Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings

Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson.

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis / Cambridge

B 81: Sextus M 11.200-201, 207 (SVF 3.516)

200. In reply to this they say that all men have the same functions, thought i makes a difference whether they are carried out from a craftsmanlike disposition or an uncraftsmanlike one. For taking care of one's parents and otherwise honouring them is not the special function of a virtuous man, but doing so from prudence is. 201. And just as healing is common to the doctor and the layman, but doing so medically is the special function of the craftsman, in the same way too honouring one's parents is common to the virtuous man and the non-virtuous man; but honouring one's parents from prudence is the special function of the wise man; consequently he has a craft of the life whose special function it is to do each of the things which are done from a virtuous disposition... 207. Just as in the intermediate crafts it is the special function of a craftsman to do things regularly and to produce the same results consistently (for even a layman could carry out the function of a craftsman, but rarely and not all the time, and certainly not consistently in the same manner), so too it is the function of a prudent man, they say, to be consistent in his [morally] perfect actions, and just the opposite for the imprudent man.

B 82: Stobaeus Anthology 4.39.22 vol. 5 p. 906.18-907.5 W-H (SVF 3.510)

Chrysippus says: "he who makes [moral] progress to the highest degreee performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances and omits none." And he says that his life is not yet happy, but that happiness supervenes on him when these intermediate actions become secure and conditioned and acquire a special sort of fixity.

B 83: Epictetus Discourses 2.6.6-10

6. "Go and salute Mr. So-and-so." "All right, I salute him." "How?" "Not in an abject fashion." "But you were shut out." "That's because I haven't learned how to enter through the window. And when I find the door shut [against me] , I must either go away or enter through the window." 7. "But speak with the man too!" "I do so." "How?" "Not in an abject fashion." 8. "But you did not succeed." -- Now surely that was not your business, but his. So why do you encroach on what concerns someone else? If you always remember what is yours and what concerns someone else, you will never be disturbed. 9. That's why Chrysippus was right to say, "As long as what comes next is non-evident to me, I always cling to what is better suited to getting what is in accordance with nature. For god himself made me such as to select those things. 10. But if I knew for sure that it was fated for me now to be ill, I would even seek [illness]. For my foot, if it had brains, would seek to be muddied."

B 84: Cicero On Goals 5.16-21

16. Since there is so much disagreement about this [the goal of life] we should employ the division of Carneades, which our friend Antiochus is so fond of using. Carneades discerned not only all the views which philosophers had yet held about the highest good, but also all the views which are possible. So he claimed that no craft took its starting point from itself, since there is always something external which is the object of the craft. We need not prolong this point with examples; for it is obvious that no craft is concerned with itself, but the craft is distinct from its object. So just a medicine is the craft of health and helmsmanship is the craft of navigation, in the same way prudence is the craft of living; therefore it too must be constituted by and take its principle from something else. 17. It is a matter of general agreement that the concern of prudence and its goal must be what is adapted and accommodated to nature and such as to stimulate and stir up, all by itself, an impulse in the mind (which the Greeks call horme). But there is no agreement about what it is which thus moves us and which nature seeks from the moment of birth -- and that is the source of all the disagreement among philosophers when they are considering what the highest good is. For the source of the entire debate about the limits of good and bad, when they investigate the extreme limits of each, is to be found in the primary natural affiliations; and when that is found, the whole debate about the highest good and [worst] bad [thing] is derived from it as from a source.

18. Some philosophers think that our first impulse is to pleasure and that our first avoidance is of pain. Others think that freedom from pain is what we first welcome and that pain is the first object of avoidance. Others again take their start from the things which they call primary according to nature -- a class in which they include the integrity and preservation of all of our parts, health, sound sense organs, freedom from pain, strength, good looks, and other things of this kind; similar to these are the primary natural things in the soul, which are as it were the sparks and seeds of the virtues. Since it is some one of these three which first stirs nature into action, either to pursue something or to avoid it, and since there can be no additional possibility beyond these three, it follows necessarily that the tasks of pursuit and avoidance are to be referred to one of these. Consequently, that prudence which we called the craft of loving is concerned with some one of those three things and takes from it the basic principle for all of life.

19. One's theory of what is right and honourable is derived from whichever of these three which one has decided is the thing which stimulates nature into action, and this theory can correspond with any one of the three. As a result, honourableness is either a matter of doing everything for the sake of pleasure, even if you do not achieve it; or for the sake of avoiding pain, even if you cannot manage this; or for the sake of acquiring primary natural things even if you succeed in getting none of them. So it is that disagreements about the starting points of nature exactly correspond to disagreements about the limits of good and bad things. Others again will start from the same principles and refer every [question about] appropriate action either to [the actual attainment of] pleasure or freedom from pain, or to the acquisition of the primary natural things.

20. So six views about the highest good have now been set forth, and the chief spokesman for the last three are: for pleasure, Aristippus, for freedom from pain, Hieronymus; and for the enjoyment of those things which we have termed primary natural things it is Carneades himself -- not indeed that he believes in the view, but he does defend it for the sake of argument. The other three were views which could be held, although only of them has even been defended, but it has been defended with great vigour. For no one has said that the plan of acting in such a way that one does everything for the sake of pleasure, even if we do not achieve anything is nevertheless worth choosing for its sake and honourable and the only good things. Nor has anyone held that the very act of trying to avoid pain was something worth choosing, unless one could actually escape it. But that doing everything in order to acquire the primary natural things, even if we do not succeed, is honourable and the only thing worth choosing and the only good thing -- that is what the Stoics say.

21. These are the six simple views about the greatest good and bad things; two without spokesman, four which have actually been defended. There has been a total of three composite or double accounts of the highest good, and if you consider the nature of things carefully you will see that there could not have been any more. For either pleasure can be coupled with the honourable, as Callipho and Dinomachus held; or freedom from pain, as Diodorus held; and so can the primary natural things, which is the view of the ancients, as we call the Academics and Peripatetics.

B 85: Cicero On Goals 3.16-34

16. The school whose views I follow [a Stoic speaks] holds that every animal, as soon as it is born (for this should be our starting point), is congenial to itself and inclined to preserve itself and its constitution, and to like those things which preserve that constitution; but it finds uncongenial its own death and those things which seem to threaten it. They confirm this by [noting] that before pleasure or pain can affect them, babies seek what is salutary and spurn what is not, and this would not happen unless they loved their constitution and feared death. They could not, however, desire anything unless they had a perception of themselves and consequently loved themselves. From this one ought to see that the principle [of human action] is derived from self-love. 17. Most Stoics do not think that pleasure should be classed among the primary natural things; and I strongly agree with them, for fear that, if nature seemed to have classed pleasure among the primary objects of impulse, then many shameful consequences would follow. It seems, however, to be a sufficient argument as to why we love those things which were first accepted because of nature [to say] that there is no one (when he has a choice) who would not prefer to have all the parts of his body in a sound condition to having them dwarfed or twisted, though equally useful.

They think, moreover, that acts of cognition (which we may calls grasps or perceptions or, if these terms are either displeasing or harder to understand, katalepseis) are, then, to be accepted for their own sake, since they have in themselves something which as it were includes and contains the truth. And this can be seen in babies, who, we see, are delighted it they figure something our for themselves, even if it does not do them any good. 18. We also think that the crafts are to be taken for their own sake, both because there is in them something worth taking and also because they consist of acts of cognition and contain something which is rational and methodical. They think, though, that we find false assent more uncongenial that anything else which is contrary to nature...

20. Let us move on, then, since we began from these natural principles and what follows should be consistent with them. There follows this primary division: that say that what has value (we are to call it that, I think) is that which is either itself in accordance with nature or productive of it, so that it is worthy of selection because it has a certain 'weight' which is worth valuing (and this [value] they call axia); by contrast, what is opposite to the above is disvalued. The starting point being, then, so constituted that what is natural is to be taken for its own sake and what is unnatural is to be rejected, the first appropriate action (for that is what I call kathekon) is that it should preserve itself in its natural constitution; and then that it should retain what is according to nature and reject what is contrary to nature. After this [pattern of] selection and rejection is discovered, there then follows appropriate selection, and then constant [appropriate] selection, and finally [selection] which is stable and in agreement with nature; and here for the first time we begin to have and to understand something which can truly be called good. 21. For man's first sense of congeniality is to what is according to nature; but as soon as he gets an understanding, or rather a conception (which they call an ennoia) and sees the ordering and, I might say, concord of things which are to be done, he then values that more highly than all those things which he loved in the beginning and he comes to a conclusion by intelligence and reasoning, with the result that he decides that this is what the highest good for man consists in, which is to be praised and chosen for its own sake. And since it is placed in what the Stoics call homologia, let us call it agreement, if you please. Since, therefore, this constitutes the good, to which all things are to be referred, honourable actions and the honourable itself -- which is considered to be the only good -- although it arises later [in our lives], nevertheless it is the only thing which is to be chosen in virtue of its own character and value; but none of the primary natural things ws to be chosen for its own sake. 22. Since, however, those things which I called appropriate actions proceed from the starting points [established] by nature, it is necessary that they be referred to them; so it is right to say all appropriate actions are referred to acquisition of the natural principles, not however in the sense that this is the highest good, since honourable action is not among the primarily and naturally congenial things. That, as I said, is posterior and arises later. But [such action] is natural and encourages us to choose it much more than all the earlier mentioned things.