Abstract
This chapter is about how we can improve our rational abilities, i.e. make progress towards virtue. I first show that, according to Chrysippus, the natural properties of children are usually corrupted in three ways when they grow up and that adults therefore can make progress only by solving their inner conflicts, becoming more steadfast in their practical reasoning, and improving their self-understanding. So I argue that the main remedy against corruption is to study philosophy. I detail how we can acquire a better self-understanding by studying physics and how we can cure the mind of its inconsistencies by studying logic. I also argue that ethics prepares the mind for an active life in which we can set a goal that is not in conflict with virtue and take the right sort of steps to realize it. I then show that, if we manage to improve our rational abilities, we come to master a degree of the art of living. A wise person masters the art of living to a perfect degree, and she is much like a child, I argue, in that she is so well-adjusted to the world around her that she is always representing things as they are and never frustrated in her impulses.
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- 1.
Note that the three δυνάμεις are not faculties but just so many ways in which a mind can fulfill or fall short of its natural potential to act and react for reasons, as I argued on page 25. Note also that our sources are less tidy than I make them sound, since there are at least three other mental properties, namely firmness, quick-wittedness and soundness of the sense organs (Cic. TD 4. 31; Stob. 2. 79. 20–80. 1). But it seems that quick-wittedness was subsumed under strength, firmness under fineness, and soundness of the sense organs under health. So I shall assume that health, strength and fineness are the three main properties of our minds.
- 2.
All the three mental properties must therefore come in degrees, and Cicero suggests that they do when he says that there is ‘a sort of mental health that can be found also in the non-wise person’ (see ‘est autem quaedam animi sanitas, quae in insapientem etiam cadat’ in TD 4. 30; see also ἐπιγίνονται καὶ περὶ φαύλους in D. L. 7. 91). I take it that the same can be said about mental strength and mental fineness.
- 3.
A set of beliefs is either consistent or inconsistent, but an inconsistent set of beliefs can be more or less inconsistent (Cic. TD 4. 29). I take it that Karl’s set of beliefs is more inconsistent than Aksel’s set of beliefs if either (1) Karl has a higher number of beliefs that are in conflict with each other than Aksel has, or (2) Karl’s conflicting beliefs are more important, in some sense, than Aksel’s conflicting beliefs are, or (3) a combination of (1) and (2). Other factors may come into play too, but we have no evidence for the Stoics’ views on this.
- 4.
It is true that some passages in Galen and Plutarch seem to be meant to explain what it is that makes a soul weak or strong, according to the Stoics. See, in particular, Galen PHP 4. 6. 5–6, quote, and Plut. St. Rep. 1034d–e, quote. But none of these passages succeeds in explaining this, as far as I can see, and it is quite possible that they were not meant to do so, either.
- 5.
We can see this as a case of epistemic modesty rather than as a case poor science, which is what Galen does. At any rate, we should notice that Galen is just being polemic when he is arguing that Chrysippus must have regarded weakness as a property of a faculty other than reason (PHP 4. 6. 28), for he knew perfectly well that, for Chrysippus, it is not (PHP 7. 1. 13).
- 6.
I read πρὸς τὸ ὅλον…αὐτοῦ (‘in relation to the whole of reason’), which is found in all manuscripts, instead of πρὸς [τὸ] ὅλον…αὐτῆς (‘in relation to the whole of the soul’), as Wachsmuth prints.
- 7.
Chrysippus may simply have overelaborated the soul/body analogy, perhaps because he was influenced by doctors who included fineness and ugliness among the basic properties of the body (see Galen Thras. 14, p. 49, 13–18 Helmreich). In that case, the proportion that characterizes a fine mind will be just another name for the well-blended set of beliefs that characterizes a healthy mind, and this is how Cicero treats the notion of fineness in his Tusculan Disputations 4. 31. But I am trying to argue that this is wrong, even if I must admit that fineness is a function of health, which is probably why it is characterized as ‘a proportion of [the conceptions] in relation to each other’.
- 8.
I say ‘as things are’ because, according to Posidonius at least, there was once a Golden Age when people did not need to study any philosophy at all, but our minds have now become so corrupted that stronger measures are needed (Sen. Ep. 95. 29–35). And I say ‘in the first place’ because a thorough philosophical education can cure our ugliness and sickness, but not our weakness. At least, I argue in Sect. 5.3 that in order to cure our weakness, we also need to habituate our thoughts.
- 9.
I am here trying to paraphrase οἱ…Στωικοὶ ἔφασαν…τὴν δὲ φιλοσοφίαν ἄσκησις ἐπιτηδείου τέχνης· ἐπιτήδειον δὲ εἶναι μίαν καὶ ἀνωτάτω τὴν ἀρετήν… The only translation I have seen is Long & Sedley 26A: ‘The Stoics said…that philosophy is the practice of expertise in utility. Virtue singly and at its highest is utility…’. I do not think that translation is right, but I admit that it is very difficult to come up with a better one. Notice that I have rendered ἐπιτήδειον in two different ways (‘fitting’ and ‘well-adjusted’) and that nothing in the Greek corresponds to my expression that a person becomes ἐπιτήδειον ‘to the world around him’.
- 10.
Diogenes writes that ‘the followers of Cleanthes, Chrysippus and Antipater’ divide virtue into more than four kinds, but this is misleading. Chrysippus recognized a multitude of virtues (Plut. Virt. Mor. 441b), but probably classified this multitude into dialectical and physical and ethical virtues. I believe it were some of the later Stoics who first divided virtue into four main kinds, namely prudence, courage, moderation and justice (Cic. Off. 1. 12–15; Stob. 2. 60. 10–11), probably wanting to assimilate their view to Plato’s. The assimilation may have started with Panaetius (Cic. Off. 1. 9–10) and it is well established among ‘the followers of Posidonius’ (D. L. 7. 92).
- 11.
This is against Hadot 2002, 173. I agree with much in Sellars’ more balanced account in his 2003. But I still find that, in Sellars’ account, early Stoicism comes across as too similar to existentialism and that philosophical discourse is ascribed a too prominent role in the art of living. Or, a bit more accurately, it is my impression that Sellars’ account of the Stoic notion of philosophy fits Epictetus better than it fits Chrysippus. See Sellars’ brief discussion of how Seneca and Epictetus relates to early Stoicism in his 2006, 33–36.
- 12.
Two excellent discussions are Schofield 19912, 67–74, and Striker 1991, 228–231.
- 13.
There also exists a bond between human beings and gods because of our shared rationality, according to the Stoics, and awareness of this bond gives rise to the virtue of piety, which is a sense of gratitude to the gods and knowledge of how to care for them (Cic. Leg. 1. 23–24; Cic. Fin. 3. 73; Stob. 2. 62. 2–3).
- 14.
It seems that our minds will remain quite ugly until we at the other end of the curriculum attend some more advanced classes in Stoic physics, not least the one called ‘the topic about the gods’ (Plut. St. Rep. 1035a, quote). It is only here we seem to learn everything that a wise person knows about how the world and everything in it is governed. See Cic. Leg. 1. 61.
- 15.
Strictly speaking, dialectic is a sub-part of what the Stoic called the logical part of philosophy, as we will see in Chap. 6. Notice that what I present here, is dialectic as it was conceived by Chrysippus, and that Chrysippus belonged to the Stoic tradition for a constructive use of reason, as I have called it in Chap. 1 above. I return to the defensive tradition in Chap. 6 below.
- 16.
Two Stoic metaphors seem to confirm this: (1) Philosophy is like an egg, where ethics and physics are the white and yolk and dialectic is the shell; (2) Philosophy is like a garden, where the trees and their fruits are physics and ethics, and the surrounding wall is dialectic (D. L. 7. 40; see also Cic. Leg. 1. 62). Note, however, that neither Diogenes, nor Cicero is expressly ascribing these metaphors to the early Stoics. Notice also that protection cannot be the sole purpose of dialectical studies, at least not for the early Stoics. For as I argued on pages 64–65, a proof can explain why something is as it is and such an explanation will give us access to a fact that would otherwise have remained completely hidden from us. However, I also argued that such explanatory proofs are too rare to be very useful to us in our quest for a good life, according to the early Stoics.
- 17.
It may seem that Cicero does when he writes in De Finibus 3. 72 that ‘[t]o these virtues we have discussed, they add logic and physics’. It is not clear whether the discussion Cicero refers to starts at 3. 16, 3. 20 or 3. 26, but in any case he seems to be saying that what has been discussed between that starting-point and 3. 72, are the ethical virtues. As it is, however, De Finibus 3 is not a comprehensive account of Stoic ethics, mainly because the emotions are just briefly mentioned in 3. 35, and this probably because Cicero is at the same time writing or planning to write his Tusculan Disputations. Whatever the reason is, however, the outcome is that De Finibus 3 cannot be used as evidence for which of the virtues count as ethical virtues, according to the early Stoics.
- 18.
Diogenes’ partition, which is ascribed to Chrysippus, is very fine-grained: there are topics about impulse, the good and bad, emotions, virtue, the end, the primary value, actions, what is appropriate, and encouragements and discouragements. Seneca’s list is shorter: ‘the first [sub-part of ethics] deals with… what each thing is worth (quanti quidque sit), the second with…impulse, and the third with…an agreement between impulse and action’ (Ep. 89. 14). My partition is a simplified version of Seneca’s partition, combining his second and third part into moral psychology. As far as I can see, this leaves out only ‘encouragements and discouragements’ in Diogenes’ list. Notice that Cic. Ac. 1. 35–39 starts out with value theory and then moves on to moral psychology.
- 19.
The first assumption is best defended by testing it for consistency with other preconceptions, I take it, and the second assumption was backed up by the old Socratic argument that things that are normally regarded as good will be harmful if they are used badly and things that are normally regarded as bad will be beneficial if they are used well (D. L. 7. 102–103). Both assumptions can be questioned, and they were.
- 20.
This is an enormously difficult question, of course, and very much still with us in contemporary philosophy and psychology. In my view, it is a sign of just how difficult the question is that Cicero explains the Stoic notion of temperance in Platonic terms, as a rational soul-part commanding over a non-rational soul-part (Off. 1. 101–102; see also Cic. TD 4. 10–11). Posidonius too may have suggested something along these lines. This cannot be how temperance was conceptualized by Chrysippus, however. Rather, he must have held that temperance is a mind’s ability to control or regulate itself, in some sense that I am here trying to specify.
- 21.
ἐπιτήδευμα is very difficult to translate into English. The standard translations are ‘practice’ or ‘occupation’ or ‘pursuit’, but these are too value-neutral, as far as I can see: we can engage in practices or occupations or pursuits without caring much about what we are doing, which seems not to be the case with an ἐπιτήδευμα. On the other hand, a value-laden translation, like ‘calling’, will not do, either (see ἐπαγγελία in Epict. Disc. 2. 10. 4). This is because ‘calling’ does not capture the fact that an ἐπιτήδευμα is a skill-based activity, as we shall soon see. I have not been able to find a better translation than ‘commitment’.
- 22.
Strictly speaking, the object of the art of living is how the world as a whole is living its life (Menn 1995, 24). But for an individual person, the art of living is about how he is going to live his own life in agreement with the life of the world as a whole. In my opinion, it is not misleading to ascribe to the Stoics an ‘art of living’ in the sense of this expression that we are now familiar with. However, we should bear in mind that they conceived of this art in a very different way than most of us now do.
- 23.
So, ἀγχίνοια is defined as a virtue in Stob. 2. 61. 2–4, but ‘velocitas ingenii’ is referred to as a mental property in Cic. TD 4. 31. Likewise, μεγαλοψυχία is listed together with mental strength in Stob. 2. 58. 12, but defined as a virtue in Stob. 2. 61. 15–17. Notice also that ἀκοσμία is associated with mental weakness in D. L. 7. 48 and that κοσμιότης is defined as a virtue in Stob. 2. 61. 9–10.
- 24.
A classical study of the issue is Kerferd 1978a.
- 25.
See Brouwer 2002 for a useful discussion of these examples. Posidonius may have held that both these heroes lived in a Golden Age, when there was no need for philosophy (see page 93, note 8 above), and the early Stoics may have agreed.
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Løkke, H. (2015). Our Progress Towards Virtue. In: Knowledge and virtue in early Stoicism. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2153-1_5
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