CLAS 196/PHIL 196
Stoicism
Prof. Bailly

Some challenges to the Stoic specification of the end: Antiochus

• Quick review
• In ancient ethics, each school specified what the goal of human life is.
• This is variously called the "final end," "summum bonum," or "ultimate good," etc.
• It is that for the sake of which every action is ultimately undertaken but itself is undertaken for nothing but itself: it's the answer to the question "what is life for?"
  
• As such, rationality enters the picture
• Humans' ability to explain why they are doing what they are doing is both part of what we do and also contributes to it
• Our rational explanation will have as the ultimate reason "to reach the goal of human life"
  
• Although people may be mistaken about what is good, all nonetheless have an idea of what it is for themselves
• For Stoics, and many people today too, the good for human beings is a factual matter, not a relative matter that changes radically from human to human (well, actually, there were relativists in antiquity too, but we aren't talking about them: they are the Protagoreans among others)
• The goal of human life is also known as flourishing, happiness, the good life
  
• And virtue stands in some relation to the goal
• For some, it is the same thing as the goal
• For others, it is necessary to reach the goal
• For others, it is an important part of the goal

• Quick Bailly note about moral realism and the idea that humans have a "nature": this is all quick musing, not fully baked thought
  
• Personally, I doubt that this sort of thing is black and white, on or off: it may be that significant parameters of the answer to the question "why are we here" are fixed or have a sort of attractive force that comes with them, while others are relative. It may be that parts of morality are "real," while others are constructed either socially, rationally, or however. Moreover, things that are constructed are "real" too and can only be constructed within constraints.
  
• I also think that the old saying "it takes a village" might mean that we need people who take radically different and mutually incompatible choices in life to keep society healthy: we may need people who choose to make the code and goal of their lives safety and stability, others who seek risk and adventure, and others who seek only to care for fellow humans: it may be that there are several correct answers, only a few of which can be followed by any individual
• The idea that the "answer(s)" might be flexible or only partially fixed does not mean that it's all relative any more than the fact that any given dog might weigh 6 or 150 pounds, have hair or fur, be friendly or aggressive, be vegetarian or meat-eating, means that  dog is a relative concept or that they aren't all dogs and don't have something about them that is legitimately "canine-ness." In other words, don't make claims that humans have a nature into an inflexible "scarecrow" position that is oh so easy to knock down.
• Moral realism is not an answer that can be eliminated right off the bat: it's a possibly correct approach to the world
  
• And the idea that humans have a nature that tells us significant things about what we're here for and what works best for us is also not something that we should reject out of hand.
• A good provocative read: The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
  
• But both moral realism and claims that there is such a thing as human nature are positions that require defense and that defense can be quite challenging, and the Stoics apparently hold both positions. We need to be on the lookout for where and when and how they explain, defend, and use those positions.
  

• Stoics hold that there is good, bad, and indifferent.
• Good includes virtue, things such as wisdom, courage, justice, etc.
• These are pretty much the same things we think of when we think of them, perhaps explained differently and hooked into a system that might transform our understanding of them
• But nonetheless sufficiently similar to what we think of as justice and wisdom and courage that we will readily agree at the end of the full explanation of Stoicism that they are indeed the same thing as what we speak of when we speak of justice, courage, and wisdom, etc.
• Bad includes things opposed to virtues: ignorance, folly, cowardice, injustice, etc.
• These things are infinite and not crisply definable except as absence of virtue: if you consider virtue as the bullseye of a target, think of vice as everything else that can possibly be hit instead of the target. There's (infinitely) more territory in the "miss" range than in the "hit" range.
  
• INDIFFERENTS
  
• Diogenes Laertius 7.101-3 (60 in our website numbering)
• "Moreover, they divide all existing things into good, bad, and indifferent. The good are the virtues, prudence, justice, manly courage, temperance, and the rest of the like qualities. The bad are the contraries, folly, injustice, and the like. Those are indifferent which are neither beneficial nor injurious, such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, riches, a good reputation, nobility of birth; and their contraries, death, disease, labour, disgrace, weakness, poverty, a bad reputation, baseness of birth, and the like; as Hecaton lays it down in the seventh book of his treatise on the Chief Good; and he is followed by Apollodorus, in his Ethics, and by Chrysippus. For they affirm that those things are not good but indifferent, though perhaps a little more near to one species than to the other.
• For, as it is the property of the hot to warm and not to chill one, so it is the property of the good to benefit and not to injure one. Now, wealth and good health cannot be said to benefit any more than to injure any one: therefore, neither [297>] wealth nor good health are goods. Again, they say that that thing is not good which it is possible to use both well and ill. But it is possible to make either a good or a bad use of wealth, or of health; therefore, wealth and good health are not goods."
• An argument that might be offered to shore this position up is that a bad person who has wealth and health is worse off, because that enables that bad person to do more harm to herself and others than she otherwise could.
  
• If you think that wealth and health and any other "externals" actually are good in and of themselves, choiceworthy for their own sake, then you need to refute the argument given above.
• That argument is the reason why Stoics insist that such things as health and wealth and life are not good
• If we claim that such things are good, then the agent has reason to feel that the loss of them really is the loss of something genuinely important
• and that would make their life more vulnerable and less preferred and their goodness external to themselves.
  
• If those things have some positive value, even just a little, that has consequences.
• Some non-Stoics argue that virtue transforms those things into something good
• the idea is that in the hands of a virtuous person, wealth, health, life BECOME good, not just useful instrumentally
  
• in the hands of a vicious person, those same things are transformed into bad things
  
• Others claim that they are something like prerequisites for good
  
• a little bit of health and wealth is necessary even for virtue is what these folks claim
  
• on the other hand, it's also requisite for vice...
  
• The Stoic worry here is that if they have some positive value, then virtue may not be sufficient for happiness
• the virtuous could at the very least be HAPPI-ER if they had them
• But that would make our happiness somewhat vulnerable
• if we loose health, wealth, etc., we are less happy
• perhaps even unhappy
• It seems that the Stoic is so paranoid of vulnerability that she is like the chef who seeks only the freshest ingredients, but in the end can find nothing that satisfies, nothing fresh enough
  
• Some goods simply are vulnerable by their nature and nonetheless have value, goes the claim of the nonstoic here
  
• In Cicero's de Finibus, Antiochus of Ascalon proposed that the intelligent Stoics, Aristotelians, etc. were all in fundamental agreement:
• NOTE: this position is not what I think strict Stoics believe: it's a sort of Stoicism-lite that comes closer to what Aristotle seems to have believed.
  
• the good is "virtue combined with moderate physical advantages"
• Antiochus' claim in Cicero is that virtue is necessary for happiness and its most important component
• that gives enough reason for rational agents to be virtuous
• and it leaves room to deny that virtue is sufficient for happiness
• Cicero de Finibus IV.25ff. (Woolf Transl.): Antiochus takes on the Stoics
  
• "Let it first be granted, then, that we are well disposed towards ourselves, and by nature have the desire to preserve ourselves. So far we agree. What follows is that we must give heed to who we are, to ensure that we preserve ourselves in the condition that is proper to us. We are, then, human beings. We are made of mind and body of a certain kind. It is proper for us, as demanded by our primary natural desire, to love these elements and to derive from them our end, the supreme and ultimate good. If our premises are correct, this good must consist in our obtaining as many as possible of the most important things that are in accordance with nature. This, then, is what the ancients held to be our end. It is living in accordance with nature.
• I put it at some length, they more concisely. But this is what they took to be the highest good. ‘Now I ask that the Stoics, or rather you (since no one is better qualified), tell us how you start from the same principles but manage to end up with the supreme good of “living morally” (since that is what “living virtuously” or “living in harmony with nature” is). How and where did you suddenly abandon the body and all those things that are in accordance with nature but not in our power, finally discarding appropriate action itself? How is it that so many of the things originally commended by nature are suddenly forsaken by wisdom? Even if we were seeking the supreme good not of a human being but of some living creature who had nothing but a mind (let us imagine that there is such a creature, as this will help us discover the truth), then even this mind would not accept the end you are proposing. It would want health and freedom from pain, and would also desire its own preservation as well as the security of those goods I just mentioned. It would establish as its end a life in accordance with nature, and this means, as I said, possession of things that are in accordance with nature, either all of them or as many as possible of the most important.  Construct any kind of animal you like, even one without a body as we just imagined, and it will still have mental attributes parallel to the bodily ones. This means there can be no highest good except the one that I set out. ‘In his exposition of the different animal species, Chrysippus says that some excel in body, others in mind; and some flourish in both aspects. He regarded the human species as one that excels mentally, but from his definition of the supreme good you would have thought that human beings had nothing but mind, not just that they excelled in it. The only circumstance in which it would be correct to make the supreme good consist solely in virtue would be if our animal which has nothing but a mind also had nothing connected with its mind that was in accordance with nature: for example, health. But any creature one could imagine of that kind would be a walking self-contradiction. ‘If Chrysippus is saying that certain things are so small that they are eclipsed or disappear, then I would agree. As Epicurus says of pleasure, the smallest pleasures are often eclipsed and buried. But the bodily assets are too great, too permanent and too numerous to fall into that category. In the case of items which are so slight that they do become eclipsed, we often have to admit that it makes no difference whether we have them or not. So, to quote your examples, lighting a lamp makes no difference in sunshine, nor does adding a penny to the riches of Croesus. But there are some things that are not so easily eclipsed, even though the difference they make may not be great. Thus, say someone who has lived pleasantly for ten years has an equally pleasant month of life added on. That is a good thing – the month’s additional pleasure carries some weight. None the less, the life would still have been a happy one regardless of the addition. ‘Bodily goods are closer to this latter category. They make a positive contribution that is worth striving for. The Stoics sometimes say that the wise person would rather have an oil-flask and scraper to accompany a virtuous existence than not, but that one’s life would not be happier on that account. I think they must be making a joke. The case is hardly comparable. One should dismiss it with a laugh rather than a speech. To care about whether one has a flask or not is fully deserving of mockery. On the other hand, one who alleviates bodily deformity or agonizing pain earns great gratitude. Imagine your famous wise person sent to the rack on tyrant’s orders. Would we observe the facial expression of one who has just lost a flask? I think not. Rather, the expression would be of one embarking on a great and difficult challenge. Realization dawns that one’s adversary is the mortal enemy, pain. All one’s principles of courage and endurance are summoned up. With their protection one enters the tough, serious battle I spoke of. ‘Our question, again, is not what is so small that it is eclipsed or destroyed, but what is of sufficient significance to contribute to the whole. Any one pleasure will be swamped by the swarm that makes up the life of pleasure that I mentioned earlier. But still, however small, it is a part of that life which is based on pleasure. A penny is swamped by the riches of Croesus, but it is still a part of those riches. Hence, though what we refer to as things in accordance with nature may be swallowed up in a happy life, they are still a part of the happy life.
• It is important to look at what Antiochus says about the Stoics, for he read them, apparently:
1. Chrysippus did not, in fact, claim that humans were just souls and nothing more. Otherwise, Antiochus would have said that.
2. Chrysippus nonetheless spoke as if humans were nothing but souls.
3. Chrysippus derived each species' telos from their nature. Specify the nature, and that leads to the telos.
• The upshot of that is that Chrysippus apparently thought that although humans do have bodies, the good of humans consists in the good of their souls and nothing else. What is good for our bodies is not, in fact, good for us (which doesn't make it bad: it's indifferent to us).
• Epictetus, discourses IV.1
• "“Must I, then, not desire health?” By no means, nor anything else that belongs to another: for what is not in your power to acquire or to keep when you please, this belongs to another. Keep, then, far from it not only your hands but, more than that, even your desires. If you do not, you have surrendered yourself as a slave; you have subjected your neck, if you admire anything not your own, to everything that is dependent on the power of others and perishable, to which you have conceived a liking. “Is not my hand my own?” It is a part of your own body; but it is by nature earth, subject to hindrance, compulsion, and the slave of everything which is stronger. And why do I say your hand? You ought to possess your whole body as a poor ass loaded, as long as it is possible, as long as you are allowed. But if there be a press, and a soldier should lay hold of it, let it go, do not resist, nor murmur; if you do, you will receive blows, and nevertheless you will also lose the ass. But when you ought to feel thus with respect to the body, consider what remains to be done about all the rest, which is provided for the sake of the body. When the body is an ass, all the other things are bits belonging to the ass, pack-saddles, shoes, barley, fodder. Let these also go: get rid of them quicker and more readily than of the ass."
  
• Epictetus, fragment 23
• "Nature is an extraordinary thing, and 'a lover of animals,' as Xenophon said. At any rate, we cherish and take care of our bodies, the most disgusting and filthy things of all--for we couldn't bear to take care of our neighbor's body, even for a mere five days. Just think what it's like--getting up at dawn to wash someone else's teeth, and after he has done his business you have to give him a wipe down there. What is really extraordinary is the fact that we love such a thing, given how much upkeep it requires each day. I stuff my paunch. Then I empty it. What could be more tedious? But I must serve God. That's why I wait, and put up with washing this wretched little body, and giving it fodder, and sheltering it.
• (translation from Brennan, P. 130)
• Don't confuse what you are in charge of (your livestock, as it were) with your self. Don't think your body's activity and welfare are really your own.
• This may seem to require us to be alienated from ourselves, but as Brennan points out, that argument has no traction with a Stoic, because she thinks her body is not her self, so how can she be alienated from herself by being alienated from her body?
  
• The Stoic does not claim we should not strive for health or wealth or to stay alive: it is important to see that fact.
• Rather, the Stoic claims that health and wealth in the present have no value: if we have them, we do not have anything of great value; if we do not have them, we do not lack anything of great value.
• Striving for something may be merely saying that the thing has instrumental value: it itself is not good, but through it, good things can be accomplished/avoided.
• The USE of wealth is a good or bad thing: the wealth itself is indifferent
• actions are good or bad: things are not
• A big question is whether the Stoic sage is faced with choices that include only indifferents or also faced with choices that are a mix of virtuous and indifferent things.
  
• There's a lot of ground to cover in trying to answer that question.