations. Looking at a situation differently will not cure depression, if depression is independent of any particular situations. By contrast, moods are treated not only by Posidonius and Galen, but also, we shall see in Chapter 23, by the Christian Evagrius, who paid particular attention to a form of depression called akēdia. Secondly, Chrysippus has comparatively little to say about children and how to mould their emotions. In this he may be like Socrates: both depend on rational interrogations of a kind more suited to adults. In Chrysippus' view, children do not acquire reason until the age of 14. It is the complaint of Posidonius that Chrysippus has nothing to say about how to train children, because he thinks

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they are naturally virtuous unless corrupted by bad company. This too is due to neglect of their non-rational side.589 Plato, Posidonius, and Galen, by contrast, have a great deal to say on the training of children, and so do others in Plato's tradition, Antiochus and Plutarch. This is true of others too, of Aristotle and the Epicureans. Chrysippus' comparative silence is only partly offset by later Stoics, like Seneca, who talk of the value of precepts (praecepta, Greek paraineseis) as well as doctrines and theories (decreta, Greek dogmata). Seneca reports a Stoic debate on the utility of precepts and believes that they are useful, especially for those who are beginning to take control of themselves in youth, a point on which he says Brutus agreed.590 Seneca's Stoic contemporary, Musonius Rufus, gave detailed advice on behaviour, partly for the young, for example on whether to obey your parents, or get your hair cut.591 Such instructions were sometimes called in Greek hupothēkai. However, an earlier Stoic, Aristo, contemptuously asserts that hupothēkai are suitable only for schoolteachers and nurses, not for philosophers, to give.592 A third limitation is that the Stoics concentrate their attention on understanding one's own emotions, not the emotional effect of one person on another, nor the emotions of others,593 except in so far as these bear directly on how to control one's own. An example of this exception is that you may control your own anger by reflecting: ‘I, too, have before now committed the offence I am complaining of.’594 The point is not to understand that person, but to see that for you to react would be inappropriate.

Modern Cognitive Therapy A parallel question has arisen what limitations there may be on modern cognitive therapy. I should first say something of its relation to Stoic cognitive therapy. In one way it is very like, as shown by the fact that a leading practitioner of cognitive therapy has described emotions as being judgements.595 Unwanted emotions are treated

589

Galen PHP 5. 5. 31, pp. 322–4 de Lacy.

590

Seneca Letter 94. 48 and 51. The debate is the subject of Letters 94–5.

591

Fragments 16 and 21 in the Teubner edition of O. Hense, translated by Cora E. Lutz, ‘Musonius Rufus, “The Roman Socrates’ ”, Yale Classical Studies, 10 (1947), 3–147.

592

Ap. Sextum Against the Mathematicians 7. 12; cf. Seneca Letters 89. 13(SVF 1. 356–7), 94. 8.

593

For an up-to-date account of understanding the emotional effect of one person on another and the emotions of others see Goleman Emotional Intelligence.

594

Seneca On Anger 2. 28.

595

I am very grateful to David Clark for speaking at two conferences, one at Wolfson College, Oxford, on the Origins of Psychotherapy of the Emotions (16–17 Mar. 1994), and one a conversazione at the British Academy comparing ancient and modern disagreements on therapy (8 June 1995). My account of those meetings represents my understanding, and is subject to correction by him.

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by changing judgements. In resorting sometimes to behaviour to change judgements, modern cognitive therapy is no different from ancient. Seneca, we shall see, changed his judgements in favour of retaliation by looking in a mirror, to see how ugly anger made him. Similarly, in modern cognitive therapy behaviour was used to cure a patient of irrational fear of a heart attack, which doctors had shown to be delusive. When he believed an attack was coming on, he was asked to engage in the strenuous activity of star jumping. When this did not lead to a heart attack, the belief in imminent danger abated. But the differences should be noticed, as well as the similarities. Modern cognitive therapy of course only offers to treat unwanted emotions. It does not follow what we shall see to be the Stoic ideal, of eradicating all emotion. Again, the judgements selected for treatment tend to be factual, not evaluative (‘I am going to have a heart attack’, ‘Nobody is interested in what I say’, ‘I am fat’). But even Stoics like Seneca treat factual questions too (assume your health will last, assume your son is enjoying life after death). And in each case the factual question is relevant because of its relation to an evaluative one (death, being ignored, fatness, ill health, and extinction are all bad). Sometimes too modern cognitive therapy does the same as Chrysippus in addressing the evaluative questions directly (‘Would it be insupportable if this did happen?’). The modern therapy makes one concession to Posidonius' point that imagination, as well as judgement, is important. Patients may not be brought to recognize by evidence alone that a heart attack is not in the offing, because they have such a vivid picture of themselves lying dead on the floor. It may be necessary to substitute a picture of themselves sitting comfortably in an armchair and merely imagining themselves collapsed on the floor. Early Stoics had sufficiently allowed a role for imagination in therapy, as shown, for example, by the relabelling exercises to be discussed in Chapter 15, but not (this is Posidonius' point) in the emotion itself. Chrysippus' concern with evaluative judgements is due to a further difference, that he has a whole ethical theory according to which most evaluative judgements are mistaken because most things are indifferent. But this difference, though huge, does not impinge very

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much on therapeutic practice because, as will be seen in Chapter 12, Chrysippus is willing to exclude this theory from therapy. The question of limitations to modern cognitive therapy has arisen in connection with the fact that its major successes have been with some conditions rather than others. It has been very successful indeed, for example, with phobias. But among eating disorders it has had far more success with bulimia, in which, for emotional reasons, people eat too much, than with anorexia, in which they eat too little and in which mistaken judgements about their being too fat persist. An obvious conclusion would be that there are other factors at work here besides judgements and that other non-cognitive therapies will be needed. But one cognitive therapist has, in oral discussion, offered the following alternative explanation.596 The judgements associated with anorexia are far more numerous than those associated with phobias and it takes time to discover which judgements are the driving ones doing the damage in any given case. Further, in some cases it may be hard for a person to identify the judgements at all: they may be unconscious. In time, however, all emotions will turn out to consist of judgements and all will be amenable to cognitive therapy. Chapter 17 will be devoted to a non-Chrysippan tradition in ancient philosophy which gave a central role to the body in emotion and recognized the need for non-cognitive therapies. But before that, I want to consider how Chrysippan cognitive therapy would work in detail.

596

My report of discussion with David Clark is subject to the provisos above.

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Part II Value Of the Emotions, Cognitive Therapy, and the Role Of Philosophy

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11 The Role Of Analytic Philosophy In Stoic Cognitive Therapy Stoic cognitive therapy consists of a package, which is in part a philosophical analysis of what the emotions are and in part a battery of cognitive devices for attacking those aspects of emotion which the philosophical analysis suggests can be attacked. The devices are often not philosophical, and are often shared with other schools. But I believe it is wrong to suppose that they are doing all the work. The work is done by the package, and the philosophical analysis is an essential part of the package. Admittedly, somebody who just wanted to be treated passively as the patient of a Stoic therapist would not have to understand the philosophical analysis. But anyone who wants to be able to deal with the next emotional crisis that comes along, and the next, needs to learn how to treat themselves, and for this the philosophical analysis of emotion is essential. What is under discussion here is the role of philosophical analysis as relevant to life. I am indebted to Bernard Williams not only for expressing a diametrically opposite view, but for discussing it with me both orally and in print.597 His case demands the most careful consideration. His claim, which echoes Macaulay's epigram on Seneca quoted in the epigraphs at the front of this book, is that rigorous philosophy cannot be therapeutic. I shall postpone to Chapter 15 the further suggestion that this is the province of psychoanalysis. But can we really believe that philosophy, properly understood in terms of rigorous argument, could be so directly related to curing real human misery, the kind of suffering that priests and doctors and—indeed—therapists address? How many people can really have believed it? . . . [The author under review] has left me, for one, feeling how strange it might be to see rigorous

597

Seminar in Oxford, 1 Nov. 1996; see also Bernard Williams, ‘Stoic Philosophy and the Emotions: Reply to Richard Sorabji’, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, suppl. vol. 68; 1997), 211–13. I also thank Tom D'Andrea for discussion of the discussion.

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philosophy (Chrysippus' logic, for instance) exclusively or mainly in this light, and also how great a distance separates these thinkers, in as much as they did believe this, from the modern world. . . . We are surely bound to find the Epicureans too rationalistic, the Sceptics too procedurally self-obsessed, the Stoics (at least in their Roman incarnation) too unyieldingly pompous for us to take entirely seriously, not just their therapies, but the idea of them as philosophical therapists. . . .598 I have already begun to indicate my answer. I have argued that the Stoic analysis of emotion was more rigorous than similar modern analyses, and yet that it has therapeutic value. Here are four ways in which the philosophical analysis contributes to therapy. First, it provides the necessary motivation. Therapy would have seemed hopeless, in the absence of drug therapy, if emotions had been involuntary contractions or physical reactions. But if they are judgements and we are free to suspend judgement, then our efforts may be worth while. Secondly, the analysis immediately shows you which two propositions you typically need to attack if you want to get rid of an emotion: the proposition that your situation is good or bad (e.g. have you really suffered harm?) and the proposition that it is appropriate to react(e.g. would it really be appropriate to get even?). Thirdly, while you are evaluating whether you have really suffered harm, it helps you enormously to think, ‘Don't worry if your teeth are chattering, don't worry if you have got a sinking feeling’: that is not the emotion. This is calming because what often happens is that people think, ‘I am in a terrible situation’, as soon as they realize that their teeth are chattering, or that they have a sinking feeling. This is the phenomenon recognized by William James when he said: We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.599 It has also been confirmed in recent studies of feedback from facial expression, posture, gaze, or sweaty palms.600 Fourthly, it is important to know that you must act fast if you are to counteract the initial appearance that things are bad and it is appropriate to react. Otherwise you will be carried away by a third

598

Bernard Williams, ‘Do Not Disturb’, review of Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, in London Review of Books (20 Oct. 1994), 25–6. This is an application to the Hellenistic period of remarks made about earlier phases of ancient philosophy in his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London, 1985).

599

James, Principles of Psychology.

600

By Paul Ekman and others listed in ch. 15.

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movement and endorse even more extreme appearances (‘I must get even, come what may’). Next come the cognitive exercises for helping you reassess the two appearances. Even some of these, we shall see, are philosophical considerations, including philosophical analyses of time and the self. But most of them are not, and this fact raises a new question.

Why Not Use the Techniques Without Philosophical Analysis? Would not the techniques calm emotions on their own without the analysis of emotions? The question has been pressed by Bernard Williams.601 A parallel question arises in Yoga, where often useful techniques are taken over in the West without the theoretical framework. In fact, on the different issue of achieving not tranquillity, but happiness, Seneca preserves a debate on whether you need both Stoic philosophical theory (decreta) and precepts (praecepta), or whether one or the other would be enough on its own.602 The ‘theory’ of which he is speaking would include, for example, the Stoic analysis of emotions,603 while precepts are included among the therapeutic techniques. Seneca sees the two as forming a package and values them both. Of the therapeutic techniques, some are prophylactic, designed to build character in advance. But the ones that concern me for the moment are applied in retrospect after an emotional provocation has occurred. By contrast with the retrospectively applied techniques, the philosophical analysis of what emotions are needs to be internalized in advance. This is to enable you to apply therapy to yourself, because the analysis can motivate, guide, and direct the use of the techniques. The techniques can be targeted, some on one of the two propositions that the analysis distinguishes, some on the other. Consider some of the techniques for assessing the appearance that your situation is bad. The distressed may feel it is less bad when they reflect on the thought, ‘You are not the only one’.604 Then there is the technique of relabelling, exemplified by Epictetus' advice to think of a crowd as a festival.605 It can help to ask yourself whether your situation is really bad, or merely unexpected: recently people who thought they had won the national lottery, and then found that they

601

Williams, ‘Stoic Philosophy and the Emotions’.

602

Seneca Letters 94–5.

603

The decreta are by no means confined to moral principles, as Brad Inwood shows: ‘Rules and Reasoning in Stoic Ethics’, in Katerina Ierodiakonou (ed.), Some Topics in Stoicism (Oxford, 1998), 95–127.

604

Cicero Tusc. 3. 79.

605

Epictetus 4. 4. 24–6.

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had made a mistake and had not got the winning number, committed suicide. Why? What is bad about not winning the lottery? A week earlier, they thought there was nothing bad about it. The difference is that now failure to win the lottery is unexpected. They have confused the unexpected with the bad.606 For assessing the other appearance, that it is appropriate to react, the Stoics have a number of techniques: ‘Mourning makes you neglect the living.’607 ‘Anger makes you ugly.’608 ‘I too have before now committed the offence I am complaining of.’609 When we include the Stoics' prophylactic techniques, we find that many of them are philosophical. Does anger or pity have a useful function? Not as often as we may think. The question is philosophical even if the answer calls for empirical experience. Anger tends to be self-frustrating, and you can often achieve everything you want to achieve by sheer determination to produce the right result. Pity, unlike mercy, may get in the way of our helping by causing us to feel upset.610 We shall see in Chapter 16 the relevance of the Stoics' philosophical views about the nature of time and the self. For example, Seneca, followed by the Platonist Plutarch, argues that you should not be afraid of death because there is no continuous self, only a series of momentary selves. Earlier selves have already died anyhow.611 Rather inconsistently, Plutarch also argues in the opposite way, that in order to achieve tranquillity, you must avoid disintegration into momentary selves, by weaving your past life into a whole. You should use your memory to create a biography of yourself, including the bad parts of the picture along with the good. Those who do not use their memory to create a biography for themselves are like a person plaiting a rope who does not notice that a donkey is eating up the rope as he plaits it.612 On this view, a self is something that you create. Epictetus offers tranquillity by a different route. We are to think that the self is not the body, but the reason or will (proairesis),

606

Cicero Tusc. 3.28; 3.52; Galen PHP 4. 7. 7, p. 282 de Lacy; Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 E ; On Freedom from Anger 463 D ; Tranq. 474 E –475 A .

607

Seneca Marcia 2.4; 3.3; 5.6.

608

Id. On Anger 2. 36. 1.

609

Ibid. 2. 28.

610

e.g. Cicero Tusc. 4. 43–57; Acad. 2. 44. 135; Seneca On Anger 1. 9. 2; On Mercy 2. 5–6; Philodemus On Anger cols. 31–2 Indelli; Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 19; Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 32. 186. 21 ff.

611

Seneca Letters 24.20–1; 58.23; Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392 C –E .

612

Plutarch Tranq. 473 B –474 B .

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so no tyrant can control it.613 Posidonius' rival analysis of the soul as containing an irrational element with spatial movements of its own is used to justify an education involving rhythm and music.614 And Posidonius' and Galen's analysis of mental characteristics as following the blend of bodily qualities is used to justify character training by means of diet.615 In each case, a philosophical analysis is considered relevant to real-life practices for obtaining the right psychological temperament. Whether or not these metaphysical views are therapeutic, it is not only ancient philosophers who suppose they are. Derek Parfit, for one, expects the denial of a continuous self to be so.616

Concessions and Vindications But now I must make some concessions. In so far as the philosophical analysis offered by Chrysippus is mistaken, to that extent we cannot expect that it will help us with our emotions. Take fear, for example. We have recognized that you do not remove your fear in battle by deciding that it is inappropriate to run away. We have to admit that. So in so far as Chrysippus was wrong about fear in battle, to that extent he does not help us get rid of it. Yet even with fear, we can see that a revised version of Chrysippus is of some help. Think of the fear of flying. British Airways used to offer a course which had eighty per cent success in curing people in a single day of the fear of flying. But they had to use imagination as well as judgement. The technique was to stop people having the appearance, or feeling-as-if, flying meant that something bad would happen. And that did cure the emotion. We are talking now not of the ‘appropriate to react’ proposition, but of the ‘something bad is going to happen’ proposition. If you remove the appearance that something bad will happen, that does cure fear. So even though Chrysippus' analysis of fear is wrong, none the less a revised analysis can help you cope. What I am conceding is that, in so far as Chrysippus' analysis is wrong about what is necessary for emotion, we cannot expect it to guide therapy. But that, I believe, reinforces my point that the philosophical

613

Epictetus 1. 1. 23; cf. Anaxarchus in Philo, Every Good Man is Free 17. 109; Gregory of Nazianzus Letter 32.

614

Galen PHP 5.5.29–35; 5.6.19–20, pp. 332–4, 330 de Lacy, see ch. 6 above.

615

Ibid. 5.5.22–4; 5.5.30–5, pp. 320–2, 322–4 de Lacy; QAM, in the Teubner edn. of his Scripta Minora, vol. 2, p. 67, lines 2–16. See ch. 17 below.

616

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984). Cf. the comparison of his views with Buddhism in Steven Collins, Selfless Persons (Cambridge, 1982).

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analysis is relevant to the therapy. Stoic therapy consists of rejecting those judgements or appearances which the analysis says are necessary to emotion. In the example of fear, I was exploiting two related facts. First, if the analysis is wrong because the judgement of appropriateness is not necessary in any way to fear, then the therapy of rejecting that judgement will not free you from fear. Conversely, if the analysis is right that an appearance of bad in the offing is necessary in some way to fear, then the therapy of rejecting that appearance will free you from fear. It might be added too that if the therapy of rejecting the appearance of bad in the offing regularly freed one from fear, that would be evidence that the appearance was in some way necessary to fear. But there is a complication. The claim made in the analysis is that certain judgements or appearances are necessary as components of the emotion, and not merely necessary in some other way, for example causally. But what is relevant to therapy is merely that they should be necessary in some way or other, not that they should be components. There are still other cases of fear, besides the one mentioned, in which rejecting a judgement fails to remove an emotion. The shell-shocked are terrified by a slamming door, even when they realize it is not gunfire. In this example premiss and conclusion are reversed. The failure of the therapeutic ‘It's only a door slamming’ shows the wrongness of the analysis which makes a judgement of imminent harm necessary for fear. In the earlier example it was independently implausible that fear required a judgement of the appropriateness of avoidance, and that was used to infer the failure of therapy. But Stoic therapy can fail for other reasons too, not only because the rejection of a judgement fails to have the desired effect, but also because it proves impossible to remove the judgement. The anorexic who eats nothing for emotional reasons persists in believing he or she is too fat. That Stoic cognitive therapy will not always be effective, and that other therapies will be needed too, should already have been clear from the discussion in Chapter 10 of the amygdala system in the brain. This can produce on its own the physical reactions of fear and may not be amenable to judgemental correctives coming from the cortex. Another thing that became clear is that those people who merely feel-as-if there was something bad in the offing may be responding to stimulation of the amygdala and not at all to information presented independently to the cortex. In that case Stoic cognitive

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therapy may have only limited chances of removing the feeling-as-if by supplying information to the cortex. What all this suggests is that what we need in regard to therapies is a pluralism. It is sensible to have a repertoire of therapies alongside the Stoic ones, and to discover empirically which therapies help best in which circumstances. Not only may other therapies be required, but the Epicureans would say that the Stoic rejection of judgements is not needed. For a mere switch of attention away from disquieting judgements can be sufficient.617 But shifting attention is often difficult unless supported by the kind of techniques supplied in Yoga: the recitation of mantras, or listening for minutes to a tuning-fork. The ancients complained, surely correctly, that without such aids trying to shift attention may not work.618 Sometimes Stoic therapy will not work for a completely different reason, I believe (although we shall see they would not agree), namely that you really are in a bad position and a sinking feeling really is appropriate. Bereavement would be an example. I would think it even stupid to deny the enormity of the loss. But Chrysippus and Seneca agree, we shall see in the next chapter, that therapy should not treat the loss as indifferent. Moreover, their analysis points you in the right direction. At some stage—after a pause, they would say619—you need to attack the first judgement by asking yourself how to make your life marginally less awful, by putting something back into it, or the second judgement by seeing that the sinking reaction has inappropriate consequences for other people. Seneca's On Consolation to Marcia, though not always strictly Stoic, is a marvellous example of what can be done. Stoic cognitive therapy does have some advantages of its own, I believe. It involves a habit of mind of questioning appearances by saying things to yourself, and this habit can be exercised all the time in daily life, for the many little ups and downs that occur. You can apply it to yourself, and you need no therapist other than yourself, once you have taken in the system. I believe that practising Stoic thoughts will show how often they are effective even though they will not always be so. This belief is itself an encouraging one. If we believed, erroneously, that the amygdala's reactions could not be countered by taking thought, this despairing attitude would become self-fulfilling by leading us not to make the effort.

617

Cicero Tusc. 3.33; 3.35; 3.76; 5.74; 5.88; Fin. 2. 96; Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 22; Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1099 E .

618

e.g. Cicero Tusc. 3. 35.

619

Ibid. 3. 76–7; Seneca Marcia 1. 7.

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Is Stoic Therapy a Detachable Part Of the Stoic System? In one way I may seem to have been distorting in comparing Stoic therapy with modern psychotherapy, because Stoic therapy is only one small part of a much larger system combining ethics, physics, and theology, not to mention logic. But we shall see in the next chapter that Chrysippus himself was willing to offer therapy to people who did not share Stoic values, so he himself thought the therapy to be detachable from the ethics, though not from the psychological theory. Even with Stoic trainees, Chrysippus believed it should be possible to present Stoic ethics without dependence on theology, because ethics came early in the curriculum, whereas theology came last.620 This is despite the fact that the ultimate justification from a Stoic point of view might be theological.621

Christian Therapy It may be easier for some people nowadays to gain tranquillity from selected aspects of Stoic philosophy than from belief in the Christian God. We shall see in later chapters that the Christians of antiquity were in the business of proposing rival therapies. They borrowed and adapted the Stoic idea of ‘first movements’, and they disagreed with each other about the value of eradicating emotion. What is striking is how much stranger their therapies often appear from a present-day perspective than the pagan ones. In Evagrius, the desert father, we find a belief in demons as tempters and a heroic ever-losing battle of playing one emotion off against another in the solitude of the desert.622 Christian consolation literature invokes the resurrection of the body.623 Augustine connects our inability to avoid fear and grief with original sin.624 His advice on consolation appeals much more directly to reliance on God than does the Stoic version. He was in-consolable

620

Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1035 A , cited by Jacques Brunschwig, ‘On a Book-title by Chrysippus: “On the Fact that the Ancients Admitted Dialectic along with Demonstrations’ ”, in Henry Blumenthal and Howard Robinson (eds.), Aristotle and the Later Tradition (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy suppl. vol.; Oxford, 1991), 81–95, esp. 91–5.

621

Brunschwig cites Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1035 C –D , but points out that the Chrysippan treatises which give these justifications come from the physics and theology part of the curriculum, not from the ethical part.

622

See ch. 23. Evagrius Practical Treatise, ed. A. and C. Guillaumont (Sources Chrétiennes, 171; Paris, 1979).

623

See ch. 25; Robert C. Gregg, Consolation Philosophy: Greek and Christian Paideia in Basil and the Two Gregories (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).

624

See ch. 25; Augustine City of God 14. 9–10.

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for his lost childhood friend until he learnt that God is the only thing that cannot be taken away.625 And he thinks that Christian baptism is the only thing that can fortify us against lust.626 Boethius gives an explicit warning in his Consolation of Philosophy, which I take to be a Christian work.627 After using familiar pagan techniques of consolation in the first two books, he says that he will move to something harder in Book 3, as he turns to his conception of God.628 These Christian appeals are undoubtedly powerful for believers, but since not everyone nowadays is a believer, I should expect the Stoic therapies to be much easier to assimilate for some people than the Christian ones. None of this is to deny that Stoicism has its unacceptable face, which I shall consider in Chapters 12 and 13.

Revival and Obsolescence Of Ideas I have been arguing that the Stoic belief in rigorous philosophy as contributing to therapy is not obsolete. I think that it is in any case very difficult to predict when ideas are finally obsolete and when they may be revived. This is partly because ideas can be transplanted into new contexts, I believe, without necessarily being radically changed in the process. Since people are eclectic, ideas may then be unpredictably revived. Elements, at least of the Stoic approach, have been revived by cognitive therapy, and in Chapter 16 we shall notice that one ancient idea about momentary selves, with its therapeutic consequences for the fear of death, has been revived by Derek Parfit.

Stoic Ethics Practical, But Not ‘Applied’ I could sum up my view by saying that in Stoicism analytic philosophy is married to philosophy as a way of life. But in describing Stoic philosophy as practical, I have not described it as applied ethics. The idea has been rightly criticized that one can work out an ethical theory in the abstract and then discover how to act in concrete situations by applying the theory (often in a rather automatic way) and seeing what it tells you to do.629 The Stoic texts I have been concerned with

625

Augustine Confessions 4.8.13–4.9.14.

626

See ch. 26. The culminating works are Augustine Against Julian and the Opus Imperfectum against Julian.

627

Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, 196n.28.

628

Boethius Consolation of Philosophy 3. 1, prose and poetry.

629

See Bernard Williams, e.g. ‘The Need to be Sceptical’, Times Literary Supplement (16–22 Feb. 1990), One-dimensionality of Ethical Theories’, ch. 15 of Animal Minds and Human Morals.

163–4 at 163. I have made the same criticism in ‘The

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are quite unlike this. The desire to control emotion leads to acute observation, which informs the analysis of what emotion is. The resulting analysis in its turn is used in the fight to control emotion. The philosophical analysis of what the emotions are is not even treated as belonging to a separate branch of philosophy from the practical control of emotion. Both are classified as ethics.630 The connection between practice and theory is seamless.

630

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 84.

12 Stoic Indifference: A Barrier To Therapy? I come now to the unacceptable face of Stoicism, their wider value system, and their belief that everything except character, or more generally rationality, is in the end indifferent. Of course anyone who reached the Stoic ideal of wisdom would regard everything else as indifferent, and then would be (almost) free of emotion. But Stoic sages were rarer than the phoenix.631 What I want to stress in this chapter is that the theory of indifference was not an essential part of Stoic therapy. It was one of their reasons, their own peculiar reason, for taking freedom from emotion (apatheia) as an ideal. I shall discuss apatheia in the next two chapters, but we do not have to agree with that ideal in order to learn from the Stoics how to get rid of unwanted emotions. And in getting rid of them, we do not have to resort to their theory of indifference. Before I can show this, I must explain what the theory of indifference is. The Stoics said we should give up the idea that anything matters that is not under our control.632 Control is allimportant, and the one thing that is under our control is our character—whether we are virtuous, as they put it. This means that our happiness is under our control.633 For we can be virtuous, they say, even if the misfortunes of Priam befall us,634 contrary to the example explicitly given by Aristotle.635 The Stoics cannot afford to admit that anything else is important, or the tranquillity of the wise Stoic cannot be guaranteed. Thus it comes about that all of the following are for the Stoics indifferent: life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wellfunctioning sense organs, wealth, reputation and their opposites, death, disease, pain, ugliness, frailty, disablement, poverty, low repute, and ignoble

631

Alexander On Fate 199. 19–20.

632

Epictetus 3.3; 3.8.

633

Cicero Tusc. 5. 40–1; 5. 81–2.

634

Stephanus In Rhet. (CAG 21, part 2) 325. 15.

635

Aristotle says no one would call someone like Priam happy: NE 1. 9, 1100a 8–9.

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birth.636 What matters is whether you are virtuous, and you can be virtuous while starving. Admittedly, life, health, and the rest are natural objectives (‘in accordance with nature’).637 Admittedly, they are naturally preferred (they are proēgmena, Latin commoda).638 They excite our impulses and are not indifferent in relation to that.639 Admittedly, we select them (eklegesthai, seligere) and they are normally to be taken (lēpta), although it would do them too much honour to say that they are to be chosen (haireta, expetenda).640 Admittedly, they are regarded by most Stoics as having some value, or more exactly selective value (axia eklektikē),641 although the Stoic Aristo denies them any value at all,642 and in Epictetus it is their indifference that is stressed rather than their value.643 Selective value is such that we should select them only with the reservation ‘if circumstances permit’,644 an attitude explained in Chapter 2. All in all, I think we have to take seriously the Stoics' refusal to say that the natural objectives are actually good (agatha), or a benefit (ōpheleia), or their opposites bad.645 I have discussed in Chapter 6 to what extent Panaetius (c.185–c.110 BC) and Posidonius (c.135–c.50 BC) might have qualified the theory of indifferents. Despite the thesis of indifference, the Stoics do not wait passively for things to happen. To see this, we must take into account their view of the goal or end (telos) of life. The early Stoic definition of the goal as ‘living in accordance with nature’ is refined by Diogenes of Babylon and his successor Antipater. Diogenes defines it as being rational in your selection of natural objectives, i.e. the preferred indifferents,

636

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 101–5 (=LS 58A –B ); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 61–3; Stobaeus 2. 79–80 Wachsmuth (=LS 58C ).

637

Stobaeus 2. 79–80 (=LS 58C ); 2. 82. 11 ff. Wachsmuth; Plutarch On Common Notions 1071 A (= SVF 3. 195); Cicero Fin. 3.22; Epictetus 2. 6. 9 (= SVF 3. 191).

638

Cicero Fin. 3. 51–2; Stobaeus 2. 84. 21 ff. Wachsmuth (=LS 58E = SVF 1.192; 3.128); Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 101–3 (=LS 58A = SVF 3. 126–7); Alexander Mantissa 163. 4ff. (SVF 3. 192); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 62.

639

Stobaeus 2.79; 2.80 (=LS 58C ); 2. 83. 2 ff. Wachsmuth.

640

Ibid. 2.79.15–16; 2.75; 2.82–3 (=LS 58C ); 2. 85. 1–4 Wachsmuth (=LS 58E ); Cicero Fin. 3. 31 (= SVF 3. 190); 3. 22; Epictetus 2. 6. 9 (= SVF 3. 191); Plutarch On Common Notions 1071 A (= SVF 3. 195); 1071 E ; Alexander Mantissa 164. 7 (= SVF 3. 193); 163.32 and 164.32 (= SVF 3. 194).

641

Stobaeus 2. 83–4 (=LS 58D = SVF 3. 124); 2.79; 2.80 (= SVF 3. 136); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 62 ff. (= SVF 3. 122); Alexander Mantissa 163–4 ff. (= SVF 3. 192); Plutarch CN 1071 B ; Seneca On the Happy Life 22. 4.

642

Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 64–7 (=LS 58F = SVF 1. 361); Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 160 (= SVF 1. 351). Aristo also denies they are preferred.

643

Epictetus 3.3; 3.26.

644

Stobaeus 2.83.10–84.2 (LS 58D = SVF 3. 124).

645

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 103 (=LS 58A ); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 22 (= SVF 3. 75); Cicero Fin. 3.50; 3.53.

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Antipater as doing everything in your power (pan to kath' hauton) to obtain these natural objectives.646 The point of both definitions is that actual success in hitting on the natural objectives does not matter. The telos is to aim right, whether or not you hit. The comparison with an archer is explicit,647 and it has been conjectured that it was introduced by Antipater, although one of our two sources introduces it only in order to ridicule it. In fact, the Stoic idea that the aim's the thing is parallel to what the English are taught about cricket: ‘The game's the thing.’ The idea is also transatlantic. For Grantland Rice, speaking of American football, wrote: When the last Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He asks not if you won or lost, But how you played the game.648 This brings out the Stoic attitude to preferred indifferents. You should do everything in your power to secure them for yourself and others. But whether you do secure them should matter no more than whether you win at cricket. The only question that matters is whether you aimed aright. The natural objectives are merely the subject matter (hulē, materia) of virtuous action.649 Admittedly, certain preferred indifferents may have a special role to play for those who are progressing (prokoptōn, proficiens) towards virtue. Seneca allows that such people need some indulgence from fortune.650 They need food and the liberal arts,651 they need precepts,652 and they may need funds,653 if they are to achieve virtue. One possible way for the Stoics to give these preferred indifferents a special value would be to class them as instrumental goods (poiētika, not telika), instrumental for approaching virtue. Of instrumental goods the Stoics

646

Stobaeus 2. 76. 9–15 (= SVF 3 Diogenes 44; Antipater 57); Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 21 (= SVF 3 Diogenes 46; Antipater 58); Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 88 (= SVF 3 Diogenes 45); Cicero Fin. 3. 22 (= SVF 3. 18); 5. 20 (= SVF 3. 44); Plutarch On Common Notions 1070 F –1071 E (= SVF 3. 195); 1072 E –F (= SVF 3 Antipater 59).

647

Plutarch On Common Notions 1071 C ; Cicero Fin. 3. 22 (= SVF 3. 18). See A. A. Long, ‘Carneades and the Stoic Telos’, Phronesis, 12 (1967), 59–90; Gisela Striker, ‘Following Nature: A Study in Stoic Ethics’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 9 (1991), 1–73.

648

I thank Alasdair MacIntyre for the reference.

649

Plutarch On Common Notions 1069 E (= SVF 3. 491); 1071 B ; Cicero Fin. 3. 60 (= SVF 3. 763). On the application of this doctrine by Alexander of Aphrodisias to the track record of doctors in securing their patients' health, see Katerina Ierodiakonou, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on Medicine as a Stochastic Art’, in P. van der Eijk (ed.), Ancient Medicine in its Socio-cultural Context (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1995), 473–85.

650

Seneca On the Happy Life 16. 3.

651

Id. Letter 88. 31.

652

Id. Letters 94–5.

653

Id. On the Happy Life 23. 5.

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still insist that, rather than constituting a benefit (ōpheleia), they are merely ‘not other than benefit’.654 Sometimes preferred indifferents play a role for people who are not progressives. For example, wealth can enable us to exercise a wider range of virtues.655 But here too the Stoics could say that its role is only that of an instrumental good. This perfectly good line of defence is, however, somewhat jeopardized, for the case of aids to moral progress, by the view ascribed to the Stoics that moral progress is itself only a preferred indifferent.656 The thesis of indifference may seem to be more clearly compromised by the Stoic view that it is sometimes justifiable to commit suicide. But in fact I think the Stoics have two different rationales for suicide and both respect the idea of indifference. Cicero tells us657 that the decision on suicide should turn on whether one has, or even foresees having,658 the preferred indifferents, indeed a preponderance (plura, in maiore parte) of them. It should not turn on whether one has the only thing that is good, virtue, or the only thing that is evil, vice.659 Does this give a new importance to the indifferents? No, on the contrary, it emphasizes the importance of the act of selection and the unimportance of the things selected, including life itself. The point has been made by others. Selecting death can itself be a rational and virtuous exercise, while life, which is disselected, is indifferent.660 I think the attitude manifested by some later Stoics is different. Instead of totting up, in a rather calculating way, where the preponderance lies, they came to list certain rather extreme circumstances that could justify suicide.661 Suicide is permitted to save one's country, to avoid a disgraceful deed imposed by a tyrant, or (these are the relevant cases) to avoid senility, incurable disease, or poverty.

654

Stobaeus 2.71.15–72.6 Wachsmuth (=LS 60M = SVF 3. 106); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 22–6 (=LS 60G ).

655

Seneca On the Happy Life 22. 1.

656

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 106–7 (= SVF 3.127; 3.135); Stobaeus 2. 80. 22 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 136).

657

Cicero Fin. 3. 60–1.

658

Cf. Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 28; 7. 176; Seneca Letter 58.34; 70.3; 104.21.

659

Cf. Stobaeus 2. 110. 9–15 Wachsmuth; Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1042 D ; On Common Notions 1063 D –E ; Alexander (?) Mantissa 159.15–22; 160.20–31; 168.1 ff. (= SVF 3. 758, 759, 767, 766, 764).

660

John Cooper, ‘Greek Philosophers on Euthanasia and Suicide’, in Baruch Brody (ed.), Suicide and Euthanasia (Dordrecht, 1989), 9–38, as glossed to me by Tad Brennan.

661

Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo 1.8, ed. and trans. L.G. Westerink, The Greek Commentaries on Plato's Phaedo, vol. 1. Olympiodorus (Amsterdam, 1976); Elias Prolegomena (CAG 18.1) 14.15–15.22 (= SVF 3. 768); David Prolegomena (CAG 18.2) 32. 11–33. 26 (for a translation from the Armenian version see Bridget Kendall and Robert W. Thomson, Definitions and Divisions of Philosophy by David the Invincible Philosopher (Chico, Calif., 1983); Pseudo-Elias (Pseudo-David) Lectures on Porphyry's Isagoge, ed. Westerink (Amsterdam, 1967), 13. 1–17.

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The inclusion of poverty as a reason is dubious:662 Diogenes Laertius omits poverty, but adds severe pain and mutilation.663 We need to ask whether in this list freedom from senility, pain, disease, mutilation, and perhaps poverty has gained a new importance, and ceased to be a matter of indifference. Seneca gives an answer completely different from the other Stoic one. He might by suicide put an end to senility, illness, or pain: not, however, to avoid the pain, but only if the pain were an impediment to all that he lived for,664 perhaps progressing, or in the case of a sage even aiming aright. This rationale provides a different method of making virtue the important thing and treating pain as indifferent.

Objections To Indifference As I said, I am against the Stoic thesis of indifference, and I find this an unattractive side of their philosophy. It is better to treat the welfare of our loved ones as something very much more than rightly preferred, even though the Stoics are right that this means incurring the risk of loss and desolation. Bernard Williams has interestingly commented that the concern of the Stoics and a number of other Greeks for self-sufficiency seems alien to us in the light of Christianity and Romanticism: Standing on the other side of so much history, above all of Christianity and Romanticism, we are bound to find these therapists very strange, in their aims, their tone and their methods.665

None the less, as already remarked, we can learn from the Stoics in treating unwanted emotions, without agreeing that none should be wanted. Not only are emotions quite often unwelcome: they are also quite often counter-productive. Anger or anxiety may be what is preventing us from getting what we want. There is a further point. There are tight corners in which it can prove useful after all to follow the Stoic view that what matters in a given situation is character. It is better to seek justice for others because you positively want them to be fairly treated. But what about those rare occasions on which you can achieve justice only at great personal cost? Suppose you find it beyond you positively to want

662

For the case against poverty see Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1039 E –F ; On Common Notions 1069 D –E ; Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 130 (= SVF 3. 757); and Westerink in his notes to Olympiodorus Commentary on Plato's Phaedo 1. 8.

663

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 130 (= SVF 3. 757).

664

Seneca Letter 58. 35–6.

665

Williams, ‘Do Not Disturb’.

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fairness for everyone at that cost? Then it is useful to fall back on the Stoic perspective and secure justice because you want to be a just person. There are also areas in which an attitude of indifference can profitably be practised. The clearer a person is about what they really want, the more likely they are to see that it can come about in different ways, and so be indifferent to the chance closing and opening of alternative routes. The objection may reasonably be felt that the doctrine of indifference is incompatible with fellow-feeling. Yet in a way fellow-feeling is a centrepiece of Stoic moral theory. For the Stoics argue that it is in accordance with nature and is right to treat all human beings, even slaves, as belonging, metaphorically speaking, in the same household (oikos), because all humans are rational. The process of coming to treat others as so belonging is called oikeiōsis. The naturalness of the process can be seen in the love of parents for children.666 No doubt, such untutored love is an emotion which the Stoic sage would transcend precisely because it does not exemplify an attitude of indifference. But the sage is allowed to have a corresponding eupatheia of good will (eunoia), defined as willing good to another for the other's sake. Its species include affection (aspasmos) and love (agapēsis).667 The goods which the sage wishes for others will not, I think, be indifferents like life and welfare, but goods of character. On the other hand, he or she will think it a duty energetically to pursue such indifferents as life and welfare for other people, so long as God wills these, and so long as they are recognized as indifferents. Such an attitude may still seem self-centred, because the sage's pursuit of life and welfare for others is treated as important while their actual life or welfare remains indifferent. But Epictetus tries to argue the other way, as will be seen in Chapter 13. Not only is an attitude of indifference compatible with fellow-feeling: it is essential for it. For without this we shall be driven to squabble over indifferents in competition with those we imagine we love, and shall find one wishing the other dead. We shall not truly love them (philein). True love for others, on this view, requires a certain

666

For Chrysippus' version of oikeiōsis see Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1038 B ; for a later (post-Chrysippan) and fuller version see Cicero Fin. 3. 62–3. I have described the doctrine in Animal Minds and Human Morals, chs.10–11.

667

Pseudo-Andronicus On the Emotions 6(= SVF 3. 432).

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detachment from things other than our own character and proairesis.668

The Relation Of Indifference To Therapy In a magisterial phrase, Bernard Williams has described the thesis of indifference as one of lethal high-mindedness: Without some credible account [of the value we accord to Stoic indifferents] Stoicism seems attached to a lethal high-mindedness which we can hardly recognise as the materials or goal of a therapy.669 On the ‘high-mindedness’ I rather agree; what interests me is the further objection, that we cannot recognize the thesis of indifference as the materials or goal of a therapy. Let me start with the materials for therapy. The point was already made by the Stoics themselves that the thesis of indifference could not be used as materials. The only early Stoic who thought it could be was Cleanthes, so Cicero tells us;670 but Chrysippus disagreed. The thesis of indifference attacks the first of the two judgements involved in emotion, the judgement that good or bad is at hand. But Chrysippus, we are told, thought the main thing in consoling people was to attack the second judgement, the judgement that it is appropriate to react.671 We have seen there are plenty of techniques for attacking the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement. One borrowed by Seneca from the Pythagoreans was to counter anger by looking in a mirror to see how ugly it made you.672 Another was to remember that you too had committed the offence you are complaining of.673 Seneca consoles Marcia by reminding her she is neglecting the living.674 Cicero raises three objections to Cleanthes' strategy of using indifference as the material for therapy. First, you could only recognize the

668

Epictetus 2. 22. I am indebted to Brad Inwood's excellent paper on this text delivered at the Institute of Classical Studies, 19 Feb. 1996.

669

Williams, ‘Do Not Disturb’.

670

Cicero Tusc. 3. 76–9, translated below.

671

If Martha Nussbaum had drawn attention to these two points in The Therapy of Desire, ch. 10, I believe she would have protected herself from the first of Bernard Williams' two criticisms.

672

Seneca On Anger 2. 36. 1; cf. Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 456 A –B ; Apuleius Apology 15.

673

Seneca On Anger 2. 28.

674

Id. Marcia 2.4; 3.3; 5.6; 5.16. Cf. Galen PHP 4. 6. 40–1, p. 278 de Lacy, on Achilles' advice to Priam that mourning will not bring his son back, but is just an extra evil. Basil of Caesarea urges his consolands to attend to the living: Letters 6; 269.

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indifference of things by becoming a wise person, and a wise person needs no consolation. Secondly, it is the wrong time to preach indifference. Thirdly, it is not in every case true that the cause of distress is a matter of indifference. Alcibiades' distress was caused by Socrates showing him that he lacked a good character,675 the thing which really does matter to the Stoics. So Cleanthes cannot show why Alcibiades should not indulge in distress. The solution to both problems turns on the fact that there is in emotion a second judgement about reaction being appropriate. It is the second judgement that is the target of Chrysippan therapy, thus obviating an appeal to indifference. Cicero tells us in another passage that it is the second, the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement, that is withheld by philosophers who are progressing towards wisdom when they contemplate the fact that they have not attained it. This provides their rationale for avoiding distress. The passage runs as follows. Surely the greatest philosophers who have not yet, however, attained wisdom understand that they are involved in the greatest evil since they are unwise, and there is no bigger evil than unwisdom. Yet none the less they do not grieve. How so? Because to this kind of evil the belief is not applied that it is right and appropriate and a matter of duty to take it badly that you are not wise.676

I believe that this excerpt is part of a larger passage (Tusculan Disputations 3. 64–71) in which Cicero focuses his attack on the judgement that it is appropriate to react, although the text has been taken differently.677 The example just given is one in a long series in which the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement is inhibited. I think Cicero's purpose in giving these examples is to show that the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement can be shed, and hence that emotion is voluntary rather than natural. It is worth quoting Cicero's main discussion of alternative therapies for grief in full. It is particularly poignant because he himself had tried them in a state of extreme distress. He describes how, when already driven from public life by the civil war, he lost his daughter.

675

A reference to Plato Symposium 215 E .

676

Cicero Tusc. 3. 68.

677

Another interpretation has been offered, that Cicero's examples reflect Antiochus' reply to Posidonius' objection that Chrysippus cannot explain when people do, or do not, judge it appropriate to react. So Rabbow, Antike Schriften über Seelenheilung und Seelenleitung, 157–60. It is true that Cicero's examples often include an explanation of why the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement is inhibited, but they do not invariably do so, and not in the case just quoted of progressives.

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He found himself sobbing uncontrollably alone in the woods. He read all the philosophical advice he could and composed a Consolation, to comfort himself.678 The Consolation itself is lost, but in book 3 of the Tusculan Disputations he describes the therapies he tried and offers a summary, which includes the comparison of Chrysippus' preferred technique with Cleanthes': 76. There are some who think there is only one duty for a consoler: to teach that the thing is not an evil at all, as Cleanthes thinks. There are some, like the Peripatetics, who think they should teach it is not a great evil. There are some, like Epicurus, who distract from evil to good. There are some, like the Cyrenaics, who think it enough to show that nothing unexpected has happened. But Chrysippus holds that the chief thing in consoling grieving people, if they think that by grieving they are carrying out a duty that is just and owed, is to remove that belief from them. There are also some who collect together all these methods of consolation, since different people are moved in different ways, much as in the Consolation I threw everything together into one consolation, since my mind was in a ferment and every remedy was tried in that state of ferment. But the right time must be caught no less in diseases of the mind than in those of the body, as shown by the Prometheus of Aeschylus. When he was told, ‘But certainly, Prometheus, I think you hold that reason can cure wrath’, he replied, ‘If indeed one applies the remedy at the right time and does not make the wound worse by striking it with one's hand.’ 77. The first remedy, then, in consoling people will be to teach that there is either no evil or very little. The second is that one must discuss the common condition of human life and anything in particular there may be concerning the condition of the grieving person's life. The third is to show that it is the greatest folly to be consumed with grief when you understand that it cannot do any good. For Cleanthes offers consolation to the wise who do not need it, since if you persuade the grieving person that nothing is bad unless it is dishonourable, you will have removed not their grief, but their folly. But it is the wrong time for teaching a lesson. And on the other hand Cleanthes does not seem to me sufficiently to have seen that distress can sometimes be derived from the very thing that he himself acknowledges to be the greatest evil. What shall we say, seeing that, as we hear, Socrates persuaded Alcibiades that he was no kind of a human, and that there was no difference between him who had been born in the highest station and any porter, and Alcibiades tormented himself and supplicated Socrates in tears to convey virtue to him and repel his dishonourable character? What shall we say, Cleanthes? Surely not that there was no evil in the thing that afflicted

678

Cicero Letters to Atticus 12.14; 12.15; Tusc. esp. 1. 83.

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Alcibiades with distress? [78.] What next? What are Lyco's proposals like? He minimizes distress by saying that it has been provoked by small things, not evils of the mind, but handicaps of fortune or the body. But what about the thing that Alcibiades was lamenting. Did it not consist of evils and vices of the mind? As for Epicurus' form of consolation, enough was said about it earlier. 79. Not even the consolation ‘You are not the only one’ is absolutely reliable, although it is much used and often helps. It helps, I said, but not always and not everyone, for there are some who reject it. But it matters how it is applied. The first thing to be explained is how each of the people who bore something wisely bore it, not the handicap by which they were afflicted. Chrysippus' form of consolation is the most reliable as regards its truth, but it is difficult at the moment of distress. It is a big task to prove to someone while they are grieving that they are doing so because of their own judgement and because they think they ought to grieve. No wonder, then, that as in lawsuits we do not always take the same ‘position’, as we call the lines of argument, but adapt ourselves to the timing, the nature of the argument, and the individual character, so in alleviating distress we must see what remedy each person is capable of accepting.679 The advice of Cicero, set out in a theoretical way here, is brought to life in the Consolation which in the next century Seneca addressed to Marcia on her bereavement. Seneca repeatedly attacks the second judgement. Like Chrysippus, he argues that Marcia is ashamed to end her mourning and would think the loss of tears a second bereavement.680 Like Chrysippus, he argues that, at least after three years,681 the mourning is on the contrary a wrong reaction. As already mentioned, it makes her neglect the living. It is important that therapy can attack the second judgement, that it is appropriate to react, because that makes a wider range of therapeutic techniques available, including techniques borrowed from other schools, as will be illustrated in Chapter 15. Moreover, since therapy does not have to fasten on the peculiarly Stoic doctrine of indifference, Stoic therapies are available to members of other schools. Because of this, Chrysippus himself offered to treat the emotions of people who did not accept the fundamental Stoic tenets about what was good, bad, or indifferent.682

679

Id. Tusc. 3. 76–9.

680

Seneca Marcia 1.7; 2.1; cf. Epictetus 1. 11. 30–3, on Achilles' distress, and Augustine Confessions 4. 6. 11, on his own.

681

Seneca Marcia 1. 7.

682

Origen Against Celsus 1.64; 8.51 (= SVF 3. 474).

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179

Therapy has a further resource. It can attack not only the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement, but also any supplementary judgements there may be. In anger, the supplementary judgement is involved that the harm you have suffered is undeserved. And this judgement, as well as the ‘appropriate to react’ judgement, can be attacked by the reflection suggested by Seneca that you often behave the same way yourself.683 But now I want to come back from the materials to the goal of therapy. For there is a way in which Stoic therapy takes an attitude of indifference as its goal without being high-minded at all. It sometimes attacks the judgement of good or bad, not with a view to producing a generalized attitude of indifference, but in particular cases and retrospectively, after some disturbing event has happened. Fuller illustrations will be given in Chapter 15. Epictetus says, if you are stuck in a crowd, think of it as a festival. This is not high-minded, but an everyday relabelling technique. Ovid, we shall see, uses it amusingly, advising you to redescribe your beloved according to whether your aim is seduction or falling out of love. In another example, Admiral Stockdale freed his fellow prisoners of counter-productive guilt at having given information away by making Epictetus' point that nothing is evil if it is not under the control of the will. Again, in grief you can reflect that you are not the only one, that others coped, or are worse off than you. In anger you can delay your decision. In each case an attitude of indifference is the goal, but as it is a particularized and retrospective attitude, there is nothing lethal about it. And an arsenal of everyday techniques was assembled, many of them shared among the schools to make this goal achievable. Let me now finish with a concession. Whether the idea of indifference features as the material or goal of therapy depends in the end on the addressee. It may after all do so if the addressee is a committed Stoic trainee. Seneca's Letters, unlike, say, his On Consolation to Marcia, are addressed to someone who really does want to progress in Stoic ways of thinking. So sometimes Seneca illustrates to him what it would be like to have reached the ideal Stoic attitude of indifference,684 even though much of the time he confines himself to dealing with particular anxieties. Epictetus is more severe. He is talking to trainees who have come to the school he held in exile, precisely to learn Stoicism. Not all of them would necessarily survive the course, to judge from Epictetus' severity. But those who did might well have

683

Seneca On Anger 2. 28.

684

e.g. Seneca Letters 71; 92.

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been brought much of the way towards an attitude of indifference.685 In Chapter 15 I shall describe how Epictetus' trainees will have practised dismissing what they saw on their early-morning walk as of no concern, if it was not under the control of their will. They will have reminded themselves, as they kissed their family, that all of them were mortal. Unlike the progressives described by Cicero, they will have experienced agony (agōnia, algein) at their state of character.686 Without that, the lesson will have been a failure—a criterion not yet used in present-day assessment of teaching quality. Here the attitude of indifference is indeed the goal of the therapy. That it is an undesirable goal, I would agree. But as to whether it is unattainable, I fear that Epictetus' methods might go a long way.

685

At least, Epictetus castigates one at 2. 21. 12–14 for homesickness and retaining the values he brought from home.

686

Epictetus 3.19.1; 3.23; 3.30; 3.37; 4.9.10; 4.10.3.

13 The Case For and Against Eradication Of Emotion I have postponed discussing the ideal of eradicating emotion, just as I postponed discussing the thesis of indifference, because I find these belong to the less acceptable side of Stoicism. It may even be wondered if the ideal of eradication can constitute a serious issue. As the work of LeDoux illustrates, humans, along with other animals, have been given an automatic emotional system as a safeguard for their own survival. Admittedly, the basic system does not involve conscious judgement, so not emotion as the Stoics define it, but the addition, at least in humans, of judgement makes the system an even better safeguard for survival. Moreover, I have made it clear where my own sympathies lie. It is hard to overstate the value of the love between parent and child, or between sexual partners. My interest in Stoic therapy, therefore, is in its ability to get rid of unwanted or counter-productive emotions, not of all. I do think emotions may be counter-productive far more often than is recognized. But what I want to consider in this chapter is Chrysippus' much more radical thesis that nearly all of them should be eradicated. What reasons could there be? Some of the reasons are very challenging. And on the other side many of the obvious objections to his position miss the mark. So the case against eradication is not so obvious as one might take it to be at first. I shall start with the reasons for eradicating emotion.

Reason For Rejecting Emotion: Indifference The first reason for eradication is the peculiarly Stoic one discussed in the last chapter, which the Stoics do not expect other schools to accept, and do not necessarily find useful in therapy. It is that emotions, in Chrysippus' view, are not only judgements, but false judgements. For they consist partly of the judgement that things are

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good or bad, whereas nothing is in fact good or bad except character. The rest is indifferent. Even in the case of character, although people distressed at their own character are not wrong in thinking bad character is genuinely bad, they are wrong in their other judgement. For they are mistaken in supposing that the appropriate reaction is inner contractions.687

Reasons For Rejecting Emotion: Tranquillity, Dignity Both the believers in moderate emotion and the believers in freedom from emotion were in the post-Aristotelian period trying to offer some kind of tranquillity. That might be conceived in terms of Democritus' word euthumia ‘cheerfulness’ as it was by the Stoic Seneca, who offers tranquillitas as the Latin translation,688 and by the Platonist Plutarch. Or it might be conceived in terms of ataraxia, freedom from disturbance, as it was by the Epicureans and Pyrrhonian sceptics. One objection to emotions is that they are disturbing and so preclude tranquillity. This point is emphasized when Cicero over-translates the Greek word for emotion, pathos, choosing the Latin term perturbatio, which actually means disturbance. Cicero also gives a distinct reason, as we saw in Chapter 2, why distress is the wrong reaction even to one's own faults of character: it is a further fault of character not to be dignified (gravis).689

Why Not Retain Just the Pleasant Emotions? But why, then, do the opponents of emotion not admit that the pleasurable emotions should be retained? Part of their rationale is that pleasant and unpleasant emotions go together. You cannot hope for the pleasure of obtaining what you want without being liable to anxiety as to whether you will get it, depression if you do not, pride if you do, fear that you may lose it, possibly the experience of actual loss, even jealousy, anger, fear, or subservience.690 As John Cleese says in one of his films, ‘It's not the despair I mind; it's the hope I can't stand.’691 The Pyrrhonian sceptics put the point well: When he gets control of what appears to him good, he falls into no mean disturbance because of conceit and fear about losing it, and caution about not getting back into a situation which he considers bad by nature.692

687

Cicero Tusc. 3.61; 3.68; 3.70; 3.77–8; 4.61.

688

Seneca Tranq. 2. 3.

689

Cicero Tusc. 4. 61.

690

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 237.

691

John Cleese in Clockwise.

692

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 237.

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There is another reason for not trying to retain just the pleasant emotions. For in many of them the painful aspect is inextricably intertwined with the pleasant, and the intertwining here is not between different emotions, but within the compass of a single emotion. The point is made by Plato for anger, distress, and envy,693 and it has been repeated in modern literature.694

Reasons For Rejecting Emotion: Ordinary Family Love Turns Into Hate Epictetus offers the most forthright challenge. The Stoics had come to celebrate family love, especially that of parents for children, as the basis on which a sense of justice can grow by a process of oikeiōsis.695 But Epictetus condemns ordinary family love. Because it does not treat indifferent things as indifferent, it readily turns into hate, a phenomenon that even modern supporters of the emotions acknowledge.696 Contrary to Adolf Bonhöffer, I think Epictetus regards ordinary untutored love for offspring as a pathos.697 In a discussion which Brad Inwood has analysed, Epictetus argues that untutored affection for children, wife, or friends is not love (philein) at all,698 and this is partly because it fails to treat things as indifferent.699 Another way of putting it is that what we really treat as belonging in the process of oikeiōsis is our own interest (to sumpheron).700 And we too readily locate our interest in things other than the quality of our proairesis, or will.701 Epictetus imagines objections: ‘How so? I am foolish, but I still love (philō) my child.’702 ‘But he has cared (therapeuein) for me for so long and did he not love me?’703 ‘But she is my wife and we have lived together for so long.’704 Epictetus imagines one may well have been in agony over one's small

693

Plato Philebus 47 E –50 B .

694

Michael Stocker with Elizabeth Hegeman, Valuing Emotions (Cambridge 1996), 230–42.

695

I have described this in Animal Minds and Human Morals, ch. 10.

696

Stocker with Hegeman, Valuing Emotions, 279.

697

Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, 299, gives as his grounds for the opposite conclusion, that Epictetus says it is not up to us to avoid feeling it (1. 23. 5). But Epictetus must be speaking of the ordinary person, because he expects the sage to avoid it.

698

Epictetus 2.22.4; 2.22.31. I have learnt from Brad Inwood, who has treated the passages very well in work in preparation, of which a version was delivered at the Institute of Classical Studies on 19 Feb. 1996.

699

Epictetus 2. 22. 3.

700

Id. 2. 22. 15.

701

Id. 2.22.20; 2.22.26; 2.22.28.

702

Id. 2. 22. 4.

703

Id.2.22.31.

704

Id. 2. 22. 32.

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child's fever and often said ‘I wish I had the fever instead.’705 But this does not prove love (philein), nor even good will (eunoia).706 For if we throw a piece of land, or a woman, or a bit of glory between father and son, how they will wish for each other's deaths. Then you will say, ‘What a child I have brought up. He has long been carrying me out to the grave.’707 The point is that people not only put the wrong value on their child's life and health, but also on many other things extraneous to their own character and will. They value land, or women, or glory, and that is why their love was never real. Eriphyle and Amphiaraus had lived together long enough and had many children, yet a necklace came between them.708 Only in the light of this view can one understand Epictetus' notorious advice that you should remind yourself, when kissing your wife and children, that you are kissing a mortal.709 Epictetus believes this attitude shows in the end a truer concern. I shall return to the idea in Chapter 15. Epictetus is reverting to an early Stoic view of humanity. Whereas Cicero and Seneca had associated Stoicism with the idea that oikeiōsis unites all humans into a single household, just because they are human,710 the founder of Stoicism, Zeno, had taken a sterner view. Only virtuous humans belong in his ideal community as fellow citizens; the others are enemies to each other.711 Epictetus provides a rationale. He says that we should not consider people as friends, nor even as human, unless they locate their personal interest in the character of their will. For otherwise they will be ready to do anything to each other.712 This contrasts with the more benign picture of humans in Cicero and Seneca, as always willing to show the way to strangers, or to share knowledge,713 the very antithesis of Hobbes's view. Zeno and Epictetus, without going all the way to Hobbes, insist that only the rare standards of virtue can make people friends. Let us now consider the case against eradication.

705

Id. 2. 22. 12.

706

Id. 2. 22. 8.

707

Id. 2. 22. 10–11.

708

Id. 2. 22. 32.

709

Id. 3.24.84–8; 4.1.111; Handbook 3.

710

Cicero Leg. 1. 12. 23; Off. 3. 6. 27–8; Fin. 3. 19. 63; Seneca Letter 95. 52–4; On the Happy Life 24. 3.

711

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 32–3.

712

Epictetus 2. 22. 27–30.

713

Cicero Fin. 3. 65–6; Seneca Letter 95. 52–3.

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Objections To Eradication: Is It Suppression? One objection to eradication may be drawn from modern psychiatry, which emphasizes that emotions may be wrongly suppressed. People may be mistakenly convinced that they have not suffered anything bad when they have. Other emotional difficulties may arise if we suppress one emotion without having understood its deeper causes. But this objection would misunderstand the Stoic approach, which is not to suppress emotion (that would be enkrateia, karteria)but to dispel it through understanding the real situation.

Objections: Romanticism—Should Emotions Be Celebrated? Another objection would be that emotions are to be celebrated. But most people would wish to be rid of some outbursts of emotion. Few of us will want to go along with the particular Romantic view which celebrates the emotions of the psychopath. Some emotions are to be celebrated, but the question then becomes: which?

Objections: Would Eradication Remove All Motivation? Lactantius objects that the eradication of emotion would remove all motivation.714 This might seem to be confirmed by recent neurophysiological findings, according to which damage which flattens emotions thereby prevents decisionmaking.715 But I suspect that the damage in these cases will have flattened other desires, and not just the emotions. The Stoics are right that not all desires are emotional. Their answer was explained in Chapter 2. Selection (eklogē) is the pursuit of indifferents seen as indifferents, and this is in principle open to everyone. In addition, the sage is motivated by seeing the good as good and the bad as bad, and thereby experiencing eupatheiai. Neither of these attitudes commits the mistake that is involved in emotion of seeing indifferents as if they were good or bad, and so both kinds of motivation are freely available. It might be objected that desires in these circumstances will not be intense or energetically pursued. The opposite is the case. As we saw in Chapter 12, a later Stoic, Antipater, defines the goal (telos) of life as doing everything in your power to obtain the natural objectives. You should be nothing less than extremely energetic in your pursuit. The talk of indifference and reservation is not an advocacy of being slack, but of eschewing disappointment if you fail.

714

Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 14.

715

Damasio, Descartes' Error.

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The intensity of Stoic motivation is illustrated in statues of the early Stoics. Paul Zanker, in a brilliant book, has contrasted them with the statues of the early Epicureans.716 The latter look so relaxed and tranquil as to appear almost vacant in expression. Their Stoic contemporaries, by contrast, are portrayed as totally intent. Their intensity is directed to their ratiocinations and to their teaching. Ratiocination and the teaching of it are things that matter. But it would be equally true of actions directed to indifferents that intensity is entirely compatible with freedom from emotion, just so long as the indifferent things, so energetically pursued, are seen for what they are. The statues are a visual embodiment of this idea.

Objections: Are Emotions Eradicable? The obvious objection that emotions are an ineradicable part of our nature was extensively considered by the Stoics. Of course, the automatic responses identified by LeDoux are ineradicable. But the question would be whether the judgemental responses are eradicable. As seen in Chapter 6, Posidonius, despite advocating some kind of apatheia, thought that an emotional part was built into our soul, but this Chrysippus denied. For him the only relevant part of the soul was our reason. Seneca, it was explained in Chapter 2, analysed emotion to bring out more clearly how it involved voluntary assent, and there were debates, we saw, with other schools about whether emotions were thus voluntary, or rather natural and necessary.

Objections: Can We See What It Would Be Like To Be Free Of Emotions? (a)Epictetus The objection has been made that we cannot even see what it would be like to be free of emotions.717 There was a fictional character, Dr Spock, in the television series Star Trek who was supposed to be without emotion, but, it is complained, the drama merely told you that he was, without showing how this could be so. A better modern model, however, for imagining what Stoic freedom from emotion would be like is provided, as is briefly acknowledged, by Buddhism.718 First, we must recall that to be free of emotion is not to be free of strong, determined, and intense motivation. It is merely clear-headed motivation that understands, according to

716

Zanker, The Mask of Socrates.

717

Stocker with Hegemann, Valuing Emotions pp. xv–xvi, 234–5.

718

Ibid. 252.

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the Stoics, the true value of things. Secondly, we should look at the exercises by which Epictetus leads his pupils towards freedom from emotion. In Chapter 15, I shall translate a passage719 in which he describes sending his pupils out at dawn, equipped with a rule about what matters and what does not. They are to ask themselves, as they see each agitating event, whether it falls under the rule or not. For those pupils who survived the course—and Epictetus was very ready to dismiss non-survivors—one can see how training of this sort would in time lead towards the intended effect: freedom from emotion.

Seeing What Apatheia Is Like: (b) the Gods and the Next Life There is another context in which ancient thinkers described a life in which ordinary emotions would be irrelevant. This is the context in which they consider the virtues or the happiness of the gods, or of the blessed in the next life. Already Plato warns that his account of the soul as having spirited and appetitive parts or forms (eidē), and of justice as involving each of these parts or forms doing their own job, applies only to the forms the soul takes in human life. Once it was freed from the body, its love of wisdom (philosophia) would be the thing to look to. It might prove to have only one form, and we might get a clearer view of justice.720 Aristotle thinks the activity of the traditional gods can only consist in intellectual contemplation, and human happiness must emulate this: We have supposed that the gods are especially blessed and happy, but what sort of actions should one assign them? Just acts? Or will they appear ridiculous if they make contracts and pay deposits and so on? Brave acts, enduring dangers and taking risks because it is noble to do so? Or liberal acts? But to whom will they give? And it is strange if they will actually have money, or something like it. And what would their temperate acts be? Or is such praise vulgar, since they do not have bad appetites? If you go through all the cases, the context of actions will seem minor and unworthy of the gods. But yet all have supposed that they are alive and hence that they are active, not that they are asleep, like Endymion. If, then, acting is removed from a living being, and still more making things, what is left but contemplation? So the activity of God, unique in blessedness, must be contemplative, and hence, among human activities the one closest to this will be the happiest.721

719

Epictetus 3. 3. 14–19.

720

Plato Republic 611 B –612 A .

721

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10. 8, 1178b 8–23.

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Aristotle had earlier made much the same point about those humans who, after death, are said to go to the Isles of the Blessed: You could see that what we are saying is supremely true, if someone conveyed us in thought, as it were, to the Isles of the Blessed. For there there is no need of anything, nor any advantage in anything else, but only reasoning and contemplating are left, which we say constitute the free life even now.722

Cicero, in his lost Hortensius, denies that in the Isles of the Blessed there would be any place for the four traditional virtues: If we were allowed, as the legends say, to spend an immortal life in the Isles of the Blessed after passing from this life, what need would there be of eloquence, since there would be no trial, or even of the virtues themselves? We should not need courage, since no labour or danger would be set before us. Not justice, since there would be nothing for strangers' appetites to seek. Not temperance to rule lusts that would not exist. We should not even need prudence, since no choice would be set before us between good and evil. So we should be happy in the knowledge and science of nature alone, which is what alone makes the life of the gods also estimable. From this it can be understood that the rest is a matter of necessity, only this a matter of will.723

Among the Christians, Clement of Alexandria argues that the ordinary virtues would not be needed even in this life by someone who had been perfected.724 But Augustine comments that in his view justice would always be needed,725 and we shall see he says the same about some emotions. He none the less imagines that the life of the saints, and of the heaven of heavens, may consist in rapt contemplation of God, with no awareness of past or future.726 The ideal of timeless contemplation is one he had encountered in Plotinus, whom he echoes.727 Another Christian model of contemplation sets it in time as something that makes perpetual progress.728 The consensus here is that the life of the blessed would consist in contemplation. Even though in Christian thought we shall have resurrected bodies, these bodies may be so different as not to permit other sorts of activity. Augustine is repelled at the thought he rejects, that anything like hunger or thirst might be necessary.729 Some sixth-century

722

From Aristotle Protrepticus frag. 12 Ross, Walzer.

723

Cicero Hortensius, quoted by Augustine On the Trinity 14.9.12.

724

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6. 9.

725

Augustine On the Trinity 14. 9. 12.

726

Id. Confessions book 9, ch. 10 and books 12–13.

727

Sorabji Time, Creation and the Continuum, ch. 11.

728

Gregory of Nyssa, discussed in Time, Creation and the Continuum, 149–51.

729

Augustine Against Julian 5. 5. 22.

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sources ascribed to Origen the view that our resurrected bodies would be spherical,730 and although this was not in fact true of Origen, it probably was of some sixth-century Origenists. Spherical bodies would restrict our activities still further, and similar beliefs were widespread. Chrysippus thinks our souls are material and will after death be spherical,731 just as God is spherical, a point which Seneca turns into a joke against the Emperor Claudius.732 Among the Neoplatonists, Iamblichus thinks our souls are housed in spherical vehicles of luminous matter like the stars, which Plato sometimes treats as vehicles for souls.733 And Plotinus considers the implications for personality if souls after death have only spherical vehicles. He envisages that our souls may have got rid of emotions, but he thinks of those that have not risen to the intelligible world as retaining memory and character (ēthē) and supposes that, despite the spherical vehicles, the individuality of their behaviour (idiotēs tōn tropōn) might persist, and they might recognize each other through that, all the more easily if they could talk.734 However, those souls which were contemplating in the intelligible world would neither remember their past nor display character.735 These efforts at imagining a more blessed life are valuable in helping us to see that it is the circumstances of human life which make emotion seem so inevitable. There has been a long tradition that we should hope to pass to a better life. And when this supposedly better life is imagined, it becomes less obvious how there would be a place for ordinary emotions.

Objections: Would We Be Human? A justly celebrated paper by Peter Strawson argued that without emotions we would scarcely be human, and this has been reaffirmed in more recent literature.736 I am inclined to agree, and I further declare my own wish to live a recognizably human life and not to be

730

Anathema 10 of the Second Council of Constantinople and Justinian Letter to Menna, 9. 516 D Mansi, both translated by G. W. Butterworth in his translation of Origen On First Principles, note ad 2. 10. 4.

731

Scholia on Homer Iliad 23. 65 (= SVF 2. 815).

732

Seneca Pumpkinification of Claudius 8: Claudius cannot be deified as a Stoic god since he is not spherical, without face or foreskin. I thank David Langslow for the reference.

733

Iamblichus ap. Proclum In Tim. 2. 72. 14 Diehl; Plato Phaedrus 247 B ; Timaeus 41 D –E ;cf. Phaedo 113 D .

734

Plotinus 4. 4. 5 (11–31).

735

Id. 4.4.1(1–14); 4.4.2(1–3); 4.4.5(11–13; 22–3).

736

Peter Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 48 (1962), 187–211; Stocker with Hegemann, Valuing Emotions, 236.

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transformed into something different even if I could survive that change. But this further question of what life is preferable needs discussion for present purposes and was explicitly considered in antiquity. Aristotle, in another part of the same passage from which I started, addresses the question: is it wrong, since we are human, to aspire to the more divine life of intellectual contemplation? He replies (although I do not think this is his last word) that, on the contrary, our intellect is our truer self.737 And Plotinus takes the same view. It is our intellect with which we should, so far as we can, identify,738 and then our stature is increased, not diminished.739 Perhaps indeed we shall then hardly be human, but the advantages or disadvantages of this were at least consciously discussed. This supplies the context for the sarcastic comment on some philosophers that one must become human before one can become divine.740 It also supplies the context for a view which will be encountered in Chapter 25. Some Church Fathers (not all) held that apatheia, freedom from emotion, was a suitable ideal, but for the next life, not the present one. Augustine, we shall see, was not of this persuasion, but found room for emotion in the next life too.

Objections: Would We Be Humane? A related question is whether, without anger and distress, we would be humane. This subject is very well discussed by Martha Nussbaum.741 Do Nazi atrocities not call for anger or distress, at least when directly encountered, on pain of inhumanity? I think in any ordinary person they do. But we might not require this in a sage who was known for combining compassion with his or her serenity. The compassion would have to be an unusual one, in that personal pain would never be a part of its motivation.

Objections: Are Not Emotions Useful? I have already referred to the utility of emotions as part of a natural survival mechanism. Aristotle saw emotions not merely as useful, but as essential to the best life to which humans can in practice attain. Though torn, he recognizes that a life of nothing but contemplation is

b

a

737

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10. 7, 1177 26–1178 8.

738

Plotinus 1.1.11(5–8); 6.7.6(18).

739

Id. 6. 5. 12. 15–26.

740

Damascius in Photius'Epitome 227; Hierocles Commentary on the Golden Verses poem 4, p.6 Kohler.

741

Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, ch. 11, esp. 405, 415–17.

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191

not possible for us. Even philosophers must eat and live in society, and the happiest life will involve also exercising the virtues in society.742 The virtues, in their turn, involve hitting the mean point in emotion as well as in action. Among the virtues, one of particular interest is friendship, which involves emotion in a particularly direct way. Here emotion enters into the very constitution of the best human life. But it was also asked whether emotions are not also instrumentally useful in many ways. It was objected against the Stoics that we need them for many activities. Do we not need them for battle, for fighting in the arena, for training animals, for self-defence, for ambition, independence of spirit, dutifulness, law-abidingness, prudence, administering punishment, or offering succour?743 On the other hand, the Peripatetics themselves acknowledge that excessive emotion is not useful.744 And some of them agree that anger is not useful for punishment.745 As regards anger, I have indicated that I think Seneca right. Anger is especially often counter-productive. What Seneca advocates in its place is firmness of purpose, and anger does not correlate closely with that at all. I am not saying that we always can avoid anger, nor am I denying that anger in the face of atrocities may be the more humane reaction. The question is whether it serves a useful or necessary purpose. Punishment is a special case for the Stoics, because their aim in punishing is correction, as with a doctor,746 and for getting the right correction, anger is not useful. Seneca unnecessarily creates a problem for himself by giving two descriptions of the angry person's judgement at the stage of the second movement.747 If he judges, ‘It is appropriate for me to be avenged, because I am injured’, the concern with vengeance is clearly distinct from the Stoic sage's concern with correction. But Seneca's alternative formulation, ‘It is appropriate for him to be punished, because he has committed a crime’, blurs the difference between the angry person and the Stoic sage. The angry

742

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10. 8, with Richard Sorabji, ‘Is the True Self an Individual in the Platonist Tradition?’, forthcoming.

743

Peripatetics at Cicero Tusc. 4. 43–57, with his reply; and at Philodemus On Anger, cols. 3. 1–4 Indelli with his reply; Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 19; Aristotle at Seneca On Anger 1. 9. 2; the early Platonist Crantor ap. Ciceronem Acad. 2. 44. 135; Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 32. 186. 21 ff.; Augustine City 9. 5.

744

Cicero Tusc. 4. 46.

745

Despite the Peripatetics at Philodemus On Anger 31. 32 Indelli, see the Peripatetic Hieronymus at Seneca On Anger 1. 19. 3–4. See also the Platonist Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 459 B –460 C ; the Epicurean Philodemus On Anger, cols. 32–4 Indelli; the Stoic Seneca On Anger 1.6; 1.15.1–2; 1.16.1–4; 1.19.3–4 and 7; 2.31.8; Plato at Seneca 3. 12. 5–7; Galen (Platonist) On the Passions and Errors of the Soul.

746

Seneca On Anger 1.6.2; 1.6.4; 1.16.3–5; 2.10.7.

747

Ibid.2.4.1.

192

THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST ERADICATION OF EMOTION

person will then be distinguished only when he passes to the third movement and judges, ‘I must be avenged, come what may (utique).’ Another way in which Seneca distinguishes the attitude of correct punishment is that the punisher is not avid for the punishment itself (ipsius poenae avidus).748 It may be objected: anger is sometimes useful, because other people may need to be given a message. It is sometimes the best way to curb the bully or rowdy, or simply to alert someone that the feelings of others need to be considered. I believe that regrettably this objection is very true, and I may need to do more justice to it elsewhere. But the Epicureans have a rejoinder. These benefits can be gained by simulating anger. Epicurus, we are told, would simulate, and Philodemus recommends the practice, while Seneca repeats the point.749 So nothing need be conceded on this account to the idea that anger itself is useful. Another example favoured by Seneca involves a contrast between pity, which he rejects as being an emotion, and mercy, which he approves as compatible with clear thinking.750 Certainly, when pity involves anxiety, it can get in the way of helping. But with certain other emotions on the Stoics' list it would be harder to deny their utility. In Chapters 25–6 we shall encounter the unpersuasive attempt of Clement of Alexandria to say that pleasure is never necessary,751 and Augustine's reluctance in admitting that in the Garden of Eden procreation would have involved pleasure. A recent discussion has argued that you need to have emotions in order to see things. Love can focus the attention and help in understanding.752 The discussion candidly admits that emotion can also blind.753 What one's emotion reveals, when it does, is often the state of other people's emotions, so the utility presupposes the emotional life that we in fact lead: since others have emotions, so should we. I believe the Stoics could accommodate this point. A Stoic sage, if anyone achieves this ideal, will have reached it by passing through emotions and reflecting very carefully on them. His freedom from emotion will have been gained through much experience of it and he will not be blind to others.

748

Ibid. 1. 9. 4.

749

Philodemus On Anger cols. 34. 7 and 35 Indelli; Seneca On Anger 12. 17. 1.

750

Seneca On Mercy 2. 5–6.

751

Clement Stromateis 2. 20.

752

Stocker with Hegeman, Valuing Emotions, 188, 192, 201–3.

753

Ibid. 116, 120, 149.

THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST ERADICATION OF EMOTION

193

I think we can now see that the ancient assessment of the value of emotions was more radical in certain ways than modern assessments. First, it considered the value of emotions not merely as a necessary response to other emotions, but also against the imagined alternative of a complete absence of emotions, as in the next life. Secondly, it assessed the values of emotions not only in ordinary life, but also at the extremes of human possibility, for monks in the solitude of the desert, or for Stoic sages trained from youth to reject whatever did not matter. I have only touched on the issues, sufficiently to show they are numerous, but I hope two things will have become clear. One is that the case against eradication is not as straightforward as it might have seemed at first. The other is that the considerations for and against eradication help to bring out some of the sense of the rival ideals. With the sense now to that extent clearer, I shall turn to the historical question which philosophers supported which ideals. The Christian philosophers will be treated later, in Chapter 25.

14 The Traditions Of Moderation and Eradication If we look at the history of the traditions, we find that the debate on whether the emotions (pathē) should only be moderated (metriopatheia) or actually eradicated (apatheia) was already under way before the Stoics, in Aristotle's time, and there were models for eradication even as early as the Presocratics.

Aristotle: Moderation and the Mean The leading proponent of moderate emotion was Aristotle, with his famous doctrine of each virtue lying in a mean position between two vicious extremes. What is required for good temper, courage, temperance, or self-esteem is the right amount, timing, and direction of anger, fear, pleasure, or pride.754 Aristotle's advocacy of the mean position is commonly attacked as meaningless or tautological,755 but the opposite is the case. It is a controversial and substantive move in a debate which had already started. It is rejected as totally false not only by the Stoics a generation or two after his death, but also by his pre-Stoic contemporaries. For he himself draws attention to the rival view that virtue consists in freedom from emotion (apatheia).756 There have been varied conjectures as to who his opponents are.757 But in Eudemian Ethics he says

b

b

754

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 2. 6–7; Eudemian Ethics 2.3; 2.5; 2.10, 1227 6–12. For amount, timing, and direction, see Eudemian Ethics 2. 3, 1221 11–17. The Nicomachean Ethics emphasizes more than the Eudemian Ethics that the mean concerns actions as well as emotions. The actions of the liberal person will involve giving the right amounts to the right people at the right time. See the notes in Michael Woods, Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics 1, 2, and 8 (Clarendon Aristotle Series; Oxford, 1982).

755

e.g. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 36: the doctrine ‘is better forgotten. It oscillates between being unhelpful and being a substantively depressing plea for moderation.’

756

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1104 25; Eudemian Ethics 1222 3.

757

E. Zeller: the Cynics (Philosophie der Griechen, 4th edn. (Leipzig, 1889–1903), vol. 2 part 1, p. 312 n. 2). M. Pohlenz: Pyrrho (‘Das Lebensziel der Skeptiker’, Hermes 39 (1904), 15–29 at 25–9). Natorp, according to Pohlenz, ibid.: a late Democritean. John Burnet, commentary on Nicomachean Ethics 1104b 25: Plato's Academy. A. Grant, commentary on Nicomachean Ethics [110]4[ b 25]: the Cynics and Democritus. Gauthier and Jolif, commentary on Nicomachean Ethics 1104b 25: Democritus and Plato's Academy, including Speusippus.

b

a

THE TRADITIONS OF MODERATION AND ERADICATION

195

everyone takes this view, which suggests it was widespread at least within the Platonic Academy to which he originally belonged. Within the Academy, the most obvious influence is Speusippus, Plato's successor, whom Aristotle twice names as holding that pleasure and distress are both bad.758 What good men aim at, according to Speusippus, is aokhlēsia, freedom from disturbance.759 Outside the Academy, but in the Socratic tradition, Antisthenes is recorded as saying that he would rather go mad than feel pleasure,760 and the opponents of pleasure are already discussed in Plato's Philebus.761 Aristotle's advocacy of a middle position should not be understood in purely quantitative terms, as Lactantius' criticism of the Aristotelian school brings out. Lactantius objects that you should not rejoice at all at seeing your enemy harmed, but should rejoice greatly at seeing a country liberated from a dictator. Again, you should feel no lust for unlawful objects, but for lawful ones extreme lust may be perfectly legitimate. What needs to be considered is the time, circumstance, and place.762 But in fact Aristotle already intended this. For he says that what counts as too much or too little depends on who we are, on the occasion, on what and whom our emotion is directed at, on the likely outcome and the manner of reacting.763 Moreover, he points out, some emotions like Schadenfreude and envy have the idea of badness built into them, so that there is no room for the idea of moderation in exercising them.764

Stoic Eradication Of Emotion The Stoics were not, then, the first, nor were they the last, to advocate apatheia, the eradication of emotion. Rather, they were the most important influence. But apatheia meant different things in

b

a

758

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1153 1–7; 1173 6–8 (Speusippus frags. 80a; 81a Tarán); similarly Aulus Gellius 9. 5. 4 (Speusippus frag. 84 Tarán).

759

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 22 (vol. 2, p. 186. 19–23 Stählin =Speusippus frag. 77 Tarán).

760

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6. 3; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 20.

761

Plato Philebus 44–6.

762

Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 16.

763

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 2.6, 1106 26–8; 1106 21–3; 2.9, 1109 26–9.

764

a

a

Ibid. 2. 6, 1107 8–15.

b

a

196

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different Stoics. I argued in Chapter 2 that for Chrysippus it was freedom from all emotion except a small range of eupatheiai enjoyed only by the sage, if there ever were any sages. And this became the canonical Stoic view. In Zeno, by contrast—so I claimed in Chapter 3—apatheia was something narrower: freedom from the kind of emotional disobedience to reason exemplified by Medea. Posidonius was different again, I maintained in Chapter 6. He is against emotion as defined by Zeno or Chrysippus: examples of disobedience to reason, or of misevaluation of indifferents. But he does not accept that view of what emotion is. In his view, humans have an emotional part of the soul, as described by Plato, and what matters is its conforming with the rational part.

The Tradition Of Moderation The majority view among post-Aristotelian philosophers favours Aristotle's ideal of metriopatheia, rather than the Stoic apatheia, although the picture is not clear-cut. Metriopatheia is advocated not only by members of Aristotle's own school, the Peripatetics, but also in the early Platonist Academy, e.g. by Crantor,765 and by many Middle Platonists,766 although not by the Stoicizing Antiochus,767 and there is some wavering in Plutarch and Apuleius.768Metriopatheia may perhaps be accepted by the Pythagorean Sotion,769 and the Epicureans sometimes incline in that direction,770 although we shall see they are better classified as selective in relation to emotions. Christian views on the issue were different again, and will be discussed in Chapter 25.771

765

Cicero Tusc. 3. 12; cf. Acad. 2. 44. 135; Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 102 D .

766

Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 30, 184.20–36; ch. 32, 186.15–24; Taurus ap. Aulum Gellium 1. 26. 11; Maximus of Tyre Or. 27, § 7 =p. 230, lines 122–3 Trapp.

767

Cicero Ac. Pr. 2. 135.

768

See Michael Spanneut, ‘Apatheia ancienne’, ANRW 2. 36. 7 (1994), 4641–717 at 4704–7, 4708–11, and the note to Michael Trapp's translation of Maximus of Tyre Or. 27, § 7(Maximus of Tyre: The Philosophical Orations (Oxford, 1996)), which cites, inter alia, Apuleius On the Doctrines of Plato 2. 20. 247.

769

Stobaeus Florilegium ed. Hense, book 3, ch.20, § 50 (=vol. 3, p. 549, lines 16–19 of Stobaeus ed. Wachsmuth–Hense): Sotion praises holding out against anger.

770

See Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10. 117–19; Plutarch Epicurus: Pleasant Life 1101 A –B ; on moderate censure cf. Philodemus On Frank Criticism frags. 6.7–8; 20.1–2; 93.4–6.

771

See M. Pohlenz, ‘Philosophische Nachklänge in altchristlichen Predigten’, Zeitschr. für wissenschaftliche Theologie, 48(NS 13) (1904), 72–95, and Robert Gregg, Consolation Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), under ‘Apatheia ’ in the bibliography. Michel Spanneut's second article for ANRW is still awaited. The first two authors concentrate on the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, with further references to Origen and John Chrysostom.

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197

The Acceptance Of Both Ideals A further refinement, to be discussed further in Chapter 25, was to view the two as ideals for different people. This idea is found in the Jewish philosophers Philo of Alexandria and Maimonides. Similarly, some of the Church Fathers, we shall see, reserve freedom from emotion, at least during this life, for monks, although it may be achieved by others after the resurrection and may have been the state of Adam and Eve before the Fall. According to another tradition, that of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, as I shall explain below, apatheia and metriopatheia correspond to different stages of the philosopher's progress, and to different levels of virtue attained. Themistius, however, whose allegiance to Platonism or to Aristotelianism has been a matter of controversy, firmly backs Aristotle on this issue. Apatheia is impossible and also undesirable, since God implanted the emotions for our preservation.772

The Tradition Of Eradication An early model for freedom from emotion (apatheia) was the fifth-century Presocratic philosopher Anaxagoras. On hearing his son was dead, he said, ‘I knew I had begotten a mortal.’773 Socrates is portrayed as another model,774 and we have already noticed the advocacy of Plato's successor Speusippus and of a later Platonist, Antiochus. One source describes the tradition as passing through the Socratic–Cynic line (Socrates, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates) to the founder of Stoicism, Zeno, although the words apatheia, apathes are here replaced in the case of Crates and Zeno by enkrateia and karteria (endurance).775 The Stoics were the most prominent exponents of the ideal of freedom from all emotion. Some Church Fathers, as we shall see in Chapter 20, were worried at hearing that ‘Jesus wept’, since they wanted to model him on a Stoic sage.

772

Plotinus 1.2.2(13–18); 1.2.3(20); 1.2.6(25–7); Porphyry Aphormai = Sentences 32. Themistius Oration 32, Metriopathēs ē philoteknos, vol. 2, pp. 193–204 Downey–Norman (Teubner edn.).

773

Cicero Tusc. 3. 30 and 58; Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 118 D ; On Freedom from Anger 463 D ; Tranq. 474 D ; Aelian Varia Historia 3. 2; Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Words 5. 10, ext. 3; Galen PHP 4. 7. 9, p. 282 de Lacy, who cites Euripides frag. 964 Nauck as deriving from this.

774

Plato Symposium, speech of Alcibiades 216 E –221 B .

775

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.2; 6.15. The replacing words are confusing in that in Aristotelian terminology they would imply a struggle with emotions and suppression of them rather than an absence of them.

198

THE TRADITIONS OF MODERATION AND ERADICATION

The Pyrrhonian sceptics also believed in the eradication of emotion. This is implied by their claiming to be altogether free of feeling (apathēs),776 when disturbance (tarakhē, tarattesthai, okhlēma) depends on belief. But they add something new. With inevitable sensations like pain which do not depend on belief, they can only achieve moderation of feeling (metriopathein, metriopathōs).777 But at least they do not make things worse by adding emotional distress to the sensation. The Stoic view was not so different, although they do not use the term metriopatheia. Seneca says that with physical pain all rests on opinion, and if you say to yourself the pain is small (exiguus), then it will indeed be slight (levis).778 We have a vignette of Posidonius, visited by Pompey during an attack of gout, saying, ‘It is no use, pain: although you are troublesome (molestus), I will never admit you are evil (malus).’779 The Pyrrhonian texts which move to talk of metriopatheia need a little interpretation, to bring their message out.780

Pyrrhonian Sceptics: Eradication Of Emotion Is Moderation Of Physical Pain The disturbances which depend wholly on belief781 are specified as being concerned with wealth, reputation, friendship, good looks, strength, fitness, courage, justice, wisdom, virtue in general and their opposites, poverty and so on.782 The second group, which depends wholly on sensation,783 not on reason,784 includes hunger, thirst, cold, heat, acute pain requiring analgesics, the pains of chronic illness, the pain of surgery, and opposite pleasures.785 The Pyrrhonians suspend judgement even on such apparently indisputable questions as whether the virtues are good and vices bad, or, as the Stoics would say, are good or bad by nature. To make such judgements is to subject yourself to disturbing emotions, as you try to get, or keep, or avoid the things in question.786 It is an anti-Stoic move to make such beliefs about the virtues disturbing in just the same way as beliefs

776

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235.

777

Ibid. 3.235, 3.236; Against the Mathematicians 11.161; cf. 11.148metriazein.

778

Seneca Letter 78. 13.

779

Cicero Tusc. 2. 61.

780

I am grateful to Myles Burnyeat for setting me on this line of interpretation.

781

Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 141; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235.

782

Id. Against the Mathematicians 11. 142.

783

Ibid. 11. 148; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 236.

784

alogoi :id. Against the Mathematicians 11.148; 11.161.

785

Ibid. 11.143; 11.149; 11.152; 11.153; 11.159; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 236.

786

Id. Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235–7; Against the Mathematicians 11. 110–61.

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199

about other things. It is often the judgement of naturalness that is eschewed, but at one point it is explicitly said that to judge something merely (monon) bad, i.e. without adding that it is so by nature, already creates distress.787 There is a third class of disturbances which depends not only on having sensations, but also on believing or imagining in addition (prosdoxazein, prosanaplassein)788 that the sensation is bad. Pyrrhonian sceptics avoid this belief too. And this bears on the extent to which they can achieve their goal of living without disturbance (atarakhōs).789 They cannot avoid the disturbances which depend wholly on sensation. These occur of necessity (katēnangkasmenos, kat' anangkēn, anangkē parekhei),790 as the result of involuntary (akousios)791 processes. It is not feasible (amēkhanon) to be freed of them by sceptical reasoning.792 Disturbance from pain is not up to the victim (par' auton), but must happen of necessity, whether he wants it or not (ean te thelēi, ean te kai mē).793 This is quite unlike disturbance based on one's own suppositions, for which one must be held responsible (aitiateon).794 None the less, there is something the sceptic can do. He can avoid adding to the sensation of pain the further belief that the pain is bad. By doing this, he presumably avoids adding emotional distress to the sensation. The result is that, although he cannot avoid feeling, in such a case, his feeling is at least moderate (metriopathein, metriopathōs),795 consisting as it does in mere sensation, not emotion: I use the elastic term ‘feeling’ to cover both. As regards emotion, he is free of feeling altogether (apathēs).796 This distinction of sensation from emotional distress has been endorsed in some modern studies of pain, which, very like Sextus in the second passage below, contrast pre-operative and post-operative pain.797 The point about freedom from emotion moderating pain is expressed in the following two passages.

787

Id. Against the Mathematicians 11. 158.

788

Id. Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 236; Against the Mathematicians 11. 158.

789

Id. Against the Mathematicians 11. 141.

790

Id. Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235; Against the Mathematicians 11.141; 11.143; 11.156; 11.157; 11.158.

791

Id. Against the Mathematicians 11.148; 11.156; 11.161.

792

Ibid. 11. 148.

793

Ibid. 11. 157.

794

Ibid.

795

Id. Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.235; 3.236; Against the Mathematicians 11. 161.

796

Id. Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3. 235.

797

See R. Melzack, ‘The Perception of Pain’, Scientific American, 204/2 (Feb. 1961), 41–9. Recent studies are more nuanced: R. Melzack and Patrick Wall, The Challenge of Pain (Harmondsworth, 1982); Patrick Wall, Pain: The Science of Suffering (London, 1999).

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So the sceptic, seeing such great anomalies in things, suspends judgement about anything being by nature good or bad or to be done or left undone. In that, he stands aside from the rashness of dogmatism (dogmatikos), and without belief(adoxastōs) follows the ordinary observances of life. But that means he remains free of feeling (apathēs) in things which depend on beliefs, and his feeling is moderate (metriopathein) in things which happen of necessity. As a human being with sensation (aisthētikos), he is subjected to various things, but since he does not add the belief (prosdoxazein) that what he is subjected to is by nature bad, his feeling is moderate (metriopathei). For adding a belief of that kind is even worse than being subjected, just as sometimes people bear undergoing surgery or being subjected to something else of that kind, but the bystanders faint because of their belief (doxa) that what is happening is bad. A person is disturbed (tarassesthai) in many ways if he postulates that something is by nature good or bad or in general to be done or left undone. For he thinks he is being pursued by the Furies when the things he thinks by nature bad are upon him. And when he gets control of what appears (phainesthai) to him good, he falls into no mean disturbance (tarakhē), because of his self-satisfaction and his fear of losing them, and through guarding against reverting to what he thinks of as by nature bad.798 He who adds no belief (prosdoxazein) about the pain being bad is caught by the necessary processes of the pain. But he who imagines in addition (prosanaplassein) so much as (monon)799 that the pain is alien (anoikeion) or bad doubles by this belief the disturbance (okhlēma) which attends on the pain. For do we not observe that often in the case of people undergoing surgery the patient bears the test of cutting manfully even while being cut, neither ‘growing pale in his fine complexion nor wiping tears from his cheeks’? For he is subject only to the processes of cutting. But the bystander no sooner sees a small flow of blood than he grows pale, trembles, sweats, feels faint, and finally falls down speechless. This is not because of the pain, because that is not his, but because of his belief that the pain is bad. In the same way, the disturbance (tarakhē) arising through the belief that some bad thing is bad is sometimes greater than the disturbance that arises through the very thing that is said to be bad. Hence the man who suspends judgement about all matters of belief enjoys the fullest happiness. He does suffer disturbance (tarattesthai) in involuntary processes of a non-rational kind. ‘For he is not made from the legendary oak nor from rock, but his is the race of men.’ Still, he is disposed so as to feel moderately (metriopathōs).800

798

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.235–7; cf.1.30.

799

i.e. even if he leaves out ‘by nature’.

800

Sextus Against the Mathematicians 11. 158–161.

THE TRADITIONS OF MODERATION AND ERADICATION

201

Shifting Emphases In Plato We have seen much variety of opinion in the Platonist tradition, and this was possible because Plato did not give a firm decision in favour of one ideal rather than the other. Several earlier dialogues, for example the Phaedo, condemn certain emotions, yet the pleasures of learning are celebrated as against the pleasures of the body,801 and different pleasures are still being differently evaluated in as late a work as the Philebus. The Republic condemns the tearful emotions,802 but finds an essential purpose and value in spirit and appetite.803 The Symposium and Phaedrus contain speeches both for and against love, but the speeches for are the ones that stay in everybody's mind.

Epicureans: From Selective Emotions To Compromise With Stoics The Epicureans will not side exclusively with the advocates of moderate emotion, nor with those of freedom from emotion. It is better to think of them as believing in selective emotion. Pleasure, understood in the right way, as a static freedom from distress, which cannot be increased but only varied, is actually made the end or goal of life.804 On the other hand, we shall encounter in Chapters 16 and 18 Epicurus' campaign against the fear of death, which removes pleasure, and his warnings against falling in love. There is a text in which, as emended by Bignone, Epicurus says that the wise person will be more gripped by certain (tisi) emotions.805 The same passage ascribes to the wise pity and distress, but dissociates them from hatred, envy, and contempt.806 Certainly, Epicurus makes a distinction, whose antecedents are in Plato and whose sequel (Chapter 25) is in the Church Fathers, between desires that are natural and necessary, desires that are only natural, and desires that are neither natural nor necessary.807 The Epicurean Philodemus distinguishes between anger based on empty

801

Plato Phaedo 114 E .

802

Id. Republic 606 A –B .

803

Ibid. 440 A –D ; 485 D ; 586 E –587 A . The definition of justice requires that reason, spirit, and appetite each do their proper job: 441 D –E .

804

Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 131–2; Kuriai Doxai 3 and 18, all in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10, at 131–2; 139; 144 (cf. 136); Cicero Fin. 1.29–32; 1.37–41; 2.9–10.

805

tisi (some) is Bignone's emendation at Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 117.

806

Ibid. 10. 117–20.

807

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 29 in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 149, with scholium, and scholium on Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1118b 8 = Epicurea 456 Usener; Letter to Menoeceus in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 127; Cicero Fin. 1. 45; Philodemus On Choices and Avoidances col. 6, ch. 2, ed. and trans. Voula Tsouna-McKirahan and G. Indelli (Naples, 1995). For necessary pleasures cf. Plato Philebus 62 E 9, for necessary and unnecessary desires Republic 558 D –559 C , for unnecessary pleasures and desires Republic 571 B . Aristotle contrasts emotions (pathē) natural and necessary to humans (Nicomachean Ethics 5. 8, 1135b 21; 1136a 8), with bestial ones (thēriōdēs) (ibid. 7. 5, 1149a 6 ff. etc.).

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beliefs, which he rejects, and natural anger, which he accepts.808 But with Philodemus we find Epicureanism moving much closer to Stoicism. Admittedly, in On Anger he explicitly confronts the Stoics. Admittedly, too, in On Death he can offer no more than moderating one's agitation (metriōs enokhleisthai).809 But several things have happened: first, that he shares quite generally the Stoics' way of putting things. One example is the idea of a bite (dēgmos) or poke (nuttein)810 as natural and hard to avoid. Another is the idea that certain things are indifferent (adiaphoron)—not, of course, the full range of indifferents recognized by the Stoics, but falling on acknowledged evils that are not too many or continuous.811 Philodemus shares, too, the Stoic terminology of psychological expansion and contraction (exairein, sustellein).812 What is more significant, however, is that in On Anger the attitude which Philodemus advocates and which he calls natural anger seems virtually indistinguishable from the wise state which the Stoics deny to be anger. He accuses Nicasicrates, who is probably a fellow Epicurean, of viewing all emotion as bad, like the Stoics.813 Butatleast Nicasicrates differs from the Stoics in thinking that not even the wise person can ever be free from anger. Philodemus seems to differ from the Stoics on this point only in name. In his natural anger one need not expect any ill to befall oneself. It may be a friend who is harmed, and either by others or by himself.814 The difference from Stoicism is that this would be considered a genuine ill. But for the rest, Philodemus is like the Stoics. What is sought is described as punishment (kolasis), not retaliation. And it is sought not as something pleasant. It is seen as very necessary, but very unpleasant, like

808

Philodemus On Anger, ed. Indelli.

809

Id. On Death, col. 34 Kuiper. My attention was drawn to this and several references in the next three notes by Voula Tsouna-McKirahan's paper, read at the Institute of Classical Studies, London, on 7 Dec. 1998, concerning Philodemus On Vices and the Opposite Virtues, a fragmentary work in ten books which includes, inter alia, sections On Arrogance, On Flattery, On Envy, and On Avarice. These are separate from the treatises On Anger, On Frank Criticism, and On Death.

810

Id. On Death cols. 25; 26; 34; On Frank Criticism, text, introduction, translation, and notes by D. Konstan et al. (Atlanta, 1998), cols. 8b 11; 17a 9; tabula 4.1; frag. 26, line 9.

811

Id. On Envy frag. 18, ed. Guerra, Cronache ercolanesi, 15 (1985), 113–25.

812

Id. On Arrogance col. 11, lines 31–3, in Philodemus On Vices, book 10, ed. C. Jensen (Teubner edn.: Leipzig, 1911).

813

Id. On Anger, cols. 37–41 Indelli.

814

Ibid. col. 41, lines 17–25 Indelli.

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203

a drink of medicinal wormwood, or surgery.815 The punishment is not thought of as worth choosing for its own sake (di' hauto haireton).816 By contrast, the man with an appetite for punishment (kolasis) comes to vengeance (timōria) as though it (vengeance) were to be chosen for its own sake.817

Plotinus On Metriopatheia And Apatheia I have already said that the Neoplatonists think of metriopatheia and apatheia as corresponding to two different stages of progress. Plotinus distinguishes between ordinary civic virtue (politikē), suchas Plato describes in Republic Book 4, and the purified virtue (katharsis) which Plato hints at elsewhere.818 At the stage of civic virtue, one merely moderates emotion (metrein).819 But in the purified state, the soul is free of emotion (apathēs).820 On the soul's apatheia three successive discussions by Plotinus have been distinguished by others. First, he suggests that the whole soul can reach apatheia through purification, so that it scarcely suffers emotion, and even for the body, shocks will be reduced. Slightly later, he appeals to Aristotle's idea in On the Soul 2. 5 that the soul is in any case never affected, but only activated, though shocks in the body can result from the opinions and appearances involved in emotion. But he sees this raises a problem: if the soul is already apathēs, why should it need purification? His final statement is that it is only part of the soul that is apathēs, namely that part which never descended, in his view, from the intelligible world, but is uninterruptedly contemplating the Platonic Forms without our normally being conscious of it.821

Neoplatonist Borrowings From the Stoics: Shocks And Eupatheiai The Neoplatonists exploit two Stoic ideas, that of shocks (plēgai, ekplēxis) in the body and that of eupatheiai, in order to describe how

815

Ibid. 44. 9–22, translation in J. Annas, ‘Epicurean Emotions’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30 (1989), 145–64 at 159. ‘Not as something pleasant’ recurs in the next reference.

816

Ibid. 42. 22–34, translation in Annas, ‘Epicurean Emotions’, 155.

817

Ibid. 44. 26–32, translation in J. Procope, ‘Epicureans on Anger’, in Glenn Most et al., Philanthropia kai Eusebeia [Festschrift for Albrecht Dihle] (Göttingen, 1993), 363–86 at 376. Annas's is the pioneering article, but Procope brings out the nuances particularly well.

818

Plato Republic 10, 611; Phaedo 69 B –C .

819

Plotinus 1.2.2(14–18).

820

Id. 1.2.3(20); 1.2.6(25–7).

821

The three views are found (1) in Plotinus 1. 2. 5–6, the 19th treatise; (2) in id. 3. 6. 4–5, the 26th treatise; (3) in id. 1.8.4; 2.3.9; 1.1.1–6, the 51st, 52nd, and 53rd treatises.

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states that might be thought emotional none the less leave the soul free from emotion, apathēs. Bodily shocks feature in both of the first two Plotinian discussions of apatheia, and in the earliest of them I believe the reference is to something like Stoic first movements. Plotinus here thinks it is only the body that suffers once the soul is purified. The body still suffers pains (algēdones), a word used by Chrysippus, along with ‘bites’, for sensations of movement in the chest.822 The body may still get angry (orgizesthai is connected with orgān ‘to swell’). There are unwilled reactions (to aproaireton, a term frequently used by Epictetus) in the body, and the body may receive shocks (plēgai, plēttesthai: this corresponds to Seneca's ictus in Chapter 4 above). But the soul will not now share in these things. On the contrary, it will reduce the shocks in the body, and will sometimes free the body of pain, fear, or anger. Perhaps we must say that the soul is collected to a sort of place away from the body into itself in a state entirely free of emotion (apathōs) and gives itself only such awareness of pleasures as is necessary and remedies and relief from stress, so as not to be disturbed, and removes pains (algēdones), or if it cannot, bears them calmly, and makes them less by not suffering along with the body. Rage (thumos), as far as it can, it removes if possible altogether; if not, then at least it does not share the body's anger (sunorgizesthai). The unwilled (aproaireton) belongs to something other than it, and is small and weak. Fear it removes altogether, since it will not be afraid of anything, except as a warning, though the unwilled occurs here too. As for appetite, it clearly will not have that for anything bad. A gentle (pros anesin;cf. Stoic aneimenōs) appetite for food and drink will belong not to it itself. Nor will an appetite for sex. If there is any appetite, it will be for natural things, I think, which import nothing unwilled, or if they do, only insofar as the soul is involved with imagination which pre-figures things. In general, the soul will be pure from all these things and will want to make the irrational part pure too, so that it does not even receive a shock (plēttesthai)—or if it does, not a strong one. Its shocks (plēgai) will rather be few and promptly dissolved by the soul's proximity.823

Plotinus' shocks (plēgai) recur in the entirely different context of mystical experience, because this too must be distinguished from merely emotional states. In mystical experience beauty strikes you with a blow (ekplēttesthai, ekplēxis), but a blow without harm (ablabōs).824 Both ideas are repeated by Saint Augustine. Mystical experience involves an ictus,825 and there is such a thing as striking without

822

Galen PHP 3. 7. 4, p. 212 de Lacy.

823

Plotinus 1.2.5(5–24).

824

Id. 1.6.7(17); 5.5.12(16 and 35–6).

825

Augustine Confessions 9.10; 7.17.

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harm (percutit sine laesione), although the context in which it is mentioned is not that of mystical experience, but rather of the light of God's Wisdom striking him.826 It has been pointed out that Damascius, seeking to escape from Plato's idea that pleasure is a process of restoration, presupposing a lack, prefers Aristotle's definition of pleasure and argues that pleasures of the intellect are free from shocks (aplēktoi, not plēktikai).827 The Neoplatonists also deploy the Stoic notion of eupatheia in these last contexts, although they may have taken the term from Plato Phaedrus 247 D 4; Rep. 615 A 3. Mystical experience for Plotinus is a eupatheia,828 and so is intellectual pleasure for Proclus and Damascius.829

Three Neoplatonist Controversies On Apatheia There were at least three major Neoplatonist controversies on apatheia. The most interesting of all will be reserved for Chapter 18. Iamblichus attacks Porphyry's desire to avoid all temptations, including obscene language, so as to achieve apatheia. Speaking of ordinary people and their phallic festivals, with obscene words, he commends them as achieving metriopatheia. The second disagreement concerns Plotinus' view that we have an undescended soul. Iamblichus rejects this and the corollary that purification (katharsis) is needed not for it, but only for the irrational soul and for the lower, doxastic type of reason (doxastikos logos),830 although it has recently been argued that he makes one concession to Plotinus. He allows that there are some exceptional souls which never break their connection with the higher, intelligible world.831 Proclus supplies three arguments against Plotinus, which may or may not come from Iamblichus. First, the whole soul must sin if proairesis, a power of the rational soul, sins. Secondly, we should be totally happy

826

Ibid. 11. 9 (the Loeb and Pelican translations conceal the last three uses).

827

Damascius Lectures on Plato's Philebus §§ 145; 190 Westerink. I owe the references to Damascius on intellectual pleasure to Gerd van Riel, who has a forthcoming book Pleasure and the Good Life: Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists (Leiden), arising out of his doctoral dissertation Pleasure and the Good (Leuven, 1996).

828

Plotinus 6. 7. 35 (26).

829

Proclus In Remp. 2. 303. 1–4; Damascius Lectures on Plato's Philebus §§ 87.1–4; 13.5–12.

830

Iamblichus in Stobaeus 1. 454. 10–22 Wachsmuth.

831

R. M. van den Berg, ‘Proclus and the Myth of the Charioteers’, Syllecta Classica, 8 (1997), 149–62, citing Olympiodorus Commentary on Plato's Phaedo 203. 26 ff. Westerink (=Iamblichus Commentary on Plato's Phaedo frag. 5 Dillon); Iamblichus On the Soul in Stobaeus 1. 379. 22–4 Wachsmuth; Hermeias Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus 215. 12 ff. Couvreur (=Iamblichus Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus frag. 7 Dillon).

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if the most important thing in us (kratiston) is always thinking with the gods.832 Thirdly, Plato declares the soul to be selfmoving, so none of it can be exempt from change.833 The third controversy concerns Proclus. Although he rejects Plotinus' undescended soul affected by nothing, he does not like the opposite view of Galen, to be discussed in Chapter 17, that mental functions depend on the state of the body. So he has to discuss apparent evidence to that effect which Galen cites from Plato's Timaeus.834 Proclus takes a third way: admittedly, the activities of the soul can be disturbed, but its substance, which is non-temporal, cannot be.835 Damascius replies that the substance of the soul is affected by emotions,836 drawing, so it has been argued,837 on Iamblichus.

Is the Dispute On Apatheia Merely Verbal? It has often been said that the dispute on apatheia and the other disputes we have been looking at in the preceding chapters are merely verbal. On the whole, I believe the opposite is the case. The disagreements are usually substantive, but verbal devices are often used in the presentation of them, sometimes in order to disguise the substantive nature of the disagreements. Claims that controversy with the Stoics was merely verbal have often centred on the concept of freedom from emotion (apatheia). We saw in Chapters 3 and 6 that for Zeno, Panaetius, and Posidonius that may have been something closer to merely moderating emotion. Augustine drew attention to the ambiguity of freedom from emotion as between a mere stupor, as he puts it, and a freedom from disturbing emotions that oppose reason, like fear and grief, as opposed to love and gladness.838 Many have suggested that the debate on freedom from pathos turned on an ambiguity in pathos.839 But it was Chrysippus, not Zeno, Panaetius, or Posidonius, who established the main Stoic

832

Proclus In Tim. vol. 3, p. 334. 3–15 Diehl.

833

Ibid. vol. 3, p. 335. 10–14. For replies to Proclus' objections see John Rist, ‘Prohairesis : Proclus, Plotinus et al’, in De Jamblique à Proclus (Entretiens de la Fondation Hardt, 21; Geneva-Vandœuvres, 1974), 103–22.

834

Plato Timaeus 43 B –44 B , discussed by Proclus In Alc. 1 226. 12–227. 2; In Tim. 3.349.21–350.8; 330.9–331.1.

835

Proclus In Tim. 3.335.24–336.1; 338.6–13; 340.14–17.

836

Damascius in Parm. 252.11–13; 252.27–253.11; 253.23–6; 266.25–8 Ruelle II. In agreement: ‘Simplicius’In DA 241. 7.

837

By Carlos Steel, The Changing Self (Brussels, 1978), a magisterial study covering the second and third controversies.

838

Augustine City 14. 9.

839

Julia Annas's valuable study, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, 103,114, says that pathos is ambiguous.

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view on this question, and I think it would be wrong to say that he differs from his opponents only in withholding the name ‘emotion’ from moderate emotion, or only in the amount of anger or fear to be tolerated, or that extirpation of emotion is only a repression of excess.840 It may be true that there would have been no disagreement if the Stoics had not seen emotion, or rather the ingrained disposition to emotion, as disease.841 But their seeing emotion in terms of disease represents a substantive disagreement. I shall make a similar point in Chapter 25 about Gregory of Nyssa. I believe his treatise On the Resurrection advocates apatheia in a full-blooded sense. It does not undo this when the case for metriopatheia is treated as being after all a case for apatheia in a secondary sense of the word. Sometimes the idea that the dispute is merely verbal rests, I believe, on misunderstanding the distinctions that I have been analysing. Authors both ancient and modern have held that when the Stoics permit first movements,842 or eupatheiai,843 or Platonic homosexual love,844 or the selection of indifferents,845 they are really permitting emotions under another name, just like their opponents. I have tried to show in Chapter 4 how first movements, being movements felt in the chest and physiological symptoms, are altogether different from emotions, which are judgements or impulses. The impression that they are not different may come from the mistaken idea that first movements are impulses, or alternatively that emotions are movements of expansion and contraction. The last was indeed the view of Zeno, but I argued in Chapter 3 that Chrysippus superseded it.

840

F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London, 1975), 63–4; A.-J. Voelke, L'Idée de volonté dans le stoïcisme (Paris, 1973), 56.

841

Rist, Stoic Philosophy. 27.

842

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A , where I suggest reading sunathroiseis (sinkings inward) in place of sunthroēseis (perplexities); Augustine City 9.4; 14.9, which will be the subject of ch. 24; Inwood Ethics and Human Action, 178, 180.

843

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 A ; Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 15; Augustine City 9. 4; Damascius Commentary on Plato's Phaedo 1, § 162 Westerink, if ‘natural pleasure’ means eupathic joy; Voelke, L'Idée de volonté, 56.

844

Plutarch On Common Notions 1073 B ; cf. Cicero Tusc. 4.70; 4.72.

845

On Stoic indifferents see the preceding chapter. The main attack on the doctrine of selecting indifferents came from Carneades: Cicero Fin. 5. 16–20; Plutarch On Common Notions 1070 F –1072 F , with Long, ‘Carneades and the Stoic Telos’. The relevance to emotions is stressed by Augustine City 9. 5 and 9. 4, citing Cicero Fin.. Carneades said that the disagreement on indifferents was merely verbal: Fin. 3. 41; Tusc. 5. 120. Cicero tends to agree: Fin. 4.20; 4.72; Tusc. 2.30; 5.32. That a correct drive towards selecting an indifferent is not so different from an emotion is suggested also by Sandbach, The Stoics, 63. Cicero, however, represents Cato as denying that the dispute on indifferents is verbal: Fin. 3. 41.

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As for the eupatheiai, it was argued in Chapter 2 that they include only a very select and rare set of emotions—by no means all the moderate emotions allowed by the Stoics' opponents. The endorsement of Platonic homosexual love is something I hope to explain in Chapter 18. It too is not a pathos, and that is connected with its ignoring sex as a mere indifferent and its making friends solely for the purpose of inculcating virtue. Finally, the advocacy of selecting certain indifferents has to be understood in terms of the analogy of the archer who is more interested in aiming right than in hitting,846 which I explained in Chapter 12. The Stoic sage will not be upset if, through no fault of his, he ‘misses’ and fails to secure the selected indifferent. That leaves the indifferents just that—indifferent—and does not allow them to serve as grounds for emotional concern. The confrontation between apatheia and metriopatheia was blurred not only by qualifications on the Stoic side. The supporters of metriopatheia also conceded that certain emotions were to be avoided altogether. Aristotle cited envy and Schadenfreude,847 Augustine, as will be seen in Chapters 25 and 26, pride and lust.848 Damage to clarity about Stoicism was, however, done, I think, by Cicero's decision to translate the Stoic word for emotion, ‘pathos’, as perturbatio, or ‘perturbation’.849 It is a substantive thesis on the part of the Stoics that emotions in the ordinary meaning of the word, or most of them, are perturbing. If the substantive thesis is misguidedly made part of the meaning, it invites the reaction, ‘If you are only against perturbing emotions, you don't differ from us.’ Conversely, if the controversy is only about perturbing emotions, it becomes unintelligible how anybody can be in favour of them in moderation, or even consider them, like the Epicureans, compatible with freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). This type of misunderstanding was in fact exploited.850 Cicero, though identifying himself with the Platonic Academy, takes the Stoic side, and characterizes the Peripatetic belief in moderate emotion as a belief in moderate perturbation (moderatae perturbationes), moderate evils (mediocritas malorum), or moderate vice (modum vitio).851 Seneca does the same. The Peripatetics are said to believe in

846

Cicero Fin. 3. 22.

847

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2. 6, 1107 8–15.

848

Augustine City of God 14.

849

Cicero Fin. 3. 10. 35; Tusc. 3.7; 4.10.

850

This is well brought out by Rabbow, Antike Schriften über Seelenheilung und Seelenleitung, 88–95, 181–5, from whom I draw many of the Peripatetic examples.

851

Cicero Tusc. 4.42; 4.57; 4.39; 4.41; 4.42.

a

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209

moderation in disease (mediocritas morbi).852 And in the modern literature the Stoics have been defended as merely opposing disease.853 Seneca further says against the advocates of moderate emotion that anything subjected to moderation (modus) is not anger at all.854 This last may not be mere verbal legislation, for Seneca may be offering it as a substantive thesis that the judgements which constitute the second movement in anger will turn into an immoderate third movement.855 But verbal legislation is attempted by a fourteenth-century source, Barlaam of Seminaria, against the Peripatetic Theophrastus in the name of Stoicism. Theophrastus is wrong, it is said, to call anything by the Latin name perturbatio (in fact, Theophrastus was writing Greek), if it is not contrary to any equable state (constantia, the Latin for eupatheia). So when he favours those emotions which are not so contrary, he is really agreeing with the Stoic belief in having no emotion.856 It may have been similar misinterpretations which led to confusion in our sources about whether Theophrastus believed in moderate emotion (as he did) or in freedom from emotion.857 The wittiest verbal legislation along these lines is that of Galen, who says: It is no longer so clear whether being moderately disturbed in mind at a great loss of money or esteem belongs to the class of pathē, and similarly for being rather out of control in eating cakes.858

What is going on here, I think, is not a verbal dispute at all (although I do not deny there are some examples of this), but an attempt to disguise a substantive dispute as if it were merely verbal. Something similar happens when it is suggested that the Aristotelians'

852

Seneca Letter 116. 1.

853

Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 27.

854

Seneca On Anger 1. 9. 3.

855

On the interpretation of Seneca On Anger 2. 3. 4 mentioned, but rejected, in ch. 3, we should need to add ‘unless immediately retracted’.

856

Barlaam of Seminaria Ethics according to the Stoics 2. 13–14 (PG vol. 151, cols. 1362 B –1363 D ) =Theophrastus frag. 447 FHS&G.

857

Moderate emotion: frag. (FHS&G) 449A (=Stobaeus 2. 140. 7–142. 13 Wachsmuth); frag. 559 (Athenaeus Sophists at Dinner 13. 14, 562 E ; frag. 446 (=Seneca On Anger 1.12.3; 1.14.1)). Freedom from passio corporalis :frag.448(= Lumen animae B, ch. 63, ‘De sapientia’ E, 2nd edn. of Farinator, 1477). The references to apatheia in frags. 584B and D , from Porphyry Abstinence 2. 43. 3–4 and 2. 61. 1, belong, I think, to Porphyry, not to Theophrastus.

858

Galen On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul, ch. 2, (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1, p. 5, lines 12–14; also in Kühn, vol. 5), translated in Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Columbus, Ohio, 1963).

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acceptance of moderate emotion is an acceptance of the rabidity or cruelty of anger. Such a charge is made against ‘most people’ by Plutarch,859 even though in this passage (unlike some others)860 he claims to favour emotion in moderation (metriopatheia).861 Similarly, the Epicurean Philodemus, in defending his own concept of natural anger, represents the Aristotelians as supporting unbridled anger.862

859

Plutarch On Freedom from Anger, 456 F .

860

See Spanneut, ‘Apatheia ancienne’, 4704–7.

861

Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 458 C .

862

Philodemus On Anger cols. 29–33 Indelli.

15 How the Ancient Exercises Work What Chrysippan Psychotherapy Can and Can't Do Before I get into the methods of Chrysippus' psychotherapy, I should recall what was said in Chapter 10 about what it can and what it can't do. It is directed to situations. Typically, it is directed to our evaluation of situations as good, bad, and calling for reaction. Occasionally it is directed to the non-evaluative facts of the situation, as when Seneca advises Lucilius to assume that everything will be all right, although Seneca admits that this is not the Stoic way of speaking.863 The word ‘therapy’, though it is the Stoics' own metaphor, will mislead us if it causes us to think of treating an individual psyche that has come to function badly, perhaps because of individual childhood relationships or chemical imbalance. The Greeks have little to say on the former; Galen, we shall see in Chapter 17, has much to say on the latter; but Chrysippus in this context addresses neither. The Stoics in his tradition focus on situations, on the ordinary ups and downs of life, on bereavement, loss of office, promotion, the rat race, money, invasions, the sacking of cities, exile, worries about health. They are not concerned even with moods, because moods are not firmly directed to particular situations. In this, followers of Chrysippus are quite unlike Plato, Posidonius, and Galen, whose diet, music, and exercises are designed to rear children to have the right moods. And they are unlike the Christian Evagrius, who will be discussed in Chapter 23, and who tackles the moods of depression called akēdia. I further pointed out in Chapter 10 that Plato, Posidonius, and Galen have far more to say about emotional help for children. Chrysippan techniques tend to be too intellectualistic for them, although they can be very useful for adults. Everyone finds the situations of human life hard to deal with,

863

Seneca Letters 13; admission at 13. 4 and 14.

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not because of something special about their individual psyche. The Stoics think we all tend to have the wrong evaluations, and they believe the remedy lies in a change of attitude. But the focus is on the situations themselves and how to see them. And this is useful because advice on this is probably less immediately accessible nowadays. There are indeed very useful therapies and even management consultancies which address such situations. But the Stoics may be unusual in not addressing them only one by one, but offering to prepare you for whatever fortune may bring, even good fortune, like winning the lottery. It is on how adults can handle these universal shifts of fortune that Chrysippan therapy has so much to say.

No Competition With Psychoanalysis This different objective means that Chrysippan psychotherapy is not in competition with modern psychoanalysis. I agree with a good point made by Bernard Williams, that it could not deal with the problems that psychoanalysis sets out to tackle.864 But I want to say that equally, if the problem is simply that you have missed your plane or failed to gain promotion, it is Stoicism, not psychoanalysis, that is more likely to help.

Ancient Exercises, Prospective and Retrospective Ancient philosophical therapy relied heavily on exercises. Only some of the exercises presupposed the metaphysics, ethics, or epistemology of particular schools. I shall come to some of these later. But many exercises were free of doctrinal presuppositions, and were consequently interchangeable among schools. Only some of the exercises were prospective, preparing you in advance to avoid emotion. These could be given only to trainees. Other exercises are retrospective, to calm emotions when they have arisen.865 Many of these can be applied to anyone. To understand the situation, we need a wide range of examples.866

864

Williams, ‘Stoic Philosophy and the Emotions’, 211.

865

The prospective/retrospective distinction is made in Seneca On Anger 2.18; Galen PHP 4. 7. 22, p. 284 de Lacy.

866

The justly famous work on exercises is Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris, 1981), which overlaps with his Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford, 1995). But for the Hellenistic period there is still a wealth of examples in the lesser-known Paul Rabbow, Seelenführung (Munich, 1954).

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213

Plato's Anticipation As often, Plato amazes us because he was able to anticipate several of the later therapies, in a few short lines principally devoted to something else. He mentions the sceptical attitude that it is unclear what is really good or bad, Chrysippus' point that taking things badly is no help but actually hinders deliberation, and Cleanthes' point that no human concern is worth much trouble: ‘The law says, I suppose, that it is best to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and not to fret, since the good and bad in such things is not clear, nor does it get the person who takes it hard any further forward, nor are any human concerns worth much trouble, while grieving impedes what should most quickly come to our aid in these matters.’ ‘To what are you referring?’ he said. ‘Deliberation,’ said I.867

Plutarch's Character Exercises The Middle Platonist Plutarch, in the first century AD, left us a series of character exercises. To suppress curiosity, you should practise not looking through people's doors as you walk, not reading the graffiti on the walls, and not biting letters open with your teeth, as some people do in their haste to read them.868 To guard against the fear of giving offence (dusōpia), you should practise not staying to hear out a bore. You should not stick to your usual medical practitioner when you need a skilled physician, nor to the innkeeper you know when you need someone better. Nor should you invite to a wedding anyone who runs up to you.869

Pythagorean Exercises Adopted By Stoics The Pythagoreans had an exercise of arriving for a feast and then renouncing it and leaving it for the servants.870 Other Pythagorean exercises were adopted by Stoics. Seneca, for example, took over the practice, later followed by Christians, of reviewing the day at bedtime, leaving his wife to go to sleep, and asking himself whether his reactions had been right or wrong.871 To this the Pythagoreans and

867

Plato Republic 604 B –C .

868

Plutarch On Being a Busybody 520 D –522 F .

869

Ibid. 530 E –532 C .

870

Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life ch. 31. 187. The practice is mentioned also by Plutarch On the daemon of Socrates 585 A ; Diodorus Siculus History 10. 5. 2.

871

Porphyry Life of Pythagoras 40; Pythagoras'Golden Verses 40–4, cited by Epictetus 3. 10. 2–3; Seneca On Anger 3. 36. Basil of Caesarea adopts this as a Christian practice: Ascetic Sermons 1, col. 882 PG 31.

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HOW THE ANCIENT EXERCISES WORK

the Stoics Seneca and Epictetus added morning questions about what might be encountered or achieved.872 It was from his Pythagorean teacher again that Seneca learnt to look at his distorted face in a mirror as a cure for anger,873 and to be vegetarian, use a hard bed, and avoid hot baths.874 He had an obsessive fascination with luxurious baths, with silver spigots and induced waves.875

Stoic Disciplines Some, but not all, Stoic training was sterner than this. Seneca meditates on suicide because he sees the possibility of suicide as a guarantee of freedom.876 No tyrant can make you do anything while you are free to commit suicide. And it is important to know how to commit suicide even in captivity and to be ready for it. Seneca says a gladiator did so by sticking his head in a cartwheel while being taken to the arena, and another gladiator did so by swallowing a toilet sponge.877 This is in the tradition of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, who is supposed to have committed suicide by suffocating himself.878 Suicide would probably also have been the right Stoic response for the father whose advice to the tyrant Cambyses on alcohol was repaid by Cambyses shooting the son dead as a proof of his steady aim.879 Seneca condemns the father for praising Cambyses' accuracy, but he does not think anger the right reaction. To prepare himself for suicide, Seneca meditates on it repeatedly in his Letters, and this is another form of exercise. For the slightly younger Stoic Epictetus, it is a very important exercise to decide what is in our power or up to us (eph' hēmin). We should treat only that as mattering.880 This rule is not always harsh in

872

Epictetus 4. 6. 34; cf. Seneca On Anger 2.10.7; Marcus Aurelius 2.1.

873

Seneca On Anger 2. 36. 1. The practice is mentioned also in Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 456 A –B ; Apuleius Apology 15.

874

Seneca, Letter 108. 13–22.

875

Very well described by Catherine Edwards in a talk given in Oxford in 1994–5, drawing on the Letters, e.g. 51.6; 86; 108.16.

876

This has been well brought out by Walter Englert. In a paper presented at the Institute of Classical Studies in London on 7 June 1993 he cited Seneca On Providence 6. 6–7; Letters 12.10; 51.9; 70.14–15; 77.14; 91.21; Marcia 20. 2–3.

877

Seneca Letters 70. 19–25.

878

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 28.

879

Seneca On Anger 3. 14.

880

e.g. Handbook 2.2; 5; 19.2; 31.2; Discourses passim. Simplicius agrees in his commentary ad 31. 2 (ch. 38, pp. 361, line 24–364, line 87; 384, lines 568–75 Hadot =pp. 91.52–93.26; 104.43–50 Dübner =pp. 350–3; 386–7 in Stanhope's English translation (London, 1694), soon to be replaced by Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain).

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its effects. Later in this chapter we shall notice a modern case (that of Stockdale) in which it had the effect of liberating from shame. Epictetus intended it to be liberating. Epictetus draws very narrow boundaries around the concept of what is in our power. Our will (proairesis) is in our power, and in general our judgements and desires, but, strikingly, our body is not.881 I shall argue in Chapter 21 that it is an innovation in Epictetus to exclude the body from what is in our power. His experience as a slave made him, no doubt, vividly conscious of how our bodies may be incapacitated. Epictetus gives a very good sense of how a student would be trained to question appearances until he or she could view almost everything not in our power as indifferent. Epictetus tells his students to practise asking whether what they see is proairetikon, a distinctive Epictetan usage. I shall render proairetikon as ‘subject to the will’,882 at the cost of a little distortion, since proairesis has more to do with reason and less with will-power than do modern concepts of will. The rule (kanōn) that students are to ask whether what they see is proairetikon must be kept to hand (prokheiron). If something is not subject to their will, it is to be dismissed as indifferent. Several of Epictetus' words for exercises, and the word for ‘to hand’, are already to be found in the fragments of his teacher, Musonius Rufus.883 It is especially for this kind of thing that you must perform exercises (gumnasteon). Go out at first light, examine whomever you see or hear, and answer as if you had been asked a question. What did you see? A beautiful man or woman? Apply the rule (kanōn). Is this subject to your will (proairetikon) or not (aproaireton)? No: remove it. What did you see? A man grieving at the death of his child? Apply the rule. Death is not subject to your will. Move it out of the way. Did a consul meet you? Apply the rule. What sort of thing is consulship, subject to your will, or not? No: remove that too; it is not approved (dokimon). Throw it away; it means nothing to you. If we did this and took exercise for this every day from dawn till dusk, I swear we'd get results. But as it is, we are caught right away gaping by every appearance and only wake up a little, if at all, in the classroom. If we then go out and see someone grieving, we say, ‘He is ruined’, if a consul, ‘He is happy’, if an exile, ‘He is wretched’, if a pauper, ‘The poor fellow has no source of food’. These, then, are the bad opinions that we must knock out, and pull ourselves

881

Handbook 1; Discourses 1. 22. 10.

882

Epictetus says much the same things about the proairetikon and about what is up to us. A weaker rendering of proairetikon would be ‘a suitable subject for willing’.

883

Translated by Cora E. Lutz from Hense's Teubner edition in ‘Musonius Rufus: “The Roman Socrates’ ”; see frag. 6.

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together on the subject. For what is wailing and lamenting? A belief. What is misfortune? A belief. What are quarrelling, dissension, reproach, accusation, impiety, foolery? They are all beliefs, nothing else, and beliefs that things not subject to our will are good or bad. Let someone transfer these beliefs to things that are subject to his will, and I guarantee that he will be steady, whatever his surrounding circumstances.884

Another exercise of Epictetus is notorious. To fortify yourself against future loss, you should start with a favourite pot and work up to your wife and children, reminding yourself, even as you kiss them, that one day they will be no more. Then you will be able to withstand the loss.885 I have said in Chapter 13 that this can only be understood against the background of Epictetus' view that love which is not thus detached turns into hatred, and only detached love is true. Plutarch makes a different use of the technique of imagining absence. If we imagine the absence of things we take for granted, we shall appreciate small things more.886 This is related to the point that when we know someone we love is going to die, we love that person more, not less.887 Some of Epictetus' exercises are easier. He appreciates the value of reinforcement: to cure irascibility, offer a sacrifice when you manage to avoid anger thirty days in a row.888 When the food is passed round, do not project your desire towards it before it has arrived; just wait.889 Similarly, Galen in the next century warns us not to lift our cup to our lips more greedily than is becoming, nor to take the drink in one gulp.890 Some readers may be familiar with this tradition if, like me, they were instructed by a grandmother never to take the glass straight to their lips after stretching it out for water, as if in a hurry, but always to let the glass rest on the table first.

Distraction, Memorization, Letters, Criticism, and Confession Among the Epicureans A lot is known about Epicurean practices. In Chapter 16 I shall discuss their view that an emotion can be averted by distracting

884

Epictetus 3.3.14–19;similarly 3.8.1–5.

885

Id. 3.24.84–8; 4.1.111; Handbook 3.

886

Plutarch Tranq. 469 E –F .

887

I thank Mary Midgley for this point in correspondence.

888

Epictetus 2. 18. 12.

889

Epictetus Handbook 15. The accompanying advice to take the food in an orderly way is echoed by the Christian Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2. 1. 13.

890

Galen On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul ch. 6 (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1).

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one's attention from the situation. But they also thought it essential to prepare the mind in advance and to influence its beliefs. One of the most important exercises for them was memorizing the views of Epicurus. The surviving works of Epicurus, before the fragments of his main work On Nature were excavated from the volcanic ash at Herculaneum, consisted largely of three letters from him epitomizing his views. Epicurus is sometimes thought to have inspired a tradition of letter-writing in certain other schools.891 The first letter opens by saying it is composed for the purposes of memorization, while the last closes by urging on the reader that what has been said must be rehearsed (meletan) both to oneself and to others like oneself night and day.892 More is revealed about exercises within the school by a treatise of Philodemus On Frank Criticism (Peri parrhēsias). This represents a lecture course by one of Philodemus' teachers, the Epicurean Zeno of Sidon (c.155–c.75 BC). Frank criticism (parrhēsia) is said to be the opposite of the fear of giving offence (dusōpia),893 discussed by Plutarch. As other schools would agree, it is an appropriate task for a friend to criticize a friend, although here it may be done in front of others.894 Different intensities of criticism are recommended for different recipients,895 but one should not forget to say ‘my dear’.896 Self-directed criticism or confession is also recommended, both on the part of the teachers, though with caution,897 and on the part of the students,898 and the Christian parallels for this have been discussed. Teachers, though called ‘wise’, may criticize each other,899 and are criticized by the treatise, because the Epicurean wise person, unlike the Stoic, is not infallible. Philodemus wrote a large number of treatises, now only fragmentary, on emotional dispositions. On Frank Criticism is combined with On Anger in an Epitome on Conduct and Character. On Vices and the

891

Besides the obvious case of Seneca's letters, Clarence E. Glad has critically compared the letters of Saint Paul, Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Christian Psychagogy (Leiden, 1995).

892

Epicurus Letter to Herodotus, in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 35–6; Letter to Menoeceus ibid. 10. 135.

893

Philodemus On Frank Criticism, ed. and trans. David Konstan et al. (Society of Biblical Literature; Atlanta, 1998), frag. 50.

894

Ibid. frag. 50; see also Glad, Paul and Philodemus, e.g. p.106.

895

Philodemus On Frank Criticism, frag. 7; cf. 10; 60.

896

Ibid. frag. 14.

897

Ibid. frags. 9; 47; 49; 51; 53; 55; 81.

898

Ibid. frags. 40–2; 76. On confession see Glad, Paul and Philodemus, esp. 124–34; Nussbaum The Therapy of Desire, ch. 4; Rabbow Seelenführung, 269–70, 277–9.

899

Philodemus On Frank Criticism cols. 8a; 9b.

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Opposing Virtues includes On Pride and probably On Flattery and On Avarice. There are also treatises On Envy, On Gratitude, and On Death.900 It is striking how often the advice in these treatises is introduced as something the pupil is to ‘remember’. The therapy is cognitive, but in the treatise On Conversation it is repeatedly pointed out that silence may be the best way to make other people think.901

Homesickness, Confession, and Related Practices In Other Schools Other schools accepted many of these ideas. It was the Cynics who were associated with particularly harsh criticism. The early Cynics already set an example, and their biographies in Diogenes Laertius provide a catalogue of pithy and deflating remarks.902 Epictetus the Stoic approved of such criticism, provided it was exercised at the right moment to benefit the recipient.903 Epictetus makes much less allowance than the Epicurean text for the home background of students. Teaching in exile in Nicopolis, he deals harshly with a complaining, homesick student, while requiring a confession of weaknesses.904 Another Stoic, Seneca, represents Serenus as confessing weaknesses to him.905 Among the Platonists, Plutarch advocates confession906 and connects this with the Cynic advice of Diogenes and Antisthenes to have someone who will criticize you, and to learn to welcome this.907 The advice is repeated by a later Platonist, the doctor Galen.908 Epictetus compares self-admonition about your loved ones being mortal with the practice of generals having someone stand behind them in triumphal processions whose task was to remind them of their mortality.909

900

The more fragmentary of these treatises have been edited in recent years in Cronache ercolanesi. I am grateful to Voula Tsouna-McKirahan for drawing my attention to them. On Pride is edited by C. Jensen (Teubner edn.; Leipzig, 1911); On Anger by G. Indelli (Naples, 1988); On Death is being edited and translated by David Armstrong, who has kindly shown me a draft.

901

Philodemus On Conversation, in Cronache ercolanesi, 5 (1975), 63–76.

902

Diogenes Laertius Lives, book 6.

903

Epictetus 3.22.81–2; 3.22.93; 3.22.96–7.

904

Id.2.21.

905

Seneca Tranq. 1. 2 and 5.

906

Plutarch How to Recognize One's Moral Progress 82 A –F .

907

Ibid., and How to Tell a Flatterer 74 C ; On Benefiting from Enemies 89 A –F . The first passage also cites Bion.

908

Galen On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul ch. 3 (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1), English version in Galen, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Columbus, Ohio, 1963).

909

Epictetus 3. 24. 85.

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Wanting With Reservation In Stoics and Church Fathers One of the practices which Stoics were expected to learn was wanting and expecting with reservation (hupexairesis, exceptio).910 Your desires and expectations should be qualified with an ‘if Zeus wills’, or ‘if nothing prevents’. I suggested in Chapter 2 that wanting with reservation can be represented as follows: I desire (judge appropriate): I shall avoid illness and Zeus' will shall be done, or failing that (Greek ei de mē ‘but if not’): Zeus' will shall be done.

As to how this helps the Stoic to escape feeling frustrated, I suggested that all along he desires the second conjunct, that God's will be done. Moreover, he also desires the conjunction that he should escape illness and God's will be done. But he is already disposed to abandon the conjunction, and will abandon it at latest when he finds he cannot secure both conjuncts. He would then come actually to desire the illness, as Epictetus, quoting Chrysippus, says he does—or in other cases even death or torture.911 The logic is, on this interpretation,912 closely comparable to that sometimes applied to Christ's saying in Matthew 26: 39, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.’ In the twelfth century this was sometimes called willing with a condition (voluntas conditionalis, cum condicione), and it is sometimes identified with velleity (velleitas). Velleity is connected with what I would wish (vellem) rather than with what I do will (volo). But there was a dispute whether conditional willing involved actual willing or not.913 As in the Stoic examples, the conjunction is actually willed, but is the conjunct of the cup's passing? As I

910

e.g. Epictetus Handbook 2; 4; Discourses 2. 6. 9–10; Seneca On Benefits 4. 34; 4. 39; Tranq. 13. 2–3. That there is a distinction between reservations to wanting and to expecting was brought home to me by Tad Brennan in an early version of his paper ‘Reservation in Stoic Ethics’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, forthcoming, and I have greatly benefited from discussion with him, although his view is very different from the one suggested here. My thanks again to Tad Brennan and Jacques Brunschwig, who take very different views.

911

Epictetus 2.6.9–10; 4.1.89–90. Cf. Handbook 4: I may want to go to the baths, but only with the reservation that my proairesis will not be upset by rowdy behaviour. If that condition is not fulfilled, I shall turn back with serenity.

912

Epictetus Handbook 4. But not on Tad Brennan's.

913

Peter of Poitiers, Stephan Langton, William of Auxerre, and Alexander of Hales are discussed by Risto Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Medieval Thought from Augustine to Buridan (diss. Helsinki, 1993), revised version published by Brill (Leiden, 1994).

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interpret the Stoics, each conjunct is initially willed, but one may be abandoned later. According to defenders of velleity, by contrast, the cup's passing is not willed in isolation, unless the other condition is fulfilled. The same saying of Christ had been discussed in the third century by Origen, who suggests that Christ wanted God's will to be done more (magis volo) than he wanted his own.914 Augustine suggests at one point that Christ did not stay in the will he expressed by saying ‘let this cup pass from me’.915 Christ would presumably have changed his will on this view, when he came to realize that it did not coincide with his Father's. Neither author uses the technical Stoic terminology for Christ's act of will.

Recurrence Of These Themes In the Desert Fathers Some of these themes recur in the desert Fathers. Christian confession has been both compared and contrasted with pagan.916 But one interesting innovation is the idea ascribed to the desert Father Saint Antony, who will be further discussed in Chapter 22, which turns confession into a thought experiment. According to the Life of Antony ascribed to Athanasius, he encouraged us to recall our actions and the ‘movements’ of our soul and write them down, as though we were going to give an account to one another. But then sheer shame at the thought of doing so will eliminate the sinful thoughts.917 The closest pagan parallel for this is perhaps the advice of Epicurus and others to imagine a respected figure and what he would advise.918 The theme of homesickness also recurs. The desert monks were discouraged from seeing their families again, and there are heart-rending stories of their refusing to meet relatives who had made the arduous journey across the desert to visit.919 In Chapter 23, I shall describe Evagrius' graphic account of the temptation of thinking about

914

Origen Commentary on Matthew 26: 39, sec.92.

915

Augustine Expositions of the Psalms Psalm 93. 19. 15.

916

M. R. Barnes, ‘Galen and Antony: Anger and Disclosure’, Studia Patristica, 13, Leuven, forthcoming.

917

Athanasius, Life of Antony 55.

918

Seneca Letters 11.8–10; Marcia 6.1; Marcus Aurelius 11. 26 (both ascribe the practice to Epicurus); Plutarch How to Recognise Moral Progress 85 A .

919

Life of Pachomius, secs. 37–8, translated from Coptic by James E. Goehring in Vincent L. Wimbush (ed.), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook (Minneapolis, 1990), 349–56 at 354–6; cf. John Cassian Institutes 5. 32.

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home, the distress, anger, or lust it gives rise to, and the exercises for avoiding the temptation.920

Aristotelians The best-known of Aristotle's therapies is not an exercise, but the dramatic catharsis, to be discussed further in Chapter 19. We might have expected that Aristotle's insistence on the importance of good habits in moral development921 would also have been developed. But what strikes Olympiodorus, we shall see, is neither of these, but Aristotle's advice to orators in the Rhetoric on treating opposites by opposites, knocking out anger by pleasure, and vice versa. Olympiodorus ascribes this method originally to Hippocrates and contrasts it both with the method of catharsis, which purges people by giving them a small dose of what is harmful, and with that of Plato's Socrates, the method of ‘similars’ which leads people forward by offering them a higher interpretation of something they already believe in. Olympiodorus' general classification of therapies, translated in Chapter 19, expands the range of techniques considered in the present chapter.922 As for Aristotle's successors, Theophrastus simply characterizes a variety of emotional dispositions in his influential Characters, without suggesting therapies. He may have gone further in some of the titles ascribed to him—On Emotions, On Grief, On Ambition, On Gratitude, On Love, On Education, On Bringing up Children.923 But there is perhaps more evidence in the work of a minor successor, Aristo of Ceos.924 Aristo's On Freeing from Pride goes beyond Theophrastus' sketch of pride (huperēphania) in the Characters by suggesting therapies, including the therapy of attacking emotions by opposites, criticizing the proud, and encouraging the humbled. The therapy is all cognitive. People should measure themselves against superiors or inferiors, according to their state of mind. The proud should consider the mutability of fortune, should guard against envy, remembering how they once felt about proud people, should realize

920

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 10; On Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts ch. 8 =Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 8.

921

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, esp.2.1–4;cf. Theophrastus frag. 466B FHS&G.

922

Olympiodorus In Alc. I 6.6–7.8; 54.15–55.11; 145.12–146.11.

923

Diogenes Laertius Lives 5. 43–50.

924

Aristo of Ceos On Freeing from Pride, preserved by Philodemus On Pride, which is On Vices book 10, ed. Jensen (Teubner edn.: Leipzig, 1911). The columns cited here are 11–16.

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that the proud fall because they do not get co-operation, should repeatedly ask themselves, ‘What makes me proud?’, should think that—as with Xerxes, who tried to subdue the sea—their pride may turn into madness or sickness. Despite the evident interest in emotional exercises shown here, and the influence on Philodemus, who preserves this treatise, the Aristotelians may on the whole have been borrowers, rather than lenders, in the matter of exercises.

Relabelling Two final techniques deserve a mention: relabelling and appeal to the lot of others. Stoics, Epicureans, and others used the technique of relabelling. Epictetus comes close to this when he advises you to think of your family as mortal. But a clear case is his suggesting that, if you are stuck in a crowd, you should think of it as a festival.925 In one case it took a poet, Ovid, to convert into an exercise what Plato and Lucretius had presented as a case of self-delusion.926 To adapt the examples, the lover calls the sallow ‘honey-dark’, the thin ‘slender’, and the fat ‘curvaceous’. Lucretius' aim is to deter us from the ridiculous emotion of love. But Ovid wrote two relevant poems. One, the Art of Love, parodies philosophical handbooks, and has been seen as reflecting a three-stage Platonist Art of Love.927 Platonists, followed by Stoics and others, approved certain educative homosexual relations, as will be seen in Chapter 18. But Ovid's concern is far from homosexual. He gives advice in verse first to men and then to women on seduction, and recommends switching the epithets in the direction indicated. His other poem, The Remedies of Love, tells men how to fall out of love and recommends switching the epithets in the opposite direction.928 Ovid was exiled by Augustus for his pains. His second poem does, however, solve another problem in Lucretius' passage on self-delusion. Lucretius complains that the beloved woman smells, and much ink has flowed on what she smells of.929 Ovid, writing in the same context, reveals that the smells come from the cosmetics and he recommends the exercise of catching your beloved at her toilet, to put yourself off.930

925

Epictetus 4. 4. 24–6.

926

Plato Republic 474 D –475 A ; Lucretius 4. 1160–70.

927

For John Dillon's view that Ovid reflects a three-stage Platonist Art of Love see ch. 18.

928

Ovid Art of Love 2. 657–62; Remedies of Love 325–30.

929

As recorded by Nussbaum The Therapy of Desire, 179–81, the conjectures include dirt, her lover's seed, flatulence, the menstrual cycle, and medical fumigation. See Lucretius 4. 1175–84.

930

Ovid Remedies of Love 355–6.

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Relabelling sometimes involves falsehood. But the Stoics allow the telling of falsehoods in certain restricted circumstances.931 Other examples in Seneca are his advice to assume that everything will be all right, although he admits this is not a Stoic approach, or to think of a dead son as merely absent.932 Seneca also favours avoiding knowledge of insults to yourself. It may be better to be deceived (decipi) or deceive ourselves (nosmet fallere), and Caesar is praised for refusing to look at letters sent to his enemy Pompey.933 Epictetus says that if the Stoic belief in the indifference of everything except character were false, it would still be worth supposing it true.934 The Stoic may conceal from his patient the unpleasant procedure he is planning to use, lest the patient avoid it, and may lie to the enemy, to save his country.935 In some of these cases the falsehood is only to be imagined, in others, to be believed.

The Lot Of Others Appeal to the lot of others is a frequentrecipe in consolation. It is well illustrated by the story told in Chapter 1 of Democritus comforting the king of Persia on his bereavement.936 By inviting him to find three subjects who had suffered nothing similar, he conveyed the message, ‘You are not the only one’. This effect is mentioned by Cicero,937 and is also the burden of a fragment of Euripides'Cresphontes quoted by Plutarch.938 Appeal to the lot of others can help in other ways too. A reason not so much stressed by the ancient schools is that it is more comfortable to dwell on their plight than on one's own, and if one takes action accordingly, this is simultaneously useful and distracting. Reference to the lot of others could take different forms. Others may not only have suffered, but triumphantly endured, difficulties.

931

Stobaeus 2. 111 Wachsmuth, recording what is conjectured to be Arius Didymus' doxography of Stoic ethics, which occupies 2. 57–116, and of which translations are in preparation by Brad Inwood and by Julia Annas. For assessment of the attribution to Arius see A. A. Long, ‘Arius Didymus and the Exposition of Stoic Ethics’, in W. Fortenbaugh (ed.), On Stoic and Peripatetic Ethics: The Work of Arius Didymus (Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities, 1; New Brunswick 1983), 41–65.

932

Seneca Letters 13. 4 and 14; Marcia 19. 1On Anger 2. 23. 4–2. 24. 1.

933

Seneca On Anger 3.11; 2.23.

934

Epictetus 1. 4. 27.

935

Philo On the Cherubim 14–15 (= SVF 3. 513 =59H LS).

936

Democritus in Julian Letters 201 B –C (=Democritus A 20 DK). A parallel story is attached to an Indian philosopher, so I learn from Arindam Chakrabarty: the story is a floating one.

937

Cicero Tusc. 3. 79.

938

Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 110 D .

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Cicero says it may be necessary to stress this rather than the severity of what they endured, and Seneca follows suit.939 Indeed, there are whole compilations of examples of virtuous endurance, like the banal collection of Valerius Maximus, or that of chaste women in Jerome.940 The idea that the lot of others is worse than your own is also exploited, for example, by Democritus and Seneca,941 but most memorably by Lucretius, who describes the pleasure of recognizing your own safety as you watch from shore while others are caught in a storm.942 Lucretius, however, is thinking not of the person who needs comfort, but of the person who has already been saved by the doctrines of Epicurus. The suffering of others is displayed in tragedy, and the role of this display, according to the comic poet Timocles, a contemporary of Aristotle, is to produce forgetfulness of one's own sufferings, to enable one to bear them more easily and to lighten (kouphizein) the burden.943 It is not entirely clear by which of the mechanisms just surveyed the suffering of others is supposed to achieve this effect. But the reference to forgetfulness (lēthē) suggests that distraction plays a role. I think it is a mistake to call this a reference to katharsis, if by that is meant Aristotelian katharsis.944 Admittedly, Aristotle also connects katharsis with lightening (kouphizein) a burden.945 But his analogies with laxatives or purification and his reference to orgiastic music do not suggest he has in mind such simple mechanisms as distraction, or the others mentioned above.

Epistemological and Ethical Doctrines I shall reserve until Chapter 16 various metaphysical ideas about the nature of time and the self that were used for therapeutic purposes. Here I shall only recall that we have already encountered epistemological and ethical doctrines being applied to the handling of emotions.946 In Chapter 14, I interpreted the Pyrrhonian sceptics as claiming to avoid emotion by withholding assent from the appearance that anything is by nature good or bad. And we have also noticed the

939

Cicero Tusc. 3. 79; Seneca Marcia 12.5–16.4; cf. 3. 1–4.

940

Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Words ;Jerome Against Jovinian.

941

Democritus frag. 191 DK; Seneca Marcia 12. 4–5.

942

Lucretius 2. 1–13.

943

Timocles frag. 6, p. 453 Kock (Com. Att. vol. 2).

944

C. Diano, ‘Euripide auteur de la catharsis tragique’, Numen, 8 (1961), 117–41 at 124–5.

945

Aristotle Pol. 8. 7, 1342 14.

946

In ch. 16 the question will arise whether Aristippus was driven by epistemological concerns.

a

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225

ethical positions taken on the questions of indifference, of whether moderate emotion or freedom from emotion was the ideal, and of the approval of eupatheiai which were not counted as emotions.

Stoicism In Vietnam and Ordinary Life So much for some of the most prominent ancient techniques. I shall finish the chapter by referring to a modern adaptation. Admiral Stockdale of the US Navy survived four years of solitary confinement in Vietnam, eight years of captivity, and nineteen occasions of physical torture, and helped his men to endure the same, entirely through having studied the sayings of Epictetus.947 As he fluttered to earth from his crashing plane, with his parachute being fired at, he thought, ‘I am leaving the world I know for the world of Epictetus.’ Like Epictetus, he had his leg broken, through the impact of his fall, and under fettering and physical torture Epictetus' remark ‘You can fetter my leg, but not me’948 became very relevant. What above all Stockdale took from Epictetus was the importance of distinguishing what is in your power (up to you) from what is not. Under torture, the US captives all blurted out more information than the name and number to which military regulations confined them. They were then too ashamed to face their fellow captives, and the captors could exploit the shame to obtain the thing they really wanted: denunciations on television of US policy towards Vietnam. Stockdale, exploiting an Epictetan therapy, persuaded his men that it was not in their power, under physical torture, to confine themselves to name and number, thus curing their shame. But something else was in their power: deliberately courting physical torture again by disobedience. This they did, and under renewed torture they again blurted out too much. But the information revealed was insignificant. What mattered was that they had regained their pride, and then the captors could not obtain the one thing they wanted: the denunciations. What mattered, of course, was not merely that silence was not in their power,949 but that through distinguishing what was and what was not in people's power they saw they could live up to the standards of those they cared about. No doubt it also helped

947

J. B. Stockdale, ‘Testing Epictetus' Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 40 (1995), 1–13.

948

Epictetus 1. 1. 23; cf. 4. 1. 72–80; Handbook 9.

949

I agree with the point well made by Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 69–70, 92–4, that one can feel guilt and shame alike at what is not in one's power.

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that Stockdale showed the men there was something they could do, since helplessness is an important factor in creating post-traumatic stress.950 The Stoics always show you something you can think or do, even if it is only committing suicide. Stockdale did not, like Seneca, see suicide as a route to freedom. He attempted it only once and that, without realizing it, in one of the five contexts that the Stoics are said to approve: to help save his countrymen.951 You can under torture select what information to reveal, so long as the captors do not know that you know. On an occasion when they knew that Stockdale knew the names of those involved in a particular act of defiance, he made a thorough attempt at suicide and was rescued only by chance. One might expect that Stoicism, which was so useful to Admiral Stockdale, would have been useless to Mrs Stockdale, who waited in the United States, most of the time not knowing whether her husband would return, or whether he was still alive. The doctrine of indifference, that it did not matter whether he was alive or dead, would hardly have helped her campaign to get the United States government to acknowledge that there were United States prisoners. This had not been acknowledged because war had not been officially declared. Yet something different emerges from their joint book, In Love and War,952 in which they wrote alternate chapters, explaining their different predicaments throughout the eight years. Although Mrs Stockdale reported finding Stoicism, as she knew it, useless,953 the book brings home its pervasive relevance. It is not a philosophy only for the prison camp. It was relevant to Mrs Stockdale's ability to enter the White House and talk to the President of the United States that she should be clear about what is in your power and what is not. At one stage she was offered advice which, given her devotion, might seem appalling, that she should assume her husband would never come home. But this too, expecting the worst, is precisely a Stoic technique. Meanwhile Stoicism remained relevant to Admiral Stockdale in peacetime. Showered with honours, a national hero, soon persuaded to be a candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States, he found that the easy life of the civilian world did not

950

Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, 204.

951

Five Stoic occasions for suicide are listed by Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo 1. 8, lines 19–39 Westerink.

952

Jim and Sibyl Stockdale, In Love and War (New York, 1984; rev. edn. Annapolis, Md., 1990).

953

Discussion after Jim Stockdale's lecture, King's College, London, 15 Nov. 1993.

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offer him the tranquillity which he had so courageously cultivated in prison camp. Stoicism would have had advice to offer for finding tranquillity as much in favourable circumstances as in adverse. But if he drew on this, he does not in the book record it.

16 Exercises Concerned With Time and the Self So many of the ancient exercises have to do with the passage of time, or with the self, that these subjects call for separate discussion. Therapies often turned on advocating the right attitudes to past, present, and future.

Asymmetrical Attitudes To Past and Future In Chapter 8 the question was raised why the Stoics did not recognize emotions relating solely to the past. Even horror at what might have happened, but was now safely past, depended, it was suggested, on what this would have meant for one's present or future situation. We do not seem to mind in the same way about what is wholly past and gone if we do not see it as making the present or future bad. This asymmetrical attitude to the past is also exploited in an argument that was probably not intended by the Epicurean Lucretius. But it is sometimes read into an argument of his, which had appeared before him (though probably after Epicurus) in the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus,954 and which was subsequently repeated by others.955 The argument is designed to show that our fear of annihilation at death is irrational. If Epicurus ever used it, this would give the lie to Plutarch's complaint that he ignored the fear of annihilation.956 Lucretius says: The ancient past of everlasting time before we are born has been nothing to us. Nature then shows us this as a mirror of future time after our final death. Does anything appear horrible there, does anything seem sad? Does it not stay steadier than any sleep?957

954

Pseudo-Plato Axiochus 365 D .

955

Seneca Letter 54. 4–5; Cicero Tusc. 1. 37. 90; Plutarch Consolation to his Wife 610 D ; Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 109 F .

956

Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible chs. 25–30, 1104 A –1107 A .

957

Lucretius 3. 972–7.

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Lucretius may only be repeating a point he has already made in book 3, lines 832–42, that we shall not suffer from future evils after our death any more than we did from past evils before our birth. But many interpreters have seen a more powerful argument here: we are not now horrified at the thought of our past non-existence, so why should we be horrified at the thought of our future non-existence? As I have said elsewhere,958 I think this last argument, whether or not it is in Lucretius, does show it to be in a way irrational to feel horror at one's future non-existence, if one does not feel horror at one's past non-existence. None the less, for those who feel it, the horror may be inevitable, because we are constructed, as humans, to have such asymmetrical attitudes. Anyone would prefer a life of promotion to a life of demotion, even if each life contained the same amount of success. Similarly with a life of ever-increasing knowledge and a life of ever-decreasing knowledge, even if the total knowledge enjoyed were the same. We mind our friend's future permanent absence in a way that we do not, unless there are special circumstances, mind the period before we got to know them. We hate the thought of our brains become infantile in old age, but we are not worried by their having been infantile once. We would not be human if we did not have these differential attitudes towards past and future. Still more, the human race would probably not have been favoured by natural selection if its members had viewed the past and future symmetrically. I am therefore not surprised that Hume on his deathbed was unable to comfort Boswell by producing the ‘Lucretian’ argument.959 At best, agitation may be slightly reduced when one realizes that the badness of future non-existence and the appropriateness of reaction are only an appearance. If one does not assent in addition (prosepidoxazein), one may take one's fear less seriously and prevent it growing greater. But still, this is yet another example, to add to those in Chapters 8 and 9, in which assent is not necessary, since appearance is sufficient, for fear. At worst, the proof of irrationality might have the opposite effect of making one equally horrified at one's past nonexistence. But I know of only one author, Nabokov, who has expressed anything resembling a horror at past nonexistence.960 In his autobiography

958

Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, 176–9.

959

Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, vol. 12, pp. 227–32, repr. pp. 76–9 of Norman Kemp-Smith's edition of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd edn. (London, 1947).

960

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (London, 1967), 19.

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Speak, Memory, Nabokov describes his horror at seeing a homemade film of his mother happily waving out of a window of their home—happy, even though he did not exist! The brand-new baby carriage awaiting his existence on the porch came to seem to him like nothing so much as a coffin. Ideally, the pseudo-Lucretian argument should make one realize that, if one's life has value, it does not matter where it belongs in the past–present–future scale. And this corollary is one to which I shall return later in the chapter. So far I have been repeating in summary form a view I have expressed elsewhere. But it might be thought that more defence is now needed, because since then, in a wonderfully subtle discussion, Derek Parfit has taken the opposite view, that the bias between future and past is not irrational.961 Interestingly, he has added that the bias often felt between near and remote future can also not be shown irrational, as Plato's Socrates believes it to be.962 On the question of future and past, I am not sure if there is a real disagreement. We have both followed the same strategy of arguing that the bias between future and past is not confined to the context of death, but is a very widespread human phenomenon. I agree that we cannot call one instance of this bias irrational if we are not willing to call the others so. I called them all irrational because it is not self-evident why mere position in the past or future should be important. There is a good explanation of why we take it to be so, but it is a causal explanation, that natural selection has caused us to react asymmetrically. I do not have to put my point in terms of irrationality. Someone may prefer to say that natural selection has caused us to treat position in the past or future as a reason for different reactions. In that case, my point can be put by saying that it is something we are caused to take as a reason, rather than being self-evidently a reason. And this fact can equally be used in the hope of slightly reducing our agitation at the thought of future non-existence. There is a further asymmetry concerning the past which I have not seen discussed. One's childhood can seem beginningless. This is for a simple reason: one has memories of individual occasions in early childhood (I remember what I know can only be my third birthday party), but one does not remember them as sequential. No event is remembered as first. Is there a corresponding trick of the mind that

961

Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 174–86, esp. 186.

962

Ibid. 161, referring to Plato Protagoras 356 A –D . It is not clear whether 356 A 5–7 explicitly defends the bias, but Socrates' reply treats it as due to miscalculation.

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could make one's future seem endless? Only, I am afraid, ignoring the un-ignorable fact of death.

Other Attitudes To the Past There were other attitudes to the past, and some of them paid the past very great attention. Aristotle, Plutarch the Platonist, Seneca the Stoic, and Epicurus all recommend that we should remember the good things in the past, although they do not agree with each other about how this is to be done, and Plutarch joins in the widespread attempts to ridicule Epicurus' approach. Nor do they agree on what the good things are. As to how to think of the sad things in the past, different ideas are offered by Plutarch, Seneca and Augustine, and there are different attitudes again to how to think of one's past mistakes. Seneca stresses the importance of remembering the past, though with the warning that only good people can bring themselves to do so. The life of others flows away like water poured into a vessel with no bottom, for the present is short and the future uncertain, so the past is all we have of our lives. The past can neither be disturbed nor snatched from us, but is a perpetual possession and one not subject to fear.963 Plutarch agrees. He recommends964 that we should weave our present together with our past, instead of being forever intent on the future. Otherwise we shall be like the man portrayed as plaiting a rope in Hades which a donkey eats up as fast as he plaits it. And we shall become like those people who are said to be forever different from their former selves. This is what the Growing Argument in Plato's Academy makes us out to be, when it says that with each change of size we become a different person, just as a number becomes different with each addition.965 We should not, however, dwell on the bad parts of the past, like beetles which have fallen into the place called ‘Deathto-Beetles’. The bad parts should be included only in the background, like sombre colours in a painting, though included they must be, just as low notes must be combined with high in music. It has been very well said966 that Plutarch's weaving or painting

963

Seneca On the Shortness of Life 10.

964

Plutarch Tranq. 473 B –474 B .

965

The main exposition of the Growing Argument is in Plutarch On Common Notions 1083 B –C .

966

Joe Sen, ‘Good Times and the Timeless Good: Plutarch and Plotinus’, Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, 3 (1995), 3–24, citing Plotinus 1. 6. 9 (7) ff.

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contrasts with Plotinus' conception of the self as something that is already there in the marble, but needs the sculptor's chisel to reveal it. Plutarch's description runs as follows: That everyone has within himself the store-rooms of good and bad cheer (euthumia, dusthumia) and that the jars of goods and evils are laid down not on the threshold of Zeus, but in the soul, is clear from the differences in people's emotions (pathē). For foolish people overlook and neglect even present goods, because they are always intent in their thoughts on the future. But wise people make even what no longer exists to exist vividly for themselves by the use of memory. The present, which allows contact with only the smallest portion of time and then escapes observation, no longer seems to the foolish to be anything to us or to be ours. But just as the man pictured in Hades plaiting a rope allows a grazing donkey to consume what he is plaiting, so forgetfulness, unaware of most things and ungrateful, snatches and overruns things, obliterating every action and right act, every pleasant discussion, meeting, or enjoyment, and does not allow our life to be unified, through the past being woven together with the future. Whatever happens, it immediately consigns it to what has not happened by forgetfulness, and divides yesterday's life from today's as something different, and tomorrow's similarly as not the same as today's. Those in the schools who refute the fact of growth on the grounds that substance is perpetually flowing make each of us in theory ever different from himself. But those who do not preserve or retrieve the past in memory but allow it to flow away from under them make themselves needy every day in actual fact, and empty and dependent on tomorrow, as if last year and yesterday and the day before were nothing to them and had not actually happened to them. This is one thing that disturbs good cheer. Another does so more, when people drift away from cheerful and soothing things and get enmeshed in recollections of the disagreeable. It is as when flies slip off the smooth patches on mirrors and catch hold of the rough and scratched ones, or rather as they say that beetles in Olynthus, falling into a place called ‘Death-to- Beetles’, are unable to get out, but twist and turn there until they die. That is how people who slide into the memory of ills do not want to recover or revive. What we should do is make the bright and shining events prominent in the mind, like the colours in a picture, and hide and suppress the gloomy ones, since we cannot rub them out or get rid of them altogether. For the harmony of the cosmos, like that of a lyre or bow, involves bending in two directions, and nothing in human affairs is pure or unmixed. But as in music there are high and low notes, and in language consonants and vowels, and a musician or language specialist is not one who dislikes or avoids either of these, but one who knows how to use them all and mix (mignunai) them

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appropriately, so . . . we too should make the mixture (migma) of our life harmonious and appropriate for ourselves.967

As to how to deal with unpleasant things in the past, there are other suggestions besides Plutarch's of weaving them into the background of your life's story. Indeed, another view gives them a certain positive value. Aristotle and Seneca both make the point that it can be positively pleasant to think we have endured them.968 Augustine makes a double correction, adding that he is both glad to remember sorrow and sorry to remember gladness, when they are over.969 The second befell not only Augustine, when the friend of his youth died,970 but also Boethius thrown into prison.971 Aristotle finds the pleasures of memory involved also in the pains of the present, both in the pining lover and in the mourner. Such memories constitute falling in love.972 A new attitude to the past (and future) is found in Jewish philosophy, when Philo makes repentance a virtue.973 But the need for attention to one's past mistakes is already implied by the practices of confession and mutual criticism discussed in Chapter 13, as particularly strong among Epicureans and Cynics, as well as being found among Platonists and Stoics. The same is also implied by the practice of reviewing one's mistakes at bedtime, which we saw in Chapter 15 travelling from the Pythagoreans to the Stoics and recurring in Christianity. The Neoplatonist Simplicius urges the benefits of repentance at length.974

Epicureans On Curing Emotion By Shifting Attention To the Past Memory is celebrated by Epicurus not only in connection with memorizing his sayings. He also recommended dealing with distress and physical pain by calling yourself away (avocatio) from present evils and recalling yourself (revocatio) to good things remembered from the past.975 He practised this in great pain on his deathbed by recalling the theories he had discovered,976 or past conversations.977 Plutarch

967

Plutarch Tranq. 473 B –474 B .

968

Aristotle Rhet. 1. 11, 1370 1–7; Seneca Letter 78. 14–15.

969

Augustine Confessions 10. 14; cf. 10. 21. 30.

970

Ibid. 4. 4.

971

Boethius Consolation of Philosophy 2. 4 prose, lines 1–6.

972

Aristotle Rhet. 1. 11, 1370a 30–b 30.

973

Philo On Virtues 177; On Abraham 26; On Dreams 1. 91; On the Special Laws 1. 103.

974

Simplicius Comm. on Epictetus ch. 38, p. 389, line 679–p. 391, line 724 Hadot.

975

Cicero Tusc. 3.33; 3.76; 5.74; cf. Fin. 1. 18. 60.

976

Id. Fin. 2. 96; Tusc. 5. 88; cf. Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1099 E .

977

Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 22.

b

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does not agree.978 He doubts that mere distraction would work on your death-bed.979 In this he is like Seneca980 and Cicero. Cicero had tried Epicurean distraction at the time of losing his daughter, and found it impossible.981 In any case, Plutarch, like Cicero, misinterprets Epicurus as committed by his other remarks to focusing on bodily pleasures.982 These, unlike great deeds, he complains, leave only a faint odour behind, and recalling them creates, if anything, unsatisfied lust.983 He cites Carneades as having complained of the worthlessness of memories of food, drink, and sex, and the same complaint is made by Cicero and Plotinus.984 Plotinus adds that if the memory recommended is instead memory of creditable deeds, only the person who had lost his excellence would feel the need of such memory.985 But this too is unfair: Epicurus' recollected discoveries are not lost.986 Moreover, Seneca's advice to recall virtuous acts is directed to someone who has not yet attained full virtue.987 Epicurus' advocacy of shifting attention contrasts with the Stoic recipe of changing our beliefs. Epicurus himself advocates acquiring Epicurean beliefs at the prophylactic stage. But when an unwanted emotion is upon you, it is the shift of attention, not of belief, that he emphasizes. This is unlike the advocacy by Plutarch and Seneca of recalling the past in calm moments. The idea is repeated by the Epicurean Philodemus that wordless music soothes not by changing our beliefs, but by stopping us attending (anepiblētoi) to our previous concerns.988 As regards the practicability of distraction, in Chapter 23 we shall encounter the desert Father Evagrius, who recommends working in the monastery hospital to distract you from bad thoughts. Bereavement has sometimes been tackled by taking up social work. It is not very plausible that the mere power of thought without some such activity would be enough to distract a bereaved person. But from the minor upsets of everyday life there are plenty of suitable distractions, including, some people find, the pleasures of philosophy.

978

I here diverge from Christopher Gill's very helpful article ‘Peace of Mind and Being Yourself ’, which puts Plutarch in the tradition of Democritus and Epicurus.

979

Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1099 E .

980

Seneca To Helvia On Consolation 17. 1–2.

981

Cicero Tusc. 3. 35.

982

Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1088 F –1089 D ; 1099 D –F .

983

Cf. Cicero Fin. 2. 98.

984

Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1089 C ; Cicero Tusc. 5. 74; Plotinus 1. 5. 8.

985

Plotinus 1. 5. 9.

986

I thank Juha Sihvola for this comment.

987

Seneca Letter 78. 18.

988

Philodemus On Music book 4, ch. 8, p. 58, col. 15 Neubecker.

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Attitudes To the Future As regards the future, the view of the Stoics was that you should not pin your hopes on it, expecting your good from that direction.989 According to the Stoics, we should live each day as if our last.990 We should be able to say at any moment, ‘I have lived’.991 What of somebody in the middle of a project? He would be helped by the Stoic policy described in Chapter 12 of emulating the archer who has a project of hitting the target, but regards the important thing as aiming aright in the present. Epicurus, who made pleasure the goal in life, none the less agreed to some extent, but we must be careful not to let the points of agreement conceal the many differences. He agreed in criticizing those who neglected past and present benefits and only hoped for future ones.992 He urged people not to postpone joy.993 Nature, he said, has nothing more to offer us than she already has.994 But he differed in none the less recommending us to anticipate and hope for future pleasures.995 The Stoics made only a small concession to hope in the case of people still progressing towards virtue: they should think of virtue as a prize to be won.996 Stronger than the Stoic advice not to pin hopes on the future is the recommendation positively to anticipate misfortune, so that you will be fortified when it comes. This goes back to the Presocratic philosophers, most famously to Anaxagoras, but also possibly to Antiphon and the Pythagoreans, and to the tragedian Euripides, who, as Cicero points out, had been taught by Anaxagoras.997 Anaxagoras' much-admired and -quoted response to hearing his son was dead was to say, ‘I knew I had begotten a mortal.’998 There are people, I am surprised to find, who would like their parents to react that way. There will be a fresh asymmetry between future and past if what you

989

Seneca Letter 101. 10; On Benefits 7. 2. 4–6.

990

Marcus Aurelius 2.5; 7.69.

991

Seneca Letters 12.9; 101.10.

992

Cicero Fin. 1. 18. 60.

993

Epicurus Vatican Sayings 14.

994

Lucretius 3. 947–9.

995

Cicero Tusc. 3.33; 5.96.

996

Seneca Letter 78. 16; On the Constancy of the Sage 15. 4.

997

Antiphon, frags. 3 and 5 DK, speaks of the unprepared mind (aparaskeuōi gnōmēi) and of sufferings that are not sufferings (pathē apathē). Pythagoreans of unspecified date in Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life 196. Euripides quoted by Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 112 D ; Cicero Tusc. 3. 29–30; Galen PHP 4. 7. 10–11, p. 282 de Lacy.

998

e.g. Cicero Tusc. 3.30; 3.58; Galen PHP 4. 7. 9, p. 282 de Lacy; Plutarch (?) Consolation to Apollonius 118 D –E ;Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 463 D ; Tranq. 474 D ; Aelian Var. Hist. 3. 2.; Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 5. 10, ext. 3; Jerome Letter 60. 5. 1. Cf. Basil of Caesarea Letters 6 and 269; Augustine Confessions 4.6.12; 4.8.13 on the death of Nebridius.

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dwell on is pleasant things in the past and unpleasant things in the future. Anticipating misfortune is recommended by the Stoics. We have already noticed the Stoic Epictetus telling you to think, as you kiss your family, that one day they will be no more.999 But this is coupled with denying that you should fear the future.1000 Fear is one of the main emotions which the Stoics condemn. Here the Epicureans join them. Much of the Epicurean effort is devoted to countering the fear of death,1001 which is in its turn seen as the source of disquieting restless activity and ambition,1002 and to eliminating fear of interference from the gods.1003 But if the Stoics, unlike the Epicureans, advocate anticipating misfortune, how do they avoid fear? The answer is that fear, in their view, involves not only the judgement that misfortune impends, but also the judgement that misfortune is an evil. This second judgement is no part of the Stoic exercise of anticipating misfortune. Cicero ascribes the belief in anticipating evil to the Cyrenaics, as well as to the Stoics.1004 But we must not confuse this with the different approach of the Cyrenaic Hegesias.1005 Hegesias went much further, teaching that life was a vale of tears and death an escape. He was reportedly stopped from lecturing because some of his listeners committed suicide.1006 This, of course, conflicts with Stoic techniques of anticipation, which forbid one to think of impending misfortune as an evil. One reason for anticipating bad fortune, ascribed to the Cyrenaics and many others, is that unexpectedness is often the sole cause of distress.1007 This is a very good point. As I said in Chapter 11, people who mistakenly believe they have won the national lottery have been known to commit suicide. But there is nothing bad about not winning unless expectation makes it so. As to why anticipation of misfortune helps, Cicero gives an intellectualist

999

Epictetus 3.24.84–8; 4.1.111; Handbook 3.

1000

Seneca Letters 78. 14; 101. 10.

1001

Lucretius 3. 830–1094; Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 2.

1002

Lucretius 3.59–67; 3.1053–70.

1003

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 1; Lucretius 1.44–9 (=2.646–51); 5.1218–40; 6.379–422.

1004

Cicero Tusc. 3.28; 3.52; 3.59. Further ascriptions to the Stoics are supplied by Rabbow, Seelenführung, 160–71. The advice is found even in the Stoic Posidonius (Galen PHP 4. 7. 7, p. 282 de Lacy), who speaks of dwelling in advance (proendēmein). See also Seneca Marcia 9.1–10; 11.1.

1005

For a different suggestion see Terence Irwin, ‘Aristippus against Happiness’, The Monist, 74 (1991), 55–82.

1006

Cicero Tusc. 1. 83.

1007

Ibid. 3.28; 3.52; 3.76; Posidonius at Galen PHP 4. 7. 7, p. 282 de Lacy; Plutarch On Moral Virtue 449 E ; On Freedom from Anger 463 D ; Tranq. 475 A and, for Carneades, 474 E –F ; Basil of Caesarea Letter 5.

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account. Anticipation, he says, has the same effect as lapse of time on those who have not anticipated. It gives time for reflection, and so for correcting one's judgements.1008 The Epicureans do not agree with the Stoics on the value of anticipating misfortune. Epicurus complained that anticipating misfortune merely makes evils ever present, even if they were not going to happen.1009 It is antithetical, as Cicero points out, to Epicurus' policy of recalling past pleasures.1010 Indeed, Cicero paraphrases Epicurus as also recommending us to dwell on the hope (spes, sperare) of future pleasures and to anticipate them.1011 This is despite his telling us not to postpone joy,1012 or expect new types of pleasure. I would agree that planning for future goods is one of the pleasures of life, whether or not they come off. I would add that the neuropsychologist Luria found that personality disintegrated more from brain damage that precluded future planning than from brain damage that erased memory in a way that did not exclude planning.1013 The pleasures of hope had already been discussed by Plato. On the one hand he sees firm hope as pleasurable, and when it is a firm hope of relief from suffering based on memory of remedies, the memory is also pleasurable. But on the other hand, he thinks that false hopes give pleasures that are worthless, and he concentrates on anticipatory pleasures that are mixed with distress, thinking such mixture to be the usual situation with pleasure.1014 Aristotle also discusses the pleasures of hope and explains in that way the pleasure in anger and in competitive activities—not only games, but debates among lawyers and philosophers.1015 Hope is the special theme of Christianity. St Paul tries to make it a distinctive feature when he says, referring to the hope of resurrection, ‘Sorrow not, as those who have no hope.’1016 I shall note in Chapter 25 how many of the Church Fathers cited this text. The Epicureans did not offer hope of this sort, but argued rather that we will be annihilated at death, thereby offering not hope, but freedom from fear of punishment.1017 Among the Stoics, the closest to St Paul is perhaps Seneca's consoling Marcia with the thought that her son's

1008

Cicero Tusc. 3.52; 3.58.

1009

Ibid.3.32–3.

1010

Ibid. 3. 32.

1011

Ibid. 3. 33; id. Fin. 1. 12. 41.

1012

Id. Tusc. 3.33; 5.96.

1013

A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (London and New York, 1969).

1014

Contrast Plato Philebus 32 C ;35 E –36 B with 40 A –E and 50 B .

1015

Aristotle Rhet. 1. 11, 1370 29–1371 8.

1016

Thessalonians 4: 13.

1017

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 2; Lucretius 3.31–93; 3.830–1094.

a

a

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soul will last in happiness for a finite period—indeed, given his virtue, until the next conflagration.1018 It is the Neoplatonists who display a more positive attitude to hope. The Neoplatonist Porphyry remarks that hope is found more in good people than in bad, and in his letter to his wife Marcella he treats it as one of the four elements of a religious attitude to God.1019 The tetrad of faith, truth, love and hope, drawn from the Chaldaean Oracles, becomes standard in Iamblichus, Proclus, and Simplicius.1020 For those who object to eschewing hope, or to positively anticipating misfortune, other techniques are available. For example, in many authors, including Cicero and Seneca, we find a retrospective analogue of anticipation: you ought to have expected misfortune, because it is the norm.1021 There is another technique which combines hope with an element of caution: the Stoic technique of putting a reservation (hupexairesis, exceptio) on our expectation, if we do expect good fortune. We should expect it only with the reservation ‘if God wills’.1022

Attitudes To the Present It has been said that many ancient philosophers found value only in the present.1023 But the idea that we should focus on the present is ambiguous. Epicureans and Stoics, for example, do not mean the same thing. The Epicureans, when telling us not to dwell only on future goods, but to attend to present ones, urge in the same breath that we should attend to past ones too.1024 And we have also seen that they recommend hoping for future good, whereas the Stoics bid us to consider the future indeed, but to anticipate misfortune. Stoics and Epicureans both agree that we should not fret over the past, nor fear the future. But they would disagree on the Stoic injunction to pin no hopes on the future except the hope of achieving virtue, a hope that can be superseded once achieved. Are there philosophers who really mean us to neglect past and future altogether?

1018

Seneca Marcia 24. 5–25. 3; cf. Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1107 B .

1019

Porphyry Letter to Marcella 24, p. 289, lines 17–25.

1020

Iamblichus ap. Proclum In Tim. 1. 212. 12–16 Diehl; Proclus ibid. 1. 212. 22 Diehl; Simplicius In Phys. 5. 20.

1021

Cicero Tusc. 3. 77; Seneca Marcia 9–11.

1022

Seneca Tranq. 13.

1023

Pierre Hadot in a brilliant article translated as “ ‘Only the Present is Our Happiness”: The Value of the Present Instant in Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy’, in his Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford, 1995), 217–37. But neither phrase, I believe, applies to the Epicureans.

1024

Cicero Fin. 1. 18. 60.

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The Cyrenaic Aristippus might be one. He says we should not toil over (epikamnein, prokamnein) past or future, because the past has gone, and it is not clear whether the future will come. Only the present is ours, and we should merely seek the pleasure of the present moment. To do that is a proof of cheerfulness (euthumia), whereas memory of past pleasures, or expectation of future ones, meant nothing to him.1025 This is partly because memory and expectation cannot over a long time maintain the motion of the soul in which pleasure consists.1026 It is also because the things that produce pleasure are often not choiceworthy, and the accumulation of pleasures that does not produce happiness is disagreeable.1027 This view is a complete antithesis to the claim in Plato's Protagoras that a hedonist would need a calculus to avoid misestimating the size of distant future pleasures.1028 Aristippus' claim that pleasurable motion in the soul gets exhausted over time suggests that he believes in a continuing self. So I am doubtful about an intriguing alternative interpretation, according to which Aristippus' preference for pleasure over happiness is based on not knowing whether there is a continuing self to enjoy the happiness.1029 None the less, the idea that there are only momentary selves did play a role in discussions of emotion, as will be seen below. Sometimes Marcus Aurelius, the last of the major Stoics, seems to approach the insistence on the present that we are seeking. He talks of drawing a circle round (perigraphein) the present,1030 and finding the present sufficient (arkein).1031 The future and past are indifferent.1032 We should separate them from our minds,1033 leave the past alone and entrust the future to Providence.1034 Combating fear of death, he insists that it can only rob us of the momentary present, because this is all we possess, and we cannot be deprived of what we do not possess.1035 It might be complained that one can be deprived of what one might have had, and that the arguments do not address the case in which it is the present itself that is painful. But often the present owes its painfulness to thoughts about the future or past. The claim that past and future are indifferent is a strong one. Startling in a different way is Marcus' injunction to live each day

1025

Aristippus ap. Aelianum Var. Hist. 14. 6; Athenaeus Sophists at Dinner 12, 544 A .

1026

Diogenes Laertius Lives 2. 89–90.

1027

Ibid.2.90.

1028

Plato Protagoras 356 C –D .

1029

For evidence in favour of this interesting suggestion see Irwin, ‘Aristippus against Happiness’. A more extensive reply has been formulated by Voula Tsouna-McKirahan in Cyrenaic Epistemology (Cambridge, 1997).

1030

Marcus Aurelius 7. 29.

1031

Ibid. 3.12; 9.6.

1032

Ibid.6.32.

1033

Ibid. 12. 3.

1034

Ibid. 12. 1.

1035

Ibid. 2.14; 8.36; 9.6.

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as if our last.1036 The idea is also found, both in Marcus and in the Epicurean Philodemus, that we should think of our last hour.1037 This is best taken not as an exhortation to anticipate future misfortune, something the Epicureans objected to, so much as a further remark on how to view the present.

Abstracting From Past, Present and Future Focus on present, past, and future is sometimes rejected equally. I have already commended the view that, if your life has value, it ought not to matter where it lies in the spectrum of past, present, and future. All three are indeed rejected by Plotinus, since for him true happiness consists in an activity which is outside time altogether: the timeless contemplation of the world of Platonic Forms in which our intellect engages, without our normally being conscious of it.1038 In the light of this, Plotinus explicitly rejects the attempt to use memory to make yourself better off.1039 Further, it is a mistake to seek to prolong life, in fear of death, because prolongation is inapplicable to an activity that does not take place in time at all.1040 Again, the past does not even exist, and this is offered as a further argument for denying that well-being and ill-being are greater for having lasted longer.1041 I have myself elsewhere expressed a preference for the rival conception of another mystical philosopher, the Christian Gregory of Nyssa (c.AD 331–96), who is a little later than Plotinus. Supreme happiness, which in his view consists in contemplating God, is not static, much less timeless, but involves perpetual progress, because there is always more to understand.1042

Prolongation and Delay Aristotelians, Stoics, and Epicureans would have agreed with Plotinus, though not for his reasons, that the prolongation of happiness does not increase it. Aristotle argues against Plato's Form of the

1036

Ibid. 2.5; 7.69.

1037

Ibid. 7. 29; Philodemus On Death 37.20; 38.12; 38.14; 38.17–18; 38.27.

1038

e.g. Plotinus 1. 4. 10.

1039

Ibid. 1. 5. 8–9.

1040

Ibid.1.5.7(23–5), and the whole treatise 1.5, entitled On whether well-being increases with time.

1041

Ibid.1.5.7(10–23).

1042

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection col. 93 C (PG 46); On the Song of Songs 5, col. 876 B –C (PG 44), both quoted in Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, 148–51; cf. On the Song of Songs 12, col. 1037 (PG 44), and On the Life of Moses cols. 403 D –404 D (PG 44); Time, Creation and the Continuum, 149–51.

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Good that it would not be any better for being everlasting, any more than a white thing is whiter for lasting longer.1043 Pleasure and happiness are both energeiai, and therefore complete at any moment; they do not have to wait to be completed.1044 According to Epicurus and Seneca, life can be made perfect in a finite time, and perfection does not require further prolongation.1045 Lucretius, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius argue that nothing is gained by prolongation, since the everlasting period of death will be just as long.1046 Many of the ancient exercises have to do with the passage of time. One much-repeated point concerns the value of delay. Time makes emotions fade, and this was discussed in Chapter 7. As to why time makes them fade, some explanations were discussed in that chapter. Chrysippus' view is intellectualist, on the interpretation I endorsed. The passage of time allows you to change your judgements.1047 Cicero applies this point not only, as we saw, to anticipating misfortune, but also equally to letting time elapse after misfortune.1048 Posidonius has a rival explanation, that the irrational forces in the soul which seek victory or pleasure are either exhausted or satisfied over time.1049 But Augustine has a different account again. He recovered partially from the death of the friend of his youth, because time implanted in him new hopes and new experiences to remember.1050 Plutarch and Seneca, like many others even from Presocratictimes, advocate delay before acting on anger,1051 as does Epictetus before seeking pleasure.1052 Some people refused to beat their slaves precisely because they were angry, as Lactantius reports with disgust of Plato's Pythagorean friend Archytas,1053 and as is reported of Plato, who in one case got Xenocrates or Speusippus to administer the beating

1043

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1. 6, 1096b 3–5; Eudemian Ethics 1. 8, 1218a 10–15.

1044

e.g. Nicomachean Ethics 10. 3, 1174 17 ff.

1045

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 19 and 20, Letter to Menoeceus in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 126 and 145; Seneca Letters 32; 93.7; 101.8–9; cf. Aristotle Eudemian Ethics 1. 5, 1215b 29.

1046

Lucretius 3. 1087–94; Cicero Tusc. 1.94;MarcusAureliuse.g.4.50.

1047

Galen PHP 4. 7. 14, p. 282 de Lacy.

1048

Cicero Tusc. 3.52; 3.54; 3.55; 3.58; 3.74.

1049

Galen PHP 4.7.26; 4.7.28; 4.7.30; 4.7.32–3; 4.7.35; 4.7.41; 4.7.43–4; 5.6.31–2, pp. 286–90, 332 de Lacy.

1050

Augustine Confessions 4. 8. 13.

1051

Seneca On Anger 2.29; 3.12.4–7; Antiphon frag. 58 DK; Pythagoreans ap. Iamblichum Pythagorean Life ch. 31, para. 197; Theophrastus ap. Stobaeum Florilegium vol. 3, p. 532, lines 1–13 Hense (=frag. 526 FHS&G); Epictetus Handbook 20; Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 459 E –460 C ; Galen On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul, chs. 4 and 5 (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1), English version in Galen, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, trans. Harkins; Porphyry Letter to Marcella 35; cf. Aristotle Rhet. 2. 3, 1380b 5–6.

1052

Epictetus Handbook 34.

1053

Lactantius On God's Anger 17.

a

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instead.1054 But Galen thinks that even a vicarious beating should be delayed.1055 Several of these texts reveal that the institution of slavery constituted a particular temptation to indulge in anger.1056 Delay plays an opposite role in connection with the bad thoughts discussed below in Chapters 23 and 24. Allowing a bad thought to linger (khronizein), so far from calming it, brings it closer to being a full-scale emotion.1057

Recurrent Time-Cycles One might have expected the ancient theories of time-cycles to play a role in therapy, but I have noticed it used by only one author. The belief in cycles took different forms. Individuals might be reincarnated, or the entire universe might repeat its history, and in that case reincarnation might occur within each cycle before the next repetition.1058 An alternative belief in circular time would deny that your birth would ever be repeated. Rather it occurs only once, and yet it lies in two directions from now, both in the future and the past, rather as, from the three o'clock position on a clock, twelve o'clock can be viewed as both behind and in front. Such a view is hinted at in the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems.1059 Repetition or circularity is not normally, however, cited by the ancients as a source of comfort. Seneca does so cite it twice in his Letters.1060 In one case he comforts us with the thought that we shall return. In the other, he merely counsels resignation on the ground that the entire universe will soon perish too. Here and in his On Consolation to Marcia he speaks of the soul possibly surviving for a while. But his On Consolation to Marcia stops short when it assures Marcia of her son's souls surviving up to the conflagration at the end of history's present cycle. This is the longest possible survival time and is reserved for virtuous souls.1061 The idea of the conflagration as imminent at the time of the Roman

1054

e.g. Seneca On Anger 3. 12. 5–7; Diogenes Laertius 3. 38–9 (v. A. S. Riginos, Platonica, Anecdote 113A ).

1055

Galen On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul ch. 5.

1056

See especially the horrifying story in Galen, ibid. ch. 4; and cf. Philodemus On Anger col. 23, lines 37–40.

1057

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 6; Augustine On the Trinity 12. 12.

1058

I have reviewed these alternatives in Time, Creation and the Continuum, 182–90.

1059

Pseudo-Aristotle Problems 17. 3, 916 18–39. I have discussed the view in Matter, Space and Motion, ch. 10.

1060

Seneca Letters 36.10–11; 71.15.

1061

Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 15. 20. 6–7 (=53W LS).

a

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243

civil wars was a source of dismay, not comfort.1062 And Augustine complained that the repetition of history would remove our hope by making Christ's crucifixion and resurrection futile.1063

Recurrence and the Self There was much uncertainty whether recurrence would provide any kind of survival anyhow. Would the future people be us? Some Stoics held that even if the population in the next cycle of the universe were indistinguishable (aparallaktos) from the present population and in indistinguishable circumstances, they would not be the same people.1064 Others asked if the difference of temporal location (katataxis) would mean there were different mes, that is, several of the same person.1065 Others thought the people could be the same even if they had inessential differences, like freckles.1066 The Stoics' Aristotelian opponent Alexander took the view that after an interruption we would not have numerically the same Socrates, even if the same matter was reassembled. For the interruption would prevent it being the same individual form (atomon eidos).1067 Lucretius raised a corresponding question about the Epicurean idea that the atoms that now compose our bodies might by chance reassemble in the same order as now, long after our deaths, in the infinity of time. Like John Locke after him, Lucretius comments that would be of no concern to us (nec pertinere) if the memory of our past life was broken off (interrupta), which may or may not imply lost. None the less, he does concede that the atoms reassembled in the right order would be us.1068 It is not clear whether Epicurean materialism implies that the identically reassembled person remembers his past life after an interruption,1069 or does not remember it at all.

1062

Mircea Éliade, The Myth of Eternal Return (New York, 1954), 130–7 (translated from the French of 1949).

1063

Augustine City 12. 14; cf. 21.

1064

Origen Against Celsus 4. 68 (= SVF 2. 626).

1065

Simplicius In Phys. 886. 11 (= SVF 2. 627).

1066

Alexander In An. Pr. 181. 25 (= SVF 2. 624); Origen Against Celsus 5. 20 (= SVF 2. 626).

1067

Alexander ap. Philoponum In GC 314. 9–22.

1068

Lucretius 3. 847–51. Cicero is less clear, calling our Epicurean duplicates innumerable: Acad. 2. 125. Does this make them distinct from us?

1069

Thanks to Verity Harte for this doubt, based on David Sedley, ‘Epicurean Anti-reductionism’, in Jonathan Barnes and Mario Mignucci (eds.), Matter and Metaphysics (Naples, 1988), 295–327.

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Therapy and the Self Some therapies, as has already emerged, turn on the nature of the self. This, we shall see, has also been true in modern philosophy, notably in the work of Derek Parfit.1070 On the other side, some modern appeals to a notion of self in moral philosophy have been heavily criticized.1071

The Variety Of Selves The ancient concepts of self invoked are very diverse, and they can differ even in the same author and the same context. One reason for this is that philosophers may want to talk of a self acting on a self. We shall see that in Plutarch a self weaves a life, in Epictetus a self moulds a self, in Plotinus a self can direct a self so that it becomes a different self, while in Hierocles the Stoic a self is conscious of and attached to a self. The selves which enter into these exchanges are not all conceived the same way. They may or may not be conceived as including the body, or the whole of the mind, or even any of the mind. They may need to be constructed or just be there for inspection. They may or may not be continuous. And they may or may not include personality.1072

Therapeutic Concepts Plutarch: The Woven Versus the Discontinuous Life Let us consider some therapeutic concepts of the self. Plutarch, in a passage translated above, urges us to weave our life into a single whole by the use of memory. The aim is therapeutic—to gain tranquillity. If we do not do the weaving, we shall be like the people envisaged by the so-called Growing Argument, who become different people with each change of size, just as a number becomes different with each addition.1073 But does the woven life imply the existence of a unified and continuous self to do the weaving? Daniel Dennett faces a similar question in his attack on the self as a biographical fiction. He answers ‘No’.

1070

Parfit, Reasons and Persons.

1071

Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, e.g. on Kant, p.64.

1072

On these differences, see Richard Sorabji, ‘Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy’, in James Crabbe (ed.), From Soul to Self (Wolfson Lectures; London, 1999), 8–32.

1073

Plutarch Tranq. 473 B –474 B , translated above.

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In his view, biographies just get woven through the interaction of separate systems in the brain, which are no more unified than the ants in an anthill.1074 It might be thought that Plutarch would equally answer ‘No’. The biography might get woven by the short-term selves of the Growing Argument. Elsewhere, we shall see, Plutarch actually endorses the idea that we are no longer the same person as our childhood selves.1075 In fact, however, the Growing Argument is here cited only as a simile. What needs to be woven is not a continuous self, but a single life (bion hena). The memories Plutarch wants us to weave in are genuine memories, that is memories of what we, the self-same persons, formerly did and experienced. So Plutarch seems to be presupposing an ordinary concept of a continuing physical person. Presumably, then, it is this person who does the weaving. And the therapeutic construct is that person's life, rather than his self. For a therapeutic concept of self, we might do better to turn to Epictetus.

Epictetus: The Inviolable Self Epictetus the Stoic holds that we can decide to locate ourselves either in externals or in our proairesis1076—let us say in our will—and our will is something we can develop.1077 Proairesis is really something more intellectual than will. It is the disposition of reason towards certain kinds of moral decision. Once our self is our proairesis, it will have become inviolable. Epictetus had been a slave and had his leg broken. As we saw in Chapter 15, he imagines the following dialogue: ‘I will fetter you.’ ‘What did you say, man? Fetter me? You will fetter my leg, but my will (proairesis) not even Zeus can conquer.’1078 This is by no means the only place where Epictetus implies that he is not his body, but his proairesis.1079 The idea has immediate emotional implications. It is intended to be a source of tranquillity, in the face of whatever hostility the world may bring against you. A similar dissociation between the person and his body had been ascribed to an earlier thinker of the fourth century BC, the sceptically minded

1074

Daniel Dennett, ‘Why Everyone is a Novelist’, Times Literary Supplement (16–22 Sept. 1988), 1016, 1028–9; Consciousness Explained (Boston, 1991).

1075

Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392 C –E , translated below.

1076

Epictetus 2.2.19–20; 2.2.28.

1077

Ibid. 1.4.18; 3.5.7.

1078

Ibid.1.1.23;cf.4.1.72–80; Handbook 9.

1079

See e.g. Epictetus 3. 1. 40; Handbook 18.

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atomist Anaxarchus, teacher of Pyrrho and his supposed companion on the march to India: Beat Anaxarchus' hide (askos), for you cannot beat Anaxarchus.1080 But the use of the concept of proairesis is Epictetus' own. In Epictetus there are at least two selves at work. The self which is shaped for therapeutic reasons is mental, but not the whole of the mind, simply one aspect of it, the proairesis. The self that does the shaping is the embodied self, as we know from the exercises by which Epictetus' students are to do the shaping. They are to go walking at dawn, as we saw in Chapter 15, and asking themselves questions about the emotive situations they encounter, and whether these are subject to their will. These two selves are distinct from the further two selves discussed by Adolf Bonhöffer and drawn to my attention by Jan Opsomer, the lower self and the daimonic self, to which it ought to conform, and with which it is in constant dialogue.1081

Discontinuous Selves The idea of discontinuous selves is quite common in ancient thought, so I have argued elsewhere,1082 although I did not earlier in this chapter find it in Aristippus. It is relevant here because it was put to therapeutic use by Seneca and Plutarch. Plutarch refers not only, as we have seen, to the Growing Argument, but also to Heraclitus, who says that one cannot grasp the same mortal substance twice.1083 The idea that there are only short-lived or momentary selves has been used in Buddhism, in Kashmiri Shaivism, and by Derek Parfit in modern philosophy, to combat the fear of the annihilation of the self at death.1084 Indeed, the Buddhist ideas feature in a dialogue in Pali, The Questions of Milinda, between a Buddhist monk and a Greek Bactrian ruler, Menander, who is dated to the second century BC (although the work itself contains earlier borrowings and later accretions).1085

1080

Philo Every Good Man is Free ch. 17. 109; Gregory Nazianzen Letter 32.

1081

Adolf Bonhöffer, Epiktet und die Stoa, 81–6.

1082

Sorabji, ‘Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy’.

1083

Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392 B –C =Heraclitus frag. 91 DK.

1084

Parfit, Reasons and Persons ; Collins, Selfless Persons ; Richard Gombrich, ‘Selfless Buddhists: Ethics without Metaphysics’, in preparation.

1085

An excerpt in English translation is included in Buddhist Scriptures (Harmondsworth, 1959). The whole work is available in two volumes: Milinda's Questions, trans. I. B. Horner (2 vols.; Sacred Books of the Buddhists 22–3; London and Luzac, 1964).

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In their versions of the argument, Seneca and Plutarch both ask: since our former selves have died many times, why do we fear a death will happen that has happened many times already? The idea that we die every day is called by Seneca a commonplace. I do not know if this is one of those rare cases where a philosophical idea can be seen travelling from India to the Greek world. But if so, the result is disappointing. On the Greek side it is as if Seneca and Plutarch had heard the argument, but did not know how to integrate it into their systems. Let us see first what they say. I remember you once treated the commonplace that we do not run into death suddenly, but proceed by degrees: we die every day. Every day some part of our life is taken away. Then too, as we grow, our life shrinks. We have lost first our infancy, then our childhood, then our youth. All past time up to yesterday has perished. The very day we are living we share with death. Just as it is not the last little drop that drains the water-clock, but what has flowed out before, so that last hour at which we cease to be does not on its own produce death; on its own it completes death. That is when we come up against it, but we have come for a long time. When you had described this in your usual voice—you are always powerful, but never sharper than when you are fitting words to the truth—you said: ‘It is not a single death that comes; the death that takes us is the last.’ I would rather you read yourself than my letter. For it will be evident to you that this death which we fear is the last, but not the only, death.1086 None of us is the same in old age as he was in youth. None of us is the same tomorrow morning as he was the day before. Our bodies are carried away like rivers. Whatever you see races along with time; nothing that we see stays still. I too, while saying that things change, am changed myself. That is what Heraclitus says: ‘We do, and we do not, step down into the same river twice.’ The name of the river stays the same; the water has passed. This is more obvious in a river than in a person, but we too are carried past in a race no less swift. So I am amazed at our madness: we love the most fleeting thing so much, the body, and we fear we are going to die some time, when every moment is the death of our previous state. Will you stop fearing that that will some time happen which happens every day?1087 Thus what is coming into being does not even attain to being, because it never desists from, nor halts, its coming into being, and because it rather is forever causing change, making from seed an embryo, then a baby, then a child, next a lad, a youth, then a man, an elder, an old man, destroying the former comings into being and ages with the ones that supersede them. But we are ridiculous enough to fear one death, when we have already died so many deaths and are still dying. For it is not only, as Heraclitus said,

1086

Seneca Letter 24. 19–21.

1087

Id. Letter 58. 22–3.

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that ‘the death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water’, but you can see this still more clearly in our own case. For the man in his prime perishes when the old man has come into being, and the young man perished on turning into the man in his prime. Similarly, the child on turning into the young man and the infant on turning into the child. The man of yesterday has died and turned into the man of today, and the man of today is dying in turning into the man of tomorrow. No one stays still, or is a single person, but we become many, with matter whirling and sliding round a single image and a shared mould. If we stayed the same, how would we enjoy different things now from what we enjoyed before, and love or hate, admire and censure opposite things? How would we use different words and indulge in different emotions, without keeping the same appearance, or figure, or thoughts? It is not plausible that one should receive different characteristics without changing, nor upon changing is one the same person (ho autos). And if one is not the same person, one does not exist, but changes in this respect too, becoming a different person from before. The senses say falsely that what appears to be in existence is so, through ignorance of what being is.1088

My claim is that Seneca and Plutarch have not really integrated this argument into their thought. Seneca's use of it is not consistent with his elsewhere insisting that our constitution (constitutio) differs at different ages, but the self (ego, me) is always the same;1089 nor with his assuring Marcia that her dead son will live on until the next conflagration of the universe.1090 Plutarch could have argued consistently, if he had chosen, that the short-term selves should be woven together into a long-term biography. But in fact, we saw, when he recommends biographical weaving, he treats the short-term selves of the Growing Argument as no more than a simile. And in practice it would not have been possible to combine the therapy of weaving, to produce tranquillity, with the therapy of dwelling on discontinuity, to allay fear of death.

Dispersible and Everlasting Selves There are other therapeutic concepts of self designed to allay different fears about death. The Epicureans drew comfort from the idea of a self dispersed at death, and so exempt from subsequent punishment.1091 The Platonist Plutarch objects eloquently that this

1088

Plutarch On the E at Delphi 392 C –E .

1089

Seneca Letter 121. 16.

1090

Id. Marcia 26. 6–7.

1091

Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 2; Lucretius 3.31–93; 3.830–1094.

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fails to address the fear of annihilation.1092 And Plato's Socrates, of course, offered the opposite solace of an everlasting self,1093 which is standard in the Platonic,1094 and of course the Christian, tradition. He also put forward the idea that the desire for offspring or fame is a desire for indirect immortality.1095

Concepts Relevant To Therapy: The Posidonian Self Yet other concepts had immediate relevance for how therapy was to be conducted, a notable example being Posidonius' conception of the self as including irrational forces. This provides a clear case of what was discussed in Chapter 11. Philosophical analysis of what the self consists in has immediate practical implications for how the emotions are to be brought into order—in Posidonius' view by diet and music, to deal with the irrational forces, as well as by more intellectual means.

Individual Personae The idea of the individual persona was also used by Stoicism in the battle against emotions. It is first emphasized in our sources in an account drawn from the Stoic Panaetius, head of the Stoa 129–109 BC. Either he, or1096 some earlier Stoic, introduced the view that how it is right to react depends on our four prosōpa or personae. These are our rational nature as humans, our individual endowments, the positions we occupy by chance, and the careers we have chosen.1097 Individual history (vita) as well as character (mores) can be relevant, so that it would be right for a Cato to commit suicide in circumstances where it would be wrong for another person.1098 This is a welcome corrective to the modern doctrine of universalizability. I agree with the objection that this doctrine is often empty.1099 It says that if it is right for Cato to commit suicide, it will be right for anyone who is in the same circumstances. But for this to be true, we must include in the circumstances Cato's whole life and character, and then no one

1092

Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible chs. 25–8, 1104 A —1105 C .

1093

Plato Phaedo.

1094

Pseudo-Plato Axiochus ;Plutarch Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1104 A –1107 C ; Cicero Consolation fragment quoted by himself at Tusc. 1. 66.

1095

Plato Symposium 206 E –209 E .

1096

So Inwood, ‘Rules and Reasoning in Stoic Ethics’.

1097

Cicero Off. 1. 107–15.

1098

Ibid. 1. 112.

1099

So Peter Winch ‘The Universalisability of Moral Judgement’, The Monist, 49 (1965), 196–214.

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ever will be in the same circumstances, so the doctrine has told us nothing. The idea of acting in accordance with one's persona is the closest ancient analogue I know to the modern notion of authenticity. The individual persona is connected more closely with emotions by Epictetus. The philosopher should prefer to have his head cut off rather than his beard, because that is in accordance with his prosōpon. The cithara-player must react like a cithara-player and the philosopher like a philosopher.1100 Epictetus stresses the importance of individual history when he declines to say that the athlete who refused a life-saving excision of his genitals did so either as an athlete or as a philosopher. He did so as a male (anēr), but as a male who had been proclaimed at the Olympic games, not one who had merely been to Bato's wrestling school.1101 Epictetus' use of the idea of persona is another part of his search for imperturbability in the face of adversity.

Happiness and the Contemplative Self There were other concepts of self relevant not to therapy, but to happiness, to salvation, and to attachments in society. We have seen in Chapter 13 Aristotle's discussion of what a blessed state would be like. The gods and the heroes in the Isles of the Blessed have hardly any activity open to them but contemplation, we saw. So the intellect in us is the part we should most cultivate, as bringing us closest to a blessed life,1102 and indeed it is, on the Platonic view which Aristotle reports and exploits, our true self.1103

Soteriology and the Contemplative Self Plotinus, talking not merely of happiness but of salvation, takes the idea of a contemplative self much further. He distinguishes three powers in the soul which he sometimes calls three selves (hēmeis). Below there is that concerned with the body. Above there is the soul, which is uninterruptedly contemplating the Forms, although we are normally unconscious of it. But the true person (alēthēs anthrōpos), that which he sometimes singles out for calling us (hēmeis), is the

1100

Epictetus 1.2.25–37; 3.23.5. See the very helpful article of Christopher Gill, ‘Personhood and Personality: the Four-personae Theory in Cicero De officiis 1’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 6 (1988), 169–99 at 188–91, which, however, emphasizes our common human rationality more than the individual persona.

1101

Epictetus 1. 2. 25–6.

1102

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10. 8, 1178 8–23.

1103

b

b

a

Ibid. 10.7, 1177 26–1178 8; cf. 9.4, 1166a 17; 9.8, 1168b 34–1169a 2; Protrepticus fr. 12.

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intermediate power of step-by-step reasoning, which Plotinus calls, after Plato Republic book 9, the human within.1104 This is the true person, not in the sense of the best, since there is a better. But it is pivotal. For Plotinus says that our intermediate self can be directed upwards towards the activity of contemplating, or downwards towards bodily activities.1105 Indeed, it can be directed by us (taxōmen: is this the embodied self as a whole?).1106 We can act in accordance with any of the three selves, and each individual (hekastos) actually is the one in accordance with whom he acts.1107 This means that our reasoning self can actually come to be the self that uninterruptedly contemplates. This contemplative self does not display personality.1108

Attachment To Oneself and Others Finally, there is a concept of self which is not itself therapeutic, but which is put to work in a context concerned with emotion, the Stoic concept of attachment, or oikeiōsis. According to the Stoic Hierocles, infants and newborn animals are attached to themselves and their own constitution (oikeiōthē pros heauto kai tēn heautou sustasin).1109 They apprehend all the parts of their body and soul, and this is equivalent (ison) to perceiving themselves (heautou).1110 It has been well observed that the self of which they are conscious, and to which they are attached, is an embodied self.1111 But what about the self that feels attachment? Elsewhere Hierocles describes us as each (hekastos) being surrounded by circles. The central circle is the mind (dianoia), next, ‘almost the smallest’, is the circle which includes our body, and in circles further out are other people more or less closely connected to us. We should practise spreading attachment to circles further out. What is the status of the individual (hekastos, autos tis) who is thus surrounded? He does not include the body, since that is in a circle further out. He might be the mind, but the mind is said to be his (heautou) rather than him. So he might be conceived as a sizeless centre-point surrounded first by mind and then by body. Either way, the body is certainly outside him: Each (hekastos) of us is, as it were, entirely surrounded by many inscribed

1104

Plotinus 1.1.7(16–24); 1.1.10; 5.3.3(34–9).

1105

Id. 1.1.11(1–8); 2.9.2(4–18).

1106

Id. 1.1.11(7).

1107

Id. 6.7.6(15–18); cf. 6.4.15(37).

1108

Id. 4.4.5(23–7); 4.3.32; 4.4.1.

1109

Hierocles Elements of Ethics 6. 49–53, ed. A. A. Long (Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e Latini, 1; Florence, 1992).

1110

Ibid. 4. 51–3.

1111

Brad Inwood, ‘Hierocles: Theory and Argument in the Second Century AD ’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2 (1984), 151–83 at 163–4.

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circles, some smaller, others larger, some surrounding, others surrounded, according to our different and unequal relations to others. The first and closest circle is that which some individual (autos tis) has drawn for himself around his own (heautou) mind (dianoia) as a centre. In this circle is included the body and anything taken for the sake of the body, for this circle is almost the smallest and nearly touches the centre itself.1112

Inwardness One thing to notice is the inwardness of many of the foregoing exercises. I cannot agree with the view that we have to wait for Augustine to find the idea of an inner self where God resides, where the principles of the intelligible order and the source of truth are to be found, if only our attention takes the right direction.1113 Augustine, Confessions 7.3, says he learnt looking inwards from the Platonists. Most notable is the famous account at Enneads 4.8.1(1–11) of Plotinus' personal experience of turning inwards to find God and the intelligible world. He repeatedly tells us thus to turn inwards: 1.6.9(8); 5.8.10(31–43); 6.9.7. The idea of the inner man at Plato Republic 589 A 7 would have been found by Augustine repeated by St Paul and Plotinus. I cannot agree either that introspection was not thought crucial by the Stoics, that they did not ask us to examine ourselves. Their introspective self-examination, marked by the special word prosokhē, as described in Chapter 15, helped to shape the climate in which Plotinus worked. And the late Stoics Seneca and Epictetus speak of God and his watchful sentry as within us: Seneca Letters 41.2; 83.1; Epictetus 1.14.12; 2.18.19.

1112

Hierocles in Stobaeus Florilegium, vol.4, p.671, lines 7ff. Hense.

1113

Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, 1989), 127–142, 174–6, a book for which in general I have a great admiration for its demonstration of a much richer range of concepts of self in later European thought than is commonly recognized.

17 Physiology and the Non-Cognitive Galen's Alternative Approach to Emotion I have concentrated on those ancient approaches, both therapies and analyses of the emotions, which were cognitive and rationalistic, the principal exception being Posidonius' insistence on irrational psychological forces. But there was also a tradition, and Posidonius was part of it, which laid very great stress on the physiology of emotion.

The Theory Of Physical Blends One of the most physicalistic accounts of emotion was the view that emotions depend on bodily states, especially on the blend of hot, cold, fluid, and dry in the body. Two of the thinkers who held this, Posidonius and Galen, concluded that any therapy of the emotions needs to attend to the body, and in this they were following Plato. Galen wrote a whole treatise, That the Capacities [dunameis]of the Mind Follow [hepesthai]the Blends in the Body (Quod animi mores, or QAM for short). As the following passage says, good blends are produced by the right food, drink, and daily activities: That psychological capacities follow the blends in the body is something that I have, not once or twice but very often tested and explored in many ways, not only on my own, but from the beginning together with my teachers and later with the best philosophers. I have found the proposition both true in every case and useful to those wanting psychological improvement. For as I spelt out in the treatise on habits, we produce a good blend through food and drink and daily activities, and from this blend we shall contribute to excellence for the soul, as the followers of Pythagoras and Plato and certain others of the ancients are said to have done.1114

1114

Galen That the Capacities of the Mind Follow the Blends in the Body (Quod Animi Mores, henceforth QAM) ch. 3, Teubner edn. of the Scripta Minora, vol. 2, p. 32, lines 1–13.

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Reactions In Aristotle's School To Plato's Phaedo Galen had a physicalist view not only of the soul's capacities, but also of the soul itself, and, in the latter form, his view went back to a theory described and rejected by Plato in the fourth century BC in the Phaedo, that the soul is the harmonious attunement (harmonia) or blend (krasis—the same word is used) of the hot, cold, fluid, and dry in the body.1115 Plato's Socrates replies that the attunement of a lyre conforms to, or follows (hepesthai—same word), the lyre's physical condition and cannot, like the soul, oppose the body.1116 And Aristotle adds the reply that the soul, unlike an attunement, originates changes (kinei).1117 Despite Aristotle's opposition, some members of Aristotle's school were very attracted by the theory. The history of this reaction has been made very accessible to philosophers in recent work by Victor Caston.1118 Aristoxenus suggested that the soul was a harmonia of organs and limbs,1119 Dicaearchus that it was nothing but a harmonia of hot, cold, fluid, and dry in the body.1120 He was understood, but perhaps wrongly, to mean that the capacity (vis) by which we act is only a harmonia, and not a soul at all.1121 Their contemporary as head of Plato's school, Xenocrates, is taken by Andronicus, another Aristotelian, to be endorsing the harmonia theory when he says that the soul is a number: on this interpretation the soul is the numerical ratio of the attunement.1122 Aristotle wonders whether still earlier Empedocles had taken such a view.1123 Judging from Galen, Andronicus evidently tried to meet Aristotle's objection to harmonia theory by a refinement. The soul is either a bodily blend, or a capacity (dunamis) following the blend.

1115

For this formulation see Plato Phaedo 86 C .

1116

Ibid. 92 E –93 A ;94 C .

1117

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 4, 407b 34 ff.

1118

Victor Caston, ‘Epiphenomenalisms Ancient and Modern’, Philosophical Review, 107 (1998).

1119

Cicero Tusc. 1. 18. 41; Lactantius Div. Inst. 7. 13; Opif. Dei 16.

1120

Nemesius On the Nature of Man, on the reading of Matthaei, ch. 2, p. 17, lines 5–9 Morani; cf. Aëtius Placita 4. 2. 5(Dox. Gr.).

1121

The incorrectness of this inference is urged by Caston, ‘Epiphenomenalism Ancient and Modern’. See Cicero Tusc. 1.10.21; 1.11.24; 1.22.51; Acad. 2. 39. 124; Iamblichus ap. Stobaeum vol. 1. 367. 4–9 Wachsmuth; Atticus ap. Eusebium Preparation for the Gospels 15. 9. 10, vol. 2, p. 370. 17–18 Mras; Sextus Against the Mathematicians 7. 349; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2. 31.

1122

Themistius In DA 32. 22–31.

1123

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 4, 408a 18–28.

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Galen and Posidonius Galen disagrees; he wishes to revert to the older version of the theory: I strongly commend the Peripatetic Andronicus, [name supplied from the Arabic translation] and endorse the man's judgement, for I find him like this in many other things too. For like a free man without obscure weaving of words he dared outright to declare the essence of soul a blend (krasis) or capacity (dunamis) of the body. In that he says it is either a blend or a capacity following the blend, I criticise the addition of ‘capacity’.1124

Galen does make some concessions. He declares that he cannot say whether Plato is right or wrong that the rational (logistikon) part of the soul is immortal,1125 so he applies his remarks to the mortal part of the soul.1126 But in fact, we shall see, he goes on to treat rational capacities as equally dependent on bodily blends. Galen makes another concession, not about the soul, but about the emotions and other mental capacities which follow the blends. There can be feedback from them on to the blend itself: Because of the hot blend, people become quick-tempered and by their hot temper inflame once again the innate heat.1127 This concession fits with Galen's willingness to call traits like hot temper capacities (dunameis) of the soul, as he does in the very title of his work. But though such mental states are capacities, this is not to concede that the soul is. Galen applies the thesis that psychological capacities follow blends not only to the intellect, but to emotional traits and to emotions, and not only in the passage just quoted, but elsewhere too.1128 And he cites as supporters of the thesis not only Andronicus, but Heraclitus,1129 the Stoics,1130 Plato's Timaeus and Laws,1131 Aristotle's Parts of Animals and History of Animals,1132 and Hippocrates'Airs, Waters, Places.1133 Many of the passages from Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates concern emotions and emotional traits, and it is striking what close parallels to his own view he seems able to provide by careful selection of passages on the effects of blood, of seed, of humours, of climate, and of food and drink. He takes the message to be that these all affect our

1124

Galen QAM 44. 12–20 Caston stresses the denial of power.

1125

Ibid. 36. 12–16.

1126

Ibid. 44. 7–8.

1127

Ibid. 79. 4–7.

1128

Ibid. pp. 39; 41; 79.

1129

Ibid. p. 47.

1130

Ibid.p.45.

1131

Plato Timaeus 44 A –B (pp. 43, 48); 86 C –E (pp. 49–50); 87 B (p.71);24 C (p. 65); Laws 747 D (p. 65); 666 A –B (pp. 68–9); 674 A (pp. 69–71).

1132

Aristotle Parts of Animals 2. 2, 648 1–19 (pp. 51–2); 2. 4, 650 14–651 16 (p. 52); History of Animals 1.8–1.10 (pp. 55–7).

1133

Galen, QAM pp. 57–64.

a

b

a

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emotional states via their effect on the blend of hot, cold, fluid, and dry in our bodies. In the Timaeus, for example, Plato points out how disorders in the body can produce disorders in the soul: two kinds of thoughtlessness (anoia), viz. ignorance and madness (amathia, mania), and also defects of character and emotion such as discontent, low spirits, rashness, and cowardice (duskolia, dusthumia, thrasutēs, deilia), as well as forgetfulness and slowness to learn (lēthē, dusmathia). When male seed is too copious, it can make people mad or senseless (emmanēs, aphrōn). The other disorders can be produced by humours. This all needs to be cured (iatika) by nurture, exercises, and instruction (trophē, epitēdeumata, mathēmata).1134 Galen argues that by nurture Plato means the right food, including the wine discussed in Laws book 1, by exercises the gymnastics and music discussed in Republic books 2–3, and Laws book 2, and by instruction the geometry and arithmetic of Republic book 7.1135 But for the present, I shall write out the passage in the Timaeus in which Plato starts by saying, ‘thus all of us who are bad become bad through two most involuntary reasons, for which those who beget and nurture (trephein) must be blamed more than those begotten or nourished’. He goes on: ‘We must try, however we can, through nurture (trophē), exercises (epitēdeumata), and instruction (mathēmata), to avoid bad character and seize its opposite.’ [He says this] because nurture is no less able to remove bad character and generate good than are exercises and instruction. Although by ‘nurture’ is sometimes meant not only a regimen in diet, but the entire regimen of the child, it cannot be said that nurture is now being spoken of by Plato in its second meaning. For Plato was exhorting not children but grown-ups when he said, ‘We must try, however we can, through nurture, exercises, and instruction, to avoid bad character and seize its opposite.’ So by exercises he means those in gymnastics and music, by instruction that in geometry and arithmetic. But he cannot be thinking of any other kind of nurture than that consisting of food, gruel, and drink, in which is included wine, which Plato discussed a great deal in the second book of the Laws.

If this is how psychological capacities are based, we might imagine there would be a problem about the utility of philosophy for improving our capacities. But Galen protests that his view creates no such problem,1136 and I shall try to explain why below. So this account does not do away with the benefits of philosophy, but is a

1134

Plato Timaeus 86 B –87 B .

1135

Galen QAM 71.19–72.18.

1136

Ibid. 73. 3.

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guide to them and gives instruction in them. Yet it is to an extent ignored by some philosophers. For those who think that everybody can take on good character and those who think no one chooses justice itself have each only half seen human nature. Not everyone is by nature an enemy of justice, nor everyone a friend. People become one or the other because of the blending of their bodily constituents.

Galen thinks the problem about the role and value of philosophy is created not by his own view, but by false philosophical conceptions about human nature. And the conception he goes on in particular to attack is that which the Stoics took from Chrysippus. According to this conception, humans are all well fitted for acquiring virtue.1137 In that case, they will not need more than to be set a good example. But the old philosophers knew this was wrong, and that children who have been set a good example often turn out bad.1138 The person who really got this right was the Stoic Posidonius,1139 who also followed Plato. The response of Posidonius to Chrysippus is much more fully described in Galen's other work, which was the subject of Chapters 6–8 above, On the Placita of Hippocrates and Plato (PHP). The extra material there reveals that in some ways Galen goes further in a physicalist direction than Posidonius. To see what Galen finds to admire in Posidonius, we need to turn briefly to Galen's PHP, and to some of the Posidonian ideas already encountered in Chapter 6. Galen reports that according to Chrysippus, people are born with a natural kinship for virtue, and are perverted (diastrophē), if they are, by popular talk and the nature of the environment,1140 or, as QAM says, by those they live with,1141 external factors all. By contrast, Posidonius says, against Chrysippus, that bad character comes largely from within.1142 Drawing on Posidonius, Galen objects that Chrysippus overlooks the affinity of the two irrational parts of the Platonic soul for domination and for pleasure.1143 Because of such internal factors, we get the phenomenon mentioned in QAM, that even children who have been given good habits and a good education can go wrong. In PHP the point seems to be attributed to Posidonius, and is said to have been unwillingly conceded even by Chrysippus himself.1144 Posidonius' positive account is in many ways very close to Galen's.

1137

Ibid. 73.6–12; 74.21–77.1, esp. 74.21–75.1.

1138

Ibid. 76.1–77.1.

1139

Ibid. 77.17–79.2.

1140

Galen PHP 5. 5. 14, pp. 318–20 de Lacy.

1141

Id. QAM 75. 1.

1142

Ibid. 78. 2–19.

1143

Galen PHP 5. 5. 3–9, pp. 316–18 de Lacy.

1144

Ibid. PHP 5. 5. 9–13, p. 318 de Lacy; id. QAM 78. 8–19.

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Posidonius makes emotional traits depend on physiognomy, and in particular on bodily heat and cold. In Chapters 6–8 we concentrated on Posidonius' ‘emotional movements’ (pathētikai kinēseis), which are irrational movements of the soul. But now we learn that these movements of the soul ‘follow’ (hepesthai) dispositions of the body. And the blend (krasis) of qualities in the environment in turn affects these bodily dispositions. It is reasonable of Posidonius to add to these remarks the observations of physiognomy: all humans and animals that have broad chests and are hotter are more irascible (thumikōtera) by nature; those who have broad hips and are colder are more cowardly. And humans differ by geographical location in no small way in their characters as regards cowardice, daring, love of pleasure, or of work, which suggests that the emotional movements of the soul always follow (hepesthai) the body's disposition, in respect of which people are not insignificantly altered by the blend (krasis) in the environment. For he says that the blood differs in animals in respect of heat, coldness, thickness, and thinness and in not a few other characteristics—characteristics which Aristotle discussed at length.1145 Posidonius and Galen agree to a large extent on the implications of this very physical account for moral education. Posidonius endorses Plato's regimen (diaita) for the expectant mother in respect of food and drink (trophai, pōmata), exercises and rest (gumnasia, hēsukhiai), sleep and waking, appetite and anger (epithumiai, thumoi), along with the nourishment (trophē) and training (paideia) of the child.1146 Posidonius sees this training as an irrational habituation (alogos ethismos) by good exercises (epitēdeumata),1147 which works on the irrational or emotional powers of the soul, as Posidonius calls them, which have to do with appetite and anger.1148 The upbringing (askēsis) would include the right rhythms and scales to work on one of the irrational powers of the soul, the spirited power.1149 For Posidonius, as for Galen, food and drink are relevant to emotional training, as securing the right balance of bodily qualities. Music and rhythm are relevant in a different way. I have argued in Chapter 5 that for Posidonius, as for Chrysippus1150 and Plato,1151 the

1145

Id. PHP 5. 5. 22–4, also 25–9, pp. 320–2 de Lacy. The reference is to Aristotle Parts of Animals 2. 2 and 2. 4.

1146

Galen PHP 5. 5. 30–5, pp. 322–4 de Lacy.

1147

Ibid. 5. 5. 29 and 35, pp. 322–4 de Lacy.

1148

Ibid. 5. 5. 32–4, p. 324 de Lacy.

1149

Ibid. 5. 6. 19–20, p. 330 de Lacy; cf. Plato Republic 3, 411 A –B .

1150

See e.g. Chrysippus' descriptions of the expansion and contraction of the soul, translated in ch. 2, Galen PHP 2.8.4; 3.1.25; 3.5.43–4; 3.7.4, pp. 158, 172, 208, 212 de Lacy.

1151

Plato Timaeus 36 C –37 A ;38 C –39 E ;40 A ;41 D –42 A ;43 D ;44 A –B ;44 D ;91 E –92 A .

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soul engages in spatial movements, and that, just as in Plato,1152 the movements set up in the body by sounds can affect the movements of the soul. But what about the education of our reason? Plato had seen music and gymnastics as helping to balance the spirited and philosophical tendencies of the soul.1153 But Posidonius thinks the education of reason must be different. We need two distinct types of education, a rational one for our rational powers, and an irrational one for our irrational and emotional powers. After all, Help and harm come to the irrational through irrational things and to the rational through understanding and ignorance.1154 What reason needs is rational instruction (didaskalia logikē), to give understanding of the nature of things (epistēmētēs tōn ontōn phuseōs) and of the truth (epistēmētōn alēthōn).1155 Galen seems to endorse this, and what is striking is that it appears to give an immediate role to philosophy as a source of rational instruction. It fits with this that in yet another treatise, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, Galen gives conventional rationalistic advice on how to control the emotions, some of which has already been mentioned in Chapter 15. But curiously, this is not the role that Galen stresses in the treatise on capacities following blends, when he raises the question whether he is allowing a place to the services of philosophy. Moreover, in several ways Galen seems to give a more physicalistic account in this treatise than he ascribed to Posidonius in PHP.1156 First, he repeatedly insists that our rational capacities also follow the blend of the body, whereas Posidonius1157 had made this point only about the irrational capacities. This in turn means, secondly, that Galen rejects Posidonius' view that only rational therapies can help the rational capacities. Thirdly, Galen, we have seen, insists that the soul is not a capacity.1158 In addition, Galen attacks, in the treatise on capacities following

1152

Ibid. 67 A –B , and for a different case of bodily movements affecting soul movements 43 C –D .

1153

Plato Republic 3, 411 E –412 A , correcting the suggestion of 2, 376 E (cf. Timaeus 89 A ), that gymnastics is for the body, by saying this is only a side effect.

1154

Galen PHP 5. 6. 22, p. 330 de Lacy.

1155

Ibid. 5. 5. 29 and 35, pp. 322–4 de Lacy.

1156

Other disparities between PHP and QAM have been noted by Heinrich von Staden. QAM restricts the range of functions allowed to the soul: ‘Body, Soul and Nerves: Epicurus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, the Stoics and Galen’, in John P. Wright and Paul Potter (eds.), Psyche and Body (in preparation).

1157

Galen PHP 5. 5. 22–6, pp. 320–2 de Lacy.

1158

Id. QAM 44. 12–20.

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blends, those who admit that bodily disease impedes the soul but deny that in bodily health the soul is either helped or hindered by the body.1159 In reply Galen, as a doctor, offers to help people's emotional character by advising them on food, drink and, climate: So now at least let those come to their senses who are displeased that food can make (ergazesthai) people more sensible or more licentious, more in command or less in command of themselves, bold or cowardly, mild and gentle or contentious and competitive. Let them come to me to learn what they should eat and what drink. For they will be greatly helped towards ethical philosophy and in addition they will progress towards excellence in the capacities of the rational part, by improving their intelligence and memory. Besides food and drink, I shall also teach about winds and the blends (kraseis) in the environment, and about what locations one should choose and avoid.1160

Despite the more physicalistic approach in the treatise on capacities following blends, Galen has, it seems, left room for philosophy to offer rational instruction as Posidonius would wish. Witness his appeal in the passage just quoted to ethical philosophy and progress towards excellence in rational capacities. This fits too with the reference already noticed to Plato requiring education to cover not only food and drink, gymnastics and music, but also instruction (mathēmata) in geometry and arithmetic.1161 This, we saw, almost immediately precedes the question about philosophy's role. Even when Galen gives his non-philosophical advice on food, drink, and climate, he seeks his justification in philosophy. It is the analysis of the soul as a blend of the body and of mental characteristics as following the body's blends which he takes as his justification for giving this advice. That, I think, is why he is so confident that he is giving a role to philosophy. In Galen and Posidonius we have yet another example, to put beside those in Chapter 11, of how philosophical analysis can be relevant to life. This time the philosophical analysis of soul and of mental states is relevant as a justification for educational practice involving diet and music. Galen raises an objection to himself. If character is due to bodily blends, how can we praise and blame people? Galen gives the tough reply that we can still love or hate, welcome or avoid, just as we do with scorpions, and the death penalty would still serve its standard purposes.1162

1159

Ibid. 64.19–65; 70.11–14.

1160

Ibid. 67. 2–16.

1161

Ibid. 71. 19–72. 18.

1162

Ibid. 73.13–74.21.

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261

Alexander Alexander of Aphrodisias, as head of the Aristotelian school, was often opposed to his Platonizing contemporary Galen. But on this issue they have certain things in common, and particularly so on the idea that emotions depend on bodily states. For this much at least had been clearly said by Aristotle, and in the following passage, Alexander is doing little more than paraphrasing him. That the soul is the form of the body is also shown by the fact that changes corresponding to the soul also correspond to the preparedness of the body. For sometimes we are not affected at all, or only superficially and for a little, despite the strength of the external causes which can excite anger, fear, appetite, or some other such emotion. At other times, we are excessively impassioned, though the external factors are small and trifling. That is whenever the body is swollen and prepared and ready for emotion, either through some lack, or through surfeit, or through a juxtaposition of humours. For we are more readily angry when bile is in excess, and we are often frightened or distressed at trifles through our body being disposed that way.1163 In a similar vein, Alexander says that different perceptual powers are caused by (aitia) different bodily blends.1164 The question whether the soul is a bodily blend is different from the question whether emotions and perceptual powers depend on bodily blends. On the soul there is more distance between Alexander's view and Galen's. He says that the soul is a form (eidos) or capacity (dunamis) which in some sense—not necessarily the modern one—supervenes (epiginetai) on the blend of bodily ingredients.1165 And the same is said by Alexander, or somebody, about the material intellect.1166 Alexander diverges even from his Aristotelian predecessor Andronicus, who is quoted above as saying not that the soul supervenes

a

1163

Alexander On the Soul 13. 1–8 (cf. 12. 16–17), echoing Aristotle On the Soul 1. 1, 403 19–24.

1164

Ibid. 10. 14–26.

1165

Ibid. 24.1–5; 24.18–25.9; 26.7–30. epiginetai and cognates at 24.19; 24.22–3; 25.2–3; 26.22; 26.26–7. In the modern sense, for the soul to supervene would be for a one-way relationship to hold, that there is no difference in soul without a difference in body.

1166

Alexander Mantissa 112. 14–16(On the Intellect) : for the question of whether this is Alexander or someone else and interpreting Aristotle or Aristotle of Mitylene, see e.g. Frederic M. Schroeder and Robert B. Todd, Two Greek Commentators on the Intellect (Toronto, 1990), 22–31. There will be a new proposal by Jan Opsomer and Robert Sharples in the translation of the Mantissa by Sharples, in preparation, and in their ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu 110. 4: “I Heard This from Aristotle”. A Modest Proposal’, Classical Quarterly, forthcoming. For the further question whether some, all, or none of the Mantissa is genuinely by Alexander see e.g. Schroeder and Todd, pp. 6–22, and Sharples's translation in preparation.

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on, but that it follows, a blend.1167 Alexander insists, rightly, that his view is in an important respect very different from the idea that the soul is a blend. It supervenes on a bodily blend, but it is a capacity, and so has the efficacy which Aristotle insists on and finds lacking, in a mere harmony.1168 Referring to medicine, and therefore perhaps to Galen, Alexander says that the concept of a harmony would be more applicable to physical health. It must not be supposed that the soul is being called a harmony by those who say that it is a form supervening on such and such a mixture and blend of the bodies that underlie it. For if the soul cannot exist without such a blend and mixture, that does not mean that it is identical with the blend. For the soul is not the suchlike blend of bodies, which would be a harmony, but the capacity (dunamis) supervening on such a blend.1169 Health could more plausibly than the soul be called a harmony. It is nearer than the soul to a harmony, for health is a symmetry of certain things, and that symmetry is a combination and mixture according to some ratio. But the soul is not the symmetry, but the capacity that arises upon the symmetry. It cannot exist without this symmetry, but it is not the symmetry.1170 This instrument is called potential intellect, a capacity supervening on such-and-such a blend of bodies.1171 Alexander refers to the Stoic doctrine that the soul is a mixture of fire and air, to Epicurus' that it is a compound of atoms, and to Plato's Timaeus, which makes the soul's essence come from a combination of the circles of the same and the different. These doctrines, he says, are closer than his to the view that the soul is a harmony: The soul would be a harmony more for people who speak like this than for someone who says that it is a state and capacity and form that supervenes on such and such a blend and mixture of the simple bodies.1172

Alexander tells us more about the efficacy, not admittedly of the soul, but of desire (orexis) and of the desiring factor in us (to orektikon). Desire is an origin of change (arkhēkinēseōs) in the body, and the desiring factor is described by Alexander with a Stoic term as commanding (hēgemonikon), although Alexander makes the very un-Stoic point that there are two commanding factors in us, one in the sphere of judgement, and this one in the sphere of action:

1167

Andronicus in Galen QAM 44. 12–20.

1168

The point is stressed by Caston, ‘Epiphenomenalism Ancient and Modern’.

1169

Alexander On the Soul 24. 18–23.

1170

Ibid. 25. 4–9.

1171

Alexander Mantissa 112. 14–16(On the Intellect).

1172

Id. On the Soul 26. 20–2.

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Just as in the sphere of judgement there is something that commands and something that facilitates, so also in the sphere of action there is something that commands, which we call capable of impulse and desire (hormētikon, orektikon), while the other is in the nerves. For there is also a capacity in the nerves by which the body facilitates the activities that accord with impulse. Whatever is done in accordance with desire is done through instilling an experience (pathos), and of these experiences some relax the body and enlarge its members by means of well-blended heat, while others produce cooling and shrinking (sustellein). Appearances, perceptions, and thoughts of things arise with a certain likeness to the things as if at their actual occurrence, and relax the body or make it shrink and shiver. These shrinkings and enlargements occur in the region of the connate breath (pneuma) and are passed on from it to the nerves, and the nerves can be activated with movements conforming to impulse, getting their origin of movement from desire.1173

Plato and Aristotle Since Plato's Socrates and Aristotle both reject the theory that the soul is the harmony of the body, how can they have been in any way associated with it? The case for Aristotle is clearest. Alexander believes that by making the soul not a blend, but a capacity supervening on a blend, he meets all Aristotle's desiderata. The case for Aristotle believing that emotions follow the state of the body is even clearer. The text of Aristotle which Alexander paraphrases is the following: All the emotions (pathē) of the soul appear similarly to be accompanied by the body: anger, pacific feelings, fear, pity, boldness and again joy, and both loving and hating. For the body is affected along with these. This is indicated by the fact that sometimes we are not at all irritated or frightened, even though clear and powerful troubles are befalling us, while at other times we are stirred by small and insignificant things, when the body is swollen and is in the same state as when we are angry. Again, it is still more obvious that people get in the emotional state of a frightened person when nothing frightening is happening. If so, it is clear that emotions are principles embedded in matter (logoi enuloi), so that their definitions are, for example, like this: being angry is a certain change in a body of such and such a sort, or in a part, or a capacity of it, caused by this and serving this purpose.1174 Aristotle goes on to say that the full definition of anger would include

1173

Ibid. 76.14–77.8.

1174

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 1, 403a 16–27.

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as matter a boiling of the blood or warm stuff around the heart and as form the desire to retaliate.1175 Galen is able to cite in addition Aristotle's discussion elsewhere of how differences in the temperature, thickness, and texture of the blood account for courage, cowardice, fear, anger, getting to be besides oneself, and other character traits.1176 As for Plato, there is no evidence that he thought of the soul as a bodily blend, but he did think that mental states and characteristics often follow bodily states. Galen is able to show that in passages partly discussed above from the Timaeus Plato thinks that climate affects intelligence, that bodily disturbances in the newly incarnated impede thought, although education (paideusis) may help, that a superfluity of seed in males does the same,1177 and that humours can produce low spirits (dusthumia), rashness (thrasutēs), andcowardice (deilia), as well as forgetfulness and slowness to learn.1178 According to the Laws, climate, water, and available produce make people better or worse (Galen reads Plato's text as saying they are sometimes made shameless).1179 Wine can madden (emmanē) people, or make them forget low spirits (dusthumia), become optimistic (euelpis), bold (tharraleos), and shameless (anaiskhunteros).1180 One very important difference, I have argued in Chapter 5, between Plato and Aristotle is that Plato thinks the soul engages in spatial movements, and this same belief is what enables Posidonius to explain the effect of musical sound and rhythm on the soul's movements.

Epicureans Even the Epicureans take over this tradition. There are variations: the mind itself, being material, takes on heat and cold. But we find the same view that teaching (doctrina) can help, though only up to a point. For the first traces of the hot or cold nature can never be completely eradicated, as the Stoics would wish. Nor are the Stoics right to distinguish clemency (or mercy) as acceptable from pity, which is an emotion. Clemency too can be overdone. Lucretius further uses the Platonic idea of following (sequaces), when he says that character follows the hot or cold nature: Such is the human race. Although teaching (doctrina) gives some people an

1175

Ibid. 403a 25–b 9.

1176

Aristotle Parts of Animals 2.2, 648 1–19; 2.4, 650 14–651 16.

1177

Plato Timaeus 24 C ;44 A –B ;86 B –C .

1178

Ibid. 87 A –B .

1179

Plato Laws 747 C –D .

1180

666 A –B ; 671 C .

a

b

a

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equal polish, it still leaves the first traces of the nature of each individual's mind. Nor should it be thought that evils can be plucked out by the root (radicitus evelli), so as to prevent this person falling more precipitately into fierce anger, that one being a little more quickly tempted by fear, and a third accepting certain things with more clemency than is right (clementius aequo). The natures of humans must differ in many other respects, and the characters that follow (sequaces) their natures.1181

Proclus Some of the Neoplatonists reject Galen's thesis that capacities of the soul follow the blends in the body. But in doing so, Proclus has to be careful, because he knows that Galen is able to cite Plato in his favour. Proclus refers in two works to Plato's suggestion that the strong currents in children's bodies, and in the bodies of our original ancestors when they were first created, interfered with thinking. Plato none the less believes that education (paideusis) helps.1182 In one work Proclus rejects the view of those who interpret the passage by saying that it is the initial lack of proportion in the body's fluidity which makes children thoughtless.1183 This view appears not only to be in Plato, and endorsed by Galen, but also to be offered by Calcidius as one of two explanations of the child's lack of tranquillity.1184 In another work, addressing Galen's use of the same passage, Proclus draws a distinction, but one that had already been ascribed by Galen to earlier Platonists and attacked as incompatible with Plato.1185 The body can interfere with thinking, but it cannot assist it. What supplies assistance is education (paideia). Moreover, the body interferes only like a chattering neighbour. The soul is not really disturbed, but as it were sees its reflection disturbed in the waters of the body. His view turns out to be1186 that the activities of the soul can be disturbed, but not its essence. Galen would say that psychological capacities follow the blends in the body, and that the soul is thoughtless (anous) and unsettled when the body is fluid and unsettled and flowing in every direction, but is straightened up and becomes reflective (emphrōn) when the body settles into a proportionate blend. How shall we concede that? It is not right to make the immortal soul,

1181

Lucretius 3. 307–15; see more generally 288–315.

1182

Plato Timaeus 43 A –44 C , cited by Galen QAM 42.11–43.19.

1183

Proclus In Alcib. I 226.12–227.2.

1184

Calcidius In Tim. ccvi, 224. 10 Waszink.

1185

Galen QAM 64.19–65.1.

1186

Proclus In Tim. vol. 3, pp. 335.24–336.1; 338.6–13; 340.14–17.

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which exists before the body, think because of the body. Rather, we should say that the body sometimes becomes an obstacle to the soul's leading an orderly life, and sometimes gives less trouble. It is just as by living next to a silly, chattering neighbour, we would not be made more thoughtful because of him. But he is capable of interfering more or less with our having a peaceful life. That is how the complexion of the body sometimes disturbs the soul, and sometimes reduces its hubbub, so that the soul gets some quiet. That soul is more in a natural state than the disturbed soul, but even it is not, until education (paideia) is added to it. So the body can prevent reflective living, but cannot in any way produce it.1187 It should not be thought on this account that the soul is affected. It is as if someone standing on a promontory made his image and form appear in a flowing river and kept his face unmoved, while the river by flowing changed his image in every sort of way. Thus it would show it now this way, now that, sideways and upright maybe, and fragmented and continuous. Seeing this, he might, through unfamiliarity with the effect, think he was seeing himself being affected, though he was only seeing his shadow in the water, and thinking this, he might be pained, bewildered, shocked, and frustrated. In the same way, the soul too in seeing its image in the body flowing in the river of coming to be and disposed now this way, now that, by effects (pathē) from within and incursions from without, though it is unaffected (apathēs), thinks that it is being affected, because it does not know itself and thinks its image is itself and is bewildered, shocked, and perplexed. This effect occurs especially in newborn children and is found also in adults in dreams. For example, when one's natural organs are having trouble digesting food, one thinks in a dream that one is having trouble walking or carrying burdens, or being affected in some other such way. From this one can see what the effects suffered by children are like.1188

Philoponus On Supervening, Following, and Resulting We have seen that Posidonius made the emotional movements of the soul follow (hepesthai) the bodily dispositions,1189 and that Galen made capacities of the soul follow the body's blends. Going further, Galen represented the mortal soul as being a blend, like Socrates' interlocutors in the Phaedo, but reported Andronicus as making it instead a capacity following the blend. The word ‘follow’ here seems to respond to Socrates' objection in the Phaedo, that the soul cannot be a blend or harmony, because a harmony follows physical conditions. Andronicus makes the soul lead by presenting it as a capacity, but

1187

Ibid. vol. 3, pp. 349. 21–350. 8.

1188

Ibid. vol 3, pp. 330. 9–331. 1.

1189

Posidonius in Galen PHP 5. 5. 23, p. 322 de Lacy.

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none the less allows that it follows the blend or harmony which Socrates had presented as itself following physical conditions. Alexander, speaking of the soul, substituted for Andronicus' talk of its following the bodily blend the idea of its supervening (epiginesthai) on the blend. And Philoponus applied this distinction also to the soul's mental capacities and activities. Perception is a capacity that supervenes on a blend.1190 He makes explicit the contrast between something's supervening and its following on (hepesthai), or being a result of (apotelesma), the blend.1191 The blend is merely fit (epitēdeios),1192 but not sufficient, for the presence of the psychological capacity. It is true that different blends are required for different capacities.1193 But it can be shown against the doctors (notably Galen, I presume) that mental states do not follow blends necessarily, for the doctors admit that philosophy can counteract our bodily blends.1194 Philoponus ascribes this reply to the ‘Attic commentators’, i.e. to representatives of the Athenian Neoplatonist school, although the issue, we saw, had been raised already by the Epicureans, and Philoponus' answer was in the Socratic tradition. Socrates supposedly defended the physiognomist Zopyrus for saying that he (Socrates) was stupid and addicted to women, by saying that those were indeed his inborn characteristics, but he had overcome them by reason (ratio).1195 Hence doctors have said that psychological capacities follow the blends in the body. Against this the Attic commentators say that just as the doctors infer that the soul has the body as its substrate in which to inhere on the grounds that such-and-such psychological impulses follow the blends in the body, so we can establish the opposite result from the opposite premiss. For if the soul's inseparability from the body follows from its impulses following bodily blends, it will then be separable if it does not follow these blends. Now we see that through philosophy even people with bad blends have not had corresponding impulses, but have overcome the blends. This would not have happened if their capacity had had the blend as a substrate in which to inhere. One cannot stop being pale, or sallow, or dark, which arises from (ginesthai ek) such-and-such a blend, even if one philosophizes ten thousand times, until the blend is changed. Thus if such and such a psychological impulse happened as a result (apotelesma) of one's blend, it

1190

Philoponus In DA 439. 35–440. 3; In Phys. 191. 11–25.

1191

Philoponus In GC 169. 4–27.

1192

Philoponus In DA 141. 22–9; In Phys. 191. 18–25; In GC 169. 6–27.

1193

Philoponus In DA 141. 22–9; 439.35–440.3; In Phys. 191. 11–25.

1194

Philoponus In DA 51.13–52.1.

1195

Cicero On Fate 10 (voluntas, studium, disciplina ); Tusc. 4. 80 (ratio ). For Epicureans see Lucretius 3. 307 ff., translated above.

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ought to have been quite impossible for a person to refrain from anger if his blend was in the direction of anger, and similarly for other cases. But as it is, that does not happen. So psychological impulses do not necessarily follow bodily blends. And the doctors themselves say this, for after saying that psychological capacities follow bodily blends, they add ‘apart from the philosophical way of life’. So if the philosophical way of life can prevent psychological impulse following bodily blends, then there is something that is up to us and they do not follow of necessity. And the being of impulses does not consist in the blend, for if it did, how would the philosophical way of life counteract emotions? From what would the truceless battle of reason and the passions arise? For nothing fights with the body that is its salvation, or strives to quarrel with its own cause. So if the blend were the cause of all psychological changes, it would never fight against itself. It is opposites that fight each other.1196

In the foregoing passage pale, dark, and sallow are contrasted with psychological characteristics. But elsewhere even colours are said merely to supervene on the fitness of the blend and not to be apotelesmata (previously translated ‘results’) of the blend, although they can be said to follow (hepesthai) the blend (Philoponus In GC 169. 17; 170. 28). Why is this? We are told, in a continuation1197 of the passage next translated, that a particular shade conforms (kata) not to a particular blend or numerical proportion of hot, cold, fluid, and dry, but to a range (platos) of such proportions, and a given flavour corresponds to a different, but possibly overlapping, range. We can infer that, because of the invariability, each follows from its range and from any proportion within the range. But Philoponus still does not think the colour or flavour is a result explained (apotelesma) by the range, or by any proportion within it. Why not? First, it would have to be the range, rather than any proportion within it, which explained the colour as opposed to the flavour. Secondly, not even the range explains, because matter alone without form cannot fully explain. Moreover, Philoponus thinks the colour-forms which supervene on the range of material proportions are created by God. Hence his reference to

1196

Philoponus In DA 51.13–52.12. Diagōgē may mean exhortation, rather than way of life.

1197

Philoponus In GC 170. 12–35. I thank Sylvia Berryman, Frans de Haas, and Carlos Steel for discussion of apotelesma in this passage. I shall discuss the concept of platos, the medieval ‘latitude’, in Philosophy of the Ancient Commentators: A Sourcebook now in preparation, under ‘Latitude’ in the volume concerned with physics, and in ‘Latitude of Forms’, in Cees Leijenhorst and Christoph Lüthy (eds.), Proceedings of the Conference Held at Nijmegen, 1999, on the Dynamics of Natural Philosophy in the Aristotelian Tradition, Leiden (forthcoming).

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the forms coming from outside from the Creator's work as a whole (169. 7–8). The same absurdity would seem to follow both for those like the doctors who say that forms are results explained by (apotelesmata) blends and for those who say, as the correct account has it, that forms are not results explained by blends but, coming from outside from the Creator's work as a whole, they supervene (epiginesthai) on the fitness (epitēdeiotēs) of the blend. For if forms were results explained by blends, since what follows (hepesthai) that sort of proportion in the primary blend, I mean in the blend of dry with fluid, and hot with cold ingredients, is a number of qualities (such-and-such a colour, flavour, softness, hardness, and the like), it is evidently clear that the thing will, in conformity with (kata) the same ratio, be sweet, red, fluid, hot, and so on. Hence if all these [qualities] exist in conformity with the same ratio, a thing that is qualified by one will be qualified also by the remainder. Thus if it is active in conformity with one [quality] and passive in conformity with another, it will then be passive and active in conformity with the same thing, since it is in conformity with the same ratio that it is both.1198 But if forms are not results explained by blends, but, coming from outside, follow the fitness of blends, clearly the different qualities will have supervened in conformity with the same repeated fitness. But if different qualities have supervened in conformity with the same ratio of fitness the same absurdity will follow again if it is active by [dative case] one quality and passive by another, since it will be passive and active in conformity with the same thing. Thus the same absurdity has followed from the true account as well. It is worth seeking then, and it would be an enquiry in its own right, how the different forms either result from the same blend or, as the truer account has it, how different forms supervene on the same fitness, since it is clear in advance that the forms are not simply results of the blends.1199

Philoponus does, however, allow that a physiological change is involved when learning makes us less irascible, or leads us to understand something. The direction of causation is opposite to that chiefly emphasized by Galen (though Galen does recognize feedback, QAM 79. 4–7), because the learning produces the physiological change. This qualifies the earlier claim that philosophy can counteract the body: in doing so, it evidently acts via the body. The passage is remarkable in other ways too. First, it shows a vivid appreciation of communication in the lecture room. Secondly, it is significant for our

1198

A similar objection had been raised to Aristotle's distinction of acting and being acted on as separate categories: Plotinus 6. 1. 20 (8–9).

1199

Philoponus In GC 169. 4–27.

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knowledge of other minds: it is the facial reflection of physiological changes which enables the lecturer to know if he has been understood. The passage comes from Philoponus, In Phys. 7, translated by Paul Lettinck, p. 125, from Arabic 771. 21–772. 3: Furthermore, those who frequently attend lectures on the disciplines of knowledge get lean and dry bodies, which results in their 〈not〉 easily becoming annoyed. Also, if there were not those alterations and affections connected with the body, we would not be able to explain the expressions in the face of someone showing that he has understood what we say and the other expressions showing that he has not understood us.

Augustine Augustine attacks not only the view that the soul is a body, but also the view that it is a blend (temperatio) or harmony (compago) of the body. He does so by using the argument later adapted by Descartes. We cannot doubt that we are alive, remember, understand, went, think, know, and judge, for doubting would involve precisely these activities. Thus the soul knows itself with certainty and hence knows its essence (substantia) with certainty. But it is not certain whether it is material. So it is not. A further sign that it is not is the fact that it uses imagination to consider the various material things it fancies it might be. But if it were one of these things, it would not need imagination, for nothing is more directly present to the soul than itself.1200

Ghazali Galen's view continued to provoke reaction among Islamic philosophers, but for a different reason. If even our reason were dependent on bodily blends, as Galen says, it would perish at death, and this leads to the view that, with no punishment to be feared in the next life, we can abandon ourselves to our passions like beasts.1201

Implications For Non-Cognitive Therapy So much for the dependence of the soul and of emotions on bodily blends. We have already seen that the idea has implications for emotional therapy and leads Posidonius and Galen, following Plato, to

1200

Augustine On the Trinity 10. 10. 14–16.

1201

Ghazali's autobiography Deliverance from Error, § 32, trans. R. J. McCarthy, Freedom and Fulfilment (Boston, 1980). Reference kindly supplied by Fritz Zimmermann.

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insist on the right diet, and on a whole regimen, covering the expectant mother and the child, of exercise, rest, sleep, and wordless music. To this Plato adds the child's whole aesthetic environment, as Myles Burnyeat has emphasized:1202 painting, weaving, embroidery, architecture, and furniture. To complete the account of non-cognitive therapies, I should draw attention to some of the others that flourished. Some were physiological.

Other Physical Therapies Porphyry's rejection of meat to forestall lust is one kind of physical therapy,1203 and there was a Pythagorean tradition that a sparse, vegetarian diet promotes virtue, health, reason, and prophetic power and reduces the need for sleep.1204 Plotinus too is said to have shortened his sleep by a reduced diet.1205 Breathing exercises are found in the magical papyri.1206 They are of a hyper-inflationary kind, designed to give you the impression of being lifted into mid-air and of seeing the gods.

Other Non-Judgemental Therapies Some therapies were cognitive without being judgemental. Epicurus, we have seen, treats distress not only by switching belief, but also by switching attention; the Pyrrhonian sceptics not by switching belief, but by suspending it.1207 Porphyry's regimen of avoiding temptation will not directly produce the right thoughts, but is meant to prevent the wrong ones.1208

Behaviour Therapy Behaviour therapy often overlaps with cognitive therapy, but there is an interesting example in which it does not, in Socrates'alleged

1202

Plato Republic 401 A –D , on which see Myles Burnyeat, ‘Art and Mimesis in Plato's Republic ’, London Review of Books (21 May 1998), 3–9.

1203

Porphyry Abstinence, e.g.1.32.

1204

Photius, Bibliotheca 249, Life of Pythagoras Henry vol. 7, 439 24 ff. Bekker; Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life 3.13; 16.68; 24.106; 30.186; 31.187; Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana book 6, ch. 11; book 8, ch. 7, vol. 2, pp. 40–2, 320–2 Conybeare (Loeb edn.). See J. Haussleiter, Der Vegetarismus in der Antike (Berlin, 1935), 127–44.

1205

Porphyry Life of Plotinus 8.

1206

Papyri Graecae Magicae 4. 538 ff. I owe the reference to Sara Rappe.

1207

Sextus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1. 25–30; see David Sedley, ‘The Motivation of Greek Skepticism’, in Myles Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 9–29.

1208

Porphyry Abstinence is discussed in the next chapter.

a

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technique for avoiding anger. He did so simply by changing his demeanour: So whenever Socrates noticed himself being moved to treat a friend rather roughly, he took in his sails ‘before the storm along the headland’, lowered his voice, put a smile on his face, softened his gaze, and stopped himself falling and being beaten, by leaning the other way and tilting against the emotion.1209 This idea was taken much further by William James's thesis: We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble.1210 It has been repeatedly confirmed by modern studies of facial expression, posture, and gaze that feedback about these can affect emotion.1211 The success of behavioural therapy appears to have a neural basis.1212 Much more commonly, behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy overlap. The Pythagorean practice borrowed by Seneca of looking in a mirror to avoid anger1213 depends on a cognition as well as on behaviour. You have to notice that anger makes you ugly. Admittedly, Socrates' behaviour in smiling might eventually lead to a change of judgement about wrong suffered and the appropriateness of retaliation. But looking in a mirror effects such a change of judgement via an intermediate recognition of ugliness. Socrates' smiling does not depend on an intermediate cognition, and so is a behavioural therapy without being cognitive. We have encountered other examples of behavioural therapy too; Plutarch's exercises for eliminating curiosity and complaisance, Seneca's partly physical therapies borrowed from the Pythagoreans about avoiding soft pillows and hot baths. These were precautionary disciplines practised in advance, and it is less clear how far their efficacy depended on intervening judgements.

1209

Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 455 A –B .

1210

James, Principles of Psychology.

1211

P. Ekman, ‘Facial Expressions of Emotion: New Findings, New Questions’, Psychological Science, 3 (1992), 34–8; id., ‘Facial Expression and Emotion’, American Psychologist, 48 (1993), 384–92; James D. Laird and Nicholas H. Apostoleris, ‘Emotional Self-control and Self-perception: Feelings are the Solution, Not the Problem’, in Rom Harré and W. Gerod Parrott (eds.), The Emotions (London, 1996), 285–301; J. D. Laird and C. Bresler, ‘William James and the Mechanisms of Emotional Experience’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16 (1990), 636–51; P. K. Adelman and R. B. Zajone, ‘Facial Efference and the Experience of Emotion’, Annual Review of Psychology, 40 (1989), 249–80.

1212

See LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, 295.

1213

Seneca On Anger 2. 36. 1.

18 Sex, Love, and Marriage In Pagan Philosophy and the Use Of Catharsis Before I leave the subject of the value and therapy of the emotions, I want to consider the value put on erotic emotions. This not only reveals the difficulties felt by the Stoics on that subject, but uncovers the huge variety of attitudes taken by the pagan Greek philosophers. It thus provides a contrasting background for the very particular view that Augustine stamped on the Western Christian tradition, which will be the subject of Chapter 26.

The Variety Of Views In pagan philosophy being in love (erōs), sex(aphrodisia, sunousia, mixis, sunkoimēsis), marriage (gamos), and having children came apart. Each could be advocated without the others. This was not the case in early Christian thought, nor was it acknowledged as acceptable in the Christian milieu of my own childhood. But I think it is once again widely accepted in the English-speaking countries. Indeed, new permutations are being explored such as homosexual marriage and surrogate motherhood. A difference, however, in the ancient philosophical texts is that the perspective is almost exclusively male, so that it is necessary, for example, to talk about their views on the wise man, rather than on the wise person.

Sex, Being In Love, Marriage, and Having Children Come Apart The separation of the four can be illustrated in many permutations. In Plato's Phaedrus Plato's Socrates advocates homosexual love without sex or marriage.1214 But this is only after Plato has ascribed to the

1214

Plato Phaedrus 256 A –257 B .

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orator Lysias,1215 and put into the mouth of Socrates,1216 the opposite view, that sex is better with those who are not in love. This last is but one of many examples of sex being advocated without regard to being in love or marriage. There is another example in Plato's Republic. There Plato advocates community of women in the ideal city.1217 During the age approved for procreation, the rulers will regulate sex between whatever pairs they choose for eugenic purposes. After that age, men and women can have sex (sungignesthai) with whomever they like, provided any offspring are aborted or killed.1218 Although the word ‘marriage’(gamos) is still used for the sexual unions approved by the rulers,1219 in fact neither marriage nor being in love, as we understand them, is envisaged. For no one can say ‘mine’ of any one woman or man rather than of any other.1220 Plato's ideal of community of women is repeated by the Cynic Diogenes. Sex (suneinai) should be had with anyone by consent.1221 Diogenes downgrades not only marriage, but sex itself. For it can be dealt with most conveniently by masturbation, in his view. This is easier than reliance on women,1222 and easier than the alleviation of hunger.1223 Diogenes' Cynic pupil Crates was something of an exception, since he married a woman, Hipparchia, who was in love with him (ēra).1224 But he too reportedly debunked the sexual side of marriage by stripping to show his possessions when she insisted on marriage,1225 by copulating with her (sungignesthai) in public,1226 and by showing his son a brothel to illustrate how his marriage took place.1227 To the consternation of later Stoics, the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, who studied with Crates, accepted Plato's community of women and random sex as a practice for the wise, which would obviate the jealousies arising from adultery. This view, propounded in his Republic and by the later Stoic Chrysippus in his On Government,1228

1215

Ibid. 227 C ; 230 E –234 C .

1216

Ibid. 237 B –242 A .

1217

Plato Republic 5, 457 B –471 E .

1218

Ibid. 461 B –C .

1219

Ibid. 460 A .

1220

Ibid. 461 E –465 D .

1221

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6. 72.

1222

Galen On Affected Places 6. 15; cf. Pseudo-Diogenes Letter 44, in A.J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition (Missoula, Mont., 1977).

1223

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6.46; 6.69; Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1044 B .

1224

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6. 96.

1225

Ibid.6.97.

1226

e.g. ibid. 6. 97; Augustine Against Julian 4. 43. 8; Pseudo-Crates Letter 28 in Malherbe The Cynic Epistles. Augustine has heard that Diogenes too had sex in public, but disbelieves the story (City 14. 20).

1227

Diogenes Laertius Lives 6. 88.

1228

Ibid. 7.33; 7.131; Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge, 1991), ch 2.

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hardly takes account of being in love, if it expects to eradicate jealousy. Earlier than Diogenes, but in the same Socratic tradition, Antisthenes, who is sometimes classed as a Cynic, treated sex, marriage, and love entirely separately.1229 Marriage is chosen for procreation with eugenics in mind, but little expectation of contentment. It is good to be in love if you are wise enough to know whom to choose, but normally love is a destructive disease. Sex should be had with such women as will feel grateful for it. The advocacy of sex without regard to being in love, or marrying, comes up again in Epicureanism. The Epicurean Lucretius warns that being in love (amor) entails care, distress, a sore, frenzy, and gloom (cura, dolor, ulcus, furor, aerumna). If you feel it coming on, you should distract your attention (the Epicurean recipe) at once by having sex indiscriminately (vulgivagāque vagus venere).1230 It is only occasionally that, despite physical imperfections, love (amor) and cohabitation can succeed, provided you don't expect too much.1231 Marriage is by no means excluded. But it is treated merely as a source of children,1232 and even then Lucretius mentions, without disapproval, the practice of taking another woman for procreation if your wife is infertile.1233 The preference for sex over being in love is expressed in these lines: But it is fitting to flee the images and to frighten away from yourself what nourishes love, to turn your mind elsewhere, and to squirt the collected fluid into any chance bodies, not to retain it, wrapped up once and for all in the love of one person, thus keeping care and certain distress for yourself. For the sore quickens and is made inveterate by feeding. Day by day the frenzy swells and the gloom grows heavier, if you do not confound the first wounds by new blows and cure them while still fresh (recens) indiscriminately with an indiscriminate Venus, or cannot turn the movements of your mind elsewhere.1234

So far the ideals canvassed have been being in love without sex, or marriage, in Plato's Phaedrus, sex without being in love or marrying, elsewhere in Plato, in the Cynics, the early Stoics, and Lucretius, a

1229

Ibid. 6. 3 and 11; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 20.

1230

Lucretius 4. 1058–72.

1231

I am not quite persuaded by Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, ch. 5, that Lucretius 4.1190–1; 4.1278–87 says more than this, or advocates marriage.

1232

Lucretius 4. 1209–77.

1233

Ibid.4.1254–6.

1234

Ibid. 4. 1063–72.

276

SEX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE IN PAGAN PHILOSOPHY

debunking of sex itself by the Cynics, and marriage for procreation without being in love in Antisthenes and Lucretius. But there are further permutations in store. For marriage does not necessarily imply sex, and procreation is sometimes disfavoured even where sex is allowed. Marriage without sex is illustrated by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, who married Marcella to help bring up her children. He writes very frankly in his letter to her that he married her not as a woman,1235 and thus he keeps to the spirit of his injunction that the philosopher should not marry at all.1236 Among Christians we find praise of abstinence from sex within marriage by mutual agreement from Tertullian in the second and third centuries to Augustine in the fifth.1237 Augustine insists very strongly on the need for mutual consent before abstinence,1238 although in the case of a would-be martyr husband, the wife is very strongly pressured.1239 No praise is offered for another practice: cohabitation without sex on the part of Christian virgins known as subintroductae.1240 Much commoner than marriage without sex is the restriction that sex in marriage should be only for the purposes of, and during the period of, procreation. This idea appealed to Philo the Jew, to Musonius Rufus the Stoic, to Porphyry speaking of the non-philosopher, to various neo-Pythagoreans, and to a number of Church Fathers and lay Christians.1241 Augustine does allow health, as well as procreation,

1235

Porphyry Letter to Marcella 33.

1236

Porphyry Abstinence 2. 52.

1237

Augustine On Marriage and Concupiscence 1. 13. 12 takes Joseph and Mary as a model, but Julian doubts if there are any examples (ibid. 2. 37. 22). For further references see Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York, 1988); Elizabeth Castelli, ‘Virginity and its Meaning for Women's Sexuality in Early Christianity’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2 (1986), 61–88 at n. 90; Aline Rousselle, Porneia, trans. Felicia Pheasant from the French of 1983 (Oxford, 1988), 185–93.

1238

Augustine, e.g. New Sermon 41 (Mainz), Sermon on the Good of Marriage, ed. Dolbeau, Rev. bénédictine 102 (1992), 275 ff., (= De bono nuptiarum). I have benefited from a draft translation by Gillian Clark.

1239

Augustine New Sermon 42, ibid.

1240

Castelli, ‘Virginity and its Meaning’, nn. 91–5; Elizabeth Clark, ‘John Chrystostom and the Subintroductae’, Church History, 46 (1977), 171–85.

1241

Philo On the Special Laws 3. 113; Musonius Rufus frag. 12 Hense; Porphyry Marcella 35; Pseudo-Ocellus On the Nature of the Universe ch. 4; Sextus Sentences, version of Clitomachus 13 (=Sextus 86a); 97; 87; 116; 70 (cf. Sextus 232 and Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 3. 24); Justin Apology 1.14; 1.19 (PG 6. 347 A –350 A ;355 B –358 B ); Clement of Alexandria Paedagogus 2. 10. 90–102; Augustine, e.g. Against Julian 3. 21. 43; New Sermon 41 (Mayence) (as n. 25). This was the practice of Paulinus of Nola (Augustine Letter 31. 6), who presents it as an option to Julian of Eclanum and his bride in his Epithalamium (Carmen 25. 233–4). It had been the choice also of Paulinus' friend Melania and Valerius Pinianus, Life of Saint Melania 1, ed. D. Gorce (Sources Chrétiennes 90), pp. 131–2. Augustine accepts that Julian himself is celibate, whether his wife had retired to a monastery or was dead (e.g. Against Julian 3.14.28; 3.21.49). Augustine also ascribes post-marital celibacy to Count Valerius, to whom both he and Julian appealed to sponsor their rival views, On Marriage and Concupiscence 1. 2. 2. See Brown, The Body and Society ; Michel Foucault, L'Usage des plaisirs (Paris, 1984) and Le Souci de soi (Paris, 1984), trans. Robert Hurley as The History of Sexuality :vol.2. The Use of Pleasure, vol. 3. The Care of the Self (New York, 1985–6). Cf. Iamblichus Pythag. Life 31. 210.

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as a legitimate reason for sex.1242 He does not adopt Aristotle's quaint formula that sex in marriage after childbearing age is for health or some other reason.1243 As for procreation, we have already noticed Plato favouring sex without procreation after the eugenically preferred age in his Republic.1244 The Presocratic philosopher Democritus holds that it is better to adopt a child whose nature is known from a friend's family than to risk procreating oneself.1245 More startling is the Manichaean view, which will become relevant in Chapter 26, that procreation is much worse than sex, because it traps divine soul in the bodies of the offspring.1246 Sex does not do this if it is practised with contraception.1247 The closest thing among the pagan philosophers to a romantic view of marriage which associates it with companionship and with sex is perhaps found in Plutarch's treatise On Being in Love. Plutarch stages a debate on whether the young man under discussion should continue a homosexual relationship or marry the widow who wants him. He presents marriage as involving not just procreation but a sharing of life (homilia), and he sees sex as a treaty whose renewal enables you to put up with the annoyances of daily living.1248 Plutarch may have been drawing on the favourable Stoic attitude to marriage. He uses the same metaphor as that earlier used by the Stoic Antipater in his praise of marriage, according to which it is a genuine chemical combination, not a mere juxtaposition of ingredients. Antipater had made the point that the partners share their bodies in this way, not just their souls.1249 Although he repeats, as an inducement to males, what Euripides' Medea had expressed as a complaint, that the wife's one aim in life must be to please one person, the husband, he adds that each must give the first fruits of goodwill to the other. The Stoic Musonius Rufus goes further. Not only does he look

1242

Augustine Against Julian 4. 14. 69.

1243

Aristotle Politics 7. 16, 1335 36.

1244

Plato Republic 461 B –C .

1245

Democritus frag. 277 DK.

1246

Augustine On the Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life 2. 17.

1247

Ibid.18.15;id. Against Faustus 22. 30.

1248

Plutarch Erōtikos 769 A –B .

1249

Ibid. 769 F ; Antipater On Marriage, quoted in Stobaeus vol. 4, Florilegium, ch.67, § 25, pp. 508.8–509.4 Hense (= SVF 3. 63 at p. 255, lines 11–25).

b

278

SEX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE IN PAGAN PHILOSOPHY

for much more in marriage than procreation, which he points out does not require marriage. In marriage, he says, there should also be sharing (koinōnia), agreement (homonoia), and mutual concern (kēdemonia),1250 and husbands should abstain from extramarital sex even with unmarried women, since injustice to other husbands is not the only consideration.1251

Two Kinds Of Being In Love Two connected questions were much rehearsed in pagan philosophy. Should the wise man fall in love, and are there two kinds of being in love? Plato exerted a great influence on both questions: on the question of kinds, because he included speeches for and against being in love both in his Symposium and in his Phaedrus. Moreover, in the Symposium he has Pausanias say there are two kinds of being in love, one heavenly, one earthly.1252 Socrates is made by Xenophon to draw a similar distinction between a heavenly and a bodily kind.1253 In the Phaedrus too, Plato distinguishes different types of reaction in people in love. Some react like a four-footed beast (tetrapous), whereas others have sex seldom or never.1254 Already before Socrates, Democritus had distinguished a just kind (dikaios erōs) which desires what is admirable (kala), and warned that sexual pleasure merely creates painful need.1255 Thus a tradition arose that love has a good and a bad form. Such a distinction between good and bad love continued in at least three of the later schools, the Aristotelian, the Middle Platonist, and the Stoic. Though not in Aristotle's extant works, it is ascribed to Aristotle: Aristotle says that being in love (erōs) is a passion of the whole soul, and if reasoning prevails, it is directed to friendship, if emotion (pathos), to sexual intercourse (sunousia).1256 Again: [Aristotle says that] being in love is directed not only to sexual intercourse (sunousia), but also to philosophy.1257

1250

Musonius Rufus frag. 13 Hense, trans. Cora Lutz, ‘Musonius Rufus: “The Roman Socrates’ ”.

1251

Musonius frag. 12 Hense.

1252

Plato Symposium 180 C .

1253

Xenophon Symposium 8. 9–13.

1254

Plato Phaedrus 250 E –251 B ; 256 A –E .

1255

Democritus frags. 73; 235 DK.

1256

Hermeias, Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, p. 34. 4–6 Couvreur.

1257

Diogenes Laertius Lives 5. 31; cf. Stobaeus 2. 144. 10 Wachsmuth.

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The distinction may rather have originated in the school with Aristotle's successor Theophrastus, who disparaged being in love (erōs) in two of the surviving fragments.1258 But in a third fragment from his treatise On Being in Love he distinguishes the moderate (metriazōn) kind as gracious from the intense and disturbing kind, which is called very difficult.1259 The Middle Platonist treatise Didaskalikos makes a threefold distinction. The friendship of male couples in love may be refined (asteia). It is then free of emotion (pathos). As regards its aim (skopos), it is for the sake of the other's soul alone. It is an art (tekhnikē tis) which belongs to the rational part of the soul, an art of recognizing, winning, and putting to use another who is worthy to be loved because his intentions are directed to what is admirable (kalon). He will put him to use by transmitting the means by which the other may become perfect through practice, and his goal (telos) will be their becoming friends, not lovers. By contrast, the bad kind of being in love is for the sake of the body like that of cattle (boskēmatōdēs). The third kind desires both body and quality of soul.1260 It is not only three kinds of love that are distinguished by this Middle Platonist text. There are also three successive objectives pursued by the art of refined loving, the objectives of recognizing, winning, and putting to use the beloved. Ovid's mischievous poems The Art of Love and The Remedies of Love parody such philosophical advice, and John Dillon has pointed out that The Art of Love still divides the art into three similar objectives: recognizing, winning, and stabilizing the love.1261 One Neoplatonist source, Hermeias, says that it is the First Alcibiades, ascribed to Plato, which shows how to achieve three such objectives: discerning who is worthy of love, waiting for the critical moment, and teaching the principles of love, so that love is returned (anterōs).1262 It must be acknowledged, however, that the three objectives in Ovid, in Hermeias, and in the Didaskalikos, though similar, do not correspond perfectly. The verbal echoes are in one case positively misleading, since the descriptions

1258

Theophrastus frags. 557; 558 FGH&S, from Stobaeus Florilegium 4. 468. 4–7 Hense; Libanius Preliminary Exercises 3. 4. 1–3.

1259

Theophrastus frag. 559, from Athenaeus Sophists at Dinner 13.14, 562 E .

1260

Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 33.

1261

John Dillon, ‘A Platonist Ars Amatoria ’, Classical Quarterly, NS 44 (1994), 387–92, referring to Ovid Art of Love 1. 35–40. Another Neoplatonist author, Proclus (In Alcib. I 133. 18 ff. Westerink), takes the identification criteria in Alcibiades I to involve beauty of body and of character, the latter being shown, for example, by dissatisfaction with external goods.

1262

Hermeias In Phaedr. 207. 17 ff. Couvreur.

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of the third stage as getting love returned (anterōs) and as becoming friends instead of lovers (anti erastou) are strictly incompatible. The later Stoics are the third group to have adopted a distinction between the refined and the bad kind of being in love. The fullest report runs as follows: Some supposed being in love to be just bad, like Epicurus, who defined it as an intense desire for sex (aphrodisia) accompanied by a sting (oistros) and distress. . . .Others supposed it to be just refined (asteios), like Heracleides, who said that being in love was directed to friendship and to nothing else, although some people, as it happened (kata sumbebēkos), fell into sex (aphrodisia). The Stoics were formerly said to think that being in love was just one thing. But now I have heard of them too saying that it is of two kinds, one refined and one bad. . . .[lacuna]. . .It is an appetite (epithumia) and desire (orexis) for sexual intercourse (sunousia), according to Pausanias and to the tragedian who said, ‘Love (erōs), you blow with two winds.’ Aristotle said that being in love is a passion of the whole soul, and if reasoning prevails, it is directed to friendship, if passion, to sexual intercourse (sunousia).1263 Epicurus and the Platonist Heracleides of Pontus are the two people selected as not allowing two kinds of being in love, Epicurus because he thinks the desire for sex always essential, Heracleides because he thinks it always inessential, to being in love.

Will the Wise Man Fall In Love? The existence of two kinds of love is relevant to the further question: will the wise man fall in love? This question was particularly acute for the Stoics, given their rejection of emotion. It will be no surprise, in light of the passage just quoted and the earlier reference to Lucretius, that Epicurus is supposed to have answered ‘No’.1264 The Stoics are said to have been on the other side and to have made falling in love an activity of the wise,1265 although they exploit the distinction of a superior kind of love, as we shall see, and Panaetius warns that the non-wise cannot be trusted to avoid being carried away.1266 Positions on the issue are ascribed to many other thinkers,1267 but the views of

1263

Ibid. pp. 33.11–34.6 Couvreur (for Pausanias see Plato Symp. 180 C ). For pure (sancti) love affairs in the Stoics cf. Cicero Fin. 3. 68.

1264

Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 118.

1265

Ibid. 7. 129; Cicero Tusc. 4. 72; Stobaeus 2.115.2–4; 2.65 Wachsmuth.

1266

Seneca Letter 116. 5.

1267

Aristippus the Cyrenaic is supposed to have denied the wise would fall in love: Diogenes Laertius Lives 2. 91. This would not stop him, like Epicurus, taking a different view of sex: the same paragraph reminds us he favoured pursuing the pleasure of the moment. Heracleides, judging from the passage quoted in the text, would have taken the opposite view, that the wise may fall in love, and Aristotle is also listed as being on that side: Diogenes Laertius Lives 5. 31; Stobaeus 2. 144. 9 Wachsmuth. Antisthenes the Socratic is credited with the same restriction as Panaetius: the wise man will fall in love, but only because he knows who should be loved: Diogenes Laertius Lives 6. 11.

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the Stoics and Epicureans need more careful description. The Stoic view in particular has received different interpretations and calls for explanation.

The Stoics The Stoic view on falling in love is startling, in a way in which their view on marriage and procreation is not. Marriage and procreation are preferred indifferents, and we saw in Chapter 12 that the wise Stoic should do everything in his power to attain these, while regarding the right aim as the thing that matters, not the attainment. What is startling is the view that some Stoics take about falling in love. I say ‘some Stoics’, because Epictetus, for example, rejects erōs.1268 But other Stoics hold that the wise man will fall in love,1269 with younger men.1270 This is startling because the wise man is supposed to avoid emotion. I have already discussed in Chapter 2 whether the so-called eupatheiai and family affection are exceptions to this. Is Platonic love an exception? In fact, the Stoics appeal to the idea of a superior kind of love. The Stoic wise man will fall in love with younger men, but the definitions are very carefully crafted to make sure that his love at least will not involve emotion. One point that leaps to the eye at once, although it is not on its own decisive, is that being in love is often defined not as an emotion (pathos), but as an epibolē.1271 An epibolē is in turn defined as an impulse preceding an impulse,1272 and I believe we can see what the two impulses are. The full definition of being in love is an epibolē for making friends because of the appearance of beauty. So the first impulse is for making friends, but for what is the second?

1268

Epictetus 3.13.10; 4.1.15–18.

1269

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 129; Stobaeus 2.115.2–4; 2.65 Wachsmuth; Cicero Tusc. 4. 72; cf. Plutarch On Common Notions 1073 C .

1270

Stobaeus 2.66.6–8; 2.115.2 Wachsmuth; Sextus Against the Mathematicians 7. 239; Plutarch On Common Notions 1073 C .

1271

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7.113 (= SVF 3. 396); 7.130; Stobaeus 2.66.11–13 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 717); 2.91.15–16 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 395); 2.115.1–2 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 650); Cicero Tusc. 4. 72 (= SVF 3. 652); Sextus Against the Mathematicians 7. 239 (= SVF 3. 399); Pseudo-Andronicus On Emotions 4(= SVF 3. 397); Alexander In Top. 139. 21 (= SVF 3. 722).

1272

Stobaeus 2. 87. 18 Wachsmuth.

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Here I conjecture1273 there will be different answers in the case of the wise man and of the fool. The fool, no doubt, will be making friends in order to have sex. But there is evidence that the wise man makes friends in order to inculcate virtue, and this inculcation will be his second impulse. Thus it is said that the wise man will fall in love with those who through their demeanour (eidos) show a natural bent (euphuia) towards virtue.1274 There is, as in Platonism, a special virtue connected with being in love (erōtikēaretē).1275 This virtue is the scientific understanding of hunting for young men with a natural bent, and it encourages people to virtue and1276 in general to an understanding of how to be in love in a noble way. It is explicitly said that this kind of being in love is not an appetite (epithumia), but only an epibolē.1277 I have already suggested in Chapters 2 and 13 that, rather than being a pathos, it is best classed as a eupatheia. This is one part of the explanation of why this kind of being in love involves no emotion. The point just made is that the second impulse is not an appetite for sex, but an impulse to inculcate virtue. The further point is that all emotion, appetite included, involves erroneously judging something to be good (or bad). But the wise Stoic knows that sex is indifferent, and so is being in love,1278 in so far as it can take the wrong form. At the same time, he is perfectly correct in supposing that the virtue inculcated in the right form of love is a genuine good. So his impulses are unlike emotions in that they involve no misevaluation of an indifferent as if it were a good. But why, it may be asked, does Diogenes Laertius speak of being in love as not only an epibolē, but also an appetite (epithumia) for the Stoics? The answer is that he is explicitly speaking about the kind of being in love that the wise man avoids. There is no confusion here. The second impulse in this inferior kind is indeed an appetite for sex. The passage runs: But being in love is an appetite (epithumia) not concerning good people, for it is an epibolē for making friends because of the appearance of beauty.1279

1273

I am venturing a different interpretation from that of Brad Inwood, both in his Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism and in his ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’, in Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, 57–69.

1274

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 129 (= SVF 3. 716). The demeanour (eidos) is a requirement additional to the appearance of beauty.

1275

Stobaeus 2.65.18; 2.66.3 Wachsmuth.

1276

Ibid. 2. 66. 6–8. The manuscripts have ‘to a virtuous general understanding’.

1277

Ibid. 2. 66. 11–12.

1278

Ibid.2.66.10.

1279

Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 113.

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This inferior kind of love is an emotion or appetite, because being in love insists on seeing its objective as something good, which in the ordinary case it is not. There would presumably be no objection to wanting sex, provided sex was seen as a preferred indifferent, not as something good. Such a desire would be parallel to the wise man's love for his family, which I discussed in Chapter 2. For there too the Stoic attitude is to foster the welfare of your family as a preferred indifferent, and there too such an attitude avoids emotion.

The Epicureans As regards the Epicureans, I have already said that Lucretius' exposition of Epicurus is opposed to falling in love. It has nothing against sex as a palliative, although it does ridicule the expectations which lovers have of sex.1280 It treats marriage as a source of procreation, but not one from which contentment can particularly be expected. On falling in love and on marriage this agrees quite well with what we know independently about Epicurus. We have seen that he defined being in love as something bad. He also denied that the wise man would marry except in special circumstances (kata peristasin), or have children.1281 What is less clear is what Epicurus thought about sex. The hostile tradition was that he had sex (suneinai) with courtesans (hetairai) called Tits (Mammarion), Pleasure (Hēdeia), Lovey (Erōtion), and Little Victress (Nikidion).1282 This would fit very well with the view of sex as a palliative which we have found in Lucretius. A scholiast on a text of Aristotle tells us that Epicurus distinguished the appetite for sex (epithumia tōn aphrodisiōn) as natural, but not necessary, from appetite for food and clothing, which is both natural and necessary, and from the appetite for particular kinds of food, clothing and sex, which is neither natural nor necessary, but a reflection of empty beliefs.1283 That sex is not necessary to preserve one's own life could be one rationale. But the Epicureans distinguished necessity for life

1280

Lucretius 4. 1084–120.

1281

Hermeias, Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus p. 33. 11 Couvreur (Tad Brennan's emendation of the irrelevant kai diatrapēsesthai to kai paidia traphēsesthai, ‘and will rear children’, improves the sense: ‘Epicurus on Sex, Marriage and Children’, Classical Philology, forthcoming); Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 119.

1282

Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 7. The names are well rendered by Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, ch. 5.

1283

Scholium on Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1118b 8 =Usener, Epicurea, 456.

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from necessity for health, happiness,1284 or freedom from discomfort or pain (algēdōn).1285 From these points of view sex could have been treated as necessary, as it is by Plato in the Republic.1286 So far, there is no clash with what Lucretius tells us. But there is evidence of a much more austere view in Epicurus. He is said to believe that sexual intercourse (sunousia) never benefited (oninanai) anybody and you should be glad if it does not actually harm you.1287 And the later Epicurean Philodemus warns that sex is itself a source of pain.1288 But there need still be no clash with Lucretius. In Epicurus, the danger may be that sex can lead you to fall in love. If so, his attitude will still be in line with that in Lucretius, because Lucretius too wanted sex to be casual. No doubt Epicurus' caveat will have been used, without further explanation, in efforts to defend the school from charges of immorality.

The Neoplatonists: Porphyry and Iamblichus There are new developments in the Neoplatonists, and in particular a controversy between Porphyry and Iamblichus. Porphyry's views have already been mentioned. The philosopher should not marry.1289 Porphyry married a widow only to help raise her children and wrote to her that he did not marry her as a woman.1290 The Neoplatonist way of life requires us to abstain from sex (aphrodisia) because it is incompatible with using the intellect,1291 and he approves the holy men who have forbidden sex.1292 He tells his wife, Marcella, that the gods have ordered us to abstain,1293 and that one should never use the parts of one's body for mere pleasure.1294 One of the reasons for his vegetarianism is that we should abstain from foods which stir up lust.1295 He describes how we may progress from moderating emotions (metriopatheia) towards being free of them (apatheia). We must start by not indulging in sex (aphrodisia), even unchosen sex (aproaireton), unless

1284

Philodemus On Choices and Avoidance, ed. and trans. V. Tsouna-McKirahan and G. Indelli (Naples, 1995), col. 6, ch. 2.

1285

Scholium on Epicurus'Kuriai Doxai 29, at Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 149.

1286

Plato Republic 558 D –559 C .

1287

Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 118, and the other texts gathered in Usener, Epicurea, 62: Clement of Alexandria Paidagogus 2. 10, p. 84. 41; Porphyry Abstinence 1. 52; Galen, The Art of Medicine ch. 24 (vol. 1, p. 371 Küuhn); Galen Commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics 3, 1. 4 (vol. 17/1, p. 521 Kühn). The traditional interpretation is defended against Jeff Purinton by Brennan, ‘Epicurus on Sex, Marriage and Children’.

1288

Philodemus On Anger col. 7. 24.

1289

Porphyry Abstinence 2. 52.

1290

Id. Marcella 33.

1291

Id. Abstinence 1. 41.

1292

Ibid.4.20.

1293

Id. Marcella 28.

1294

Ibid. 35.

1295

Id. Abstinence 1.32; 2.45.4.

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perhaps merely in dreams.1296 It has been conjectured that Porphyry wrote a treatise, now lost, On the Chaste Life and that Jerome took from here the catalogue of virgins he put into his treatise Against Jovinian, although he was not willing to name his pagan source.1297 Iamblichus probably attended Porphyry's lectures,1298 but despite Porphyry having dedicated a book to him (On ‘Know Thyself ’), Iamblichus attacks Porphyry sometimes with unconcealed disdain. Iamblichus was interested enough in marriage to write a book, of which one fragment survives, On the Use of Marriage. Each philosopher wrote a Pythagorean Life.1299 But while Porphyry acknowledges that Pythagoras had a wife and children, he makes Pythagoras say that sex is like the song of the Sirens.1300 Iamblichus, by contrast, has Pythagoras make a speech on marriage to the people of Croton and describe children as like a treaty for the parents.1301 Iamblichus answers the questions which Porphyry had posed in his Letter to Anebo for Egyptian religious practice. The magisterial reply purports to come from Anebo's teacher.1302 That piece of one-upmanship against Porphyry is augmented by another, if the teacher's name, Abamon, meant in Egyptian Father of God,1303 a title reserved by Porphyry for someone who has reached the highest level of virtue.1304 Iamblichus' treatise is called On the Mysteries of the Egyptians. He has Abamon address Porphyry as ‘you’, and explain that he is offering arguments addressed to the intellect on Porphyry's account, although he does not think this the most appropriate approach.1305 Porphyry had expressed a worry that the gods were made to tempt people through magic to have sex. Iamblichus' reply is entirely relaxed,

1296

Id. Sentences 32.

1297

Ernst Bickel, Diatribe in Senecae Philosophi Fragmenta (Teubner edn; Leipzig, 1915), vol. 1.

1298

If akēkoa at Iamblichus On the Soul ap. Stobaeum 1. 375. 24, p. 375. 24 Wachsmuth, means ‘heard’, not ‘heard of ’: Schroeder and Todd, Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect, 22–5, referring to work of 1942 and 1967 by P. Moraux, of 1982 by R. Goulet, and of 1984 by P. Thillet. Most recent is D. M. Schenkeveld, ‘Prose Usages of akouein “to Read’ ”, Classical Quarterly, NS 42 (1992), 129–41.

1299

Iamblichus' is called On the Pythagorean Life, Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras.

1300

Porphyry Life of Pythagoras 39.

1301

Iamblichus Pythagorean Life 9. 47.

1302

Iamblichus On the Mysteries of the Egyptians 1. 1. Iamblichus' text is being translated by John Dillon and others.

1303

H. D. Saffrey, ‘Abamon, pseudonyme de Jamblique’, in Robert B. Palmer and Robert Hamerton-Kelly (eds.), Philomathes: Studies and Essays in Memory of Philip Merlan (The Hague, 1971), 227–39, repr. in Saffrey, Recherches sur le Néoplatonisme après Plotin (Paris, 1990), 95–107.

1304

Porphyry Sentences 32.

1305

Iamblichus Myst. 1.2, p. 6.10; p. 7.6; cf. 5.13, pp. 216.16–217.2.

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its burden being that this is done only by humans, bad demons, and ghosts.1306 The most striking contrast, for our purposes, comes when Iamblichus answers Porphyry's question about why the ritual practices of ‘theurgy’ treat the gods as if they had emotions. Iamblichus' reply takes us back to Aristotle's theory of catharsis, discussed in Chapters 1 and 5 above. He refers to obscene sights and sounds in religious rituals and to the setting up of phalli and the uttering of obscenities (aiskhrorrhēmosunē, tōn aiskhrōn rhēsis),1307 and he offers two justifications. Either the obscene language may work as an aversion therapy, turning people's desires towards the beautiful instead, or it can work like catharsis in tragedy and comedy. (This is the fullest surviving reference to Aristotelian catharsis since he applied it to the theatre some 650 years earlier, as will be seen in the next chapter). The idea is that a moderate exercise (metrios energeia) of our emotions can make them moderate, which is the Aristotelian ideal, and then (if this is what is meant by apopauesthai and apallagē) rid us of them, as required by the Stoics. The standard Neoplatonist view is that these should be successive stages in our progress. Again the question admits another rationale too. When the power of human emotions (pathēmata) in us is everywhere confined, it becomes stronger. But when it is brought to exercise (energeia) briefly and to a moderate (summetros) extent, it rejoices moderately (metriōs) and is satisfied. By that means it is purged (apokathairesthai) and ceases (apopauesthai) by persuasion, and not in response to force. It is by this means that, when we see the emotions (pathē) of others in comedy and tragedy, we still our own emotions and make them more moderate (metriōtera) and purge them (apokathairein), and in sacred rites, through the sight and sound of obscenities, we are freed from the harm that comes from actual indulgence (erga) in them. So things of this sort are embraced for the therapy of our souls and to moderate the evils which come to us through the generative process, to free us from our chains and give us riddance (apallagē).1308

Porphyry too believes in persuasion rather than force,1309 but the contrast between Iamblichus' view and his own as expressed in his On Abstinence from Animal Food could hardly be greater. Porphyry too speaks of aiskhrorrhemosunē, obscene language, but his point is that one must avoid it at all costs.1310 Similarly, one must avoid the

1306

Ibid. 4. 11–13.

1307

Ibid. 1. 11, pp. 38.13–40.8.

1308

Ibid. 1. 11, pp. 39.14–40.8.

1309

Porphyry Abstinence 1.32.1; 1.38.2.

1310

Ibid. 1. 34. 2.

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sight of things like food which arouse the passions.1311 This avoidance of all temptation is almost the opposite of Iamblichus' idea that an actual exercise (energeia) of the emotions, if moderate, can rid us of them. Porphyry's strategy of avoidance recurs in his idea that we must avoid killing animals, because this will help prevent us being led on to inhumanity to our fellow humans.1312 He is a little embarrassed, however, that Plato had recommended getting experience in handling lust no less than fear.1313 Porphyry is more attracted to avoiding experience, and rather grudgingly says: And one should be wary about a struggle and, let me say, even a victory too, if it is based on experience as well as about lack of practice based on inexperience.1314

The obscene element in pagan religious ritual remained a pressure point. Augustine attacks it unsparingly, while acknowledging that he had gone to watch as a young man.1315

1311

Ibid. 1.32; 1.35; 1.37; cf. 1.45.3.

1312

Ibid. 3.20.7; 3.26.6–7.

1313

Plato Laws 647 D . Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 20 reports the further argument that there is credit in eschewing pleasure only if you have experienced it. His own view, like Porphyry's, is that one should avoid pleasure and the foods which arouse lust.

1314

Pophyry Abstinence 1. 35.

1315

Augustine City 2.4–6; 2.26.

19 Catharsis and the Classication Of Therapies Iamblichus brings us back, not for the first time, to Aristotle's best-known therapy, the process of emotional catharsis. My suggestion in Chapter 5 was that Seneca's discussion of first movements incorporates an unnoticed reply. The theory of catharsis is normally taken as Aristotle's defence of the poets against Plato, who regretfully banned them from the ideal society because they stir up emotions. Aristotle's point is that stirring up emotions in the theatre is a good thing, because it provides catharsis of the emotions. All I shall attempt in this last chapter on the value and therapy of emotions is an account of what catharsis might relieve us of, if, as I believe, it gives a form of relief, and a sketch of the later history of the theory. This will lead in Olympiodorus to a general classification of therapeutic methods. Therapy is not Aristotle's word, but notoriously he uses a medical analogy in describing catharsis. The fullest surviving description of catharsis in his work comes in a discussion of the effects of music, not drama, in the Politics. The passage cross-refers to his discussion of poetry, presumably to a passage now lost, for a clearer account of what catharsis is. So the present account is meant to be relevant to tragic catharsis as well. It describes how those who experience ecstasy, or pity, or fear, or other emotions can all alike secure the same result, viz. catharsis, as a result of ecstatic or cathartic melodies. Even though Aristotle is only drawing an analogy when he says it is as if (hōsper) people were getting healing and catharsis, and that they get a sort of(tis) catharsis and lightening, I do not think we can overlook Bernays's point1316 that the reference to healing and being lightened shows the analogy is with medical purging by laxatives or emetics.

1316

Jacob Bernays, ‘Aristotle on the Effect of Tragedy’, excerpt translated by Jonathan and Jennifer Barnes in Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, vol. 4, pp. 154–65, from Zwei Abhandlungen über die aristotelische Theorie des Drama (Berlin, 1880; originally Breslau, 1857). In the full version Bernays cites Proclus In Remp. 1, pp. 49–50 Kroll, which is translated below.

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It is not only the reference to medicine, but also the reference to catharsis, which is treated as an analogy (hōsper, katharsis tis), and indeed early in the passage Aristotle takes the reference to catharsis as calling for explanation. So he does not suppose it to be already clear independently of the appeal to medicine. I take this to imply that catharsis in the case of ecstasy, pity and fear, like medical catharsis, at least involves getting rid of something. And we can see from the passage that there is something to be got rid of, for Aristotle is talking of a predisposition to emotion which needs correcting, not only in the case of ecstatics, but also in those disposed to pity and fear. I shall need to reply shortly to some of the objections that have been raised against this conclusion. But provided the analogy with medicine is not taken further than this (and sometimes it has been taken too far), many of the insights of the alternative interpretations can, I think, be accommodated. Before I come to objections, I must do some other things, and first of all must quote the Politics passage: We accept the classification of melodies that some philosophers give who arrange them as ethical, practical, or ecstatic (enthousiastika) and who allocate the corresponding character of the modes to different places corresponding to each of these melodies. We also say that music should be used to procure not one benefit but several. It should be used both for education and for catharsis (what we mean by catharsis we shall say now without going into detail, but more clearly later in the discussion of Poetry) and thirdly as a pastime, to relax us (anesis) and give us rest from tension (tēs suntonias anapausis). For these reasons all the modes must clearly be used, not all in the same way, but the ethical ones for education, and both practical and ecstatic ones for listening to others performing. For the emotion which occurs strongly (iskhurōs) in some souls exists in all, but makes less difference to some people and more to others (hētton, mallon), for example pity and fear and again ecstasy. For some people are possessed by this movement, and when they use melodies which make the soul frenzied (exorgiazein), we see them restored (kathistasthai) by the sacred melodies as if (hōsper) they got healing and catharsis. This same thing, then, must happen also to those disposed to pity, or to fear, or to any emotions in general, and to others in so far as (kath' hoson) any such emotions fall to their lot. All must get a sort of (tis) catharsis and be lightened (kouphizesthai) together with pleasure. And similarly, the cathartic melodies too give harmless joy to people.1317 Before going further, I want to consider what might be got rid of

1317

Aristotle Pol. 8. 7, 1341b 32–1342a 16.

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in the case of tragedy and comedy. Aristotle's discussion of comedy is lost, although a bald summary from the sixth century AD has been identified and a hypothetical reconstruction attempted.1318 I shall suggest that what comedy rids us of will be not just an excess of the desire to laugh, but the excess of contempt which in his view lies behind that desire. As for tragedy, I shall suggest that besides ridding us of any excess of pity and fear, it also rids us of an excess of grief.

Aristotle On Laughter and Grief If Aristotle defended laughter as having a cathartic effect, his will have been a comparatively rare voice. Although some philosophers allowed laughter in connection with mockery, the predominant attitude to laughter in much of ancient philosophy, and still more in the Church Fathers, was disapproval. Aristotle connects wit with a sense of superiority. In the Poetics he describes comedy as imitating mistakes (hamartēma) and unseemliness (aiskhos), which is not painful or destructive.1319 This is kinder than Plato's account of comedy in terms of the pleasure taken by jealousy (phthonos) in the self-delusions of others.1320 Aristotle treats wit (eutrapelia) as a minor kind of virtue,1321 and defines it in the Rhetoric as an educated insolence (hubris),1322 while insolence is described as being exercised simply for the pleasure of being superior (huperekhein).1323 Thomas Hobbes translates the Rhetoric as saying that wit is contumely, and himself defines laughter as ‘sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly’.1324 Aristotle's connection of wit with superiority had been further reinforced by Cicero's claim that laughter arises from our perception of unseemliness (turpitudo, deformitas),1325 and by Quintilian's describing laughter (risus) as not far from derision (derisus).1326 This leaves

1318

Janko, Aristotle, Poetics, based on the Tractatus Coislinianus, which Janko also translates. Cf. Lane Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (Oxford, 1924).

1319

Aristotle Poet. 5, 1449 32–7.

1320

Plato Philebus 48 A 8–50 B 6.

1321

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 4. 8.

1322

Id. Rhet. 2. 12, 1389 11–12.

a

b

b

1323

Ibid. 2. 2, 1378 23–8.

1324

These points, including the comparison with Hobbes, are well made by Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion, 20–1; Quentin Skinner, lecture in Oxford, drawing on material which now appears in ch. 5 of his Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996).

1325

Cicero De oratore 2. 58. 236.

1326

Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 6. 3. 7–8. See Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, ch. 5, and Michael Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (London, 1995), 56–7.

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little room for laughter at oneself, which Quintilian confines to boors (6. 3. 82). Aristotle himself is recorded as having practised mockery and as having a mocking look (mōkia).1327 I conjecture that what would have been reduced by comedy, along with the urge to laugh, if Aristotle intended the medical metaphor, would be the tendency towards contempt. This can be taken as supporting the suggestion of D. W. Lucas that one of the emotions to be purged by comedy might be scorn.1328 The connection Aristotle makes between laughter and contempt also provides some substance for the Islamic misunderstanding, so beautifully described in Borges's short story, according to which comedy is satire.1329 It does nothing, however, for the companion misunderstanding, according to which tragedy is eulogy. Besides laughter, I want to mention only grief. I suggest that Aristotle means to include grief among the emotions that benefit from catharsis when he talks of ‘such’ emotions, in his definition of tragedy as: accomplishing through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions (tōn toioutōn pathēmatōn).1330 If under ‘such’ emotions he includes grief, this would solve the puzzle why people should need their pity subjected to catharsis. Aristotle speaks in the passage quoted from the Politics of people predisposed to pity, fear, and other emotions. But whereas it is plausible that many people go around with too much fear, it surely is not so common for people to go around with too much pity. A solution is suggested by a passage in Plato to which Aristotle is undoubtedly reacting. Before banning the poets from his ideal city, Plato complains that they appeal to the wailing part of the soul (to pepeinēkos tou dakrusai te kai apodurasthai, to thrēnōdes, to eleinon). The important point is that pity and grief are combined in this single part of the soul, and Plato thinks that this is what is insidious. Our reason relaxes its guard over the wailing part because there is no shame in enjoying contemplating another person's grief and praising and pitying him. The trouble, Plato thinks, is that this has consequences for our own

1327

Philodemus On Rhetoric col. 48. 36, in Vol. rhet. vol. 2, p. 50 Sudhaus; Aelian Var. Hist. 3. 19.

1328

D. W. Lucas, Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford, 1968), 288. Lucas also considers here, on the basis of Iamblichus Myst. 1. 11, whether another might be erotic feeling.

1329

Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Averroes' Search’, in Labyrinths (1962).

1330

Aristotle Poet. 6, 1449b 27–8.

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grief, because we cannot restrain this part of the soul in our own suffering, if we have nourished it in that of others.1331 Aristotle's theory of catharsis is, of course, a reply. Tragedy does good because it effects catharsis of such emotions. And which emotions? If he is to answer Plato, he will need to combine grief with pity. The idea will be that we come into the theatre with too much grief, not pity. But by arousing pity in the theatre we subject to catharsis not only the newly aroused pity but also the original grief with which Plato has bound pity so closely. This interpretation would put Aristotle in agreement with his contemporary, the comic poet Timocles. For Timocles says that the role of tragedy is to show the suffering of others and so lighten (kouphizein) one's own burden. His idea is that by increasing pity, tragedy reduces not some antecedent pity, but antecedent grief.1332

Objections To the Purgative Interpretation This provides an answer to one of the objections to the claim that Aristotle intends catharsis as a medical metaphor.1333 Catharsis works on everyone (pasi),1334 but why should we suppose that everyone needs to be rid of an excess of emotion? This would be particularly implausible for pity, and Aristotle claims no more than that some people are too disposed to pity. But it is not implausible at all, but very true, that many people are liable to too much fear and anxiety or to too much grief. Admittedly, there will be one important exception, since Aristotle's people of virtue will have the right emotional dispositions. But it would be irrelevant for Aristotle to consider this exceptional case, if his aim is to answer Plato, because his point will be that tragedy need not corrupt people as Plato alleged. It was the non-virtuous for whom this was posed as a danger by Plato, and all Aristotle needs to say is that the non-virtuous stand on the contrary to benefit from tragedy in the way specified. This is not to exclude that the virtuous may benefit in other ways. Another class of people who will not stand to benefit in the way specified are those who are deficient in pity, fear, and grief. But not

1331

Plato Republic 606 A –B .

1332

Timocles frag. 6, p. 453 Kock (Attic. Com. vol. 2).

1333

Objections have been very usefully collected in three outstanding discussions: Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle's Poetics (London, 1986), 191–4, 354; Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 1986), 502; Jonathan Lear, ‘Katharsis ’, Phronesis, 33 (1988), repr. in A. Rorty (ed.), Aristotle's Poetics (Princeton, 1992), 315–40 (see p. 317).

1334

Aristotle Pol. 1342a 14–15.

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only will this class be very small, especially as those deficient in fear are likely to have occasions for grief; more importantly, it is once again not a class recognized by Plato in the passages to which Aristotle is thought to be replying. Plato is concerned with the majority situation, an over-propensity to emotion. And correspondingly, Aristotle too makes no allowance for those deficient in emotion. He tells us in the Politics passage that pity, fear, and even ecstasy are found in all souls, even if in some more weakly than in others. It is sometimes said that Aristotle's medical analogy applies only to the extreme case of pathological ecstatics, but I do not read the Politics passage that way. It says explicitly that the same happens to those disposed to pity or fear as to ecstatics, it reiterates the medical analogy used for ecstatics by saying that the others too are lightened, and it repeatedly makes the difference one of degree (iskhurōs, hētton, mallon, kath' hoson). Two other significant objections to taking the analogy as medical deserve an answer. One is that the idea of using emotion to rid us of emotion would imply a homoeopathic cure, and there is no evidence that Aristotle was aware of homoeopathic cures. But, quite apart from Proclus' doubts (below) about homoeopathy, the illustration in Simplicius, also to be discussed below, of over-eating as an emetic should already have been familiar to Aristotle. There is another important objection to taking the analogy as purgative, and that is that emotions are cognitive. Indeed, I have argued in Chapter 1 that even the element of distress or pleasure in emotion is cognitive for Aristotle. But in that case, an excess of emotion is not at all like the excessive fluids to which doctors apply purges. But the answer is that Aristotle intends only the analogy that an excess of emotion is to be got rid of. Whether the theatre achieves this by cognitive or non-cognitive means he simply does not say. A cognitive mechanism would be the only plausible one, but that could in its turn alter the physiological processes which in Chapter 1 we saw lie at the base of every emotion for Aristotle.1335 When the medical analogy is taken in this way as just an analogy, though not an empty one, it may be that the insistence on it will no longer be seen as so objectionable.

Subsequent History Aristotle's reply to Plato, though elliptical in the surviving texts, is a brilliant one, and it is on the face of it surprising that it provoked

1335

Aristotle On the Soul 1. 1, 403a 3–b 19.

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comparatively little discussion until the Neoplatonists some 600 years later. Of course there was some discussion, but how much depends on what we count as Aristotelian catharsis. There must be some restrictions, or there would be too many examples of catharsis. For the arousing of emotion can lead to its reduction in many different ways. Pity for others can lead us to count our blessings, or recognize that we are not alone in our predicament. These are offered as distinct therapies, as Chapter 15 explained. If they were taken to involve catharsis, whenever they reduce emotion by first arousing it, catharsis would be ubiquitous, and scholars have indeed located it in some of these contexts.1336 But we need to insist on more connection with Aristotle's account than that.

Stoics and Epicureans There is a fragmentary reference to Aristotle's theory of catharsis in a papyrus containing an Epicurean work by Philodemus.1337 It is less clear that it was also discussed by the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon, although that conjecture has been made on the basis of a passage in another papyrus text of Philodemus.1338 My main point about the Stoics, made in Chapter 5, was that their comparative silence about catharsis needs explaining, given their strong belief in the undesirability of emotion and their interest in the role of the theatre. I found the explanation, at least for later Stoicism, in the view which Seneca puts that the theatre, and the arts in general, do not stir up emotions at all, but only first movements.1339 In that case, the theatre cannot produce Aristotelian catharsis, so Aristotle's theory needs no further discussion.

Neo-Pythagoreans After the comparative silence of the Stoics, it is the Neo-Pythagoreans and Platonists who revive interest in the subject. It has been pointed out that there is a clear reference to the medical purging of emotions—though through education, not through the theatre—in

1336

Alexander Nicev has a rich collection of references, some closer to Aristotle than others, in L' Énigme de la catharsis tragique dans Aristote (Sofia, 1970).

1337

Philodemus, Herculaneum Papyrus 1581, which has been assigned by Richard Janko to Philodemus, On Poems, and is translated by him in Aristotle, Poetics at p. 61. The text may be summarizing Aristotle's lost On Poets.

1338

See the account of Diogenes of Babylon at Philodemus De musica col. 69*, lines 1–12 Delattre, with Janko, ‘A First Join’, 127.

1339

Seneca On Anger 2. 2. 3–6.

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a Neo-Pythagorean treatise, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress, of the first century

BC

or

AD,

The Tablet of Cebes.1340

Middle Platonism: Plutarch The subject was taken up again among Platonists by the Middle Platonist Plutarch.1341 He goes well beyond the contexts discussed by Aristotle and offers a compromise view, finding the cathartic method more useful in some cases than in others. It may be true that the lover's passion is lightened (kouphismos) by serenading and garlanding the beloved's door, and that the mourner's surrender to weeping can expel (sunexagein) much of the grief along with the tears. But anger is different, and is ignited by action or words.1342

Neoplatonism Iamblichus' advocacy of the cathartic method, to reduce erotic feelings by a moderate exercise of eroticism, has just been discussed in Chapter 18.1343 We shall also see that he ascribes to Pythagoras a cathartic use of music. But he opposes Porphyry's assumption about how music works in cases of divine inspiration. The gods themselves are present because of the kinship (oikeiotēs) of certain melodies to them. We must not with Porphyry appeal to the data of natural science and human art. It is not to be called a vomiting out (aperāsis) and purgation (apokatharsis) and medical treatment (iatreia), for the [inspiration] is not engendered in us by way of illness and excess and residues.1344

Despite the disagreement concerning inspiration, Iamblichus seems to accept Aristotle's view on the ability of tragedy and comedy to produce catharsis. A later Neoplatonist disagrees about this, for Proclus sees it as his duty, in commenting on Plato's Republic, to defend Plato's banning of the poets, and he denies that tragedy and comedy could have the cathartic effect that Aristotle claimed. He denies the possibility of

1340

The Tablet of Cebes 18. 4–20. 1, cited by Nicev, L' Énigme de la catharsis, 210–13. I owe the Pilgrim's Progress description to Michael Trapp. See his ‘On the Tablet of Cebes’, in Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, 159–80.

1341

References in Plutarch include How to Profit from Enemies, 91 F ; On Freedom from Anger 455 C ; Quaest. Conv. 657 A ; see further Van der Stockt, Twinkling and Twilight.

1342

Plutarch On Freedom from Anger 455 C .

1343

Iamblichus Myst. 1.11.

1344

Ibid. 3. 9, at 119. 15–120. 2.

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purgation (aphosiōsis) through tragedy and comedy, on the grounds that the theatre stirs up emotions violently, and not in the moderate way which Iamblichus agrees to be necessary for catharsis. Proclus also speaks as if purgation (kathareuein, aphosiōsis) would need to act as an emetic. His complaint is that the emetic effect depends on restricted activity, which bears little homoeopathic resemblance to what is being purged, and cannot be achieved through the violent emotions aroused in the theatre: The second question was the strangeness of [Plato's] expelling tragedy and comedy [from the ideal society], if these make it possible to satisfy the emotions moderately (emmetrōs), and, having satisfied them, to keep them amenable to education, by having brought therapy to the affliction. This question provided both Aristotle and the champions of statements against Plato on behalf of this type of poetry with plenty of grounds for objection. We shall resolve it in some such way as the preceding. Everything that imitates all kinds of characters is totally alien to conducting young people to good character. Because of the imitation it easily infiltrates into the minds of the audience, and because of the variety it becomes harmful to them, since whatever kind of character is imitated, someone who empathizes with the imitations must become like that. For good character is a single thing, most similar to God himself, to whom we say unitariness is particularly appropriate. So someone who is to become like such a being will need to shun the life that is opposed to singleness and be purged (kathareuein) of all variety. If so, people who are young and, because of their youth, easily moulded, must stay as far away as possible from everything that drags them down into this variety. So we shall clearly be very wary of both tragedy and comedy, which imitate characters of all sorts and strike the audience with pleasure, in case their drawing power drags what is easily led to feel sympathy and fills the children's lives with the evils that come from imitation, engendering in their souls, instead of a moderate purgation (metria aphosiōsis) in relation to emotions, a wicked and indelible disposition that obliterates what is unitary and single and leaves a mark of the opposite kind derived from the love of the diverse things imitated. These kinds of poetry are particularly directed to that part of the soul which is most exposed to emotions. One kind incites (erethizein) the love of pleasure and leads to inappropriate laughter; the other exercises the love of woe and drags that part of the soul down to ignoble lamentations. Each nourishes our emotional part (to pathētikon), and all the more, the more fully it performs its function. We too shall say, then, that the statesman must devise certain emetics (aperaseis) for these emotions, but not in such a way as to intensify our empathy towards them, but, on the contrary, so as to bridle and restrain their movements harmoniously. We shall say that those kinds of poetry possess

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297

not only variety, but also immoderation (to ametron), in the invocation of these emotions and so are far from being useful for purgation (aphosiōsis). For purgations depend not on excesses, but on restricted activity which bears little resemblance to that which is being purged.1345

Later still, however, in the sixth century, the Neoplatonist Simplicius recognizes a useful role for catharsis. He too sees it as working like an emetic. The emetic interpretation in effect combines the two methods that Iamblichus had presented as alternatives, aversion therapy and catharsis. Simplicius is explaining the problem of evil and he says that some people are allowed by God to indulge in pleasures until they reach satiety (koros) and vomit. This is said to be a kind of catharsis which heals them. And that is why teachers also do well not to oppose the desires of children all the way, but often to give in (endidonai) and sometimes to abet them, since that kind of soul cannot entirely vomit out (exemesai) those emotions, if it does not ever exercise (energein kata) them and get sated (koresthēi) by the exercise. . . . Thus health and power harm wicked people still more and are bestowed in some cases by way of correction and in others by way of retribution, in order that they may be sated (koresthentes) and worn (epitribē) by the emotions and may at last vomit the passion out (exemesai), becoming thereupon ready for correction and catharsis (katharsis).1346

But the situation in the sixth century gets a twist, because when Olympiodorus discusses this last kind of catharsis, which gives in a little in the manner of doctors and allows people to act in accordance with emotion, he associates it not with Aristotle, but with Pythagoras. Pythagoras' role must have been made more prominent by Iamblichus, whose On the Pythagorean Life describes how Pythagoras calmed people's emotions with specially constructed music, and calls this katharsis.1347 Aristotle, by contrast, is coupled by Olympiodorus with the Stoics, and both are associated with Hippocrates' medical prescription to cure opposites by opposites. The example of Aristotle stopping anger through appetite and vice versa

1345

Proclus In Remp., vol. 1, pp. 49.13–50.28 Kroll.

1346

Simplicius Commentary on Epictetus, ch. 35, p. 341, lines 455–9; ch. 38, p. 386, lines 611–15, ed. I. Hadot (=pp. 300, 391 Schweighāuser; ch. 34, pp. 291, 389 in the English translation of Stanhope (London, 1694), soon to be replaced by Tad Brennan and Charles Brittain). For the reference to vomiting cf. Proclus In Remp. 1. 50. 16–17 Kroll.

1347

Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Life ch. 15, §§ 64–6; ch. 16, §§ 68 and 70; ch. 25, § 110. I owe the references to Peter Lautner.

298

CATHARSIS AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THERAPIES

is presumably based on Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he advises the orator that people in the opposite state (enantiōs) of pleasure cannot be angry. Similarly, fear drives out pity and is often useful to the orator for producing the opposite of pity.1348 The Poetics seems to be ignored for these purposes, since this is not how Aristotle uses fear in that context. But Aristotle does advise in his Nicomachean Ethics that if you wish to correct an extreme in your character, you may need to overshoot the mean-point and aim a little way towards the opposite extreme of character.1349 Olympiodorus' further example of casting down the over-satisfied with rebukes and rousing the downcast with encouragement is a method advocated for curing pride by the Aristotelian Aristo of Ceos.1350 Hippocrates' treatment by opposites was also known to the Christians in Evagrius' circle, as will be explained in Chapter 23. In contrast with the method of curing by opposites, the method of curing pleasure by pleasure is contemptuously ascribed to the Cyrenaic Aristippus by Clement of Alexandria.1351

Therapy By Tasting, Opposites, Similars Olympiodorus offers us a general classification of therapies, including therapy by tasting, by opposites, and by similars, and slots cathartic method into his classification: Socrates' admonition is like painless purges (katharsia) and drugs steeped in honey, because he does not correct souls through opposites in the way Hippocrates gives orders to bodies, saying that opposites cure opposites. Nor like Aristotle does he encourage us to stop anger through appetite and appetite through anger, that is, by means of opposites. Nor does he [proceed] through a taste of the emotions (pathē) and the so-called ‘fingertip’, like the Pythagoreans, who say that no one could cure someone inflamed with pathē without giving in to them (endidonai) a little. . . .Socrates, then, does not correct souls by the methods of those mentioned, but rather by means of similarity. If someone is amorous, he says, ‘Learn what the love of noble things is’, if someone is avaricious, say, ‘Learn what self-sufficiency is’, if someone loves pleasure, ‘[Learn] what the true tranquillity is which the poet ascribes even to the gods, when he says “gods who live at ease”.’1352 Recognize that, as was said at the outset, there are three kinds of catharsis

1348

b

a

Aristotle Rhet. 2.3, 1380 2; 2.8, 1385 23. b

b

1349

Id. Nicomachean Ethics 2.9, 1109 1–7;

1350

Aristo of Ceos On Freeing from Pride, recorded by Philodemus On Pride, in On Vices book 10, col. 11 Jensen (Teubner edn.; Leipzig, 1911).

1351

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 20.

1352

Olympiodorus, In Alcib. I 6.6–7.8.

24–6.

CATHARSIS AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THERAPIES

299

(katharsis), Pythagorean, Socratic, and Peripatetic or Stoic. The Stoic cures opposites through opposites, leading appetite against anger, and so weakening the anger, or leading anger against appetite and so strengthening the appetite and leading it to be bolder, like bent rods which people bend the opposite way if they want to straighten them, so that the right tension will reappear as a result of the opposite twist. The Pythagorean kind bids us give in (endidonai) a little to the pathē and taste them with a fingertip, as it were. The doctors call this ‘diminution by means of a small quantity’. For they say that people inflamed with a pathos will not get clear of it until they exercise it (energein kata). . . . But Socrates' kind of catharsis leads people from similars to similars, and if someone is avaricious says, ‘Learn what true self-sufficiency is’, if a lover of pleasure, ‘what divine tranquillity is’, and just all that was said before.1353 There are five kinds of catharsis (katharsis), all five taught us by Plato in the present dialogue [Alcibiades I]. For you can be purged (katharthēnai) by escaping to sacred precincts, or to teachers, or by busying yourself with books. He taught us this kind when he said, ‘Believe me, my good man, and the Delphic inscription “Know thyself”.’ The second is through criticism, which he taught us when he resorted to attack, exposing the man's judgement based on double ignorance, and unmasking his life and [showing] what kinds of thing result from double ignorance. The third kind is Pythagorean, which is also fallible. It gives you a taste of emotions (pathē) just with the fingertip. Doctors use this kind when they employ the ‘worse in small quantity’. Plato taught us this here by saying, ‘You have something suitable for governing the city, something that naturally commands, if you were willing to embellish it by education.’ For by these words we shall heighten his ambition. The fourth kind is the Aristotelian, which cures evil with evil and brings things into proportion by the conflict of opposites. And Plato taught this kind here by sometimes casting him down with rebukes and sometimes rousing him to the heights with encouragement, and thus making him generate the definition of political science. The fifth kind, which is also the most efficacious, is the Socratic, which uses progress by means of similarity. And Plato uses this here when he says, ‘Do you love power? Learn what real power is, which cannot be taken away by a tyrant. Do you love pleasure? Learn what real tranquillity is, which is found even among the gods.’1354

1353

Ibid. 54. 15–55. 11.

1354

Ibid. 145. 12–146. 11.

300

CATHARSIS AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THERAPIES

Islamic Philosophy The idea of catharsis seems to have got lost in the medieval Islamic commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics. Avicenna's paraphrase of Aristotle's definition of tragedy omits the reference to catharsis altogether. Although a little later Avicenna reports Aristotle's view that tragedy solaces the afflicted and relieves the distressed, he takes the purpose of tragedy for Aristotle to be the enhancement of kindliness and piety.1355 Averroes' commentary preserves the reference to catharsis in Aristotle's definition, in so far as it says that tragedy moves to a moderate emotion by means of the pity and fear it generates. But nothing is made of the point. So much for the value and therapy of the emotions in non-Christian contexts. I shall come to the Christians in later chapters. But first it is time to see how different views on the nature of emotional conflict bear on the structure of the mind.

1355

Avicenna's Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, with translation and comments by Ismail M. Dahiyat (Leiden, 1974) §§ 6; 7; 16, and nn. to pp. 86, 93.

Part III Emotional Conict and Structure Of the Mind

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20 Emotional Conict and the Divided Self The next two chapters look forwards and backwards. They supply a missing piece of the Stoic controversy with others on the psychology of emotion. But they also provide a background to Christian treatments of temptation, will, and divided will. We have seen in Chapter 3 that Zeno, Chrysippus, and Seneca seem to think emotion involves akrasia, lack of control, in the sense of conflict with one's better judgement.1356 It does so at the stage when one is carried away (ekpheresthai, efferri). I have claimed that Seneca's descriptions of this lack of control in anger are highly realistic. But this creates a problem for the Stoics, because Plato had argued that such emotional conflict shows the self to be divided into different kinds (eidē) or parts of soul. Chrysippus, however, and those Stoics who follow him, believe the relevant aspect of the self, the command centre (hēgemonikon), to be free from partition. It contains not parts, but only powers, namely appearance, impulse, assent, and reason, which are no more separated from each other than the taste and smell of an apple.1357 Admittedly, appearances arrive at the command centre from the five senses, and the five senses can be described as distinct parts of the physical pneuma or spirit which constitutes the soul, as can the parts that control the voice or reproduction.1358 But the command centre itself has no parts, and three of its powers are not as distinct as they sound, since impulse is sometimes treated as a kind of assent and assent is an act of reason, as we saw in Chapter 2. To understand how Chrysippus avoids splitting the command centre, we must see why Plato insisted the soul must be split.

1356

Galen PHP 4. 4. 24, p. 256 de Lacy (akrateis, ou kratountes heautōn) ; Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1(impotens).

1357

Iamblichus ap. Stobaeum 1. 367–9 Wachsmuth; cf. 1. 352; Themistius In DA 37. 21.

1358

Proclus In Remp. 1. 234 Kroll.

304

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

Plato's Argument For Dividing the Soul Plato's argument in the Republic for dividing the soul is partly based on an analogy with his division of society, but partly on a logical point.1359 He says that the same thing would never undergo or be, or do opposites at the same time, in the same respect, in relation to the same object. Yet a very thirsty person, finding water he knows to be contaminated, can want to drink this drink1360 and want not to drink it at the same time. These are opposite states of mind related to the same drink, so it cannot be the same single thing that has these opposite desires after all. It requires further argument (which I shall not discuss) to show that there are precisely three such things, that they are in the soul, and that they are properly described as the rational (logistikon), high-spirited (thumoeides), and appetitive (epithumētikon). In his earlier work, the Phaedo, he had distinguished only two conflicting things, body and soul, and had treated the soul as unitary. His conclusion in the Republic is that there are three kinds (eidē) and that they are in the soul.1361 Later in the Timaeus he will locate them in different parts of the body, so that they become three parts of the soul.1362 But I am concerned with the logical argument, which establishes no more than that there are at least two things which have the simultaneous opposite desires. The conclusion is still a strong one. It is not the obvious point that there are different desires, but the claim that there are distinct kinds or parts which have these desires. It is much harder than one might suppose to say what, if anything, is wrong with the logical argument, but a passage in Pseudo-Plutarch helps. The question turns partly on the meaning of ‘opposites’(enantia). Aristotle defined opposites in some passages as two properties belonging in the same range (e.g. colour), but separated to the maximum distance from each other,1363 as are black and white. To take one of Plato's own examples, pushing and pulling are separated by the intermediate possibility of exerting no pressure in either direction. It is true that such opposites as pushing and pulling cannot coexist

1359

Plato Republic 436 B –440 B .

1360

Plato agrees that if you want drink you want it as a good (505 D –E , to be discussed below). But that implies only that you see it as good in some way, not necessarily as a good drink. Plato rules out the suggestion that one can only desire drink as good drink. For that would mean that the thirsty person faced with a drink known to be contaminated would have no desire for it at all (and therefore would not have opposite desires).

1361

Plato Republic 439 E ; 440 E .

1362

Id. Timaeus 69 C –72 D .

1363

Aristotle Cat. 6a 17–18; Metaph. 10, 1054b 32–1055a 16.

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

305

simultaneously, in that we cannot with exactly the same point on our own bodies push and pull simultaneously one and the same point on another body. But is this true of all opposites? What about readiness to push and readiness to pull? Why should I not have these opposite potentialities simultaneously? This point is explicitly made by Pseudo-Plutarch about opposite capacities in general. And might not opposite desires be more like opposite readinesses or capacities? Plato biases the result by comparing the two opposite desires to pushing and pulling, rather than to a readiness to push and a readiness to pull. Pseudo-Plutarch's objection deserves to be quoted: Capacities are such that, however many there may be, each is seen as belonging to the subject as a whole. But the rational and irrational do not have this relation to the soul, but are thought to be sections of the whole soul and to do different things in it. And that is for a plausible reason, that they are opposites, and for opposites to belong together in a single thing in the same respect [is thought impossible]. [But it must be considered whether this principle is] true. For perhaps nothing prevents opposites belonging together in the way described, if they are capacities (dunameis) and are not taken as activities (energeiai). It is impossible to exercise reason and unreason, or to make well and ill, both at the same time. But the capacity for making well and for making ill can belong to the same thing at the same time, and the capacity of exercising reason and of exercising unreason can belong to the soul at the same time, while the corresponding activities cannot also belong.1364

Plato's Changing Recognition Of Akrasia and Its Causes When Plato moves beyond the logical argument for a division to the further argument that we must distinguish a third part of the soul, the thumos, which exercises indignation in alliance with reason, but is distinct from it, he introduces the extra division by telling the story of Leontius: But I once heard something which I believe, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was coming up from the Piraeus under the north wall from outside and observed corpses lying beside the public executioner. At the same time he had an appetite (epithumein) to look and again felt disquiet and turned himself away. For a while he fought and [440 A] covered his face. But overcome (kratoumenos) by appetite, he stretched his eyes, ran towards the corpses and said, ‘See for yourselves, you wretches, replenish yourselves

1364

Pseudo-Plutarch, Is the Emotional Element in Humans a Part or a Capacity of the Soul?, Tyrwhitt's frag. 2 of Plutarch, ch. 2 (vol. 15, pp. 61–2 in the Loeb edn. of Plutarch).

306

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

with the beautiful sight’ . . . Now this story means that anger (orgē) sometimes makes war on the appetites, as being distinct from them. . . .So in many other cases too, when [440 B] appetites force (biazesthai) somebody against his reasoning (logismos), do we not observe him reviling himself, and directing an angry spirit (thumousthai) against that within him which is being forced (biazomenon)?1365

This passage is innovative for a new reason. It abandons an idea found in earlier dialogues and discussed in Chapter 1, that we never want to take what we think (oiesthai) to be a bad, or the less good, course of action. Some such view is several times put by Plato into the mouth of Socrates, although in the Protagoras Socrates is speaking dialectically against Protagoras, and claims only that such a view follows if we accept Protagoras' idea that ‘the pleasant is good’. The view is that it is causally impossible (not in our nature) to be willing (ethelein) to do something (the example that will concernus is looking at corpses) while making the comparative assessment (oiesthai) that another course would be better. Much the same treatment is given to acting as to willingness to act. If then, the pleasant is good no one who either knows or thinks (oietai)1366 that things other than what he is doing are better (beltiō) and possible will still do what he is doing, when it is possible to do the better. Nor is being overcome by yourself anything other than ignorance (amathia). Nor is being master of yourself anything other than wisdom. (All agreed.) What, then? Do you say that ignorance is having a false opinion and being mistaken about things that matter a great deal? (All agreed.) Then another result is that nobody voluntarily (hekōn) goes after bad things, nor after what he thinks (oietai) to be bad, nor is it, as it seems, in human nature to be willing (ethelein) to go after what one thinks (oietai) bad instead of good things. And when one is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater, when it is possible to choose the lesser.1367 A similar view recurs in dialectical contexts in Plato's Gorgias and Meno. What one really wants (boulesthai) is good, not bad. The interlocutor's rival claim that one can have an appetite for (epithumein) things one thinks and knows (hēgeisthai, gignōskein) to be harmful and bad is neither confirmed nor denied. It might be thought that the view of appetite envisaged as Socratic must be the same as what

1365

Plato Republic 439 E –440 B .

1366

I cannot accept the gloss which Gregory Vlastos has put on this expression, ‘knows or knows-and-thinks’: ‘Socrates on akrasia ’, Phoenix, 23 (1969), 71–88 at 72, repr. in his Studies in Greek Philosophy, vol. 2. Socrates, Plato and their Tradition (Princeton, 1995). The text says ‘knows or thinks’.

1367

Plato Protagoras 358 B –E .

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

307

he is made to say about action, namely that appetite is in some sense directed at what seems good (dokei), or, in the case of comparative judgements, better. But that is less than certain, because a parallel passage1368 says that appetite (epithumia) is directed at pleasure, boulēsis at the good. It is in pursuit (diōkein) of the good, then, that we walk when we walk, thinking (oiomenoi) that better (beltion), and conversely we stand when we stand for the sake of this same thing, the good. (Yes.) So we kill, if we kill anybody, and exile people and confiscate their goods, thinking (oiomenoi) it better for us to do this than not? (Quite so.) So those who do these things do them all for the sake of the good? (I say so.) Then we have agreed that what we really want (boulesthai) is not what we do for the sake of something else, but the thing for whose sake we do those things. (Yes.) Then we do not really want (boulesthai) to butcher or exile from cities or confiscate goods just like that without qualification. Rather we really want (boulesthai) to do that if it is beneficial, but if it is harmful, we do not really want it (boulesthai), since it is the good that we really want (boulesthai), as you say yourself. We do not really want (boulesthai) what is neither good nor bad, nor what is bad. Right? Do I seem to you to be speaking the truth, Polus, or not? Why do you not answer? (It is true.) Then if we agree on this, if anyone, whether a tyrant or an orator, kills another, or exiles him from the city, or confiscates his goods, thinking (oiomenos) that is better for himself, but it happens to be worse, he surely does what seems good to him (dokei). Right?(Yes.)Does he then also do what he really wants, if this happens to be bad? Why do you not answer?1369 What then? Do those who have an appetite (epithumein) for bad things, as you say, and who believe (hēgeisthai) that bad things harm the person to whom they come—they know (gignōskein) presumably that they will be harmed by them? (Necessarily so.) But do these people not think (oiesthai) that those who are harmed are more wretched in so far as they are harmed? (That too is necessarily so.) But are the wretched not unfortunate? (I think so.) Is there then anyone who really wants (boulesthai) to be wretched and unfortunate? (I don't think so, Socrates.) No one, then, really wants (boulesthai) bad things, Meno, if he does not really want (boulesthai) to be like that. For what else is being wretched than having an appetite for bad things and getting them? (You are probably right, Socrates, and no one really wants (boulesthai) bad things.)1370

The contrast could hardly be greater with the later passage quoted from Plato's Republic. In that story Leontius believes that looking at the corpses is bad, and probably the worse course of action, certainly

1368

Id. Charmides 167 E .

1369

Id. Gorgias 468 B –D .

1370

Id. Meno 77 E –78 B .

308

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

not the better. But he wants to look and he does look. The most that could be pleaded is that this is not what Leontius really wants (boulesthai). But it can hardly be maintained that he is not willing (ethelein) to look. Indeed, Plato keeps reiterating that Leontius does have such an appetite (epithumein). It is noteworthy that Plato robs himself of the device later used by the Stoics of saying that there is a rapid oscillation in Leontius' evaluations. For it is at the very moment of looking that he curses his eyes, ‘See for yourselves, you wretches, replenish yourselves with the beautiful sight.’ The story seems to contradict what was said both about action and about desire in the early dialogues, because Leontius both acts and is willing to act, in the context of a comparative assessment, when he believes this course of action bad, and does not believe it better. But Plato does still retain one element from the earlier dialogues. For he then insisted that what one really wants (boulesthai), unlike what one has an appetite for, is good. So too in this part of the Republic he maintains that no one is satisfied (arkein) with getting apparent good, but people seek (zētein) real good and the soul pursues (diōkein) and does whatever it does for the sake of (heneka) real good.1371 We are not told quite how to apply this to the case of Leontius. Another view which is still maintained by Plato, even in his later writings,1372 is that giving in to temptation is not voluntary (hekōn). The only qualification is that one may injure people voluntarily, but one is still never voluntarily unjust.1373 There is a contrast with the view of Plato's pupil Aristotle that giving in to temptation is voluntary.1374 But what is new for Plato in his Republic is that the source of involuntariness no longer has to be lack of the right opinion. Leontius has the right opinion, that it is bad to look, and he gives in to temptation not through lacking this opinion, but because he is forced (biazesthai) by the strength of his appetite. In his last work, the Laws, Plato still lists force (bia), in this case the force of spirited anger (thumos), as one of the causes of wrongdoing.1375 Aristotle responds that we cannot infer from the fact that reason and desire subject each other to force that the soul as a whole is subjected to force (bia) when

1371

Id. Republic 505 D –E .

1372

Id. Timaeus 86 D ; Laws 731 C ; 861 D 2.

1373

Id. Laws 860 C –863 A .

1374

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 7. 10, 1152 15–16; Eudemian Ethics 2. 8, 1224 26–36; cf. 3.1, 1110 9–15; 1110 24–7; 1111 24– 3; 5.8, 1135 20; 5.9, 1136 31–4.

1375

Plato Laws 9, 863 B 4.

a

b

b

b

a

b

b

a

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

309

we give in to temptation. For force is defined by him as an external cause, and the action of desire is not external to the soul.1376 The dialogues that follow the Republic not only continue to deny that wrongdoing has to be due to lack of true opinions.1377 They reveal an expanding sensitivity to the variety of ways in which we can be led into temptation. The Phaedrus offers the very subtle idea that a false opinion can exist alongside a true opinion. In resisting sexual temptation, the charioteer, representing reason, may know that the temptation is wrong. But the worse of the two horses, representing appetite, speaks to the charioteer and thinks it right (axioi) in return for its many labours to have a little enjoyment.1378 Aristotle seems to overlook this possibility when he says that opinion does not oppose right reason.1379 Among the other causes of wrongdoing, Plato's last work, the Laws, lists not only the force (bia) of anger as we have already noticed, but also pleasure, which, he says, persuades with forcible deception (apatē biaios). Mere ignorance (agnoia), the lack of true opinion, is distinguished from this deception as a third source of wrongdoing.1380 Various texts list still other alternatives to simple ignorance. There is discord (stasis),1381 lack of control (akrateia),1382 unwillingness to learn (amathia),1383 along with intemperance (akolasia) and cowardice (deilia).1384 In one respect Plato probably stays faithful to the ideas of his early Socrates. True philosophical knowledge would prevent you from giving in to temptation. When Leontius gives in he has only true opinion, not knowledge. Only in this different sense of the absence of true knowledge does ignorance remain a necessary condition for wrongdoing. Aristotle agrees explicitly with Socrates that true knowledge is not overcome by passion.1385 But Plato abandons the view he ascribed to Socrates in his early works, that true opinion is not overcome. Plato's division of the soul applies to the soul as it is in the present life, and as it will be for most people when they are reincarnated in future lives. In the Phaedrus Plato even applies his division to the

b

1376

Aristotle Eudemian Ethics 2. 8, 1224 26–36.

1377

Plato Timaeus 70 A ;71 A ; Sophist 227 D –228 E ; Laws 689 A –C ;734 B 5; 863 B –C ; 957 E 2.

1378

Id. Phaedrus 255 E .

1379

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 7. 3, 1147 2–3.

1380

Plato Laws 9, 863 B –C .

1381

Id. Sophist 227 D –228 E .

1382

Id. Laws 734 B 5.

1383

Ibid. 734 B 5; 863 C ; 957 E 2.

1384

Ibid. 957 E 2.

1385

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 7. 3, 1147b 14–17.

b

310

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

souls of the gods.1386 But he also allows that some people may escape reincarnation.1387 At the end of the Republic he suggests that the soul in its ideal state would be unitary.1388 In the Timaeus he calls the two lower parts of the soul mortal.1389 Thus the unitary soul of the earlier Phaedo is now seen as a possible future ideal.

Aristotle: How Akrasia Can Occur Without a Conict Of Opposites After Plato's expanding awareness of the many causes of giving into temptation, or going against one's better judgement, I confess to some disappointment at finding Aristotle attempting to reduce the cases to one. But he has a motive, and his attempt does involve an excellent account of the different forms inattention can take. Aristotle's main discussion of akrasia in book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics starts from Socrates' view. In so far as Socrates denies that akrasia happens, Aristotle says, his view conflicts with obvious facts, but on the other hand, Aristotle is prepared to consider Socrates' view that ignorance is responsible. He only insists that we must get clearer what sort of ignorance.1390 I think his strategy is to explain how akrasia can occur without the conflict of opposing attitudes that Plato ascribes to Leontius. This is done in 7. 3. First, we must distinguish the major premiss which in several examples represents a dietary policy, say, that one must not eat heavy food. This premiss, I take it, represents what has been chosen as a matter of policy (proairesis) after deliberation (bouleusis).1391 This premiss is known and Socrates' view is endorsed that it cannot be blotted out from our consciousness by passion. Aristotle's reason, I conjecture, is the non-Socratic one, that so much thought goes into the choice of deliberate policies that they are not likely to be blotted out in this way.1392 But the akratēs can still act against his proairesis, and this will be due to an imperfect grasp of the minor premiss,1393 which concerns matters of sense perception,1394 for example ‘This food is heavy’. Appetite for a particular food might

1386

Plato Phaedrus 246 B –249 D .

1387

Ibid. 249 A .

1388

Plato Republic 611.

1389

Id. Timaeus 69 C –E .

1390

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 7. 2, 1145b 21–9.

1391

There are two types of akratēs, one who does not deliberate at all, and one who deliberates and makes a deliberate choice, but acts against it (1150 19–22; 1151 2; 1152 18–19; a 28). It is the latter kind of person on whom Aristotle concentrates (1145b 11; 1148a 9; 1150b 30–1; 1151a 7; a 26; a 30–5; b 26; 1152a 17; a 26).

1392

Nicomachean Ethics 7.2, 1145 23–4; 7.3, 1147 14–17, to be discussed below.

1393

Ibid. 7. 3, 1146 35–1147 10.

1394

b

b

b

b

Ibid.7.3, 1147 10;

a

b

17.

b

a

a

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

311

in a variety of ways impair the realization that it was heavy. First, a person might possess the knowledge, but not use it.1395 Then he might possess it only in a way, as a person who is mad, asleep, or drunk might be said to possess knowledge.1396 This is the alternative which Aristotle favours in the end,1397 although not before trying out such other formulas as that the person does not possess the minor premiss, or possesses it in a way that does not amount to knowing it.1398 There are many states between ignorance and inattention. Aristotle envisages two rival bits of reasoning. One, I conjecture, runs ‘Avoid heavy food [a chosen policy or proairesis]. This food is heavy’. The other is specified as ‘Everything sweet is pleasant. This is sweet’. Of the minor premisses (‘This is heavy’, ‘This is sweet’), only the second is actually working, because the first is obscured by the appetite for sweetness. So when the universal premiss is present which forbids tasting, and the other premiss that everything sweet is pleasant, and this is sweet and the latter premiss is actually working, and appetite happens to be present, the one premiss tells us to avoid this, but appetite drives us. The chapter finishes: Since the last premiss (teleutaia protasis) is an opinion about perceptibles and controls action, he either does not have this, through being in a state of passion, or has it in such a way that to have it is not to know it, but to utter it like the drunk man uttering the words of Empedocles. Because the last term (eskhatos horos) is not universal and is not thought to be so much a matter of knowledge as the universal, it looks as if what Socrates was after happens. For passion does not conquer [reading periginetai]what is thought to be knowledge in the proper sense—that is not dragged about by passion—rather it conquers the perceptual knowledge.1399 In other words, the passion for sweetness is not in head-on collision with the proairesis to avoid heavy food. Instead, it works by partially blotting out the perceptual knowledge that this food is heavy. Aristotle is happy to treat an uncontrolled appetite for sweet things as a pathos, despite Galen's subsequent warning, noted in Chapter 14, that an uncontrolled appetite for cakes may not be a pathos.1400

1395

Ibid. 7. 3, 1146b 31–5.

1396

Ibid.7.3, 1147a 10–18.

1397

Ibid. 7. 10, 1152 15–16.

1398

a

a

Ibid. 7.3, 1147 7;

b

10–11.

b

1399

Ibid. 7. 3, 1147 9–17.

1400

Galen, On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul, p. 5, lines 12–14 (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1; also in vol. 5 Kühn), English version in Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Columbus, Ohio, 1963).

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There is a rival minority interpretation of Aristotle,1401 although I am not myself persuaded by it, which construes the teleutaia protasis here at 1147b9 not as the last (i.e. the minor) premiss, but as the last proposition, i.e. the conclusion, e.g. ‘Avoid this food!’ In that case, the person who gives in to temptation after all has the premisses needed, and fails only in appreciating the imperative conclusion which follows from them. I doubt myself whether teleutaia protasis can refer to the conclusion, which is elsewhere said to be an action, not a proposition,1402 and which in any case is not a perceptual proposition, as the teleuaia protasis is meant to be.1403 Moreover, an earlier passage had connected giving in to temptation with ignorance of the minor premiss,1404 and the present passage is introduced not as offering an alternative explanation, but as describing the same thing from another point of view.1405 What is true is that in a work which I believe to have been written earlier, book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle did envisage the akratēs acting with knowledge: If to treat someone unjustly is simply to injure him voluntarily, and to do it voluntarily is to do it knowing (eidōs) whom one is acting on, with what instrument and how, and if the akratēs injures himself voluntarily, then he would suffer injustice voluntarily and one could treat oneself unjustly.1406 Although Aristotle goes on to reply that in injuring oneself (blaptein) knowingly, one is not treating oneself unjustly (adikein), he does not retract the suggestion that the akratēs acts knowingly. I have argued elsewhere that the same is true of the adjacent chapter in book 5. The akratēs fits under the third category of offences along with those who knowingly (eidōs) commit an injustice, but are not unjust.1407 If, however, we return to Aristotle's main discussion of akrasia in Nicomachean Ethics book 7, it looks as if he has reverted so far in the direction of Socrates' view that there would be no need to accept Plato's argument for a division of the soul. The division was made necessary by the akratēs appearing to have opposite desires at the same time. But Aristotle's akratēs does not appear to be in opposite states. In so far as his knowledge is obliterated that the food is heavy,

1401

First proposed, so far as I know, by A. J. P. Kenny, ‘The Practical Syllogism and Incontinence’, Phronesis, 11 (1966), 163–84. See also David Charles, Aristotle's Philosophy of Action (London, 1984).

1402

Aristotle Movement of Animals 7, 701a 12; 20–4.

1403

Id. Nicomachean Ethics 7.3, 1147 10;

b

a

a

b

17.

1404

Ibid.7.3, 1147 3;

1405

Ibid. 7. 3, 1147 24.

1406

Ibid.5.9, 1136 31–4.

1407

Ibid. 5. 8, 1135b 20, discussed in my Necessity, Cause and Blame (London and Ithaca, NY, 1980), 275–8.

7.

a

a

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

313

he does not desire to avoid it. Accordingly, Aristotle rejects Plato's tripartition in On the Soul 3. 9, 432a22–b7, and distinguishes not so much parts as different capacities in the soul.1408 In spite of this, we find that Aristotle does after all use Plato's appeal to emotional conflict to show that there is a ‘nature’ (phusis) in the soul besides reason,1409 and he calls it by Plato's name, the appetitive (epithumētikon), or more generally the desiderative (kai holōs orektikon).1410 In order to justify his appeal to Plato's argument, Aristotle might need to urge that the knowledge that the food is heavy (and hence the desire to avoid it) is not completely obliterated. And indeed Aristotle does allow that the person who is mad, asleep, or drunk can be said to possess knowledge in a way,1411 while in book 5, I have claimed, he allows the akratēs to act with full knowledge.

The Stoics I turn now to the Stoics. Since Chrysippus believes that the relevant aspect of the soul, its command centre or reason, is unitary, he has to give a different account of emotional conflict. His answer is that reason is a single thing, but in emotional conflict it oscillates between rival judgements, and oscillates so rapidly that we do not notice the oscillation. We have seen in Chapter 3 that all emotion seems to be thought of by Chrysippus as involving akrasia in the sense of conflict with one's better judgement, that all emotion is thought by him to involve an oscillation of reason between conflicting judgements and that this may be why all emotion is described as a fluttering (ptoia), although that description has an earlier history.1412 The main account of oscillation is the following: Some people say that emotion is not different from reason and that there is not a distinction and struggle between two things, but a turning of unitary reason in each direction, without our noticing it because of the sharpness and speed of the change. We are not conscious that it is the same thing in our soul with which the soul naturally feels appetite, repentance, anger, fear, and is carried by pleasure towards misconduct and gets hold of itself

1408

It is rather, as Ann Mullins has suggested to me, the person who remains in control and does not have his knowledge obliterated who has opposite desires at the same time.

1409

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1. 13, 1102 13–31.

b

b

1410

Ibid. 1. 13, 1102 30–1.

1411

Ibid. 7.3, 1147a 10–18; 7.10, 1152a 15–16.

1412

Stobaeus 2. 88. 11–12 Wachsmuth (‘all’ in ‘all emotion’ represents an emendation). Earlier Plato had connected emotion with ptoia (Phaedo 68 C 9; Republic 439 D 7), and Zeno had described emotion as ptoia of the soul (Stobaeus 2. 39. 8 Wachsmuth).

314

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

again while it is being carried. For appetite and anger and fear and all such things are wrong opinions and judgements which occur not in some one part of the soul. Rather they are tiltings (rhopai), yieldings (eixeis), assents, impulses, and in general particular activities of the entire command centre, which shift in a short space of time. It is just as children's fights exhibit violence, extreme volatility, and transience, because of their weakness.1413

The oscillation described is sometimes between full-scale assents and impulses, and there needs to be assent and impulse if there is to be emotion. But it is also allowed that sometimes it is between mere inclinations to assent or dissent (tiltings and yieldings). We might agree with the Stoics that oscillation does sometimes happen. It has even been postulated as the explanation of stammering that there is an oscillation between wanting to speak and wanting not to speak.1414 But it is hard to believe that all emotion involves an oscillation and an oscillation too rapid to notice. The Stoics would have been able to give a different answer, if they had seen that, as explained above, there is a flaw in Plato's reasoning about opposites. If a readiness to push and a readiness to pull can coexist in the same arm, then perhaps in the same unitary reason we can simultaneously entertain the opposite judgements which Posidonius sees Chrysippus as postulating, that the object of temptation is beneficial and that it is not.1415 More than this, the judgements between which Seneca imagines us oscillating are not even opposites: ‘It is right for me to be avenged, because I have been injured’ and ‘I must be avenged, come what may’.1416 There should then be even less obstacle to these judgements being simultaneously entertained in a unitary reason. At least one Stoic, Posidonius, avoided the need for oscillation either between judgements, since his irrational capacities of the soul make no judgements, or between desires, since these could no doubt be simultaneously entertained by different capacities of the soul. I have discussed in Chapters 3 and 6 to what extent Posidonius may have been anticipated by earlier Stoics, by Zeno, Cleanthes, or Panaetius, in recognizing Plato's divisions. But in one respect Posidonius does not follow Plato, since he distinguishes only capacities of the soul, not kinds (eidē) or parts. To this extent he is conforming to early Stoic doctrine. The distinction between capacities and parts became important in controversy between the Stoics and Platonists.

1413

Plutarch On Moral Virtue 446 F –447 A .

1414

This is called Approach–Avoidance Theory.

1415

Galen PHP 4. 5. 42–3, p. 268 de Lacy, discussed in ch. 6.

1416

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

315

The latter were accused of dividing the soul into three parts. The Neoplatonist Longinus replied by borrowing the Stoic idea that only capacities, not parts, need to be distinguished,1417 and by complaining in response to the Stoic Medius that once we go beyond the Stoic command centre, we find them postulating a total of eight parts. There is not only the command centre itself, but the five senses and a further two parts concerned with voice and reproduction.1418

Origen Some of the Church Fathers, reflecting on moral struggle, were impelled to postulate two wills in us, while at the same time having to resist heretical suggestions that we have two souls. Origen was one such person. When St Paul says that flesh and spirit war against each other, so that we do not do what we will to do,1419 this should not be taken as endorsing the idea that we have a second soul, material in character, with a will of its own, directed towards evil. This had been the view of the heretic Valentinus in the second century AD, and was already known to Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus.1420 Paul's talk of the flesh is a reference, not to the will of such a soul, but to the body's strivings. There are indeed two wills in us, says Origen, but they are the higher will of our spirit and the lower will of our soul.1421

Pseudo-Makarios Among the writings of the desert Fathers there are some falsely ascribed to Evagrius' master Makarios, and said to have been circulating by the AD 370s or 380s.1422 Here we find the will of the flesh distinguished and talk of not surrendering the whole inclination of one's will.1423

Augustine On Will and Double Will Augustine, like Origen, knows and rejects a theory that we have two minds or souls, but the theory he attacks comes from the Manichaeans.1424

1417

Porphyry in Stobaeus 1. 351 Wachsmuth.

1418

Proclus In Remp. 1. 234 Kroll.

1419

Galatians 5: 17.

1420

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6.16 (136.1); 7.12 (79.6); Excerpts from Theodotus 50. 1 (vol. 3, p. 133, line 9 ff. Stählin); Irenaeus Against Heresies 1. 5. 5.

1421

Origen On First Principles 3. 4. 1–5.

1422

See Columba Stewart, Working the Earth of the Heart (Oxford, 1991). I am grateful to Marcus Plested for drawing my attention to Pseudo-Makarios.

1423

Pseudo-Makarios, Fifty Homilies, ed. H. Dörries, trans. Mason, 41 and 55.

1424

Augustine Confessions 8. 10.

316

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

Although he rejects the idea of two souls, he endorses the idea that we have two wills. The experience of struggling against lust convinces him that we have a spiritual and a carnal will.1425 The distinction of wills is indeed inevitable, if lust opposes the will yet is, as he will say in the City of God about all emotions,1426 itself an act of will. Augustine's recognition of two wills parallels Plato's recognition of two opinions, that of the bad horse that sexual indulgence is all right (axioi), and that of the charioteer that it is not.1427 But Plato puts his contrast in terms of opinion, not of will. One result of there being two wills is that, as recognized by Pseudo-Makarios, it may not be the full will (plena voluntas) that gives a command.1428 Moreover, in the case of reluctant action, I believe Augustine allows one can act with something less than the full will.1429 Of course, if one is satisfied with one's decision, the will becomes whole and unitary. But this does not happen automatically at the moment of choice, judging from the possibility Augustine acknowledges of acting with less than the full will.1430 Yet, if we attend more subtly, even (etiam) what anyone is compelled to do unwillingly (invitus) he does by his will, if he does it. It is because he would prefer something else that he is said to do it unwillingly (invitus), that is, wanting not to (nolens). He is compelled to act by some evil, and he does what he is compelled to do through willing to avoid or remove from himself the evil. For suppose his will is so great that he prefers not doing this to not suffering that. Then indubitably he will resist the compulsion and not do it. Hence if he does it, it is not indeed with his full (plena) and free will. But because the effect follows his will, we cannot say that control (potestas) over his act was missing.1431

Conditional Willing A number of Augustine's distinctions recur among later medieval authors, when they seek to explain Christ's saying,

1425

Ibid. 8.5; 8.9–10. I am grateful to Simo Knuuttila for discussion.

1426

Augustine City 14. 6.

1427

Plato Phaedrus 255 E .

1428

Augustine Confessions 8. 9. 21.

1429

Id. On the Spirit and the Letter 31. 53 (PL 44. 234).

1430

On this point I diverge from p. 36 of the valuable Ph.D. dissertation of Risto Saarinen, from which I have learnt a very great deal, Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought from Augustine to Buridan (Helsinki, 1993) (subsequently published with revisions by Brill, Leiden), and from Neal W. Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1 (1963), 17–35 at 32.

1431

Augustine On the Spirit and the Letter 31. 53 (PL 44. 234).

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

317

‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.’1432 This saying is of particular interest, because, on the interpretation I offered in Chapters 2 and 15, it is close to the Stoic ideal of desiring only with the reservation (hupexairesis, Latin exceptio) ‘if Zeus wills’, or ‘if nothing interferes’. Risto Saarinen1433 has described how Peter of Poitiers (1130–1205) called this ‘willing with a condition (cum condicione)’. There was a dispute in the twelfth century as to whether one had actually willed the thing if the condition (God's willing it) was not fulfilled. Peter thought not, and some who took this view described such willing as velleity (from vellem ‘I would will’), because one was only disposed to will, if the condition was fulfilled. The parallel with Stoic ‘wanting with reservation’ has already been mentioned in Chapter 15. Thomas Aquinas agrees that Christ's will for the cup to pass was not absolute (absoluta), but relative (secundum quid) to no obstacle being discovered by his reason. He explains that it was willed not in accordance with the rational will, but in accordance with sensual movements and with the natural will he had as a human.1434 Like Augustine, then, Thomas appeals to different wills.

The Monothelite Controversy I shall mention one last distinction of wills, because it was the centre of interest of Maximus the Confessor, whose ideas will recur in the next chapter. As a sop to those who believed heretically that Christ had only one nature, not two (human and divine), it was suggested in the seventh century that perhaps he had only one will. Monothelitism might be accepted in place of monophytism. But the compromise provoked an uproar. Maximus argues that Christ had two wills, but that the prayer for the cup to pass from him shows they were in harmony. He did not, like us, have a gnomic will, which depends on

1432

Matthew 26: 39.

1433

Saarinen, Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought from Augustine to Buridan (diss. Helsinki, 1993), 76, commenting on Peter Sent. 2. 16 (124. 80–9 Moore–Dulong), with similar accounts of conditional willing still earlier (1180–1200) in Stephan Langton (Saarinen p. 75), and later (c. 1225) in William of Auxerre (p. 83). But in Alexander of Hales (1185–1245) conditional willing is differently treated as actual but reluctant willing—the opposite of Christ's, who was not reluctant for the cup to pass (p. 84).

1434

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 3, q.21, a.4.

318

EMOTIONAL CONFLICT AND THE DIVIDED SELF

opinion and deliberation. And so his human will could not oppose the divine.1435

1435

Maximus Opuscula 3 and 7.

21 The Concept Of Will I have been discussing the division of the will into two wills. But the will is itself a division of the soul, and we need to consider the concept more closely. It evolved gradually and there have been many suggestions about who first formulated it. Suggestions have included Plato,1436 Aristotle,1437 the Stoics Chrysippus and Posidonius, followed by the Platonist Galen,1438 the Stoic Seneca,1439 the Stoic Epictetus,1440 Augustine,1441 and Maximus the Confessor.1442

Terminology To start very briefly with the terminology of the will, it developed somewhat independently of the concept, and both developed only gradually until their full flowering in the Latin of Augustine, whose On Free Choice of the Will was written in AD 388–95. As regards terminology, Aristotle sometimes reflects the practice of Plato's Academy, which used boulēsis as a term for rational desire for the good, as opposed to thumos for the desire for honour, and epithumia for the

1436

David Sedley, ‘Commentary on Mansfeld’, The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 7 (1991), 146–152. The idea had also been expressed orally to me by George Kerferd, and Mansfeld, ibid., p. 107, n. 1, cites a passing remark along the same lines by F. Dirlmeier in Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik, 3rd edn. (Berlin, 1964), pp. 327 f. n. 3.

1437

Terence Irwin, ‘Who Discovered the Will?’, Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics (1992), 453–73.

1438

Jaap Mansfeld, ‘The Idea of the Will in Chrysippus, Posidonius and Galen’, The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 7 (1991), 107–45. On Chrysippus see Pohlenz Die Stoa, vol. 1, pp. 141–53; Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1 (1963), 17–35 at 22.

1439

Pohlenz, Die Stoa, vol. 1, p. 319; Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy’, 25–7.

1440

Charles Kahn, without committing himself, shows what is to be said in favour of this in ‘Discovering the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine’.

1441

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982).

1442

R. A. Gauthier, Aristote: l' Éthique à Nicomaque, 2nd edn. (only), vol. 1, pt. 1. Introduction (Louvain, 1970).

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THE CONCEPT OF WILL

desire for pleasure.1443Boulēsis, both in this context and in others, is often translated ‘will’. It has been shown that in the Christian era forms of another word for willing, thelein, became more prominent.1444Thelein and thelēma are often used in the New Testament, and those along with thelēsis in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. When Christ asks for the cup to pass from him, but nevertheless for his Father's will, not his, to be done, the verb used is thelein more often than boulesthai, and the noun is thelēma.1445 Origen, discussing human selfdetermination (autexousion), asks if it is threatened by Paul's remarks that reward does not depend on the man who wills (thelei), but on God's mercy, or that it is God who wills (thelei).1446 Among the pagans, Epictetus uses the verb thelein often enough, but not the corresponding nouns, which are not common pagan usage, although we shall notice thelēma for the will of the One in Plotinus,1447 Porphyry speaks of the soul's ethelousion,1448 and thelēsis appears once as a species of boulēsis for the Stoics.1449 The Christian who made thelēsis the standard word for will, it has been said,1450 was Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century. But the most important terminological developments were in Latin. The phrase ‘free will’, libera voluntas, appears in Latin in the first century BC in the Epicurean Lucretius, followed by Cicero.1451 But in Lucretius, although there is an important discussion of freedom due to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, the fact that this is connected with will does not prove to be very significant. The innovation, I believe, has more influence on terminology than on concepts. As others have shown, the Christian Tertullian, writing in Latin shortly after AD 200, uses the phrase ‘free power of choice’(libera

a

b

b

b

1443

Plato Charmides 167 E and further references below; Aristotle Top. 126 12–14; On the Soul 3.9, 432 5–6; Pol. 7.15, 1334 22; Nicomachean Ethics 3. 2, 1111 11; On the b Movement of Animals 6, 700 22.

1444

See e.g. John D. Madden, ‘The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thelēsis) ’, in F. Heinzer and C. Schönborn (eds.), Maximus Confessor (Fribourg, 1982), 61–79.

1445

Luke 22: 42; Matthew 26: 39; Mark 14: 36.

1446

Origen On First Principles 3.1.8; 3.1.18; 3.1.20.

1447

Plotinus 6.8, entitled in Porphyry's edition On the Voluntariness [hekousion]and Will [thelēma]of the One.

1448

Porphyry frag. 268 Smith (pp. 100–1).

1449

Stobaeus 2. 87. 22 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 173), conjectured by some to be from Arius Didymus'Epitome of Stoic Ethics (translations in preparation by Brad Inwood and by Julia Annas).

1450

R. A. Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l'acte humaine’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 21 (1954), 51–100 at 78; Madden, ‘The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thelēsis) ’.

1451

Lucretius 2. 251–93; Cicero On Fate 9. 20.

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

321

arbitrii potestas) and ‘freedom of choice’(arbitrii libertas).1452 These are, at least sometimes, translations of the completely different Greek term to autexousion, self-determination, which makes no reference to choice or will.1453 It has been suggested that the phrase ‘free choice of the will’(liberum arbitrium voluntatis) originates with Augustine, who uses it extensively in his On Free Choice of the Will.1454 From this account of Latin terminology, it looks as if Boethius is reading Augustine's Latin expression back into an earlier Greek debate, when he talks of free choice of the will.1455

The Concept: A History Of Clustering But that is enough on terminology. I want to focus rather on the development of the concept, and I want to reframe the central question. Instead of asking who invented the concept of will, I think it is more profitable to ask something different, since there is no one concept, and much less do we have an agreed concept nowadays. Rather, will is a desire with a special relation to reason and a number of functions associated with it. Some of these functions come in clusters. It is more illuminating to ask when these functions came together and who made the decisive difference. The functions include two important clusters, freedom and responsibility on the one hand and will-power on the other. My claim will be that both these clusters can be found early in Greek philosophy, and even in the same philosophical treatise, but totally dissociated from each other, and often connected with reason rather than with rational desire. It is a long time before all the elements get associated together. When they do get associated, yet other ideas previously instantiated in isolation join the group: the idea of perverted will and of will as ubiquitously present in all decisions. Once this history of clustering is clear, it will be the history that matters. As to when the concept of will was invented, we can say what we like, but we shall see the reasons for saying one thing rather than another. At the end, I shall explain why I do not think the invention has to wait for Maximus the Confessor.

1452

Tertullian On the Soul 21. 6 and 20. 5, recorded by Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’, 250–1.

1453

Tertullian On the Soul 21. 6; Jerome Against the Pelagians 3. 7.

1454

Augustine On Free Choice of the Will 2. 1. 1 and passim.

1455

Boethius In Int. 9, 2nd comm., 195.2–197.10; 217.17–219.9 Meiser.

322

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

Reason Versus Rational Desire For the Good: Aristotle's Restructuring Of Plato Aristotle gave a strong impetus to the idea of will as a desire, so distinct from reason, but none the less belonging with reason as rational. In two passages Aristotle treats boulēsis as belonging to the rational part of the Platonist soul.1456 At the same time, in one of the two passages he urges against Plato that if one is going to distinguish parts of the soul, one should bring boulēsis together with other types of desire, thumos and epithumia, to form a desiderative part of the soul (orektikon) quite distinct from reason.1457 So far this seems to encourage the view that boulēsis is not reason, but a rational desire. And I think this is close to Aristotle's view, but I must enter a caveat. For Aristotle qualified the Platonist view that boulēsis belongs to the rational part of the soul, as indeed Plato himself had done before him.1458 At the opposite extreme Aristotle once says that boulēsis exists in children before reason or intellect (logismos, nous) and is irrational.1459 But elsewhere he calls it rational.1460 And his more considered view is that the part of the soul that desires, even if called irrational, does have a share in(koinōnein) reason, and can even in a secondary sense be said to have reason (logon ekhein), because it listens to reason even if it does not reason things out for itself.1461 The general effect is to make boulēsis distinct from reason, though still related to it.1462 As regards boulēsis being directed to the good, Aristotle draws on an idea found in three passages of Plato,1463 now thoroughly familiar from the preceding chapter, where Plato was seen to use the verb boulesthai to say that what we really want is good. The contrast in each of the three passages is with mere appetite (epithumia), which is for pleasure, not for good. Plato added, we saw, that no one is satisfied (arkein) with apparent good.1464 But in Aristotle's version boulēsis is

1456

a

b

a

Aristotle Top. 126 12–13; On the Soul 3. 9, 432 5–6; cf. 3. 10, 433 24–5. a

b

1457

Aristotle On the Soul 3. 9, 432 22– 7. I have not been persuaded by challenges to this conventional interpretation of Aristotle: see my Animal Minds and Human Morals, 70 n. 38.

1458

Plato Laws 863 B ; 904 B –C ; Paul Vander Waerdt, ‘Aristotle's Criticism of Soul Division’, American Journal of Philology, 108 (1987), 627–43 at 641.

1459

Aristotle Pol. 7. 15, 1334b 22–5.

1460

Id. Rhet. 1. 10, 1368b 37–1369a 4.

1461

Id. Nicomachean Ethics 1. 13, 1102 29–1103 3.

1462

For different views see Terence Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles (Oxford, 1988); Michael Frede, introduction to M. Frede and G. Striker (eds.), Rationality in Greek Thought (Oxford, 1996), 8 and 25–6. Frede's Sather Lectures will be devoted to the subject of the will, but I have not had access to these at the time of writing.

1463

Plato Gorgias 468 C ; Meno 77 E –78 B ; Charmides 167 E .

1464

Id. Republic 505 D –E .

b

a

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

323

directed to what is or appears good.1465 Later, we shall see, the Stoics had more to say about whether the good willed in boulēsis is real or apparent. The term ‘good’(agathon) in this context is used by Plato and Aristotle in a narrow sense, in contrast with honour and pleasure, which are the goals of the lower types of desire, thumos and epithumia.1466 In some sense, however, Plato and Aristotle are ready to say that all desire, not just boulēsis, sees its objective as good in some way or other.1467

Plato: Freedom and Responsibility Separated From Will Power Plato might seem an unpromising source for a concept of the will, because we have already seen Aristotle criticizing him for not distinguishing sharply enough between reason and rational desire. None the less, the good point has been made that something very like the function of will-power is assigned by Plato to another part of his soul, high spirit or the spirited part (thumos, thumoeides).1468Thumos is like will in being distinct from reason, but a desire which, according to Plato, is always allied with reason and never opposes it in a struggle against appetites (epithumiai), although elsewhere it is sometimes shown opposing reason.1469 Plato thus foreshadows the debates that arose in the 1270s AD as to whether will is free to oppose reason.1470 But according to Plato's first-mentioned view, thumos shepherds the baser appetites, as if it were reason's sheepdog. So far it seems to play the role of will-power. What is missing is any particular connection with moral responsibility, or with freedom, so only some of the criteria for a concept of will are satisfied. In another part of the Republic, however, choice (haireisthai) is connected both with freedom and with moral responsibility.1471 Souls are represented as choosing their next lives before reincarnation. Because of the choice, the responsibility will be theirs, not God's: Responsibility (aitia) is the chooser's; God is not responsible (anaitios). Moreover, they may choose virtuously, and virtue is free: it has no master (adespoton). This is the earliest use I have encountered of the

a

b

1465

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3. 4, 1113 15–24; Rhet. 1. 10, 1368 37 ff.

1466

Plato Charmides 167 E .

1467

Id. Republic 505 E ; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1. 1, 1094 1–3.

1468

Plato Republic 440 B , D . So Sedley, Kerferd, and Dirlmeier (as in n. 1 above).

1469

e.g. Plato Republic 9, 586 C 7–D 2. I thank Julius Tomin for the reference.

1470

Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will (Washington, 1995), ch. 3, ‘Voluntarism’.

1471

Plato Republic 617 E .

a

324

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

metaphor of freedom. It is earlier than the use of the same word by Epicurus, to which Charles Kahn has drawn attention.1472 What is still missing is any cross-reference to the treatment of thumos as will-power elsewhere in the Republic.

Platonists: The Separation Continues The separation of the two subjects continues in later Platonists, although they develop one of the subjects. They pick up Plato's term for freedom (adespoton),1473 and integrate it much more fully with the ideas of responsibility and will, and Christians follow. The Middle Platonist Didaskalikos says that if virtue has no master (adespoton), it must be voluntary (hekousion), and that since the soul chooses (helesthai) its next life and has no master, it is up to it (ep' autēi) whether it acts or not. Plotinus connects the term adespoton not only with choice (helesthai) and with what is up to us (eph' hēmin) and voluntary (hekousion), but also with boulēsis,1474 one of the words conventionally translated as ‘will’. Virtue is up to us and without a master, if we will and choose. Plotinus has an extended discussion in the treatise which Porphyry calls On the Voluntary and the Will [thelēma]of the One.1475 We find extra terms not only for the will (thelēma) and willing (thelein) but also for freedom (to eleutheron), control (kurios), and purpose (proairesis). The Christian Gregory of Nyssa repeats that virtue and the soul have no master (adespoton), adds that virtue is voluntary (hekousion), and connects this with the selfdetermination (autexousion) of the human will (proairesis) or soul, and with the soul being steered by its own willing (thelēmata).1476 None the less, Plato's idea of thumos as will-power which we found in an earlier part of the Republic, is not integrated with these other ideas, either by him or by later Platonists. When the power of thumos is treated by a later Platonist, Galen, it is again treated separately from these other ideas. Galen discusses contests of strength between reason (logismos) and high spirit (thumos). The talk is of strength (iskhuron, rhōmē), violence (sphodroteron), domination (arkhein, kratein, epikratein), carrying off (sunapopherein), dragging (sunepispān),

1472

Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 133, cited by Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’. Plato's use is also the subject of work in progress by Myles Burnyeat.

1473

Alcinous Didaskalikos ch. 31, 184.37–40; ch. 26, 179.10–11. I thank David Sedley for the Platonist references.

1474

Plotinus 6. 8. 5 (30–2).

1475

Ibid. 6. 8. 1–6.

1476

Gregory of Nyssa On the Creation of Man 4; 16.11; cf. 16.14.

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325

defeat (nikāsthai), and weakness (arrhōstia).1477 In another passage, it is all three elements of the Platonic soul that are involved, not only reason and high spirit, but also appetite (epithumia). Each of these can stir up or stop impulses (hormai). But already there is an important difference from the passage in Plato's Republic. Thumos in Galen is not always the ally of reason, but frequently opposes it. So if we want to find rational desire in Galen's account, we must look rather to his boulēsis, boulēthēnai. But boulēsis is not treated in this context as having any special dominance over the other desires, thumos or epithumia. Any of the three elements will have more or less power at different times.1478 When Galen wants to give the highest element in the soul a special status, comparing it with a charioteer or a rider who ought to take control, he reverts to Plato's usage, calling it reason (logismos) rather than boulēsis.1479 Galen's discussion of will-power, if it is one, is not connected by him with any discussion of freedom or responsibility. He does also discuss, as others have well shown,1480 the power exerted from the brain through the nerves. But this is a discussion of physiological power, and so takes us away from will-power.

Aristotle's Proairesis Distinct From Responsibility and Will-Power I have ascribed Aristotle a role in developing the concept of will in so far as he contrasted two concepts borrowed from Plato, those of reason and of boulēsis, or rational desire for the good. But it was boulēsis which I stressed. It is in Aristotle's other concept of proairesis that some interpreters have detected a concept of will. Proairesis is generated from boulēsis, which, as Plato had already hinted,1481 is the desire for ends. Proairesis is the desire for the means which will lead towards those ends.1482 And proairesis is even more closely connected with reason, because it is a desire based on reasoning out what means would secure those ends.1483 An example of proairesis, I take it, would be the kind of dietary policy which Aristotle

1477

Galen PHP 3. 3. 5–6, pp. 184–6 de Lacy.

1478

Ibid. 4. 2. 36–8, pp. 244–6 de Lacy. Both passages are discussed by Mansfeld.

1479

Galen PHP 5.5.32–5; 5.6.31; 3.3.5–6, pp. 324, 332, 184–6 de Lacy.

1480

Mansfeld, ‘The Idea of the Will in Chrysippus, Posidonius and Galen’.

1481

Plato Gorgias 467 C –E .

1482

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3.2, 1111 26–30; 3.4, 1113 15.

1483

b

a

a

Ibid. 3.3, 1113 10–11; 6.2, 1139 32;

a

b

4–5.

326

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

cites, like eating dry food.1484 This is something one might have reasoned would lead to the goal of health. I do not think the concept of proairesis, as it features in Aristotle, is yet very close to a concept of will. Aristotle does not treat proairesis as a kind of will-power. When he discusses people who fail to abide by their proairesis,1485 he does not present this as due to their proairesis being weak. In his main account of this failure of control (akrasia), he insists, so I claimed in the last chapter, that appetite makes us overlook the facts, e.g. the fact that the food we are taking is not of the right sort.1486 Furthermore, he follows Plato, and says that it is reason (logos) against which the appetites fight.1487 He does not say it is will. Conventionally, this discussion is spoken of as Aristotle's explanation of weakness of will. But this is a misnomer for the reason given, that his diagnosis is not in terms of proairesis being weak or strong. If he concedes anything to the idea of will-power, then I would agree with the point that has been put to me1488 that it is when he discusses the opposite phenomenon, that of maintaining control (enkrateia) and sticking by our proairesis, in the face of rival desires. I agree that this is described in terms of winning or losing (nikān, hēttasthai) against strong (iskhuros) desires.1489 But the discussion is extremely brief, because all the emphasis is given to failure of control. Moreover, it is never said what enables proairesis to win, when it does. But if Aristotle had addressed the question, at least part of his answer would surely have been in terms of intellect, rather than will. It must make a difference how carefully you have thought out your policy (proairesis) at the stage when you were deliberating about the best means to your goal. Aristotle's very silence is significant: a proponent of will-power would be likely to tell us how victory depends rather on the strength of the will. Aristotle does not associate proairesis very closely with freedom, and he even dissociates it from moral responsibility. He is explicit that voluntariness, which he has just linked with moral responsibility,1490 extends much more widely to the doings of animals and children, who are not capable of anything as rational as proairesis:

b

a

b

a

1484

Ibid. 7.3, 1146 35–1147 7; cf. 6.7, 1141 20; 6.8, 1142 22–3.

1485

Ibid. 7.4, 1148a 9–10; 7.8, 1151a 7; 1150b 29–1151a 4; 7.9, 1151a 29–35; 7.10, 1152a 17.

1486

Ibid. 7. 3, 1146 31–1147 19, discussed above; cf. 6. 8, 1142 23.

b

b

a

b

b

1487

Ibid. 1. 13, 1102 13–31, also discussed above; 7. 3, 1147 2–3.

1488

By David Sedley.

1489

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 7.2, 1146 9–16; 7.7, 1150 12–13; 33–6.

1490

a

a

b

Literally, praise and blame, ibid. 3. 1, 1109 31.

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

327

Although proairesis (deliberate choice) appears to be voluntary, then, it is not the same thing. The voluntary extends further. For both children and animals share in the voluntary, but not in deliberate choice.1491 I have elsewhere resisted an alternative interpretation according to which Aristotle distinguishes ‘up to us'(eph’ hēmin) from voluntary (hekousion), at least in the Nicomachean Ethics, connects only the ‘up to us’ with moral responsibility, and confines the ‘up to us’ to what has been sanctioned by rational proairesis.1492 Against this, I think Aristotle implies that all that is voluntary is also up to us. He sometimes includes this requirement directly in the definition of voluntariness1493 and sometimes makes it an implication of the demand, which is itself included in the definition of voluntariness, for an internal origin of action.1494 Nor is it unreasonable of Aristotle to suppose that, despite lacking proairesis, the dog which bites you can be blamed. Animals were held morally responsible by other philosophers too, possibly by Democritus,1495 certainly by Clodius or Heracleides of Pontus,1496 and tame animals by Epicurus.1497

Alexander and Aquinas: Proairesis Ubiquitous In All Action That Is Up To Us It is rather, I believe, the much later Aristotelian Alexander who makes the moves just described. In speaking of what is up to us, he ties it, unlike Aristotle, to proairesis. It is found only in beings capable of proairesis, and (I think he means) only when they are using their proairesis. In this he conforms, at least verbally, to the Stoic Epictetus, who had said that nothing is up to us except what falls under proairesis, in his rather different sense of the term.1498 Alexander is motivated to show that Aristotelianism can match the intellectualist presuppositions of Stoicism. He not only accepts the Stoic linkage

1491

Ibid. 3.2, 1111b 6–9. Cf. Eudemian Ethics 2.8, 1223b 37–1224a 4; 2.9, 1225a 37; 2.10, 1226b 30, for voluntariness distinguished from proairesis.

1492

In my Animal Minds and Human Morals, ch. 9, 111–12, referring to Walter Englert, Terence Irwin, and Roderick Long.

1493

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 5.8, 1135a 24; Eudemian Ethics 2.9, 1225b 8–10 (cf. 2.10, 1226b 30–2).

1494

Id. Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, 1110 15–18; 3.5, 1113 19–23; 1114 18–19.

1495

Democritus frags. 257–9 DK, from Stobaeus Florilegium 4. 2. 13 Hense.

1496

Ap. Pophyrium Abstinence 1. 14.

1497

Epicurus On Nature, 34. 25, lines 22–34 Arrighetti, 2nd edn. (Turin, 1973).

1498

Epictetus 1. 22. 10.

a

b

a

328

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

of what is up to us with proairesis, but borrows the Stoics' own terminology in linking proairesis with rational impulse (logikēhormē).1499 Thomas Aquinas compromises, but is closer to Alexander's intellectualist account in his discussion of proairesis, which he translates into Latin as electio.1500 He claims that voluntariness in the primary sense does depend on electio, so that animal behaviour is voluntary only in a secondary sense.1501 Similarly, Alexander, in a treatise available to Thomas, had reported that some Stoics allowed a weaker sense of ‘up to it’ to be applicable to the doings of animals.1502 Alexander's new move has the significant effect of making proairesis ubiquitous in all action that is up to us. This gives it something in common with concepts of the will in Descartes and in modern philosophy as involved in every intentional action.1503 In another passage, Alexander switches attention from proairesis to boulēsis and gives it a special role in preserving our freedom. Impulse and desire (hormē, orexis), he says, going along with the Stoics' intellectualist account, are cases of assenting that something is choiceworthy (epi tisi sunkatathesis hōs hairetois). But, he warns, in opposition to Stoic determinism, hormē will not necessarily lead to action, if boulēsis does not concur (sundramein).1504

The Stoics: Will Related To Voluntariness But Not Distinct From Reason The Stoics, I believe, come closer than Aristotle to a full-blooded idea of the will, but there are still some very important differences. One difference was noticed in Chapter 2. When Seneca describes anger as involving an act of will (voluntas) to the effect that (tamquam) we should be avenged,1505 he is using voluntas in a broad sense to refer to impulse. What is significant is that he does not contrast will, as a type of conation, with cognition. He intellectualizes it, treating it as merely one type of cognition: assent to a proposition

1499

Alexander On Fate ch. 33, 205. 15–22 Bruns (CAG suppl. vol. 2 pt. 2), discussed in Animal Minds and Human Morals, 110.

1500

R. A. Gauthier traces other uses of electio, first for the Stoic selection (eklogē) of preferred indifferents, and then, in William of Auxerre, for assent: ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l'acte humaine’, 86–7 n. 127; 92.

1501

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2.1, q.13, a.2, ad3; 2.1, q.6, a.2, incorp., discussed in Animal Minds and Human Morals, 113.

1502

Alexander On Fate, ch. 13. Bob Sharples has pointed out to me that P. Thillet's preface to his 1963 edition of the medieval Latin attributes the Latin to Thomas's associate, William of Moerbeke.

1503

Descartes, Fourth Meditation.

1504

Alexander On the Soul 72. 26–73. 2 Bruns (CAG suppl. vol. 2 pt. 1), a passage discussed by Victor Caston at the Commentators Workshop, Institute of Classical Studies, London, 16 June 1997.

1505

Seneca On Anger 2. 4. 1.

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329

about how it is appropriate to react. This fits perfectly with the view ascribed to the Stoics in general that impulse (hormē) is assent to a proposition1506 and in particular is assent to the appearance that it is appropriate (kathēkei) to act.1507 Assent to appearance, we know, is a judgement. Impulse is also described intellectualistically as reason (logos) commanding (prostaktikos) us to act.1508 It matters that the command is said to come from reason. I dissented from the view that Seneca innovates and dissociates will from intellect.1509 It is important to see that the Stoics are going beyond Plato's Socrates in their intellectualism. I argued in Chapters 1 and 20 that Socrates' few restrictions in Plato's early dialogues on what beliefs are compatible with wanting fall far short of Chrysippus' bold idea that wanting simply is the intellectual judgement that a certain act is appropriate. I believe that will has traditionally been thought of as much more distinct from rational judgement than that. Although Seneca treats wanting here as an intellectual judgement, in the same paragraph he takes a step in the direction of a fuller concept of the will, by connecting the will (voluntas) with the notion of voluntariness (voluntarius), and hence with moral responsibility. This connection, it has been pointed out, is one which comes out in Latin, but not in Greek,1510 since the Greek word for voluntariness, hekousion, has no connection with words for will. The link between the Latin terms is found already in Cicero.1511 Seneca is using the word voluntas in a wide sense for any desire or hormē. But sometimes voluntas and boulēsis are used in a narrow sense for an attitude that only the sage achieves,1512 and then the Stoic usage has a further implication. Since the sage is supposed to be infallible, he knows what is really good, and so his will must be a desire not merely for the apparent good, but simply for what is good. A non-sage could presumably achieve a similar result by desiring what he believes to be good, only with the reservation discussed in Chapter 2, ‘if God wills’. He can then set his heart on what he believes to be

1506

Stobaeus 2. 88. 1 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 171).

1507

Ibid. 2. 86. 17–18 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3. 169).

1508

Plutarch On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1037 F (= SVF 3. 175).

1509

Pohlenz Die Stoa, vol. 1, p. 319. This has been the dominant view. For replies see Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 224 ff., and, decisively, Brad Inwood, ‘The Will and the Self in Seneca’, in preparation.

1510

Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’, Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l'acte humaine’, 90.

1511

Cicero On Fate 11. 23.

1512

Id. Tusc. 4. 12.

330

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good only in so far as it actually is so. But a non-sage's desire will be called a boulēsis or voluntas only in a looser sense.

The Stoics: Interrogation Of Appearances Versus Posidonius' Will-Power Although there were developments in the direction of a fuller concept of will, for most Stoics a big gap remains: no notion of will-power is at all prominent, because their account is more intellectualist. Great moral effort is required, but, as seen in Chapter 15, it is the intellectual effort of questioning appearances. We saw Epictetus, in a passage translated there, telling his students to practise questioning the appearance that the beautiful or grand passer-by involves something good, or the bereaved or hungry person has encountered something bad.1513 Admittedly, Epictetus does refer to the questioning of appearances as a struggle (agōnisteon),1514 but the process is described in intellectual terms. Other references to strength, or domination, are also intellectualized by the Stoics. They do talk of strength and weakness, connecting it with tension in the soul, which enables it to endure.1515 But the weakness is the intellectual weakness of a weak assent: if you have not sufficiently questioned appearances, you will have a weak and changeable opinion about what is good, or bad.1516 There is a similar intellectualizing when the Stoics talk of the ruling (hēgemonikon) or dominating (kratoun, kurieuon) part of the soul, for it is standardly referred to as reason, not as will. And similarly, when the runner's momentum is greater than (pleonazei) his impulse to stop, we have to recall that the impulse thus overpowered is an intellectual judgement. There is, I believe, at least one exception to this lack of reference to will-power. But it is found in Posidonius, the Stoic who deliberately reverted to Plato's tripartite psychology. Posidonius takes up Chrysippus' concession that people sometimes weep without willing to (mē boulomenoi). But he makes an entirely different use of the notion of will. He says that the emotional movements press so hard (sphodra enkeisthai: a military metaphor) that they cannot be mastered

1513

Epictetus 3. 3. 14–19.

1514

The title of Epictetus 2. 18 is ‘How one is to struggle [agōnisteon ] against appearances’.

1515

Galen PHP 4.6.5–6; 5.2.26–7, p. 300 de Lacy.

1516

Stobaeus 2. 111. 18–112. 8 (= SVF 3. 548; LS 41G ). The point is made by Sedley, ‘Commentary on Mansfeld’.

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331

(krateisthai) by the will (boulēsis).1517 Here the will is turned into something that tries (but fails) to exert power. Similarly, some people stop weeping in spite of willing (boulesthai) to continue, because the emotional movements can no longer be aroused (epegeiresthai) by the will. The will had not been treated in this dynamic way by Chrysippus. On his account, people who weep, or cease weeping, against their will are receiving conflicting appearances,1518 presumably appearances about whether things are bad. Theirs is a state of intellectual confusion, not a failure of will-power. It is Posidonius' Platonist sympathies which bring will-power into the Stoic account. Elsewhere Posidonius tends to speak in terms of reason (logismos) rather than will (boulēsis), but, as noted above, at least he puts a premium on reason as opposed to high spirit and appetite, by following Plato's comparison of it to the charioteer who ought to take control.1519 Even Posidonius' teacher, Panaetius, had moved a little way in this Platonic direction, when he suggested that there is a force (vis) called impulse (hormē) in the appetite (appetitus) and another force in reason (ratio), and that reason presides (praesit), while appetite submits (obtemperet). At least in the temperate person, the impulses are obedient (oboedientes) to reason. But the force in reason is not spoken of in this brief citation as a kind of will.1520

Epictetus: Proairesis Connected With Freedom and Responsibility Epictetus, I have said, does not follow Posidonius in speaking in terms of will-power. But he gives renewed prominence to Aristotle's term proairesis.1521 Zeno had continued to use this term rather in Aristotle's way,1522 but Epictetus changes its meaning in a way that brings it much closer to an idea of will, which is how I have translated it in Chapter 16, in the passage in which he says: ‘I will fetter you’. ‘What did you say, man? Fetter me? You will fetter my leg, but my will (proairesis) not even Zeus can conquer.’

1517

Posidonius at Galen PHP 4. 7. 37, p. 288 de Lacy.

1518

Chrysippus, ibid. PHP 4. 7. 16, p. 284 de Lacy.

1519

Ibid. 5.5.32–5; 5.6.31, pp. 324, 332 de Lacy.

1520

Cicero Off. 1.101; 2.18.

1521

Robert Dobbin, ‘Proairesis in Epictetus’, Ancient Philosophy, 11 (1991), 111–35, argues that Epictetus appropriates the term in order to answer criticism from the Aristotelian school, that the Stoics failed to make room for proairesis in their account of basic causal principles (arkhai).

1522

The contrast of proairesis and nature as sources of nobility in Zeno's letter to King Antigonus contains some echo of Aristotle: Diogenes Laertius Lives 8. 7.

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THE CONCEPT OF WILL

Here and repeatedly elsewhere, Epictetus is insisting that my proairesis is free from all constraint.1523 Epictetus connects proairesis not only with freedom, but also with what is up to us (eph' hēmin). All that falls under proairesis is up to us.1524 Moreover, unlike Aristotle, he holds that nothing is up to us except what falls under our proairesis.1525 I have already suggested that this may have helped to motivate a parallel shift in Alexander.1526 The result is that only the mental is up to us. Epictetus specifies, following his teacher Musonius Rufus, that the evaluation of appearances is up to us,1527 and so is assent to those appearances,1528 and hence the shaping of our proairesis, but nothing else. Had any earlier Stoic anticipated the idea that only the mental is up to us? Antipater, head of the Stoic school from about 152 to 129 BC, has been named as a possible candidate.1529 He described the goal of life as doing everything in one's power (kath' hauton) to achieve the natural objectives.1530 So it is probably he who made the comparison with an archer, and said that the goal is not hitting the target, but doing everything one can (facere omnia quae possit) to aim or align (collineare) the arrow right.1531 Evidently, hitting the target is not thought of as, or as necessarily, in one's power. What is, or is necessarily, in one's power is steps towards aiming right. But are these steps sometimes, or always, mental rather than physical? For all that we have been told, physical steps may be, at least often, in one's power, and it has not even been excluded that in favourable circumstances hitting the target may be in one's power. So Epictetus is the first to make it clear that physical activity is never up to us, on the grounds that it always could be frustrated. So far I have said that Epictetus connects proairesis not exactly with will-power, but with freedom and with what is up to us. I assume the last means that he connects it with moral responsibility, that is, with what you can be praised or blamed for. But this inference has been challenged.1532 It would mean that someone could not be blamed

1523

Epictetus 1. 1. 23; cf., for example, 1.17.21–8; 4.1.72–80; Handbook 9.

1524

Epictetus Discourses 2.13.10; 4.1.100.

1525

Ibid. 1. 22. 10.

1526

Alexander On Fate 33, 205. 15–22.

1527

Musonius frag. 38 Hense, from Stobaeus 2. 8. 30 Wachsmuth; Epictetus 1.1.7; 1.12.34; 2.19.32 and 39; 3.24.69; 4.1.74.

1528

Epictetus 4. 1. 74.

1529

Susanne Bobzien, ‘Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relation to Ethics’, in Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, 71–89.

1530

Stobaeus 2. 76. 13–15 Wachsmuth.

1531

Cicero Fin. 3. 22; with Plutarch On Common Notions 1071 B –C .

1532

See the illuminating D. Phil. dissertation of Susanne Bobzien, ‘Determinism and Free Will in Stoic Philosophy’ (Oxford, 1992), revised version Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford, 1999); overview provided in her article ‘Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relation to Ethics’.

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directly for a physical activity, but only for the mental attitudes involved in a physical activity. Can we be sure that Epictetus intended this? For we have evidence that at least some late Stoics broke the connection between ‘up to’ and moral responsibility, by allowing that animals' behaviour is up to them, without, however, holding them morally responsible.1533 But I am persuaded1534 that Epictetus does not break the connection. For he is prepared to confine moral responsibility as narrowly as what is up to us, that is, confine it to mental attitudes. We should praise or blame (epainein, psegein) people only for their judgements (dogmata), not for indifferents (koina),1535 and you are accountable (hupeuthunos) only for the only thing that is up to you (epi soi), and that is the proper evaluation of appearances.1536

Epicureans: Freedom More Important Than Will The Stoics' Epicurean rivals were interested in freedom, but not so interested in the will. As others have pointed out,1537 Epicurus made a very early use of the metaphor of freedom. The text, as emended by Usener, says of the wise man: He laughs down that fate which is introduced by some as mistress (despotis) of all, and says instead that somethings happen of necessity, some by chance, and some things are because of us (par' hēmas). For he sees that necessity is unaccountable, and chance unstable, but what is because of us has no master (adespoton) and it is to this last that blameworthiness and the reverse naturally belong.1538 In fact, Epicurus' usage goes back still earlier to Plato, as we have seen.1539 But what is missing from the passage is any reference to will. Lucretius takes Epicureanism further.1540 He is the first to introduce the expression ‘free will’(libera voluntas), though he is shortly followed by Cicero, who complains that the Stoics preclude free will.1541

1533

Alexander On Fate ch. 13, 182. 8–20; cf. Nemesius On the Nature of Man ch. 35, both discussed by Bobzien.

1534

By Ricardo Salles, who supplied me with the first reference and plans to discuss the matter further. See his ‘The Stoic Account of the Psychology of Responsible Actions and the Question of Determinism’ (Ph.D. diss. London, 1997).

1535

Epictetus 4. 4. 44.

1536

Ibid. 1. 12. 34.

1537

Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’.

1538

Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius Lives 10. 133.

1539

Plato Republic 10, 617 E 3.

1540

Lucretius 2. 251–93.

1541

Cicero On Fate 9. 20.

334

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

Lucretius bases its possibility on the unpredictable swerve of atoms. But what seems to do the work in Lucretius' explanation of freedom is the swerve rather than the will. He is perfectly happy to say that the mind (animus), when it wills (velit), strikes the force of the soul, rather than talking of the will acting.1542

Perverted Will, Pride, and Fall: Pythagoreans and Plotinus I have mentioned Plotinus already as developing Plato's treatment of the choice of one's next incarnation, and as using thelēma as a word for the will. But much more important were his views on pride and will as the beginning of evil. For souls that turn away, break loose, and become ignorant of the Father the beginning of the evil is pride (tolma) and willing (boulēthēnai) to belong to themselves alone. They are pleased with their own self-determination (autexousion) and create the greatest possible distance (apostasis) from the Father.1543 The same happens at the level of intellect, when it becomes multiple by willing (thelein) to possess everything.1544 There is a restless nature originally at rest in eternity, which, however, wills (boulesthai) to govern itself and belong to itself, and chooses (helesthai) to seek more than the (timeless) present. This results in the creation of time out of timeless eternity.1545 Tolma, or pride, had played a role in earlier sources too in the creation of lower levels of reality. Thus the NeoPythagoreans'Dyad, which provided a model for Plotinus' intellect, was called by them tolma, because it separated itself from their version of the One.1546 And Irenaeus reports that among certain Gnostics it is tolma which leads to the creation of the physical world.1547 But in Plotinus the connection of tolma with will makes closer the relation to Augustine, who alludes to Plotinus' treatise.1548

1542

Lucretius 4. 886–7; Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin philosophy’, 19–20.

1543

Plotinus 5. 1. 1 (1–22). The references are collected by John Rist Augustine (Cambridge, 1996), 188.

1544

Plotinus 3. 8. 8 (32–6).

1545

Ibid. 3. 7. 11 (15–16).

1546

Pseudo-Iamblichus (Nicomachus of Gerasa) Theologoumena Arithmeticae p. 9, lines 5–6 de Falco (Teubner edn.). See the note in A. H. Armstrong's translation of Plotinus (Loeb edn.), ad 5. 1. 1, and his discussion in the Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1970), 242–5; see also Naguib Baladi, ‘L'audace chez Plotin’, in Le Néoplatonisme (Colloque CNRS at Royaumont; Paris, 1971), 89–97.

1547

Irenaeus Against Heresies 1.2.2 ff.; 1.29.4.

1548

Augustine City 10. 23, alluding to 5. 1. 1.

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

335

Augustine's Clustering Augustine's treatment of the will is new in more than one way. Most relevantly, Augustine brings together all the criteria which we have seen occurring separately in others. Let me illustrate this for each in turn. First, will (voluntas) belongs to the rational soul: To the irrational soul also He gave memory, sense, appetite, to the rational he gave in addition intellect, intelligence and will.1549

Secondly, Augustine connects the will with freedom, for the choice (arbitrium) that the will makes is free, and one of his best-known treatises is called On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio voluntatis). Thirdly, Augustine connects the will (voluntas) with responsibility, as in the following passage, which also talks of perverted will (perversa), a will turned away from God, not merely, like the reason of Zeno and Chrysippus, discussed in Chapter 3 above, from one's own better judgement. It makes a difference what a person's will (voluntas) is like. If it is perverted (perversa), these movements[sc. appetite, fear, joy, grief] will be perverted in him. If it is upright (recta), they will be not just blameless, but praiseworthy. Indeed, the will is present in all these movements. Rather, they are all nothing other than acts of will (voluntates).1550 I shall return to this passage in Chapter 26. Another relevant passage connects free choice of the will with responsibility: And I attended in order to understand what I heard, that free choice of the will is the cause of our doing wrong.1551

Fourthly, Augustine repeatedly speaks in terms of will-power and the failure of will-power. He sees his will as struggling against lust, and this will be the subject of Chapter 26. Often he speaks in terms of the will's command, and one of the innovations that will emerge in the later chapter is Julian's insistence against him that he should also recognize the will's different role of consent.1552 Fifthly, Augustine comes to make willing ubiquitous in all action: Yet, if we attend more subtly, even (etiam) what anyone is compelled to do unwillingly (invitus) he does by his will, if he does it. It is because he would prefer something else that he is said to do it unwillingly (invitus), that is, wanting not to (nolens). He is compelled to act by some evil, and he does

1549

Augustine City 5. 11.

1550

Ibid. 14. 6.

1551

Augustine Confessions 7. 3. 5.

1552

Id. Against Julian 5. 5. 20.

336

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

what he is compelled to do through willing to avoid or remove from himself the evil. For suppose his will is so great that he prefers not doing this to not suffering that. Then indubitably he will resist the compulsion and not do it. Hence if he does it, it is not indeed with his full (plena) and free will. But because the effect follows his will, we cannot say control over his act was missing.1553 Augustine reached this position gradually. First, he suggests in Confessions 7 that whatever we really do we do by will, but this leaves out the evils that one does unwillingly (invitus), because these one may undergo (pati), rather than doing.1554 But this exception is put in doubt in Confessions 8 by the view that one has two wills, neither of them complete (tota),1555 which suggests that reluctant misdeeds may be following the will, even if not the complete will. This is confirmed in our new passage, among others.1556 Unwilling acts follow the will, even if not the full (plena) will. That is why Augustine says even (etiam) unwilling acts are done by will. A fortiori all other acts are so done. Sixthly, Augustine develops the criterion of a perverted or bad will. In the City of God1557 he quotes a version of Ecclesiasticus: The beginning of all sin is pride (superbia). He connects this with the will, saying: What could be the origin of evil will (mala voluntas) except pride? And he applies this to the Fall of Man, saying that the effect on the will of being too pleased with oneself and falling away from God instead of loving him was what made Eve believe the serpent and Adam heed his wife, rather than obey God's command. Another fall, that of the fallen angels, is treated by Augustine,1558 as it had been earlier by Evagrius,1559 as due to pride (huperēphania). And Plotinus had seen tolma as causing a descent. Augustine himself applies the message to his own case. Lust was the result and punishment of his own pride, when he failed to listen to God.1560 A further great innovation of Augustine's is enormously to expand the functions of the will. In On the Trinity, for example, will performs

1553

Id. On the Spirit and the Letter 31. 53.

1554

Id. Confessions 7. 3. 5.

1555

Ibid. 8. 9.

1556

Cf. also Augustine Literal Interpretation of Genesis 9. 14. 25.

1557

Id. City 14. 13.

1558

Id. Confessions 7. 3. 5.

1559

Evagrius On Various Bad Thoughts 15 (PG 79, col. 1217 A ).

1560

Augustine Confessions 7. 7. 11.

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

337

some of the functions of directing attention. It unites perception with the perceptible,1561 memory with internal vision,1562 and intellect with objects taken from memory.1563 It is responsible for imagination.1564 Faith is also due to will.1565 Belief depends on the assent of the will.1566 We have seen that emotions are acts of will,1567 and we shall see that will is the centrepiece of Augustine's objections to lust, which will be the subject of Chapter 26. The expansion of functions gave the will a greater importance than ever before. We have seen how the different functions we have discussed gradually got associated in clusters with each other and with a rational desire for the good distinct from reason itself. We can see that Augustine made the most decisive difference. But the associations had started long before him, and it will not matter if we talk of concepts of will in earlier philosophers, provided we see, as we now can, how they fall short of Augustine's.

Maximus' Thelēsis and Stoic Oikeiōsis I do not think the concept of the will had to wait until Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century added his contribution. So much had already been brought together by Augustine, and what Maximus added did not remain an uncontroversial piece of orthodoxy. I also want to suggest that Maximus' contribution was not so novel either, but was a borrowing from something that had gone before, but something from a completely different direction: the Stoic theory of oikeiōsis. Maximus was defending the view that Christ had two wills, one human, one divine. But he wanted to explain why Christ's human will could not sin. So he distinguished Christ's human will as a natural will (thelēma phusikon) different from our gnomic will, since the latter can turn in either direction, towards good or bad, according to our opinion. This, to scholastics, came to seem the right view, and Maximus has been praised for defining the natural will as a faculty directed of its essence to the good, rather than as something one calls ‘will’ when it happens to be so directed. Another point considered important is that the will aims at this good quite independently of

1561

Id. On the Trinity 11.2.2 ff.; 11.2.5; 11.3.1.

1562

Ibid. 11. 3. 6.

1563

Ibid. 14. 10. 13.

1564

Ibid. 11. 10. 17.

1565

Exposition of 84 Propositions in the Epistle to the Romans 60–1; On the True Religion 24. 45; Serm. 43. 4; On the Spirit and the Letter 31.54; 34.60.

1566

Id. On the Spirit and the Letter 54.

1567

Id. City 14. 6.

338

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

reason, although reason recognizes the same good.1568 The last point, however, is not a universally agreed feature of the will, since after 1270 it became a matter of debate whether and in what sense the will was independent of reason.1569 As for the first point, the idea of a naturally directed desire for the good does not seem particularly new. Even before the Stoics, Aristotle already holds that everybody naturally desires a happy life.1570 In fact it is the Stoics from whom Maximus' favoured definition of the will seems to derive. No less than five features of the definition he cites (and silently presupposes) proclaim this link. First, the good aimed at is self-preservation. Secondly, what is to be preserved is described by the Stoics' word sustasis, our ‘constitution’. Thirdly, will is said to depend only on nature, unlike proairesis. Fourthly, the Stoic term sunektikē, sunekhein is used when it is said that will holds the substance together. Even more characteristically, what it holds together is the idiōmata, the attributes which the Stoics postulated as lasting through an individual's life and distinguishing it from all other individuals. My suggestion is that Maximus' will (thelēsis) is a variant of the Stoics'oikeiōsis, that attachment that is felt by newborn infants and animals to their own physical constitution (sustasis), and which the adult human can later extend to his entire rational constitution. This attachment drives infants and animals to preserve that constitution. The claim that it is natural is important to the Stoics, because they argue, against opponents who want to ascribe reason to animals, that this penchant for self-preservation is due to nature, not to reason.1571 The account of the will that Maximus turns out to favour, and for which he has been so much praised, runs as follows: They say that natural thelēsis or thelēma is a capacity desirous (orektikē) of what is in accordance with nature, a capacity which holds together in being (sunektikē) all the distinctive attributes (idiōmata) which belong essentially to a being's nature. The substance, being naturally held together by this, desires (oregetai) being and living and moving in accordance with perception and intellect, striving for (ephiesthai) its own natural and complete existence (ontotēs). A thing's nature has a will (thelētikē) for itself, and for all that is

1568

Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l'acte humaine’, 58, 79, endorsed by Madden, ‘The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thelēsis) ’. I am grateful to Martin Stone for drawing my attention to this literature.

1569

Kent, Virtues of the Will, ch. 3.

1570

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1. 1, 1094 1–3.

1571

Sorabji Animal Minds and Human Morals, ch.7. Oikeiōsis is explained in chs. 12 and 13.

a

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

339

set to create its constitution (sustasis), and it is suspended in a desiderative way over the rational structure of its being, the structure in accordance with which it exists and has come into being. That is why others, in defining this natural thelēma, say that it is a rational and vital desire (orexis), whereas proairesis is a desire, based on deliberation, for things that are up to us. So thelēsis is not proairesis, if thelēsis is a simple rational and vital desire, whereas proairesis is a coming together of desire, deliberation, and judgement. For it is after first desiring that we deliberate, and after having deliberated that we judge, and after having judged that we deliberately choose (proaireisthai) what has been shown by judgement better in preference to the worse. And thelēsis depends only on what is natural, proairesis on what is up to us and capable of being brought about through us.1572 The idea of the will as a desire for self-preservation continues in the fourteenth century.1573 My suggestion is that this, coming through Maximus, may be a Stoic legacy.1574 I shall not discuss the immediately following lines of Maximus' text, in which he describes the stages by which will is converted into action, because, although I believe these stages are of greater interest, they are not the ground on which he has been presented as inventing the concept of the will.

Evaluation I have ascribed to Augustine the originality of bringing all the criteria together. But it is a different question whether bringing them together is a good idea. I believe new reasons would need to be found, and indeed a recent work has offered a rationale to show that some such clustering round a concept of will is required in order to show what human action involves.1575 But without a new rationale, we have little incentive to accept the clustering. The idea of perverted will involves a metaphysics that is not now widely shared. As for the idea of will as ubiquitously present in all action, people may nowadays be more sympathetic to Aristotle's idea that in voluntary action what is always present is an internal cause,1576 always, I think, desire, sometimes negligence in addition,1577 but not

1572

Maximus Letter to Marinus cols. 12 C –13 A (PG 91).

1573

Kent, Virtues of the Will, ch.3.

1574

I am grateful for discussion with Malcolm Schofield, who has helped me to strengthen my case, and to B. Markesinis for letting me see his forthcoming edition of the text and for his valuable comments.

1575

Tom Pink, The Psychology of Freedom (Cambridge, 1996).

1576

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3. 1, 1111 22–4.

1577

a

b

Ibid.5.8, 1135 17–19, as treated in my Necessity, Cause and Blame, 275,279.

340

THE CONCEPT OF WILL

always rational will. Aristotle's examples include such baser desires as anger,1578 and appetite.1579 The idea of freedom may be better treated without the idea of will. Certainly, Lucretius' idea of an uncaused swerve in the operation of the will seems to me unhelpful, leaving us caught in the dilemma as to whether our actions are inexplicable or necessitated. I have sought elsewhere to tackle this dilemma by arguing that actions can be fully explained, and indeed caused, without being necessitated.1580 But there are other treatments of freedom too, which feel no need to invoke the idea of will, and I shall mention another shortly. As for moral responsibility, Aristotle's view is persuasive that it extends wider than just to actions and agents motivated by rational will. For some idea of will-power there is a good use. We need to describe the effort to pursue what we think best against desires of which we approve less. But this phenomenon may be better analysed in the way just indicated, in terms of different layers of attitudes. Desires at the first level may be the subject of second-order approval or disapproval. The effort to act in accordance with the approved desires requires what we call will-power. But I doubt that anything is gained by thinking of this effort in terms of the exercise of a rational faculty, rather than in terms of the varied thoughts, imaginings, and acts of attention involved. One element in the notion of freedom has also been analysed, in recent years, in terms of first- and second-order attitudes. Freedom involves being able to give second-order approval to one's attitudes of the first order.1581 To this extent there may be some overlap between treatments of freedom and of will-power. But on the whole, we may think it was more reasonable of Plato, Posidonius, and Galen to handle them quite separately.

1578

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, 1110b 25–7; 5.8, 1135b 20–2 with 1135a 23–33.

1579

Ibid.7.3, 1147 33–4, with 7. 10, 1152 15–16.

1580

Sorabji Necessity, Cause and Blame, ch.2.

1581

Harry Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, Journal of Philosophy, 68 (1971), 5–20.

a

a

Part IV From Stoic Agitations To Christian Temptations

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22 First Movements As Bad Thoughts Origen and his Legacy I shall now turn to the way in which the concept of first movements was transformed by Christian thinkers, and how it was applied to a Christian debate on whether moderation or eradication of emotion was the proper ideal for humans in this life. Both issues relate to Augustine's distinctive and influential views on sexual desire.

First Movements Applied To Biblical Stories The idea of initial shocks or first movements was first taken over by Philo the Jewish philosopher, and then by the Church Fathers.1582 A special Stoic term, pre-passion (propatheia, or in Jerome's Latin propassio, antepassio), is recorded by Philo, Origen, Jerome, and, as Simo Knuuttila has pointed out to me, Didymus the Blind. Didymus, like Origen before him, was head of the Christian catechetical school in Alexandria, where he instructed Jerome, so all four sources were linked with Alexandria.1583 Origen, at least in Rufinus' Latin, speaks of first movement (primusmotus), as well as of pre-passion (propatheia).1584

1582

Many of the references to the Fathers are supplied by Pohlenz, Die Stoa, vol.2, p.154. The classic work for the 12th and 13th cents. is O. Lottin, ‘Les mouvements premiers de l'appétit sensitif de Pierre Lombard à Saint Thomas d'Aquin’, in his Psychologie et morale du douzième siècle, vol. 2, pp. 493–589. Further references and discussion for the fourth to fourteenth centuries are provided by Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Medieval Thought from Augustine to Buridan. For A.-M. La Bonnardière on Augustine, see below. I have been introduced to a number of passages noted below by Simo Knuuttila, who will be presenting his own complementary findings in a book.

1583

Philo, at least in the paraphrase of Procopius, new frag. p. 78 in Wendland, Neu entdeckte Fragmente, from Procopius MS 394 fo. 110 =Loeb edn. of the Greek fragments, suppl. 2, p. 220 Marcus; Origen Commentary on the Psalms 4, verse 5, § 561 (PG 12, cols. 1141–4); Jerome Commentary on Matthew 5, verse 28; 26, verses 37–9, §§ 28–9 and 218 (PL 26, cols. 39 and 205); Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2 § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9); Letter 79. 9 to Salvina, § 506 (PL 22, col. 731). Margaret Graver has drawn my attention to further discussion in Philo, to be noted shortly.

1584

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 2.

r

344

FIRST MOVEMENTS AS BAD THOUGHTS

They and others apply Stoic ideals to biblical stories and sayings, to the Psalmist's fear, to the souls of the saints, to Abraham's mourning Sarah, to his fear, to Christ's condemnation of the man who looks at a woman to lust after her, to St Paul's injunction, drawn from the Psalms, ‘Be angry’, to Christ's enduring the cross, and to Christ's weeping and distress.1585 In fact Christ was grieved in at least three contexts.1586 Some of these reactions, it is said, should be reinterpreted as no more than pre-passion. Mere titillation (titillare) at a woman, without consenting to anything, would be no more than a thought (cogitatio), and a pre-passion (propassio), not a passion (passio, affectus). What Christ condemns, according to Jerome and Augustine, is looking at a woman in order deliberately to stir up one's own lust.1587 But because the Stoic idea of pre-passion is reinterpreted, the denial of emotion is less clear-cut than it would otherwise have been. The pseudo-Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews, it has been said, hints at a different way of Stoicizing Christ's loud cries and tears at the prospect of his death. Instead of representing the first movements, which Stoic theory had only recently distinguished, they represent the Stoic eupatheia of caution or reverence (eulabeia). At least, the Epistle uses the Stoic word eulabeia and says that his cries and tears were needed because of the godly fear (eulabeia) which, presumably, they manifested.1588 If this is the Epistle's intention, it will be clutching at straws. Appeal to first movements was an easier way to make Christ conform to the Stoic model.

Are Biblical First Movements Distinguished From Emotions? Jewish and Christian thinkers were not always clear about Seneca's point that Stoic pre-passions are not yet emotion. And this is because pre-passions are not analysed in Seneca's crisp way, but treated more vaguely as some kind of preliminary to emotion. Seneca had himself called them ‘preliminaries’ (principia).1589 We can see the blurring happening if we take some of these religious authors in turn, starting with Philo.

1585

References in preceding two notes. Paul, at Ephesians 4: 26, is drawing on Psalms 4.4. Abraham's fear is discussed not in these passages but in a passage to be mentioned in ch. 24, Augustine Questions on the Heptateuch 1. 30. On Didymus the Blind see below.

1586

Augustine City 14. 9 lists his grief over Jerusalem, over the dead Lazarus, and at his forthcoming betrayal.

1587

Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 5, verse 28, §§ 28–9, (PL26, col.39);Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 34. 12.

1588

Hebrews 5:7, as pointed out by E.V. Arnold, Roman Stoicism (Cambridge, 1911).

1589

Seneca On Anger 2. 2. 5.

ORIGEN AND HIS LEGACY

345

Philo Of Alexandria Although Philo, at least in Procopius' paraphrase already cited, describes Abraham's bewailing Sarah in Genesis 23: 3 as merely a pre-passion,1590 he elsewhere describes it as a case of emotion moderated by reason (meson, metrion, metriopatheia).1591 Philo is equally vague when he describes how Abraham came to beat his breast and then stood up from Sarah's corpse. He puts this in terms of Abraham's not going all the way, but turning back under the influence of reason.1592 We are left unclear whether he suffered grief or not. The first two passages run as follows: That Abraham's was a pre-passion, not a passion, is shown by its being said, not that he beat his breast, but that he came to beat his breast. And after ‘he beat his breast’ has not been preferred, the point is also shown by the words ‘Abraham rose up from the corpse’.1593 When he had lost his lifelong partner, whose qualities are revealed by our account and indicated by oracles, distress, like an athlete, began to strip and dust itself in his soul. But he remained master, strengthening and powerfully encouraging his reason, the natural adversary of the emotions, which he had used as his counsellor throughout his life. At that moment, he thought it especially important to obey its advice on what would be beneficial and best. And that was neither to toss about beyond measure (metrion) as if at an entirely novel and spontaneous disaster, nor to be emotionless (apatheia), as if nothing painful had happened, but to choose the mean (to meson) rather than the extremes (akra), and try to be moderate in emotion (metriopathein).1594

Philo adds two unconventional treatments of pre-passion, both from the same work, Questions on Genesis. We saw in Chapter 2 that he tries to fill a lacuna in the Stoic list of eupatheiai by inserting a propatheia or pre-passion, namely bites and contractions, to serve as a eupathic counterpart of the emotion of distress. The Stoics had denied there was any such counterpart for the sage to suffer, since the sage is so far removed from any regret.1595

1590

Philo, new frag. p. 78 Wendland (Neu entdeckte Fragmente), from Procopius MS 394 fo. 110r =Loeb edn. of the Greek fragments, suppl. 2, p. 220 Marcus.

1591

Philo Abraham 256–7.

1592

Id. Questions on Genesis 4. 74.

1593

Philo MS 394, fo. 110r , in Wendland, Neu entdeckte Fragmente.

1594

Id. Abraham 256–7.

1595

Id. Questions on Genesis 2. 57, preserved in Armenian, translated by Ralph Marcus (Loeb edn.), revised by Abraham Terian in Philo of Alexandria, The Contemplative Life, The Giants and Selections, ed. David Winston (London, 1981), p. 252. Marcus's note reveals that the literal meaning of the Armenian is ‘biting (or striking)’ and ‘contraction’. I do not accept the reinterpretation he offers, in which he was followed by Terian and at first by John Dillon, that the reference is to compunction or remorse. John Dillon and Abraham Terian, ‘Philo and the Stoic Doctrine of eupatheiai ’, Studia Philonica, 4 (Chicago, 1976–7), 17–24, is recanted in Dillon's collected papers, The Golden Chain (Aldershot, 1990). The reinterpretation is interesting, because to make repentance a eupatheia would reflect the different view Philo takes of repentance as something good. But there is no evidence to connect bites and contractions with repentance, as there is to connect them with first movements.

346

FIRST MOVEMENTS AS BAD THOUGHTS

Philo diverges from the Stoics again in a passage to which Margaret Graver has drawn my attention, by treating hope not as an emotion, but as a pre-passion preceding joy.1596

Origen: First Movements As Bad Thoughts Origen, if we can trust Rufinus' Latin paraphrase, makes a decisive change. In mentioning first movements, he connects them with the idea of bad thoughts (logismoi, Latin cogitationes),1597 which he takes from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, who talk of bad thoughts coming from the heart.1598 Origen sometimes talks of the bad thoughts, in Rufinus' Latin paraphrase, as bad suggestions (suggestiones),1599 a term echoed by Augustine.1600 The same connections are found not only in Rufinus' Latin, but also in Greek in later Christians discussing emotional struggle in the same tradition, like Climacus in the sixth to seventh centuries, who also connects ‘first movements’ with thoughts.1601 And it happens too with the other Stoic term, ‘pre-passion’. For Jerome, writing in Latin in the century after Origen, connects ‘pre-passion’ with thoughts in no fewer than three of the passages which will be quoted below in this chapter.1602 Origen's shift is a major one. We may possibly make it more intelligible by thinking of it as a change of focus from Seneca's first movement, the shock, to its cause (see Chapter 2), the appearance. But Stoic appearances are still different from Christian thoughts, and are not subject to the Christian questions, which I shall stress later

1596

Philo Questions on Genesis 1. 29; Margaret Graver, ‘Philo of Alexandria and the Origins of Stoic Propatheiai ’, Phronesis, 44 (1999), 300–25.

1597

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 4; cf. Commentary on Joshua 15. 3 (GCS 30, p. 387); Commentary on Matthew 21 (GCS 40, p. 58); Commentary on the Song of Songs 3(GCS 33, p. 211); Commentary on Psalms 54, verse 5, § 561 (PG 12, col. 1465).

1598

Matthew 15: 19; Mark 7: 21.

1599

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 4.

1600

e.g. Augustine On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 12. 34.

1601

Climacus Ladder 15 § 62.

1602

Jerome Commentary on Matthew 6, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, col. 39); Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verse 102, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9); Letter 79. 9 to Salvina, § 506 (PL 22, col. 731).

ORIGEN AND HIS LEGACY

347

in the chapter, ‘Did you let it linger?’ ‘Did you enjoy it?’ ‘Did you put yourself in the way of it?’ There is another difference from Stoicism, for the bad thoughts, though suggested to us by various sources, are sometimes proffered by the devil, or demons, or bad angels. Even then, the bad thoughts provide only an agitation and incitement (commotio sola et incitamentum), which it is up to us to resist.1603 At other times, we derive the bad thoughts from our natural constitution. Then, too, they are merely the beginnings and seeds, as it were (initia, velut quaedam semina), of sin, and it is only if we do not resist that the demons take advantage. This is the passage, in Rufinus' Latin paraphrase, that explicitly uses Seneca's term ‘first movements’(primi motus) for the bad thoughts.1604 So it is not only in pagans, but also in Christians, that the term antedates the twelfth century:1605 We find that the ‘thoughts (cogitationes) which proceed from our heart’, whether they are a memory of some actions, or a contemplation of things and their causes, sometimes come from us ourselves, sometimes are stirred up by hostile powers, and sometimes are introduced even by God or the holy angels. . . . But we must think that nothing else happens to us as a result of the good or bad things that are suggested (suggeri) to our heart, except a mere agitation and incitement that provokes us to good or bad things. It is possible for us, when a malign power has begun to incite us to evil, to repel the wicked suggestions (suggestiones) from us and to resist the worst blandishments, and do absolutely nothing culpable.1606 So it is a clear argument that, just as in good things human intention by itself alone is inadequate for accomplishing good, since it is always brought to full accomplishment by divine help, so too in the opposite case we receive certain beginnings and, as it were, seeds of sin from those things which we are given by nature for our use. But when we have indulged them beyond the point of adequacy and have failed to resist the first movements (primi motus) of intemperance, then the hostile power gains a position from this first offence [the over-indulgence], and incites and urges us on in every way, eager to spread our sins more widely. Indeed, while we humans provide occasions and beginnings (occasiones et initia) of sin, the hostile powers extend them far and wide and if possible endlessly.1607

Demons had already been given a role in producing emotions by

1603

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 4.

1604

Ibid.3.2.2.

1605

Pace Lottin (above, n. 1).

1606

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 4.

1607

Ibid. 3. 2. 2.

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Origen's teacher Clement of Alexandria (died before AD 215),1608 and Origen was to be followed by the desert Father Antony (died 356),1609 as well as by Evagrius. On the pagan side, Porphyry agrees that bad demons stir up emotions in us.1610 Talk of thoughts in this context also becomes standard after Origen. Antony speaks of demons or devils producing thoughts (logismoi).1611 And the reference to thoughts (cogitationes, logismoi) is echoed again in many others.1612 Climacus uses Seneca's and Origen's term ‘first movements’.1613 Origen's conflation of first movements with thoughts added to the unclarity over whether those undergoing first movements are experiencing emotion. Sometimes Origen reflects the Stoics very faithfully. He points out that one can resist movements (kinēmata), because one need not give them assent (sunkatathesis). But he obscures the situation by coupling kinēmata with pathē, a word which in this context the Stoics would have reserved for full emotion, and by allowing pleasure (hēdonē) to occur before assent.1614 What is fully Stoic is his statement that one can sometimes avoid anger, but cannot avoid one's heart being heated within one.1615 He is accurate again in saying that pre-passion is involuntary, and not a sin.1616 He is careful to say that Christ was not saddened with the sadness of the emotion itself.1617 He insists that the Gospel does not say he was afraid or sad, but that he began to be afraid and began to be sad. On the other hand, this

1608

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 20.

1609

Antony Letter 1.3; 1.43 Garitte; trans Louf, p. 44, lines 25–7 (vol. 1, p. 3 Chitty).

1610

Porphyry Abstinence 2.39.3; 2.40.3.

1611

Athanasius Life of Antony, chs. 5; 23 (PG 26, 845 C –849 A ,877 A ); Antony Letter 6 =4.31, 45–8 Garitte.

1612

On Evagrius see below; Athanasius Life of Antony 55; Makarios, Fifty Homilies, ed. H. Dörries, trans. Mason, 15.15; 15.28; 15.49; 50.4; Pseudo-Makarios'Homilies (thanks to Marcus Plested for references) in The Philokalia, compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (3 vols.; London, 1979–84), vol. 3, The Freedom of the Intellect, §§ 119; 147; Jerome Commentary on Matthew 5, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, cols. 38–9); Commentary on Ezechiel, 18, verses 1–2, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9); Letter 79. 9 to Salvina, § 506 (PL 22, col. 731); Augustine Trin. 12. 12 (PL 42. 1007–8); John Cassian Institutes 6. 2, etc.; Diadochus Century on Spiritual Perfection 83; Maximus the Confessor Centuries on Love 1.83–4; 2.19; 2.31; 2.23 Ceresa-Gastaldo (also PG 90. 980 A –B ), trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware in Philokalia, vol.2; Questions to Thalassius, PG 90. 544 C ; Pseudo-Maximus Centuries, PG 90. 1281 B ; Pseudo-John of Damascus On the Virtues and the Vices, PG 28. 1396 B ff., under Athanasius, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware in Philokalia, vol.2, p.337.

1613

Climacus Ladder 15. 62 and passim.

1614

Origen On First Principles 3. 1. 4.

1615

Origen Commentary on the Psalms, Psalm 38, verse 4, § 689 (PG 12, col. 1388).

1616

Ibid., Psalm 4, verse 5, § 561 (PG 12, col. 1144).

1617

Id. Commentary on Matthew 26, verses 36–9.

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clarity is slightly marred by Origen (in Rufinus' paraphrase) using the rather vague expression, again in the same passage, that Christ did not suffer any more of sadness or fear than just its preliminaries (nihil amplius tristitiae vel pavoris patiens nisi principium tantum). The word ‘preliminary’(principium) is exactly that used by Seneca (On Anger 2. 2. 2), but there the word is supported by further explanation. Origen, or Rufinus on his behalf, did not want to go too far because he had to insist, against certain heresies, that Christ had a human mind and a human body.1618 On Christ's beginning to be sad:1619 He ‘who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet has not sinned’1620 is not saddened with the sadness of the emotion itself (passio ipsa), butis made in accordance with human nature only in respect of the very beginning of sadness and fear (ipsum principium tristitiae et pavoris), so that to his disciples, who were present, and especially to Peter, who had a high opinion of himself, he should show in actual practice what he would also say to them afterwards, that ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’.1621 One should never be confident in the flesh, but should always fear for it. For incautious confidence leads to boasting, but fear of weakness encourages us to flee to God's help, just as it encouraged the Lord himself to go forward a little, to fall on his face, and pray. So he did indeed begin to be sad and troubled (ērxato lupeisthai kai adēmonein;Latin coepit tristari et taediari),1622 in accordance with his human nature, which is subject to such emotions (passiones), but not in accordance with his divine power, which is far removed from emotion of this kind. And we say this of Jesus, so that you should not think as some heresies do, that he was a man, but should think that God took on the true nature of the human body. He was able to suffer with our weaknesses, since he himself was clothed with the weak nature of a human body sharing like us in a body and blood. For the children of whom he said, ‘Behold I and the children whom God has given me’ also ‘share in flesh and blood’.1623 So he saw the struggle confronting him, which for him was ‘not against flesh and blood’, but ‘against kings of the earth’ ‘set against him’1624 and princes gathered together against him in greater force than ever. And he began to feel afraid (pavere) or to be sad (tristari), without suffering anything more of sadness or fear than just its beginning. For it is not written that he was

1618

Ibid., and On First Principles 4. 4. 4; cf. e.g. Jerome Commentary on Matthew 26, verse 37, cited below; and Basil Letter 261; Augustine City 14. 9.

1619

Origen Commentary on Matthew 26, verses 36–9, in Rufinus' Latin translation (GCS 11, pp. 206–7).

1620

Hebrews 4: 15.

1621

Matthew 26: 41.

1622

Ibid. 26: 37.

1623

Hebrews 2: 13–14.

1624

Ephesians 6:12; cf. Psalms 2:2.

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afraid or sad, but that he began to be afraid and began to be sad,1625 when he actually said, ‘My soul is sad unto death.’1626 That seems to mean something such as if he had said, ‘Sadness has begun in me, so that I may not be altogether without a taste of sadness. This is in me not always, but up to the time of death, so that once I am “dead to sin”,1627 I shall also die to all sadness, of which only the beginning was in me.’ On temptation:1628 But if anyone should say that what comes from outside us is such that it is impossible to resist anything of that sort when it has happened, let him pay attention to his own experiences (pathē) and movements (kinēmata), to see if there is not some approval (eudokēsis) and assent (sunkatathesis) going on, and an inclination of his command centre to this particular thing, because of these incentives (pithanotētes). For example, if a woman displays herself to someone who has decided to be continent and restrain himself from sex, and she invites him to do something contrary to his intention, it is not she who is the perfect cause (autotelēs aitia) of his setting aside his intention. For he commits the licentious act (akolasia) after approving the titillation (gargalismos) and the smoothness of the pleasure (to leion tēs hēdonēs), come what may (pantōs), without willing (beboulēmenos) to resist it or ratify his decision. In someone else in the same circumstances, on the other hand, who has taken more lessons and practised, the titillations and incitements (erethismoi) occur, but his reason is better strengthened and nourished by practice, and has been confirmed by doctrine towards the good, or come near to being confirmed. And it pushes back the incitements and weakens the appetite. On ‘my heart was heated within me’:1629 It is possible when the demon of anger is standing over us not to get angry. But perhaps it is impossible not to get heated. On ‘they bear a grudge against me. . . .My heart is troubled within me. . . .Fear and trembling came over me and darkness hid me’:1630 Every good man knows that sinning in one's thoughts (logismoi) is one thing, and is tolerable, but sinning in word and deed is another, and is a dangerous burden. And that is why if it sometimes comes about that there is turmoil (klonos) and harm (blabē) in his thoughts, the wise man keeps this inside, and utters no word, as is the way with a hidden sin, nor does he bring the act to completion, for he knows that a thought (enthumēma) is curable.

1625

Mark 14: 33.

1626

Ibid.

1627

Romans 6: 10.

1628

Origen On First Principles (Greek)3.1.4.

1629

Id. Commentary on the Psalms Psalm 38, verse 4, § 689 (PG 12. 1388).

1630

Ibid., Psalm 55, verses 3–5, § 730 (PG 12, col. 1465).

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But a sin in word and deed is hard to cure and sometimes incurable. And that is why he [the psalmist] says, ‘my heart is troubled within me’. For I did not announce my trouble (tarakhē), nor act in any way upon it. But when cowardice fell on me because of the death that follows sin, I kept it within myself. For cowardice is made apparent by external signs, and he who is thus revealed becomes a stumbling-block to others. ‘Fear and trembling came over me and darkness hid me’ belongs to human nature, which possesses the emotional part (pathētikon) [of the soul], both irascible (thumikon) and appetitive (epithumētikon). If one progresses (prokoptein) in virtue, the emotional part does not disappear, but it comes to be in the state called sympathy (sumpatheia). On ‘Be angry’:1631 The words also refer to something unwilled (aproaireton), which some call the occurrence of pre-passion (propatheia; in Rufinus' Latin prima commotio), and which drags us, on the occurrence of certain incentives (erethismoi), to the type of anger which we defined earlier. So if we take ‘be angry’ in this second way, I mean as something unwilled happening by way of pre-passion, it is no sin to be liable to fall away from the good.

Didymus the Blind Didymus the Blind, Alexandrian ascetic, teacher of Rufinus and Jerome, and older contemporary of Evagrius, gives one of the clearest Christian accounts of pre-passion.1632 His examples are the Psalmist's fear (deilōthēnai), the souls of the saints, Christ's enduring (hupomenein) the Cross, his beginning to be distressed at his forthcoming betrayal (Mark 14: 33; Matthew 26: 37), and his being described as tested or tempted (peirasthai), like us, but without sin (Hebrews 4:15). The explanation of the last is that pre-passion is not yet sin. Pre-passion must be ascribed to Christ, or his soul would have a different substance from ours and there would be no glory in his comportment, and no struggle on the Cross. But on the other hand, it must not be supposed that his soul has an irrational faculty of desire (orektikē). For his reaction was a rational one. Mark and Matthew describe it with the verb adēmonein, which Didymus defines as [distress] of something rational coupled with rehearsing (anapolein) the reasons for the distress. It is the substance of the rational soul that receives anger, appetite, distress, disturbance (tarakhē), and fear.

1631

Ibid., Psalm 4, verse 5 (Greek) (PG 12. 1141–4).

1632

Didymus the Blind, Psalmen-Kommentar (Tura-Papyrus), ed. Michael Gronewald (Bonn, 1969), part 3, 221.33–222.14; part 4, 282.4–7; part 5, 293.4–12.

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What, then, is pre-passion? Is it, as in Seneca, something of a quite different kind from the emotion? No, for the Psalmist's fear (Psalm 34: 17 in the Septuagint) is called a pre-passion. Moreover Didymus, speaking of disturbance (tarakhē), which he has just listed along with clear examples of emotion, says that when something which excites fear is at hand, the rational soul is inevitably disturbed. But sometimes it stops the disturbance at once, so that nothing comes after. That is pre-passion: [Question . . . ] Since ‘in all things he has been tempted like us, without sinning’ [Hebrews 4: 15], we ascribe to him pre-passion (propatheia). But pre-passion is not sin. If you do not ascribe this, you introduce into him a different soul substance, and it has no glory and is not worthy of praise and crowns, because it is not troubled. At any rate you have in the Gospel [Hebrews 4. 15] ‘he began to be troubled (thambeisthai) and perplexed (adēmonein)’. Beginning is not something different from pre-passion. This beginning is just that, a beginning only and has nothing after it. Only this [soul] chose good in preference to the choice (haireisthai pro haireseōs) of evils. [Question . . . ] This has often been said. The substance of the rational (soul) is receptive of what it is its nature to receive. It is receptive of anger, appetite, distress, disturbance (tarakhē), fear. When something exciting fear is at hand, the rational substance is disturbed (tarattesthai), come what may. But some times it halts the disturbance (tarakhē) at once so that nothing more happens after it. They call this pre-passion.1633

Jerome Jerome, as already remarked, connects pre-passion with thoughts (cogitationes). As with Origen, his accuracy in reflecting Stoicism is variable. He insists that Christ's beginning to be sad was only a pre-passion, but adds that Christ was truly saddened (vere contristatus) because he had taken on genuine humanity. It was merely that emotion did not dominate in his mind (ne passio dominaretur).1634 But Jerome reflects Stoicism accurately some of the time, despite this distortion. He correctly notes that the transition from prepassion (propatheia, propassio) to emotion (pathos, passio) is marked by assent (consentire), will (voluntas),1635 decision (decernere),1636 and

1633

Ibid., part 3 (Psalms 29–34), 222. 12–14.

1634

Jerome Commentary on Matthew 26, verse 37.

1635

Ibid. 5, verse 28 §§ 28–9 (PL 26, cols. 39–40).

1636

Id. Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9).

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judgement (iudicium).1637 He is in line with Stoicism in saying that pre-passion cannot be avoided and would not be punished by God.1638 Yet he adds a thoroughly Christian idea that some fault (culpa) attaches to it, even though it is not a matter for accusation (crimen).1639 Jerome, we shall see in Chapter 24, is like Augustine in recognizng degrees of sin. It is just as well that the mere occurrence of the bad thought involves no sin, given that Christ was himself subject to first movements, yet sinless. Christ spent forty days in the desert, where he was subjected by the devil to three temptations which are described, and he was tempted throughout the forty days,1640 which some took to imply further temptations. The desert Father Evagrius, to whom I shall devote the next chapter, tried to identify the temptations with various of the eight first movements which he distinguished.1641 And before him Origen had already correlated the temptations with various vices.1642 Yet Christ was free of all sin, even of original sin, which the rest of us supposedly inherit from the first human, Adam. Augustine had a rationale for this exemption, namely, that Christ was not conceived through a human father, and so was free from the mechanism of lust which transmits original sin.1643 Christ's temptations and first movements will need to be ones that he spat out at once without allowing them to linger, in order that he may have remained sinless. And if he was tempted for forty days, this needs not to have been through his continuing to dwell on the same temptations. The following are some of the passages from Jerome. On Christ's beginning to be sad:1644 ‘He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sad and sorrowful (coepit contristari et maestus esse).’ What we said above about passion (passio) and pre-passion (propassio) is revealed also in the present

1637

Id. Commentary on Ephesians 4, verse 26, book 2, ch. 4 § 628 (PL 26, cols. 542–3).

1638

Id. Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9); Letter 79. 9 to Salvina, § 506 (PL 22, col. 732).

1639

Id. Commentary on Matthew 5, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, cols. 39–40).

1640

Luke 4: 1–13; Matthew 4: 1–11; Mark 1: 12–13.

1641

Evagrius On Discrimination ch. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol. 1 = On Various Bad Thoughts, PG 79. 1200–34. Ch. 1 selects thoughts of gluttony, avarice, and vainglory.

1642

Origen Homilies on Luke 29, Greek frag. (GCS 35, p. 182 =Sources Chrétiennes 87. 502–3 =fragments grecs, frag. 56, line 9 (Luke 4: 4) Hom. 21. 2–3), starts with gluttony, but beyond the first three adds sleep, depression (akēdia), andcowardice.

1643

Augustine Opus imperfectum 4.79; 4.104; 6.22 (PL 45. 1384, 1401, 1553).

1644

Jerome Commentary on Matthew 26, verse 37, § 218 (PL 26, col. 205).

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chapter, namely that the Lord was indeed truly saddened (vere contristatus), in order that he might display the truth of the humanity he had assumed. But so that emotion should not dominate in his mind, he began to be sad by way of pre-passion. For it is one thing to be sad and another to begin to be sad. On looking at a woman to lust after her:1645 There is this difference between pathos and propatheia, that is between passion (passio) and pre-passion (propassio): passion is counted as a sin (vitium); pre-passion, though it involves the fault (culpa) of something beginning, is not treated as a matter for accusation (in crimine). Sosomeone who on looking at a woman has his soul titillated (titillata) is struck (percussus) by pre-passion. But if he once assents, and makes a thought (cogitatio) into an emotion (affectus), as is written in [the Psalms of] David, ‘They have passed to an emotion (affectus) of the heart’, he has passed from pre-passion to passion. And what he lacks is not the will (voluntas) to sin, but the opportunity. So whoever looks at a woman to lust after her, that is, if he has looked at her in order that he may feel lust, and in order to dispose himself to act, he is rightly said to commit adultery with her in his heart. On the blamelessness of pre-passion:1646 So God in no way punishes the first and second stimuli of thought (cogitationes), which the Greeks call propatheiai and which no human can be without. But he punishes if anyone decides to do what has been thought, or is unwilling to correct by penitence what he has done. On pre-passion:1647 It is difficult, or rather impossible, for anyone to be free of the beginnings of emotion (perturbationuminitia), which the Greeks more significantly call propatheiai, and we, in a word-for-word translation, can call antepassiones. For the incentives to every vice titillate (titillare) the mind, and our judgement is at the midpoint between accepting and rejecting what is thought (cogitata). Hence the Lord spoke in the Gospel and said, ‘Out of the heart come bad thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy.’1648 This is what the mouth of the prophet refers to in different words, when he says, ‘I was disturbed (turbatus) and spoke not’, and in the same book, ‘be angry and do not sin’.1649 And it is what the remark of Archytas of Tarentum to the negligent steward refers to, ‘I would have killed you dead with blows,

1645

Id. Commentary on Matthew 6, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, col. 39).

1646

Id. Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2 § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9).

1647

Id. Letter 79. 9 to Salvina § 506 (PL 22, col. 731).

1648

Matthew 15: 19.

1649

Psalms 4: 4.

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if I had not been angry.’ For the anger of man does not produce the justice of God. Let us apply what is said about one emotion (perturbatio) to the others. Just as it is human to get angry, and Christian not to bring one's anger to completion, so all flesh desires the things of the flesh and draws the soul by various enticements (inlecebrae) to deadly pleasures. On ‘Be angry’:1650 The word ‘anger’ is understood in two ways not only among ourselves, but also among philosophers. For either when we are provoked (lacessiri) by an injustice and stirred up by natural stimuli (stimuli), or when the provocation (impetus) has quietened and fury has been quenched, our mind can make a judgement and still desire revenge just as much on the person who is thought to have harmed us. I think the present saying concerns the former case. It is allowed to us as humans that we should be moved in the face (facies) of anything undeserved, and that like a light breeze it should disturb (conturbare) the tranquillity of our mind. But in no way is it allowed that we should be worked up into swollen whirlpools.

Augustine Augustine will be the subject of Chapter 24, where we shall see that he was partly misled by taking Aulus Gellius, rather than Seneca, as his guide to Stoic first movements. We shall also see that even when he reports the Stoics correctly, in applying their concept to Abraham's fear, he still thinks that the difference between pre-passion and emotion is merely verbal.1651 What we have noticed in this chapter is that Augustine follows Origen's talk of thoughts and suggestions, and that like Jerome he recognizes degrees of sin. We also noticed earlier that he repeats from Plotinus the idea of a shock, and of a shock that does not hurt. But there is one alteration to Stoicism that still needs to be identified. Augustine allows desire, appetite, and pleasure (desiderium, appetitus, delectatio) to precede assent (consensus, consensio), whereas for the Stoics they are emotions that already involve assenting to the appropriateness of action. In the next chapter we shall see that in the seventh century assent is often listed as occurring long after the emotion. These variations are partly due, we shall find, to its not always being clear whether the assent is to the thought, to its lingering, to the pleasure of its lingering, to the emotion, or to the act. In any case, it is seldom, as with the Stoics, to appearance.

1650

Jerome Commentary on Ephesians 4, verse 26, § 628 (PL 26, col. 543).

1651

Augustine Questions on the Heptateuch 1. 30.

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Christian Adaptations I have stressed a number of Christian adaptations. First movements are associated with bad thoughts and suggestions. They can be induced by demons or devils. They involve a degree of sin, but a lesser one. Assent of some kind may precede desire or pleasure. The emphasis on initial thoughts may have helped Christian writers to ask new sorts of questions that are not prominent in the Stoics, but are highly legitimate. They asked whether one dwelt on the thought,1652 whether one enjoyed the thought,1653 or whether one deliberately put oneself in the way of it.1654 Here, the grafting of Christianity on to Stoicism proved fruitful. Thomas Aquinas adds a further distinction. Is the pleasure taken in the activity thought of—a mortal sin—or in the thinking of it—a venial sin?1655

1652

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 6; Augustine Trin. 12. 12.

1653

Augustine Trin. 12. 13; Evagrius Practical Treatise 75.

1654

See for the Middle Ages Lottin and Saarinen (as n. 1 above). This question would be considered very relevant by Porphyry, who insists that one should go nowhere near temptation, rather than that one should gain experience in handling it (Abstinence 1. 35); see ch. 18 above.

1655

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I IIae q. 74, a. 8, reply.

23 From First Movements To the Seven Cardinal Sins Evagrius The Christian treatment of first movements was enormously advanced by the desert Father Evagrius of Pontus (ADc. 345–99).1656 He wrote his own graphic advice for desert dwellers on the spiritual exercises needed to combat emotions. Evagrius' work was at first widely read in the West, to Jerome's displeasure, because of Latin translations by Rufinus.1657 Moreover, his ideas on emotion were confirmed in the West by John Cassian. But his eventual condemnation in 553 led to many of his works being suppressed, some being preserved only through being ascribed to someone else (Nilus), or in oriental translations. His corpus has only recently been reconstructed. Evagrius was ordained by the Great Cappadocian Fathers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus. They had been fellow pioneers of monastic retreat near Evagrius' original home. Basil's Longer and Shorter Rules codified behaviour in monasteries and treated of the monks' emotions. Evagrius was ordained first as a reader by Basil, and then in 380 as a deacon by Gregory. In 382, after an affair with a married woman in Constantinople, Evagrius fled and was cared for in Jerusalem by Rufinus and Melania, who ran monasteries there, one for men and one for women. In 383 he moved to a desert monastery for two years, and then spent his last fourteen years in even greater solitude in the desert. Besides the monastic communities of cenobites, there were in the desert semi-anchorites who lived in huts, meeting only once a week, which was Evagrius' later practice, and anchorites (anakhōrētai), who lived in total solitude (anakhōrēsis). Such practices went back long before

1656

I thank Claudia Rapp for first suggesting I look at him.

1657

Jerome Letter 133, to Ctesiphon (CSEL 56, p. 246).

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Evagrius and his Cappadocian mentors in the fourth century. Already in the first century AD Philo of Alexandria wrote a treatise On the Contemplative Life extolling a semi-anchorite community, living, not admittedly in the desert, but in solitude outside Alexandria.

Evagrius' Practical Treatise and the Seven Cardinal Sins Evagrius wrote a number of treatises on how to deal with what Origen, following the Stoics, had called first movements, and on how to work towards the Stoic ideal of apatheia, or freedom from emotion. I shall start with the best known, the Practical Treatise.1658 That he is talking of first movements, in the new Origenist sense, I shall argue shortly. He talks of eight thoughts (logismoi) which assail you: there is the thought of gluttony (gastrimargia), the thought of fornication (porneia), the thought of avarice (philarguria), the thought of distress (lupē), the thought of anger (orgē), the thought of listless depression (akēdia), the thought of vainglory or vanity (kenodoxia), and the thought of pride (huperēphania).1659 In later Christians these eight became the seven cardinal sins, by a series of adjustments. The number eight was, however, preserved in the Greek tradition through ps.?-John of Damascus, and within the Western Latin tradition by John Cassian, founder of the fifth-century monastery at Marseilles. It is said to have lasted in the British Isles until the twelfth century. Cassian's On the Institutions of the Monastic Communities and on Eight of the Principal Vices and his Conferences, so influential on Western monastic life, both have substantial sections expounding Evagrius' eight thoughts.1660 Evagrius echoes the Stoics on emotions when he calls his eight thoughts the most generic (genikōtatoi), which include all the others.1661 But he does not, like the Stoics, try to show how the others are species of these generic ones. Evagrius was not alone among the desert Fathers in making a list of sins. A set of six appears in contemporary writings from the 370s

1658

For the Practical Treatise there is a fundamental introduction and set of notes in A. and C. Guillaumont's edition in Sources Chrétiennes 171 (Paris, 1979). English translation by John E. Bamberger (Cistercian Studies Series, 4, Cistercian Publications; Spencer, Mass., 1970, and Kalamazoo, 1981).

1659

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 6.

1660

Cassian Institutions bks. 5 to 12; Conferences 5. Both are translated into English, though with book 6 of the Institutes omitted, by E. C. S. Gibson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, vol. 11 (1894).

1661

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 6.

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or 380s, wrongly attributed to his mentor Makarios.1662 But this list did not have the influence of Evagrius'.

Evagrius' Eight Thoughts As First Movements Evagrius' eight thoughts have to do with emotions like lust, distress, anger, or vain feeling. But they are not themselves emotions, as is shown by their being called bad thoughts of these emotions. Not only does the ‘of ’ distinguish them from the emotions, but also the idea of bad thoughts is derived from Origen, who so much influenced Evagrius, an influence which led to his later condemnation. And Origen, in Rufinus' version, treated the bad thoughts, we have seen, as first movements.1663 Evagrius' bad thoughts are like Origen's in another way too: he sees them as being injected (emballein) in many cases, though not in all, by demons,1664 and his Practical Treatise is to a large extent about how to outwit the very clever demons. There is further evidence that the eight thoughts correspond to first movements, rather than to the emotions themselves. For Evagrius says that it is not up to us (eph' hēmin) whether these thoughts disturb the soul, but it is up to us whether they linger (khronizein)1665 and whether they stir up emotions (pathēkinein).1666 This last remark distinguishes bad thoughts from emotions decisively. Further on, he reports a dispute on whether thought (ennoia) stirs up emotions (pathē), as he has said, or emotions thought.1667 Here is his opening account: The most generic thoughts, in which every thought is included, are eight in all. First, the thought of gluttony, and after it that of fornication, third that of avarice, fourth that of distress, fifth that of anger, sixth that of listless depression (akēdia), seventh that of vanity, eighth that of pride. It is not up to us whether any of these disturb the soul or not. But it is up to us whether they linger (khronizein) or not, or whether they stir up emotions or not.1668

That the thoughts are only first movements is further confirmed by Evagrius saying that the thoughts are only temptations (peirasmoi).

1662

Pseudo-Makarios Fifty Homilies 15. 50, ed. Dörries, trans. Mason: lust, avarice, vanity, pride, envy, anger.

1663

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 2.

1664

Evagrius Practical Treatise ch. 80.

1665

Ibid. 6; cf. Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Eight Spirits of Wickedness chs. 4; 6 (PG 79, cols. 1148, 1152). The points are repeated by Pseudo-John of Damascus, On the Virtues and Vices, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol.2, p.337.

1666

Evagrius Practical Treatise 6.

1667

Ibid. 37.

1668

Ibid. 6.

360

FROM FIRST MOVEMENTS TO THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS

Sin comes in only when assent is given to the pleasure of the thought.1669 This talk of assent to pleasure, incidentally, tended to obscure the Stoic idea that pleasure already presupposes assent. Meanwhile, the distinction of thought from sin meant that a further transformation was required before Evagrius' thoughts could be turned into the deadly sins, as they were by Gregory the Great: For a monk temptation (peirasmos) is a thought rising through the emotional part (to pathētikon) of the soul and darkening the intellect. For a monk sin (hamartia) is assent (sunkatathesis) to the forbidden pleasure of the thought.1670

Evagrius makes one passing reference in the Practical Treatise to the expansions and contractionswhich for the Stoics can either follow emotions or, I have argued, precede them as first movements. But he seems to be thinking of them as following emotion: Distress sometimes occurs upon the frustration of appetites and sometimes follows on anger. It occurs in the following way upon the frustration of appetites. Certain thoughts take the soul by surprise and lead it into memories of home, parents, and its former life. When they see that it does not resist, but follows, and is diffused (diakheomenē) in the pleasures of thought, then they seize it and plunge it in distress, because those erstwhile things are no more, and further cannot be because of the present way of life. The sorrowing soul is lowered and contracted (sunestalē) as much at these second thoughts as it was diffused at the former ones.1671

Evagrius' Techniques For Achieving Apatheia Evagrius' aim is to achieve apatheia, freedom from emotion. That can be achieved only by degrees. Evagrius' technique is to play one bad thought off against another. And for this purpose, he studies the causal interrelations among the thoughts. Reading the Practical Treatise is like passing, in the different context of logic, from Aristotle's logic of the terms that make up propositions to the Stoic logic of whole propositions. Evagrius goes beyond the Stoics, who had been concerned with the internal structure of each type of emotion, in order to discuss the interrelations. In the process of playing one bad thought off against another, vanity plays a special role. For if you have defeated the first six, you

1669

Augustine is not the first to make assent a pre-requisite for sin, pace R. A. Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l'acte humaine’, 89. What Augustine does, however, is to ascribe the assent to will, rather than to reason.

1670

Evagrius Practical Treatise 74–5.

1671

Ibid. 10.

EVAGRIUS

361

are immediately open to vanity. To ward off vanity, you may have to entertain some of the other bad thoughts, e.g. that of fornication, he says, to remind yourself of your frailty. But almost any of the other bad thoughts can repel vanity.1672 The special role for vanity had been anticipated by the desert Father Antony, if we are to believe Athanasius' life. For there Antony is presented as recommending monks to write down the movements of their souls, so that shame at the thought of others knowing will cure them.1673 The writing down of angry thoughts has also been recommended in modern psychotherapy,1674 but for the more Stoic reason of facilitating reappraisal, rather than playing shame off against anger. So long as you can ward off thoughts of vanity or fornication only by playing them off against each other, you will not do more than approach the frontiers of freedom from emotion. Once you ward them off by the virtues of humility (tapeinophrosunē) and chastity (sōphrosunē), you have reached the most profound apatheia.1675 The method of using opposed disturbances to knock each other out was ascribed to Hippocrates in a passage of Olympiodorus cited in Chapter 19. But it was known also in Evagrius' circle to Palladius, author of the Lausiac History, and the ascription to Hippocrates is cited by Jerome.1676 The following passage incorporates many of Evagrius' ideas. It further incorporates Origen's idea that bad thoughts can be human in their provenance, rather than inspired by demons, a point that Evagrius also makes elsewhere.1677 The demon of vanity opposes the demon of fornication, and it is not possible for these to attack the soul simultaneously, if one promises honour, while the other is the ambassador of dishonour. So if either of these two approaches and puts you under pressure, imagine in yourself the thoughts of the opposite demon. And if you are able to knock out the one proverbial nail with another, know that you are near the frontiers of apatheia. For

1672

Ibid.30–1; 57–8;cf. On Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts ch. 14, preserved in the 18th-cent. Philokalia of Saints Nikodimos and Makarios, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, vol. 1. This is a variant of the first 24 out of 27 chapters of Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Various Bad Thoughts (PG 79. 1200–34): see chs. 14 and 15.

1673

Athanasius Life of Antony 55 (thanks to Luke Beckett for the reference).

1674

Redford Williams and Virginia Williams, Anger Kills (New York, 1993).

1675

Evagrius Practical Treatise 58.

1676

Olympiodorus In Alc. I 6.6–7.8. I am grateful to Henry Chadwick for the references to Jerome Letter 121, addressed to Algesia, preface, and Palladius Lausiac History 25. 5.

1677

Evagrius On Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts ch. 2 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 2.

362

FROM FIRST MOVEMENTS TO THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS

your intellect was strong enough to efface the demons' thoughts by human thoughts. But to drive away the thought of vanity through humility, or that of fornication through chastity, would be a sign of the deepest apatheia. Try to do this in the case of all the demons which are opposed to each other. For you will discover at the same time by what emotion you have been more affected. But as far as you can, seek from God to ward off your enemies in the second way.1678

Description Of Bad Thoughts It may be tempting to suppose we do not often suffer from bad thoughts. This enabled the Pelagians to say, to Augustine's disgust, that there are people who need not ask God's forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer every day.1679 But Evagrius' descriptions of bad thoughts are frighteningly familiar. As we read, it becomes harder to deny that we may indulge in many of them a lot of the time without realizing it. He describes a monk devoted to poverty who thinks how useful it would be to do some fund-raising to alleviate the lot of the poor. He knows some wealthy ladies who would help. And if he succeeded, how admired he would be. He would surely be given the ecclesiastical post whose incumbent is dying. He has now succumbed at least to thoughts of avarice and vanity.1680 Another monk thinks it quite harmless to indulge in thoughts of home. Soon he feels pleasure at the memory of his past life and realizes he can never have it again. What follow are the demons of distress, anger, depression, or fornication.1681 Yet another monk is meant to be reading in solitude, but entertains thoughts of akēdia, or depression. He stares at the window and starts at every sound that might suggest visitors. He looks to see how much of the book is left, and counts the pages. He puts the book under his head as a pillow and takes a nap, but he can't sleep properly. He wakes with thoughts of hunger.1682 Which of us has not counted the pages and wondered whether there are still any biscuits in the cupboard? Evagrius' description in the same work of a seduction is surely based on personal experience.1683 The eyes of the depressed [monk] continually gaze at the windows and his mind imagines visitors. The door creaks and he jumps up. He hears a

1678

Id. Practical Treatise ch. 58.

1679

See next chapter.

1680

Evagrius On Discrimination ch. 21 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 22.

1681

Id. On Discrimination ch. 8 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 8; Practical Treatise 10.

1682

Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On the Eight Spirits of Wickedness ch. 14 (PG 79, col. 1160 A –B ).

1683

Ibid. ch. 4 (PG 79, col. 1149 A –B ).

EVAGRIUS

363

voice and peeps through the window. He does not come away until numb with sitting. While reading, he yawns repeatedly and easily slides towards sleep. He rubs his eyes and stretches his hands; he takes his eyes off the book and gazes at the wall. Turning back, he reads a little. He takes a lot of trouble opening the ends of the sections. He counts the pages and calculates the quaternions. He complains of the handwriting and decoration. Then, folding the book, he puts it under his head, and sleeps but not very deeply, for hunger then rouses his consciousness and instils its own cares.1684 The demon of avarice seems to me very versatile and ingenious at deception. Often when squeezed by [the monk's] extreme renunciation, he at once assumes the mask of provisioner and lover of the poor. Strangers not yet present he receives with much sincerity and to others left behind he sends ministrations. He visits the prisons of the city and of course ransoms those who are being sold. He sticks to wealthy ladies and indicates people who deserve to be well treated, and he advises others who have acquired a well-stuffed purse to renounce it. And so having deceived the soul little by little, he subjects it to thoughts of avarice and hands it over to the demon of vanity. So the demon introduces a crowd of people praising the Lord for these provisions and gradually projects (proballei) others chatting about our ordination, and prophesies the speedy death of the present incumbent.1685

These last lines could have been written by Trollope. Susceptibility to homesickness has already been mentioned above: There is a demon called the one who leads astray. He approaches the brothers especially at dawn. He leads the mind of the anchorite round from city to city, from house to house, and from village to village, making the meetings simple at first, of course, then running into some acquaintances and chatting longer, doing away with the proper position in relation to encounters. . . . It is not at random nor by chance that the demon works that long circuit, but he does it from a wish to do away with the anchorite's position, so that the mind may be inflamed by these events and, drunk from the many meetings, may at once fall to the demons of fornication, or of anger, or of distress, which are especially harmful to the lustre of his position.1686

Evagrius also explains the necessary countermeasures: After the departure of the demon, let this happen. Sit down by yourself and remember the things that happened to you, from where you started and where you travelled, in what sort of place you were caught by the spirit of fornication, or anger, or distress and how all the events happened, and learn that distinctly and entrust it to memory, so that you can catch the demon

1684

Ibid. 14.

1685

Evagrius On Various Bad Thoughts 22–3 = On Discrimination 21.

1686

Id. On Various Bad Thoughts 8 = On Discrimination 8.

364

FROM FIRST MOVEMENTS TO THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS

out when he approaches, and point out the place which he keeps hidden. Then you will not follow him again. If you want some time to drive him mad, catch him out as soon as he comes up, and show him the first place he went to, then the second and the third. He gets very angry and cannot bear the shame of it.1687

Sequences, Timing, Which Does Not Follow Which Evagrius tells us we must observe the sequences and timing of bad thoughts and note which does not follow which: If any monk wants to experience the cruel demons, and to get a grasp of their art, let him observe the thoughts, let him mark their intensification and their relenting, and their interweaving and timing, and which are the demons who do this, and what sort of demon follows what, and which does not follow which. And let him seek from Christ the reasons for these things. For the demons take it very ill when people pursue the practical art with more knowledge, since they want to ‘shoot down the true-hearted on a moonless night’.1688

As regards sequences, I have already described the causal connection of thoughts of vanity and fornication, and the sequences in thoughts of poverty, avarice, and vanity, of boredom and hunger, of home, and many others. But there are many further sequences to study as well.1689 As for timing, the time of prayer is crucial for many emotions.1690Akēdia is the noonday demon and lasts for four hours.1691 The demon who leads astray visits at dawn.1692 We must notice which thoughts start suddenly (fornication, blasphemy, anger), which more gradually, and which are frequent,1693 which can be got rid of in youth (passions of the body: fornication, gluttony), and which last all one's life (passions of the soul: anger, etc.).1694 As to which thought does not follow which, Evagrius gives a special role to the three demons who, he says, tempted Christ, those of

1687

Id. On Various Bad Thoughts 9 = On Discrimination 8.

1688

Id. Practical Treatise 50.

1689

Vanity can be followed by pride, by distress, or by fornicatory thoughts (Practical Treatise 13). Depression or akēdia is not followed by another demon, but by peace and joy after the struggle (ibid. 12). Anger is a source of frightening nightmares (ibid. 21). You must not dismiss a brother who has irritated you, or you will feel distress (ibid. 25). Pride can be followed by anger, distress, or even the illusion of many demons in the air (ibid. 14). If at the time of prayer you nurse images of lust or anger, this will be followed by depression or akēdia (ibid. 23).

1690

Ibid. 11; 23; 25.

1691

Ibid. 12.

1692

Id. On Discrimination 8 = On Various Bad Thoughts 8, translated above.

1693

Id. Practical Treatise 43; 51; 11.

1694

Ibid. 36.

EVAGRIUS

365

gluttony, avarice, and vanity. These demons form the front line of the attack, because they alone can open the way to the others.1695 Thus the demon of fornication cannot attack those who have resisted the demon of gluttony.1696 Nor can the demon of anger or of depression attack, if one has already abandoned desire for food, possessions, or esteem. Equally, the demon of pride will have no success if one has no wish for possessions. Elsewhere, avarice is called, in St Paul's words, the root of all evils, with other emotions depending on it, like so many branches.1697 By contrast, distress is very derivative, depending on the frustration of other emotions.1698 So we should reject the worldly pleasures whose loss occasions grief.1699

The Demons' Tricks The demons play tricks. They can bring to their aid incompatible demons, for whichever of them prevails, our soul is lost in any case.1700 We have noticed other tricks to do with thoughts of home or of fund-raising. The demons can also retreat to see which virtue is being neglected, and then rush back in.1701 They can weaken us by wrongly encouraging us to sing psalms standing up and to control ourselves.1702 In fact, it is dangerously debilitating to fast, keep vigil (agrupnein), work continuously, or engage in excessive solitude.1703 We can give away to them by a word or gesture whether we are harbouring their thoughts.1704 But since they cannot see directly into our minds, they wait for our uttered speech (prophorikos logos—a term much used by Stoics),1705 as opposed to our inner thought (endiathetos logos). They deceitfully suggest to us retiring (anakhōrēsis), which is the

1695

Id. On Discrimination ch. 1 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 1. For other identifications of the temptations of Christ see Origen Homilies on Luke, 29 (Sources Chrétiennes 87, pp. 502–3); John Cassian Conferences 5. 6.

1696

Gluttony is the origin (arkhē) of the passions in Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius, On Eight Spirits of Wickedness, ch. 1 (PG 79, col. 1145 A ); cf. id. Sentences to the Virgins, PG 40. 1284 A .

1697

Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Eight Spirits of Wickedness ch. 7 (PG 79, col. 1152 B ), citing 1 Timothy 6: 10.

1698

Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Eight Spirits of Wickedness ch. 11 (PG 79, col. 1156 D ). Cf. Stoics ap. Stobaeum, 2. 88. 18–21 Wachsmuth.

1699

Evagrius Practical Treatise 19.

1700

Ibid. ch. 45.

1701

Ibid. 44; id. On Prayer ch. 134; repeated in Isaiah the Solitary On Guarding the Intellect sec. 2, tran. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol.1, p.22.

1702

Evagrius Practical Treatise 40.

1703

Id. On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 25.

1704

Id. Practical Treatise 47. Augustine, by contrast, thinks demons can read our thoughts directly (Literal Interpretation of Genesis 12. 17. 34).

1705

Evagrius On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 27; Practical Treatise 47.

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FROM FIRST MOVEMENTS TO THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS

worst treatment for anger, or sociability, which is the worst for lust.1706 Against the demons' tricks, what the angels can do is remind us of spiritual pleasures, so that we may turn our anger against the demons.1707

Countermeasures The monk must avoid leaving his cell not only when faced with the demon of lust, but still more when faced with akēdia, or depression.1708 On the other hand, visiting the sick can overcome stubbornness and repel disturbing dreams. Solitary anchorites do not have as much opportunity for this as monks in a community.1709 In general, pity reduces anger and hate.1710 Evagrius is also aware of the importance of diet.1711 Evagrius tells us of further remedies. He wrote an Antirrhetic, surviving in Syriac and Armenian, with biblical texts to repel each of the eight bad thoughts. His idea was that you have to be able to find the right words against the demons very quickly,1712 just as the Stoics Musonius Rufus and Epictetus insisted that you needed the rules of conduct ‘to hand’(prokheiron). In other works too, Evagrius recommends hymns and psalms against lust1713 and anger,1714 and reciting the words of David against akēdia or depression.1715 A quite different remedy is to raise our mind to a higher level by analysing bad thoughts and asking questions about them. We must see that the avaricious thought is not the mere thought of gold, nor is it the thinking intellect, nor the gold, both of which are created by God. We may ask why demons can make us worse, but we cannot do the same to them.1716 Different again is the response quoted above to the demon who leads us astray. Next time, we should tell him at once just which places he made us visit in our imagination, and he

1706

Id. Practical Treatise 22; cf. 15.

1707

Ibid. 24.

1708

Ibid. 28; id. Sentences to the Monks, PG 40. 1279 D ;cf. On Discrimination 10 = On Various Bad Thoughts 11–12.

1709

Id. Practical Treatise 91; On Discrimination 10 = On Various Bad Thoughts 11–12.

1710

Id. Practical Treatise 20; On Discrimination 3 = On Various Bad Thoughts 2; Sentences to the Monks, PG 40. 1279 A .

1711

Id. Practical Treatise 16; 17; 91.

1712

W. Frankenberg, Abh. Göttingen (Berlin, 1912), 472–544, provides a retroversion into Greek from Syriac, of which some sections are translated by Michael O'Loughlin in V. L. Wimbush (ed.), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Minneapolis, 1990), 243–62; H. B. Sarghisian (Venice, 1907), 217–323, gives the Armenian text. Henry Chadwick informs me of excerpts in Sogdian, published by O. Hansen in Abh. Mainz (1955).

1713

Evagrius Practical Treatise 71.

1714

Ibid. 15; cf. 20.

1715

Ibid. 27.

1716

Id. On Discrimination ch. 20 = On Various Bad Thoughts chs. 19 and 20.

EVAGRIUS

367

will go away ashamed.1717 Evagrius also fortifies us by warning us in advance of the physical sensations we may suffer after repulsing this demon,1718 as well as of the physical movements we may suffer at the touch of the demon of lust.1719

Inuences From Stoicism Evagrius was steeped in philosophy, unlike many of the desert monks around him who were illiterate. He is not, of course, a Stoic any more than he is a Platonist. What is interesting is rather to see what a different thing he makes of Stoic materials. Sometimes he merely borrows Stoic language, but in the examples we have been looking at he makes something substantial of his own out of ideas that originally come from Stoicism. It is worth seeing what his diverse borrowings are. We have already noticed the role played by the Stoic ideas of first movements, which are not up to us, of assent to them, of apatheia, of generic emotions, and the reference to inner sinking and expanding, and to speech as externalized thought (prophorikos or proenekhtheis logos).1720 Freedom from emotion (apatheia) would be health (hugieia).1721Apatheia is the flowering of the practical art and the harbour to arrive at.1722 In his On Various Bad Thoughts Evagrius speaks, like the Stoics, of the need to make progress (prokoptein).1723 He uses the Stoic term ‘command centre’ (hēgemonikon) for the mind, although he does not, like them, think of the command centre as unitary.1724 He uses the Stoic term eulabeia for godly fear and warns that we may lose it.1725 He uses a term common to the Stoics and others when he says that avarice is born by our voluntary self-determination (ek tou autexousiou).1726

Platonism None of this is to deny that Evagrius is equally steeped in other Greek schools and especially in Platonism, but the Platonist links

1717

Id. On Discrimination ch. 8 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 9.

1718

Ibid.

1719

Id. On Discrimination ch. 15 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 16.

1720

Id. Practical Treatise 56.

1721

Ibid. 81.

1722

Ibid. 91.

1723

Id. On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 15; Practical Treatise 43; 59; 87.

1724

On Various Bad Thoughts chs. 2; 24; cf. On Discrimination ch. 2.

1725

On Discrimination ch. 10 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 11.

1726

On Discrimination ch. 20 = On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 19.

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FROM FIRST MOVEMENTS TO THE SEVEN CARDINAL SINS

have been very fully documented by others.1727 One Platonic influence, however, deserves further remark, the acceptance of a Platonic division of the soul into rational and emotional (pathētikon). For if there is an emotional part of the soul, this affects the sense in which a human can hope to achieve freedom from emotion. Atrophy, or total subordination to reason, of the pathētikon would give us different interpretations.

Subsequent Developments: Multiplication Of Stages In Evagrius' successors we find a multiplication of distinct stages in temptation far beyond necessity, starting perhaps with Mark the Ascetic in the early fifth century.1728 Climacus in the sixth to seventh centuries is not yet too far distant, when he treats the first movement as the attraction exerted by an evil object, and follows this with the thought's lingering, then assent to the evil, followed by captivation, struggle, and emotion.1729 His younger contemporary Maximus the Confessor has assent (but this may be to action—he does not say) coming not only after the thought's lingering, but after the emotion.1730 Interestingly, the assent is ascribed to intellect (nous), not to Maximus' special protégé, the will. Ps.-John of Damascus has a plethora of stages, first the suggestion and enjoyment of dwelling on it, then emotion interpreted as the brooding of the imagination and assent to this emotion coming much later, only after struggle and captivation. The distinctions lack the realism of Evagrius' account.1731 Akēdia : depression I should say a little more about three of Evagrius' thoughts, partly because they underwent subsequent revision, akēdia, pride, and lust. Akēdia, or listless depression, is distinct from lupē, distress. We saw that distress was defined by the Stoics as situational. It consisted of judgements about a situation seen as bad. Akēdia is not situational,

1727

See A. and C. Guillaumont's edition of the Practical Treatise in the series Sources Chrétiennes and the important introduction. A. Guillaumont says slightly more about Stoicism in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 6, col. 1104.

1728

See Philokalia, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, vol.1, index s.v.‘Temptation: stages analysed’, and the translation of Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, §§ 138–41.

1729

Climacus Ladder 15, § 62.

1730

Maximus Centuries on Love 1. 84 Ceresa-Gastaldo (PG 90. 980 B ), trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware in Philokalia, vol.2.

1731

Pseudo-John of Damascus On the Virtues and Vices, English version under Athanasius trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol.2, p.338.

EVAGRIUS

369

but is a mood that can feed itself by latching on to any situation that comes to mind, rather than being directed to a particular situation. It could be called for that reason a mood, rather than an emotion. I have already commented that Chrysippus' therapies cannot cope with moods, because they concentrate on re-evaluating a particular situation. Evagrius has made a mood central. Akēdia had already been treated by Origen, who saw it as one of the general temptations of Christ in the desert, if the relevant fragment is a genuine one.1732 It had also been treated by Basil, who recognised, unlike some of his successors, that akēdia might be dispelled by leaving one's cell.1733 Akēdia, we saw, stopped Evagrius' hermit from reading his text, and Evagrius was aware that akēdia borders on (epikeitai) idleness (argia).1734 But still in Cassian idleness (otiōsitas) is distinguished from akēdia as a consequence. Only once are the terms interchanged.1735 In time, however, the concept and even the name of sloth came to replace that of depression. Two explanations of this change have been offered by Siegfried Wenzel.1736 First, in Benedictine monasteries the monks slept in dormitories, with tasks to perform, supervised by senior monks, and were allowed siestas. So their life was quite unlike that of the hermit caught in solitude, in the Egyptian heat, by the noonday demon, as the demon of akēdia was called. The non-performance of tasks became the more salient phenomenon in the new situation. Secondly, by the ninth century it was found, in confessions for lay people, much easier to assess the nonperformance of tasks, such as going to church, than the inner state of mind.

Pride Pride (huperēphania, superbia) is one of the bad thoughts listed in Mark 7: 22. The main difference I see between it and vanity is that vanity, as in the example of Evagrius' fund-raising monk, always involves thoughts about the admiration of other people. Pride is in a way more sinister because it does not. It is, as we saw, often described as a turning away from God. It was perhaps vanity for which Evagrius had personally been rebuked when a priest told him,

1732

Origen Commentary on Luke frag. 96 (GCS 35. 82. 20 ff., 2nd. edn., p. 265, dubious fragments). Another conjecture ascribes the fragment to Evagrius.

1733

Basil, Constitutiones monasticae ch. 7 (PG 31. 1368 A ).

1734

Evagrius Rerum monachalium rationes 8 (PG 40. 1260 D ).

1735

Cassian Conferences 5. 16.

1736

Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth (Chapel Hill, 1960).

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after he had held forth, ‘You would be a bishop at home, but here you are a stranger.’1737 Pride (huperēphania) had previously been a special interest of the Aristotelian school, appearing, as was seen in Chapter 15, in Theophrastus and Aristo of Ceos, and then taken over by the Epicurean Philodemus. We can now understand the changes introduced by Pope Gregory the Great in the seventh century, when he turned Evagrius' eight bad thoughts into seven cardinal sins (principalia vitia).1738 What Gregory did was to remove pride from the list as being the root of all the other sins, to substitute akēdia for distress (tristitia), contrary to the original distinction, and to fill the resulting vacancy with envy (invidia). In the Greek Church Gregory's contemporary Climacus, though typically preferring Evagrius' eight, at one point congratulates Gregory on his reduction to seven, on the somewhat different ground, again contrary to the original concepts, that pride and vainglory can be collapsed.1739 On the only occasion on which he gives a list of seven, he instead follows Gregory in collapsing distress into akēdia.1740

Lust Sexual thoughts were not for Evagrius one of the more dangerous temptations, as we shall see they were for Augustine. Evagrius says that the demon of fornication cannot attack those who have resisted the demon of gluttony.1741 He gives dietary advice to someone who asks how to avoid sexual dreams and says he has not himself been troubled by fleshly appetites for two to three years.1742 We have seen him treating vanity as more dangerous than lust, and in his Chapters on Prayer he views anger as a particular obstacle to praying.1743 After Evagrius further distinctions were made about the sources of sexual dreams. In a letter said to have been written in 601 by Gregory the Great to the later Augustine, Bishop of Canterbury, it is said that sexual dreams may come from bad thoughts during the day and are

1737

Sayings of the Fathers, PG 65. 176 A , Evagrius, English version in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, 1975), Evagrius 7, p. 64.

1738

Gregory Moralia 45. 87 ad Job 39: 25 (PL 76. 620–1).

1739

Climacus Ladder 22. 1.

1740

Ibid. 29. 10.

1741

Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius On Eight Spirits of Wickedness ch. 1 (PG 79, col. 1145 A ); cf. Sentences to the Virgins, PG 40. 1284 A .

1742

In Palladius Lausiac History 38.

1743

Chapters on Prayer addressed possibly to Rufinus (ascribed wrongly to Nilus), Latin version PG 79, Greek version in the Philokalia, reassigned to Evagrius in the translation of Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, vol. 1, pp. 55–7, and in the translation by John E. Bamberger (Cistercian Studies Series, 4; Spencer, Mass., 1970, and Kalamazoo, 1981).

EVAGRIUS

371

worse according to whether the thoughts were the result of mere suggestion, actual pleasure, or, worst of all, consent to sin. So much is familiar ground. But Gregory also distinguishes sexual dreams due to gluttony, for which the guilt is less, and those due only to superfluity of seed, for which there is no guilt. The last possibility had been mentioned by Cassian and is described in Plato's Timaeus.1744

1744

In Bede Ecclesiastical History, Augustine's 9th question. Cf. Cassian Conferences 12.7; Plato Timaeus 86 C –E .

24 First Movements In Augustine Adaptation and Misunderstanding Augustine knew about the idea of first movements from many sources. We saw in Chapter 22 that Jerome recorded the Stoic idea of a prepassion, and that Plotinus had supplied not only talk of a shock, but of a shock without hurt, which Augustine borrowed. We shall see that Augustine knew Aulus Gellius' discussion of prepassion and Gellius' citation of Epictetus on the subject. Latin translations by Rufinus were available of both Origen and Evagrius. Augustine also knew of the Life of the desert Father Antony, which contributed to his conversion to Christianity.1745 Augustine discusses the early stages of temptation in ways which relate to discussions of prepassion or first movements. In an early treatise, On the Sermon on the Mount of 394, he explains Christ's saying that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.1746 As noticed in Chapter 22, he says that Christ was criticizing someone who looked at a woman precisely in order to arouse his lust, where it did not necessarily exist before. By contrast, the person who is merely titillated (titillari) is not being criticized, but only the person who assents (consentire) in such a way that he would take the opportunity to act if it were granted. Four years later, Jerome gave the same explanation in his Commentary on Matthew, adding that titillari is an example of mere Stoic prepassion. Augustine's discussion in the following paragraphs looks un-Stoic in two ways. First Origen's notion of suggestio is used for the earliest stage of temptation. Secondly, it does not, on the face of it, seem to

1745

Augustine Confessions 8. 6.

1746

Id. On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 12. 33–4, commenting on Matthew 5: 28. This passage and the next from On the Trinity are to be discussed by Simo Knuuttila in a forthcoming book. I am most grateful to him for introducing me to them and discussing them with me.

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fit with Stoicism that appetite and pleasure (appetitus, delectatio) are allowed to occur before assent (consentire), that is, apparently at least, before assent to the pleasure. The last issue is cleared up later in On the Trinity 12, in AD 414. It is now only the pleasure of thinking about a sin that precedes assent to action. There are elements in this discussion that could easily have come from Evagrius. There is sin already if the mind is pleased by illicit things in mere thought, not indeed deciding that they are to be done, but retaining and willingly (libenter) revolving things that ought to be spat out as soon as they touch the mind.1747 Evagrius had already said that it is up to us, not whether bad thoughts come to disturb us, but whether they linger (khronizein), and that sin (hamartia) is assent (sunkatathesis) to the pleasure of the thought.1748 Augustine makes a point of distinguishing different degrees of sin: assent to the pleasure of thought and assent to action. Augustine's view about the lesser sin, the mere pleasure of thinking (sola cogitationis delectatio), was that it could be absolved by the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and in particular by the use of the sentence ‘Forgive us our debts’. But he insisted that this sentence should be accompanied by beating of the breast and linked with the immediately following clause, ‘as we forgive our debtors’.1749 So forgiveness of others was required. Moreover, Augustine insisted that the Lord's Prayer should be recited every day,1750 and he connected the prayer's preceding request, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, with the bread distributed at the daily celebration of the Eucharist.1751 Many of us, if asked how often we do wrong, might be complacent enough to suppose it was only from time to time. The existence of sin at the level of initial thoughts helps to show that it is many times a day. Hence the necessity for saying the Lord's Prayer every day. And it explains Augustine's revulsion from Pelagians like Julian, who will be the subject of Chapter 26, since they are alleged to hold that people can by their own efforts reach the point where they have no debts for which they need to ask forgiveness.1752 On Augustine's view, this overlooks how sin permeates down to the level of our initial

1747

Id. Trin. 12. 12.

1748

Evagrius Practical Treatise 6 and 75.

1749

Augustine Trin. 12. 12.

1750

References in A.-M. La Bonnardière, ‘Pénitence et réconciliation des pénitents d'après saint Augustin’, Revue des études augustiniennes, 13 (1967), 31–53 at 49–53, which is devoted to the remission of this type of sin.

1751

Augustine On the Sermon on the Mount 2. 7. 25, and other references given by La Bonnardière.

1752

Id. Against Julian 3.1.2; 4.3.29, and other references supplied by La Bonnardière.

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thoughts. Jerome agreed that no human can avoid this prepassion, and so none can be free of sin.1753 Elsewhere in the same book, Augustine makes further distinctions among degrees of sin: there is silent anger, an uttered expletive, and actually saying ‘Thou fool’.1754 Again, sin can exist in the heart, in an action, or as a habit.1755 I shall now quote some of the passages from Augustine. For present purposes I shall ignore the male perspective, in which Adam represents reason and Eve pleasure or appetite, although more will come up about that later. Indeed, we must reflect that [Christ] did not say ‘anyone who lusts after a woman’, but ‘anyone who looks at a woman, in order to lust after her’, that is, who attends to her with the purpose and intention of lusting after her. That is not being titillated (titillari) by the pleasure of the flesh, but openly consenting (consentire) in such a way that the illicit appetite would not be bridled but, if an opportunity were granted, would be indulged. There are three things by which sin is brought to completion, suggestion, pleasure, and assent (suggestio, delectatio, consensio). . . .As when we are fasting and the appetite (appetitus) of the palate arises at the sight of food, this does not happen except through pleasure (nisi delectatione), but we do not assent (consentire) to the latter, but restrain it by the authority of its master, reason. But if consent should be given, it will be a complete sin in our heart, known to God, even if it does not become known through any deed to men. . . . It is as if the suggestion is made, along with a kind of persuasion, by the serpent, whereas the pleasure resides in our carnal appetite, as if in Eve, while consent resides in reason, as if in the man.1756 So it is like the serpent speaking to the woman, when that carnal or animal sense offers some enticement to enjoy itself as a personal and private good, not as a public and communal good, which is the unchangeable kind, and offers it to the mental attention (intentio) which in its active function revolves with the vivacity of thought upon temporal and corporeal things. But to assent (consentire) to that enticement is to eat of the forbidden tree. However, if that assent (consensus) is content with the mere pleasure of thinking (sola cogitationis delectatione), whereas the limbs are restrained by the authority of higher counsels, so they are not ‘offered to sin as the instruments of wickedness’, then I think it must be taken as if the woman alone ate the forbidden food. But if, in assenting (consensio) to the bad use of things that are sensed

1753

Jerome Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9); Letter 79. 9, to Salvina, § 506 (PL 22, col. 731).

1754

Augustine On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 9 (I thank Mary Sirridge for the reference).

1755

Ibid.1.12.

1756

Ibid. 1. 12. 33–4.

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375

through the bodily senses, any sin is decided on in such a way that it will be physically carried out, if there is a possibility, the woman must be understood to have given the forbidden food to her husband to eat together with her. For if sin is decided on by the mind not only as to be thought of with pleasure, but also as to be perpetrated in actuality, this cannot happen without the mind's attention yielding to the bad act and becoming its servant, and it is that attention which has the supreme power of moving the limbs to, or keeping them from, the deed. Nor, indeed, is it to be denied that it is a sin when the mind is pleased by illicit things in mere thought (sola cogitatione), not indeed deciding that they are to be done, but retaining and willingly (libenter) revolving things which ought to be spat out as soon as they touch the mind. None the less, it is a far lesser sin than if the thing were decided on as to be implemented in practice. And so forgiveness is to be sought for thoughts even of this kind. We must strike our breast and say, ‘Forgive us our debts’. And we must do what follows and link in our prayer the words ‘as we too forgive our debtors’.1757

Panic and Pallor: The History Of a Mistake So far there has been nothing more than a legitimate, if distorting, adaptation of the Stoic idea of first movements. But it is time now to tell the history of a mistake. We saw in Chapter 22 that Augustine's predecessors did not always distinguish first movements in Seneca's sharp way from emotions. In Augustine's case, the conflation of the two was confirmed through his using Aulus Gellius, rather than Seneca, as his authority for Stoic ideas. In Gellius' report of Stoicism there is a change of one single letter of the alphabet. This change was enough to mislead Augustine, and so to play a role, if only a small one, in shaping Western views on sexuality. Aulus Gellius, the Roman philosophical journalist, illustrated the idea of initial shock by telling how he was a fellow passenger with a Stoic philosopher on board ship in a storm.1758 The Stoic became jittery (pavidus), and so when the storm subsided a rich Asiatic Greek asked him why he, a Stoic, was afraid (timere) and grew pale (pallere), when the Asiatic Greek did not. At first the Stoic gave the answer which the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus had offered in similar circumstances. Aristippus, not being a Stoic, had been free to acknowledge that he was afraid (timere), but responded that he was naturally more afraid for the life of Aristippus than his questioner

1757

Augustine Trin. 12. 12.

1758

Aulus Gellius 19. 1.

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could be for the life of a paltry fellow like himself.1759 The idea behind this reply is found still earlier, in Aristotle.1760 Gellius, not satisfied with this answer, waited till the ship approached port, and then asked him for an explanation again. The Stoic replied that the brief, but necessary and natural, jitters (pavor) were explained in the fifth book of Epictetus' Discourses, which he drew from his bag. Gellius continues by paraphrasing the extract into Latin: In that book, we read the following view, written of course in Greek. The appearances (visa) entertained by the mind, which the Greeks call phantasiai, and by which (quibus) the human mind is jolted (pellitur) right away at the first appearance (primā specie) of a thing impinging on the mind, do not belong to the will (voluntas), and are not chosen (arbitrariae). Rather, they infiltrate themselves by a certain force of their own as things for people to acknowledge (noscere). The approvals (probationes), however, which the Greeks call sunkatatheseis, by which these same appearances are acknowledged, are voluntary (voluntariae) and happen by human choice (arbitratus). Consequently, when some frightening sound occurs from the sky, or from a ruin falling, or as a sudden announcement of I know not what danger, or whatever else of that kind, the mind even of the wise person has to be moved (moveri) and to shrink (contrahi) for a little and to grow pale (pallescere), not through recommending a belief (opinio) that there is something bad, but because of certain rapid and unsolicited movements (motus) which preempt the functions of the mind and reason. Soon, however, the wise person denies approval (non adprobat) to those same phantasiai of that kind, that is to those frightening appearances in his mind; in other words, he does not assent (sunkatatithetai) nor lend belief (prosepidoxazei), but he rejects them and spits them out [the metaphor borrowed by Augustine]. Nor does he see (videri) anything in them to be feared (metuendum). And they say that this is the difference between the mind of the wise and unwise. The unwise person thinks that things which seem to him dangerous and desperate at the first jolt (primō pulsu) of his mind really are like that, and when they have begun as if they were genuinely to be feared, he further gives approval (adprobare) by his assent (adsensio), and lends belief (prosepidoxazei)—for this is the word the Stoics use to discuss that phenomenon. But the wise person, after being moved (motus) briefly and slightly in his colour and countenance, does not assent (sunkatatithetai), but retains his stance and the vigour of the belief which he has always had about such appearances,

1759

The story is also in Diogenes Laertius Lives 2. 71; Aelian Var. Hist. 9. 20.

1760

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3. 9, 1117b 10–13: the virtuous man has more to lose.

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that they are not in the least to be feared, but cause terror by putting on a false front with empty alarms. We read in the book I mentioned that the philosopher Epictetus thought and uttered these doctrines of the Stoics. And I thought that they ought to be noted down, so that we should think it not a sign of being unwise or cowardly, if when things happen to arise of the kind I have mentioned, we grow slightly jittery (sensim pavescere) and as it were go white, and so that we should think that we are yielding (cedere) to natural weakness in that so brief movement, rather than that we are judging (censere) those things to be as they appear (visa).1761

Gellius' paraphrase of Epictetus is absolutely unexceptionable. It speaks of the wise person's mind being moved (moveri), shrinking (contrahi), and [metaphorically] growing pale (pallescere). The danger begins in Gellius' statement of his motive for offering the paraphrase, where, instead of pallescere, ‘to grow pale’, he changes one letter of the alphabet, to produce pavescere, ‘to grow jittery’. Indeed, he twice describes the Stoic sailor in the storm as experiencing jitters (pavor) and once as being jittery (pavidus). I have translated pavescere in terms of ‘jitters’, because it emphasizes the ambiguity of the word between actual fear and mere trembling. From a literary point of view, this ambiguity makes it an excellent word to use. But from a philosophical point of view, it is disastrous. For the ambiguity obscures Seneca's point, five times repeated in On Anger 2. 2. 5 to 2. 3. 5 (translated in Chapter 2), and implied again in the passage translated next below, that initial shocks like trembling are not yet the emotion of fear. This point is very important to Seneca, because it is part of the method of control to be able to reassure yourself that at the stage of initial shock you have not yet indulged in emotion. Admittedly, at one point Seneca himself uses the verb expavescere for the jitters experienced by animals. But he does not rely on the word alone to make the point that the jitters of animals involve no fear (metus). He makes the point explicitly in the adjacent sentence: As a result their charging and commotion is violent. Fear (metus), however, anxiety (sollicitudo), sadness (tristitia), and anger (ira) are not found, but only certain things like them. Thus they quickly subside and change into the opposite state, and after becoming intensely frantic (saevire) or jittery (expavescere) they start feeding, and quiet or sleep immediately follows on their mad bellowing and rushing about.1762

1761

Aulus Gellius 19. 1. 15–21.

1762

Seneca On Anger 1. 3. 8.

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The trouble with Gellius' comment on Epictetus and his account of the Stoic sailor is that he gives no warning that the jitters in his story are unaccompanied by fear even of the briefest kind. This was to have significant consequences, for Augustine was to draw important conclusions from Gellius' version. Augustine's claim that the Stoics' dispute with other schools is merely verbal was discussed in Chapter 14. He thinks that when the Stoics allow initial shocks, they are really allowing emotions, and that in conceding that some indifferent things are preferred, they are really conceding that they are good. In City of God 9. 5–6, written between 415 and 417, Augustine summarises the account of Aulus Gellius, telling it, as he thinks, more plainly (ut puto, planius). But his ‘plainer’ version makes some vital changes. He twice uses Gellius' word pavescere, ‘to grow jittery’, but once he resolves any possible ambiguity in the wrong direction by adding ‘with fear’(pavescere metu). He adds that the wise person may shrink with sadness (tristitia contrahi), and describes these reactions three times as passions (passiones). In the following chapter he refers back and uses the other main word for fear, timor. He concludes from Gellius' story that passions (passiones) do befall the Stoic wise person. He says that this is because the things the Stoics claim to see as indifferent, but acknowledge to be preferred or dispreferred (commoda, incommoda), are really seen as good or bad, not as indifferent. For example, the Stoic philosopher in the storm did not succeed in giving no weight (nihili pendere) to his own life. The notions of Pavor and Pallor would have been connected in Augustine's mind, because he tells us that they had been made into two gods.1763 But the equation of pavor with metus and timor is his own. The following is his main account: Aulus Gellius says he read in that book that this is the Stoic doctrine. Appearances (visa) are entertained by the mind which they call phantasiai, and it is not in our power whether or when they will fall on the mind. When they come from terrifying and frightening things, it is necessary that they will move (movere) the mind even of the wise person, so that for a little he either grows jittery with fear (pavescere metu) or shrinks with sadness (tristitia contrahi), as if these emotions (passiones) pre-empt the functions of the mind and reason. But no belief is formed on that account in his mind that there is something bad, nor are those [appearances] approved, nor assent given. For they [the Stoics] mean this [assent] to be in our power, and they judge that the difference between the mind of the wise person and of the fool is that the mind of the fool yields to these same emotions (passiones)

1763

Augustine City 6. 10; cf. 4. 15.

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and allows assent of the mind. But the mind of the wise person, although it is necessarily subject to those [emotions], yet retains a true and stable opinion, with mind unshaken (inconcussa) about the things which rationally ought to be chose nor avoided. . . . And perhaps the reason why the Stoics say those [emotions (passiones, perturbationes)] do not fall upon the wise person is that they do not cloud with any error or trip with any fall the wisdom that makes him wise in the first place. But they befall the mind of the wise person while leaving his serenity intact, because of the things which they [the Stoics] call preferred or dispreferred (commoda, incommoda), although they are not willing to call them good or bad. For surely if that philosopher had attached no weight (nihili pendere) to those things which he felt he was going to lose in the shipwreck, such as his life and the safety of his person, he would not have shuddered (perhorrescere) at that danger in such a way as to be betrayed by the evidence of his very pallor.1764

Augustine's misunderstanding is brought out further when he says in this passage that the mind of the wise person is unshaken (inconcussa). Seneca had made the opposite point. Our minds can never be unshaken (the same word: inconcussi), despite our hopes. This is because of first movements. But they can be unconquered (invicti).1765 Augustine refers to the story again in another work, written a few years later in AD 419, and he correctly records Epictetus' view that we do not have a genuine case of emotion (perturbatio) if reason does not yield to the initial movements. But Augustine still treats this as a merely verbal manœuvre, which after all concedes that in the ordinary sense perturbatio does befall the Stoic sage: On the text ‘Around the setting of the sun, panic (pavor) invaded Abraham and, behold, a great fear (timor) fell on him.’ On account of those who contend that those emotions (perturbationes) do not fall on the mind of a wise man, we must discuss the question whether there is such a thing as Aulus Gellius mentions in his Attic Nights. He mentions a certain philosopher disturbed (turbatus) in a great storm at sea, while he was on board ship, and accosted by a wealthy young man. When the latter taunted him, after the danger was past, on the grounds that, though a philosopher, he had quickly been emotionally upset (perturbatus), the philosopher replied that his interlocutor had not been emotionally upset because it would have been wrong to have any fear for his own worthless life, since his life did not deserve to be the subject of any fear. But when others who had been on

1764

Ibid. 9. 4, written AD 415–17.

1765

Seneca Natural Questions 2. 59. 3. Admittedly, elsewhere Seneca describes the wise person as unshaken, inconcussus : Letter 59. 14; On the Constancy of the Sage 54.

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board were eager and expectant, he drew out a book by the Stoic Epictetus. What was read there was that the Stoic view was not that no such emotion (perturbatio) would fall on the mind of the wise man, as if no such thing would be found in their feelings (adfectus). Rather, emotion (perturbatio) was defined by the Stoics as occurring when reason yielded to such movements, and when it did not yield nothing was to be called an emotion.1766

Augustine's misunderstanding is exploited in more than one way in the City of God book 14, written between 418 and 420. Not only does he refer back to the supposed acceptance of emotions by Epictetus, to justify his advocacy for Christians of moderate emotion,1767 but he also makes an exception of lust as undesirable in an argument that trades further on his misunderstanding.1768 The attack on lust comes in City of God 14. 16–24. Lust is not good in moderation, as many other emotions are (14. 8–9). At 14. 19 Augustine asks why lust differs from anger and other emotions in that we are ashamed to be seen indulging it, even in the lawful marriage bed. In his answer he appeals to the point which, we shall see in 26, is the centrepiece of his attack on lust. It is bad because it is not under the control of the will, as it would have been but for the fall and punishment of man. Augustine is writing from a male perspective and the particular thing that is most commonly said, and said here, not to be under the control of the will is the male bodily movements. Augustine contrasts anger, because there at least the fisticuffs or other bodily movements are under control. It is the disobedience to the will of male bodily movements that explains our embarrassment: For whoever utters a word in anger or actually hits someone could not do this if his tongue and hand were not moved in some way at the command of the will. These members are moved by that same will even when there is no anger. But lust has so delivered the genitals as it were to its own jurisdiction, that they are not capable of being moved if it is missing and if it has not arisen of itself, or by being aroused. This is what causes shame. This is what avoids the eyes of onlookers with blushes. A person tolerates a crowd of spectators when he is unjustly angry with someone more than the gaze of a single person even when he is legitimately having intercourse with his wife.1769 I think the wording conceals an a fortiori argument: the male movements fail to occur when summoned by the will. A fortiori, when

1766

Augustine Questions on the Heptateuch 1. 30.

1767

Id. City 14. 9.

1768

Ibid. 14. 19.

1769

Ibid.

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381

they do occur, they are not subject to the will. Augustine's male perspective leaves us wondering if women should experience less embarrassment. If Augustine had at this stage taken in the exposition of Seneca rather than of Gellius, he would have realized that he was not comparing like with like. Irritation by seminal fluid is explicitly cited by Seneca On Anger, in the passage translated in Chapter 4 above (2.3. 2) as an example of a first movement which is not yet an emotion. What it should be compared with, therefore, is the involuntary reactions that precede anger, and that is just what it is compared with by Seneca. In that same passage he cites first movements in connection with all three of the examples discussed by Augustine. Male movements are explicitly cited as first movements, but so are the flashing eyes and quickening breath that precede anger, not to mention the pallor that characterizes the sailor in the storm.1770 Augustine should have compared the male movements with the flashing eyes. The fisticuffs, by contrast, which are under the control of the will, should be compared with the wilful pursuit of the object of lust. Lust is no different from anger in this regard, and the movements which the will fails to control are, on Seneca's analysis, neither culpable nor a proof of emotion. The same applies to Augustine's explanation of sexual shame. The male's unruly movements will not on their own explain it, given that first movements in anger too disobey the will, but without causing shame. There is, admittedly, one difference from anger, that the involuntary male movements are needed for the sexual act. But whatever may be true of anger, the involuntary salivation in hunger is needed for the act of eating, as we shall see in Chapter 26, and yet is no cause of shame. I shall suggest in Chapter 26 that Augustine's misunderstanding impairs his argument in a roughly contemporary work, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, written between 401 and 418. Augustine sets out to explain why consent (consensio) given in dreams to illicit sex is not a sin. But he finishes by explaining only why the male movements in dreams are not a sin.1771 Seneca would have complained that the phase of first movements is entirely distinct from the phase

1770

Seneca On Anger 2. 3. 2.

1771

The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 12. 15. 31.

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of consent. Thomas Aquinas, by contrast, is clear that the male nocturnal emission is only a first movement.1772 Augustine's unpreparedness to take in the Stoic picture is further illustrated in our present chapter by his treating lust as an emotion (affectio) which, unlike other emotions, bypasses the will. The Stoics would insist that every emotion is an act of will, and Augustine agrees a little earlier in the same book of City of God.1773 The Confessions would allow him to say that lust is an act of carnal will, bypassing the spiritual will.1774 But here in City of God 14. 19 he concedes only that the will gives assent to other emotions (eis consenserit). He thinks that in lust the will is bypassed and that it is the emotion itself, not the will (a distinction that hardly makes sense on the Stoic view he had so recently acknowledged), that moves the male member: What is the reason why shame does not conceal in every word and deed the actions of anger and of other emotions (affectiones), as it conceals the actions of lust which are performed by the sexual members? It is simply that with the other emotions it is not the emotions (affectiones) themselves that move the bodily members, but rather the will, once it has assented to the emotions (eis consenserit), and the will is in complete control of the use of those members.1775

Why is Augustine so blind to the Stoic distinction between involuntary first movements and willed emotion? There is more than one reason. First, by turning first movements into thoughts and suggestions, Origen obscured the distinction between them and emotions, which the Stoics saw as thoughts. Consequently, the description of first movements as the preliminaries (principia) of emotion, which had left the distinction quite clear in Seneca, leaves it unclear in Origen and subsequent Church Fathers. A different point that has been made to me is Augustine's reliance in these passages on a Platonic, rather than a Stoic, view of the soul. In City of God 9. 4 and On the Trinity 12. 12 he divides the mind between reason and the emotions or irrational parts which it should control.1776 In City of God 14. 19 he explicitly says that he is taking a Platonist view of the soul. For Plato, unlike the Stoics, the rational part which curbs or permits (refrenare, permittere) actions based on emotion is quite distinct from the two irrational parts which

1772

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 2. 2, q. 154, a. 5, respondeo (reference from John Lamont).

1773

Augustine City 14. 6.

1774

Id. Confessions 8.5; 8.9–10.

1775

Id. City 14. 19.

1776

So Simo Knuuttila in conversation.

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experience lust or anger respectively. Consequently, emotions are not seen in the Stoic way as necessarily having the permission of reason. This can help to explain how in City of God 9. 4 Augustine can so ignore the Stoic position as to claim that the wise man has emotions, even though he does not judge anything to be bad, nor give his assent, but retains a correct opinion about what should be pursued and avoided.1777 I think this Platonism is an important factor, and the point can be developed to explain why lust is differently treated from anger in City of God 14. 19. For Plato himself says in the Republic that anger is the ally of reason and never sides with the lower appetites (like lust) against reason.1778 Still, the appeal to Plato does not explain everything. For one thing, Plato does not hold that all anger is approved by reason. For another, he allows that lust may be approved by the lowest part of the soul, even when not approved by reason.1779 Augustine elsewhere recognizes an analogous point, transposed in terms of the will, when he allows the carnal will to approve what the spiritual will does not.1780 But the appeal to will is closer to Stoicism than to Platonism, as becomes clearer still when Augustine acknowledges that all emotions are acts of will.1781 There is a further difference from Plato in that the Platonic passages are not concerned, as Augustine is, with merely physical reactions, so they do not explain why Augustine notices the involuntary physical reactions in lust, but not in anger. Despite the other powerful reasons for Augustine to misinterpret the Stoics, I think the linguistic misunderstanding will have contributed. Indeed, a different linguistic misunderstanding has been postulated by others as contributing to his attack on lust. When the Wisdom of Solomon says that we cannot get control of (enkratēs, continens) wisdom unless God grants it, Augustine takes the words to mean instead that we cannot be continent unless God so grants.1782 What I am saying is that Gellius' use of the ambiguous word pavescere must have fortified Augustine in his belief that there is no real difference between the first movements which the Stoics exonerate and the emotions which they condemn. In City of God 14. 19 the failure to distinguish first movements from emotions enables him to treat

1777

Comments by Miriam Griffin, Oxford Seminar, 8 Nov. 1996.

1778

Plato Republic 440 B .

1779

Plato Phaedrus 255 E .

1780

Augustine Confessions 8.5; 8.9–10.

1781

Id. City 14. 6.

1782

Id. Confessions 6. 11. 20, on Wisdom 8: 21, discussed by H. A. Wolfson ‘St Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy’, in his Religious Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).

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lust as an exception, reprehensible in a way that most other emotions are not. The disobedience of male movements to the will is only one manifestation of lust's disobedience to the will, but it is by far the most commonly stressed manifestation, and so forms a centrepiece of Augustine's attack on lust. Thus Gellius' change of the double l in pallescere to the v of pavescere played at least a small role in Augustine's denunciation of lust, a denunciation which has so affected attitudes to sexual feeling in the West. Here we have an example of how important good philology can be to good philosophy.

25 Christians On Moderation Versus Eradication Unfortunately, Evagrius' aspiration of eradicating emotion got him into trouble. As we have noticed, in AD 553 he was anathematized. To see what happened, we should take a look at Christian attitudes to the Stoic ideal of apatheia, freedom from emotion. I shall confine myself to apatheia in humans, referring only when necessary to apatheia in God, or in Christ. To trace the developments in Christianity we need to go back to the first century AD, and to the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria.

The Alexandrians: Philo and Judaism Philo started a tradition, which is still found in his Jewish successor Maimonides in the twelfth century, of seeing moderation and eradication of emotion (metriopatheia, apatheia) as ideals for different people. In his view, Aaron and Abraham represent moderation, Moses and Isaac eradication,1783 and Maimonides also adopts Moses as his model. Philo, we saw in Chapter 22, classed Abraham as practising only moderation,1784 despite his mourning of Sarah being a mere pre-passion.1785 Augustine similarly argues on behalf of (propter) other people that Abraham's fear is a prepassion, but regards that pre-passion as a form of emotion.1786 Philo uses the Stoic term ‘progressing’

1783

Philo Leg. alleg. 3.128–34; 140–7; Abraham 256–7; Questions on Genesis 4. 177; On the Migration of Abraham 67; Maimonides, contrasting the wise and the pious man, Hilkhot De'ot 1. 4–5; Commentary on the Misnah, Avot 5. 7, on which see Dan Frank, ‘Anger as a Vice: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle's Ethics’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 7 (1990), 269–81; ‘Humility as a Virtue: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle's Ethics’, in Eric L. Ormsby (ed.), Moses Maimonides and his Time (Washington, 1989), 89–99.

1784

Philo Abraham 256–7.

1785

Philo new frag., p. 78 in Wendland, from Procopius MS 394, fo. 110

1786

Augustine Questions on the Heptateuch 1. 30.

r

=Loeb edn. of the Greek fragments, suppl. 2, p. 220 Marcus.

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(prokoptōn) for the person who achieves only metriopatheia, as if the full ideal was apatheia.1787 Philo none the less makes concessions. He considers that emotions are helpful (boēthei) to humans.1788 He also follows Plato in recognizing some pleasures, along with food and drink, as necessary,1789 a subject taken up, we shall see, by Clement of Alexandria. What is necessary can be refused sometimes, but not all of the time. Philo adds repentance to the list of states of the wise, but only as a second best to sinlessness and as a mark of improvement.1790 And he ascribes pity to the wise man too.1791 Maimonides is less compromising, requiring even those in the lower of the two states he recognises to be free of pride and anger.1792

Concessions In Later Writers On Natural Emotions Philo's recognition that emotions are helpful became common among later Christian champions of apatheia. Some emotions were recognized as natural,1793 or necessary and useful to nature:1794 gluttony, lust, anger, and appetite. Some thoughts were recognized as natural rather than bad.1795 This was not to deny that in apatheia emotions could be transcended. We shall notice below in Gregory of Nyssa the idea that when appetite and anger are put to good use, they are not pathē.1796

The Alexandrians: Clement and Origen The Christian school of Clement and Origen in second- to third-century Alexandria paid close attention to Philo. Clement1797 and Origen1798

1787

Philo Leg. alleg. 3. 143–4.

1788

Ibid. 2. 8.

1789

Ibid. 3.140–1; 3.147.

1790

Id. On Dreams 1. 91; Abraham 26; On the Special Laws 1. 103; On the Virtues 177.

1791

Id. On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 121; cf. On Joseph 82; On the Special Laws 2. 115; 138; On the Virtues 144.

1792

Maimonides Hilkhot De'ot 1.5; 2.3; Commentary on the Misnah, Avot 4. 4; Guide for the Perplexed 1. 54, with Frank's two articles (above, n. 1).

1793

Cassian Conferences 5. 3; Climacus Ladder 26. 159 (PG 88. 1068 C ); St Isaiah the Solitary On Guarding the Intellect, English version in The Philokalia of Nikodimos and Makarios, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, vol.1, p.22; and in logoi 2. 1–2, Avgoustinos. See Kallistos Ware, to whom I am indebted for most of these references: introduction to John Climacus, The Ladder, trans. C. Luibheid and N. Russell (New York, Ramsey, and Toronto, 1982), 31; id. ‘The Meaning of “pathos ” in Abba Isaias and Theodoret of Cyrus’, Studia Patristica, 20 (Leuven, 1989), 315–22.

1794

Theodoret Healing of Greek Sicknesses 5. 76–9.

1795

Ps.-Makarios Homilies 6. 3. I owe the reference to Henry Chadwick.

1796

Gregory of Nyssa On Soul and Resurrection, PG46.61 C ;68 A .

1797

A whole chapter is devoted to this in Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6. 9. Other major chapters on apatheia include 7. 11 and 7. 14. The classic treatment of Clement on this subject is Theodore Rüther, Die sittliche Forderung der Apatheia in den beiden ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten und bei Klemens von Alexandrien (Freiburg, 1949). The general treatment of apatheia in the Christian Fathers announced by M. Spanneut as the second part of his article on apatheia in ANRW 2. 36. 7 (1993) has not yet appeared at the time of writing.

1798

Origen Commentary on Matthew 15, verses 4 and 17 (PG 13. 1264 A , 1304 A ); Commentary on Romans 6, verse 14 (PG 14. 1102 B –C ); Commentary on John 20, verse 29 (PG 14. 657 D ); Commentary on Joshua 15, verse 3 (GCS 30. 386–7).

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both adopted the ideal of apatheia, freedom from emotion. This was something not possible for humans before the resurrection of Christ.1799 It requires God's grace,1800 and results from faith.1801 It is distinct from mere continence (enkrateia), which retains emotions but keeps them suppressed.1802 Clement's fullest description is in Stromateis 6. 9. Christ was completely free of emotion. Perfected humans retain hunger and thirst, which are needed for the body, but they lack any emotions: anger, fear, appetite (epithumia), desire in general (orexis), including the emotions commonly considered good, determination (tharsos), emulation (zēlos), and even cheerfulness (euthumia—the term used by Democritus and Plutarch, and translated by Seneca, for tranquillity). More than this, perfected humans actually do without the eupatheiai which the Stoics distinguished from emotions as being good states of feeling (Chapter 2 above). For example, they will lack caution (eulabeia), joy (khara), and euphrosunē, which the Stoics gloss as joy at the deeds of the temperate.1803 Strangely, if the manuscripts can be trusted, he adds an un-Stoic item to the list, katēpheia, a kind of dejection that no pagan Greeks would have approved.1804 Elsewhere, Clement concedes that eulabeia brings benefit (ōpheleia), but only because it brings strength from God (theia dunamis).1805 Despite all this, in 6.9 Clement regards his extreme apatheia as after all compatible with both hope (elpis) and love (agapē) for God, a qualification to which I shall return in a few moments. There was a choice of models for apatheia, because the Gospel of Luke says that those who attain to resurrection are equal to the angels.1806 Clement does not feel he has to choose between saying that apatheia makes humans like angels or like God, since he offers both models in the same breath.1807 On the other hand, he does qualify the

1799

Clement of Alexandria Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved? 12.1, 2.

1800

Ibid. 21. 1; Stromateis 3. 7 (57. 1–2).

1801

Id. Stromateis 7. 3 (14. 3); 2. 20 (126. 3).

1802

Id. Stromateis 2.20 (103.1); 4.22 (138.1).

1803

Ibid.6.9(71–4).

1804

Ibid. 6. 9 (74. 2).

1805

Ibid.2.20(120–2).

1806

Luke 20: 36.

1807

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 7. 14 (84. 2). ‘Like angels’ also in 7. 10.

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CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

likeness to God. Human virtue cannot be like God's, as the Stoics suppose, he says.1808 We can become like God, but only as far as our capacity allows.1809 Clement takes up the question whether some pleasures and desires are natural or necessary. In a certain sense, he would deny that pleasure is necessary. It has been attached as an accompaniment to certain needs (epakolouthēma khreiais) which are natural (phusikai), such as hunger, thirst, coolness, and sex. It thus provides a service (hupourgia) for our life. If it did not, there would be no need for it.1810 In the next chapter we shall see Augustine tempted by a similar view about sexual pleasure. He is undecided whether it would have been needed for sex before the Fall, and even now sex is not itself a need. Clement confronts the objection1811 that one cannot achieve even the loftiest ideals without anger, determination (tharsos), and desire. He replies there is no need for these, because someone who by exercising love (agapē) is already in the midst of the very thing desired. For such a person lacks nothing.

Concessions On Love Clement, I have said, regards this love for God as erotic, and yet as compatible with apatheia. It is not a desire (orexis), he continues, because perfected humans already possess the object of desire. The idea that they therefore lack nothing contains a danger, as Origen later points out, the danger of satiety. Clement already claims that perfected humans feast without satiety (akorestōs) on the euphrosunē of contemplation.1812 Origen offers an explanation, but one that does not fit with Clement, that there can be a desire which avoids satiety by ever increasing, an idea developed by Gregory of Nyssa by reference to the idea of infinity: satiety is avoided because there is no limit to the desirable aspects of God that can be discovered.1813 Instead of being a desire, Clement claims, borrowing two Stoic ideas, this love for God is an oikeiōsis sterktikē. Stoic oikeiōsis, it will be recalled, is the process of welcoming all other humans as belonging metaphorically in the household, and the model for it is precisely family affection

1808

Ibid. 7. 14 (88. 4–7).

1809

Ibid. 3.5 (42.1); 7.3 (13.2); 6.9 (72.1).

1810

Ibid. 2. 20 (118. 7–119. 2).

1811

Ibid. 6. 9 (73).

1812

Ibid.6.9(75.1).

1813

Origen On First Principles 1. 3. 8; Gregory of Nyssa, e.g. Commentary on the Song of Songs 5 (PG 44, col. 876 B –C ); On the Soul and Resurrection, PG 46. 96 C –97 A . I have discussed Gregory's cheerful idea of perpetual progress in Time, Creation and the Continuum, ch. 10.

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389

(stergein, philostorgia), especially that of parents for children. I explained in Chapters 2 and 13 why I believe against Bonhöffer that in the ordinary person such family affection is a pathos, but that as transformed by the sage, it is not. The sage, though vigorously pursuing his family's life and welfare, will have learnt to treat them merely as preferred indifferents, a concept well known to Clement,1814 not to be grieved over if lost. The Stoics had other reasons for treating certain kinds of love as compatible with apatheia. They so treated aspasmos and agapēsis, as being forms of eupatheia (Chapter 2), and I argued that they viewed a certain kind of Platonic homosexual love similarly (Chapter 18). But none of this will have appealed to Clement, who rejected the Stoic idea of eupatheia. The compatibility of love for God with apatheia remained standard among later Christians,1815 although there were differences on whether love for God bestows apatheia,1816 is bestowed by apatheia,1817 or even is apatheia.1818

Concessions On Pity Pity, we saw in Chapter 19, played a central role in Aristotle's theory of catharsis. The cathartic effect of tragedy depends on our sympathy and pity, as do some of the effects produced by the rhetorician, and pity for Aristotle is often appropriate and sometimes beneficial. By contrast, for adherents of apatheia pity can constitute a problem. We have seen that Philo thought pity compatible with apatheia. This was contrary to the Stoics, whose ban on emotion explicitly included pity (eleos, Latin misericordia).1819 In a passage translated in Chapter

1814

e.g. Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2.20; 4.26; Paidagogus 2. 1.

1815

See below on Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and Resurrection, PG 46.89 B –C ;93 A –C ; 96 B .

1816

Agapē makes apatheia possible: Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6. 9 (73. 3); Diadochus Century on Spiritual Perfection 89; Pseudo-Makarios logia type III , Homily 28. 3 Desprez, p. 166, lines 20–4 Klostermann–Berthold.

1817

Climacus Ladder 26 (PG 88. 1092 C ); Evagrius Practical Treatise 81(agapē) as engonos of apatheia), but see also 35; 38; 84; 89; 91; Sentences to the Monks, PG 40. 1280: the causation goes in both directions.

1818

Climacus Ladder 26 and 30 (PG 88. 1092 C and 1156 B ). See Kallistos Ware, introduction to John Climacus, The Ladder (as n. 11 above), p. 33.

1819

Cicero Tusc. 3.20; 4.16; 4.56 and (SVF 3.415) 4.18; Stobaeus 2. 90 and 92 (= SVF 3. 394, 413 Wachsmuth); Nemesius Nature of Man ch. 19 (= SVF 3. 416); Diogenes Laertius Lives 7. 111; Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 2. 16 (= SVF 3. 433); Pseudo- Andronicus On Emotions 2(= SVF 3. 414); Seneca On Mercy 2. 4–5 (= SVF 3. 452); Lactantius Div. Inst. 3. 23, Ep. ad Pentad. 38 (= SVF 1. 213).

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15 Epictetus told his students to take a walk at dawn, and practise examining what appears to them: What did you see? A man grieving at the death of his child? Apply the rule. Death is not subject to your will. Move it out of the way.1820 There were several Christian paraphrases of Epictetus'Handbook. One of them suppresses (although one does not) the famous remarks on pity there: Whenever you see someone weeping in grief because his child has gone on a journey, or he has lost his property, pay attention in case you too are caught by the appearance that his external situation is bad. Let the following be immediately to hand (prokheiron): this man is under pressure not from circumstances, since someone else would not be under pressure, but by his belief (dogma) concerning them. Do not hesitate, however, to go along with him within reason, and even, if need be, to groan about it with him. But pay attention (prosekhe) in case you also groan from within.1821

There is an alternative view of pity, or at least of sympathy, which would so distinguish it from emotion as to make it compatible with apatheia after all. Max Scheler, in his book The Nature of Sympathy,1822 has made the excellent point that when we sympathise with someone in pain, we do not need to have a small replica of their pain. Similarly, it may happen that people feel ill, anxious, or afraid when they sympathize with those who are ill, anxious, or afraid. But this is not likely to be of help to the object of their sympathy, and it is almost a side-effect of sympathy. Concern does not require emotion at all. If that view had been taken of pity, the Stoics would not have needed to ban it. Seneca, however, draws the line in a different way. He distinguishes pity, which he sees as a form of distress, not to be indulged in, from mercy (clementia), which the good Stoic can exercise as it is not an emotion at all.1823 Clement is like Philo in treating pity (oikteirein) as compatible with apatheia. The truly knowledgeable person is not angry even

1820

Epictetus 3. 3. 15.

1821

Id. Handbook 16, suppressed in the Christian Paraphrase, ed. Casaubon, repr. in Schweighaeuser, Epictetus (vol. 5), ch. 22. 4, but not suppressed in Pseudo-Nilus, Handbook ch. 22 (PG 79. 1286–315), both described by M. Spanneut, ‘Épictète chrétien’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 4, cols. 833–42. I have not seen a third Christian adaptation, newly edited for the first time in Gérard Boter, The Enchiridion of Epictetus and its Three Christian Adaptations (Leiden, 1999).

1822

Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy (London, 1954).

1823

Seneca On Mercy 2. 5–6.

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391

with those who deserve hatred, but pities them for their ignorance.1824 Pity is recommended to everyone, even though in the strict sense only God pities us, because only he is superior.1825 People who pity (eleēmones) are praised in the Sermon on the Mount,1826 but it turns out that this pity is not a feeling of distress (lupē), but a matter of taking pity (eleon poiein).1827

The Cappadocian Fathers On Apatheia The three great Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century were influenced by Origen. Two of them, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa made a collection of excerpts from him, the Philokalia. None the less, we find in the Cappadocians two very different contexts of discussion.1828 One is that of consolation writings. The other is discussion of ideals. To take first Basil of Caesarea, in his consolatory letters and addresses he often borrows the idea which the Stoics referred back to Anaxagoras, that we should think of our children and loved ones as mortal.1829 Yet he does not draw the Stoic conclusion that we should not grieve. On the contrary, his consolations are carefully formatted so that they express his own grief, or the rightness of grieving, very near the beginning, before he goes on to explain why grief should be moderated. This is a technique which in Chapter 12 we saw even Seneca using in his Consolation to Marcia. Basil is explicit in saying, contrary to the Stoics, that we must not react without emotion or feeling (apathōs, anaisthētos).1830 On the other hand, there is an ideal of freedom from emotion, which Basil says is not for just anyone (ho tukhōn), but for people like the Apostle Paul. Mankind surrendered the image of God and was dragged into emotional appetites (empatheis epithumiai) at the time of the Fall. But we can restore that image in our souls through apatheia, becoming like God.1831

1824

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 7. 11 (62).

1825

Ibid. 2.15 (96–8); 2.16.

1826

Matthew 5: 7.

1827

Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 4. 6 (11–15) (PG 8. 1249 B –C ).

1828

There are major discussions of the Cappadocians on this subject by Gregg, Consolation Philosophy ; Max Pohlenz, ‘Philosophische Nachklänge in altchristlichen Predigten’, Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Theologie, NS 13 (1905), 72–95; id., Die Stoa, vol.1, pp. 433–6; vol. 2, pp. 212–13; August Dirking, ‘Die Bedeutung des Wortes Apathie beim heiligen Basilius dem Gro¢en’, Theologische Quartalschrift (1954), 202–12.

1829

Basil Letters 2; 6; 269; 300; On Julitta, PG 31, cols. 215–18; On the Eucharist § 7 (PG 31).

1830

Id. On Julitta, PG 31, cols. 215–18; Letters 5; 62. For the general technique see also Letters 6; 28; 140; 269; 300; 301; 302.

1831

Basil Ascetic Sermons 1. 1–2 (PG 31. 869, 872).

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In the longer Rules which he devised for the regulation of monasteries, Basil sees it as an aim for monks to become free of emotion (aprospathēs).1832 But he regards them as at this stage not having got beyond continence (enkrateia),1833 and incidentally, he allows them to grieve for others.1834 As regards the final outcome, Basil entertains in one breath the possibility that freedom from emotion may give us a place in the chorus of angels, make us like God, or make us God.1835 The only startling thing about Basil's acceptance of apatheia as an ideal attainable in this life is that, unlike Clement, he does not think that Christ attained it. It is important for us, he believes, that Christ experienced real emotions.1836 Christ's tears over Lazarus, in Basil's view, even when he was about to bring him back to life, show that he believed in moderation, not eradication, of the emotions.1837 We find the same division of contexts in Gregoryof Nazianzus as in Basil. We are not to be passionless (apathēs) or unfeeling (analgēsia), so he says in contexts of consolation.1838 Yet he approves an old friend Philagrius exercising apatheia in illness, because he is a philosopher and that is right for him,1839 and he endorses apatheia elsewhere too.1840 The idea of Basil that apatheia and metriopatheia are ideals for different people is reflected later in the same century (the fourth) by Nemesius, bishop of Emesa.1841 The position of Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa is similar, although there are some refinements. On the one hand, in the context of consolation Gregory reminds us that there is a time for weeping. No one is so passionless (apathēs) as to hear of certain events without pain, and our burden can be lightened only by tears.1842 His sister Macrina is represented as letting him grieve initially at her impending death.1843 On the other hand, apatheia, freedom from emotion, is accepted as an ideal. It will be achieved in heaven by Placilla.1844 After the resurrection,

1832

Id. Extended Rules 8 (PG 31. 933–41).

1833

Ibid. 16–17 (PG 31. 957–65).

1834

Ibid. 17. 2.

1835

Id. On the Holy Spirit ch. 9. For imitating angels see also Letter 2; for becoming like God Ascetic Sermons 1. 2 (PG 31, col. 872 C ).

1836

Id. Letter 261. Contrast Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6. 9.

1837

Basil Homilies 3. 5–6.

1838

Gregory of Nazianzus Letter 165; Or. 7. 1.

1839

Id. Letter 32.

1840

Id. Or. 26. 13 (PG 35. 1245 B ).

1841

Nemesius Nature of Man ch. 19.

1842

Gregory of Nyssa On Pulcheria, PG 46, col. 865 A ; On Meletius, PG 46, col. 860 B ; On Placilla (Latin: Flacilla), in Opera, ed. Jaeger et al., vol. 9, pp. 476–7 (PG 46, col. 880 B –C ).

1843

Id. On the Soul and Resurrection, PG 46. 12 A .

1844

Id. On Placilla, in Opera, ed. Jaeger et al., vol. 9, p. 486 (PG 46, col. 889).

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the life of those who have achieved apatheia will be like that of the angels.1845 A particularly full analysis of apatheia is put into the mouth of his dying sister, Macrina, and from this we learn that apatheia can be achieved at two different levels. At the higher level, Moses succeeded in ridding (monōthēnai) the soul of appetite and anger (epithumia, thumos).1846 It is explicitly said that the result can be achieved either by care taken in this life (nun epimeleia) or through the purging (katharsis) of our souls in the next. This can make our souls free from kinship (sungeneia, sumphuia)1847 to irrational pathē, so that they contemplate Beauty. And then there will be no appetite (epithumia), because we shall instead have actual enjoyment (apolausis) of Beauty. Instead of appetite, there will only be will (thelein), and instead of hope (elpis) or faith (pistis) there will only be room for love (agapē).1848 Neither thelēsis nor agapēsis is classed by the Stoics as a pathos. The lower level of apatheia is presented in the dialogue as a concession to Gregory. He pleads that Daniel was praised for his appetite and Phineas for his anger. This looks like a plea for metriopatheia, but Macrina converts it into a case for apatheia of a sort. She concedes that appetite and anger, put to good use by reason, are mere impulses (hormai). They turn into pathē only when put to wrong use.1849 This allows Daniel and Phineas a lower kind of apatheia. I do not think there is any confusion with the apatheia of Moses, who remains the ideal for which Macrina argues.1850

Stoic and Cappadocian Methods Of Consolation The Cappadocian consolation letters and sermons provide a most interesting model.1851 As already indicated, they typically start by expressing the grievousness of the situation, and sometimes the author's own grief.1852 But then there is a reverse movement. Although

1845

Gregory of Nyssa Homily on Song of Songs 1; 4; 8, pp. 30. 7–8, 134–5, 254 Langer-beck, in Opera, ed. Jaeger et al., vol. 6 (PG 44, Homily 1, 777 A ; Homily 4, 857 A ; Homily 8, 948 A ).

1846

Id. On the Soul and Resurrection, PG 46. 53 C .

1847

Ibid. 88 C ;89 B . Posidonius' word had been oikeiōsis : Galen PHP 5. 5. 3–21, pp. 316–20 de Lacy.

1848

Gregory of Nyssa On the Soul and Resurrection 89 B –C ;93 A –C ;96 B .

1849

Ibid. 61 C ;68 A .

1850

See Rowan Williams, ‘Macrina's Deathbed Revisited: Gregory of Nyssa on Mind and Passion’, in L. R. Wickham and C. P. Bammel (eds.), Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Essays in Tribute to G. C. Stead (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1993), 227–46.

1851

See Gregg, Consolation Philosophy.

1852

e.g. Basil Letters 5; 6; 62; 269.

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CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

we must not be free of emotion, we must be moderate. Standard consolations are drawn from the pagans, but reinforced by the Christian hope of resurrection. It might seem that this formula takes us a long way away from Stoicism. In fact, however, if we look at Seneca's consolations, the seemingly un-Stoic ideas are there. So far from drawing a veil over Marcia's loss as a matter of indifference, Seneca acknowledges how great it is.1853 He too affirms that apatheia would be too harsh, and counsels only metriopatheia.1854 Further, he too urges that the soul of the lamented one survives in happiness,1855 although he has to concede this is only until the next conflagration.1856 The Church Fathers would have had models for consolation writing from other schools too, stemming ultimately from the Platonist Crantor. But in so far as they had Stoic models, they would not necessarily have had to adapt them as much as we might have supposed. There was one text in Saint Paul which may appear to forbid Christians to grieve, in order that they may distinguish themselves from pagans, who do not believe in the resurrection. Saint Paul says: ‘Do not be sad like those who have no hope.’1857 Many Christians besides Basil cited this text, or pursued this line of thought: Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine.1858 But except for Cyprian, whose text has the special context of combating fear of a plague, all these authors are advocating moderation (modus), not eradication, of grief.1859 At one point Basil outbids the pagans. Instead of asking ‘Who could avoid emotion?’, he says that even moderation would be stony-hearted.1860 Ideas he takes from the pagan tradition are that suddenness is itself upsetting,1861 but we should have expected what is the lot of

1853

Seneca Marcia, e.g.2.2, where Livia is held up as an example of someone who overcame grief though she had suffered a greater loss (maius damnum) than Octavia.

1854

Ibid. 3.4; 4.1; id. On Consolation to Polybius 18. 5.

1855

Id. Marcia 23–4.

1856

Ibid. 26.

1857

1 Thessalonians 4: 13.

1858

Basil Letters 28; 62; 302; Tertullian On Patience 9. 4 (CC 1, pp. 309–10); Cyprian On Mortality 2; 6; 20; 21 (CSEL 3. 1, pp. 295–314); Ambrose On the Death of his Brother 1.70; 1.71 (CSEL 73, pp. 207–325); John Chrysostom =Pseudo-Augustine De consolatione mortuorum 1. 5 (PL 40. 1160–1); Homilies on Hebrews 2. 4, 5 (PG 63); Jerome Letter 39 (CSEL 54); Paulinus Carmen 31, lines 43 and 551 ff. (CSEL 30. 2, pp. 307–29); Augustine Sermons on the Dead 173 (PL 38. 939). The Latin texts are quoted in Peter von Moos, Consolatio (4 vols.; Munich, 1971–2), vol. 3, part 3, Testimonia, 887 ff.

1859

Tertullian On Patience 9.3; Ambrose On the Death of his Brother 2.11; John Chrysostom =Pseudo-Augustine De consolatione mortuorum 2. 5 (PL 40. 1166); Jerome Letter 39.5. 2; Paulinus Letter 13. 10 (CSEL 29. 1); for Augustine see below on City 14. 9–10. These texts are quoted in von Moos, Consolatio, Testimonia, 379 ff.

1860

Basil Letter 5.

1861

Ibid.

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395

humans.1862 We should recall that all humans are mortal.1863 Grieving does not help.1864 Others have coped;1865 we too should set an example,1866 and we need to comfort others.1867 There is even an analogue of the Stoic idea of conflagration, but it is used quite differently. To emphasize that all humans are mortal, Basil insists that even the sun, moon, and stars will perish.1868

Evagrius and Jerome Evagrius was doing nothing out of the ordinary in setting up apatheia as a goal for desert dwellers, but merely continuing what the Cappadocians had done, by whom he had been ordained. For a while Evagrius worked with Gregory in Constantinople. Other Desert Fathers were pursuing the same goal. Moreover, Evagrius included the qualifications which we have seen to be normal in the tradition, and more besides.1869 He carefully points to the need for God's grace and help.1870 He recognizes that there are degrees of apatheia, and that one may merely be near to its frontiers.1871 He knows the tradition according to which assimilation is only to the angels.1872 But, more than that, Evagrius expects first movements to be retained at the stage of training which he is describing, because his technique requires us to play one off against another. Even at a later stage, anger will be retained for directing against demons and appetite for desiring virtue.1873 And apatheia both produces and is produced by love (agapē).1874 Despite this caution, Evagrius fell foul of Jerome. Besides writing the Practical Treatise, Evagrius had composed collections of Sentences with similar lists of temptations, one addressed to monks and one to virgins. They were probably for the use of Rufinus and Melania the Elder in their monastic communities in Jerusalem. He had stayed there before his move to the desert and some of his subsequent letters

1862

Id. Letters 5; 6; 269.

1863

Ibid. 6; 269.

1864

Ibid. 6.

1865

Ibid.

1866

Id. Letters 6; 269.

1867

Ibid.

1868

Ibid.

1869

A. Guillaumont, Introduction to Évagre, Traité Pratique (Sources Chrétiennes 170), pp. 98–112, is very valuable on this subject. But surprisingly, he sees Clement as the only predecessor who freely accepted apatheia as an ideal attainable in this life.

1870

Evagrius Practical Treatise chs. 43; 50; 58.

1871

Ibid. chs. 58; 60.

1872

Ibid. ch. 56 and Kephalaia Gnostica 1. 23, ed. Guillaumont (Patrologia Orientalis 28). Mark Edwards has drawn my attention to a fragment which says, ‘A soul pure in God is God’, English version in Early Fathers from the Philokalia, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (London, 1954), 109. But even this is no different from Basil, who extrapolates similarly from the idea of restoring in us the image of God.

1873

Evagrius Practical Treatise chs. 24; 86.

1874

Ibid. chs. 35; 38; 81; 84; 89; 91; cf. Sentences to the Monks, PG 40. 1280 B .

396

CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

are apparently addressed to them.1875 Rufinus translated the Sentences and the Practical Treatise into Latin, along with other works by Evagrius. He also translated much of Origen, Basil's monastic Rules, and some earlier Sentences by Sextus, whose identity became a matter of dispute. Trouble started in 393 and came to a head in 399, the year of Evagrius' death, when his companions were condemned and exiled for their adherence to Origen. Jerome had broken with his former friends, Melania and Rufinus. Later, around 414–15, Jerome attacked Evagrius three times, mentioning his Sentences for Melania and Rufinus. The context of this new attack was the Pelagianism which Jerome saw as related to Origenism, and which will be the subject of the next chapter. Pelagianism started only after Evagrius' death, but Jerome detected similar attitudes in many earlier Christians. Pelagius denied the doctrine of original sin, dear to Jerome and Augustine. According to this doctrine, original sin was transmitted to all humans from the sin of disobedience committed by Adam, the first human, and transmitted through the mechanism of the lust involved in procreation. Because of original sin, according to its proponents, humans cannot achieve the smallest thing without the grace of God. It became relevant whether humans could achieve freedom from emotion (apatheia) in this life at all. Jerome complains that Evagrius' acceptance of apatheia as a possibility for ordinary humans would turn them into God, and is one of Origen's hateful views.1876 In the same breath Jerome attacks Rufinus for passing off the Sentences of Sextus as a Christian, not a pagan, work. Perverse though he is, Jerome is not entirely wrong that the Sentences of Sextus would be congenial to Pelagius, who quoted three sentences as if they were Christian.1877 And Evagrius too can have a very Pelagian ring, as when he says: For no bad thought comes from nature. For we are not created bad from the beginning, if the Lord sowed good seed in his field [Matthew 13: 24].1878

1875

See Susanna Elm, ‘Evagrius Ponticus'Sententiae ad Virginem ’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45 (1991), 97–120, on the Sentences to the Virgins and Sentences to the Monks, ed. H. Gressmann (Texte und Untersuchungen, 39. 4; Leipzig, 1913), 43–56. For Rufinus' Latin translation see PG 40, cols. 1277–86.

1876

Jerome Commentary on Matthew 26, verses 37–9, § 218 (PL 26, col. 205).

1877

Henry Chadwick has argued that the Sentences are a pagan compilation, edited and selected by a Christian: Sextus: The Sentences (Oxford, 1959).

1878

Evagrius To Anatolius, PG 40. 1240 A .

CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

397

Even Origenwould not agree that no bad thought comes from nature, if that means our nature as it is after the Fall.1879 Jerome is not short of bile. Not only does he refer to Rufinus as ‘Grunnius’ (the Grunter), but he plays on the name Melania as meaning, in Greek, blackness. Jerome's vituperations run as follows: Evagrius Ponticus of Ibora, who writes to the virgins, writes to the monks, writes to that woman whose name of blackness attests the shades of faithlessness, published a book and sentences On Apatheia, which we can call impassibility or imperturbability, when the mind is never disturbed by any thought or vice, and is, to put it plainly, either a rock or a God.1880 Not to mention. . . Evagrius. . . The opinion of all these is that human virtue and understanding can reach perfection and—I shall not say likeness—but equality to God's.1881 When suddenly the heresy of Zeno and Pythagoras of apatheia and ana-martēsia begins to revive, that is, of freedom from emotion and sinlessness, which was once strangled in Origen and more recently in his disciples, the Grunter [Rufinus], Evagrius Ponticus, and Jovinian.1882

The Latin Tradition and Augustine It was chiefly among Latin-speaking Christians that opposition to apatheia sprang up. Before Jerome, Lactantius had attacked the Stoics for espousing apatheia.1883 But even among the Latin speakers, there was soon to be a countermovement. For Cassian impressed the ideal of apatheia on the monastic tradition.1884 In an early work Augustine, like the Stoics and Clement, distinguishes taking pity on people from feeling pity (misericordia from miseria), and asks, ‘Who does not allow that the wise man should be free from all such miseria?’1885 But in his Retractations he denies there are any such wise men. He had in the meantime become a defender of metriopatheia.1886 Augustine's position was discussed in the last chapter and will be discussed again in the next. We saw him in the City of God defending

1879

Origen On First Principles 3. 2. 2.

1880

Jerome Letter 133 to Ctesiphon (CSEL 56. 246).

1881

Id. Against the Pelagians, prologue (PL 23. 496 A =518 A in the 1883 edn.). The fragment of Evagrius cited in n. 90, ‘A soul pure in God is God’, would have been grist to Jerome's mill.

1882

Jerome Commentary on Jeremiah 4, verse 1 (CSEL 59, pp. 220–1).

1883

Lactantius Div. Inst. 6. 15. 3.

1884

See Cassian Conferences 12.

1885

Augustine On the Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life 1. 27, 53–4.

1886

Id. Retractations 1. 7. 4.

398

CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

his belief in moderate emotion for humans in this life by claiming (erroneously) that even the Stoics would allow a little fear in a storm at sea.1887 That was how he (mis)-interpreted the Stoic recognition of first movements. He complains that the Stoics should also have allowed pity for fellow passengers, and claims that Epictetus does in effect concede this when he allows the wise man to have rational emotions.1888 If we take Stoic apatheia to involve freedom from love and gladness, he says, it is not desirable at any time. If it is freedom from fear, grief, and disturbing emotions, it is still neither desirable nor attainable in this life. Rather, it is to be hoped for in the next,1889 and it was attained before the Fall.1890 Admittedly, in the next life there will be the fear accorded by the Psalms which endures for ever, but that is something different. Augustine calls it by the name of one of the Stoic eupatheiai, a will (voluntas) not to sin, and he says, reminding us of Clement and Evagrius, that it is due to love (caritas).1891 Meanwhile, in the next life joy and gladness will persist. Some of this is explained by the earlier Confessions. As to why grief should be thought useful in this life, Augustine there describes his grief at the death of his unnamed friend as leading him to God, because he found in the end that only God was stable enough to rely on.1892 As for the possibility of shedding disturbing emotions in the next life, we get some insight into this if the saints are included in the heaven of heaven. For there there is no awareness of past, present, and future, on which so many emotions depend.1893 Returning to the City of God, we find Augustine citing in favour of metriopatheia, and against apatheia, St Paul, who told us to rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep. And then there is the example of Christ himself. His emotions (affectio, affectus) were real, contrary to what is implied by those heresies which denied him a real human mind and body, heresies attacked also by Origen in Rufinus' version and by Basil and Jerome, in passages cited above.1894 We have already noticed another part of Augustine's attack on apatheia, in which he says that outside the city of God, residents of

1887

Id. City 9.4; 14.9 init.

1888

Ibid. 9. 5.

1889

Ibid. 14. 9.

1890

Ibid. 14. 10. Thomas Aquinas gives a fuller rationale for the emotions enjoyed before the Fall. They were those of present goods, viz. joy and love, and those of future good, viz. an unworried desire and hope, Summa Theologiae 1, q.95, a.2, respondeo.

1891

Augustine City 14. 9.

1892

Id. Confessions 4.4.8–4.11.16.

1893

Ibid. books 12–13.

1894

Id. City 14.9; Origen On First Principles 4. 4. 4; Commentary on Matthew 26, verses 36–9; Basil Letter 261; cf. Jerome Commentary on Matthew 26, verse 37.

CHRISTIANS ON MODERATION VERSUS ERADICATION

399

the city of the wicked may claim to be free of emotions. But they are not, because this only leads in them to pride and vanity. Such people forfeit forgiveness.1895 Later Augustine will accuse Julian, as a Pelagian, of thinking that he need not say the words in the Lord's Prayer, ‘Forgive us our sins’, because Pelagians think that one can in this life become free of sin.1896 Just as the defenders of apatheia made exceptions for repentance, pity, or love, so the defenders of metriopatheia made exceptions. This started already with Aristotle, the founder of the metriopatheia tradition, who offered no room to envy or Schadenfreude.1897 Among the exceptions to which Augustine allows no room, two play a major role. One, just mentioned, is pride. We saw in Chapter 20 how in this same book of the City of God Augustine condemns pride as the root of all other sins, including lust. Lust is the other most prominent exception. Augustine's condemnation of it will be the subject of the next chapter. Augustine's own exceptions make his relation to the Stoics an intricate one. He is like them in rejecting pride and lust. He is like them verbally in saying that all emotions are acts of will, although all that Seneca meant by his talk of will (voluntas) was the Stoic impulse (hormē).1898 There is still a tenuous analogy when he says that one of these acts of will, lust, opposes the will. For we have seen that Chrysippus thinks reason opposes itself, in that emotion involves going against one's better judgement. But Augustine defends his own view by a very un-Stoic idea that there are two wills, a carnal and a spiritual will opposing each other.1899 Moreover, by and large, Augustine sides against the Stoics in favouring moderation, not eradication, of emotion, whereas his opponent, the Pelagian Julian, we shall see, believes that even lust is acceptable in moderation.1900

1895

Augustine City 14. 9.

1896

Id. Against Julian 3.1.2; 4.1.29; cf. 2.8.23.

1897

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 2. 6, 1107a 8–15.

1898

Augustine City 14. 6. Seneca's use of ‘will’(voluntas) for impulse is at On Anger 2.4. 1.

1899

Augustine Confessions 8. 5 and 9–10.

1900

e.g. Augustine Against Julian 4. 8. 52; Opus imperfectum 4. 41.

26 Augustine On Lust and the Will Augustine's views on sexual desire have been very well studied, and on them I shall do little more than convey what others have said. But beyond that, I should like to draw attention to some of the replies by Bishop Julian of Eclanum. Augustine's case against lust centred on the idea of the will. I believe Julian won the philosophical argument and showed that Augustine's objections failed. But he lost the political battle. There is a contrast between Augustine and Evagrius, for whom sexual thoughts, we saw in Chapter 23, were not one of the more dangerous temptations.

Autobiography Augustine tells his own story in the Confessions. At the age of 17 he took as a concubine, or partner, for fifteen years someone of a class that made marriage legally impossible. In the second year, 472, contrary to intention, they had a son,1901 much loved by Augustine. After that, Augustine joined the Manichaeans for nine or ten years, had no further children, and is likely to have practised contraception. The Manichaeans thought the worst thing was procreation, because it trapped divine soul in matter.1902 Although they recommended chastity, they allowed marriage to the second rank among their followers, requiring only that contraceptive measures be taken, through the rhythm method1903 or through coitus interruptus.1904 After fifteen years Augustine was a professor of rhetoric in Milan, but wanted a loftier career with public office, which would need to be purchased. So he needed to find an heiress to marry and, with

1901

Augustine Confessions 4.2. 2.

1902

Id. On the Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life 18. 65.

1903

Ibid.

1904

Id. Against Faustus 22. 30. So John Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (New York and Toronto, 1965), 153–4.

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

401

mutual pain, sent his concubine back to Carthage, keeping his son.1905 His mother, as a Christian, wanted Augustine to marry and found a fiancée under the legal age of 12, for whom he needed to wait.1906 So far, Augustine had done nothing unusual. In Roman law (although local laws differed) long-term concubinage was a widely accepted and legally defined relationship, enshrined in the sixth-century Digest of Justinian, which draws mostly on pre-fourth-century Roman law. The relationship could be terminated by either party. The point of marriage, for those classes to whom it was permitted, was to secure property. Christians, however, demanded more than Roman law. A text of Hippolytus shows what the Roman Church required in the early third century. In some circumstances faithful concubines could be baptized. But a free man would have to give up a concubine whom he was not free to marry and find a wife.1907 This was exactly what Augustine planned to do, although he was not at this stage a Christian. Although Augustine's behaviour conformed with what was expected both by Roman law and by Christianity, he felt disgusted at himself and particularly at his captivation by lust. Before he joined his partner he was in a seething cauldron of lust.1908 His life with her was ‘a bargain struck for lust’.1909 When he left her, he could not wait for marriage, but took another mistress.1910 He was deterred from becoming a Christian by the thought that he would have to give up sex,1911 and he describes his sexual torment.1912 In the year 386 he converted to Christianity and decided not to go through with his marriage.1913 He arranged to leave his teaching post in Milan, and it is interesting that he did so in a perfect Stoic manner, leaving quietly by choosing the summer vacation, pleading ill health, and doing so in order to lead a life of leisure (otium) and philosophy with companions in Cassiacum.1914 This exactly conformed to the recommendation of Seneca in his Letters, not only to retire to a life of leisure and philosophy, but to make the move in an unostentatious way, citing ill health.1915 A similar earlier plan had foundered because of its incompatibility with marriage, or in Augustine's case, prospective

1905

Augustine Confessions 6. 15. 25.

1906

Ibid.6.13.23.

1907

I am drawing in this paragraph on the description of concubinage in Rousselle, Porneia, chs. 5 and 6. The last reference is to Hippolytus Apostolic Tradition chs. 15 and 16.

1908

Augustine Confessions 3. 1.

1909

Ibid. 4. 2. 2.

1910

Ibid. 6. 15. 25.

1911

Ibid.6.11.20.

1912

Ibid. 8. 11. 26–7.

1913

Ibid. 8. 12.

1914

Ibid. 9. 2–3.

1915

Seneca Letter 68. 1, 3–4.

402

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

marriage.1916 Augustine was baptized with his son in 387.1917 But instead of remaining in Cassiacum, he returned to Africa in 391, becoming assistant bishop in Hippo in 396 and sole bishop in 397.

Defence Of Marriage Against Manichaeans and Jerome In 401 Augustine wrote On the Good of Marriage, which he saw as a defence of marriage against the Manichaeans and against his ascetic fellow Christian Jerome, even though he expressed the view which he held for the rest of his life, that in sex marriage puts a bad thing to a good use. In thus favouring procreation, he was certainly repudiating the Manichaeans in favour of family life. At one point he struggles with the degree of sin incurred by a man and a woman who live together unmarried, as he had, until such time as he takes a wife. Although he does not excuse either, it has been pointed out that he clearly seeks to mitigate his condemnation of a woman who, like his own partner, had subsequently remained unmarried and in that sense faithful: There is a standard question whether this case should be called a marriage (nuptiae): when an unmarried man and a woman who is not the wife of another have sex (copulari) with each other, not for the sake of producing children but for the sake only of intercourse itself (concubitus) on account of incontinence, with this pact between them, that neither will he do it with another woman, nor she with another man. And perhaps indeed it is not absurd for this to be called marriage (conubium), if that has been decided between them until the death of either, and if, although not joined for the sake of producing offspring, they have not avoided that, either by being unwilling to have children born to them, or by taking evil action to prevent their being born. But if both or one of these conditions is missing, I do not see how we can call it a marriage. For if a man takes some woman to himself for a time, until he can find another woman worthy of his position or capacities to marry as his equal, he is an adulterer in his mind, not with the woman he wishes to find, but with the woman with whom he sleeps in such a way as not to be a married companion to her. The same is true of the woman who knows this and is willingly and impudently conjoined anyhow with a man with whom she has no conjugal treaty. None the less, if she keeps faith with him, and when he takes a wife, does not contemplate marrying herself, and prepares to withhold herself from any such act, perhaps I would not easily dare to call her an adulteress. But who would say that she did not

1916

Augustine Confessions 6. 14. 24.

1917

Ibid. 9. 6.

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

403

sin, when he knows that she was conjoined with a man to whom she was not a wife?1918

Augustine in this treatise celebrated as the three goods in marriage children, fidelity, and something uniquely Christian, the sacramental bond. In addition, it has been shown by others that Augustine repeatedly praises the companionship in marriage, of which he found a star example in the supposedly sexless marriage of the Virgin Mary and Joseph. At the same time, it has been brought out how this view is in tension with his belief that the best intellectual companionship was between males.1919

Counter-Attack On Augustine's View By the Pelagians Given his defence of marriage, Augustine must have felt himself infuriatingly wrong-footed when much later he found himself accused by Pelagians as an opponent of marriage and Manichaean sympathizer. The Pelagian controversy developed gradually. Pelagius was a Briton who had come to Rome. By AD 410 his views were reaching Africa. He denied the doctrine, which Augustine championed, of original sin. According to this doctrine, original sin was transmitted from Adam, the first human, to all humans through the lust of sexual union, so that infants can be saved from guilt only by the unmerited grace of baptism. Augustine began replying in 412 with his On the Deserts of Sinners, although the issue of lust took centre stage only when the controversy with Julian started. Pelagius himself visited Carthage in 410. So later did his follower Julian, before he became bishop of Eclanum in 416. In 418 the Pelagians were, not for the first time, but still more decisively, condemned, and Julian went into exile in Cilicia. But then the controversy between Julian and Augustine began. Already by 419 Pelagius had complained that Augustine's doctrine of original sin represented marriage as a bad thing, and Augustine had replied.1920 In 418 the condemned Pelagian bishops wrote to Count Valerius at the imperial court in Ravenna, alleging inter alia that the views of Augustine on marriage were Manichaean. In 419 Augustine defended his views in book1 of On Marriage and Concupiscence and sent a copy to Count Valerius. Julian wrote a reply, probably in 419, in four books, now

1918

Id. On the Good of Marriage (De bono coniugali) 5. 5.

1919

Elizabeth Clark, “ ‘Adam's Only Companion”: Augustine and the Early Christian Debate on Marriage’, Recherches augustiniennes, 21 (1986), 139–62.

1920

Augustine On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin 2.33.38–2.41.48.

404

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

lost apart from Augustine's reports and quotations. The reply was addressed to Turbantius, and extracts were sent to Count Valerius and forwarded to Augustine. Augustine replied to the extracts with book 2 of On Marriage and Concupiscence around 421 and in Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians) around 420, and to the full text in his Contra Julianum (Against Julian) around 421. Julian extended his attack in eight books To Florus, written around 421–3, again lost apart from Augustine's extensive quotations. Augustine was still replying when he died in 430 in his Contra secundam Juliani responsionem opus imperfectum (Unfinished Work against the Second Response of Julian), which is still, surprisingly, not available in English translation.1921 Augustine was in a curious position. He thought he had decisively rejected Manichaeanism with its disapproval of procreation and marriage. Yet he was also opposed to the Pelagian view that lust (libido, concupiscentia carnis—the terms are interchanged, with carnis omitted when the context makes it redundant) is perfectly natural, and calls only for moderation. On the contrary, Augustine considered that lust, as we know it, is a punishment inherited through original sin from the time that Adam and Eve committed the sin of disobedience. He had then to explain, right up to the end of the controversy, how he differed from the Manichaeans. Julian's view that lust calls only for moderation1922 was the view that Augustine himself took about many other emotions.1923 He had therefore to treat lust as one of the exceptions, and he tries to distinguish it from other emotions,1924 as was seen in Chapters 24 and 25.

Lust's Disobedience To the Will As the Ground For Condemning It The centre-piece of Augustine's attack on lust concerns its relation to the will, the concept which he did more than anyone to crystallize. His complaint is that lust is not under the control of the will in at least two different ways. First, thinking of the male's physical reactions, Augustine objects that the organ's movements in lust are not under

1921

There is an Italian translation of books 1–3 by Italo Volpi with introduction and notes by Nello Cipriani (Città Nuova, 1993) (sequel forthcoming), and some key passages are translated into English by Elizabeth A. Clark in Wimbush, (ed.), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 156–68.

1922

e.g. Augustine Against Julian 2.5.13; 3.13.27; 3.20.38; 4.8.52; Opus imperfectum 4.24; 4.41.

1923

e.g. id. City 9.4–5; 14.8–9. But Augustine also regards pride as a major evil, as explained in ch. 19.

1924

e.g. ibid. 14. 19.

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

405

the control of the will. They are not moved by (moveri, agi), nor under the power (potestas) or command (imperium, iubere) of, the will, and do not serve it (servire), but are disobedient (inobediens) to it, since they happen contrary to the will, or fail to happen in response to it.1925 One of the relevant passages was quoted in Chapter 24. It comes from City of God 14. 19, which was written in the same period as Julian's first attack on Augustine (AD 418–20). The point was made that Augustine failed to notice that the same is true of the physical reactions in anger (the reddening or bristling), because he did not appreciate the Stoic view that all these reactions are merely ‘first movements’, and do not yet imply the occurrence of the emotion itself. Conversely, the actual behaviour of going after one's objective is under the control of the will in lust as much as in anger. Augustine makes his points not only about the bodily movements but, secondly, about lust itself. It is not subject (subdita) to the will, or to its approval (nutus), nor is it the servant of (servire) the will or commanded (imperari) by it.1926 Indeed, it actually fights against (repugnare) reason,1927 and is moved contrary to (contra) the will.1928 The other complaints against lust tend merely to pick on symptoms of the central fact of its disobedience to the will. Thus the ultimate pleasure of orgasm excludes all thought, including prayer.1929 Other forms of disobedience are brought out in Augustine's newly discovered Letter 6*, probably written at about this same time, 420–1, or a little later, to Atticus, Bishop of Constantinople.1930 Lust is importunate: molestful (molestissima), it intrudes itself (ingerit se) when not needed, and tugs at (sollicitat) the hearts of the faithful and holy with desires that are untimely (importunis) or even wicked (nefariis). Again, it leads a man to coveting other women indifferently. Augustine uses here and in many other places the word inordinata, to say that lust is something unruly.1931 The power of music over lust is another manifestation of the failure of the will to command it.1932 Here Augustine cites the story of the Greek oboe-player and the youths, which we saw in Chapter 5 used by Posidonius for the quite different purpose of arguing that the emotions are not judgements.

1925

Ibid. 14.16; 14.19; 14.20; 14.24; Against Julian 4.11.57; 4.13.62; 5.5.20; 5.10.42.

1926

Id. Against Julian 4.11.57; 4.14.69; 5.5.23.

1927

Ibid.4.5.35.

1928

Id. City 14. 19.

1929

Ibid. 14. 16; id. Against Julian 2.7.20; 4.14.72; 5.10.42. The exclusion of thought had already been made an objection even before Aristotle wrote Nicomachean Ethics 7. 11, 1152b 16–18, probably by Plato's immediate successor Speusippus.

1930

Divjak, however, proposed the earlier date of 416–17.

1931

Augustine Letter 6*. 7–8.

1932

Id. Against Julian 5. 5. 23.

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Augustine's argument is in danger of proving too much, that other emotions besides lust are independent of the will, since music can control others too. Augustine thinks that our shame at being seen by third parties when having sex is simply a consequence of the disobedience of lust and the male organ to the will. That is what shames us. The disobedience and the resulting shame are part of the punishment inherited from Adam's sin.1933 Adam's sin was not lust, but was itself an act of disobedience, so that the punishment is a fitting one. Another part of the punishment is the pain endured by women in childbirth. That Augustine's complaint against lust depends on its disobedience to the will emerges again in his treatment of animals. In the contrasting view of Julian, God gave lust both to humans and to animals, but to humans alone he gave the power of moderation (modus), and so in humans God blames not lust in moderation, but only lust in excess.1934 But Augustine's view, rather like Proclus' later, is that lust in animals is all right, in humans not, because in animals there is no reason for lust to fight against, whereas in humans lust does fight against reason.1935 When Thomas Aquinas discusses the same issue, he agrees with neither side: animals and, after the Fall, humans are inferior because neither can moderate lust by reason.1936

Obedience To Will Before the Fall It becomes still clearer that Augustine's objection to lust turns on its relation to the will, when we consider his evolving opinions on the situation of Adam and Eve in paradise before they sinned and fell. Three stages in this evolution have been distinguished.1937 First, in De Genesi contra Manichaeos (On Genesis against the Manichaeans) of 388–9 Augustine thought of Adam and Eve as having had spiritual bodies, not designed for procreation.1938 Secondly, in De Genesi ad litteram (Literal Interpretation of Genesis), written over the period 401–14, and in City of God 14, written in 418–20, Augustine ascribes to Adam and Eve sexual bodies designed for procreation, although not in fact used before the Fall.1939

1933

Id. City 14. 17–20.

1934

Id. Opus imperfectum 4. 41.

1935

Id. Against Julian 4. 5. 35; cf. Proclus On Evil ch. 55.

1936

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 1a. q. 98, a. 2, ad 3.

1937

I am guided by Émile Schmitt, Le Mariage chrétien dans l'œuvre de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1983).

1938

Augustine On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2. 21. 32.

1939

Id. Literal Interpretation of Genesis 13. 21. 33, and On the Good of Marriage 2. 2, both written around 401, are still uncertain whether the bodies were sexual, but Literal Interpretation of Genesis 6. 25. 36, written around 410, already allows this, as still earlier does 11. 41. 56 (the first nine books were written last), while 9. 4. 8 denies that they did in fact use their bodies in this way before the Fall.

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

407

If they had used their bodies then, they would have felt neither lust nor pleasure.1940 Their bodily movements would have been as much under the control of the will as are our hands or feet.1941 In case this seems impossible, Augustine gives examples of exceptional physical control, including that of the musical farter.1942 A third stage is found in the newly discovered Letter 6*, of perhaps 420–1. Here Augustine introduces an ‘if ’. If there was lust (concupiscentia carnis) in paradise, he says twice, at least the flesh did not lust against the spirit, nor did it ever go beyond the approval (nutus) of the will. It was never present, except when needed, and never intruded itself on the mind with disorderly or illicit pleasure, but followed the will with an easy and harmonious obedience.1943 This letter also introduces the idea of a concupiscence of marriage (concupiscentia nuptiarum) which is distinct from concupiscence of the flesh (concupiscentia carnis), or lust, since it is an appetite for legitimate offspring.1944 In the treatise Against Julian of 421, the ‘if ’ is replaced, under pressure from Julian, by an ‘either–or’: [Marriage in paradise] had been going to exist through the genitals being moved, like other parts of the body, by the will, not excited by lust, or else through their being moved admittedly (certe) even by lust (libido) itself (so as not to depress you too much about it), but lust not as it now is, but serving the approval (nutus) of the will.1945 It remains, therefore, that either there was no lust (carnalis concupiscentia) there, but their way of life was such that all necessities were fulfilled by the appropriate actions of their parts without the movement of any lust (libido) . . . or, so that we may not seem to give too much offence to people who defend the body's pleasure in any way, let it be believed that there was lust (libido) of the carnal senses there, but such as to be subject (subdita) in every way to the rational will, and not to be present except when the health of the body or the propagation of offspring was to be taken care of by it, and to be present only in such strength that it would not in any degree bring

1940

Id. Literal Interpretation of Genesis 9.10.16 and 19; 11.31.40–11.32.42; City 14.21; 14.23. Already Clement of Alexandria denies that pleasure is in principle necessary for procreation; it has been added as an auxiliary like a seasoning: Stromateis 2. 20.

1941

Augustine Literal Interpretation of Genesis 9. 10. 18; City 14. 24; Letter 6*. 7; Letter 184A ; Ench. 28. 105; Opus imperfectum 6. 22.

1942

Id. City 14. 24.

1943

Id. Letter 6*. 8.

1944

Id. Letter 6*. 5; Opus imperfectum 4. 19.

1945

Id. Against Julian 4. 11. 57.

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the mind down from the pleasure of lofty thoughts, and that no superfluous or untimely movement would come from it, nor would anything happen through it that was not beneficial, nor would anything at all be done for its sake.1946 In the ‘or’ clause here the health of the body, as well as procreation, is allowed as a legitimate purpose. In Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, around 420, Augustine offers the Pelagians four alternatives, believing they will choose the third, which he says he will not resist (repugnare). According to this third option, That lust (carnalis concupiscentia), whose movement attains the final pleasure which delights you so much, never arose in paradise except when it was necessary for procreating upon the approval (nutus) of the will. If it pleases you to locate this in paradise, and you think that in that happy state children could have been generated through a lust (concupiscentia carnis) which did not anticipate, nor delay, nor go beyond the command (imperium) of the will, we do not resist.1947

A similar choice is offered in Augustine's last work, the Opus imperfectum: This evil did not exist in the body of that life, where either there was no lust, but even the genitals served the will, or lust absolutely never moved itself against the choice of the will.1948 It remains therefore that, if there was lust there, it was subjected (subdita) to the will in such a way as neither to draw the mind into sin, nor provoke it into a struggle, but to leave it upright and calm.1949 Either therefore there was no lust there [in paradise], or it neither preceded nor exceeded the mind's will.1950 Hence there was either no lust there, or none such as there now is by which the flesh lusts against the spirit.1951

The evolution of Augustine's view makes it still clearer that his objection is not to lust as such, but to lust as it has inevitably and universally manifested itself since the Fall, that is, to lust disobedient to the will. Thomas Aquinas is far more relaxed about the whole subject. He says that in paradise our nature and bodily state would actually have made the pleasure (delectatio) of sense greater. He compares

1946

Ibid. 4. 14. 69.

1947

Id. Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1. 17. 35.

1948

Id. Opus imperfectum 1. 68.

1949

Ibid.1.70.

1950

Ibid. 2. 122.

1951

Ibid. 5.16; cf. 5.14.

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how moderation by reason prevents us gulping our food without in any way reducing the pleasure of eating. So with paradisal bodies we would have enjoyed more pleasure through not gulping our sex. Thomas then says, rather charitably, that this is what Augustine himself had in mind.1952

Julian's Comparison Of Lust To Hunger, Thirst, Digestion and Sleep Julian, I believe, located a very serious difficulty for Augustine, which makes one wonder whether Augustine can correctly have identified what he found so objectionable about lust. In Against Julian 5. 5. 20 Julian is reported as having made an important distinction, which I have not noticed in earlier thinkers, between the command (imperium) and the consent (consensus) of the will. The male's physical movements admittedly are not under the command of the will, but they have its consent. Moreover, this makes them like hunger, thirst, and digestion. The comparison is important, although we must compare like with like. We must think of hunger and thirst not merely as needs of the body, but as actual wants.1953 For what we should compare with lust is the desire to eat and drink. Correspondingly, what we should compare with the male movements is salivation, and the subsequent digestion. The desire to eat or drink, the salivation, and the digestion are not commanded by the will, although in healthy cases they may have the consent of the will. In unhealthy cases, we shall see, they may fight against the will. Why, we may ask, and perhaps Julian intended to ask, does not this make them as bad as Augustine believes lust to be? In the next section, 5. 5. 21, it becomes apparent that Julian had discussed sleep as impeding the will's power over bodily movements. Eating and digestion, of course, can lead to sleep. Augustine sees no significance in his acknowledgement that sleep presses on men against their will (invitos premit) and impedes the will's power over the body. But why, again, does this not make sleep as bad as lust? The subject of sleep comes up again in 5. 10. 42, where Augustine concedes to Julian that sleep extinguishes thought about its restorative purpose, just as lust in sexual intercourse extinguishes thought about its procreative purpose. Thus sleep shares yet another of the characteristics for which Augustine condemned lust. Julian's point

1952

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 1a, q. 98, a. 2, ad 3.

1953

Augustine Against Julian 5.5.22; 4.14.67.

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that sleep extinguishes thought is repeated by Thomas Aquinas.1954 What Augustine says in reply is that sleep does not make the parts of the body disobedient (inobediens) to the will, because it rather divorces the will from that kind of command (imperium). The point is, presumably, that sleep does not oppose the will. But Julian had already provided the answer that lust need not oppose the will. It normally has the will's consent, even if (like sleep) it lacks the will's command. Augustine concedes in 5. 5. 22 that hunger and thirst are an evil (malum) that we would not have had to endure in paradise. But he means that they are a disadvantage, not that they are reprehensible. Furthermore, he pleads that they are needs (indigentiae) which we must satisfy to prevent injury or death. Lust is not necessary in this sense. This point, as we saw in Chapter 18, had already been made by Epicurus. But Epicurus drew the reasonable conclusion that the appetite for sex, unlike the appetite for food, is not necessary.1955 This falls a long way short of explaining why one should be condemned, the other not. It could be added to Julian's case that lust is not alone in being importunate. The desire to eat and drink is more so, coming on as it does at least three times a day, and allowing less choice of postponement. Augustine himself acknowledges this in his description of a baby bawling for its wet-nurse.1956 Sleep is not dissimilar. Moreover, the desire to eat, drink, or sleep spreads, even more than lust, far beyond the act itself, to control the daily timetable and the opportunities left free for work or social interaction. Augustine found lust particularly importunate, but that is, as I shall say below, because he had other reasons, not articulated, for thinking it bad. Lust may lead people to covet indifferently. But given models of marriage more favourable than Augustine's, for example Plutarch's, that may be a matter not of constant, but of occasional, struggle, or none. Moreover, it too has its parallels, since cooking can tempt us to overeat, or hunger to steal. There is worse to come. There are such modern eating disorders as anorexia, which can lead to death through voluntary starvation, and bulimia, the disease of binge-eating. Ancient eating disorders were differently conceived from these modern ones, but were equally out

1954

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 2. 2, q. 153, a. 3, ad 2. I thank John Lamont for the reference.

1955

Scholium on Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1118 8 =Usener, Epicurea, 456.

1956

Augustine Confessions 1. 6–7.

b

AUGUSTINE ON LUST AND THE WILL

411

of control. Starvation had actually been encouraged by Augustine's contemporary Jerome in the case of Blaesilla, the widowed daughter of Paula. Jerome had encouraged her to starve, to prevent sexual temptation in a widow, and was anxious to defend himself when as a result she died.1957 It is not only the desire for sex that can get out of hand. Here aversion from food does so, because of aversion from sex. We have also seen in Chapter 23 Evagrius warning against the temptation to engage in excessive fasting, and coupling this with a warning against its concomitant, excessive vigils.1958 There are parallels in nutrition for Augustine's complaint that the male's movements are present or absent independently of the will. That digestion can fail, or salivation occur, independently of the will hardly needs to be pointed out. It is also true that in fasting some people claimed they were unable to eat, in some cases to their own regret, while others experienced hunger alternating with revulsion.1959 The only remaining feature of lust,1960 among those mentioned, which has no parallel in the sphere of eating is the universal desire for privacy. Though fasters are sometimes ashamed of eating and do not want to be seen,1961 this is not a universal phenomenon. Admittedly, in the context of sex, the Cynic Crates had argued that the desire for privacy was misplaced, and insisted that his wife should not cover herself when engaging in sex in public. And Julian cites the case of Crates and of animals in order to challenge the universality of the desire for privacy. He also gives many examples to show that shame at nakedness is not universal, including the Apostle Peter and the Scots. Indeed, he takes it, and modern anthropologists agree, that some races are not only naked, but have sex in public.1962 Augustine answers that the Cynics are a single perverse instance. In the City of God Augustine had even questioned whether the Cynic Diogenes would have been able to have sex publicly and whether he was not merely acting.1963 As for animals, they have no shame but Augustine

1957

Jerome Letters 38; 39. See also Letters 22; 45; 54; 107, with the comments of Veronika Grimm-Samuel, in ‘Attitudes to Fasting in Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity’ (in preparation).

1958

Evagrius Practical Treatise 49; cf. Sentences of Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 25. For the alleged practice of eating only the Eucharistic wafer, which could not be considered as bread, since it was the body of Christ, see Caroline Bynum Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), esp. 94, 198.

1959

Bynum Walker, Holy Feast, Holy Fast, esp. 194–207.

1960

I have already set aside Augustine's argument from susceptibility to music as ruling out more emotions than he intends.

1961

e.g. Bynum Walker, Holy Feast, Holy Fast 97.

1962

Augustine Opus imperfectum 4. 43–4.

1963

Id. City 14. 20.

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would not expect them to, since their lust does not war against reason. The test case for Augustine is that of Adam and Eve, who, we are told, had no shame before their disobedience, but only after. This calls out for explanation, he thinks. His explanation is that it was because, as a punishment for their disobedience, their bodies, or rather the male body, no longer obeyed the will. Augustine might have tried to answer Julian's comparison of hunger, thirst, digestion, and sleep by pinning his whole argument on the one point about shame. It is not, after all, the will's lack of control, he might have conceded, but our shame at that lack of control which reveals lust to be an evil. Since that shame started only after Adam and Eve's disobedience, the only explanation is that it is a punishment transmitted to us for that disobedience. Augustine has set a challenge in asking us to explain the desire for privacy. Is it (I owe the question to Alex Rosenberg) because orgasm distracted our ancestors from predators? But whatever the explanation, Augustine's is not satisfactory. It leaves female shame underexplained. It depends on a literal interpretation of Genesis. It offers, as we shall see Julian complaining on a related issue, no genetic explanation of transmission. In any case, Augustine is not willing to abandon his appeal to the will's lack of control as itself already showing lust to be an evil. That leaves him exposed both to the complaint that other emotions too, like anger, involve unruly first movements, and to Julian's objection, that lust has the consent of the will as much, and heeds the command of the will as little, as hunger, thirst, digestion, and sleep.

The Will's Opposition Presupposes, Rather Than Grounding, Evil There is a more general reason why disobedience to the will cannot provide an ultimate ground for regarding lust as evil. Augustine's Letter 6* brings out vividly the importunate disturbance that he felt as a result of lust being against his will. But I think it must be wrong to take the fact of its being against the will as the reason for its badness. For it is against one's will only if one thinks it bad for other reasons. If one thinks it bad for other reasons, then the importunity will indeed be an extra evil. But it remains to be seen what those other reasons are and whether they are universally applicable to everybody. I sympathize with the Stoic view that what can be wrong for one person can be right for another—suicide for Cato, in Cicero's example.1964 Lust was surely wrong for Augustine, given his unique

1964

Cicero Off. 1. 112.

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history, but what he was seeking was a reason for its being wrong for everyone.

An Other-Worldly Rationale For Augustine There is a strand of thought in Augustine which would provide an alternative and independent rationale for his attack on lust. If one's goal is that revealed in Confessions books 12 and 13, to be like those in the heaven of heaven, wrapped in the contemplation of God, shedding both memory and expectation, then anything sensory can be a distraction. In this mood Augustine criticizes himself for enjoying the tunes of the Psalms, or for still stopping to watch dogs chasing a hare in the countryside.1965 Much more consuming and riveting is the sexual act which he condemns for distracting us from everything, including prayer.1966 Augustine says something parallel about marriage when he says that chastity is better, because a married man must devote himself to his wife, and for this he quotes Saint Paul.1967 That is a perspective entirely different from what motivates Stoic belief in freedom from emotion. It is rather the perspective of Neoplatonism.

Consent Of the Will In Dreams So far we have seen Augustine focus on the absence of the will's consent. But in another context he had earlier stressed the presence of consent. Both can occur in lust, but at different stages, and both can make lust objectionable, but in different ways. Augustine's question is whether the will's consent in a lustful dream constitutes a sin. The subject troubled Augustine far more than it had the pagan philosophers. Plato had mentioned dreaming of sleeping with your mother as a sign of the beast within,1968 and there is some echo in Aristotle.1969 Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, made the absence of shameful dreams a way of testing your moral progress,1970 and Epictetus thought that even in dreams the invincible person will leave no appearance untested.1971 Porphyry, however, expects sexual dreams will still linger after you

1965

Augustine Confessions 10. 33 and 35.

1966

Id. City 14. 16; Against Julian 2.7.20; 4.14.72; 5.10.42.

1967

New Sermon 41 (3), quoting 1 Corinthians 7: 32–3, ed. Dolbeau, Rev. bénédictine, 102 (1992), 275 ff.

1968

Plato Republic 9, 571 D .

1969

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1. 13, 1102 9–11.

1970

Plutarch On Moral Progress 82 F .

1971

Epictetus 1.18.23; 3.2.5.

b

414

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have abandoned all other sex, in your progress from moderating the emotions to eradicating them.1972 In Confessions 10. 301973 Augustine acknowledges that he still has sexual dreams, and he implies that in them he sometimes gives consent (adsensus, consentire, consensio). For he contrasts the cases in which he gives no consent with the cases where ‘it happens otherwise’(aliter accidit) and he looks forward to the time when through God's grace his soul will no longer so much as consent. There has been at least one admirable study of how Augustine did, or might, reduce the culpability of sexual dreams.1974 But Augustine's acknowledgement that he sometimes consents still remains a difficulty. For elsewhere, we have seen, he discusses Christ's saying that he who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.1975 Part of Augustine's explanation is that it is the consent (consensus, consentire) to the desire which makes looking a sin. How, then, does consent in dreams differ? I think Augustine may have a solution to offer, although he is not discussing the present question, when he adds a gloss, which he also repeats elsewhere.1976 The consent condemned by Christ, he says, is so complete (plene) that it would be acted on if opportunity arose. Presumably consent in a dream might be acted on if a dream opportunity arose, but not necessarily if a real opportunity arose. The other part of Augustine's explanation of looking at a woman to lust after her was noticed in Chapter 24. To look at a woman in this way is to look at her precisely in order to arouse lust where none necessarily existed before.1977 It is much more obvious why this might be considered culpable. Augustine contrasts mere titillation (titillare). A fuller answer for Augustine to the problem of dreams would have been to say that sleep is like a drug.1978 It impairs the will's ability to reflect and withhold assent, while taking stock of the relevant considerations. This in fact is precisely why consent in a dream is not an indication that there would be corresponding action if a real opportunity arose. I doubt if Augustine articulates this idea. We have

1972

Porphyry Sentences 32.

1973

Cf. Augustine Literal Interpretation of Genesis 12. 15. 31.

1974

Gary Matthews, ‘On Being Immoral in a Dream’, Philosophy, 56 (1981), 47–54.

1975

Augustine On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 12. 33–4.

1976

Ibid.; see also Trin. 12. 12.

1977

Jerome Commentary on Matthew 5, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26. 39–40).

1978

I thank Alvin Plantinga for this approach.

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seen him saying that sleep divorces the will from command,1979 but he does not apply the point to this context. It is Thomas Aquinas who comes closer to this sort of answer. In conformity with Seneca, he calls the male nocturnal emission a ‘first movement’ of sensuality, and he says that it is sinless because reason is removed in sleep and cannot restrain it.1980 Augustine attempts another explanation elsewhere,1981 that neither the images in dreams nor the resulting male movements can be helped. But here, as we saw in Chapter 24, he fails to draw the sharp Stoic distinction between the involuntary male movements and the consent. What we want to know is why the consent is not culpable.

Consent To Bypassing the Will's Consent It might be asked how it can be the will's consent which makes looking at a woman a sin if we are later told that it is precisely the will's lack of consent that makes lust an evil. I think there is no inconsistency here for two reasons. First, Augustine can say that, in the case in question, both features are present, consent and lack of consent. The consent of the will is consent to a train of events that increasingly bypasses the will. We have seen Julian and Augustine discussing some cases with a rather similar structure. Thinking about procreation can lead to the act which prevents you thinking about procreation, and thinking about restoring your body can lead to sleep which prevents you thinking about restoring it. The second point is that the question what makes lust an evil is different from the question why looking at a woman, in Christ's example, is a sin. It is a sin because, as Christ's reference to adultery shows, it is presupposed that the sex consented to is illicit sex, that is, sex not with one's lawful partner. The same is true in Augustine's example of a lustful dream. This is quite different from the further insistence that lust is in any case evil, because of its shaming disobedience to the will.

The Male Perspective On Will In the course of discussing Augustine's treatment of the will in lust, one objection I have made concerns his preoccupation with male

1979

Augustine Against Julian 5. 10. 42.

1980

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae 2. 2, q. 154, a. 5, respondeo. I thank John Lamont for the reference.

1981

Augustine On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 12. 15. 31.

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physical reactions in explaining shame. The objection was that this leaves female shame underexplained. But a much more devastating point has been made about Augustine's male perspective.1982 Lust, for him, is the mechanism by which original sin is transmitted.1983 Yet he admits that a woman can sleep with (concumbere) a man through her will (voluntas), even in the absence of lust,1984 as Julian would agree.1985 So it seems that it is due to males, and not essentially to females, that original sin is transmitted. This is not the interpretation that Augustine wants to give of Paul's remark that sin came into the world through one person (unus homo).1986 Augustine holds Eve also responsible, and takes Adam to be singled out merely because the male seed initiates procreation.1987

Genetics and the Will I have focused on problems concerning the will. One last point of Julian's on this subject deserves mention. He asks Augustine how original sin can be in the seed, for how can it come about that a matter of choice (arbitrium) should be mixed with the creation of seeds?1988 Julian is referring to Adam and Eve's choice of the will in their disobedience to God. The question is how an act of will can have genetic consequences. Augustine's answer, unfortunately, does not tackle genetics, but presupposes the point at issue, the existence of original sin.

Julian Versus Augustine: Assessment I am inclined to say that Julian won the philosophical, but Augustine the political, battle. A factor in that victory, I think, must have been the immense skill with which Augustine invoked the authority of other Fathers of the Church for the view he is offering, as seen in book 1 of Against Julian. This alone would have made it hard for

1982

Elizabeth Clark, ‘Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine's Manichean Past’, in her Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith (New York, 1986), 291–349.

1983

e.g. Augustine Against Julian 4. 4. 34. Thomas Aquinas, while agreeing that lust is the mechanism, disagrees that it would make any difference if the lust could avoid being unruly: Summa Theologiae 1.2, q.82, a.4, ad3.

1984

Augustine On Marriage and Concupiscence 2. 30. 15.

1985

Julian in Augustine Against Julian 5. 5. 23.

1986

Romans 5: 12.

1987

Augustine Opus imperfectum 2.56; 2.83; 2.85; 2.88; 2.179.

1988

Id. Against Julian 6. 24. 9. See Clark, ‘Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels’, 302, 304.

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Julian to get his case reconsidered. But to a philosopher that may be a matter of regret. The situation is not unlike that which I have described elsewhere on our attitudes to killing animals.1989 Augustine is a philosopher for whose genius I have repeatedly expressed my admiration.1990 Iknow of no subtler treatment of the emotions than his Confessions, nora better introduction to Western philosophy. It is no part of my interest to attempt any futile disparagement. But even his weaker positions have been accorded authority, and he deliberately sought authority for his views on lust. It is a good thing to know the weakness of his case against lust, just as it is to know the weakness of his case for killing animals, precisely because the Western tradition has been so influenced by it. With regard to lust, his influence may help to account for our obsession with it. Just as in his case against animals, so here he selected one view from the very wide range available in pagan philosophy. We have in Chapter 18 seen this range extending from Epicurus' casual acceptance of lust and rejection of being in love, to Plato's endorsement, in the homosexual context, of being in love and rejection of sex. To many, myself included, the Pelagian view that lust is a good thing, which may be put to bad use, is far more attractive than Augustine's view that lust is a bad thing which may, in marriage, be put to a good use. If Pelagius had prevailed on this and more generally on original sin, a British theologian would have been at the centre of Western theology, and Western attitudes to sexuality, and to much else besides, might have been very different.

1989

Sorabji Animal Minds and Human Morals.

1990

Especially in my Time, Creation and the Continuum, passim, including explicit remarks at p. 234.

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Index Of Ancient Thinkers 1. Presocratic philosophers Pythagoras, second half of 6th cent. BC Heraclitus, c.500 BC Anaxagoras, c.500–c.427 BC Antiphon, sophist, 5th cent. BC Democritus, fl. c.435 BC Gorgias, c.485–c.380 BC 2. Pythagoreans and Neopythagoreans Archytas, first half of 4th cent. BC Author of Tablet of Cebes, 1st cent. BC or AD Apollonius of Tyana, 1st cent. AD? 3. Socrates, Socratics, Cynics Socrates, 469–399 BC Antisthenes, 5th–4th cents. BC Diogenes of Sinope, first Cynic, c.412/403–c.324/ 321 BC Crates, Cynic, taught Zeno of Citium, c.368/ 365–288/285 BC 4. Plato, his Academy, Middle Platonists, and Platonizers Plato, c.427–348 BC Speusippus, Plato's successor, c.407–339 BC Xenocrates, third head of Academy from 339 to 314 BC Crantor, c.335–275 BC Heracleides of Pontos, 4th cent. BC Carneades, sceptical Platonist, 214/13–129/8 BC Antiochus, Stoicizing Platonist 130/120–c.68 BC Brutus, 85–42 BC, Roman statesman, assassin of Caesar, follower of Antiochus Cicero, Latin orator, statesman, 106–43 BC Plutarch of Chaeroneia, Middle Platonist, AD 46–120 Taurus, fl.ADc.145 Maximus of Tyre, orator, fl.AD 152

432

INDEX OF ANCIENT THINKERS

Alcinous, author of Didaskalikos, 2nd cent. AD (?) Galen, doctor, independent eclectic with some Platonist sympathies, ADc.129–99 Calcidius, Christian, wrote Latin commentary on Timaeus a little after AD 400 5. Aristotle and Aristotelians Aristotle, 384–322 BC Aristoxenus, born c.370 BC Dicaearchus, fl. 320–300 BC Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of school, 322–287 BC Lyco, c.300/298–c.226/4 BC Aristo of Ceos, 3rd cent. BC Hieronymus of Rhodes, mid-3rd cent. BC Andronicus of Rhodes, fl. c.70–20 BC Aspasius, ADc.100–50 Alexander of Aphrodisias, fl.ADc.205 Themistius, orator, essayist, politician, commentator on Aristotle, independent of Aristotle's school, ADc.317–c.388 6. Stoics Zeno of Citium, founded Stoa in Athens c.300 BC Aristo of Chios, pupil of Zeno, first half of 3rd cent. BC Cleanthes, second head 331–232 BC Chrysippus, third head c.280–c.206 BC Diogenes of Babylon, head of Stoa, taught Panaetius, c.240–152 BC Antipater of Tarsus, taught Panaetius, succeeded Diogenes of Babylon as head, died c.129 BC Panaetius, succeeded Antipater as head, taught Posidonius, c.185–109 BC Posidonius, made Rhodes centre of Stoicism, c. 135–51 BC Cato (Marcus), Roman statesman, committed suicide rather than accept Caesar's pardon, 95–46 BC Seneca, the younger, writing in Latin, tutor to emperor Nero, death by suicide, 4/1 BC–AD 65 Musonius Rufus, teacher of Epictetus, born before 30, died before AD 101 Epictetus, ADc.55–c.135 Hierocles, fl.ADc.100

INDEX OF ANCIENT THINKERS

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, author of Meditations, founded four chairs of philosophy, AD 209–35 Medius, 3rd cent. AD 7. Sceptics (see also Carneades under ‘Plato’) Anaxarchus, sceptical follower of Democritus, mid to late 4th cent. BC Sextus Empiricus, main source for Pyrrhonian Scepticism, late 2nd cent. AD 8. Epicurean school Epicurus, 341–270 BC Zeno of Sidon, teacher of Philodemus, born c.150 BC

Nicasicrates, attacked by Philodemus Philodemus, c.110–c.40/35 BC Lucretius, author of Latin poem of Epicurean doctrine, c.94–55/51 BC 9. Cyrenaics Aristippus, 5th cent. BC Hegesias, fl. c.290 BC 10. Latin compilers Valerius Maximus, 1st cent. AD Aulus Gellius, born AD 125/8 11. Neoplatonists Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism in Rome, ADc. 205–260 Longinus, ADc.213–273 Porphyry, Plotinus' pupil, editor, and biographer, AD 232–309 Iamblichus, probably pupil, certainly critic, of Porphyry, school in Apamea, Syria, ADc.250–c.325 Proclus, head of school in Athens, ADc.411–485 Hierocles, Neoplatonist teacher, opponent of Christianity in Alexandria, first half of fifth cent. AD Hermeias, head in Alexandria, father of Ammonius, later 5th cent. AD Ammonius, pupil of Proclus, teacher of Damascius, Simplicius, Philoponus, Olympiodorus, succeeded his father as head in Alexandria, AD 435/ 445–517/526 Damascius, head of Athenian school at closure in AD 529 Simplicius, member of Athenian school, wrote after AD 529 Priscian, member of Athenian school closed in AD 529

433

434

INDEX OF ANCIENT THINKERS

Philoponus, Christian Neoplatonist in Alexandria, produced his attack on pagan Neoplatonist Proclus in AD 529 Olympiodorus, last pagan head in Alexandria, AD 495/505–after 565 Elias, probably pupil of Olympiodorus, first Christian head from Olympiodorus' death 12. Christians (except where otherwise stated), Gnostics, Manichaeans, and Jewish philosophers Philo of Alexandria, Jewish philosopher, c.30 BC–ADc.45 Valentinus, Gnostic, 2nd cent. AD Irenaeus of Lyons, 2nd cent. AD Tertullian of Carthage, writing in Latin, ADc. 160–after 220 Cyprian of Carthage, writing in Latin, AD 200/ 10–258 Lactantius, writing in Latin, 3rd cent.–early 4th cent. AD Clement of Alexandria, head of Christian school in Alexandria, died before AD 215 Origen, successor of Clement in Alexandria, ADc. 185–253/4 Basil of Caesarea, Cappadocian, wrote rules for monasteries, with brother Gregory of Nyssa, excerpted Origen, ADc.330–79 Gregory of Nazianzus, Cappadocian, shared desert retreat with Basil, AD 329/30–390 Gregory of Nyssa, Cappadocian, brother of Basil, ADc.335–94 Macrina, ascetic, head of community for women, sister of Gregory of Nyssa, death described by Gregory occurred before his Mani, founder of Manichaeism, executed AD 276 Nemesius, bishop, late 4th cent. AD John Chrysostom, died AD 407 Antony, desert Father, whose biography inspired Augustine, died AD 356 Makarios, desert Father, mentor of Evagrius, ADc. 300–c.390 Didymus the Blind, teacher in Alexandria of Rufinus and Jerome, died AD 398 Evagrius, ordained by Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, became desert Father, AD 346–99 Rufinus, translator into Latin of Origen, Sentences of Sextus, Basil, Evagrius, head of monastery in Jerusalem, sponsor and addressee of Evagrius, died AD 410 Melania, head of a women's community in

Jerusalem, co-sponsor with Rufinus and addressee of Evagrius

INDEX OF ANCIENT THINKERS

Nilus, abbot of monastery, credited with works by Evagrius, died ADc.430 Palladius, pupil of Evagrius, chronicler of the monks, died before AD 431 Mark the Ascetic, desert Father, early 5th cent. AD Isaiah the Solitary, desert Father, died AD 489/91 Theodoret of Cyrus, involved in Nestorian controversy, ADc.393–c.466 Diadochus, bishop of Photice, mid-5th cent. AD Ambrose, bishop of Milan, Latin sermons reporting Greek doctrines heard by Augustine, AD 333/4 or 339/40–397 Jerome, opponent of Origen, Ambrose, Rufinus, Melania, Evagrius, Jovinian, and Pelagius, correspondent of Augustine, translated Old Testament and Gospels into Latin from Greek and Hebrew, producing standard ‘Vulgate’ Latin edition, ADc. 347–419/20 Jovinian, otherwise little-known figure, attacked by Jerome for not preferring chastity Paulinus, bishop of Nola, Latin-writing friend of Augustine, practising abstinence in marriage, AD 353–451 Augustine, AD 354–430 Pelagius, founder of Pelagianism, from Britain, writing in Latin, lived in Rome, visited Carthage in AD 410 Julian, bishop of Eclanum, Pelagian opponent of Augustine, died ADc.454 Boethius, translator in Latin of Greek philosophy, author of Consolation of Philosophy, born ADc.480, executed c.525 Cassian, Latin writer, ADc. 360–435, founded two monasteries and transmitted to West, including to St Benedict, ascetic ideas of Evagrius Climacus, spiritual ascetic, 6th–7th cents. AD Pope Gregory the Great AD 540–604 Maximus the Confessor, AD 580–662 John of Damascus, born ADc.650 Maimonides of Córdoba, Jewish philosopher, AD 1135–204

435

Index Locorum Aelian ; Varia Historia 3. 2 197 n. 20, 235 n. 453. 19 291 n. 124. 20 18 n. 49. 20 (Aristippus) 376 n. 1514. 6 (Aristippus) 239 n. 72 Aetius ; Placita 4. 2. 5 254 n. 75. 23. 1(Dox. Gr. 434–5; SVF 2. 764 103 n. 65 Alcinous ; Didaskalikos ch. 23. 185. 32–5 122ch. 26. 179. 10–11 324 n. 38ch. 30. 184. 20–36 196 n. 13ch. 31. 184. 37–40 324 n. 38ch. 32. 185. 27–32 46 n. 87ch. 32. 185. 37 134 n. 5ch. 32. 186. 15–24 196 n. 13ch. 32. 186. 21 ff. 162 n. 14, 191 n. 57ch. 33 279 n. 47 Alexander of Aphrodisias ; In Analytica priora 181. 25(SVF 2. 624) 243 n. 113; In Metaphysica 147. 23–6 85 n. 28; In Topica 139. 21(SVF 3. 722) 281 n. 58181. 4 48 n. 94; Mantissa 112. 14–16 261 n. 53, 262159. 15–22(SVF 3. 767) 172 n. 29160. 20–31(SVF 3. 766) 172 n. 29163. 4 ff. (SVF 3. 192) 170 n. 8163. 32 170 n. 10163–4 ff. (SVF 3. 192) 170 n. 11164. 7(SVF 3. 193) 170 n. 10164. 32(SVF 3. 194) 170 n. 10168. 1 ff. (SVF 3. 764) 172 n. 29; On Fate, ed. Bruns ch. 13 328 n. 67ch. 13, 182. 8–20 333 n. 98199. 19–20 169 n. 1ch. 33, 205. 15–22 328 n. 64, 332 n. 91; On Generation and Corruption 1. 5, 320b21 85 n. 28; On the Soul, ed. Bruns 10. 14–26 261 n. 5112. 16–17 261 n. 5013.1–8 26124. 1–5 261 n. 5224. 18–23 26224. 18–25. 9 261 n. 5224. 19 261 n. 5224. 22–3 261 n. 5225. 2–3 261 n. 5225. 4–9 262 n. 5726. 7–30 261 n. 5226. 20–2 26226. 22 261 n. 5226. 26–7 261 n. 5272. 26–73. 2 328 n. 6976. 14–77. 8 263 Ambrose ; On the Death of his Brother (CSEL 73, pp. 207–325) 1. 70 394 n. 761. 71 394 n. 762. 11 394 n. 77 Ammonius ; In Isagogen 13. 25 91 n. 59 (Pseudo)-Andronicus ; On Emotions 1(SVF 3. 391) 30 n. 9, 34 n. 21, 44 n. 68, 111 n. 31–5(SVF 3. 391, 397, 401, 409, 414) 29 n. 12(SVF 3. 414) 137 n. 23, 389 n. 372–5(SVF 3. 397, 401, 409, 414) 136 n. 204(SVF 3. 397) 281 n. 586(SVF 3. 432) 48, 48 n. 94, 174 n 37

INDEX LOCORUM

Anonymus Londinensis (CAG suppl. 3, part I) ; col. 2, 34–8 134 n. 6 Antiphon ; 87 A 6 DK 18 n. 8fr. 3 DK 235 n. 44fr. 5 DK 235 n. 44fr. 44 DK 18 n. 9fr. 49 DK 18 n. 9fr. 54 DK 18 n. 9fr. 58 DK 241 n. 98frags. 58–61 DK 18 n. 9 Antony ; Letters, ed. Garitte 1. 3 348 n. 281. 43 348 n. 284. 31, 45–8 348 n. 30 Apuleius ; Apology 15 175 n. 42, 214 n. 11; On the Doctrines of Plato 2. 20. 247 196 n. 15 Aquinas, Thomas ; Summa Theologiae I IIae q. 74, a. 8, reply 356 n. 741, q. 95, a. 2, respondeo 398 n. 1081a, q. 98, a. 2, ad 3 406 n. 36, 409 n. 521.2, q. 15, a. 1, ad 3 47 n. 912. 1, q. 6, a. 2, in corp. 328 n. 662. 1, q. 13, a. 2, ad 3 328 n. 662. 2, q. 1, a. 4 47 n. 912. 2, q. 2, a. 2 47 n. 912. 2, q. 153, a. 3, ad 2 410 n. 542. 2, q. 154, a. 5, respondeo 382 n. 28, 415 n. 803, q. 21, a. 4 317 n. 79 Aristo of Ceos ; On Freeing from Pride frags. 13–16 Wehrli 25 n. 45ap. Philodemum, On Pride (Jensen), col. 11 298 n. 35ap. Philodemum, On Pride, cols. 11–16 221 n. 62 Aristotle ; Categories 6a17–18 304 n. 8; Eudemian Ethics 1. 5, 1215b29 241 n. 921. 8, 1218a10–15 241 n. 902. 3 194 n. 12. 3, 1221b11–17 1942. 4, 1222a3 194 n. 32. 5 194 n. 12. 8, 1223b37–1224a4 327 n. 562. 8, 1224b26–36 308 n. 192. 9, 1225a37 327 n. 562. 9, 1225b8–10 327 n. 582. 10, 1226b30–2 327 n. 582. 10, 1226b30 327 n. 562. 10, 1227b6–12 194 n. 1; History of Animals 1. 8–10 255 n. 19; Metaphysics 10, 1054b32–1055a16 304 n. 8; Nicomachean Ethics 1. 1, 1094a1–3 323 n. 32, 338 n. 1351. 6, 1096b3–5 241 n. 901. 9, 1100a8–9 169 n. 51. 13, 1102b9–11 413 n. 691. 13, 1102b13–31 326 n. 521. 13, 1102b13–21 313 n. 541. 13, 1102b29–1103a3 322 n. 261. 13, 1102b30–1 313 n. 552. 1–4 221 n. 592. 3, 1104b25 194 n. 32. 6–7 194 n. 12. 6, 1106b21–3 195 n. 102. 6, 1106b26–8 195 n. 102. 6, 1107a8–15 195 n. 11, 208 n. 94, 399 n. 1152. 9, 1109a26–9 195 n. 102. 9, 1109b1–7 298 n. 342. 9, 1109b24–6 298 n. 343. 1, 1109b31 326 n. 553. 1, 1110b9–15 308 n. 193. 1, 1110b24–7 308 n. 193. 1, 1110b25–7 340 n. 1433. 1, 1111a22–4 339 n. 1413. 1, 1111a24–b3 308 n. 193. 1, 1111b6–11 3273. 2, 1111b11 320 n. 83. 2, 1111b26–30 325 n. 473. 3, 1113a10–11 325 n. 483. 4, 1113a15–24 323 n. 303. 4, 1113a15 325 n. 473. 5, 1113b19–23 327 n. 593. 5, 1114a18–19 327 n. 593. 9, 1117b10–13 376 n. 163. 10, 1118b8 201 n. 54, 283 n. 704. 8 290 n. 6

437

438

INDEX LOCORUM

5. 8, 1135a23–33 340 n. 1435. 8, 1135a24 327 n. 585. 8, 1135b17–19 339 n. 1425. 8, 1135b20–2 340 n. 1435. 8, 1135b20 308 n. 19, 312 n. 525. 8, 1135b21 202 n. 545. 8, 1136a8 202 n. 545. 9, 1136a31–4 308 n. 19, 3126. 2, 1139a32 325 n. 486. 2, 1139b4–5 325 n. 486. 7, 1141b20 326 n. 496. 8, 1142a22–3 326 n. 496. 8, 1142a23 326 n. 517. 1–10 56 n. 107. 2, 1145b11 310 n. 367. 2, 1145b21–9 310 n. 357. 2, 1145b23–4 310 n. 377. 2, 1146a9–16 326 n. 547. 3 3107. 3, 1146b31–1147b19 326 n. 517. 3, 1146b31–5 311 n. 407. 3, 1146b35–1147a10 310 n. 387. 3, 1146b35–1147a7 326 n. 497. 3, 1147a3 312 n. 497. 3, 1147a7 311 n. 43, 312 n. 497. 3, 1147a10–18 311 n. 41, 313 n. 567. 3, 1147a24 312 n. 507. 3, 1147a33–4 340 n. 1447. 3, 1147b2–3 309 n. 24, 326 n. 527. 3, 1147b9–17 3117. 3, 1147b9 3127. 3, 1147b10–11 311 n. 437. 3, 1147b10 310 n. 39, 312 n. 487. 3, 1147b14–17 309 n. 30, 310 n. 377. 3, 1147b17 310 n. 39, 312 n. 487. 4, 1148a9–10 326 n. 507. 4, 1148a9 310 n. 367. 7, 1150a12–13 326 n. 547. 7, 1150a33–6 326 n. 547. 8, 1150b19–22 310 n. 367. 8, 1150b29–1151a4 326 n. 507. 8, 1150b30–1 310 n. 367. 8, 1151a2 310 n. 367. 8, 1151a7 310 n. 36, 326 n. 507. 8, 1151a26 310 n. 367. 9, 1151a29–35 326 n. 507. 9, 1151a30–5 310 n. 367. 9, 1151b26 310 n. 367. 10, 1152a15–16 308 n.19, 311 n. 42, 313 n. 56, 340 n. 1447. 10, 1152a17 310 n. 36, 326 n. 507. 10, 1152a18–19 310 n. 367. 10, 1152a26 310 n. 367. 10, 1152a28 310 n. 367. 11, 1152b16–18 405 n. 297. 13, 1153b1–7 (Speusippus fr. 80A Tarán) 195 n. 59. 4, 1166a17 250 n. 1509. 8, 1168b34 250 n. 1509. 8, 1168b34–1169a2 250 n. 15010.2,1173a6–8 (Speusippus fr. 81A Tarán) 195 n. 510. 3, 1174a17 ff. 241 n. 9110. 7, 1177b26–1178a8 190 n. 51, 250 n. 15010. 8 191 n. 5610. 8, 1178b8–23 187, 250 n. 149; On the Movement of Animals 6, 700b22 320 n. 87, 701a12 312 n. 477, 701a20–4 312 n. 4711, 703b5–11 71 n. 3210, 703b6 71 n. 33; On the Parts of Animals 1. 5, 645a7–15 77 n. 3, 80 n. 102. 2 258 n. 322. 2, 648a1–19 255 n. 19, 264 n. 632. 4 258 n. 322. 4, 650b–651a16 255 n. 19, 264 n. 632. 4, 651a1–2 72 n. 38; On the Soul 1. 1, 403a3–b19 293 n. 201. 1, 403a16–27 2631. 1, 403a19–24 261 n. 501. 1, 403a22 71 n. 351. 1, 403a25–b9 25, n. 43, 71 n. 36, 264 n. 621. 3 117 n. 531. 4, 407b34 ff. 254 n. 41. 4, 408a18–28 254 n. 103. 3, 427b25 133 n. 23. 3, 428a18–24 22 n. 27, 41 n. 593. 7, 431a10–12 243. 9, 432a22–b7 43 n. 67, 313, 322 n. 223. 9, 432b5–6 320 n. 8, 322 n. 213. 9, 432b29–433a1 71 n. 333. 10, 433a24–5 322 n. 21; Poetics 1448b4–19 80 n. 101448b10ff. 77n.31449b24–8 80 n. 111449b25–31 80 n. 10ch. 5, 1449a32–7 290 n. 4ch. 6, 1449b27–8 24 n. 36, 291ch.9 79n.8ch. 13 24 n. 37ch. 13, 1452b34–1453a7 23 n. 391453a36 80 n. 11

INDEX LOCORUM

1453b11 80 n. 111459a21 80 n. 111460a17 80 n. 101462b13 80 n. 11; Politics 7. 15, 1334b22–5 322 n. 247. 15, 1334b22 320 n. 87. 16, 1335b36 277 n. 308. 7, 1341b32–1342a16 2898. 7, 1342a14–15 292 n. 198. 7, 1342a14 80 n. 11, 224 n. 83; Protrepticus fr. 12 Ross 188, 250 n. 150; Rhetoric 1. 10, 1368b37 ff. 323 n. 301. 10, 1368b37–1369a4 322 n. 251. 11, 1370a29–1371a8 237 n. 621. 11, 1370a30–b30 233 n. 191. 11, 1370b1–7 233 n. 151. 11, 1371b4–10 80 n. 101. 11, 1371b5ff. 77n.32. 1–11 41 n. 602. 2 23 n. 29, 135 n. 92. 2–11 23 n. 32, 135 n. 72. 2, 1378a30–2 22 n. 282. 2, 1378b1–10 80 n. 122. 2, 1378b23–8 290 n. 82. 3 222. 3, 1380b2 298 n. 332. 3, 1380b5–6 241 n. 982. 4 135 nn. 10, 122. 5 23 n. 302. 5, 1383a10 24 n. 402. 8 23 n. 312. 8, 1385a23 298 n. 332. 8, 1385b34 25 n. 422. 8, 1386a18–25 23 n. 332. 8, 1386a18–22 24 n. 412. 8, 1386a25 24 n. 402. 9–10 23 n. 342. 12, 1389b11–12 290 n. 7; Topics 4. 5, 126a12–14 320 n. 84. 5, 126a12–13 322 n. 216. 13, 151a14–19 22 n. 28 (Pseudo)-Aristotle ; Problems 17. 3, 916a18–39 242 n. 106 Aspasius ; In Ethica Nicomachea 42. 27–47. 2 134 n. 342. 31–43. 2 135 n. 1442. 33–44. 8 135 n. 1443. 30–1 135 n. 1144. 21–2 133 n. 144. 33–45. 10 41 n. 61, 13445. 31–46. 3 136 n. 1546. 4–5 138 n. 2546. 10–12 136 n. 2146. 27–9 135 n. 13 Athanasius ; Life of Antony 5 (PG 26. 845 C–849 A) 348 n. 3023 (PG 26. 877 A) 348 n. 3055 220 n. 55, 348 n. 31, 361 n. 18 (Pseudo)-Athanasius ; Life and Activity of Syncletica 17 (PG 28. 1487–1558) 66 n. 2 Athenaeus ; Sophists at Dinner 8, 354 E(SVF 1. 624) 49 n. 10012, 544 A 239 n. 7213. 14, 562 E (Theophrastus fr. 559 FHS&G) 209 n. 104, 279 n. 46 Augustine ; Against Faustus 22. 30 277 n. 34, 400 n. 4; Against Julian 2. 5. 13 404 n. 222. 7. 20 405 n. 29, 413 n. 662. 8. 23 399 n. 1143. 1. 2 373 n. 8, 399 n. 1143. 13. 27 404 n. 223. 14. 28 276 n. 283. 20. 38 404 n. 223. 21. 43 276 n. 283. 21. 49 276 n. 284. 1. 29 399 n. 1144. 3. 29 373 n. 84. 4. 34 416 n. 834. 5. 35 405 n. 27, 406 n. 354. 8. 52 399 n. 118, 404 n. 224. 11. 57 405 nn. 25–6, 4074. 13. 62 405 n. 254. 14. 67 409 n. 534. 14. 69 277 n. 29, 405 n. 26, 407–84. 14. 72 405 n. 29, 413 n. 664. 43. 8 274 n. 135. 5. 20 335, 405 n. 25, 4095. 5. 21 409

439

440

INDEX LOCORUM

5. 5. 22 188 n. 43, 409 n. 53, 4105. 5. 23 84 n. 23, 91 n. 59, 405 nn. 26, 32, 416 n. 855. 10. 42 405 nn. 25, 29, 409, 413 n. 66, 415 n. 796. 24. 9 416; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1. 17. 35 408; City of God 2. 4–6 287 n. 1022. 26 287 n. 1024. 15 378 n. 195. 11 3356. 10 378 n. 199. 4–5 404 n. 239. 4 35 n. 31, 207 nn. 90, 92, 378–9, 382, 383, 398 n. 1059. 5–6 3789. 5 191 n. 57, 207 n. 92, 398 n. 10610. 23 334 n. 11312. 14 243 n. 11014. 6 316 n. 71, 335, 337 n. 132, 382 n. 29, 383 n. 37, 399 n. 11614. 8–9 380, 404 n. 2314. 9 206 n. 85, 207 n. 89, 344 n. 5, 349 n. 37, 380 n. 23, 398 nn. 105, 107, 109, 112, 399 n. 11314. 9–10 165 n. 28, 394 n. 7714. 10 398 n. 10814. 13 33614. 16 405 nn. 25, 29, 413 n. 6614. 16–24 38014. 17–20 406 n. 3314. 19 380, 380 n. 24, 382, 383, 404 n. 24, 405, 405 nn. 25, 2814. 20 274 n. 13, 405 n. 25, 411 n. 6314. 21 407 n. 4014. 23 407 n. 4014. 24 405 n. 25, 407 nn. 41–221 243 n. 110; Confessions 1. 6–7 410 n. 563. 1 401 n. 83. 2 77 n. 33. 6–7 115 n. 344. 2. 2 400 n. 1, 401 n. 94. 4 233 n. 174. 4. 8–4. 11. 16 398 n. 1104. 6. 12 235 n. 454. 8. 13–4. 9. 14 167 n. 294. 8. 13 235 n. 45, 241 n. 974. 15–16 115 n. 346. 11. 20 401 n. 116. 13. 23 401 n. 66. 14. 24 402 n. 166. 15. 25 401 nn. 5, 107 3367. 1 115 n. 347. 3 2527. 3. 5 335, 336 nn. 119, 1237. 7. 11 336 n. 1257. 17 115 n. 33, 204 n. 728 3368. 5 316 n. 70, 382 n. 30, 383 n. 36, 399 n. 1178. 6 372 n. 18. 9–10 316 n. 70, 382 n. 30, 383 n. 36, 399 n. 1178. 9 336 n. 1208. 9. 21 316 n. 738. 10 316 n. 698. 11. 26–7 401 n. 128. 12 401 n. 139. 2–3 401 n. 149. 6 402 n. 179. 10 115 n. 33, 188 n. 40, 204 n. 7210. 14 233 n. 1610. 21. 30 233 n. 1610. 30 115 n. 35, 41410. 33 413 n. 6510. 35. 55 77 n. 3, 80 n. 14, 413 n. 6511. 9 205 n. 7312–13 398 n. 11114 208 n. 95; Enchiridion 28. 105 407 n. 41; Exposition of 84 Propositions in the Epistle to the Romans 60–1 337 n. 130; Expositions of the Psalms Psalm 93. 19. 15 220 n. 53; Letters 6* 405, 405 n. 31, 407, 4126*. 5 407 n. 446*. 7 407 n. 416*. 8 407 n. 4331. 6 276 n. 28147. 42–3 115 n. 34148 115 n. 34184A 407n.41; New Sermon, Mainz, ed. Dolbeau 41(Sermon on the Good of Marriage = De bono nuptiarum) 276 nn. 25, 2841 (3) 413 n. 6742 276 n. 26; On Free Choice of the Will 2. 1. 1

INDEX LOCORUM

321 n. 19; On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2. 21. 32 406 n. 37; On Marriage and Concupiscence 1. 13. 12 276 n. 242. 30. 15 416 n. 842. 37. 22 276 n. 24; On the Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life 1. 27. 53–4 397 n. 1032. 17 277 n. 3318. 15 277 n. 3418. 65 400 n. 2, n. 3; On the Good of Marriage (De bono conjugali) 2. 2 406 n. 395. 5 402–3; On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin 2. 33. 38–2. 41. 48 403 n. 20; On the Sermon on the Mount 1. 9 374 n. 101. 12 374 n. 111. 12. 33–4 372 n. 2, 374, 414 n. 751. 12. 34 346 n. 191. 34. 12 344 n. 62. 7. 25 373 n. 7; On the Spirit and the Letter 31. 53 (PL 44. 234) 316, 316 n. 74, 335–631. 54 337 n. 13034. 60 337 n. 13054 47 n. 90, 337 n. 131; On the Trinity 10. 10. 14–16 270 n. 8711. 2. 2 ff. 337 n. 12611. 2. 5 337 n. 12611. 3. 1 337 n. 12611. 3. 6 337 n. 12711. 10. 17 337 n. 12912 37312. 12 242 n. 104, 348 n. 31, 356 n. 71, 373 nn. 3, 5, 374–5, 382, 414 n. 7612. 13 356 n. 7214. 9. 2 188 nn. 37, 3914. 10. 13 337 n. 128; On the True Religion 24. 45 337 n. 130; Opus imperfectum 1. 68 4081. 70 4082. 56 416 n. 872. 83 416 n. 872. 85 416 n. 872. 88 416 n. 872. 122 4082. 179 416 n. 874. 19 407 n. 444. 24 404 n. 224. 41 399 n. 118, 404 n. 22, 406 n. 344. 43–4 411 n. 624. 79 353 n. 624. 104 353 n. 625. 14 408 n. 515. 16 4086. 22 353 n. 62, 407 n. 41; Questions on the Heptateuch 1. 30 344 n. 4, 355 n. 70, 379–80, 385 n. 4; Retractations 1. 7. 4 398 n. 104; Sermons 43. 4 337 n. 130; Sermons on the Dead 173 (PL 38. 939) 394 n. 76; The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 6. 25. 36 407 n. 399. 4. 8 407 n. 399. 10. 16 407 n. 409. 10. 18 407 n. 419. 10. 19 407 n. 409. 14. 25 47 n. 90, 336 n. 11810. 25 115 n. 3411. 31. 40–11. 32. 42 407 n. 4011. 41. 56 407 n. 3912. 15. 31 381 n. 27, 414 n. 73, 415 n. 8112. 17. 34 365 n. 4913. 21. 33 406 n. 39 Aulus Gellius ; Attic Nights 1. 26. 11 (Taurus) 196 n. 135. 12 107 n. 767.19.1ff. 50n.1029. 5. 4 (Speusippus fr. 84 Tarán) 195 n. 512.5.5 58n.2412.5.8 40n.4819. 1 45 n. 75, 69 n. 23, 375 n. 1419. 1. 3 70 n. 29, 71 n. 3119. 1. 15–21 376–719. 1. 15–16 45 n. 7819. 1. 15 68 n. 14 Avicenna ; Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle (transl. Dahiyat) § 6 300 n. 40§ 7 300 n. 40§ 16

441

442

INDEX LOCORUM

300 n. 40; (Latinus) On the Soul 86. 99–3 147 n. 789. 48–52 147 n. 7 Barlaam of Seminaria ; Ethics according to the Stoics 2. 13–14 (PG vol. 151, cols. 1362–1363D = Theophrastus fr. 447 FHS&G) 209 n. 103 Basil of Caesarea ; Ascetic Sermons 1, col. 882 (PG 31) 214 n. 91. 1–2 (PG 31. 869, 872) 391 n. 491. 2 (PG 31, col. 872 C) 392 n. 53; Constitutiones monasticae ch. 7 (PG 31. 1368 A) 369 n. 78; Extended Rules 8 (PG 31. 933–41) 392 n. 5016–17 (PG 31. 957–65) 392 n. 5117. 2 392 n. 52; Homilies 3. 5–6 392 n. 55; Letters 2 391 n. 47, 392 n. 535 236 n. 54, 391 n. 48, 393 n. 70, 394 nn. 78–9, 395 n. 806 175 n. 44, 235 n. 45, 391 nn. 47–8, 393 n. 70, 395 nn. 80–628 391 n. 48, 394 n. 7662 391 n. 48, 392 n. 76140 391 n. 48261 349 n. 37, 392 n. 54, 398 n. 112269 175 n. 44, 235 n. 45, 391 nn. 47–8, 393 n. 70, 395 nn. 80–1, 84–6300 391 n. 47301 391 n. 48302 391 n. 48, 394 n. 76; On Julitta PG 31, cols. 215–18 391 n. 47, n. 48; On the Eucharist § 7 (PG 31) 391 n. 47; On the Holy Spirit ch. 9 392 n. 53 Bede ; Ecclesiastical History Augustine's 9th question 371 n. 89 Boethius ; In De interpretatione, ed. Meiser 9, 195. 2–197. 10 321 n. 209, 217–19. 9 321 n. 20; On Music 184. 10–185. 11 91 n. 59185. 23–186. 1 91 n. 59; Consolation of Philosophy 2. 4 prose, lines 1–6 233 n. 183. 1 167 n. 32 Calcidius ; In Timaeum, ed Waszink ccvi, 334. 10 265 n. 71 Cicero ; Academica 1. 37(SVF 1. 193) 65 n. 471. 38–9(SVF 1. 207) 65 n. 472. 44 162 n. 142. 44. 135 191 n. 57, 196 n. 122. 108 45 n. 742. 124 254 n. 82. 125 243 n. 1152. 135 162 n. 14, 196 n. 14; De fato 9. 20 320 n. 16, 333 n. 10610 267 n. 8211. 23 329 n. 76; De finibus 1. 12. 41 237 n. 581. 18. 60 233 n. 22, 235 n. 39, 238 n. 711. 29–32 201 n. 511. 37–41 201 n. 511. 45 201 n. 542. 9–10 201 n. 512. 27 52 n. 1252. 96 165 n. 21, 233 n. 232. 98 234 n. 303. 10. 35 208 n. 963. 19. 63 184 n. 243. 22(SVF 3. 18) 170 nn. 7, 10, 171 nn. 16–17, 208 n. 933. 31(SVF 3. 190) 170 n. 103. 41 207 n. 923. 50 170 n. 153. 51–2 170 n. 83. 53 170 n. 153. 60(SVF 3. 763) 171 n. 193. 60–1 172 n. 273. 62–3 174 n. 363. 65–6 184 n. 273. 68 280 n. 50

INDEX LOCORUM

4. 14 97 n. 284. 20 207 n. 924. 72 207 n. 925. 16–20 207 n. 925. 20(SVF 3. 44) 171 n. 16; De legibus 1. 12. 23 184 n. 24; De officiis 1. 67 106 nn. 74–51. 69 106 n. 741. 101 103, 331 n. 851. 107–15 249 n. 1441. 112 249 n. 144, 412 n. 641. 132 103 n. 621. 136(SVF 1. 205) 34 n. 25, 55 n. 12. 8 1032. 18 106 n. 75, 331 n. 853. 6. 27–8 184 n. 24; De oratore 2. 58. 236 290 n. 10; Hortensius in Augustine On the Trinity 14. 9. 12 188; Letters to Atticus 12. 14 177 n. 4812. 15 177 n. 48; Tusculanae disputationes 1. 10. 21 254 n. 81. 11. 24 254 n. 81. 18. 41 254 n. 61. 22. 51 254 n. 81. 37. 90 228 n. 21. 66 249 n. 1411. 83 177 n. 48, 236 n. 531. 94 241 n. 932. 30 207 n. 922. 61 107 n. 77, 198 n. 263. 1 19 n. 133. 7 208 n. 963. 12 196 n. 123. 13–14 34 n. 213. 20 389 n. 373. 22 332 n. 963. 28 111 n. 7, 162 n. 10, 236 nn. 51, 543. 29–30 235 n. 443. 30 197 n. 20, 235 n. 453. 32–3 237 n. 563. 32 237 n. 573. 33 165 n. 21, 233 n. 22, 235 n. 42, 237 nn. 58–93. 35 165 nn. 21, 24, 234 n. 283. 52 162 n. 10, 236 nn. 51, 54, 237 n. 55, 241 n. 953. 54 112 n. 12, 241 n. 953. 55 111 n. 7, 112 n. 11, 241 n. 953. 58 112 n. 12, 197 n. 20, 235 n. 45, 237 n. 55, 241 n. 953. 59 236 n. 513. 61 30 nn. 7, 9, 32 nn. 15, 17, 52 n. 121, 111 n. 7, 182 n. 13. 64–71 1763. 64 45 n. 753. 65–70 46 n. 803. 66 45 n. 753. 68 30 nn. 7, 9, 32 nn. 15, 17, 52 n. 121, 176, 182 n. 13. 70 32 n. 17, 52 n. 121, 182 n. 13.72 30n.9, 32n.153. 74 30 n. 7, 32 n. 15, 46 n. 81, 112 n. 12, 241 n. 953. 75 35 n. 27, 64 n. 43, 111 nn. 3–4, 73. 76–9 175 n. 40, 177–83. 76–7 32 n. 16, 165 n. 233. 76 30 nn. 7–9, 107 n. 78, 165 n. 21, 233 n. 22, 236 n. 543. 77–8 32 n. 17, 52 n. 121, 182 n. 13. 77 238 n. 683. 79 18 n. 7, 161 n. 8, 223 n. 75, 224 n. 773. 80 45 n. 75, 46 n. 793. 81 19 n. 143.82–3 38n.39, 67, 67n.63. 82 32 n. 15, 46 n. 793. 83 30 n. 8, 31 n. 11, 38 n. 40, 45 n. 75, 46 n. 79, 67 n. 7, 70 n. 283. 84 29 n. 14. 10 208 n. 964. 11–22 29 n. 14. 11 29 n. 2, 34 n. 25, 55 n. 4, 136 n. 194. 12–14 49 n. 954. 12–13(SVF 3. 438) 48 n. 92, 49 n. 994. 12 329 n. 774. 14–15 38 n. 39, 67 n. 64. 14 30 nn. 7, 9, 31 nn. 10, 13, 37, 45 n. 754. 15 38 n. 40, 40 n. 50, 67 n. 74. 16–21 136 n. 204. 16 389 n. 374. 18 389 n. 374. 38 46 n. 844. 39 111 n. 7, 208 n. 984. 41 208 n. 984. 42 208 n. 984. 43–57 162 n. 14, 191 n. 574. 46 191 n. 584. 47(SVF 1. 205) 34 n. 25, 55 n. 44. 56 389 n. 374. 57 208 n. 984. 59 30 nn. 7, 9, 32 n. 15

443

444

INDEX LOCORUM

4. 61 32 nn. 17, 18, 50 n. 103, 52 n. 123, 182 nn. 1–24. 65 45 n. 754. 67 32 n. 184. 70 207 n. 914. 72(SVF 3. 652) 207 n. 91, 280 n. 52, 281 nn. 56, 584. 80 267 n. 825. 32 207 n. 925. 40–1 169 n. 35. 74 165 n. 21, 233 nn. 23, 315. 81–2 169 n. 35. 88 165 n. 21, 233 n. 235. 96 235 n. 42, 237 n. 595. 120 207 n. 92 Clement of Alexandria ; Excerpts from Theodotus, ed. Stählin 50. 1 315 n. 67; Paedagogus 1.6 17 n. 12. 1 389 n. 322. 1. 13 216 n. 272. 10. 84. 41 284 n. 742. 10. 90–102 276 n. 28; Stromateis 2. 9 (42) , p. 451Pott (SVF 3. 292): 48 n. 93) 2. 15 (96–8); 2. 16 391 n. 432. 16 (72) (SVF 3. 433) 48 n. 94, 389 n. 372. 20 192 n. 65, 195 n. 7, 275 n. 16, 287 n. 100, 298 n. 36, 348 n. 27, 389 n. 32, 407 n. 402. 20 (103. 1) 387 n. 202. 20 (118. 7–119. 2) 388 n. 282. 20 (120–2) 387 n. 232. 20 (126. 3) 387 n. 192. 21 (129) (SVF 3 Diogenes 46; Antipater 58; Posidonius F 186 Edelstein and Kidd) 98 n. 30, 106 n. 71, 171 n. 162. 22 (Speusippus fr. 77 Tarán) 195 n. 63. 5 (42. 1) 388 n. 273. 7 (57. 1–2) 387 n. 183. 24 276 n. 284. 6 (11–15) 391 n. 454. 22 (138. 1) 387 n. 204. 26 389 n. 326. 9 188 n. 38, 386 n. 15, 387, 392 n. 546. 9 (71–4) 387 n. 216. 9 (72. 1) 388 n. 276. 9 (73) 388 n. 296. 9 (73. 3) 389 n. 346. 9 (74. 2) 387 n. 226. 9 (75. 1) 388 n. 306. 16 315 n. 657. 3 (13. 2) 388 n. 277. 3 (14. 3) 387 n. 197. 10 387 n. 257. 11 387 n. 157. 11 (62) 391 n. 427. 12 315 n. 657. 14 387 n. 157. 14 (84. 2) 387 n. 257. 14 (88.4–7) 388 n. 26; Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved? 12.1,2 387n.1721. 1 387 n. 18 Council of Constantinople, Second ; Anathema 10 189 n. 44 (Pseudo)-Crates (the Cynic) ; Letters, ed. Malherbe 28 274 n. 13 Cyprian ; On Mortality (CSEL 3. 1, pp. 295–314) 2 394 n. 766 394 n. 7620 394 n. 7621 394 n. 76 Damascius ; In Philebum, ed. Westerink 13. 5–12 205 n. 7687.1–4 50n.108, 205n.76145 205 n. 74190 205 n. 74; In Parmenidem, ed. Ruelle 252. 11–13 206 n. 83252. 27–253. 11 206 n. 83253. 23–6 206 n. 83266. 25–8 206 n. 83; In Phaedonem, ed. Westerink 1. 162 207 n. 90ap. Photium, Epitome, 227 190 n. 54 Damon ; fr. 37 DK 90 n. 49 David ; Prolegomena (CAG 18. 2) 32. 11–33. 26 172 n. 31 Democritus ; A 20 DK 18 n. 6, 223 n. 74

INDEX LOCORUM

fr. 2c DK 17 n. 2fr. 3 DK 18 n. 2fr. 31 DK 17 n. 1fr. 73 DK 278 n. 42fr. 191 DK 18 n. 2, 224 n. 79fr. 235 DK 278 n. 42frags. 257–9 DK 327 n. 60fr. 277 DK 277 n. 32 Descartes ; Fourth Meditation 47 n. 91, 328 n. 68 Diadochus of Photike ; Century on Spiritual Perfection 83 348 n. 3189 389 n. 34 Didymus the Blind ; Psalmen-Kommentar (Tura-Papyrus, ed. Gronewald) part 3, 221. 33–222. 14 351 n. 51part 3, 222. 12–14 352part 4, 282. 4–7 351 n. 51part 5, 293. 4–12 351 n. 51 Diodorus Siculus ; History 10. 5. 2 213 n. 8 Diogenes of Babylon ; ap. Diogenen Laertium 7. 55(SVF 3 Diogenes 17) 103 n. 65 Diogenes Laertius ; Lives 2. 71 376 n. 152. 89–90 239 n. 732. 90 239 n. 742. 91 280 n. 545. 31 278, 281 n. 545. 43–50 25 n. 44, 221 n. 616 218 n. 406. 2 197 n. 226. 3 195 n. 7, 275 n. 166. 11 275 n. 11, 281 n. 546. 15 197 n. 226. 46 274 n. 106. 69 274 n. 106. 72 274 n. 86. 88 274 n. 146. 96 274 n. 116. 97 274 n. 12, n. 137. 28 172 n. 28, 214 n. 167. 32–3 184 n. 257. 33 275 n. 157. 55(SVF 3 Diogenes of Babylon 17) 103 n. 657. 84 168 n. 347. 87 97 n. 287. 88(SVF 3 Diogenes 45) 171 n. 167. 94 51 n. 1127. 96 51 n. 1137. 98 49 n. 977. 101–5 170 n. 67. 101–3(SVF 3. 195) 170 n. 87. 103 107 n. 77, 170 n. 157. 104–5(SVF 3. 119) 53 n. 1297. 106–7(SVF 3. 127; 3. 135) 172 n. 267. 106(SVF 3. 127) 52 n. 1247. 110 34 n. 25, 44 n. 68, 64 n. 447. 111–14 34 n. 21, 136 n. 207. 111 35 n. 27, 389 n. 377. 113(SVF 3. 396) 136 n. 16, 281 n. 58, 2827. 114 35 n. 30, 67 n. 47. 116 48 n. 92, n. 947. 128 107 n. 807. 129(SVF 3. 716) 280 n. 52, 281 n. 56, 282 n. 617. 130(SVF 3. 757) 173 nn. 32, 33, 281 n. 587. 131 275 n. 157. 160(SVF 1. 351) 170 n. 127. 176 172 n. 287. 177(SVF 1. 624) 49 n. 1008. 7 331 n. 8710. 7 283 n. 6910. 22 165 n. 21, 233 n. 2410. 34 134 n. 410. 35–6 (Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus) 217 n. 3010. 117–20 201 n. 5310. 117–19 196 n. 1710. 117 201 n. 5210. 118 280 n. 51, 284 n. 7410. 119 283 n. 6810. 126 (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus) 241 n. 9210. 127 (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus) 201 n. 5410. 131–2 (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus) 201 n. 5110. 133 (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus) 324 n. 37, 33310. 135 (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus) 217 n. 3010. 136 201 n. 51

445

446

INDEX LOCORUM

10. 139 (Epicurus, Kyriai Doxai) 201 n. 51, 237 n. 64, 248 n. 13810. 144 (Epicurus, Kyriai Doxai) 201 n. 5110. 145 (Epicurus, Kyriai Doxai) 241 n. 9210. 149 (Epicurus, Kyriai Doxai):26n. 47, n. 54, 284 n. 72 (Pseudo)-Diogenes (the Cynic) ; Letters, ed. Malherbe 44 274 n. 9 Elias ; Prolegomena Philosophiae (CAG 18. 1) 14. 15–15. 22 172 n. 3131. 8–25 91 n. 59 Pseudo-Elias (Pseudo-David) ; Lectures on Porphyry's Isagoge, ed. Westerink 13. 1–17 172 n. 31 Epictetus ; Discourses 1. 1. 7 332 n. 921. 1. 23 163 n. 17, 225 n. 86, 245, 3311. 2. 25–37 250 n. 141. 2. 25–6 250 n. 1481. 4. 18 245 n. 1241. 4. 27 223 n. 721. 6. 9 53 n. 1281. 10. 13 53 n. 1261. 11. 30–3 178 n. 501. 12. 34 332 n. 92, 333 n. 1011. 14. 12 2521. 17. 21–8 332 n. 881. 18. 23 413 n. 711. 22. 10 215 n. 19, 332 n. 90, 327 n. 631. 23. 5 183 n. 112. 2 214 n. 182. 2. 19–20 245 n. 1232. 2. 28 245 n. 1232. 5. 23 52 n. 1182. 6. 9–10 53 n. 130, 54 nn. 132–3, 219 nn. 48–92. 6. 9(SVF 3. 191) 170 nn. 7, 102. 11. 22 52 n. 1182. 12. 12 52 n. 1192. 18 330 n. 792. 18. 12–14 52 n. 1182. 18. 12 216 n. 262. 18. 19 2522. 19. 32 332 n. 922. 19. 39 332 n. 922. 20. 20 53 n. 1282. 21 218 n. 422. 21. 12–14 180 n. 552. 22 175 n. 382. 22. 3 183 n. 132. 22. 4 183 nn. 12, 162. 22. 8 184 n. 202. 22. 10–11 1842. 22. 12 184 n. 192. 22. 15 183 n. 142. 22. 26 183 n. 152. 22. 27–30 184 n. 262. 22. 28 183 n. 152. 22. 31 183 nn. 12, 172. 22. 32 183, 184 n. 222. 24. 16 53 n. 1273. 1. 40 245 n. 1263. 2. 5 413 n. 713. 3 170 n. 133. 3. 14–19 187 n. 33, 215–16, 330 n. 783. 3. 15 3903. 5. 7 245 n. 1243. 7. 5 52 n. 1183. 7. 7 51 nn. 112–133. 7. 27 51 n. 1173. 8. 1–5 216 n. 223. 10. 2–3 (Pythagoras'Golden Verses, 40–4) 213–14n. 93. 16. 3 52 n. 1193. 19. 1 51 n. 116, 180 n. 563. 22. 81–2 218 n. 413. 22. 93 218 n. 413. 22. 96–7 218 n. 413. 23 180 n. 563. 23. 5 250 n. 1473. 23. 30 51 n. 116, 52 n. 1223. 23. 37 51 n. 116, 52 n. 1223. 24. 69 332 n. 923. 24. 84–8 184 n. 23, 216 n. 23, 236 n. 463. 24. 108 69 n. 253. 24. 117 69 n. 243. 26 170 n. 133. 28 69 n. 243. 30 180 n. 563. 37 180 n. 564. 1. 15–18 281 n. 554. 1. 72–80 225 n. 86, 245 n. 125, 332 n. 884. 1. 74 332 n. 92, n. 934. 1. 89–90 54 n. 132, 219 n. 494. 1. 100 332 n. 894. 1. 111 184 n. 23, 216 n. 23, 236 n. 464. 4. 24–6 161 n. 9, 222 n. 634. 4. 44 333 n. 100

INDEX LOCORUM

4. 4. 45–8 52 n. 1184. 6. 10 68 n. 10, 69 n. 244. 8. 23 69 n. 244. 9. 10 51 n. 116, 180 n. 564. 10. 3 51 n. 116, 180 n. 564. 10. 23 69 n. 244. 12 13 n. 45 214 n. 1819. 2 214 n. 1831. 2 214 n. 18; Handbook 1 215 n. 192 219 n. 482. 4 53 n. 1302. 2 54 n. 133, 214 n. 183 184 n. 23, 216 n. 23, 236 n. 464 54 n. 131, 219 nn. 48–505 214 n. 186. 49 52 n. 1189 225 n. 86, 245 n. 125, 332 n. 8815 216 n. 2716 39018 245 n. 12619. 2 214 n. 1820 241 n. 9831. 2 214 n. 1833. 3 13 n. 433. 16 51 n. 11734 241 n. 9946. 2 69 n. 24fr.9 69n.23fr. 27 13. n. 4, 54 n. 133fr. 52 51 nn. 112, 117, 52 n. 118 Epicurea, ed. Usener ; p. 62 284 n. 74p. 456 (Scholium on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1118b8) 283 n. 70, 410 n. 55 Epicurus ; Kyriai Doxai 1 236 n. 502 236 n. 48, 237 n. 64, 248 n. 1383 201 n. 5118 201 n. 5129 26 n. 47, 201 n. 5430 26 nn. 47–8; Letter to Herodotus 35–6 217 n. 30; Letter to Menoeceus 126 241 n. 92127 201 n. 54131–2 201 n. 51133 324 n. 37, 333135 217 n. 30136 201 n. 51; On Nature 34. 25, lines 22–34 (Arighetti2) 327 n. 62; Vatican Sayings 14 235 n. 40 Epiphanius ; On Faith 9. 46 107 n. 77 Euripides ; fr. 964 Nauck (ap. Galenum, PHP 4. 7. 9) 197 n. 20 Eusebius ; Preparation for the Gospel 15.9.10(Atticus) 254n.815. 20. 6–7 242 n. 108 Evagrius ; Kephalaia Gnostica, ed. Guillaumont, (Patrologia Orientalis 28) 1. 23 395 n. 90; On Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts ch. 1 (Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius, On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 1, PG 79. 1200–34) 353 n. 60, 365 n. 40ch. 2 361 n. 22, 367 n. 69ch. 3 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 2) 366 n. 55ch. 8 221 n. 58, 362 n. 25, 363, 364 n. 37ch. 8 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch.9) 363–4, 367 nn. 62–3ch. 10 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 11) 367 n. 70ch. 10 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, chs. 11–12) 366 n. 54ch. 14 361 n. 17ch.15 (PG 79, col. 1217 A) 336 n. 124, 367 n. 68ch. 15 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 16) 367 n. 64ch. 20 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, chs. 19–20) 366 n. 61ch. 20 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 19) 367 n. 71ch. 21 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, ch. 22) 362 n. 25

447

448

INDEX LOCORUM

ch. 21 (= On Various Bad Thoughts, chs. 22–3) 363; On Prayer ch. 134 365 n. 46in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol. i, pp. 55–7 370 n. 88; On Various Bad Thoughts ch. 2 367 n. 69ch. 24 367 n. 69ch. 25 365 n. 48, 411 n. 58ch. 27 365 n. 50; Practical Treatise ch. 6 242 n. 104, 356 n. 71, 358 nn. 4, 6, 359, 359 n. 11, 373 n. 4ch. 10 221 n. 58, 360, 362 n. 26ch. 11 364 nn. 35, 38ch. 12 364 nn. 34, 36ch. 13 364 n. 34ch. 14 364 n. 34ch. 15 366 nn. 51, 59ch. 16 366 n. 56ch. 17 366 n. 56ch. 19 365 n. 44ch. 20 366 nn. 55, 59ch. 21 364 n. 34ch. 22 366 n. 51ch. 23 364 nn. 34–5ch. 24 366 n. 52, 395 n. 91ch. 25 364 nn. 34, 35ch. 27 366 n. 60ch. 28 366 n. 53ch. 30–1 361 n. 17ch. 35 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92ch. 36 364 n. 39ch. 37 359 n. 12ch. 38 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92ch. 40 365 nn. 47, 49ch. 43 364 n. 38, 367 n. 68, 395 n. 88ch. 44 365 n. 46ch. 45 365 n. 45ch. 47 365 n. 50ch. 49 411 n. 58ch. 50 364, 395 n. 88ch. 51 364 n. 38ch. 56 367 n. 65, 395 n. 90chs. 57–8 361 n. 17ch. 58 361 n. 20, 361–2, 395 nn. 88–9ch. 59 367 n. 68ch. 60 395 n. 89ch. 71 366 n. 58chs. 74–5 360ch. 75 356 n. 72, 372 n. 4ch. 80 359 n. 9ch. 81 367 n. 66, 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92ch. 84 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92ch. 86 395 n. 91ch. 87 367 n. 68ch. 89 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92ch. 91 366 nn. 54, 56, 367 n. 67, 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92; Frag. from Sayings of the Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum) PG 65. 176A Evagrius 390 n. 82 Pseudo-Nilus =Evagrius ; On Eight Spirits of Wickedness ch. 1 (PG 79, col. 1145 A) 365 n. 41, 370 n. 86ch. 4 (PG 79, col. 1148) 359 n. 10ch. 4 (PG 79, col. 1149 A–B) 362 n. 28ch. 6 (PG 79, col. 1152) 359 n. 10ch. 7 (PG 79, col. 1152 B) 365 n. 42ch. 11 (PG 79, col. 1156 D) 365 n. 43ch. 14 (PG 79, col. 1160 A–B) 362 n. 27, 362–3; Rerum monachalium rationes 8 (PG 40. 1260 D) 369 n. 79; Sentences to the Monks PG 40. 1279 A 366 n. 55PG 40. 1280 389 n. 35, 395 n. 92; Sentences to the Virgins PG 40. 1284 A 365 n. 41, 370 n. 86; To Anatolius PG 40. 1240 B 396 n. 96 Galen ; Commentary on Hippocrates, Epidemics, ed. Kühn 3. 1. 4 284 n. 74; On Affected Places 6. 15 274 n. 9; On the Diagnosis and Therapy of the Distinctive Passions of the Individual's Soul ch. 2, lines 12–14 (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.4.1.1, p. 5) 209, 311 n. 45ch. 3 218 n. 46ch.3.1–13 253n.1ch. 4 242 n. 103chs. 4–5 241 n. 98ch. 5 242 n. 102ch. 6 216 n. 28; PHP 2. 7. 8 39 n. 44, n. 452. 7. 9 39 n. 44

INDEX LOCORUM

2. 7. 10 39 n. 452. 8. 4 38, 38 nn. 38, 40, 67 n. 7, 258 n. 372. 8. 8 38 n. 422. 8. 18 38 nn. 40, 42, 67 n. 73. 1. 25 38 n. 38, 39, 40 n. 51, 258 n. 373. 3. 5–6 325 nn. 42, 443. 5. 43–4 38–9, 38 n. 38, 40 n. 50, 258 n. 373. 7. 4 38 n. 38, 39, 204 n. 69, 258 n. 374. 1. 6–17 102 n. 594. 2. 1–6 34 n. 214. 2. 1–4 29 n. 14. 2. 1 111 n. 34. 2. 3–4 136 n. 174. 2. 4 34 n. 224. 2. 5–6 34 n. 24, 64 n. 42, 65 n. 464. 2. 5 106 n. 724. 2. 8–12 60–14. 2. 8 44 n. 68, 57 n. 19, 58 n. 23, 65 n. 454. 2. 12 56 n. 5, 58 n. 234. 2. 13 57 n. 204. 2. 14–18 44 n. 68, 65 n. 454. 2. 19 57 n. 204. 2. 24 56 n. 5, 58 n. 234. 2. 26–7 56 n. 74. 2. 27 60 n. 294. 2. 36–8 325 n. 434. 3. 1–2 34 n. 24, 64 n. 42, 65 n. 46, 67 n. 44. 3. 2 31 n. 12, 38 n. 39, 67 n. 64. 3. 3 1044. 3. 4 98 n. 334. 3. 8 98 n. 334. 4. 1 58 n. 244. 4. 5 58 n. 234. 4. 17 58 n. 214. 4. 21 56 n. 54. 4. 23 56 n. 54. 4. 24 31 n. 10, 56 n. 9, 61, 62 n. 34, 65 n. 45, 303 n. 14. 4. 29 56 n. 64. 4. 38 101 n. 524. 5. 4 58 n. 234. 5. 6 57 n. 124. 5. 10–15 65 n. 454. 5. 26–44 59 n. 25, 98 n. 34, 101 n. 494. 5. 26 98 n. 35, 115 n. 314. 5. 28 98 n. 34, 115 n. 314. 5. 40–1 59 n. 264. 5. 42–3 59, 314 n. 604. 6. 1 72 n. 374. 6. 5–6 330 n. 804. 6. 27 57 n. 17, 59–60, 62 n. 334. 6. 35 65 n. 454. 6. 40–1 175 n. 444. 7. 2–5(SVF 3. 463) 111 n. 34. 7. 2–3 35 nn. 27–84. 7. 2 34 n. 23, 57 n. 18, 101 n. 554. 7. 3–5(SVF 1. 212) 64 n. 434. 7. 4 36 n. 324. 7. 5 30 n. 7, 31 nn. 9, 13, 37 n. 35, 112 n. 134. 7. 6 98 n. 35, 115 n. 314. 7. 7 112 nn. 9, 14, 162 n. 10, 236 nn. 51, 544. 7. 7–11 97 n. 26, 98 n. 364. 7. 9 197 n. 20, 235 n. 454. 7. 10–11 235 n. 444. 7. 12–13 1104. 7. 12 102 n. 61, 1234. 7. 13–14 36 n. 33, 122, 1234. 7. 13 1234. 7. 14 31 n. 9, 33 n. 20, 36 n. 34, 110 n. 1, 123, 241 n. 944. 7. 15–16 1224. 7. 15 121 nn. 1–2, 1234. 7. 16 (Chrysippus) 71 n. 31, 121 n. 3, 122, 123, 331 n. 834. 7. 17 122, 1234. 7. 19 98 n. 37, 112 n. 144. 7. 22 212 n. 34. 7. 23 95 n. 184. 7. 24 95 n. 17, 97 n. 27, 98 n. 36, 112 n. 144. 7. 25–35 102 n. 614. 7. 26 113 n. 19, 241 n. 964. 7. 28 98 n. 36, 112 nn. 16, 18, 113 n. 21, 116 n. 39, 241 n. 964. 7. 30 113 n. 20, 241 n. 964. 7. 32–3 98 n. 36, 112 n. 16, 241 n. 964. 7. 33 112 n. 17, 113 nn. 20, 22, 25, 116 n. 40, 118, 118 n. 58, 125 nn. 10–11, 127 n. 21, 128, 131 n. 394. 7. 34–5 112 n. 144. 7. 34 113 n. 27, 121 n. 24. 7. 35 98 n. 36, 112 n. 16, 125 nn. 10–11, 128, 241 n. 964. 7. 36–7 98 n. 374. 7. 36 121 n. 14. 7. 37–8 112 n. 144. 7. 37 (Posidonius) 121 n. 3, 122 n. 4, 123, 331 n. 824. 7. 38 123 n. 64. 7. 41 112 nn. 14, 16, 241 n. 964. 7. 43–4 112 n. 16, 241 n. 965. 1. 4 34 n. 24, 64 n. 42, 65 n. 465. 1. 5 113 n. 23, 116 n. 395. 1. 10 125 n. 10, 1295. 2. 2 106 n. 705. 2. 22(SVF 3. 471) 19 n. 12

449

450

INDEX LOCORUM

5. 2. 26–7 330 n. 805. 4. 3 95 n. 165. 4. 6 102 n. 595. 4. 14 56 n. 55. 5. 2 125 n. 135. 5. 3–21 393 n. 655. 5. 3–14 98 n. 395. 5. 3–9 257 n. 305. 5. 4–5 125 nn. 10–11, 129 n. 325. 5. 8 95 n. 85. 5. 9–13 257 n. 315. 5. 14 257 n. 275. 5. 19–20 258 n. 365. 5. 21 95 n. 12, 98 n. 40, 116 n. 40, 118, 118 n. 58, 125 n. 10, 126 n. 16, 127, 131 n. 395. 5. 22–8 96 n. 215. 5. 22–6 259 n. 445. 5. 22–4 119 n. 63, 163 n. 19, 2585. 5. 23 86 n. 32, 266 n. 765. 5. 25–9 258 n. 325. 5. 28 105 n. 69, 118 n. 595. 5. 29–35 95 n. 14, 163 n. 185. 5. 29 96, 118 n. 60, 258 n. 34, 259 n. 425. 5. 30–5 119 n. 64, 163 n. 19, 258 n. 335. 5. 30 96 n. 225. 5. 31 153 n. 145. 5. 32–5 325 n. 44, 331 n. 845. 5. 32–4 258 n. 355. 5. 32 96 n. 195. 5. 34–5 112 n. 155. 5. 34 96, 125 n. 135. 5. 35 96, 96 n. 20, 118 n. 60, 128 n. 26, 130 n. 37, 258 n. 34, 259 n. 425. 5. 36–8 98 n. 29, 106 n. 715. 5. 37 95 n. 85. 6. 1 97 n. 275. 6. 2 955. 6. 4 105 n. 695. 6. 8 105 n. 695. 6. 9–12 98 n. 315. 6. 12 98 n. 315. 6. 14 95 n. 13, 98 n. 325. 6. 16 105 n. 695. 6. 17–18 98 n. 325. 6. 19–20 119 n. 65, 163 n. 185. 6. 20 97, 106 n. 73, 128 n. 275. 6. 20–2 128 n. 275. 6. 21–2 84 n. 23, 85–6, 98 n. 38, 1305. 6. 22 126 n. 17, 128 n. 26, 2595. 6. 23–6 85 n. 29, 114 n. 29, 132 n. 42, 131 n. 385. 6. 24–5 1145. 6. 28 98 n. 35, 115 n. 315. 6. 29–32 112 n. 145. 6. 31–2 112 nn. 15–16, 113, 113 n. 26, 116 n. 39, 241 n. 965. 6. 31 113 n. 24, 325 n. 44, 331 n. 845. 6. 33 102 n. 565. 6. 34–6 101 n. 535. 6. 37–8 125 n. 10, 125–65. 6. 38 125 n. 125. 6. 42 34 n. 24, 64 n. 39, 101 n. 547. 1. 9 102 n. 57; Quod animi mores 36. 12–16 255 n. 1238 99n.4539 255 n. 1541 255 n. 1542. 11–43. 19 265 n. 6944.7–8 255n.1344. 12–20 255, 259 n. 45, 262 n. 5445 255 n. 1747 255 n. 1657–64 255 n. 2064. 19–65 26064. 19–65. 1 265 n. 7267. 2–16 163 n. 19, 26070. 11–14 260 n. 4671. 19–72. 18 256, 260 n. 4873.3 256–5773. 6–12 257 n. 2473. 13–74. 21 260 n. 4974. 21–77. 1 257 n. 2474. 21–75. 1 257 n. 2475. 1 257 n. 2876. 1–77. 1 257 n. 2577. 17–79. 2 257 n. 2678. 2–19 257 n. 2978. 8–19 257 n. 3179 255 n. 1579. 4–7 255, 269; The Art of Medicine, ed. Kühn ch. 24 284 n. 74 Genesis ; 23.3 345 Gorgias ; Encomium on Helen fr. 11, secs. 8–10 DK 19 n. 10fr. 11, sec. 10 DK 19 n. 16fr. 11, sec. 14 DK 19 n. 6 Greek Anthology ; 9. 148 18 n. 4

INDEX LOCORUM

Gregory of Nazianzus ; Letters 32 163 n. 17, 246 n. 127, 392 n. 57165 392 n. 56; Orationes 7. 1 392 n. 5626. 13 (PG 35. 1245 B) 392 n. 58 Gregory of Nyssa ; Commentary on the Song of Songs (PG 44) 5, col. 876 B–C 240 n. 89, 388 n. 3112, col. 1037 240 n. 89; Homily on the Song of Songs, ed. Langer-beck in Opera, ed. Jaeger et al., vol. vi 1, p. 30. 7–8 (PG 44, Homily 1, 777 A) 393 n. 634, pp. 134–5 (PG 44, Homily 4, 857 A) 393 n. 638, p. 254 (PG 44, Homily 8, 948 A) 393 n. 63; On Meletius PG 46, col. 860 B 392 n. 60; On Placilla, ed. Jaeger et al. vol. ix, pp. 476–7 (PG 46, col. 880 B–C) 392 n. 60p. 486 (PG 46, col 889) 392 n. 62; On Pulcheria PG 46, col. 865 A 392 n. 60; On the Creation of Man 4 324 n. 4112. 4 41 n. 52, 71 n. 3416. 11 324 n. 4116. 14 324 n. 41; On the Life of Moses (PG 44) cols. 403 D –404 D 240 n. 89; On the Soul and Resurrection (PG 46) 12 A 392 n. 6153 C 393 n. 6461 C 386 n. 14, 393 n. 6768 A 386 n. 14, 393 n. 6788 C 393 n. 6589 B 393 n. 6589 B–C 389 n. 33, 393 n. 6693 A–C 389 n. 33, 393 n. 6693 C 240 n. 8996 B 389 n. 33, 393 n. 6696 C–97 A 388 n. 31 Gregory the Great, Pope ; Moralia 45. 87 ad Job 39. 25 (PL 76. 620–1) 370 n. 83 Hermeias ; Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, ed. Couvreur 33. 11–34. 6 28033. 11 283 n. 6834.4–6 278207. 17 ff 279 n. 49215. 12 ff. (Iamblichus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, fr. 7 Dillon) 205 n. 78 Hierocles the Neoplatonist ; Commentary on the Golden Verses, ed. Kohler poem. 4, p. 6 190 n. 54 Hierocles the Stoic ; Elements of Ethics (Elementa Moralia), P. Berlin 9780, ed. Long 2. 40–3 146 n. 64. 51–3 251 n. 1576. 49–53 251 n. 156 (Pseudo)-Hippocrates ; vol. ix, p. 358 Littré 18 n. 4 Hippolytus ; Apostolic Tradition ch. 15 401 n. 7ch. 16 401 n. 7 Homer ; Iliad 18. 110 80 n. 1224. 513 80 n. 12 Horace ; Letters 2. 1. 154 ff. 18 n. 4 Hume ; Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Kemp-Smith2 pp. 76–9 229 n. 6

451

452

INDEX LOCORUM

Iamblichus ; ap. Proclum, In Tim. 1. 212. 12–16 Diehl 238 n. 67; Commentary on Plato's Phaedo, fr. 5 Dillon, ap. Olympiodorum, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo , 203.26 ff. Westerink 205 n. 78; Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, fr. 7Dillon, ap. Hermeian, Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, 215. 12 ff.Couvreur 205 n. 78; Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, fr. 49Dillon, ap. Proclum, In Tim. 2. 72. 14Diehl 189 n. 47; Letters ap. Stobaeum 1. 352 303 n. 2; On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, ed. Des Places 1. 1 285 n. 891. 2, p. 6. 10 285 n. 921. 2, p. 7. 6 285 n. 921. 11 291 n. 13, 295 n. 281. 11, pp. 38. 13–40. 8 286 n. 941. 11, pp. 38. 14–40. 8 2863. 9 2954. 11–13 286 n. 935. 13, pp. 216. 16–217. 2 285 n. 92; On the Pythagorean Life, ed. Deubner, revised Klein ch. 3. 13 271 n. 91ch. 9. 47 285 n. 88ch. 15. 64–6 297 n. 32ch. 16. 68–70 297 n. 32ch. 16. 68 271 n. 91ch. 24. 106 271 n. 91ch. 25. 110 297 n. 32ch. 30. 186 271 n. 91ch. 31. 187 213 n. 8, 271 n. 91ch. 31. 196 235 n. 44ch. 31. 197 241 n. 98ch. 31. 217 277 n. 28; On the Soul ap. Stobaeum 1. 317(SVF 1. 149) 103 n. 65ap. Stobaeum 1. 367–9 303 n. 2ap. Stobaeum 1. 367. 4–9 254 n. 8ap. Stobaeum 1. 368–9(SVF 1. 143; 2. 826) 103 n. 64ap. Stobaeum 1. 375. 24 285 n. 85ap. Stobaeum 1. 379. 22–4 205 n. 78ap. Stobaeum 1. 454. 10–22 205 n. 77 (Pseudo)-Iamblichus (Nicomachus ofGerasa) ; Theologoumena Arithmeticae, ed. de Falco p. 9, lines 5–6 334 n. 111 Irenaeus ; Against Heresies 1. 2. 2 ff. 334 n. 1121. 5. 5 315 n. 651. 29. 4 334 n. 112 Isaiah the Solitary ; Logoi 2. 1–2 386 n. 11; On Guarding the Intellect sec. 2 365 n. 46in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol. i, p. 22 386 n. 11 Jerome ; Against Jovinian 224 n. 78; Against the Pelagians prologue (PL 23. 496 A–518 A in the 1883 edn.) 3973. 7 321 n. 18; Commentary on Ephesians 4, verse 26, book 2, ch. 4, § 628 (PL 26, cols. 542–3) 353 n. 56, 355; Commentary on Ezechiel 18, verses 1–2, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9) 343 n. 2, 348 n. 31, 352 n. 55, 353 n. 5718, verse 102, § 200 (PL 25, cols. 168–9) 346 n. 21, 353 n. 57, 354; Commentary on Jeremiah 4, verse 1 (CSEL 59, pp. 220–1) 397; Commentary on Matthew 5, verses 28–9 (PL 26, cols. 39–40) 343 n. 2, 414 n. 775, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, col. 39) 343 n. 2, 344 n. 6, 348 n. 31, 353 n. 586, verse 28, §§ 28–9 (PL 26, col. 39) 346 n. 21, 35426, verses 36–9 398 n. 11226, verses 37–9, § 218 (PL 26, col. 205) 343 n. 2, 349 n. 37, 352 n. 53, 353–4, 396 n. 9426, verse 37 398 n. 112; Letters 22 411 n. 5738 411 n. 57

INDEX LOCORUM

39 (CSEL 54) 394 n. 76, 411 n. 5739. 5. 2 394 n. 7745 411 n. 5754 411 n. 5760. 5. 1 235 n. 4579. 9 (to Salvina), § 506 (PL 22, col. 731) 343 n. 2, 346 n. 21, 348 n. 31, 353 n. 57, 354–5107 411 n. 57121, pref. (to Algesia) 361 n. 21133 (to Ctesiphon; CSEL 56, p. 246) 357 n. 2, 397 John Cassian ; Conferences 5 358 n. 55. 3 386 n. 115. 6 365 n. 405. 16 369 n. 8012 397 n. 102; Institutes books 5–12 358 n. 55. 32 220 n. 576. 2 348 n. 3112. 7 371 n. 89 John Chrysostom ; =Pseudo-Augustine De Consolatione mortuorum 1. 5 (PL 40. 1160–1) 394 n. 762. 5 (PL 40. 1166) 394 n. 77; Homilies on Hebrews (PG 63) 2. 4, 5 394 n. 76 John Climacus ; Ladder 15. 62 346 n. 20, 348 n. 32, 368 n. 7422. 1 370 n. 8426 (PG 88. 1092 C) 389 n. 3626. 159 (PG 88. 1068 C) 386 n. 1129. 10 370 n. 8530 (PG 1156 B) 389 n. 36 (Pseudo)-John of Damascus ; On the Virtues and the Vices PG 28. 1396 B ff 348 n. 31in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia, vol. ii, p. 338 368 n. 76 Julian ; Letters 201 B–C (Democritus A 20 DK) 18 n. 6, 223 n. 74 Justin ; Apology 1. 14 (PG 6. 347 A–350 A) 276 n. 281. 19 (PG 6. 355 B–358 B) 276 n. 28 Justinian ; Letter to Menna, ed Mansi 9, 516 D 189 n. 44 Juvenal ; Satires 10. 28 ff. 18 n. 4 Lactantius ; De opificio Dei 16 254 n. 6; Divine Institutes 3. 7–8 97 n. 283. 23 389 n. 376. 14 185 n. 286. 15(SVF 3. 437) 46 nn. 79, 84, 49 n. 101, 207 n. 906. 15. 3 397 n. 1016. 16 195 n. 96. 19 162 n. 14, 191 n. 577. 13 254 n. 6; Ep. ad Pentad. 38(SVF 1. 213) 389 n. 37; Life of Pachomius secs. 37–8 220 n. 57; On God's Anger ch. 17 105, 138 n. 26, 241 n. 100 Libanius ; Preliminary Exercises 3. 4. 1–3 279 n. 45 Lucian ; On Sacrifices 15 18n.4 Lucretius ; On the Nature of Things 1. 44–9 236 n. 502. 1–13 224 n. 802. 251–93 320 n. 16, 333 n. 1052. 646–51 236 n. 513. 31–93 237 n. 64, 248 n. 1383. 36–67 27 n. 563. 59–67 236 n. 493. 288–315 265 n. 68

453

454

INDEX LOCORUM

3. 307 ff. 267 n. 823. 307–15 264–53. 310 46 n. 853. 830–1094 236 n. 48, 237 n. 64, 248 n. 1383. 832–42 2293. 847–51 243 n. 1153. 947–9 235 n. 413. 972–7 2283. 1053–70 27 n. 56, 236 n. 493. 1087–94 241 n. 934. 886–7 334 n. 1074. 1058–72 275 n. 174. 1084–120 283 n. 674. 1063–72 2754. 1160–70 222 n. 644. 1175–84 222 n. 674. 1190–1 275 n. 184. 1209–77 275 n. 194. 1254–6 275 n. 204. 1278–87 275 n. 185. 1218–40 236 n. 506. 379–422 236 n. 50 Luke ; 4. 1–13 353 n. 594. 4 353 n. 6120. 36 387 n. 2422. 42 320 n. 10 Lumen animae, ed. Farinator 209 n. 104 Maimonides ; Commentary on the Misnah Avot 4. 4 386 n. 105. 7 385 n. 1; Guide for the Perplexed 1. 54 386 n. 10; Hilkhot de'ot 1. 4–5 385 n. 11. 5 386 n. 102. 3 386 n. 10 (Pseudo)-Makarios ; Fifty Homilies, ed. Dörries 6. 3 386 n. 1315. 15 348 n. 3115. 28 348 n. 3115. 49 348 n. 3115. 50 359 n. 741 315 n. 6850. 4 348 n. 3155 315 n. 68; Logia type III, Homily 28. 3 (Desprez), p. 166, lines 10–14 (Klostermann–Berthold) 389 n. 34 Marcus Aurelius ; Meditations 2. 1 214 n. 102. 5 235 n. 37, 240 n. 832. 14 239 n. 823. 12 239 n. 784. 1 54 n. 1334. 50 241 n. 935. 20 54 n. 1336. 32 239 nn. 79, 826. 50 54 n. 1337. 29 239 n. 77, 240 n. 847. 69 235 n. 37, 240 n. 838. 36 239 n. 829. 6 239 nn. 78, 8211. 26 220 n. 5611. 37 54 n. 13312. 1 239 n. 8112. 3 239 n. 80 Mark ; 1. 12–13 353 n. 597. 21 346 n. 177. 22 36914. 33 350nn. 44–5, 35114. 36 320 n. 10 Mark the Ascetic ; On the Spiritual Law §§ 138–41 (in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, Philokalia) 368 n. 73 Matthew ; 4. 1–11 353 n. 595. 7 391 n. 445. 28 372 n. 213. 24 39715. 19 346 n. 17, 354 n. 6726. 37 349 n. 41, 35126. 39 219, 317, 320 n. 1026. 41 349 n. 40 Maximus the Confessor ; Centuries on Love, ed. CeresaGastaldo 1. 83–4 348 n. 311. 84 (PG 90. 980 B) 368 n. 752. 19 348 n. 31

INDEX LOCORUM

2. 23 348 n. 312. 31 348 n. 31; Letter to Marinus cols. 12 C–13 A (PG 91) 338–9; Opuscula 3 318 n. 807 318 n. 80; Questions to Thalassius PG 90. 544 C 348 n. 31 (Pseudo)-Maximus ; Centuries PG 90. 1281 B 348 n. 31 Maximus of Tyre ; Orationes 27. 7 196 nn. 13, 15 Musonius Rufus, ed. Hense ; fr. 6 215 n. 21fr. 12 276 n. 28, 278 n. 38fr. 13 278 n. 37fr. 16 153 n. 16fr. 21 153 n. 16fr. 38 332 n. 92 Nemesius ; On the Nature of Man, ed. Morani ch.2.5–9 254n.7ch. 19(SVF 3. 416) 389 n. 37ch. 21 41 n. 52, 71 n. 34ch. 35 333 n. 98 (Pseudo)-Nilus ; Handbook (edition of Epictetus) ch. 22 (PG 79. 1286–1315) 390 n. 39 (Pseudo)-Ocellus ; On the Nature of the Universe ch. 4 276 n. 28 Olympiodorus ; Commentary on Plato's Phaedo, ed. Westerink 1. 8 172 n. 311. 8, lines 19–39 226 n. 89203. 26 ff. (Iamblichus, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo, fr. 5 Dillon) 205 n. 78; In Alcibiadem I 6. 6–7. 8 221 n. 60, 298, 361 n. 2154. 15–55. 11 221 n. 60, 299145. 12–146. 11 221 n. 60, 299 Origen ; Against Celsus 1. 64 178 n. 524. 68(SVF 2. 626) 243 n. 1115. 20(SVF 2. 626) 243 n. 1138. 51(SVF 3. 474) 178 n. 52; Commentary on John 20, verse 29 (PG 14. 657 D) 387 n. 16; Commentary on Joshua 15, verse 3 (GCS 30, pp. 386–7) 346 n. 16, 387 n. 16; Commentary on Matthew 15, verse 4 (PG 13. 1264 A) 387 n. 1615, verse 17 (PG 13. 1304 A) 387 n. 1621 (GCS 40, p. 58) 346 n. 1626, verses 36–9 (Rufinus' transl.; GCS 11, pp. 206–7) 348 n. 36, 349 n. 37, 349–50, 399 n. 11526. 39, sec. 92 220 n. 52; Commentary on Romans 6, verse 14 (PG 14. 1102 B–C) 387 n. 16; Commentary on the Psalms 4, verse 5, § 561 (PG 12, cols. 1141–4) 343 n. 2, 348 n. 35, 35138, verse 4, § 689 (PG 12, col. 1388) 348 n. 34, 35054, verse 5, § 561 (PG 12, col. 1465) 346 n. 1655, verses 3–5, § 730 (PG 12, col. 1465) 350–1; Commentary on the Song of Songs 3 (GCS 33, p. 211) 346 n. 16; Homilies on Luke 29, Greek frag. (GCS 35, p. 182 =Sources Chrétiennes 87. 502–3 =fragments grecs, fr. 56, line 9 (Luke 4. 4), Hom. 21. 2–3) 353 n. 61, 365 n. 40fr. 96 (GCS 35. 82. 20 ff., 2nd edn., p. 265, dub. frags.) 369 n. 77; On First Principles 1. 3. 8 388 n. 313. 1. 4 348 n. 33, 3503. 1. 8 320 n. 113. 1. 18 320 n. 113. 1. 20 320 n. 113. 2. 2 66 n. 3, 343 n. 3, 347, 347 n. 23, 359 n. 8, 397 n. 973. 2. 4 346 nn. 16, 18, 347, 347 n. 223. 4. 1–5 315 n. 664. 4. 4 349 n. 37, 398 n. 112

455

456

INDEX LOCORUM

Ovid ; Art of Love 1. 35–40 279 n. 482. 657–62 222 n. 66; Remedies of Love 325–30 222 n. 66355–6 222 n. 68 Palladius ; Lausiac History 25. 5 361 n. 2138 371 n. 87 Paulinus of Nola ; Epithalamium Carmen 25. 233–4 (CSEL 30. 2, pp. 307–29) 276 n. 2831. 43 394 n. 7631. 551 ff 394 n. 76; Letters 13. 10 (CSEL 29. 1) 394 n. 77; Papyri Graecae Magicae 4. 538 ff. 271 n. 93 Persaios (pupil of Zeno of Citium) ; SVF 1. 435–62 88 n. 39 Peter of Poitiers ; Sententiae 2. 16 (124. 80–9 Moore–Dulong) 317 n. 78 Philo of Alexandria ; Every Good Man is Free ch. 17. 109 163 n. 17, 246ch. 22. 160(SVF 1. 179) 97 n. 28; Leg. alleg. 2. 8 386 n. 63. 128–34 385 n.13. 140–7 385 n. 13. 140–1 386 n. 73. 143–4 386 n. 53. 147 386 n. 7; On Abraham 26 233 n. 40, 386 n. 8256–7 345, 345 n. 10, 385 n. 1, n. 2; On Dreams 1. 91 233 n. 20, 386 n. 8; On Joseph 82 386 n. 9; On the Cherubim 14–15(SVF 3. 513) 223 n. 73; On the Migration of Abraham 67 385 n.1; On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 121 386 n. 9; On the Special Laws 1. 103 233 n. 20, 386 n. 82. 115 386 n. 92. 138 386 n. 93. 113 276 n. 28; On Virtues 144 386 n. 9177 233 n. 20, 386 n. 8; Questions on Genesis 1. 29 346 n. 152. 57 51 n. 110, 345 n. 144. 74 345 n. 114. 177 385 n. 1; Who is the Heir? 21 51n.109frag. p. 78 Wendland, from Procopius paraphr. MS 394, fo. 110r (Loeb suppl. 2, p. 220 Marcus) 343 n. 2, 345, 345 n. 9, 385 n. 3 Philodemus ; On Anger, ed. Indelli col. 3 27 n. 54col. 3. 1–4 191 n. 57col. 7. 24 284 n. 75col. 23, lines 37–40 242 n. 103cols.29–33 210n.109cols. 31–2 162 n. 14, 191 n. 59cols. 32–4 191 n. 59col. 34. 7 192 n. 63col. 35 192 n. 63cols.37–41 202n.60col. 38. 1–6 26 n. 46col. 39. 7–8 26 n. 46col. 39. 29–31 46 n. 85col. 40. 19–26 46 n. 85col. 41, lines 17–25 202 n. 61col. 42. 22–34 203 n. 63col. 44. 9–22 203 n. 62col. 44. 26–32 203 n. 64cols. 47. 18–42 26 n. 49cols. 49. 28–50. 8 26 n. 49; On Arrogance, ed. Jensen col. 11, lines 31–3

INDEX LOCORUM

202 n. 59; On Choices and Avoidances col. 6, ch. 2 TsounaMcKirahan and Indelli 201 n. 54, 284 n. 71; On Conversation (Cronache ercolanesi 5) pp. 63–76 218 n. 39; On Death, ed. Kuiper col. 25 202 n. 57col. 26 202 n. 57col. 34 202 nn. 56, 57col. 37. 20 240 n. 84col. 38. 14 240 n. 84col. 38. 17–18 240 n. 84col. 38. 27 240 n. 84; On Envy, ed. Guerra fr. 18(Cronache ercolanesi 15) 27n.54, 202 n. 58; On Frank Criticism, ed. Konstan et al. col. 8a 217 n. 37col. 8b 11 202 n. 57col. 9b 217 n. 37col. 17a 9 202 n. 57fr. 6. 7–8 196 n. 17fr. 7 217 n. 33fr. 9 217 n. 35fr. 10 217 n. 33fr. 14 217 n. 34fr. 20. 1–2 196 n. 17fr. 26, line 9 202 n. 57frags. 40–2 217 n. 36fr. 42 27 n. 54fr. 47 217 n. 35fr. 50 217 nn. 31–2fr. 51 217 n. 35fr. 53 217 n. 35fr. 55 217 n. 35fr. 60 217 n. 33fr. 76 217 n. 36fr. 81 217 n. 35fr. 93. 4–6 196 n. 17tabula 4. 1 202 n. 57; On Gods, ed. Diels col. 11. 19–20 26 n. 50col. 11. 28–30 26 n. 50col. 11. 29–30 26 n. 51col. 11. 30 26 n. 50col. 12. 10 26 n. 51col. 12. 10–13 27 n. 53col. 12. 17–24 27 n. 53col. 13. 1–13 27 n. 53col. 13. 6–7 26 n. 51col. 13. 16–19 26col. 13. 20 26 n. 50col. 13. 30–1 26 n. 50col. 14. 6–8 26 n. 50col. 14. 13–17 27 n. 53col. 14. 17–19 26 n. 51col. 14. 29 26 n. 50col. 15. 23 26 n. 50col. 15. 28–34 27 n. 53; On Music book 4, col. 10* in Delattre's edn., Cron. ercol. 19 (1989) = P. Herc. 411/11B = frag. 9 Rispoli (cf. Janko, Cron. ercol. 22 (1992), p. 125) 91 n. 56book 4, col. 14* in Delattre's edn., Cron. ercol. 19 (1989) = P. Herc. 1583/1A = frag. 13 Rispoli (cf. Janko, Cron. ercol. 22 (1992), p. 125) 91 n. 56book 4, Delattre 19 (1989), col. 69*. 1–12 (P. Herc. 411+1583) with Janko, Cron. ercol. (1992), p. 127 76 n. 1, 91 n. 56, 294 n. 23book 4, Neubecker, ch. 1, pp. 37–8, col. 1B =col. 115 of Delattre's edn. in Cron. ercol. (1989), p. 77 and forthcoming edn., and Cron. ercol., 23 (1993), pp. 82–3 = SVF 3, Diogenes 61, p. 222, lines 35–7, from Kemke's edn. p. 11, and p. 223, lines 10–13 (P. Herc. 411/4B+1572/8 and P. Herc. 1497/1B 90n.47book 4, Neubecker, ch. 1, p. 39, col. 2 = Delattre (forthcoming edn.) col. 116 = SVF 3, Diogenes 61, p. 223. 22–3 from Kemke's edn. pp. 62–3 (from P. Herc. 1497) 90 n. 45book 4, Neubecker, ch. 1, col. 3, p. 40 =col. 117 in Delattre's edn., Cron. ercol. 19 (1989) = SVF 3, Diogenes 62, from Kemke's edn., p. 12 = P. Herc. 1497 91 n. 54book 4, Neubecker, ch. 1, p. 40, col. 3 =Delattre (forthcoming edn.) col. 117. 10–23 =Delattre Cron. ercol. 19 (1989), book 4, cols. 40*–109*, p. 77 = SVF 3, Diogenes 62 =Kemke p. 65 82 n. 15, 88, 91 n. 57book 4, Neubecker, ch. 8, pp. 55–9, cols. 13–15 =cols. 127–9 in Delattre's forthcoming edn. 91 n. 55book 4, Neubecker, ch. 8, pp. 56–8, cols. 14–15 =Delattre col. 128, line 4; col. 129, line 7 82 n. 15, 88book 4, Neubecker, ch. 8, p. 58, col. 15 234 n. 35book 4, Neubecker, ch. 8, p. 63, col. 19 82 n. 15, 88

457

458

INDEX LOCORUM

book 4, ch. 15, Neubecker, col. 24, p. 70 90 n. 52book 4, ch. 21, Neubecker, p. 83, col. 34 = Rispoli fr. 18(P. Herc. 411/9A, col.17 in Delattre's forthcoming edn. = SVF 3, Diogenes 56, from Kemke's edn. p. 7) 90n.53On Music, P. Herc. 225/21B+1578/2, col. 100 in Delattre's forthcoming edn., Cron. ercol. 19 (1989), p. 133 90 n. 53On Music, P. Herc. 424/3 and 1572/1 =col. 41* of Delattre's edn., Cron. ercol. 19 (1989), p. 88 90 n. 51; On Poems, Herculaneum Papyrus (P. Herc.) 1581 294 n. 22; On Pride, ed. Jensen 25 n. 45col. 11 (Aristo of Ceos, On Freeing from Pride) 298 n. 35cols. 11–16 (Aristo of Ceos, On Freeing from Pride) 221 n. 62; On Rhetoric, ed. Sudhaus col. 48. 36 291 n. 12 Philoponus ; In De anima 51. 13–52. 1 267 n. 8151. 13–52. 12 267–8141. 22–9 267 nn. 79, 80439. 35–440. 3 269 nn. 77, 80Philoponus (?) 583. 16 71 n. 33; In De generatione et corruptione 83. 30–84. 13 85 n. 28169. 4–27 267 n. 78, 269169. 6–27 267 n. 79169. 7–8 269169. 17 268170. 12–35 268 n. 84170. 28 268314. 9–22 (Alexander of Aphrodisias) 243 n. 114; In Physica 191. 11–25 267 nn. 77, 80191. 18–25 267 n. 79; In Physica 7 from Arabic 771. 21–772. 3, trans. P. Lettinck 270 Philostratus ; Life of Apollonius of Tyana book 6, ch. 11 271 n. 91book 8, ch. 7 271 n. 91 Photius ; Bibliotheca 249, Life of Pythagoras 439a24 ff. (Henry vol. 7) 271 n. 91; Epitome 227 (Damascius) 190 n. 54 Plato ; Charmides 157 A 19n.11167 E 20 n. 20, 307 n. 13, 320 n. 8, 322 n. 28; Gorgias 464 B–C 19n.11467 C–E 325n.46468 B–D 20n.19, 307468 C 322 n. 28; Laches 191 D 136n.18198 B 20 n. 17, 64 n. 41198 C 21n.22; Laws 636 D 134n.4644 C–D 20 n. 17, 21 n. 26, 64 n. 41644 E 3–6 95 n. 11645 A 21n.26647 D 287 n. 100666 A–B 255 n. 18, 264 n. 67671 C 264 n. 67672 C–E 128n.28674 A 255 n. 18689 A–C 309 n. 22731 C 308 n. 17734 B 5 309 n. 22, nn. 27–8747 C–D 264 n. 66747 D 255n.18790 D–791 B 86 n. 35, 117 n. 51860 C–863 A 308n.18863 B–C 21 n. 24, 309 nn. 22, 25863 B 4 308 n. 20863 C 309 n. 28, 322 n. 23904 B–C 322 n. 23957 E 2 309 nn. 22, 28–9; Meno 77 E–78 B 20 n. 19, 307, 322 n. 28; Phaedo 68 C 9 313 n. 5769 B–C 203 n. 6578 B–80 C 116 n. 4183 B 136n.1886 C 254n.292 E–93 A 254n.3

INDEX LOCORUM

94 C 254 n. 3113 D 189 n. 47114 E 201 n. 48; Phaedrus 227 C 274 n. 2230 E–234 C 274n.2237 B–242 A 274 n. 3246 A–257 B 95 n. 10, 112 n. 15246 B–249 D 310 n. 31247 B 189 n. 47247 D 4 50 n. 107249 A 310 n. 32250 E–251 B 278n.41255 E–256 A 21n.23255 E 309, 316 n. 72, 383 n. 35256 A–257 B 273 n. 1256 A–E 278 n. 41; Philebus 32 C 237 n. 6135 E–36 B 237 n. 6137 E (10) 21 n. 25, 2240 A–E 237 n. 6144–6 195 n. 847 E–50 B 183 n. 747 E 80n.1248 A–50 B 6 290 n. 548 A 77n.348 B–50 B 80n.1250 B 77n.3, 237n.6162 E 9 201 n. 54; Protagoras 356 C–D 239 n. 75358 B–E 306358 C–D 20n.18358 D 20 n. 17, 64 n. 41360 D 21n.22365 A 5–7 230 n. 9365 A–D 230 n. 9; Republic 376 E 259 n. 40392 B 24n.38400 B 90n.49401 A–D 271 n. 89411 A–B 258n.36411 E–412 A 259n.40424 C 90n.49429 C 136 n. 18430 A 136 n. 18436 B–439 E 57n.15436 B–440 B 304 n. 4439 B 3 95 n. 11439 D 57n.13439 D 7 313 n. 57439 E–440 B 21 n. 21, 305–6439 E–440 A 80n.12439 E 304n.6440 A–D 201 n. 50440 A 305440 B 306, 323 n. 33, 383 n. 34440 D 323n.33440 E 304n.6441 D–E 201n.50441 E 128442 B–D 21n.26457 B–471 E 274 n. 4460 A 274 n. 6460 B–C 274 n. 5461 B–C 277 n. 31461 E–465 D 274 n. 7474 D–475 A 222n.64485 D 201n.50505 D–E 21 n. 21, 304 n. 5, 308 n. 16, 322 n. 29505 E 323n.32558 D –559 C 201 n. 54, 284 n. 73571 B–D 27n.55571 B 201 n. 54571 D 413n.68574 D 21n.26586 C 7–D 2 323 n. 34586 E–587 A 201 n. 50589 A 7 252603 A 21 n. 26, 41 n. 58604 B–C 213604 B 21605 C–D 77n.3606 A–B 201 n. 49, 292 n. 16606 B 77n.3611 203 n. 67, 310 n. 33611 B–612 A 187n.34615 A 3 50 n. 107617 E 323n.36617 E 3 333 n. 104; Sophist 227 D–228 E 309 nn. 22, 26263 E–264 D 22 n. 27, 41 n. 58; Symposium 180 C 280 n. 50206 E–209 E 249n.142207 E 136n.18215 E 176n.45216 E–221 B 197 n. 21506 E–509 E 27n.57; Theaetetus 156 B

459

460

INDEX LOCORUM

136 n. 18; Timaeus 24 C 255 n. 18, 264 n. 6436 C–D 116 n. 4336 E–37 A 258 n. 3836 E 116 nn. 41, 4438 C–39 E 116 n. 45, 258 n. 3840 A 116 n. 46, 258 n. 3841 D–42 A 116 n. 46, 258 n. 3841 D–E 189 n. 4743 A–44 C 265 n. 6943 A–44 B 117 n. 4943 B–44 B 206 n. 8143 C–D 259 n. 3943 C–44 B 86n.3343 D 116 n. 46, 258 n. 3844 A–B 116 n. 46, 255 n. 18, 258 n. 38, 264 n. 6444 D 117 n. 47, 258 n. 3864 B 86n.3467 A–B 86 n. 34, 117 n. 50, 259 n. 3969 C–72 D 304 n. 769 C–E 310 n. 3469 D 136 n. 2170 A 309 n. 2271 A 309 n. 2277 A–C 21n.2680 A 86n.3486 B–87 B 256 n. 2186 B–C 264 n. 6486 C–E 255 n. 18, 371 n. 8986 D 308 n. 1787 A–B 264 n. 6587 B 255 n. 1889 A 259 n. 4091 E–92 A 117 n. 48, 258 n. 38 (Pseudo)-Plato ; Axiochus 249 n. 141365 D 228 n. 1 Plotinus, ed. Henry–Schwyzer ; Enneads 1. 1. 5 (17–21) 122 n. 5, 142 n. 361. 1. 6 203 n. 681. 1. 7 (16–24) 251 n. 1511. 1. 10 251 n. 1511. 1. 11 (1–8) 251 n. 1521. 1. 11 (5–8) 190 n. 521. 1. 11 (7) 251 n. 1531. 2. 2 (13–18) 197 n. 191. 2. 2 (14–18) 203 n. 661. 2. 3 (20) 197 n. 19, 203 n. 671. 2. 5–6 203 n. 681. 2. 5 (5–24) 2041. 2. 6 (25–7) 197 n. 19, 203 n. 671. 4. 10 240 n. 851. 5. 7 (10–23) 240 n. 881. 5. 7 (23–5) 240 n. 871. 5. 8–9 240 n. 861. 5. 8 234 n. 311. 5. 9 234 n. 321. 6. 7 (12–28) 142 n. 371. 6. 7 (17) 204 n. 711. 8. 4 203 n. 682. 2. 2 (4–18) 251 n. 1522. 3. 9 203 n. 682. 9. 2 (4–18) 251 n. 1523. 6. 3 (17–19) 41 n. 523. 6. 4–5 203 n. 683. 6. 4 (13–38) 28 n. 583. 6. 5 115 n. 333. 7. 11 (15–16) 334 n. 1103. 8. 8 (32–6) 334 n. 1094. 3. 32 251 n. 1554. 4. 1 251 n. 1554. 4. 1 (1–14) 189 n. 494. 4. 2 (1–3) 189 n. 494. 4. 5 (11–31) 189 nn. 48–94. 4. 5 (23–7) 251 n. 1554. 4. 5 (22–3) 189 n. 494. 8. 1 (1–11) 2525. 1. 1 334 nn. 111, 1135. 1. 1 (1–22) 334 n. 1085. 3. 3 (34–9) 251 n. 1515. 3. 10 (28–51) 142 n. 385. 3. 13 (36) 142 n. 385. 3. 14 (1–3) 142 n. 385. 5. 12 (16) 204 n. 715. 5. 12 (35–6) 204 n. 715. 8. 10 (31–43) 2525. 8. 11 (4) 115 n. 336. 1. 20 (8–9) 269 n. 856. 4. 15 (37) 251 n. 1546. 5. 7 (3–6) 115 n. 336. 5. 12 (15–26) 190 n. 536. 7. 6 (15–18) 251 n. 1546. 7. 6 (18) 190 n. 526. 7. 16 (3–14, 39–43) 85 n. 286. 7. 33 (23) 115 n. 326. 7. 34–5 142 n. 376. 7. 35 (24–6) 50 n. 106, 1426. 7. 35 (26) 205 n. 756. 7. 35 (29–30) 142 n. 386. 7. 35 (43–5) 142 n. 386. 7. 39 (17–20) 142 n. 386. 7. 40 (1) 142 n. 386. 7. 41 (38) 142 n. 386. 8 320 n. 126. 8. 1–6 324 n. 40

INDEX LOCORUM

6. 8. 5 (30–2) 324 n. 396. 9. 4 (1–6) 142 n. 386. 9. 4 (16–23) 142 n. 376. 9. 7 2526. 9. 10 (7–21) 142 n. 386. 9. 11 (11) 142 n. 38 Plutarch ; Against Colotes 1122 C 41n.53; Consolation to his Wife 610 D 228 n. 2; Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 1088 F–1089 D 234 n. 291089 C 234 n. 311099 D–F 234 n. 291099 E 165 n. 21, 233 n. 23, 234 n. 261101 A–B 196 n. 171104 A–1107 C 249 n. 1411104 A–1107 A 228 n. 31104 A–1105 C 249 n. 1391107 B 238 n. 65; Erotikos 769 A–B 277n.35769 F 277 n. 36; How to Profit from Enemies 91 F 295 n. 26; How to Recognize One's Moral Progress 82 A–F 218 n. 4482 F 413 n. 7083 B 13n.485 A 220 n. 56; How to Tell a Flatterer 74 C 218 n. 45; On Being a Busybody 520 D–522 F 213 n. 6530 E–532 C 213n.7; On Benefiting from Enemies 89 A–F 218 n. 45; On Common Notions 1063 D–E 172 n. 291068 F 51 n. 1111069 A(SVF 3. 626–7) 51 n. 1111069 D–E 173 n. 321069 E(SVF 3. 491) 171 n. 191070 F–1072 F 207 n. 921070 F–1071 E(SVF 3. 195) 171 n. 161071 A(SVF 3. 195) 170 nn. 7, 101071 B–C 332 n. 961071 B 170 nn. 11, 191071 C 171 n. 171072 E–F(SVF 3 Antipater 59) 171 n. 161073 B 207 n. 921073 C 281 nn. 56–71083 B–C 231 n. 12; On Freedom from Anger 454 E–455 A 70n.27455 A–B 272455 C 295 nn. 26–7456 A–B 175 n. 42, 214 n. 11456 F 210 n. 106458 C 210 n. 108459 B–460 C 191n.59459 E–460 C 241 n. 98463 D 162 n. 10, 197 n. 20, 235 n. 45, 236 n. 54; On Garrulousness 23, 514 E 13n.4; On Moral Virtue 441 D–E 91n.58443 A 89n.43446 F–447 A (SVF 3. 459) 45 n. 73, 57 n. 14, 313–14449 A–B 35 n. 31, 52 n. 125, 68449 A(SVF 3. 439) 31 n. 12, 38 n. 40, 40 n. 50, 67 n. 7, 207 nn. 89–90449 E 162 n. 10, 236 n. 54; On the Contradictions of the Stoics 1035 A 166 n. 241035 C–D 166n.251037 F(SVF 3. 175) 43 n. 66, 329 n. 731038 B 174 n. 361039 E–F 173 n. 321042 D(SVF 3. 759) 172 n. 291044 B 274 n. 10; On the Daemon of Socrates 585 A 213 n. 8; On the E at Delphi 392 B–C (Heraclitus fr. 91 DK) 246 n. 130392 C–E 162 n. 15, 245 n. 122, 247–8; On Tranquillity 473 B–474 B 162 n. 16, 231 n. 11, 232–3, 244 n. 120474 D 197 n. 20, 235 n. 45474 E–475 A 162 n. 10474 E–F 236n.54475 A 236 n. 54; Quaestiones convivales 657 A 295 n. 26 Plutarch (?) ; Consolation to Apollonius 102 D 196n.12109 F 228n.2

461

462

INDEX LOCORUM

110 D 223 n. 76112 D 235 n. 44118 D–E 235 n. 45118 D 197 n. 20 Pseudo-Plutarch ; Is the Emotional Element in Humans a Part or a Capacity of the Soul? Tyrwitt fr. 2, Loeb vol. 15, pp. 61–2 305fragment, p. 48 (Loeb vol. 15) 68 n. 9, 104, 120 n. 66 Porphyry ; Letter to Marcella 24 238 n. 6628 284 n. 8033 276 n. 22, 284 n. 7735 241 n. 98, 276 n. 28, 284 n. 81; Life of Plotinus 8 271 n. 92; Life of Pythagoras 40 213 n. 9; On Abstinence from Eating Animals 1. 14 (Heracleides of Pontus) 327 n. 611. 32 271 n. 90, 284 n. 82, 287 n. 981. 32. 1 286 n. 961. 34. 2 286 n. 971. 35 287, 287 n. 98, 356 n. 731. 37 287 n. 981. 38. 2 286 n. 961. 41 284 n. 781. 45. 3 287 n. 981. 52 284 n. 742. 39. 3 348 n. 292. 40. 3 348 n. 292. 43. 3–4 (Theophrastus fr. 548B FHS&G) 209 n. 1042. 45. 4 284 n. 822. 52 276 n. 23, 284 n. 762. 61. 1 (Theophrastus fr. 548D FHS&G) 209 n. 1043. 20. 7 287 n. 993. 26. 6–7 287 n. 994. 20 284 n. 79; On the Faculties of the Soul ap. Stobaeum 1. 351 W. 315 n. 62; On What is Up to Us ap. Stobaeum 2. 163. 16–167. 7; fr. 268 Smith 320 n. 13; Sentences 32 197 n. 19, 285 nn. 83, 91, 414 n. 72 Posidonius, ed. Edelstein–Kidd (see also Galen, PHP, books 4–5); F 154 104 n. 67F 165 101 n. 51F 182 101 n. 51F 186 98 n. 30, 106 n. 71T 91 101 n. 51T 93 101 n. 51T 99 101 n. 51 Proclus ; In Alcibiadem I, ed. Westerink 133. 18 ff. 279 n. 48226. 12–227. 2 206 n. 81; In Rempublicam, ed. Kroll vol. 1. 49. 13–50. 28 296–7vol. 1. 50. 16–17 297 n. 31vol. 1. 234 303 n. 3, 315 n. 63vol. 2. 303. 1–4 50 n. 108, 205 n. 76; In Timaeum, ed. Diehl 1. 212. 22 238 n. 672. 72. 14 189 n. 473. 330. 9–331. 1 206 n. 81, 2663. 334. 3–15 206 n. 793. 335. 10–14 206 n. 803. 335. 24–336. 1 206 n. 82, 265 n. 733. 338. 6–13 206 n. 82, 265 n. 733. 340. 14–17 206 n. 82, 265 n. 733. 349. 21–350. 8 206 n. 81, 265–6; On Evil ch. 55 406 Psalms ; 2. 2 349 n. 434. 4 344 n. 4, 354 n. 6834. 17 352 Quintilian ; Institutio oratoria 1. 10. 32 91 n. 596. 3. 7–8 290 n. 116. 3. 82 291 St Paul ; Corinthians 7: 32–3 413 n. 67; Ephesians 4. 26 344 n. 46. 12 349 n. 43; Galatians 5. 17

INDEX LOCORUM

315 n. 62; Romans 6. 10 350 n. 46; Thessalonians 4. 13 237, 394 n. 75; Timothy 6. 10 365 n. 42 St Paul (?) ; Hebrews 2. 13–14 349 n. 424. 15 349 n. 39, 351, 3525. 7 344 n. 7 Sayings of the Fathers(Apophthegmata Patrum) ; PG 65. 176 A, Evagrius 370 n. 82 Scholia on Homer, Iliad ; 23. 65(SVF 2. 815) 189 n. 45 Scholium on Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics ; 1118b8(=Usener, Epicurea, 456) 283 n. 70, 410 n. 55 Seneca the Younger ; Letters 11. 1 50 n. 102, 69 n. 2211. 8–10 220 n. 5612. 9 235 n. 3812. 10 214 n. 1413 211 n. 113. 4 211 n. 1, 223 n. 7014 19 n. 15, 211 n. 1, 223 n. 7019 19 n. 1522 19 n. 1523. 5 171 n. 2324. 19–21 24724. 20–1 162 n. 1531. 18 44 n. 7032 241 n. 9236. 10–11 242 n. 10737. 5 44 n. 7141. 2 25251. 6 214 n. 1351. 9 214 n. 1454. 4–5 228 n. 258. 22–3 24758. 23 162 n. 1558. 34 172 n. 2858. 35–6 173 n. 3459. 2(SVF 3. 435) 48 n. 94, 49 n. 9959. 14 379 n. 2159. 16 49 n. 9668 19n.1568.1,3–4 401n.1570. 3 172 n. 2870. 14–15 214 n. 1470. 14 214 n. 1470. 19–25 214 n. 1571 179 n. 5471. 15 242 n. 10771. 27 119 n. 6178. 13 198 n. 2578. 14–15 233 n. 1578. 14 236 n. 4778. 16 52 n. 120, 235 n. 4378. 18 234 n. 3483.1 25286 214 n. 1387. 31–2 107 n. 7787. 35 107 n. 7789. 13(SVF 1. 356–7) 153 n. 1791. 21 214 n. 1492 179 n. 5492.3 44n.7193. 7 241 n. 9294–5 161 n. 6, 171 n. 2294. 8 153 n. 1794. 48 153 n. 1594. 51 153 n. 1595. 52–4 184 n. 2495. 52–3 184 n. 27101. 8–9 241 n. 92101. 10 235 nn. 36, 38, 236 n. 47104. 21 172 n. 28108. 13–22 214 n. 12108. 16 214 n. 16113. 18 66 n. 1, 119 n. 61116. 1 209 n. 99116. 5 280 n. 53121. 16 248 n. 136; Natural Questions 2. 59. 3 50 n. 102, 69 n. 21, 379 n. 21; On Anger 1. 2. 3 105 n. 681. 3. 7–8 72 n. 39, 129 n. 331. 3. 8 3771. 5. 2–3 46 n. 791. 6 191 n. 591. 6. 2 191 n. 591. 6. 4 191 n. 601. 9. 2 162 n. 14, 191 n. 571. 9. 3 209 n. 1011. 9. 4 192 n. 621. 12. 3 (Theophrastus fr. 446 FHS&G)

463

464

INDEX LOCORUM

209 n. 1041. 14. 1 (Theophrastus fr. 446 FHS&G) 209 n. 1041. 15. 1–2 191 n. 591. 16. 1–4 191 n. 591. 16. 3–5 191 n. 601. 16. 7 50 n. 102, 70 n. 301. 19. 3–4 191 n. 591. 19. 7 191 n. 592. 1. 1 119 n. 612. 1. 5 41 n. 552. 2. 1–2. 4. 2 66, 73–52. 2. 1 68 n. 15, 69 nn. 18, 262. 2. 2 45 n. 75, 50 n. 102, 63, 66 n. 1, 68 n. 12, 69 n. 20, 3492. 2. 3–6 72 n. 40, 77, 294 n. 242. 2. 4 66 n. 12. 2. 5–2. 3. 5 3772. 2. 5 66, 344 n. 8,2. 2. 6 68 n. 152. 3. 1 66, 72 n. 412. 3. 2–3 68 n. 152. 3. 2 68, 123 n. 7, 381, 381 n. 262. 3. 4 41 n. 56, 63, 66, 68 n. 12, 209 n. 1022. 3. 5 41 nn. 55–7, 63, 66 n. 1, 67, 68 nn. 11, 132. 4 30 n. 92. 4. 1 30 n. 9, 31 nn. 10, 13, 37 n. 36, 42 n. 62, 43, 44, 45 nn. 75, 78, 56 n. 9, 60 n. 32, 63, 66 n. 1, 69 n. 19, 140 n. 31, 191 n. 61, 303 n. 1, 314 n. 61, 328 n. 70, 399 n. 1162. 4. 2 66 n. 1, 68 n. 15, 69 nn. 18–192. 10. 5 18 n. 42. 10. 7 191 n. 60, 214 n. 102. 18 212 n. 32. 23. 4–2. 24. 1 223 nn. 70, 712. 26. 3 29 n. 52. 28 29 n. 5, 153 n. 19, 162 n. 13, 175 n. 43, 179 n. 532. 29 241 n. 982. 31. 8 191 n. 592. 36. 1 162 n. 12, 175 n. 42, 214 n. 11, 272 n. 1003. 11 223 n. 713. 12. 4–7 241 n. 983. 12. 5–7 191 n. 59, 242 n. 1013. 14 214 n. 173. 36 214 n. 912. 17. 1 192 n 63; On Benefits 4. 34 53 n. 1304. 34. 4 54 n. 1334. 39 219 n. 487. 2. 4–6 235 n. 36; On Consolation to Helvia 17.1–2 27; On Consolation to Marcia 1. 7 30 nn. 7, 9, 32 n. 15, 165 n. 23, 178 n. 502. 1 178 n. 502. 2 394 n. 712. 3 107 n. 792. 4 32 n. 15, 80 n. 12, 139 n. 29, 162 n. 11, 175 n. 443. 1–4 224 n. 773. 1 107 n. 793. 3 139 n. 29, 162 n. 11, 175 n. 443. 4 394 n. 724. 1 394 n. 725. 6 139 n. 29, 162 n. 11, 175 n. 445. 16 175 n. 446. 1 220 n. 569–11 238 n. 689. 1–10 236 n. 5111. 1 236 n. 5112. 4–5 224 n. 7912. 5–16. 4 224 n. 7719. 1 223 n. 7020. 2–3 214 n. 1423–4 394 n. 7324. 5–25. 3 238 n. 6526 394 n. 7426.6–7 248n.137; On Consolation to Polybius 18. 5 394 n. 72; On Mercy 2. 4–5(SVF 3. 452) 389 n. 372. 5–6 162 n. 14, 192 n. 64, 390 n. 41; On Providence 6. 6–7 214 n. 14; On the Constancy of the Sage 15.4 52n.120, 235n.4354 379 n. 21; On the Happy Life 16. 3 171 n. 2022. 1 172 n. 2522. 4 170 n. 1123. 5 171 n. 2324. 3 184 n. 24; On the Shortness of Life 10 231 n. 10; On Tranquillity 1. 2 218 n. 431. 5 218 n. 432. 3

INDEX LOCORUM

182 n. 213 238 n. 6913. 2–14. 1 54 n. 13313. 2–3 53 n. 130, 54 n. 131, 219 n. 4815. 2 18 n. 4; Pumpkinification of Claudius 8 189 n. 46 Sextus ; Sentences 13 276 n. 2870 276 n. 2887 276 n. 2897 276 n. 28116 276 n. 28232 276 n. 28 Sextus Empiricus ; Against the Mathematicians 7. 12 153 n. 177. 145–6 (Speusippus) 907. 239(SVF 3. 399) 281 nn. 57–87. 349 254 n. 811. 22–6 172 n. 2411. 22(SVF 3. 75) 170 n. 1511. 61–3 170 n. 611. 62 ff. (SVF 3. 122) 170 n. 1111. 62 170 n. 811. 64–7(SVF 1. 361) 54 n. 133, 170 n. 1211. 110–61 198 n. 3311. 141 198 n. 28, 199 nn. 36–711. 142 198 n. 2911. 143 198 n. 32, 199 n. 3711. 148 198 nn. 24, 30–1, 199 n. 3911. 149 198 n. 3211. 152 198 n. 3211. 153 198 n. 3211. 156 199 n. 3711. 156–7 46 n. 8311. 157 199 nn. 37, 40–111. 158–61 20011. 158 199 nn. 34–5, 3711. 159 19811. 161 198 nn. 24, 31, 161 n. 42; Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1. 25–30 271 n. 941. 30 200 n. 452. 31 254 n. 83. 235 46 n. 82, 198 nn. 23–4, 28, 199 nn. 37, 42–33. 235–7 198 n. 33, 2003. 236 198 nn. 24, 30, 32, 199 nn. 35, 423. 237 182, 182 n. 4 Simplicius ; Commentary on Epictetus, Handbook, ed. Hadot ch. 35, p. 341, lines 455–9 297ch. 38, p. 361, line 24–p. 364, line 87 214 n. 18ch. 38, p. 384, lines 568–575 214 n. 18ch. 38, p. 386, lines 611–15 297ch. 38, p. 389, line 679 233 n. 21ch. 38, p. 391, line 724 233 n. 21; In Physica 5. 20 238 n. 67886. 11(SVF 2. 627) 243 n. 112 ‘Simplicius’ ; In De anima 120. 31–4 85 n. 28241. 7 206 n. 83 Spinoza ; Ethics part 2, prop. 49, corollary 43 n. 66 Stephanus ; In Artem rhetoricam 325. 15 169 n. 4 Stobaeus ; Eclogae, vols.1and 2 Wachsmuthin the Wachsmuth–Hense edition of Stobaeus 1. 317 (1. 149) 103 n. 651. 351 (Longinus in Porphyry) 315 n. 621. 368–9(SVF 1. 143; 2. 826) 103 n. 642. 8. 30 (Musonius) 332 n. 922. 39. 5 34 n. 26, 64 n. 442. 39. 8(SVF 1. 206) 56 n. 10, 313 n. 572. 44. 5 64 n. 442. 57–116 (Arius Didymus) 223 n. 692. 57. 18(SVF 1. 190) 65 n. 472. 58. 5–9 51 n. 1132. 65 280 n. 522. 65. 18 282 n. 622. 66. 3 282 n. 622. 66. 6–8 281 n. 57, 282 n. 632. 66. 10 282 n. 652. 66. 11–12 282 n. 642. 66. 11–13(SVF 3. 650) 281 n. 582. 69. 3–4 49 n. 972. 71. 15–72. 6(SVF 3. 106) 172 n. 242. 72. 1–6 51 n. 1132. 73. 1 13 n. 42. 75

465

466

INDEX LOCORUM

170 n. 102. 75. 1–6 50 n. 105,2. 76. 2–6 97 n. 282. 76. 9–15(SVF 3 Diogenes 44; Antipater 57) 171 n. 162. 76. 13–15 332 n. 952. 79–80 170 n. 6, n. 7, n. 92. 79 170 n. 112. 79. 12–17(SVF 3. 118) 53 n. 1292. 79. 15–16 170 n. 102. 80(SVF 3. 136) 170 n. 112. 80. 22–81. 1 52 n. 124, 170 n. 92. 80. 22(SVF 3. 136). 172 n. 262. 81. 13–15 40 n. 492. 82–3 170 n. 102. 82. 11 ff. (SVF 1. 192; 3. 128) 170 n. 82. 83–4(SVF 3. 124) 170 n. 112. 83. 2 ff. 170 n. 92. 83. 10–84. 2(SVF 3. 124) 170 n. 142. 83. 14–15 54 n. 133, n. 1342. 84. 21 65 n. 472. 84. 24–85. 1(SVF 3. 128; 1. 192) 53 n. 1292. 85. 1–4 170 n. 102. 86. 17–18(SVF 3. 169) 33, 43 n. 64, 140 n. 31, 329 n. 722. 87. 18 281 n. 592. 87. 20–2 50 n. 1052. 87. 22(SVF 3. 173) 320 n. 142. 88. 1(SVF 3. 171) 43 n. 63, 329 n. 712. 88. 4 41 n. 54(SVF 3. 171) 2. 88. 8–2. 90. 6 57 n. 17, 60 n. 292. 88. 8(SVF 1. 205–6) 55 n. 1, 64 n. 442. 88. 9(SVF 1. 205) 34 n. 252. 88. 11–12(SVF 1. 206) 57 n. 12, 313 n. 572. 88. 16–21 31 n. 142. 88. 18–21 365 n. 432. 89. 2–3 111 nn. 3, 52. 89. 14–16 55 n. 22. 89. 17 62 n. 342. 90(SVF 3. 394) 29 n. 1, 30 nn. 7, 9, 31 n. 13, 34 n. 21, 35 n. 29, 67 n. 2, 389 n. 372. 90. 2–4 32 n. 152. 90. 11 37 n. 362. 90. 13 111 n. 5,2. 90. 14–18 31 n. 10, 111 n. 72. 90. 14 37 n. 352. 91. 15–16(SVF 3. 395) 281 n. 582. 92(SVF 3. 413) 389 n. 372. 101. 24–102. 2 51 n. 1112. 102. 25–6 137 n. 232. 110. 9–15(SVF 3. 758) 172 n. 292. 111. 18–112. 8(SVF 3. 548) 330 n. 812. 111 223 n. 692. 115. 2–4 280 n. 52, 281 n. 562. 115. 2 281 n. 582. 115. 5–9 54 n. 1332. 115. 5(SVF 3. 564) 54 n. 1312. 140. 7–142. 13 (Theophrastus fr. 449A FHS&G) 209 n. 1042. 144. 9 281 n. 542. 144. 10 278 n. 44; Florilegium, vols. 3 and 4 Hensein the Wachsmuth–Hense edition of Stobaeus 3. 20. 53 18 n. 4, 196 n. 163. 50 196 n. 163. 532. 1–13 (Theophrastus fr. 526 FHS&G) 241 n. 984. 2. 13 (Democritus frags. 257–9 DK) 327 n. 604. 468. 4–7 (Theophrastus frags. 557–8 FGH&S) 279 n. 454. 508. 8–509. 4 (Antipater SVF 3. 63) 277 n. 364. 671. 7 ff. (Hierocles the Stoic) 251–2 The Tablet of Cebes ; 18. 4–20 295 n. 25 Tertullian ; On Patience 9. 3 394 n. 769. 4 (CC 1, pp. 309–10) 394 n. 76; On the Soul 20. 5 321 n. 1721. 6 321 nn. 17–18 Themistius ; In De anima 32. 22–31 254 n. 1037. 21 303 n. 2107. 17–18(SVF 1. 205) 55. n. 4; Orationes 32, vol. 2, pp. 193–204 Downey–Norman 197 n. 19 Theodoret ; Healing of Greek Sicknesses 5. 76–9 386 n. 12 Theophrastus ; Characters ch. 24 25fr. 448(Lumen animaeB) 209 n. 104fr. 466B (FHS&B) 221 n. 59

INDEX LOCORUM

Timocles ; fr. 6 (Kock, Attic. Com. vol. 2, p. 453) 224 n. 81, 292 n. 17 Valerius Maximus ; Memorable Deeds and Words 224 n. 785. 10, ext. 3 197 n. 20, 235 n. 45 Valerius Pinianus ; Life of Saint Melania, ed. Gorce vol. i, pp. 131–2 276 n. 28 Wisdom ; 8. 21 383 n. 38 Xenophon ; Symposium 8. 9–13 278 n. 40

467

Subject and Name Index Abhinaragupta 82 Adelman, P. K. 272 Affect and brain reaction 144–5 Aggleton, J. P. 145 Akēdia , seeDepression Akrasia , see alsoTemptation, Will56–7, 303, 305–15 Albini, Francesca 124 Alcinous, Middle Platonist author of Didasklikos 41, 46; Disowned emotions show emotion is not judgement 122; Two generic emotions, pleasure and distress 134; Utility of emotions 191; Metriopatheia 196; Three kinds of erotic love and three objectives 279; Art of love 279; Choice of lives, freedom, responsibility 324 Alesse, Francesca 107 Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotelian ; Emotions ‘follow’ bodily states 261, 263–4; Soul is a form and capacity, not a blend, or harmony, but ‘supervenes’ on a blend 261, 262, 267; Interruption of form terminates self 243; Dist. cognitive and practical command centres 262–3; Stochastic arts 171; Cause need not be like effect 85; Proairesis involved in all action that is up to us 327–8, 332; Boulēsis preserves freedom of action Alexander of Hales 219, 317 Ambition ; Lucretius: ambition is due to fear of death 236 Ambrose, St, bishop of Milan 394 Ammonius, son of Hermeias, Neoplatonist 91 Amygdala 145–50 Anaxagoras, Presocratic ; Model for apatheia 197, 391; Anticipate misfortune 235 Andronicus of Rhodes, Aristotelian ; Emotion as irrational movement of the soul through the supposition (hupolēpsis), not mere appearance, of good or bad 41, 133–4; Soul is either a bodily blend, or a capacity ‘following’ the blend 254–5, 266 Anger , see alsoThumos23, 30, 138, 139, 173, 178, 191–2, 202–3, 216; Definitions 23, 30, 135, 263–4; Pleasurable 80, 135, 237; Orgē, one of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 362, 363, 364, 366; Depends on gluttony, avarice, vanity 365; Special obstacle to prayer 370; Augustine: less shameful than lust, because body supposedly subject to will 380–1; Philodemus: natural anger almost = freedom from anger, contrast anger based on empty beliefs 202; Anger natural or necessary among Christians 386 Animals ; Their emotions 125–9; Cruelty to them leads to cruelty to humans 286; Responsible for what they do? 326–7 Annas, Julia 26, 55, 203, 206, 223

Anticipation of misfortune 161–2, 177, 226; Anaxagoras 235; Stoics 235; Posidonius 97, 236–7; Epictetus 216, 235; Cyrenaics on unexpected 236; Rejected by Epicureans

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

237; Dist. fear 235; Recognition that ought to have anticipated 238, 394 Antiochus, Platonist 153; Apatheia 196–7 Antipater of Tarsus, Stoic 98; End of aiming well dist. from target 171, 208; Do everything in power (kath' hauton) to hit target 171; Hence intense motivation re target compatible with lack of emotion about it 185; Is the physical in one's power? 332; Advocates marriage with some level of equality 277 Antiphon, sophist, 5th cent. BC 18 , 235 Antisthenes, Socratic ; Against pleasure 195, 197, 218; Marriage is for procreation, love is destructive except to the wise, sex should be with those who are grateful for it 275, 280 Antony, St, hermit ; Exercises 220; Demons stir up emotions 348; Writing down bad soul movements will cure by shaming 361 Anxiety 149, 173 Aokhlēsia, freedom from disturbance , see also Ataraxia195 Apatheia, freedom from, eradication of, emotion (see also Metriopatheia, Eupatheia):; Ancient assessment more radical 193; Models: Anaxagoras 197, 391; Socrates 197; Accepted (but note different senses) by Speusippus 195; Stoics 194–6; But only in special senses in Zeno, Panaetius, Posidonius 64, 105–7, 195–6, 206; Antiochus 196–7; Pyrrhonian sceptics 198–200; Nicasicrates 201; Socratics 197; Cynics 197; Porphyry 284; Clement of Alexandria 188, 386–7; Origen 386–7; Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa for some purposes 207, 391–5, though not for consolations 207, 391–5; Evagrius in special sense 368; 2 senses in Gregory of Nyssa 392–3; Apatheia already rejected by Aristotle in opposition to Speusippus 194–5, 197; Search for apatheia attacked by Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine in Latin, Western, Church, but flourishes in East, and restored in West by Cassian 397; Stoic belief in apatheia misrepresented as verbal difference 206; Reasons for and against apatheia 181–93; Is eradication possible? 186; Is apatheia intelligible? 186–9; Virtues not needed by gods or the blessed 187–8; Should humans aspire to be divine? 189–190; Did Christ exhibit apatheia? 344–56, 392, 398–9; Does sex require pleasure? 388, 406–9; Does punishment require anger? 191–2, 203; Mercy substituted for pity 162, 192, 390–1; Apatheia and metriopatheia suited to different callings 197; To different stages 197, 203, 284, 286; To different purposes: consolation writings vs. discussion of ideals 391–5; To different people 391, 392; Apatheia to next life 190; Not even then 398–9; Apatheia to Adam and Eve before the Fall 197; Alternative ideals, though apatheia represents progress 385–6; Emotions accepted by Stoics during training 51–2; Some emotions for Stoics compatible with apatheia, esp.

469

eupatheiai and the right kind of homosexual love 47–53, 171, 208, 281–3; For Christians, esp. pity and love 387, 388–91; For Philo, repentance and pity 233, 386, 389; In Gregory of Nyssa higher kind of apatheia compatible with willing

470

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

(thelein) and love 392–3; Apatheia restores in humans the image of God 391; Apatheia: likeness to angels or likeness to God? 387–8, 391, 395 Apollonius of Tyana, Neopythagorean 271 Apostoleris, Nicholas H. 272 Appearance (phantasia), dist. from judgement, belief, as involving assent 22, 23, 28, 41–2, 66–8, 132, 133–4; Questioning of appearances 160, 215–16, 330–1, 332 Appetite (epithumia) , see alsoLust34–5, 135–6; Definitions 135–6; Dist. boulēsis 306–8, 319–20, 322–3; Dist. thumos 323; Appetitive (epithumētikon) as lowest part of Plato's tripartite soul 43–4; Natural or necessary among certain Christians 386 ‘Applied’ Ethics 167–8 Approach–Avoidance 314 Appropriate (kathēkon) 30, 40 Aquinas (Thomas) ; Natural vs. rational will 317; Two senses of voluntary; in primary sense implies electio/proairesis, so excludes animals 328; First movements as bad thoughts 356; Nocturnal emissions only a first movement 382, and sinless, because in sleep reason cannot restrain 382, 415; Emotions before the Fall 398; Animals and, after the Fall, humans are inferior because neither can moderate lust by reason 406; Sex before the Fall more pleasurable, since moderation prevents gulping 408–9; Sleep, no less than lust, extinguishes thought 409–10; Lust transmits original sin, independently of whether it is unruly 416 Archytas, Pythagorean 241 Aristippus, Cyrenaic 236, 375; Only present pleasure to be sought 239, 298; Against erotic love 280; Self 239 Aristo of Ceos, Aristotelian 25–6; Therapy for pride 222, 298, 370; Therapy for opposites 298 Aristo of Chios, Stoic ; Indifferents have no value 170; Against precepts 153 Aristotle 80–1, 153, 376; Mean a substantive doctrine 25, 298; Metriopatheia in opposition to Speusippus 194–5; Natural and necessary emotions 201–2; But virtues not needed by gods and blessed 187–8; Emotions classified under distress, pleasure, and desire, not Stoics' fear 22, 135; Anger 23; Fear 23–4; Pity 23–4; Pleasure 23–4; Distress 23–4; Physiological basis of emotions 25, 261, 263–4; Involuntary physical movements 71; Pleasure at memory of pain endured 233; Pleasures of art and drama 80; Pleasure taken in the unpleasant 80; Schadenfreude 195; Therapy by opposites: pleasure excludes anger, fear excludes pity 298; Sex after childbearing age for health 276–7; Distinction of two kinds of love ascribed to A., but perhaps Theophrastan 278–80; Sexual dreams 413–14; Catharsis 24–5, 76–7, 80, 286, 288–300; Tragedy conn. grief, as well as pity and fear 291–2; Comedy, def. 290; Wit a virtue 290; Wit conn. insolence (hubris) 290; Hubris conn. superiority 290; Aristotle ‘mocking’ 291; Poetry

more universal than history 79; Emotions in rhetoric 22–4, 290; Rejects Plato's purely intellectual conception of human happiness:

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

we'll always need to eat 191; Rejects Plato's tripartite division of soul 313; Elsewhere accepts his bipartition of soul 313; Contrary to Plato, contrasts desire with reason 43, 322; Recognizes distinct capacities of soul 313; Boulēsis 322–3; Proairesis 215–16, 324, 325–8; Soul is not an attunement 254; Soul, pace Plato, does not move 117, 264; Belief (doxa) a species of supposition (hupolēpsis) 133; Unlike Plato, distinguishes appearance (phantasia) from belief 41; But human emotion can be said to involve either 41, 133; Different kinds of involvement 22; Akrasia 308–13; Akrasia voluntary 310–11; Inattention 310–11; Proairesis 310–11, 325–7; Voluntariness extends more widely than proairesis to acts of animals and children 326–7; Voluntary implies up to us 327; Prolongation not add to value 241; Cause need not be like effect 85 ps.-Aristotle Problems 242 Aristoxenus, Aristotelian ; Soul an attunement 254 Armstrong, A. H. 334 Armstrong, David 218 Arnold, E. V. 344 Arts, visual 270–1 Aspasius, Aristotelian ; Emotion can be produced by mere appearance, pace Andronicus, and by appearance of pleasure, rather than of good 41, 133–4; Emotion defined as the irrational part of the soul being moved by the pleasant or distressing 134; Emotions classified under pleasure and distress, not Aristotle's desire 134–5; Anger need not be concerned with revenge 138 Assent ; To appearances in Stoicism 41–2, 376–7, 378–9; Voluntary 45–7; Dist. assent in Christians to thoughts, to their lingering, to the pleasure of their lingering, to action 355, 360, 368, 372, 373, 374, 376 Ataraxia, freedom from disturbance , see alsoAokhlēsia182, 198, 199, 208 Attention 224; Prosokhē, prosekhein, attention to own thoughts and actions in Stoic self-interrogation 13, 252, 389; Inattention 310–11; Effect of drama and narrative depends on attention to ‘in the play’, ‘once upon a time’ 80–1; Epicurean therapy distracts attention 27, 88, 177, 216, 233–4; Emotion can fade through lack of attention, as well as through change of judgement 111, 115, 132 Augustine ; Inspired by Life of Antony 372; Early retirement from rhetoric in Stoic manner 401; Relation to Stoics 399, 401; to Platonists 382–3, 413; Influence on our attitudes to both animals and lust 417; Metriopatheia favoured for many emotions 380, 398; Utility of emotions 191; St Paul recommended and Christ experienced emotions 398; In next life need love, gladness 398; also justice 188; not hunger or thirst 188, 410; Loss of awareness of past and future by saints in next life would reduce range of emotions 398; Now need, and cannot avoid, fear, grief 398; At first accepts only taking

471

pity, later feeling pity 397–8; Hope in the resurrection 394; Attack on Stoic apatheia: misrepresents Stoic acceptance of first movements as acceptance of emotion 207, 375–84, 385; Misrepresents Stoic belief in apatheia as verbal difference 206; Similarly for eupatheiai 207; Similarly for indifferents

472

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

207; The misrepresentation is part of his case for metriopatheia 397–8; Exceptions to metriopatheia:some emotions always bad: Pride 335–7; Lust 336–7, 353, 380–1, 384, 399, 400–17; Personal experience of lust 401; Obscenity in pagan ritual 287; Fall of Man and Angels due to pride and disobedience 336; Lust disobedient to will was not cause of Fall, but a fit punishment for Man 336, 404, 406; And for himself personally lust was a punishment for pride 336; It is Pelagians who say lust needs only metriopatheia 404; But Augustine accepts that since we have only the gift of moderation, God blames only excess 406; Can Augustine explain case of females? 412, 415–76; Will's opposition cause or effect of thinking sex evil? 412–13; Manichaean period: concubinage, not marriage 400; Contraception better than procreation, which traps soul in matter 277, 400; None the less had a (much-loved) son 400; Insubordinate to will as central objection to lust 337, 380, 404–5; Esp. insubordination of male member 380, 404–5; This in turn explains shame at sex and need for privacy 380, 406, 411–12; Novelty of shame after Fall shows the insubordination to be a punishment 411–12; Lust in animals all right because they have no reason for lust to rebel against 406; Anger contrasted with lust as supposedly free of bodily insubordination 380–1; Overlooks Seneca's treatment of lust, anger, and fear as all having involuntary first movements 381, 405; Consent to sex in dreams not sufficiently distinguished from nocturnal emissions 381–2, 415; Consent of will is source of sin 372, 414; Sexual dreams involve consent of will 115, 381–2, 413–15; But not consent to act in waking life 414; In sexual dreams consent is something that will subsequently bypass the will 415; Effect of music on lust shows lust is not under control of the will 83–4, 91, 131, 405–6; Lust is said to differ from sleep by opposing will 410, 414–15; Lust excludes thought and prayer 405, 413; Lust importunate and unruly 405; Importunity of thirsty baby acknowledged 410; Lust not necessary to avoid injury, death 410; More general distrust of sensory as distracting attention 413; And of marriage as occupying attention 413; Before the Fall, no conflict of lust with will: First view: Adam and Eve had only spiritual bodies 406–7; Second view: bodies usable for sex without lust or pleasure but unused 406–7; Third view: if there was lust and pleasure, it did not oppose will 406–7; Marriage without sex praised if by mutual consent 276; Sex in marriage is for procreation or health 276; Similarly before Fall 407–8; Sex in marriage puts a bad thing to a good use 402, 417; Mitigation of faithful concubinage 402; 3 goods of marriage 403; Approves appetite for legitimate offspring 407; Anti-Pelagianism 373–4, 399, 403–17; Original Sin, transmitted by lust 353; So Christ free from

353; But we need grace 396, 414; And baptism 403; First movements or prepassion 344, 346, 355–6, 372; Influence of Evagrius

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

373; Bad thoughts and suggestions 346, 348, 355; Shock, shock without hurt 204, 355; Titillation only a prepassion 344, 372, 414; Allowing bad thoughts to linger and enjoying them 373; Three stages: suggestion, pleasure, assent to action 374; Pleasure of thinking preceding assent to action 355–6, 360, 373–4; Degrees of sin 353, 355–6, 373–5; Need for daily forgiveness through Lord's Prayer 362, 373, 375; It is pride and vanity to deny this 399; Assent to appearance 378–9; Dist. assent to action 374; Will 319; Emotion an act of will 316, 382, 383, 399; Will involved in belief 47; Two wills in humans 315–16, 336, 382, 383, 399; Perverted will and pride 335–7; Fall of man and angels 336; Soul is not bodily blend 270; Uses arguments adapted by Descartes (cogito) 270; Not two souls in humans 315–16; Favours Plato's division of soul into reason and emotional parts 382–3; This obscures Stoic position that emotion necessarily has the assent of reason 383; Eternal recurrence makes crucifixion pointless 242; Pity aroused in theatre not genuine 77; Curiosity, not pleasure, drives us to look at corpses 80–1; Distress at memory of pleasure lost, pleasure at memory of pain endured 233; Time makes emotion fade because of new hopes 241; Imagery impedes mystical experience and knowledge of God 115; Need to look inwards 252 Authenticity 250 Avarice ; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 362, 365; Root of all evils 365; Lucretius: due to fear of death 236 Avicenna, Islamic philosopher 146–7, 300 Axiochus 228 Baier, Annette 83 Baladi, Naguib 334 Barnes, M.R. 220 Basil of Caesarea, Church Father ; Rules for monasteries 357, 392; Reviewing the day's conduct 213–14; Consolations 175, 391–5; Consolation enjoins metriopatheia 391; Expresses emotion 391, 394; But apatheia eventual good for monks, which restores in us image of God and assimilates us to God 391; Dist. enkrateia, their present achievement 392; And Christ had emotions 392; Pity accepted for monks 392 Beckett, Luke 361 Bedford, Errol 93 Belief (doxa) , see alsoJudgement:; Dist. from appearance (phantasia) in Aristotle and Stoics 41; In Stoicism differs by assent 41–2; Hence for Stoics and Augustine voluntary 47; Not dist. from appearance in Plato 41; On Plotinus 28; A species of supposition (hupolēpsis) in Aristotle 133 Bergmann, Frith of 93–4 Bernays, Jacob 288 Bickel, Ernst 284

473

Bignone, E. 201 Bites: sharp little contractions caused by appearance of evil 38, 68, 119–120, 151, 202, 204 Blank, David 90 Bobzien, Susanne 332–3 Body ; Contribution of body to emotion and its therapy 25, 96, 119, 142, 144–55, 203–4, 253–72, 293; Can education counteract tendency of body? 256, 258–60, 264, 265, 266, 269–70; Can philosophy? 267–8; Effect of education on body 269; Feedback of emotion on body 255

474

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Body–mind relations ; Supervening (epiginesthai) 261–2, 266–9; Following (hepesthai) 261–2, 263–4, 266–9; Explaining (apotelesma) 267–9 Boethius, Neoplatonizing Christian 91, 167, 321; Distress at memory of pleasure lost 233 Bonhöffer, Adolf 50, 51, 52, 69, 72–3, 110, 183, 246, 389 Borges, Jorge Luis 291 Boswell, James 229 Boulēsis , see Will Boys-Stones, George 58 Brain 144–55 Breathing exercises 271 Brennan, Tad 50, 51, 54, 84, 111, 172, 219, 283, 284 Bresler, C. 272 Broadie, Sarah 140 Brown, Peter 276 Brunschwig, Jacques 166, 219 Brutus, Roman statesman, follower of Platonist Antiochus 153 Budd, Malcolm 83 Buddhism 246 Burnet, John 195 Burnyeat, Myles 198, 271, 324 Bynum Walker, Caroline 411 Calcidius, Christian Platonist ; Body makes children thoughtless 265 Carneades, Platonist 98, 234; Attacks Stoic doctrine of indifferents as differing only verbally from views of other schools 207 Carone, Gabriela 116 Cassian, John, Founder of monastery at Monte Cassino ; Bad thoughts 348; Introduces Evagrius' 8 bad thoughts to Western monastic system 357–8; Some emotions natural 386; Reconfirms value of apatheia in Western church 397 Castelli, Elizabeth 276 Caston, Victor 46, 137, 254, 255, 262, 328 Catharsis 224, 288–300; Aristotle's application to drama 24–5, 80, 221; Aristotle's answer to Plato's complaint that poets stir up emotion 288; Application to music 288–9, 297; Seneca discounts theatre as using first movement, not emotion 76–81, 228, 294; Diogenes of Babylon 294; Philodemus 294; Tablet of Cebes 295; Plutarch: different emotions respond differently 295; Porphyry and Iamblichus: Does inspiration depend on physical apokatharsis? 295; Iamblichus: alternative to aversion therapy 280–7; Proclus: tragedy and comedy too immoderate to produce catharsis 295–6; Simplicius: conn. aversion therapy 297; Olympiodorus' 5 types of catharsis: giving a taste reassigned to Pythagoreans, opposites to Hippocrates, Aristotle, Stoics, similars to Socrates, instruction, criticism 297–9; Catharsis of contempt 290–1; Catharsis of grief 291–2; Islamic misinterpretation 291, 300 Cato (Marcus), Roman statesman, Stoic ; Accepts doctrine of

indifferents 207; Unique persona and universalizability 249 Causation , see also Therapy (by opposites):; Need cause be like effect? 84–9, 114, 130 Caution (eulabeia) ; Stoic eupatheia 47–51; Shed by perfected Christians 387; Christ's sorrow 344; Evagrius: godly fear 367 Cebes, Tablet of, Neopythagorean text 295 Chadwick, Henry vii, 361, 366, 396 Chakrabarty, Arindam 82, 223 Character as a motive 173–4 Charles, David 141, 312 Children, training of , see alsoAnimals96–8, 152–3, 211, 257 Christ ; Did Christ have emotions? 344–56, 392,

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

398–9; His will 219, 316–17 Christology, natures of Christ ; Origen and Rufinus 349, 398–9; Basil of Caesarea 398–9; Didymus the Blind 351; Jerome 352–3, 398–9; Augustine 398–9 Chrysippus, Stoic (already in antiquity, views seen as orthodox for Stoics tended to be ascribed to Chrysippus) 19, 20–1, 100–1; Four generic emotions: pleasure, distress, appetite, fear 29, 65, 136; Intellectualist account of emotions as identical with judgements (contrast Zeno) 29–30; With two judgements 32–3, 65; Pleasure is judgement that there is present benefit and it is appropriate to feel expansion 30; Distress is judgement that there is present harm and it is appropriate to feel a sinking 29–30; Appetite is judgement that there is future benefit and it is appropriate to reach for it 30; Fear is judgement that there is future harm and it is appropriate to avoid it 30; Second judgement is impulse (hormē) construed as a judgement about how it is appropriate (kathēkein) to react 33, 42–3, 113, 121; Judgement dist. from appearance as involving assent 41–2; Hence emotion voluntary 45–7, 65; At least one of the two judgements false 21, 32–3, 181–2; False judgement dist. from Zeno's disobedient or akratic judgement 55–6; But Chrysippus taken to favour akratic account of emotion as well 57–8, 313; Falsity of first judgement concerns difference between good and preferred 154, 181; Of the two judgements in emotion, one is about present or future, but not past, harm or benefit 30, 110, 136–7; The harm or benefit envisaged may be actual or possible 33; In pleasure and distress the harm or benefit is present, in appetite and fear future 136; The second judgement is about the appropriateness of actual or imagined pursuit or avoidance 31, 33; Or about the appropriateness of actual expansion or contraction 30–1, 33–4; Impulse is a judgement 42–3, 64–5, 113–14, 328–9; Roles of the second judgement ; (i) easier to cure 32, 175, 178; (ii) explains why distress is misguided even when first judgement is correct, that one's lack of virtue is an evil 32–3, 114–15, 175–7; (iii) second judgement constitutes impulse 33; (iv) fading of emotion may be explained by fading of second judgement 33, 109–10; Cicero infers voluntariness of emotion from dispensability of second judgement 176; Even disowned tears correspond to one of two conflicting appearances 122; Will is here frustrated 122; Tears, if not assented to, could illustrate idea of first movements, but Chrysippus does not make use of this 70–1, 122; Distress and pleasure as involving, but not being (pace Zeno), contraction/expansion 34, 36, 144; Contraction/expansion 37–41; Eupatheia distinguished from emotion as being true judgement, not disobedient to reason and not unstable 47–51; Akrasia 56–7, 308; Rejects Plato's tripartition of soul, in favour of unitary rational command centre 57, 98, 102, 303, 313;

475

Instead of being divided, it oscillates (ptoia) 56–7, 313; Though some inconsistency alleged re division 102–3; Natural tendency to virtue overlooks irrational tendencies in soul 98,

476

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

257; Souls spherical 189; God spherical 189; Makes therapy available to non-Stoics 166, 178; Concentrates therapy on second judgement 32, 175, 177–8; Therapy directed to situations 211; Not to moods 152, 211; Not suited to children 96–8, 152–3, 211, 257 Chrysostom, John, Church Father 394 Cicero, Platonizing Roman statesman, orator ; His own distress and authorship of Consolation and Tusculans 176–8; Medicine of the mind 19; On need in emotion for judgement that reaction appropriate 32, 176; On consequent voluntariness of emotion 176; Possible early reference to first movements 70; Wordless music as calming 91; Time removes emotion because reflection or familiarity can remove the relevant judgement 112; Translation of pathos as perturbatio 182, 208; Aristotelian metriopatheia ridiculed as belief in moderate perturbation, vice or evil 208; Stoic doctrine of indifferents said to differ only verbally from view of other schools 207; Virtues not needed by the blessed 188; Endurance of others as model 224; Use of many therapies 176–7; Rejection of Epicurus' distraction 234; Rejection of Cleanthes' appeal to indifference 175–7; Prolongation of life of no value 24; Free will 320, 333–4; Will (voluntas) conn. voluntary 329; Laughter conn. unseemliness 290 Clark, David 153–5 Clark, Elizabeth 276, 403, 416 Clark, Gillian 276 Cleanthes, Stoic 97, 175–7; Platonic division of soul? 101 Cleese, John 182 Clement of Alexandria, Church Father 216, 315, 386; Apatheia a human goal 387; Made possible by Christ's resurrection, requires faith and grace 387; Dist. suppressing emotion (enkrateia) 387; Christ was free of emotion 387, 392; Pleasure merely auxiliary to sex and to natural needs, not necessary 388, 407; Hope and love for God compatible with apatheia 387, 388–9; This love makes apatheia possible 389; It involves neither lack 388; Nor satiety 388; But is oikeiōsis sterktikē 388–9; Involving euphrosunē 388; Virtues not needed by perfected humans 188; Demons play a role in producing emotion 347–8 Climacus, Christian ascetic ; First movements as bad thoughts 346, 348; Lingering of thought, assent, and other stages 368; Some emotions natural 386; Love for God bestows or is apatheia 389 Climate ; Affects character 258, 260, 264 Clodius (orator, teacher of Mark Antony, author of antivegetarian tract) 327 Cogito in Augustine 270 Collins, Steven 246 Comedy ; Conn. sense of superiority 290–1; Conn. jealousy 290 Competition , see also Jealousy, Schadenfreude, Ambition, Envy,

Emulation:; Aristotle: Pleasure of competition comes from hope 237 Confession 217, 218, 220, 233 Consolation writings , see alsoPity, Metriopatheia:; Platonist Crantor as first 394; Cicero's Consolation and Tusculans 76–8; Seneca's Consolation to Marcia 178; Techniques in Basil 394–5; Other Cappadocians

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

391–4; Importance of timing 177–8; Christian consoling can express emotion 391–5; Stoic not 390; Sympathy does not require emotion 390; Despite Stoic belief in indifference, Seneca, no less than Christians, can start by acknowledging loss 394; Not Epictetus 390; But Stoic therapy does not dispute loss except in Cleanthes 165, 175; Cicero objects to Cleanthes: wrong time for dispute 176–7; Christian consoling enjoins metriopatheia usually 391–2, 393–5; But Gregory of Nyssa represents Macrina as enjoying apatheia 392–3; Seneca, through believing in apatheia, enjoins on Marcia only metriopatheia 394; Techniques , see alsoTherapy:; Lot of others 18, 177–8, 223–4, 394–5; Others have coped 178, 223–4, 395; Example to others 395; Is it bad or merely unexpected? 161–2, 236; Should have anticipated 177, 394–5; Grieving not help 177–8, 213, 395; Should comfort others 175, 223, 395; Hope of continuation 237–8, 242–3, 248, 249, 394; Even the universe doesn't last 242, 395 Contraception 277, 400 Contraction, expansion 31; A perceptible spatial movement of the physical soul in the chest 38–41, 70, 116; Physiological reinterpretation 40–1, 71 Cooper, John 57, 72, 99, 100, 104, 116, 117, 118, 119, 126, 127, 172 Cooper, Lane 290 Crantor, Platonist ; Utility of emotions 191; Metriopatheia 196; First Consolation 394 Crates, Cynic 197; Sex debunked 274, 411; Exception among Cynics in marrying someone in love with him 274 Curiosity 80, 217 Cynics , see also individual Cynics 218; Sex in public 274, 411 Cyprian, Church Father 394 Cyrenaics , see alsoHegesias, Aristippus:; Anticipate misfortune 236; Unexpected 177 Daly, D. 151 Damascius, Neoplatonist ; Substance of soul can, pace Proclus, be affected 206; Misrepresents Stoic eupatheia 207; Pleasure of intellect a eupatheia 50, 205; Switches from Plato's to Aristotle's definition of pleasure 50, 205 Damasio, Antonio 145, 148, 150, 185 Damon, Pythagorean 85, 130; Music arouses emotion by kinship 84; Music affects character by imitating character 90 d'Andrea, Tom 159 de Haas, Frans 268 de Lacy, Phillip 31, 42 Democritus, Presocratic ; Euthumia, cheerfulness 17–18, 182; Cognitive therapy 18; Appeal to the lot of others 18, 223; Adoption more prudent than procreation 277; Two kinds of love 278; Sex creates painful need 278; Animals responsible for what they do 327 Demons ; Source of bad thoughts and emotions 347–8, 350,

477

350–67 Dennett, Daniel 244–5 Depression, akēdia 152, 211; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 362–3, 364, 366; Depends on gluttony, avarice, vanity 365; Dist. distress 368–9; Dist. collapsed by Gregory the Great 370; In Origen 353, 369; In Basil 369; Converted to sin of sloth 369; cf. katēpheia 387 Descartes 269, 328 Desire , see alsoAppetite, Lust, Satiety135,

478

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

262; Stoic identification of desire with judgement controversial 42–4; Dist. pleasure and love: desire involves a lack 141, 388–9; But Plato says the same of pleasure 201; Natural and/or necessary desires 26, 201, 283 Diadochus, bishop of Photice ; Bad thoughts 348; Christ's human nature 351; Love for God makes apatheia possible 389 Diano, C. 46 Dicaearchus, Aristotelian ; Soul nothing but an attunement of hot, cold, fluid, dry 254 Didymus the Blind, teacher of Rufinus and Jerome 343, 351–2 Diet 213–14, 256, 258, 260, 264, 270–1, 284, 286, 366, 370 Dihle, Albrecht 319 Dillon, John 222, 279, 345–6 Diogenes of Babylon, Stoic ; Music arouses emotion by kinship 84, 90–1; Music affects character by kinship 91; Not by imitation 91; Scientific perception for perceiving harmony vs. irrational perception for perceiving pitch 90; Catharsis 76; End or goal of life 170–1 Diogenes of Sinope, Cynic 197, 218; Sex advocated without love or marriage 274; Sex debunked 274 Dirlmeier, F. 319, 323 Distress 23–4, 29–30, 34, 36, 110, 112, 114, 122, 139; Definition 29–30; Grief pleasurable 80; Distress at memory of lost pleasure 233; Conn. catharsis in tragedy 291–2; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 362, 363, 364; Dist. depression (akēdia) 368–9; Dist. collapsed by Gregory the Great 370; Distress depends on frustration of other emotions 365 Dobbin, Robert 331 Donini, P. L. 62 Drama , see alsoCatharsis76–81, 285–300 Dreams, sexual ; In pagans 27, 284–5, 413–14; In Augustine 115, 381–2, 413–15; Different sources of in Gregory the Great 370–1 Dusōpia, fear of giving offence 213, 217 Edelstein, L. 127 Education 95–7, 128, 256, 258–60, 264–6, 269–70; Paideia 258, 265; Doctrina 264–5; Paideusis 265 Edwards, Catherine 214 Ekman, Paul 151, 160, 272Éliade, Mircea 243 Elias, Christian Neoplatonist 91 Emotions , see alsoChrysippus, Posidonius, Seneca, Galen:; Meaning of pathos 7, 17, 68, 206; Value of emotions: ancient assessment more radical 193; Identified with judgements by Chrysippus 20–1, 29–54, i.e. with assent to appearances 41–2; Identified with false judgements by Chrysippus 21; The judgements are about harm or benefit at hand and the appropriate reaction to it: illustrated for pleasure, distress, appetite, fear 29–30; Per contra (i) Aristotle, Galen: emotions cannot be understood without

physical basis 25, 68, 71–2, 96, 119, 144–55, 253–72; (ii) Plato, Posidonius, Galen: without irrational forces in the soul 86, 93–132, 257–9; (iii) Zeno: Emotion is not false judgement, but is disobedient to one's better judgement 55–61And in this sense without judgement or reason 58Distress and pleasure are also contraction or expansion of soul, appetite and fear a reaching or leaning away 34–5Merely happens ‘on occasion of ’ (epi) disobedient judgement 35, 65And such judgement is not

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

sufficient unless ‘fresh’ 65; (iv) Aristotle, Aspasius: Emotion can be due to appearance without belief 41, 132, 133–4, 228; (v) Two brain tracks, one physical, one cognitive, with varying interconnection 144–55; Agreed by Stoics that emotion is impulse 33, 42–3, 65, 113, 116, 118, 121, 125126; But Aspasius ignores desire 134–5; Are emotions all desires? 140–1, 144; Seneca makes Zeno's disobedience to reason a distinct third stage in anger 61–3; Seneca discounts Posidonius' alleged examples of emotion without judgement, as mere first movements 72–3; Shifting from one emotion to another , see alsoFluttering (ptoia) 23, 34, 56–7, 62, 360–2; Closeness of certain emotions to each other 23; Causal interconnections 182–3, 360–2, 365–6; Emotion voluntary? 45–7, 65; Emotion more concerned with present and future than with past 79, 81, 110, 136–7 Emulation (zēlos) , see alsoCompetition, Jealousy, Envy, Ambition387 End or goal of life (telos) ; Posidonius 97–8; Diogenes of Babylon 170–1; Antipater, end of aiming well dist. from target 171; Epicurus 201, 235 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 44 Englert, Walter 214, 327 Enkrateia, endurance , see alsoKarteria:; Conn. suppression of emotion? 185, 197, 387, 392 Envy (invidia) , see alsoJealousy:; Included in 7 cardinal sins by Gregory the Great 370 Epictetus, Stoic 161, 162–3, 170, 178, 179–80, 187, 219, 241, 244, 320, 366, 398; Handbook used in Christian monasteries, with only rejection of pity suppressed 390; First movements not escaped by sage 68–9, 376–7; But dist. from first movements assent and emotion 376–7, 379; Prothumia 70–1; Bites 68; Personae 250; Lower self and daimonic self 246; God within us 252; True love requires detachment 174–5, 183–4, 216; Questioning appearances, assessing for indifference and training for this 179–80, 187, 215–16; Rules to hand for training 215; Contest appearances even in dreams 413–14; Certain emotions useful in training 51–2; Importance of clarity about what is up to us 214; Only what is up to us matters 214, 225; Or falls under our will (proairesis) 327, 332; Only will (proairesis), desire, judgement is up to us, not anything bodily 215, 332; Proairesis 215, 331–2; Making your true self your will (proairesis) 245; Not your body 225, 245; Ensures freedom 331–2; Other exercises: Relabelling 222; Falsehoods permitted 223; Morning and evening reviews of the day 214; Remember wife and children are mortal 216, 218; Celebrate with sacrifice thirty days free from anger 316; Do not project your desire to approaching food 216; Employ a critic 218; Confession 218 Epicureans , see also under individual Epicureans, esp. Epicurus,

479

Philodemus, Lucretius26–7, 46, 153, 186; Freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) 182, 208; Selective emotion 196, 201–3; Against fear of death 236, 248–9; Hope, value of 235, 237–8; Prolongation of life of no value 241; Marriage only in special circumstances 283 Epicurus 26, 134,

480

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

262; Pleasure goal of life 201, 235; Memorization of his doctrines 237; Changing attention vs. changing doctrine 234; Distracting attention as therapy, esp. to past 27, 88, 165, 177, 216, 233–4; Memory of past, value of 231, 233–4; Rejects anticipating future misfortune 237; Value of letters 217; And of imagining advice from a respected figure 220; Chose to simulate anger 192; Dists. between pleasure as static freedom from distress and kinetic pleasure 201; Static cannot be increased, only varied 201; Natural and/or necessary desires 201, 283; Sex natural but necessary and tends to harm 283–4; Against erotic love 279; Wise will marry only in special circumstances 283; Tame animals responsible for what they do 327; Because of us (par' hēmas) 333; Freedom from any master (adespoton) 333 Eternal recurrence after conflagration (Stoic) 394; Comfort or dismay from recurrence? 242–3; Resignation from end of cosmos 242; cf. 395 Eupatheiai, equanimous states , see alsoLove185; Not yet introduced by Chrysippus? 65; Dist. from emotion (pathos) by being true judgements, not disobedient to reason and not unstable 47–51; Eupatheia already used by Plato 50, 205; Applied to mystical experience 50, 205; To intellectual pleasure 50, 205; Clement of Alexandria: Perfected humans will do without eupatheiai 387; Augustine disagrees 398; Augustine hails Stoic acceptance of eupatheia as acceptance of emotion 207; Caution (eulabeia) exhibited by Christ 344; Eulabeia (caution) 47–51, 344, 387; Euphrosunē (a kind of joy) 48, 387; Euthumia (cheerfulness) 48, 182, 239, 387; Khara (joy) 47–51, 387; Gaudium (joy) 398; Eutolmia, good mettle 51; Love or eupatheia: in mystical experience 50, 142, 205; involves a kind of euphrosunē, joy 388; Aspasmos, Agapēsis are eupatheiai in Stoics 48, 174, 389 Euphrosunē, a kind of joy 48, 387 Euripides 223, 235 Euthumia, cheerfulness, tranquillity 48, 182, 239, 387 Evagrius, desert Father 52, 166, 220, 234; 8 bad thoughts are first movements 358–60; Become 7 cardinal sins 370; Reflects Stoicism 358, 360, 367; Reflects Platonism, including emotional part of the soul 360, 367–8; This affects sense of freedom from emotion (apatheia) 368; Up to us whether bad thoughts linger and arouse real emotion 359; Bad thoughts often imposed by demons, but not always 359, 361–4, 365–7; Dist. temptation/sin; latter involves assent to pleasure 360; Temptations of Christ 353, 365; Aim is apatheia 360–2; Role of vigil and fasting 365, 366, 370; Causal interrelations and sequences of bad thoughts 360–2, 365–6; Playing them off against each other by method of opposites 360–2; But this only approaches frontiers of apatheia 361, 395; Need for God's help and grace for true apatheia 395; Special difficulty of

vanity 360–1, 370; Anger a special obstacle to prayer

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

370; But can be put to good use 395; Other temptations depend on gluttony, avarice, vanity 365–6; Pride and fall of angels 336; Assimilation to God (follows Basil) 395; Assimilation to angels 395; Apatheia produces, and is produced by, love (agapē) 389, 395; Attacked by Jerome 396–7 Falsehood ; Stoics permit 223 Fasting and eating disorders 271, 365, 410–11 Fear 30, 34–5, 64, 110, 112, 114, 139–40, 163–4, 237; Definitions 20, 23, 30; Dist. anticipation of misfortune 235; In catharsis 289, 292–3; Pavor ambiguous between fear and trembling 375–82 Fear of Death ; Of annihilation 228, 237–8, 246–9; Of punishment after death 237, 270; Plutarch distinguishes these 248–9 Ferrier, David 145–50 Fillion-Lahille, Janine 72, 99, 101, 104, 127 First movements , see alsoSeneca35, 144, 207; Also called prepassion 343, 372; Mentioned by Philo of Alexandria 343; Expounded by Seneca, perhaps earlier by Cicero, but examples in Aristotle and (possibly) Chrysippus not yet recognized as such 70–1, 122; In Stoics not the same as emotion 66, 377; Because distinct from assent and judgement 67, 348, 352–3; 2 kinds. Mental: bites and little soul movements caused by appearance, without assent and emotion having yet occurred 66–8, 70; Physical, e.g. pallor, erection, glaring caused by appearance, without assent and emotion having yet occurred 68; Involuntary 69, 353–4; Not escaped by sage 68–9, 376–7, 379; Basis in the brain 148; Allow time for checking emotion 70; Philo of Alexandria 343, 345–6Includes unconventional uses 345–6; Origen 343, 346–51Connects with bad thoughts and so blurs distinction from emotion 346–51, 356Bad thoughts sometimes, not always, suggested by demons 347, 350, 356, 359, 361–4, 365–7; Didymus the Blind 343, 351–2; Jerome 343, 346, 352; First movements as bad thoughts 346, 348, 352–5; Degrees of sin 353–4; Evagrius 357–71; Augustine 344, 346, 355–6, 372, 414Augustine on bad thoughts and suggestions 346, 348, 356On degrees of sin 353, 355–6, 373–5But Augustine misidentifies them with emotions 372–84Application to biblical stories and sayings 344–55; Bad thoughts: Antony 347–8ps.-Makarios 348Cassian 348Climacus 346, 348Diadochus 348Maximus Confessor 348Aquinas 356; Lingering on bad thoughts, enjoying them, putting oneself in the way of them, enjoying the thinking vs. the thing thought 346–7, 356, 359; Dist. assent to appearance, to thought, to its lingering, to the pleasure of the thought or its lingering to the emotion, or the act 355, 360, 368, 372, 373, 374, 376; 8 bad thoughts converted to 7 cardinal sins by Gregory the Great 370 Fluttering (ptoia) 34, 56–7. 62

Fortenbaugh, William 22, 290 Foucault, Michel 276–7 Frank, Dan 385 Frank criticism 196, 217–18, 233 Frankfurt, Harry 340 Frede, Michael 29, 137, 322

481

482

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Freedom ; Autexousion, self-determination 321, 324, 334, 367; Adespoton, having no master 323–5; And will 320, 333–4; And swerve of atoms 320, 333–4; Eleutheron 324; and boulēsis 324–5, 328 Freshness of judgement and fading of emotion 64–5, 109–14 Freud 46, 95, 115–16 Galen, Platonizing ecletic doctor 163, 209, 311; Reliability as source for Chrysippus and Posidonius 99–108; Complains of contradictions in Chrysippus' account of emotion 55–61, 100–1; Praises Plato and Posidonius 93–129, 255–60; Mental states ‘follow’ the blend of hot, cold, fluid, and dry in the body 253; Even rational states do so 259; The mortal soul is that blend 254–5; Feedback from emotions to blends 255; Stoic ‘bites’ in the soul reinterpreted as physiological 40–1; Philosophy and good example cannot on their own produce good character without training of irrational forces in the soul 257; Irrational forces trained by diet, music, gymnastics 257, 258; Reason trained by mathematics 256; by philosophy? 259; Diet also affects character 256; And even progress towards ethical philosophy 260; Climate effects character 260; Spiritual as well as physical exercises: delay in acting on anger 242; Anger not useful for punishment 191; Employ a critic 218; Quench thirst in a leisurely manner 216; Instead of appealing to freshness, Chrysippus could more consistently have said time removes the judgement (associated with fear) that the evil is intolerable 112; Will-power, thumos, boulēsis 324–5 Gauthier, R.-A 195, 319, 320, 328, 329, 338, 360 Gellius, Aulus, compiler of philosophical doctrines 372, 375–8, 383–4; Report on Stoic first movements misunderstood by Augustine 375–84 Ghazāli: Soul not a bodily blend, but survives death to face judgement 270 Gibbon, Edward 91–2 Gilbert, Neal 316, 319, 334 Gill, C. 13, 17, 99, 234, 250 Glad, Clarence E. 217 Gluttony 353; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 364–5; Prerequisite to lust 365; But less culpable than other sources of lust according to Gregory the Great 370–1; Natural or necessary among certain Christians 386 Gnostics , see also Valentinus315, 334 God, assimilation to 387–8, 392, 395; Conn. restoring image of God in us 391, 395 Goldie, Peter 77 Goleman, David 62, 153 Gombrich, Richard 246 Gorgias, Presocratic 18–20 Gosling, Justin 40 Goulet, R. 285 Grant, A. 195

Graver, Margaret 343, 346 Green, O. H. 29, 93, 141, 144 Gregg, Robert C. 166, 196, 391, 393 Gregory of Nazianzus 357; Emotion needed for consoling 392; Metriopatheia enjoined 392; But philosopher can aspire to apatheia 392 Gregory of Nyssa, Church Father: Apatheia an ideal 207, 392–3; 2 kinds, higher leaves only will (thelein) and love (agapē) 392–3; But metriopatheia can sometimes be apatheia in a secondary sense 207, 386, 393; Consolation put into mouth of his dying sister Macrina prefers higher apatheia 393; But even this consolation starts by permitting emotion 392–3; Ordinary consolations by Gregory

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

may use emotion and enjoin metriopatheia 392; Perpetual progress in learning about God 240, 388; Eliminates satiety 388; Freedom and responsibility 324; Stoic contraction of soul interpreted physiologically 40 Gregory the Great, Pope ; Converts 8 bad thoughts into 7 cardinal sins, renaming some and adding envy (invidia) 370; Pride root of all sins 370; Different reasons for sexual dreams and varying culpability 370–1 Grief , seeDistress Griffin, Miriam 19, 62, 70, 383 Grimm-Samuel, Veronika 411 Growing argument 231–2, 244–5 Guillaumont, A. and C. 358, 368 Gurney, Edmund 83 Gymnastics ; Gymnastics and exercise affect character 96, 256, 270–1 Hadot, Pierre 212, 238 Halliwell, Stephen 292 Hanslick, Edward 81–2 Harte, Verity 131, 243 Hate: Not imply distress 135 Haussleiter, J. 271 Hedonism 239, 298 Hegesias, Cyrenaic: Death an escape 236 Helmbold, W.C. 31 Heracleides of Pontos, Platonist: In favour of erotic love 280; Animals responsible for what they do 327 Heraclitus, Presocratic 18, 246, 255 Hermeias, Neoplatonist 279 Hierocles, Neoplatonist 190 Hierocles, Stoic 146, 244; Self embodied vs. self as excluding body 251; Attachment to self in oikeiōsis 251 Hieronymus of Rhodes, Aristotelian: No time to check anger 70; Anger not useful for punishment 191 Hindemith, Paul 82 Hippocrates 221, 255, 298, 361 Hirzel, R. 17 Hobbes, Thomas 184, 290 Holler, E. 72 Homer 80 Homesickness 218, 220 Homosexual love 207–8, 273, 277, 281–2 Hope , see also Anticipation of misfortune:; Disapproved by Stoics, except for novices 235; Stoic reservation qualifies hope 238; Approved by Christians 237, 394; Neoplatonists 238; Epicurus 235, 237–8; Evaluated by Plato 237; Aristotle: Explains competitive pleasure, including those of debate 237; A pre-passion in Philo 346; Compatible with apatheia in Clement of Alexandria 387 Hospers, John 82 Hughes, Chris 124 Hume, David 229

483

Hupothēkai , see also precepts153 Iamblichus, Neoplatonist ; Rejects Plotinian undescended soul except for a few individuals 205; Spherical soul vehicles 189; Attacks Porphyry, his probable teacher 285; Favourable to marriage 285; Sexual enchantment not due to gods 285; Alternative defences of phallic festivals: Metriopatheia by catharsis or aversion therapy 286; Inspiration not due to physical purgation (apokatharsis), but to the gods 295; Faith, truth, love, hope 238; Stresses Pythagoras' catharsis by music 297 Ideas, transmission and revival of 12–13 Ierodiakonou, Katerina 171 Imagery, psychological power of 114–15, 132, 154 Impulse (hormē) 33, 113, 116, 118, 121, 125, 127, 131, 135; Impulse in adult humans is assent or judgement for Chrysippus and Seneca 42–3, 64–5, 113–14, 328–9; But only effect of judgement for Zeno

484

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

43; Non-rational kind in animals and children 103, 127; Impulse not sufficient for action 44–5 Indifferents, preferred and dispreferred 32, 50, 52, 53, 54, 105, 107–8, 141, 181–2, 187, 202, 207, 239, 328, 389; Theory explained 169–73, 235; evaluated 173–4; Relation to therapy 175–80; Attitude compatible with intense motivation 185–6; Contrast with good and benefit 170–2; Indifferents ‘selected’, not chosen 50, 53, 141, 170, 185, 328 Intellect: material 261 Introspection 13, 252 Inwood, Brad 31, 35, 40, 44, 50, 55, 64, 99, 103, 110, 161, 175, 183, 207, 223, 249, 251, 281, 329 Irenaeus, Church Father 315, 334 Irwin, Terry 236, 239, 319, 322, 327 Isaiah the Solitary, St: some emotions natural 386 James, William: We are sad because we cry 150, 160, 272 Jamieson, Dale 124 Janko, Richard 76, 91, 290, 294 Jealousy (phthonos) , see also Envy, Emulation, Ambition, Competition:; Pleasurable 80; Bad 195; Marital 274; Conn. Comedy 290 Jerome, St, Church Father 361; Chastity 224, 284; Encouraged starvation in widow, to reduce sex drive 411; Titillation only a pre-passion 344, 372; Connects pre-passion with bad thoughts 346, 348, 354; Degrees of sin 353–4; Christ's human nature 352, 353; Opposition to Evagrius, Melania, and Rufinus on apatheia 357, 396–7; Like Origen and Pelagians, search for apatheia ignores original sin 396; Hope of resurrection 394 ps.-John of Damascus (John of Damascus, 7th-cent. Christian): 8 Bad thoughts 348, 358; Multiplies stages of emotional struggle, assent to emotion following emotion 368 Jovinian, attacked by Jerome 397 Joy (khara, Latin gaudium):Stoic eupatheia 47–51; Shed by perfected Christians (Clement of Alexandria) 387; Retained by Christians even in next life (Augustine) 398 Judgement ; In Stoicism, assent to appearance 41–2 Julian of Eclanum, bishop, Pelagian opponent of Augustine 335, 399; Visits Carthage 403; Marriage without sex 276; Crucial reply to Augustine: Consent vs. command of will 409, 412; Male member has consent of will, so lust no different from decision to eat or drink, salivation, digestion, sleep 381, 409, 412; Sleep even parallels lust in extinguishing thought about its purpose 409, 415; Neither sleep nor lust need oppose will, if they have consent 409–10; Is desire for privacy in sex universal? 411–12; By what mechanism can Adam's act of will have resulted in genetic transmission of original sin? 416 Kahn, Charles 319, 321, 324, 329, 333 Karteria, endurance , see alsoenkrateia: Conn. suppression of emotion?185, 197

Kenny, Anthony 312 Kent, Bonnie 323, 338, 339 Kerferd, George 319, 323 Khara , see Joy Kidd, Ian 64, 101–2, 107, 127 Kivy, Peter 81–2 Klein, Peter 138 Knowledge of other minds ; via physiological reaction in Philoponus 269–70; Do demons know our thoughts through speech and gestures, or directly? 365 Knuuttila, Simo 94, 316, 343, 372, 382

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

La Bonnardière, A.-M. 343, 373 Lactantius, Church Father 241; Anger need not be concerned with revenge 138; Emotion needed for motivation 185; Attacks search for apatheia 397; Misrepresents Stoic recognition of eupatheiai as general acceptance of emotion 207 Laird, James D. 271, 272 Lamont, John 382, 410, 415 Langer, Suzanne 85 Langslow, David 189 Langton, Stephen 219, 317 Lath, Mukund 82 Laughter ; Disfavoured 290; Cathartic 290; Conn. sense of superiority 290; Conn. jealousy 290; Conn. derision 290; Conn. unseemly 290; Laughter at self only for boors 291 Lautner, Peter 297 Lear, Jonathan 292 Ledbetter, Grace M. 29–30 LeDoux, Joseph 6, 144–50, 181, 272 Leighton, Stephen R. 93 Levinson, Jerrold 80, 82, 85 Lloyd, A. C. 44 Locke, John 243 Long, A. A. 99, 171, 207, 223, 327 Longinus, Neoplatonist 315 Lord's Prayer and forgiveness: Need for daily forgiveness 362, 373–4, 399 Lottin, O. 66, 343, 347, 356 Love 273–87; Love, sex, marriage, and procreation: independent of each other 273–8, 283–4; Cohabitation without sex 276; Homosexual love 207–8, 273, 277, 281–2; Will the wise man fall in love? 280–4; Plato's speeches for and against erotic love 278; Against erotic love: Antisthenes, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aristippus, Cynics, Epictetus 275, 278, 279, 280, 281, 283; 2 kinds of erotic love in Socrates, Plato, Theophrastus, Alcinous, later Stoics 278–80; In favour of (some kind of) erotic love: Aristotle, Heracleides, most Stoics, Plutarch 277, 280–1; Art of love 222, 279; Art of falling out of love (Ovid) 222; Excellence in art of love 282; Love spells, enchantment 285; Epictetus: true love requires detachment 174–5, 183–4; Parental love 174, 183, 388–9; The right kind of homosexual love is not an emotion (pathos) in Stoics 50, 208, 281–3; Agapēsis and aspasmos are kinds of eupatheia in Stoics 48, 174; Mystical love as a eupatheia in Plotinus 50, 142, 205; Clement of Alexandria: Love for God as involving euphrosunē, a kind of joy 388; Counted as stertikēoikeiōsis 388–7; Involves no lack, unlike desire 388; But also no satiety 388; Love for God compatible with apatheia in Clement and many Christians, with various causal relations between the two 387, 388–9, 393; Neoplatonist Faith, truth, love, hope 238

485

Lucas, D. W. 291 Lucretius, Epicurean 27, 222; Pleasure in safe viewing of storm-tossed non-Epicureans 224; Asymmetrical attitude to past and future 228–31; Against fear of death 236; Prolongation of life of no value 241; Body reassembly of us after breaking off of memory of no concern to us 243; Emotion and character follows hot and cold in body 264; Mercy no different from pity in this regard 264; Apatheia impossible 265; Teaching (doctrina) can override body only to some extent 264–5; Sex at random advocated; marriage is only for procreation 275, 283; Erotic love discouraged 275, 283; Free will 320, 333–4 Lust , see alsoSex, Augustine, Julian of Eclanum139–40, 273–87,

486

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

400–17; Independent of love, marriage, procreation seeLove; Relation to will 316, 337, 380–1, 404–10; One of Evagrius' less troublesome bad thoughts 358–9, 362, 363, 364, 366, 367, 370, 400; Depends on gluttony 365, 370; Opposed to vanity 361; Natural or necessary among certain Christians 386; Lust and pleasure not necessary for sex in Clement of Alexandria and Augustine 388, 406–9; Augustine's main objection that lust and male member not subject to will 337, 380, 404–6; Anger supposedly different 380–1; Julian of Eclanum's reply 409–10, 416–17; Further replies 410–13 Lyco, Aristotelian 177 Macaulay, Lord 159 MacIntyre, Alasdair 124, 171 MacIntyre, Jane L. 142 MacLean, Paul 145, 150 Macrina, Christian ascetic, sister of Gregory of Nyssa: Apatheia 392–3 Madden, John D. 320, 338 Madell, Geoffrey 82, 84, 137 Magee, Bryan 83 Maimonides, Jewish philosopher 197; Apatheia and metriopatheia alternative ideals 385; Pride and anger excluded from both 386 ps.-Makarios (Makarios, desert Father, mentor of Evagrius) ; Two wills in humans 315–16; Bad thoughts 348; List of sins 358–9; Some thoughts natural rather than bad 386; Love for God makes apatheia possible 389 Manichaeans ; Contraception better than procreation which traps soul in matter 277, 400; Two minds or souls in humans 315–16 Mansfeld, Jaap 319, 325 Marcus Aurelius, Stoic, Roman emperor, author of Meditations ; Present only of concern 239–40; Prolongation of life of no value 241 Marcus, Ralph 345–6 Mark, the Ascetic, St, desert Father 368 Markesinis, B. 338 Marriage ; Treated by many pagan philosophers as independent of sex, love, procreation seeLove; But Plutarch: conn. companionship and sex 277, 410; Musonius Rufus: conn. sharing, agreement, mutual concern 277–8; Stoics advocate marriage 277, 181; In Stoics Antipater and Musonius some level of equality required 277–8; Epicureans: wise man will marry only in special circumstances 283; Marriage only for procreation: Antisthenes, Lucretius 275, 283; Crates exceptional among Cynics in marrying someone who loved him 274; Communal partners in Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus 274; Concubinage vs. marriage 401, 402 Mathematics: In education 256 Matthews, Gary 414

Maximus, Confessor, Christian 320, 321; Christ had two wills 317–18, 337–8; His preferred definition of will is a definition of Stoic oikeiōsis 337–9; Will independent of reason 337–8; Multiplies stages of emotional struggle 368; Assent of intellect follows emotion 368 Maximus of Tyre, orator, Middle Platonist: Metriopatheia 196 McGinn, Colin 138 Medius, Stoic 315 Melania, St, co-sponsor and addressee, with Rufinus, of Evagrius 357, 395; Marriage without sex 276; Attacked by Jerome on apatheia 397

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Melzack, R. 199 Memory: Therapeutic value 231–4 Metriopatheia, Moderate, moderation of, emotion , see alsoApatheia:; Not all emotions acceptable 195, 208, 380, 386, 399; Implies not medium quantity, but appropriate emotion 195; Accepted by Aristotle 169; but not for Schadenfreude 195; Crantor 196; Taurus 196; Maximus of Tyre 196; Sotion 196; Iamblichus: phallic festivals may produce metriopatheia by catharsis 286–7; Accepted by Augustine 380, 398; but not for lust or pride 399; Use for consolation writings 391–5; Utility of emotion 149, 162, 181, 190–3, 197; Aristotelians 191; Platonists: Crantor, Alcinous 191; Themistius 197; Lactantius 191, 195; Philo 386; Does punishment require anger? 191–2, 203; Does sex require pleasure? 192, 388, 406–9; Natural and/or necessary desires 26, 201, 283, 388; Natural and/or necessary pleasures 201, 386, 388; Natural and/or necessary emotions 201–2, 386; Natural thoughts 386; Natural and/or necessary preference 65 Midgley, Mary 216 Milinda =Menander 246 Moods 152, 211 Moraux, Paul 285 Motivation not require emotion 170–1, 185–6 Mullins, Ann 313 Music 81–92, 234; Does it arouse emotion? 81–4, 87–8; Does it arouse judgement? 81–4, 87–8, 130–2; Arouses emotion by kinship? 84; Affects character of soul 96–7, 128, 256, 258; By imitating character 90; Merely distracts? 88, 234; Spatial movements of sound produce spatial movements of soul 86; In education 97, 289; Effects catharsis 288–9; Scientific perception of harmony 90 Musonius, Rufus, Stoic 153, 215, 332, 366; Sex in marriage only for procreation 276; Marriage requires sharing, agreement, mutual concern, equal fidelity in both partners 277–8 Nabokov, Vladimir 229 Natorp, P. 195 Natural, necessary ; Desire 26, 201, 283, 388; Pleasure 201, 386, 388; Preference 65; Emotion 201–2, 386; Anger 202; Thoughts 386 Necessary, natural , seeNatural Nemesius, bishop: Apatheia and metriopatheia ideals for different people 392 Neu, Jerome 93 Nicasicrates, Epicurean? Apatheia 202 Nicev, Alexander 294 Nilus, St, Abbot: Credited with works by Evagrius 357 Novelty: As object of wonder, in lieu of benefit or harm 142 Nussbaum, Martha 27, 82, 85, 89, 90, 93–4, 115–16, 128, 175, 190, 217, 222, 283, 292

487

Obscenity in ritual 286–7 Oikeiōsis, unity of mankind 174, 183, 251–2; In Zeno and Epictetus, unity only of the virtuous 184; Oikeiōsis borrowed by Clement of Alexandria to describe love for God 388–9; By Maximus Confessor to describe will 337–9 Olympiodorus, Neoplatonist 221; Classification of therapies—5 types of catharsis: giving a taste, opposites, similars, also instruction, criticism 297–9, 361 Opinion , seeBelief

488

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Opsomer, Jan 246, 261 Origen, Church Father 220, 397; Connects first movements with bad thoughts, thus blurring distinction from emotion 343, 346–51, 359, 382; Bad thoughts sometimes suggested by demons, sometimes natural 347, 350; Temptations of Christ 353; Does not think resurrection bodies spherical 189; Two wills in humans 315; Does only God will? 320; Natures of Christ 349; Ever increasing desire for God eliminates satiety 388 Orthodoxy vs. originality 101–3 Ortony, Andrew 29, 136 Ovid on relabelling 179; On Art of Love and Falling out of love 222, 279 Pain, physical 27–8, 198–200 Palladius, pupil of Evagrius, chronicler of the monks 361 Panaetius, Stoic 331; Division of soul? 103; Apatheia only in special sense 106–7; Indifferents 107–8, 170; Personae 249; Non-wise liable to be carried away by love 280 Parfit, Derek 163, 167, 230, 243, 246 Passingham, R. E. 145 Past, present, future ; Stoics think emotions do not concern past harm or benefit 110, 136–7, 228; ‘Once upon a time’ reduces emotion 79, 81; Asymmetrical attitude to past and future 228–31; Memory of past, therapeutic value or disvalue 231, 233–4, 240; Repentance 233; Anticipation of misfortune , see s.v.; Do not pin hopes on future 235; Hope approved 235, 237–8, 394; Confine concern to present 239–40; Abstract from past, present, future 240–2 Paul, St 217, 237, 315, 320, 365, 394, 413 Paulinus of Nola, bishop: Marriage without sex 276 Pavlov 149 Pelagius and Pelagianism , see alsoJulian of Eclanum:; British thinker 417; Pelagius visits Carthage 403; Denies original sin, exonerates lust 396–7; Hence alleged to believe apatheia and sinlessness attainable 396, 399; Lust natural, only needs moderation 404, 417; Marriage good 403; Augustine alleged to be anti-marriage and still Manichaean 403 Personae (Greek prosōpa) , see alsoUniversalizability249–50, 412–13 Peter of Poitiers 219, 317 Philo of Alexandria, Jewish philosopher ; Praises semianchorite community 358; First movements applied to biblical stories 343, 345–6; Apatheia and metriopatheia alternative ideals but apatheia is progress 385–6; Emotions helpful 386; Some pleasures necessary 386; Sex in marriage only for procreation 276; Pity valued and compatible with apatheia 386, 389–90; Repentance valued 233, 386; Eutolmia, good mettle 51; Eupatheiai 50–1; confused with ‘bites’ 50–1 Philodemus, Epicurean 26, 46, 240; Music does not produce

emotion, except via words 81; Because cause must be propositional like effect 87–8; Wordless music merely distracts attention 88, 234; Sex is a source of pain 284; Pride 222, 298, 370; Natural anger vs. anger based on empty beliefs 202; Anger can be concerned with correction instead of revenge 138; It is close in some ways to Stoic freedom from anger

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

202; Ordinary anger not useful for punishment 191; Accuses Aristotelians of accepting unbridled anger 210; Anger can be simulated 192; On frank criticism 196, 217; Confession 217 Philoponus, Christian Neoplatonist 71; Perception ‘supervenes’ on a bodily blend 267; Mental states do not follow blends necessarily, since philosophy can counteract the body 267; Power of the lecturer to affect emotional character, however, works via bodily change 269–70; Knowledge of other minds also through physiological change 269–70; 3 mind–body relations: following, supervening, explaining 267–9; Cause need not be like effect 85 Philosophy ; Has a role in calming emotion 159–66; Galen: Philosophical psychology guides education 260; Galen, Posidonius: Philosophy cannot on its own train the irrational capacities of the soul 257; Philoponus: It can, however, counteract the bodily blend 267–8; But via physiological change 269–70; Aristotle: Pleasures of philosophical debate conn. hope 237 Physiognomy , see also Blend, Body96, 258 Pink, Tom 339 Pitcher, George 93 Pity , see alsoConsolation Writing:; Definitions 23, 30; In catharsis 24, 289, 291–2, 389; Antidote to anger and hate 366; Pity rejected by Stoics as pathos 389–90; Dist. mercy, which accepted 162, 192, 390–1; Distinction attacked 264; Christians suppress only treatment of pity from Epictetus'Handbook 390; Pity compatible with apatheia in Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Basil 386, 389–91, 392; But Clement means taking pity 390–1; Only God is superior enough genuinely to pity 390–1; Early Augustine also rejects feeling pity, in favour of taking pity, but later recants 396–7; Sympathy not imply emotion 390; Christian consoling can express emotion 391–5, Stoic not 390; Seneca and Christians can acknowledge loss 394, Epictetus not 390 Placilla (Latin Flacilla), Christian ascetic 392 Plantinga, Alvin 414 Plato 19–21, 22, 80–1, 182, 222, 230, 262; The Soul: immortality 249; Vicarious immortality through children 249; Unitary soul of Phaedo 304, 310; Tripartite division of soul 43–4, 63–4, 94–5, 101–2, 303, 305–6, 309–10, 368, 382–3; But soul might regain unity 187, 310; Non-rational parts of the soul compared with horses, influencing Freud 95–6; Training to balance them with reason starts in the womb, involves diet, music, exercise, gymnastics, aesthetic surroundings 96, 256, 258, 264, 270–1; Climate affects character 264; Visual arts affect character 270–1; Scales and rhythms contrasted with words as merely calming the irrational part 128; Music arouses emotion by kinship 84; Music affects character by imitating character 90; Non-rational parts of soul can

489

entertain beliefs 126; Intellect is true self 250; The inner man is reason 250; Reason is trained by mathematics 256, 260; The soul is not a blend, or attunement 254; For an attunement ‘follows’ the physical conditions 254; Movements of soul are spatial 86, 116–17, 258–9; Spatial movements of sound produce

490

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

spatial movements of soul 86, 117; Physical movements can disturb or calm soul movements 116–17, 265; Proclus' resistance to this 265; Body affects soul 255–6, 264; But education (paideusis) counteracts bodily disturbance 265; Akrasia, going against better judgement 303, 305–10, 316; Akrasia involuntary 308; Self-deception 309, 316; Fluttering of soul (ptoia) 57, 313; Pleasure, distress, appetite, fear highlighted 136; Discusses opponents of pleasure 195; Some desires and pleasures necessary 201, 386; Approves some pleasures 201; Yet pleasure seen as a process of replenishment implying lack 205; Aristotle corrects this 205; Damascius favours Aristotle's rival definition of pleasure in order to extol pleasures of intellect 205; Pleasure and danger of hope 237; False hope 237; Pleasure as source of self-deception 309; Pleasure in jealousy 80; Pleasure in anger 80; Pleasure of viewing corpses 80; Pleasures and dangers of hope 237; Most pleasures mixed with distress 237; Hedonistic calculus 239; Homosexual love advocated without sex or marriage 273, 278; Sex advocated without love or marriage 274; Communal female partners 274; Sex without procreation after childbearing age 277; Lust as necessary 283; For and against erotic love 278; 2 kinds of erotic love 278; Art of love and its three objectives 279, 282; Excellence in this art 282; Learning how to handle lust and fear rather than avoiding them 287; Sexual dreams and unconscious 27, 413; Banishment of poets for arousing wrong emotions 288; Including fearful emotions of pity and grief 291–2; Defended by Proclus against Aristotle 295–6; Comedy conn. jealousy 290; Will: thumos 323choice of lives (haireisthai) 323–4freedom from any master (adespoton) 323–4responsibility (aitia, anaitios) 323–4boulēsis 306–8, 322–3; Anger not useful for punishment 191; Delay in acting on anger 241; Fear as expectation of evil 20, 64; Eupathein 50; Anticipates later therapies 213 Pleasure , see alsoSatiety22, 30, 34, 36, 139, 201; Definitions 23–4, 30; Opponents of pleasure 195, 284; Plato approves pleasure of intellect 201; Dist. desire: pleasure need not involve a lack 141; But Plato defines pleasure as replenishment, which implies a lack 205; Aristotle disagrees 205; Damascius backs Aristotle, in order to extol pleasures of intellect 205; For Damascius these need involve no shock 205; Proclus and Damascius think of them as eupatheiai 205; Epicurus: pleasure goal of life 201, 235; Epicurus dists. pleasure as static freedom from distress from kinetic pleasure 201; Aristotle on pleasures of art and drama 80; Natural and/or necessary pleasures 201, 386, 388; Schadenfreude 195; Pleasure taken in the unpleasant 80; Pleasure in safe viewing of storm-tossed 224; Pleasure at memory of pain endured 233; Pleasures of hope 237; These explain pleasures of competition

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

237; Pleasure as source of self-deception 309; Clement and Augustine: does sex require pleasure? 388, 407 Plested, Marcus 315, 348 Plotinus, Neoplatonist 244, 320, 355; Reduced diet and sleep 271; Apatheia and Metriopatheia ideals for different stages 197, 203; Apatheia achieved by some souls after death 189; Apatheia achieved by purification 203; In one sense, soul always has apatheia 203; In another sense, only the undescended soul has apatheia 203, 205; Shocks affect body rather than soul 28, 204; Shock without harm in mystical experience 204, 372; Part of soul undescended from intelligible world, uninterruptedly contemplates without our normally being conscious of it 203, 205; Undescended soul rejected 205–6; Vehicles of soul spherical 189; Virtues, civic and purified 203; The self 232; The inner man 250–1, 252; Three selves 251; The true self as power of step-by-step reasoning 250–1; We should aspire to identify with intellect 190; Introspection 252; Disowned emotion shows emotion is not judgement 122; No judgement, because no duality, in mystical love 142; Belief not dist. from appearance 28; Imagery dropped in mystical experience 115; Imagery a test of being in love 115; Cause need not be like effect 85; Stoic contraction of soul interpreted physiologically 40; Stoics ignore contribution of body to emotion 142; Timelessness of happy life 240; So memory of past not valuable 234, 240; Nor prolongation 240; Choice of lives, freedom, responsibility 324; Pride, will (boulesthai, thelein), and tolma 334, 336 Plutarch of Chaeroneia, Middle Platonist 153, 162, 207, 228, 241, 244, 272; Music comforts non-rational element in soul 91; Tranquillity 182; Time available to check anger 70; Anger not useful for punishment 191; Misrepresents Stoic recognition of first movements as acceptance of emotion 207; Similarly for eupatheiai 207; Similarly for homosexual love 207; But also accuses Aristotelians of accepting the cruelty of anger 209–10; Memory, value of 231–3, 234, 245; Weaving life together autobiographically 231–3, 245; Momentary self 246–8; Confession 218; Exercises against curiosity and against fear of giving offence 213; Appreciating something more by imagining it absent 216; Marriage conn. companionship and sex 277, 410; Homosexuality assessed 277 ps.-Plutarch ; Opposite capacities, unlike opposite activities, can coexist 305 Pohlenz, Max 44, 55, 63–4, 127–8, 195, 196, 319, 329, 343, 391 Porphyry, Neoplatonist 320; Apatheia and Metriopatheia ideals for different stages 197, 203; Faith, truth, love, hope 238; Philosophers should not marry, but Porphyry married without sex 276; Sex in marriage only for procreation 276; Sex impedes intellect 284; Vegetarianism 271;

491

Vegetarianism controls lust 284; Avoiding temptation rather than learning how to handle it 284, 286–7; Demons stir up emotions 348; Sexual dreams persist

492

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

413–14; Inspiration as physical purgation (apokatharsis) 295; Anxiety about role of gods in love spells 285 Posidonius, Stoic 163; Emotions central to moral philosophy and education 95; Reverts to Plato's tripartition of soul, recognizing, besides reason, two irrational ‘capacities’, thumos (aggression) and epithumia (appetite) 94–5, 128, 258; Capacities not parts 94–5, 314; The last two capacities called the emotional (pathētikon) element of the soul 95; These require a different, non-rational training 85, 96; Since cause is like effect 85, 114, 117, 130; Their emotional movements are spatial movements 86, 116–17; The movements depend on physiognomy 96, 258; Adopts Plato's comparison with horses 95–6; Psychodynamic tug among capacities 95; Training of irrational capacities starts in the womb, following Plato, and involves seed, behaviour of mother, diet, habituation e.g. by rhythms and scales 96–7, 128, 258; The lower capacities of soul, wrongly ignored in Chrysippus' unitary conception of soul, explain why philosophy and good example do not on their own produce good character 98, 257; Contradictions in Chrysippus' account of emotion 58–9, 101; The lower capacities have different affiliations (oikeiousthai) 98, 257; Hence the natural aggression in animals and children 125, 129; Different virtues and natures cultivated corresponding to different capacities 97–8; The irrational capacities differ from Plato's in not making judgements 126; They do not have understanding (epistēmē) 128; Whereas training of reason involves instruction 96; And anticipation (proendēmein) of misfortune 97, 236–7; Reason takes control at age fourteen 96; Music as training irrational character 96–7; And affecting emotion 85–6; Spatial movements of sound produce spatial movements of soul 86, 258–9; Emotional movements of soul not identical with impulse 116, 131; Emotional movements unlike Seneca's first movements 117–20; Though ‘bites’ are recognized by Posidonius 68, 116, 131; Climate also affects character 258; But only in respect of irrational characteristics 259; Diet affects characters 96–7, 258; Platonic emotional element in soul ineradicable 105–7, 186; So apatheia is only freedom from unnatural emotion 105–7; But indifference: doctrine accepted 107–8, 170; And pain not an evil 107, 198; Reply to Chrysippus' intellectualist account of emotion as judgement: judgement not invariably needed for emotion 41–2, 147; Since emotional movements can be sufficient (i) in music 81, 83–4, 130(ii) in the case of disowned tears 122(iii) in the case of animal emotion 125Animals have emotion 125But not reason 125Nor judgement 126; Yet judgement is typically involved in emotion 104–5; Judgements never sufficient for emotion (i) irrational movements of emotional part also required, as shown by emotions fading faster than judgements, due to satiety with movements

112–14; satiety dist. satisfaction 112–13; Zeno's and Chrysippus' call for

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

493

‘freshness’ of judgement does not explain fading of Pythagoreans , see alsoPythagoras235, 298; Exercises 213–14; emotion 98, 111–12; (ii) irrational imagination may be Giving up meal, reviewing the day, hard bed, cold baths, needed as well as rational judgement 114; this also explains anger makes you ugly 213–14; Vegetarianism, and sparse progressive's lack of distress at not having reached virtue diet 271; Sex only for procreation 114–15; Emotion is impulse 116, 118, 125, 126; Nonrational impulse in animals and children 127; Posidonius recognizes will-power 330–1 Prasad, Ram 141 Precepts , see alsohupothēkai153, 161, 171 Pre-passion , seeFirst movements Pride ; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 364; Dist. vanity 368–9; Depends on avarice in Evagrius 365; Per contra root of all other sins in Ecclesiasticus, Augustine, and Gregory the Great 336, 370, 399; Pride is reason for the Fall of men and angels in Augustine 335–7; Theophrastus on pride 25, 221, 360; Aristo of Ceos on pride 25–6, 221, 298, 370; Conn. tolma in Plotinus 334; Neopythagoreans 334; Gnostics 334; Augustine: Denial of need for forgiveness is pride or vanity 399 Proairesis ; Epictetus 215–16, 245–6, 327, 331–3; Aristotle 310–11, 325–7; Origen 351; Gregory of Nyssa 324; Plotinus 324; Alexander 327–8; Aquinas'electio 328 Proclus, Neoplatonist ; Rejects Plotinus' undescended soul 205–6; Only activities, not essence, of soul can be affected 206, 265; Effect of soul on body an illusion, despite Timaeus 265–6; Body can impede but not assist the soul 265; Galen denies this and gives natural reading of Plato's Timaeus 260; Education (paideia) is what assists the soul 265; As Plato Timaeus agrees (paideusis) 265; Recognizing whom to love 279; Faith, truth, love, hope 238 Procope, John vii , 203 Procreation 275–7, 281, 283; For vicarious immortality 249; Manichaeans prefer contraception 277; Democritus: adoption more prudent 277; Relation to marriage: sole purpose, required, not required 275–6, 281, 283 Progressing 114–15, 171, 234, 351, 385–6; Emotions can be useful to the progressing novice 51–2, 235 Prosokhē, self-interrogation , seeAttention, Introspection Prothumia 52–3, 68, 70–1 Providence 239 Psychoanalysis , see alsoFreud212 Punishment 241; Corrective purpose in Stoics 191–2; Not served by ordinary anger 191–2, 203; After death 237, 270 Purinton, Jeff 284 Pyrrhonian sceptics ; Apatheia for emotions 198, 224; Metriopatheia for physical pain 27–8, 198–200; Ataraxia freedom from disturbance 182; Causal interconnection of emotions 182–3 Pythagoras, Presocratic ; Music as comfort 91; Music as producing a type of catharsis 297; Therapy by giving a taste 298; Marriage 285

494

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

277; Neopythagoreans , see alsoCebes, Tablet of 271, 272; Tolma and pride 334 Quintilian, rhetorician 91; Laughter conn. derision 290 Rabbow, Paul 72, 111–12, 176, 208, 212, 217 Radford, Colin 77 Range (platos), latitude of forms 268 Rapp, Claudia 357 Rappe, Sara 271 Reason ; Highest part of Plato's tripartite soul 43–4; Doxastikos (opiniative) vs. epistēmonikos (scientific) logos 205 Relabelling 115, 179, 222 Reservation ; In wanting 53–4, 219–20, 317, 329; In expecting 53–4, 238 Resurrection bodies spherical 189 Rist, John 44, 66, 70, 206, 207, 209, 329, 334 Romanticism 173, 185 Rosenberg, Alex 412 Rousselle, Aline 276, 401 Rufinus, Christian, translator into Latin 343, 346, 347, 348–9, 357, 359, 372, 395, 397; Sponsor and addressee of Evagrius 357, 395; Translator of Origen, Basil, Sentences of Sextus, Evagrius 395–6; Attacked by Jerome 396–7; Natures of Christ 349 Rüther, Theodore 386–7 Saarinen, Risto 219, 316–17, 343, 356 Sachs, David 46, 93 Saffrey, H.-D. 285 Sage ; Epicurean 217; Stoic 32, 47, 49–50, 51–2, 217 Salles, Ricardo 333 Sandbach, H. 207 Satiety ; Dist. satisfaction as a reason for emotion fading 112–13; Conn. catharsis 297; Love as avoiding both lack and satiety 388 Savile, Anthony 40 Schachter, S. 149–50 Scheler, Max 390 Schenkeveld, P. 285 Schmitt, Émile 406 Schofield, Malcolm 275, 339 Schopenhauer 83, 85 Schroeder, Frederic M. 261, 285 Sedley, David 55, 99, 102, 116, 243, 271, 319, 323, 324, 326, 330 Selection, eklogē , seeIndifferents Self 162, 232; Momentary 239, 246–8; vs. woven together 244–5; Self acting on self 244, 246; Lower self and daimonic self 246; Self preserved in eternal recurrence? 243; Breaking off memory terminates concern for self 243; Same matter in same arrangement preserves self 243; Self vs. constitution 248; Includes irrational forces 249; Personae 249; Intellect as true self in Plato 250; The inner man 250–1, 252; Power of step-by-step reasoning as true

self in Plotinus 250–1; Attachment to self in oikeiōsis 251–2; Self including or excluding one's body 251 Self-awareness (sunaisthanesthai) 39 Sen, Joe 231 Seneca, the Younger, Stoic 19, 24, 80–1, 100, 139, 144, 179, 234, 237–8, 241, 272, 399; Third movements accommodate Zeno's disobedience to reason as a stage in anger distinct from Chrysippus' mistaken judgement of reason 61–3; Zeno's akrasia, lack of control, comes in with third movements 56–7; First movements of body or soul caused by appearance without assent or emotion having yet occurred 66–9; This answers Posidonius' alleged emotion without judgements, which is only first movement 72–3; For music arouses only first movements 72, 81, 84, 89, 130Hence also Aristotle's catharsis will not work

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

76–7; And Posidonius' disowned tears are only first movements 123; Posidonius' animals also lack genuine emotion, since they are capable of appearance but not of judgement 72, 129, 377; First movements involuntary, not escaped by sage 69; Contrast with emotion, which is a voluntary judgement 69–70; Hence emotion subject to therapy 69–70; Therapy: attack second judgement, rather than first 165, 175, 178; Value of precepts 153, 171; Confession 218; Value of memory of past 231; Pleasure at memory of pain endured 233; Suicide 173; Possibility of suicide a guarantee of freedom 214; Falsehoods permitted 223; Unostentatious early retirement from rat race may be best 401; Lotofothers 224; Endurance by others 224; Reviewing the day, hard bed, cold baths, anger makes you ugly, vegetarianism 213–14; Apatheia: Mercy substituted for pity 162, 192, 390; Seneca's consolations do not express grief, but do acknowledge loss 165, 390, 394; To Marcia he enjoins only metriopatheia 394; Even physical pain reduced by opinion 198; Aristotelian metriopatheia ridiculed as belief in moderate disease 208–9; Anger not useful for punishment 191; Moderation of anger impractical 209; Tranquillity (euthumia) 182; Indifference cited or denied according to interlocutor 165, 179; Indifferents valuable for novices 171–2; Voluntas in broad sense of impulse, conn. voluntary 329; And is a judgement 42–3, 64–5, 328; Will is a judgement: Seneca not separate it off from reason 44; Prolongation of life of no value 241; Eternal recurrence a comfort 242; Soul may survive for a while 237–8, 242, 248, 394; Momentary self 246–8; God within us 252; Lampoons emperor Claudius 189 Sex , see alsoLust, Dreams, sexual:; Independent of love, marriage, procreation seeLove; Random sex advocated 274, 275, 280, 283; Sex debunked 274, 275, 283, 411; Best avoided 273, 276–7, 284–7; Not depend on lust and pleasure? 388, 406–9; Sex in public and shame 274, 380, 406, 411–12 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonian sceptic 27–8; Apatheia for emotion 198–200; Metriopatheia for physical pain 198–200 Sextus, Sentences of, pagan spiritual work, selected and edited by a Christian 396 Shaivism 246 Shame at sex, evolutionary, versus Lapsarian explanations 380, 406, 411–12 Sharples, R. W. 89, 261, 328 Shell shock 6, 146 Shiloah, A. 91 Shocks , see alsoshell shock; Seneca 73, 151; Plotinus 28, 203–4, 205; Augustine 204, 355; Damascius 205 Sihvola, Jules 234 Simplicius: Repentance 233; Catharsis combined with aversion

495

therapy 297; Faith, truth, love, hope 238 (ps.-)Simplicius, in DA =Priscian (?) ; Cause need not be like effect 85 Simulation of anger 192 Sin , see alsoLord's Prayer and forgiveness:; Degrees of sin and of penance 353–4; Depends on assent 360; Dist. assent to pleasure, to lingering, to action 355–6, 360, 368, 372, 373; Seven cardinal sins 370 Sin, original , see also

496

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Pelagius, Pelagianism:; Defined 396, 403; Starts from Adam's disobedience 396; Transmitted by lust 396, 403; Hence Christ free from 353; Makes us dependent on grace 396; and baptism 403; Makes apatheia unachievable 396; Denied by Pelagius and followers 396; Upheld by Jerome and Augustine 396 Singer, J.E. 149–50 Sirridge, Mary 374 Skinner, Quentin 290 Slaves, treatment of 241 Sleep, reduction of 271, 365, 410–11 Socrates ; Model for apatheia 69, 197; Reason overcame bodily tendencies 267; Behaviour therapy 271–2; Akrasia 306–7, 310–11; Therapy by similars 221; 2 kinds of love 278 Solomon, Robert 93 Sorabji, Richard 12, 21, 65, 117, 126, 129, 135, 159, 167, 174, 183, 188, 191, 229, 240, 242, 244, 246, 312, 322, 327, 328, 338, 340, 388, 417 Sotion, Pythagorean ; Metriopatheia 196 Soul , seeAristotle, Chrysippus, Plato, Posidonius:; Division of 43–4, 57, 63–4, 94–5, 98, 101–3, 128, 187, 258, 303–13, 382–3; Parts vs. capacities 94–5, 313–14, 316; Two souls 315–16 Spanneut, Michel 196, 210, 386–7, 390 Speusippus, Platonist ; Virtue as apatheia 194–5, 197; Aokhlēsia 195; Against pleasure 195; Lust excludes thought 405–6; Scientific perception of harmony 90 Statues of philosophers 186 Steel, Carlos 206, 268 Stephenson, Leslie 141 Stewart, Columba 315 Stockdale, Jim and Sibyl 179, 225–7 Stocker, Michael 93–4, 115, 132, 141, 144, 183, 186, 189, 192 Stoics , see under individual Stoics, esp. Chrysippus, whose views came to be seen already in antiquity as Stoic orthodoxy, so that, conversely, views seen as orthodox tended to be ascribed to him 255, 262; Stoicisim is not gritting your teeth, but seeing things differently 1; Eternal recurrence 242; Soul survives for a while 237–8, 242, 248; Oikeiōsis 251–2, 338–9; Capacities, not parts, of soul 316; see alsoPosidonius; Marriage and procreation advocated 281; Two kind of love 280; Better kind not an emotion, but educative epibolē 281–3; Wise man will fall in love 280–2; Therapy by opposites 298 Stone, Martin 338 Storr, Anthony 84 Strawson, Peter 189 Striker, Gisela 171 Suicide ; Permissible occasions 172, 226; Possibility as source of freedom 214; Encouraged: Hegesias 236 Sundara, Rajan 115–16

Suppression of emotion , seeenkrateia, karteria185 Taurus, Middle Platonist 40; Metriopatheia 196 Taylor, Charles 252 Taylor, Christopher 40 Temptation , see alsoWill, Akrasia21, 56–7, 303–18, 357–71, 400–17; Bad thoughts as temptations (peirasmoi) 359–60; Temptations of Christ 353, 365 Terian, Abraham 345–6 Tertullian, Church Father ; Marriage without sex praised 276; Free power of choice 320; Hope of resurrection 394 Themistius, orator, commentator on Aristotle ; Utility of emotions 197 Theodoret, Christian ; Some emotion necessary and useful 386

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Theophrastus, Aristotelian 25, 221; Metriopatheia 209; Two kinds of erotic love? 278–9 Therapy , see alsoConsolation211–52, 394–5; Metabolism from physical medicine 17–19; Retrospective vs. prospective 161, 212; Techniques see esp. 211–52 and Consolation; Philosophical contributions to therapy (i) Voluntariness of emotion 45–7, 69–70, 160(ii) Identification of appearances to be questioned 160(iii) Discounting first movements 69–70(iv) Need for speed 160; Relation of philosophy to techniques 161–3; Attacks on 1st judgement 179; Attacks on 2nd judgment 175, 178; Therapy can exploit half-truths in Chrysippus' analysis, e.g. a non-conceptual necessity for judgements 140, 164; or a need for appearance 132, 143, 163; Therapy can use falsehoods 223; Extinction therapy 152; Cognitive therapy 153–5; Behavioural therapy 151, 271–2; Physical therapies 256, 258–60, 270–1, 272; see alsoDiet, Gymnastics, Music; Aversion therapy: relation to catharsis 286, 297; Reinforcement 216; Anticipation of misfortune , seeAnticipation of misfortune and Unexpected; Recognizing what is not in your power and its indifference 215; Only restricted appeal to indifference 175–6, 179–80; Valuing suicide 214; Relabelling 115, 179, 222; Catharsis , see s.v.; Timelapse, effects of , see s.v.; Memory, value of 231–4; Switching attention 165, 271, and seeAttention; Suspending judgement 271; Avoiding temptation vs. learning how to handle 286; Olympiodorus' reclassification of catharsis: Pythagoreans (giving a taste); Aristotle, Stoics, Hippocrates (opposites); Socrates (similars) 221, 297–9, 361 Thillet, P. 285, 328 Thumos , see alsoAnger:; Middle part of Plato's tripartite soul 43–4; Relation to will 323–5 Tieleman, Teun 38–9, 58, 64, 99, 104, 120 Time, circular 242 Time-lapse, effects of , see alsoPast, present, future:; Time-lapse needed in consolation 176–7; Delay recommended in satisfying appetite 216, 241; How much time is available for checking anger? 70, 160, 241–2; Speed needed for checking bad thoughts 366; Emotions fade with time, because of reassessment 112, 236–7; Because judgements change 109–14, 241; Because irrational forces tire 109–14, 241; Because new hopes and interests arise 241; Familiarity in advance has same effect as fading 236–7, 241; Prolongation of life not valuable 240–1; Bad thoughts culpable if they linger 346–7, 356, 359 Timocles, comic poet 224, 292 Todd, Robert B. 261, 285 Tomin, Julius 323 Tragedy, conn. grief as well as pity and fear 291–2 Tranquillity , see also Ataraxia, Aokhlēsia, Euthumia182, 387 Translation, importance of 12–13, 384 Trapp, Michael 196

Trigg, Roger 93 Tsouna-McKirahan, Voula 27, 202, 218, 239 Unconscious ; Epicureans 27; Plato 27

497

498

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Unexpected , see alsoanticipation of misfortune; Cyrenaics 236; Sudden in Basil 394–5 Universalizability ; Conflict with theory of personae 249–50, 412–13 Up to us/in our power (eph' hēmin) 69, 214–15, 225, 324, 327, 332–3; Compare kath' hauton 171; par' hēmas 333 Utility of emotion 149, 162, 181, 190–3, 197 Valentinus, Gnostic 315 Valerius, Count, anti-Pelagian official at imperial court 276, 403–4 Valerius Maximus, compiler 224 van den Berg, R.M. 205 Van der Stockt 295 Vander Waerdt, Paul 322 van Riel, Gerd 50, 205 van Straaten, M. 103, 107 Vanity ; One of Evagrius' bad thoughts 358–9, 362, 363, 364; Dist. pride 368–9; Especially difficult to combat 360–1; Augustine: denial of need for forgiveness is vanity or pride 399 Vegetarianism 213–14, 271 Vehicles of soul spherical 189 Virtue 90–1 ; Aristotle: virtue aims at the mean, a substantive doctrine 25, 194–5; Posidonius and Galen: different virtues for different soul capacities 96–8, 152–3, 257; Speusippus: virtue is apatheia 194–5, 197; Plato and Neoplatonists: civic, purified 203 Vlastos, Gregory 306 Voelke, A.-J. 207 Voluntariness of emotion 45–7, 69–70 Voluntary (hekōn, hekousion) 324, 326–7 von Arnim, H. 58 von Staden, Heinrich 259 Vovolis, Thanos 78 Wall, Patrick 199 Walton, Kendall 77 Ware, Kallistos 386, 389 Weiskranz, L. 145 Wenzel, Siegfried 369 West, Martin 97 Westerink, L. G. 173 White, Stephen 32 Wilde, Carolyn 84 Will , see also Struggle, Eupatheia, Augustine21, 43, 45, 121; Distinct functions: desire related to reason 321, 335willpower 321, 323, 325, 330–1, 335freedom 320, 321, 323–5, 331–4, 335voluntary, up to us, responsibility 321, 323–5, 329, 331–2, 335perverted will 321, 334, 335–6present in all our decisions 321, 328, 335–6able to oppose reason? 323, 337–8what you really want 306–8, 322desire for good or apparent good? 306–8, 319, 322–3, 329–30; Clustering of functions in Augustine 335–6; Will-power opp.

questioning appearances 330–1; Emotion as act of will 316, 337; Expansion of role in Augustine: will in belief, perception, memory, imagination, thought, faith 47, 319, 337; Maximus Confessor's preferred account of will is definition of oikeiōsis 337–9; Choice (hairesis) of lives 323–4; Thumos 323, 324; Boulēsis 306–8, 319–20, 322–3, 325, 328, 330–1, 334, 350; Proairesis 215–16, 324, 325–8, 331–3; Two wills in humans 315–16, 399; in Christ 317–18, 337–8; ‘Let this cup pass from me’ 219–20, 316–17, 320; Conditional willing 219, 316–17; Will (boulēsis) as a eupatheia 47–51; Will in Stoicism as judgement that it is appropriate to act 42–3; Seneca does not disagree 44; Will (voluntas) in Seneca in broad sense covers irrational impulse 42 William of Auxerre 219, 317, 328 Williams, Bernard 47, 159–63, 167, 173, 175, 194, 212, 225, 243

SUBJECT AND NAME INDEX

Williams, Redford and Virginia 361 Williams, Rowan 393 Winch, Peter 250 Wit 290 Wodeham, Adam 94 Wolfson, H.A. 383 Woodruff, Paul 78–9 Woods, Michael 194 Xenocrates, Platonist ; Soul is a numerical ratio 254 Yaffé, Maurice 124 Yoga 161, 165 Zajone, R.B. 272 Zanker, Paul 8, 186 Zeller, E. 194–5 Zeno of Citium, Stoic 100–1, 331; Different view of emotion from Chrysippus 55–65; Hence different conception of freedom from emotion(apatheia) 64, 105–6; Emotion is not false judgement, but disobedience to one's better judgement 55–61; In this sense, it is without judgement or reason 58; And involves akrasia 56, 303; And oscillation or fluttering 34, 56–7, 313; Distress and pleasure as contraction and expansion of soul 34, 144; Appetite and fear as reaching and leaning away 34–5; Emotion as movement of the soul 34; Emotion as impulse 65; Judgement insufficient for distress and pleasure when not ‘fresh’ 64–5, 111; Emotion is not judgement but occurs on the occasion of judgement 65; But since the occasioning judgement, unlike appearance, involves assent, emotion is voluntary 65; Four generic emotions distress, pleasure, appetite, fear 65, 136; Not recognize first movements 70; Not accept Plato's irrational part of the soul 64–5, 101; Reservation 65; Indifference 65; Random sex advocated and communal female partners 274; Sexual dreams, freedom from 413–14; Suicide 214; Music is rational 89 Zeno of Sidon, Epicurean 217 Zimmermann, Fritz 270 Zopyrus, physiognomist 267

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