CLAS 196/PHIL 196

As always, Brennan is my guide here. I'm following him because he offers a coherent, interesting account of Stoicism that is carefully laid out, clear, and yet is highly respectable in a scholarly way. His book on reserve, The Stoic Life, has great advantages for you students: it is pretty easy reading and does not require you to know any Greek or Latin. Most other books on Stoicism are not as accessible, require Greek and Latin, or are not as good. You all should know that if you were to go to graduate school and study this stuff, almost every bit of it is contested in one way or another: the evidence and its interpretation is not easy. But the story you are being told here is a very good, high quality interpretation of the evidence.

• Last time, we looked over two options for interpretation of "befitting actions" (actions which are amenable to rational justification), which are the sort of actions we non-Sages can do (Sages do them too, but they are perfected befitting actions when they do them).
1. SALVA VIRTUTE: in our choices, we sometimes choose between indifferents, but sometimes we choose between virtuous and non-virtuous as well. We should always make choices in such a way that virtue is preserved. And the sage is the only reliable guide to what is virtuous.
   
2. INDIFFERENTS ONLY: in our choices, we are only ever faced with choices between indifferents. The Sage herself too, moreover, is only ever faced with choices between indifferents.
   
• Salva Virtute does not seem like a good option, largely because it leaves us with no guidance: we cannot implement it at all, because we are not Sages, and have no access to virtue except via a Sage. That seems highly objectionable.
• Indifferents-Only works well enough: we can and do choose between indifferents every day, based largely on the perceived preponderance of preferred indifferents in what we choose. The Sage KNOWS which choice has the preponderance of preferred indifferents, and so chooses that option
• The Sage also KNOWS that she KNOWS which choice has the preponderance of preferred indifferents
• Thus in addition to the motivational force which that preponderance exerts,
• The Sage has an additional motivating force: the eupathic volition which results from observing that her choice is Virtuous.
• That makes the Sage happy!

• ΅WE WILL SKIP THIS PART ON CLASS: IT IS ABOUT WHY IT IS PROBLEMATIC FOR US TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER STOICS SHOULD/DO HOLD WITH INDIFFERENTS-ONLY OR SALVA VIRTUTE
  
• While Indifferents-Only seems fine on the surface, a little consideration tells you it is insufficient to explain all the actions Stoics expect folks to do
• How does it explain why the Sage would commit suicide on behalf of friends or country?
• I know, we've said earlier that when the sage decides on suicide, it is NOT because of some grand heroic option to self-sacrifice, but rather because of a preponderance of dispreferred indifferents.
• Plutarch On stoic self-contradiction 1039e
• Later he (Chrysippus) says that it is appropriate even for inferior men to continue to live .... "for, to begin with, virtue quite on its own has no relevance to our living, and similarly neither is vice of any relevance to our needing to depart"
• Cicero, On Ends 3.60-61
• When a man has a preponderance of the things in accordance with nature, it is his proper function to remain alive; when he has or foresees a preponderance of their opposites, it is his proper function to depart from life. .... Therefore, the reason for remaining in and departing from life is to be measured by those things. For it is not virtue which retains <the wise man> in life, nor are those without virtue obliged to seek death....
  
• So it looks as if vice and virtue are irrelevant to living or departing (suicide).
  
• But there is also evidence the other way. 
• Diogenes Laertius 7.130
• They [the Stoics] say that the wise man will commit a well-reasoned suicide both on behalf of his country and on behalf of his friends, and if he falls victim to unduly severe pain or mutilation or incurable illness.
  
• Also, it seems to make the Sage into someone who is far from unconcerned about indifferents: indeed, the Sage faces ONLY choices that have to do with indifferents! That does not look like someone unconcerned with them.

• A few further texts:
• Cicero de Officiis 1.25
• Nor indeed should we condemn the accumulation of private property, provided that it does not harm anyone; but we must always avoid injustice.
• This looks a lot more like the Salva Virtute model: pursue indifferents AS LONG AS you can avoid injustice in doing so
• de Officiis often appears to be Cicero under the influence of the later Stoic Panaetius, so maybe Stoicism's ideas shifted?
• NO
• Cicero de Finibus, 3.70 (de Fin. appears to follow Chrysippus more closely)
• Some say that the sage will consider his friends' interests to be equally important to him as his own interest, others say that the sage's own interests will be more important to him. All the same, even this latter group says that it is alien to justice to deprive someone else in order to acquire for oneself.
• This too looks like Salva Virtute
  
• Cicero Quotes another Stoic, Hecato, at de Officiis 3.63
• Sages should attend to the interests of their intimates--for we do not want prosperity only for ourselves, but for our children, relatives, friends, and especially our country--while doing nothing contrary to the customs, laws, and institutions.
• Hecato was Panaetius' student, however.
• And Cicero says at de Officiis 3.42, that Chrysippus said the following:
• Runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as hard as they can, but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove. So too in life; it is not wrong for each person to seek after the things useful for life; but to do so by depriving someone else is not just.
• Looks a lot like salva virtute
• But Wait, that last text is Chrysippus, Cicero says (we have no reason to doubt that).
• So is Salva Virtute right?
• NO
• END SKIP IN CLASS
  
• Look at that last text:
  
• Runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as hard as they can, but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove. So too in life; it is not wrong for each person to seek after the things useful for life; but to do so by depriving someone else is not just.
• The "justice" spoken of there is not Virtue or even a part of it.
• Virtue just is the Sage's Mind
• This justice is a matter of intermediate actions that have to do with indifferents
• At the risk of equivocation, it seems that the Stoics talked of justice in two ways:
• The part of the Sage's Mind (i.e. the part of Virtue) that is called "justice"
• Another sort concerned with indifferents
• This other kind of justice, it turns, out, is a matter of "not shoving fellow runners"
• Brennan calls it the "No Shoving Model" for that reason.
• If we go back to formulations of the telos, we find:
• de Officiis 3.13
• The Final end specified by the Stoics, 'to live in agreement with nature,' has the following meaning, in my opinion: always to conform to virtue, and as for the other things which are according to nature, to select them if they do not conflict with virtue.
• What is going on?
  
• de Officiis 3.21
• For one human being to deprive another in order to increase his own welfare at the cost of the other person's welfare is more contrary to nature than death, poverty, pain, or any other things that can happen to one's body or one's external possessions. For, to begin with, it destroys human communal living and society. For if we are each at the ready to plunder and carry off another's advantages for the sake of our own, that will necessarily demolish the thing that is in fact most according to nature, namely the social life of human beings.
• A powerful statement that we are to be conventionally just, but also that part of our nature is simply to be social, and things that destroy good fellowship are contrary to our nature.
  
• But what about property? What of "social justice" and the redistribution of goods? We shouldn't shove each other, so we shouldn't take from anyone and give to anyone else? Should we always just respect the status quo? The following 2 quotations make that seem to be the case:
  
• de Officiis 1.20-21
• The first function of justice is that no one should harm another unless he himself was unjustly harmed; next, that each person should use communal things as communal, and their own private things as their own. But no properties are private by nature, only by long occupation, as when the occupants found it uninhabited, or by virtue of war, or law, bargain, sale, or lottery ... For this reason, whichever of the naturally communal things belongs to someone, let them retain it: and if anyone else seeks to acquire it for their own, they are violating the law of human society.
  
• de Finibus 3.67
• Human nature is such that there is a sort of civil law in effect between each person and the human race: whoever preserves it is just, and whoever strays from it is unjust. The theater is a communal place; nevertheless, whichever seat a spectator is occupying is rightfully said to be their own. So too in the state or in the universe, it is not contrary to justice that each person's things should be their own.
  
• BUT the following seems to go against that:
  
• de Officiis 3.29-30
• If for the sake of your own advantage you take something from someone, even someone completely useless to the community, then you have acted inhumanely, and contrary to nature. But if you are capable of providing a great deal of welfare to your country and to human society by remaining alive, and if you do it for that purpose, then it is not forbidden to take it from them. Otherwise, each person must bear their own disadvantage rather than deprive someone else of their advantage; for disease, poverty, and other dispreferred indifferents are not more contrary  to nature than pursuing and taking what belongs to someone else. But it is also contrary to nature to disregard the common welfare; indeed, it is unjust.
• de Officiis 1.31
• But occasions often arise when those actions that seem most appropriate to the just and the good man--for instance, returning a deposit or keeping a promise--, are changed and become inappropriate to him. It sometimes happens that the just thing is to bypass the actions that belong to truthfulness and faithfulness, and not observe them. For such matters ought to be referred to the fundamentals of justice that I laid down at the beginning: first, that no one be harmed, and second, that the common utlity be preserved.
• Harm and utility, not Virtue are mentioned in the fundamentals of this justice.
• Origen Contra Celsum 7.63
• Those who follow Zeno of Citium's philosophy avoid adultery because of communal life. For to seduce a woman who has previously contracted to another man by law is contrary to nature, as is destroying the household of another human being.
• It seems that the societal nature of humans is enough to make their conventional arrangements of indifferents a natural norm.
• This is not "justice" of the Sage's soul, but rather a matter of indifferents
• Deliberations about such matters are not in terms of virtue, but in terms of indifferent harms and benefits or indifferent utility.
• Individual indifferent motivations are not allowed, but society-based ones, or some other non-egotistical ones, are allowed as justification for breaking the conventions.
• The "No Shoving Model"
• Allows decisions to be made by ordinary people that are nonetheless worth making, not altogether vacuous in the sense provoked by Aristo's idea that indifferents are indistinguishable in value
• Deliberation will be messy
• Community concerns override individual concerns: that may be something like a general law for Stoics
• Conventional arrangements have the status of being according to nature
• At de Finibus 3.60, we saw the Sage and non-Sage deliberating about suicide: they were said to be considering only indifferents.
  
• They could not consider their own Virtue or Vice in the decision
• What they could consider is their utility
  
• de Officiis 3.29-30
• If for the sake of your own advantage you take something from someone even someone completely useless to the community, then you have acted inhumanely, and contrary to nature. But if you are capable of providing a great deal of welfare to your county and to human society by remaining alive, and if you do it for that purpose, then it is not forbidden to take it from them Otherwise, each person must bear their own disadvantage rather than deprive someone else of their advantage: for disease, poverty, and other demoteds are not more contrary to nature than pursuing and taking what belongs to someone else. But it is also contrary to nature to disregard the common welfare; indeed it is unjust.
• BUT there are limits: you cannot take something selfishly without regard for utility:
• de Officiis 3.89
• Suppose a non-sage has taken hold of a timber from a sinking ship; should a sage take it away, supposing the sage can do it? No, for that would be an injustice.
• Remember, the Sage may be poor, weak, and useless to the community (in terms of indifferents) and the non-sage may be very useful to the community (in terms of indifferents)
  
• Note that in some of the above passages, degrees of naturalness were discussed: "more contrary to nature" "most contrary"
• Brennan hence suggests substituting a "Naturalness-Only" model for the "no shoving model": degrees of naturalness will determine what befitting actions should be done, and they concern indifferents and their distributions alone, not Virtue. The Sage's virtue is an additional certainty that brings the Sage great joy and over-determines their actions.
• Sages and non-sage deliberate pretty much in the same way about the same things (but the Sage has solid unshakeable knowledge)
• They deliberate about the values of indifferents, utility to others, their own and others' welfare, laws, conventions, etc.
• In the Sage, their Oikeiosis is also very high, whereas ours might not be: that helps the sage too.
• All of our actions are still vicious in that they are the result of weak assent by a non-Sage's mind.