expressed as virtue, thereby immediately presents the appearance
of being present only as a quality of the individual. This virtue,
as such, in as far as only the moral reality of the individual is
indicated, cannot attain to happiness in and for itself, even though
happiness, regarded in the light of realization, were only the
realization of the individual. For this happiness would be just the
enjoyment of the individual as the harmony of existence with him
as individual; but with him as individual true happiness does not
harmonize, but only with him as universal man. Man must likewise not
in the least desire that it should harmonize with him as individual
man, that is, he must be indifferent to the individuality of his
existence, and to the harmony with the individual as much as to the
want of harmony; he must be able to dispense with happiness just
as, if he possesses it, he must be free from it; or it is only a
harmony of him with himself as a universal. If merely the subjective
conception of morality is therein contained, its true relationship is
yet thereby expressed; for it is this freedom of consciousness which
in its enjoyment rests in itself and is independent of objects,—what
we expressed above (p. 264) as the special characteristic of the
Stoic morality. Stoic self-consciousness has not here to deal with
its individuality as such, but solely with the freedom in which it is
conscious of itself only as the universal. Now could one call this
happiness, in distinction to the other, true happiness, happiness
would still, on the whole, remain a wrong expression. The satisfaction
of rational consciousness in itself as an immediate universal, is a
state of being which is simulated by the determination of happiness;
for in happiness we have the moment of self-consciousness as an
individuality. But this differentiated consciousness is not present in
that self-satisfaction; for in that freedom the individual has rather
the sense of his universality only. Striving after happiness, after
spiritual enjoyment, and talking of the excellence of the pleasures of
science and art, is hence dull and insipid, for the matter with which
we are occupied has no longer the form of enjoyment, or it does away
with that conception. This sort of talk has indeed passed away and
it no longer has any interest. The true point of view is to concern
oneself with the matter itself and not with enjoyment, that is, not
with the constant reflection on the relation to oneself as individual,
but with the matter as a matter, and as implicitly universal. We must
take care besides that things are tolerable to us as individuals,
and the pleasanter the better. But no further notice or speech about
this is requisite, nor are we to imagine that there is much that is
rational and important within it. But the Stoic consciousness does not
get beyond this individuality to the reality of the universal, and
therefore it has only to express the form, the real as an individual,
or the wise man.
The highest point reached by Aristotle, the thought of thought, is
also present in Stoicism, but in such a way that it does not stand in
its individual capacity as it appears to do in Aristotle, having what
is different beside it, but as being quite alone. Thus in the Stoic
consciousness there is just this freedom, this negative moment of
abstraction from existence, an independence which is capable of giving
up everything, but not as an empty passivity and self-abnegation, as
though everything could be taken from it, but an independence which
can resign it voluntarily, without thereby losing its reality; for its
reality is really just the simple rationality, the pure thought of
itself. Here pure consciousness thus attains to being its own object,
and because reality is to it only this simple object, its object annuls
in itself all modes of existence, and is nothing in and for itself,
being therein only in the form of something abrogated.
All is merged into this: the simplicity of the Notion, or its pure
negativity, is posited in relation to everything. But the real
filling in, the objective mode, is wanting, and in order to enter
into this, Stoicism requires that the content should be given. Hence
the Stoics depicted the ideal of the wise man in specially eloquent
terms, telling how perfectly sufficient in himself and independent
he is, for what the wise man does is right. The description of the
ideal formed by the Stoics is hence a common subject of discussion
and is even devoid of interest; or at least the negative element in
it is alone noteworthy. “The wise man is free and likewise in chains,
for he acts from himself, uncorrupted by fear or desire.” Everything
which belongs to desire and fear he does not reckon to himself, he
gives to such the position of being something foreign to him; for no
particular existence is secure to him. “The wise man is alone king,
for he alone is not bound to laws, and he is debtor to no one.” Thus
we here see the autonomy and autocracy of the wise man, who, merely
following reason, is absolved from all established laws which are
recognized, and for which no rational ground can be given, or which
appear to rest somewhat on a natural aversion or instinct. For even
in relation to actual conduct no definite law has properly speaking
reality for him, and least of all those which appear to belong to
nature as such alone, _e.g._ the prohibition against entering into
marriage relations which are considered incestuous, the prohibition
of intercourse between man and man, for in reason the same thing is
fitting as regards the one which is so as regards the others. Similarly
the wise man may eat human flesh,[143] &c. But a universal reason is
something quite indeterminate. Thus the Stoics have not passed beyond
their abstract understanding in the transgression of these laws, and
therefore they have allowed their king to do much that was immoral;
for if incest, pederasty, the eating of human flesh, were at first
forbidden as though through a natural instinct only, they likewise
can by no means exist before the judgment-seat of reason. The Stoic
wise man is thus also ‘enlightened,’ in the sense that where he did
not know how to bring the natural instinct into the form of a rational
reason, he trampled upon nature. Thus that which is called natural
law or natural instinct comes into opposition with what is set forth
as immediately and universally rational. For example, those first
actions seem to rest on natural feelings, and we must remember that
feelings are certainly not the object of thought; as opposed to this,
property is something thought, universal in itself, a recognition of my
possession from all, and thus it indeed belongs to the region of the
understanding. But should the wise man hence not be bound by the former
because it is not something immediately thought, this is merely the
fault of his want of comprehension. As we have, however, seen that in
the sphere of theory the thought-out simplicity of the truth is capable
of all content, so we find this also to be the case with the good, that
which is practically thought-out, without therefore being any content
in itself. To wish to justify such a content through a reason thus
indicates a confusion between the perception of the individual and that
of all reality, it means a superficiality of perception which does not
acknowledge a certain thing because it is not known in this and that
regard. But this is so for the reason that it only seeks out and knows
the most immediate grounds and cannot know whether there are not other
aspects and other grounds. Such grounds as these allow of reasons for
and against everything being found—on the one hand a positive relation
to something which, though in other cases necessary, as such can also
be again sublated; and, on the other hand, a negative relation to
something necessary, which can likewise again be held to be valid.
Because the Stoics indeed placed virtue in thought, but found
no concrete principle of rational self-determination whereby
determinateness and difference developed, they, in the first place,
have carried on a reasoning by means of grounds to which they lead back
virtue. They draw deductions from facts, connections, consequences,
from a contradiction or opposition; and this Antoninus and Seneca do in
an edifying way and with great ingenuity. Reasons, however, prove to
be a nose of wax; for there are good grounds for everything, such as
“These instincts, implanted as they are by nature,” or “Short life,”
&c. Which reasons should be esteemed as good thereby depends on the end
and interest which form the pre-supposition giving them their power.
Hence reasons are as a whole subjective. This method of reflecting on
self and on what we should do, leads to the giving to our ends the
breadth of reflection due to penetrative insight, the enlargement
of the sphere of consciousness. It is thus I who bring forward these
wise and good grounds. They do not constitute the thing, the objective
itself, but the thing of my own will, of my desire, a bauble through
which I set up before me the nobility of my mind; the opposite of this
is self-oblivion in the thing. In Seneca himself there is more folly
and bombast in the way of moral reflection than genuine truth; and thus
there has been brought up against him both his riches, the splendour
of his manner of life, his having allowed Nero to give him wealth
untold, and also the fact that he had Nero as his pupil; for the latter
delivered orations composed by Seneca.[144] This reasoning is often
brilliant, as with Seneca: we find much that awakens and strengthens
the mind, clever antitheses and rhetoric, but we likewise feel the
coldness and tediousness of these moral discourses. We are stimulated
but not often satisfied, and this may be deemed the character of
sophistry: if acuteness in forming distinctions and sincere opinion
must be there recognized, yet final conviction is ever lacking.
In the second place there is in the Stoic standpoint the higher,
although negatively formal principle, that what is thought is alone as
such the end and the good, and therefore that in this form of abstract
thought alone, as in Kant’s principle of duty, there is contained that
by which man must establish and secure his self-consciousness, so
that he can esteem and follow nothing in himself in as far as it has
any other content for itself. “The happy life,” says Seneca (De vita
beata, 5), “is unalterably grounded on a right and secure judgment.”
The formal security of the mind which abstracts from everything,
sets up for us no development of objective principles, but a subject
which maintains itself in this constancy, and in an indifference
not due to stupidity, but studied; and this is the infinitude of
self-consciousness in itself.
Because the moral principle of the Stoics remains at this formalism,
all that they treat of is comprised in this. For their thoughts are the
constant leading back of consciousness to its unity with itself. The
power of despising existence is great, the strength of this negative
attitude sublime. The Stoic principle is a necessary moment in the
Idea of absolute consciousness; it is also a necessary manifestation
in time. For if, as in the Roman world, the life of the real mind
is lost in the abstract universal; the consciousness, where real
universality is destroyed, must go back into its individuality and
maintain itself in its thoughts. Hence, when the political existence
and moral actuality of Greece had perished, and when in later times the
Roman Empire also became dissatisfied with the present, it withdrew
into itself, and there sought the right and moral which had already
disappeared from ordinary life. It is thus herein implied, not that
the condition of the world is a rational and right one, but only that
the subject as such should assert his freedom in himself. Everything
that is outward, world, relationships, &c., are so disposed as to be
capable of being abrogated; in it there is thus no demand for the real
harmony of reason and existence; or that which we might term objective
morality and rectitude is not found in it. Plato has set up the ideal
of a Republic, _i.e._ of a rational condition of mankind in the state;
for this esteem for right, morality and custom which is to him the
principal matter, constitutes the side of reality in that which is
rational; and it is only through a rational condition of the world
such as this, that the harmony of the external with the internal is
in this concrete sense present. In regard to morality and power of
willing the good, nothing more excellent can be read than what Marcus
Aurelius has written in his Meditations on himself; he was Emperor
of the whole of the then known civilized world, and likewise bore
himself nobly and justly as a private individual. But the condition
of the Roman Empire was not altered by this philosophic emperor,
and his successor, who was of a different character, was restrained
by nothing from inaugurating a condition of things as bad as his own
wicked caprice might direct. It is something much higher when the
inward principle of the mind, of the rational will, likewise realizes
itself, so that there arises a rational constitution, a condition of
things in accordance with culture and law. Through such objectivity
of reason, the determinations which come together in the ideal of
the wise man are first consolidated. There then is present a system
of moral relationships which are duties; each determination is then
in its place, the one subordinated to the other, and the higher is
predominant. Hence it comes to pass that the conscience becomes bound
(which is a higher point than the Stoic freedom), that the objective
relationships which we call duties are consolidated after the manner
of a just condition of things, as well as being held by mind to be
fixed determinations. Because these duties do not merely appear to
hold good in a general sense, but are also recognized in my conscience
as having the character of the universal, the harmony of the rational
will and reality is established. On the one hand, the objective system
of freedom as necessity exists, and, on the other, the rational in
me is real as conscience. The Stoic principle has not yet reached
to this more concrete attitude, as being on the one hand abstract
morality, and, on the other, the subject that has a conscience. The
freedom of self-consciousness in itself is the principle, but it has
not yet attained to its concrete form, and its relation to happiness
exists only in its determination as indifferent and contingent, which
relation must be given up. In the concrete principle of rationality
the condition of the world, as of my conscience, is not, however,
indifferent.
This is a general description of Stoic morality; the main point is to
recognize its point of view and chief relationships. Because in the
Roman world a perfectly consistent position, and one conformable to
existing conditions, has attained to the consciousness of itself,
the philosophy of the Stoics has more specially found its home in the
Roman world. The noble Romans have hence only proved the negative, an
indifference to life and to all that is external; they could be great
only in a subjective or negative manner—in the manner of a private
individual. The Roman jurists are also said to have been likewise
Stoic philosophers, but, on the one hand, we find that our teachers of
Roman law only speak ill of Philosophy, and, on the other, they are
yet sufficiently inconsistent to state it to the credit of the Roman
jurists that they were philosophers. So far as I understand law, I can
find in it, among the Romans, nothing either of thought, Philosophy
or the Notion. If we are to call the reasoning of the understanding
logical thought, they may indeed be held to be philosophers, but this
is also present in the reasoning of Master Hugo, who certainly does not
claim to be a philosopher. The reasoning of the understanding and the
philosophic Notion are two different things. We shall now proceed to
what is in direct contrast to the Stoic philosophy, Epicureanism.
B. EPICURUS.
The Epicurean philosophy, which forms the counterpart to Stoicism, was
just as much elaborated as the Stoic, if, indeed, it were not more so.
While the latter posited as truth existence for thought—the universal
Notion—and held firmly to this principle, Epicurus, the founder of
the other system, held a directly opposite view, regarding as the
true essence not Being in general, but Being as sensation, that is,
consciousness in the form of immediate particularity. As the Stoics
did not seek the principle of the Cynics—that man must confine himself
to the simplicity of nature—in man’s requirements, but placed it in
universal reason, so Epicurus elevated the principle that happiness
should be our chief end into the region of thought, by seeking pleasure
in a universal which is determined through thought. And though, in so
doing, he may have given a higher scientific form to the doctrines of
the Cyrenaics. it is yet self-evident that if existence for sensation
is to be regarded as the truth, the necessity for the Notion is
altogether abrogated, and in the absence of speculative interest
things cease to form a united whole, all things being in point of fact
lowered to the point of view of the ordinary human understanding.
Notwithstanding this proviso, before we take this philosophy into
consideration, we must carefully divest ourselves of all the ideas
commonly prevalent regarding Epicureanism.
As regards the life of Epicurus, he was born in the Athenian village of
Gargettus in Ol. 109, 3 (B.C. 342), and therefore before the death of
Aristotle, which took place in Ol. 114, 3. His opponents, especially
the Stoics, have raked up against him more accusations than I can tell
of, and have invented the most trivial anecdotes respecting his doings.
He had poor parents; his father, Neocles, was village schoolmaster,
and Chærestrata, his mother, was a sorceress: that is, she earned
money, like the women of Thrace and Thessaly, by furnishing spells and
incantations, as was quite common in those days. The father, taking
Epicurus with him, migrated with an Athenian colony to Samos, but here
also he was obliged to give instruction to children, because his plot
of land was not sufficient for the maintenance of his family. At the
age of about eighteen years, just about the time when Aristotle was
living in Chalcis, Epicurus returned to Athens. He had already, in
Samos, made the philosophy of Democritus a special subject of study,
and now in Athens he devoted himself to it more than ever; in addition
to this, he was on intimate terms with several of the philosophers
then flourishing, such as Xenocrates, the Platonist, and Theophrastus,
a follower of Aristotle. When Epicurus was twelve years old, he read
with his teacher Hesiod’s account of Chaos, the source of all things;
and this was perhaps not without influence on his philosophic views.
Otherwise he professed to be self-taught, in the sense that he produced
his philosophy entirely from himself; but we are not to suppose from
this that he did not attend the lectures or study the writings of other
philosophers. Neither is it to be understood that he was altogether
original in his philosophy as far as content was concerned; for, as
will be noted later, his physical philosophy especially is that of
Leucippus and Democritus. It was at Mitylene in Lesbos that he first
came forward as teacher of an original philosophic system, and then
again at Lampsacus in Asia Minor; he did not, however, find very many
hearers. After having for some years led an unsettled life, he returned
in about the six and thirtieth year of his age to Athens, to the
very centre of all Philosophy; and there, some time after, he bought
for himself a garden, where he lived and taught in the midst of his
friends. Though so frail in body that for many years he was unable to
rise from his chair, in his manner of living he was most regular and
frugal, and he devoted himself entirely to science, to the exclusion
of all other interests. Even Cicero, though in other respects he has
little to say in his favour, bears testimony to the warmth of his
friendships, and adds that no one can deny he was a good, a humane,
and a kindly man. Diogenes Laërtius gives special commendation to his
reverence towards his parents, his generosity to his brothers, and his
benevolence to all. He died of stone in the seventy-first year of his
age. Just before his death he had himself placed in a warm bath, drank
a cup of wine, and charged his friends to remember what he had taught
them.[145]
No other teacher has ever been loved and reverenced by his scholars
as much as Epicurus; they lived on such intimate terms of friendship
that they determined to make common stock of their possessions with
him, and so continue in a permanent association, like a kind of
Pythagorean brotherhood. This they were, however, forbidden to do by
Epicurus himself, because it would have betrayed a distrust in their
readiness to share what they had with one another; but where distrust
is possible, there neither friendship, nor unity, nor constancy of
attachment can find a place. After his death he was held in honoured
remembrance by his disciples: they carried about with them everywhere
his likeness, engraved on rings or drinking-cups, and remained so
faithful to his teaching that they considered it almost a crime to make
any alteration in it (while in the Stoic philosophy development was
continually going on), and his school, in respect of his doctrines,
resembled a closely-barricaded state to which all entrance was denied.
The reason for this lies, as we shall presently see, in his system
itself; and the further result, from a scientific point of view, ensued
that we can name no celebrated disciples of his who carried on and
completed his teaching on their own account. For his disciples could
only have gained distinction for themselves by going further than
Epicurus did. But to go further would have been to reach the Notion,
which would only have confused the system of Epicurus; for what is
devoid of thought is thrown into confusion by the introduction of
the Notion, and it is this very lack of thought which has been made
a principle. Not that it is in itself without thought, but the use
made of thought is to hold back thought, and thought thus takes up a
negative position in regard to itself; and the philosophic activity of
Epicurus is thus directed towards the restoration and maintaining of
what is sensuous through the very Notion which renders it confused.
Therefore his philosophy has not advanced nor developed, but it must
also be said that it has not retrograded; a certain Metrodorus alone
is said to have carried it on further in some directions. It is also
told to the credit of the Epicurean philosophy that this Metrodorus
was the only disciple of Epicurus who went over to Carneades; for the
rest, it surpassed all others in its unbroken continuity of doctrine
and its long duration; for all of them became degenerate or suffered
interruption. When some one called the attention of Arcesilaus to this
attachment to Epicurus, by the remark that while so many had gone over
from other philosophers to Epicurus, scarcely a single example was
known of any one passing over from the Epicurean system to another,
Arcesilaus made the witty rejoinder: “Men may become eunuchs, but
eunuchs can never again become men.”[146]
Epicurus himself produced in his lifetime an immense number of works,
being a much more prolific author than Chrysippus, who vied with him
in the number of his writings,[147] if we deduct from the latter his
compilations from the works of others or from his own. The number of
his writings is said to have amounted to three hundred; it is scarcely
to be regretted that they are lost to us. We may rather thank Heaven
that they no longer exist; philologists at any rate would have had
great trouble with them. The main source of our knowledge of Epicurus
is the whole of the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, which after all
gives us but scanty information, though it deals with the subject
at great length. We should, of course, have been better off had we
possessed the philosopher’s own writings, but we know enough of him to
make us honour the whole. For, besides this, we know a good deal about
the philosophy of Epicurus through Cicero, Sextus Empiricus and Seneca;
and so accurate are the accounts they give of him, that the fragment of
one of Epicurus’s own writings, found some years ago in Herculaneum,
and reprinted by Orelli from the Neapolitan edition (Epicuri Fragmenta
libri II. et XI. De natura, illustr. Orellius, Lipsiæ 1818), has
neither extended nor enriched our knowledge; so that we must in all
earnestness deprecate the finding of the remaining writings.
With regard to the Epicurean philosophy, it is by no means to be looked
on as setting forth a system of Notions, but, on the contrary, as a
system of ordinary conceptions or even of sensuous existence, which,
looked at from the ordinary point of view as perceived by the senses,
Epicurus has made the very foundation and standard of truth (p. 277). A
detailed explanation of how sensation can be such, he has given in his
so-called Canonic. As in the case of the Stoics, we have first to speak
of the manner which Epicurus adopted of determining the criterion of
truth; secondly, of his philosophy of nature; and thirdly and lastly,
of his moral teaching.
1. CANONICAL PHILOSOPHY.