CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS IN THE GRÆCO-ROMAN PHILOSOPHY
The beginnings: Socrates.
IN the seventh century before Christ the Greek spirit begins to free
itself from the world-view which underlay the traditional religion,
and undertakes the task of establishing another on a foundation of
knowledge and thought.
First there comes a nature-philosophy, the result of investigation of
Being with reflexion upon what it really is. Then criticism begins its
work. Belief in the gods is found unsatisfying, not only because the
course of nature is not made intelligible by the rule of dwellers in
Olympus, but also because these personalities no longer answer to the
demands of feeling which is thoughtful and moral. These two elements,
nature-philosophy and criticism, are found united in Xenophanes and
Heraclitus in the sixth century B.C.
In the course of the fifth century B.C. Sophists appear, and begin to
concern themselves critically with the accepted standards of value
current for social life and individual activities._(_3_)_ The result
is annihilating. The more moderate of these “Enlighteners” proclaim the
overwhelming majority of these standards which pass for moral to be
merely claims made by society on its members, leaving open thereby the
possibility that a small remainder may be able to prove themselves to
rational consideration as moral in [pg 033] themselves. But the
younger radical sophists maintain the position that all morality, like
all current law, has been invented by organized society in its own
interest. Hence the thinking man who is freeing himself from this
tutelage will make his own moral standards, and will follow in them
nothing but his own pleasure and interests. Thus Western philosophical
thought about the problem of ethics and civilisation starts with a
shrill dissonance.
What was Socrates (470-399 B.C.) able to contribute, when he came
forward to oppose this tendency?
In the place of the simply pleasurable he put the rationally
pleasurable.
By rational consideration, he asserts, it is possible to establish a
standard of action in which the happiness of the individual, rightly
understood, is in harmony with the interests of society. Virtue
consists in right knowledge.
That the rationally moral is that which procures for the agent true
pleasure, or, what means the same thing, true profit, Socrates draws
out into the most diverse applications in the simple everyday
discussions which Xenophon has transmitted to us in his
_Memorabilia_._(_4_)_ The dialogues of Plato show him going beyond
this primitive utilitarianism, and seeking a conception of the good
which has been made something inward and aims at the well-being of the
soul; which stands, too, in relationship with the beautiful._(_5_)_
How much of these more advanced views are the Master’s own, and how
much of his own thoughts his pupil has in this way put into his mouth,
cannot now be decided.
That Socrates spoke of an inner, mysterious voice, the “daimonion”, as
being the highest moral authority in man is indeed certain, for it is
mentioned in his indictment. His [pg 034] utilitarian rationalism is
therefore completed by a kind of mysticism. An empirical ethic, that
is, one established out of past experience and with a view to future
experience, and an intuitive ethic live in him side by side and
undistinguished from one another, to be separated later and developed
in contrast to one another in his pupils, the Cynics and Cyrenaics on
the one hand, and Plato on the other.
Was Socrates at all conscious that with the bringing back of the moral
to that which is rationally pleasurable he builds the road only a
short way further, and stops exactly at the point where the real
difficulty makes its appearance, viz. that of defining the most
general content of the moral as given by reason? Or was he so simple
as to regard the general formula he had arrived at as the solution of
the difficulty?
The confidence which he displays in all his public life leads us to
suppose the latter. In his unaffected simplicity lies his strength. In
that perilous hour when Western thought comes to the point of having
to philosophize about the moral in order to arrest the dissolution of
Greek society which has been begun by a body of unstable and
disputatious teachers, the wise man of Athens shatters all scepticism
by the mighty earnestness of his conviction that what is moral can be
determined by thought. Beyond that general statement he does not go,
but he is the source of that serious spirit in which antiquity after
his day busied itself with the problem. What would that ancient world
have become without him?
Characteristic for this prologue to Western philosophizing about the
moral is the indifference with which Socrates stands outside the
philosophic efforts to reach a complete world-view. He troubles
himself neither about the results of natural science, nor about
inquiries into the nature of knowledge, but is busied simply with man
in his relation to himself and to society. Lao-tse, Confucius, the
Indian philosophers, the Jewish prophets, and Jesus seek to comprehend
ethics as somehow or other derived from, or [pg 035] forming part of,
a world-view. Socrates gives them no foundation but themselves. On
this stage, which has no scenery to form a background, there will
appear in succession to him the utilitarians of every age.
And here a remarkable prospect opens to us. To all efforts to
determine the content of the moral more help is afforded by the ethic
which keeps clear of all connexion with a complete world-view than by
any other. Such an ethic is the most practical. And yet this isolation
is unnatural. The idea that ethics are rooted in a complete
world-view, or must find their completion in one—that is, the idea
that one’s relations to one’s fellow-men and to society are in the
last resort rooted in some relation to the world—never loses its
natural claim. Hence again and again—already in Plato, then in
Epicurus and in the Stoic philosophy—ethics feel the need of again
connecting themselves with world-view, and the same process continues
in modern thought. But the practical search for the content of the
ethical remains the prerogative of those who are busied with ethics in
themselves.
In Socrates the ethical mysticism of devotion to the inner voice takes
the place of the complete world-view, which was in future to be the
foundation of the ethical determination of mankind.
Epicureanism and Stoicism. The Ethic of Resignation
Three tasks were left by Socrates to his successors: to determine more
exactly the content of the rationally useful; to give the world the
most universal general-notion of the good; and to think ethics into a
complete world-view.
What conclusions are come to by those who concern themselves with the
first question, and seek to determine the rationally useful from a
corresponding experience of pleasure?
As soon as the notion of pleasure is brought into connexion with
ethics it shows disturbances, as the magnetic [pg 036] needle does in
the neighbourhood of the poles. Immediate pleasure shows itself as
incapable in every respect of being reconciled with the demands of
ethics, and it is therefore given up. Lasting pleasure is called on to
take its place, but this retreat does not suffice. Lasting pleasure,
interpreted seriously, can be nothing but pleasure of the mind. Even
this position, however, is not tenable. Reflexion upon the ethic which
is to produce happiness sees itself compelled at last to give up the
positive notion of pleasure in any form. It has to reconcile itself to
the negative notion which conceives pleasure as somehow or other a
liberation from the need of pleasure. Thus the individualistic,
utilitarian ethic, also called Eudæmonism, destroys itself as soon as
it ventures to be consistent. This is the paradox which reveals itself
in the ethics of antiquity.
Instead of coming to maturity in the following generations, the
ethically-rational life-ideal put forward by Socrates succumbs to an
incurable decline, because the notion of pleasure, which lives in it,
denies itself as soon as it makes any attempt to think itself out.
Aristippus (_c._ 435-355 B.C.), the founder of the Cyrenaic school,
Democritus of Abdera (_c._ 450-360 B.C.), the author of the atomic
theory, and Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) seek to retain as much as possible
of the positive notion of pleasure. The Cynic school of Antisthenes
(born _c._ 440 B.C.), and the Stoicism which originated with Zeno, a
native of Kittium in Cyprus (_c._ 336-264 B.C.), keep from the very
beginning to the negative notion._(_6_)_ But the final result is the
same with both. Epicurus sees himself compelled at last to exalt the
[pg 037] absence of desire for pleasure as being itself the purest
pleasure, landing thereby on the shore of resignation where the Stoics
take their exercise. The fundamental difference between the two great
philosophical schools of antiquity does not lie in what they offer to
men as ethical. About what the “wise man” does and leaves undone, they
both frequently express themselves in the same way. What separates
them is the world-view with which their ethic is combined.
Epicureanism accepts the atomistic materialism of Democritus, is
atheistic, asserts that the soul perishes, and is in every respect
irreligious. Stoicism is pantheistic.
With Epicurus and Zeno ethics no longer trust themselves, as with
Socrates, to maintain an independent existence. They see the necessity
of attaching themselves to some sort of world-view. Travelling along
this road, Epicurus is guided solely by the effort after veracity. He
leaves the talking to the purely scientific knowledge of the world,
not allowing ethics to join in the investigation of Being and
introduce into it what might be of advantage to itself. How poor, or
how rich, it will finally become is to him a matter of indifference.
The one thing he is concerned about is that the world-view be a true
one, and therein lies the greatness of Epicurus with its claim to our
respect.
Stoicism seeks to satisfy the need for an inward, stable world-view;
like the Chinese monists it tries to find a meaning in the world. It
tries to widen out the ethical rationalism of Socrates into cosmic
rationalism. The moral is to show itself to be conduct agreeable to
the pronouncements of world-reason.
Stoicism has a vision of an optimistic-ethical affirmation of life,
grounded in the nature of the cosmos, but it fails to reach it. It is
not untutored enough to acquiesce in the ethical simplicity of a
nature-philosophy such as can be seen in Lao-tse and in the older
philosophical Taoism. It is ever struggling to discover in
world-reason the notion of purposive activity, and is ever mercilessly
thrust back upon that of activity pure and simple. Hence the ethic
with which it is operating never has a sufficiently universalist [pg
038] character to let it form a natural connexion with world-reason.
As might be expected from its origin, it is dominated by the problem
of pleasure and not-pleasure, and therefore no longer possesses any
efficacious instinct for effort. Its horizons, because still
determined by the questions arising out of ancient citizenship and the
ancient city-state, are narrow. It is, therefore, not advanced enough
to engage in thought on nature-philosophic lines, concerned with both
the world and man, although it does feel the inner necessity for doing
so.
The vacillation which is characteristic of Stoicism comes, then, from
the fact that the results it attains to do not match its aspirations,
but are much poorer than the latter. The spirit of antiquity tries to
find an optimistic-ethical life-affirmation in nature-philosophy, and
to find in it also the justification of those instincts for reliable
activity which it has possessed since the days when it was entirely
untutored, but it cannot do so. Whenever it acknowledges what has
happened it sees clearly that thinking about the universe leads only
to resignation, and that a life in harmony with the world means quiet
surrender to being carried along in the flood of world-happenings,
and, when the hour comes, sinking into it without a murmur.
Stoicism talks, it is true, with deep earnestness of responsibility
and duty, but since it cannot draw either from nature-philosophy or
from ethics a well-established and living notion of activity, it shows
us in these words nothing but beautiful corpses. It is impotent to
command anything whatever that is bound up with voluntary activity
which is conscious of its aim. Again and again evidence breaks through
that its thinking has been pushed aside on to the track of passivity.
Nature-philosophy only provides the cosmic background for the
resignation to which ethics have come. The ideal which gives life to
Chinese Monism, of the perfecting of a world through ethical and
ethically organized mankind, is not really discerned, much less
securely grasped.
One watches with dismay the shaping of the fate of [pg 039] ancient
ethics in Epicureanism and Stoicism. In place of the vigorous
life-affirming ethic which Socrates expects from rational thinking,
resignation steps in. An inconceivable impoverishment takes place in
the representation of the moral. The notion of action cannot be worked
out to completion. Even so much of it as, thanks to tradition, still
survives in the simple thought-methods of the Greek world in general,
is lost.
The ancient Greek was more citizen than man. Active devotion to the
cause of the community was to him a matter of course. Socrates
presupposes it. In the conversations which Xenophon hands down to us
in the _Memorabilia_ he is ever insisting on it that the individual
must improve himself in order to become an active citizen. The natural
course would have been that the thought which originated with him
should deepen this mentality by setting before it the highest social
aims. It was, however, never at all in a position to maintain the
mentality as it received it. More and more it leads the individual to
withdraw himself from the world and from all that goes on in it.
By a never-ceasing process of change the ethics of Greek thought
become in Epicureanism and Stoicism ethics of decadence. Not being
capable of producing ideals of progressive development for collective
bodies, they are also impotent to become really ethics of
civilization. In place of the ideal of the man who works for
civilization they set the ideal of the “wise man.” It is only the
inward individual civilization of refined and reflective
self-liberation from the world that now floats before its eyes, but
this in all its depth.
It is true that there is power in the preaching of resignation which
ancient thought, now become knowing about life, allows to go forth to
mankind. Resignation is the lofty porch through which one enters upon
ethics. But Epicurus and the Stoics stop in this porch. Resignation
becomes for them an ethical world-view. Hence they are incapable of
leading ancient society from its untutored life- and world-affirmation
to one based on thought.
[pg 040]
The conception of the rationally pleasurable, which was the legacy of
Socrates, is not productive enough to keep a world alive. It is
impossible to develop out of it the ideas of a utilitarianism directed
to the welfare of the community, although he believed he found them in
it. Ethical thought remains confined within the circle of the
self-regarding. Every attempt to ennoble the rationally pleasurable
ends in life-affirmation changing into life-denial. On this logical
fact was wrecked the ancient West, which, after the critical awakening
of the Greek spirit, could have been saved only by means of a
reflective optimistic-ethical world-view. It was able to develop
seriously what Socrates gave it, but not to make it capable of
producing life and civilization.
Plato’s abstract basic principle of the ethical. The ethic of
world-negation
Plato, too (427-347 B.C.), and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the two great
independent thinkers of antiquity, are incapable of producing an ethic
of action, and so giving civilization a firm foundation.
Plato seeks the general notion of the Good, but he abandons the path
which was pointed out, even if not followed to the end, by Socrates,
viz. the determination of it by a process of induction. He gives up
trying to arrive at the nature of the Good by considerations of the
kind, the object, and the results of action, that is to say, by its
content. He wants to establish it by a purely formal process, by
abstract logical thinking.
In order to arrive at an ethic he uses a detour through the theory of
ideas. All similar phenomena, he says, are to be conceived of as
varying copies of an original—to express which he uses the word
“idea.” In trees there is to be seen the idea of tree, in horses, that
of horse. The idea does not come to us, as we are inclined to think,
by our abstracting from trees the idea of tree, and from horses that
of horse. We have it within us already. It originates, not in our [pg
041] experience of the empirical world but in the recollection which
our soul brought with it from the supra-sensuous, pure world of ideas,
when it began its existence in a body. In the same way we have brought
with us the idea of the Good.
Thus in a tortured doctrine which is disfigured everywhere with
fancies and obscurities, Plato tries to found ethics on a theory about
the character of our knowledge of the world of sense, and he is
encouraged to this undertaking by the consideration that it is not
from reflexion that we obtain our conception of the Beautiful, which
is closely allied with that of the Good: we bring that conception also
with us, ready made.
Plato is the first of all thinkers who feels that the presence of the
ethical idea in man is what it is: something profoundly puzzling. That
is his greatest distinction. Hence he cannot profess to be satisfied
with the attempt of the historic Socrates to explain the Good as that
which is rationally pleasure-giving. It is clear to him that it is
something unconditional, with a compelling force of its own, and to
preserve for it this character seems to him, as later to Kant, to be
the great task of thought.
But what is the result of his undertaking? A fundamental principle for
ethics which is devoid of content. In order to secure its lofty
character it is allowed to be born of abstract considerations in the
country of the supra-sensuous. It can, therefore, never find itself at
home in reality and become familiar with it, nor can any rules for
concrete ethical conduct be developed from it. Thus Plato, when he
treats practically of ethics, is compelled to abide by the chief
virtues, as popularly conceived. In the _Republic_ he names four of
them: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, and he founds them not
on his general idea of the Good, but on his psychology.
But the characteristic ethic of Plato has nothing whatever to do with
such virtues. If the conception of the Good is supra-sensible and the
immaterial world is the only real one, then it is only thought and
conduct which deal with the [pg 042] immaterial that can have any
ethical character. In the world of appearance there is nothing of
value to be made actual. Man is simply compelled to be an impotent
spectator of its shadow-play. All willing must be directed to enabling
oneself to turn away from this, and get sight of that true activity
which goes on in the light.
The true ethic, then, is world-negation. To this view Plato was
committed the moment he allowed the ethical to find its home in the
world of pure Being. Thoughts of ascetic inactivity find expression in
him side by side with the Greek feeling for reality, and it is
confusing that he does not recognize the conflict between them, but
speaks now in one sense, now in the other. His ethic is a chaos, and
he himself an expert in inconsistency.
Plato’s ethic of world-denial is not an original creation; he takes it
over in the Indian setting in which it is offered to him by Orphism
and Pythagoreanism. By what route there found its way into Greek
thought this pessimism which has been thought out to a system and
provided with the doctrine of re-incarnation, we do not know, and
shall probably never learn. The presence side by side in Greek thought
of an artless optimism and a mature pessimism will always remain for
us the great puzzle of Greek civilization. But if the pessimism had
not been there, Plato must have introduced it. The abstract basic
principle of morality which he adopts in order to preserve the
absolute character of morality which he was the first to pronounce to
be a necessity, precludes any other content than that of the denial of
the sensible world and of natural life.
Aristotle. Instruction about virtue in place of ethics
Plato’s fate alarms Aristotle. He refuses to soar to the heights where
Plato lost himself. How then does he fare?
His object is the establishment of a serviceable ethic which is in
harmony both as to extent and content with reality. What he
accomplished lies before us in the [pg 043] so-called _Nicomachean
Ethics_, the comprehensive work which he composed for the benefit of
his son, Nicomachus. The general thought of Socrates, that ethics are
a striving after happiness, he acknowledges. But at the same time he
makes quite clear his opinion that the part played by activity in
ethics must be a much more important one than is given to it in Plato
or in the other post-Socratics. Aristotle feels that the crux of the
question is the conception of activity, and this he wants to save. He
therefore avoids Plato’s paths of abstract thinking, and rejects the
ethic of pleasure and not-pleasure over which the Cyrenaics and Cynics
work so hard. In his ethical thinking the vitality of the ancient
world tries to find expression.
In magnificent fashion he lays down the pre-suppositions which are
necessary for the carrying through of his undertaking. He finds the
motive to activity in the conception of pleasure, a thing he can do
because his whole philosophy has indeed for its aim and object the
conceiving of Being as formative activity. Hence the essential element
in human nature also is activity. Happiness is to be defined as
activity in accordance with the law of excellence. Rational pleasure
is experience of the perfecting of one’s activity.
Starting from the conception of pleasure which experiences itself as
activity, Aristotle is on the way to comprehend ethics as deepened
life-affirmation, and to attack the problem of leading the ancient
world up from a naïve and unreflecting world-affirmation to a thinking
one. But on the way he diverges from the high-road.
When he has to ask the decisive question as to what make activity
moral, he shrinks from discussing the problem of the basic principle
of the moral. Ethics are not some sort of knowledge which gives a
content to activity, he says in opposition to Socrates. The content of
the will is already given. No reflexion and no knowledge can put
anything new into it, or alter it.
Ethics consist, then, not in a guiding of the will by aims and objects
which knowledge puts before it, but in the will’s [pg 044] own
regulation of itself. The right thing to do is to establish the
correct balance between the different elements in the given contents
of the will. Left to itself, the latter rushes to extremes. Rational
reflexion keeps it in the correct middle path. Thus brought to a state
of harmony, human activity can be conceived as motived and ethical.
Virtue, therefore, is readiness to observe the correct mean which is
to be acquired by practice.
Instead of creating an ethic, Aristotle contents himself with a
doctrine of virtue. This depreciation of the ethical is the price he
pays in order to reach an ethic which ends neither in the abstract nor
in resignation. While he shirks the problem of the basic principle of
the moral, he still remains able to establish an ethic of activity,
though the latter contains indeed no live forces, only dead ones.
Aristotle’s ethic is therefore an æsthetic of the impulses of the
will. It consists in a catalogue of virtues and in the demonstration
that they are to be conceived as a mean. Thus courage lies between
rashness and cowardice, temperance between sensuality and
insensibility, truthfulness between boastfulness and irony,_(_7_)_
liberality between prodigality and avarice, high-mindedness between
conceit and small-mindedness, gentleness between quarrelsomeness and
characterless good-nature.
On this excursion through the field of the ethical, there open up many
interesting views. In an acute and living discussion Aristotle lets
his readers survey the questions of the relations of man to his
fellow-men and to society. How much that is deep and true there is in
the chapter on moral excellence and in that on friendship! How he
wrestles with the problem of justice!
No one can fail to feel the charm of the _Nicomachean Ethics_. There
is revealed in them a noble personality with abundant experience of
life, depicted with a magnificent simplicity. But just in proportion
as the method followed [pg 045] is advantageous technically, it is
valueless in itself. The ethical is reconciled with reality without
having first tried to come to clear understanding of itself. It is in
this reconciliation that the understanding is to be found, so
Aristotle thinks, but he is mistaken. His mind is seduced through his
having observed that some virtues—but even these more or less under
compulsion—allow themselves to be conceived as real means between two
extremes, and he is misled into developing on these lines the whole of
his ethical system.
But a more or less natural quality, which in ordinary speech is called
a virtue, is one thing, virtue in the really ethical sense is another.
The middle quality between prodigality and avarice is not the ethical
virtue of liberality, out the quality of rational economy. The middle
quality between rashness and cowardice is not the ethical virtue of
courage, but the quality of rational prudence. The combination of two
qualities only produces a single one. But virtue, in the ethical
sense, means a quality guiding itself by an ideal of self-perfection,
and being serviceable for some object which looks towards the
universal. Liberality as an ethical virtue means a process of spending
which serves some object recognized by the person practising it as
valuable in principle, and in such a way that any natural tendency to
prodigality, should there be such in the giver, plays no part, while
the tendency to avarice is paralysed.
Devotion of one’s property or one’s life to an object which is
valuable in principle is under all circumstances ethical, while
prodigality and avarice, rashness and cowardice as simple qualities
not inspired by any higher aim have never any ethical character; they
are merely something natural. Whether the devotion of one’s property
or of one’s life for an object valuable in principle is made more
completely than need be or exactly to the extent required by the
circumstances, does not alter in any way the ethical character of the
decision and the action. Such excess or defect only shows how much or
how little the ethical will has allowed [pg 046] itself to be at the
same time influenced by considerations of prudence.
Aristotle’s representation, then, rests on the fact that he allows
virtue in ordinary speech and virtue in the ethical sense to get mixed
up. He smuggles in the really ethical, and then offers it as the
resultant of two natural qualities, each of which is an extreme.
In the chapter on temperance—_Ethics_, Bk. III., 10—he has to allow
that the theory which makes the ethical a mean between two extremes
cannot be carried through completely. The love of beauty, he says
plainly, however strong it becomes, remains what it is; there can
never be any question of excess. He throws out this admission without
seeing that he thereby undermines his feeble definition of the ethical
as the appropriate relative mean, and, like Socrates and Plato,
acknowledges that there can be something which its content allows to
be reckoned as good in itself.
Aristotle is so firmly resolved not to let himself be entangled in the
problem of the basic principle of ethics, that he will allow nothing
to lead him to the discussion of it. He means to voyage along the
coast, keep to facts, and deal with ethics as if they were a branch of
natural science. Only he forgets that in science we can confine
ourselves to venturing from definite given happenings through
hypotheses to the nature of the Being which lies behind them, while in
ethics, on the contrary, we have to establish a basic principle
through the application of which we secure our happenings.
It is because he misunderstands their nature that Aristotle cannot
help ethics forward. Plato rides off over the head of Socrates and
loses himself in abstractions. Aristotle, in order to maintain the
connexion with reality goes down below Socrates. He brings together
material for a monumental building, and runs up a wooden shack. Among
teachers of virtue he is one of the greatest. Nevertheless, the least
of those who venture on the search for the basic principle of the
ethical, is greater than he.
[pg 047]
Ethical theory is no more ethics than cartilage is bone. But how
strange is this inability to establish the basic principle of ethical
action which Socrates regarded as the certain, and from the very first
sure and certain, product of thoughtful reflexion on the ethical! Why
do all the ancient thinkers who in succession to Socrates search for
it, always miss it? Why does Aristotle cease to concern himself with
it, and so condemn himself to a doctrine of virtue in which, as a
matter of fact, there is hardly any more living ethical force than
there is in the abstract ethical system of Plato or in the ethics of
resignation of the rest?
The Ideal of the Civilized State in Plato and Aristotle
How little Plato and Aristotle are capable of establishing an ethic of
action can be seen from the way in which they sketch their ideal of
the civilized State. Plato develops his in the _Republic_, Aristotle
his in the _Politics_. At this very time, Mencius (Meng-tse) is
putting before the princes of China a doctrine of the civilized State.
That the State must be something more than a union which regulates in
the most practical way the common life of a number of persons whom
natural conditions compel to depend upon one another, is quite clear
to both of them. They also agree in demanding that the State shall
promote the true prosperity of its citizens. This is, however,
unthinkable and impossible without virtue, and the State must
therefore develop into an ethical institution. “Honourable and
virtuous conduct is the object which the political community aims at,”
is the way Aristotle puts it.
The State, which is given by history, is therefore to come under the
influence of a representation of its nature as a political body which
is both ethical and rational. In the _Republic_ Plato puts in the
mouth of Socrates the following sentiment: “Unless it happen that
either philosophers acquire the kingly power in States, or those who
are to-day called kings and potentates cultivate philosophy truly and
sufficiently, and thus political power and philosophy [pg 048] become
as one . . . there can be no deliverance from evil for States, nor
ever, so I think, for the human race” (Bk. V, 473, C and D).
When, however, it comes to a more detailed carrying out of the ideal
of the civilized State, Plato and Aristotle betray remarkable
embarrassment. First of all, their vision of the State of the future
is not that of a community which embraces a whole nation, but is
always just a copy of the Greek city-republic with appropriate
improvements. That they think out their ideal within such narrow
limits is historically intelligible, but for the development of the
philosophical idea of the civilized State it is deplorable.
One result of these narrow limits is that both are anxiously concerned
to provide that the well-being of the city-republic shall not be
endangered by the increase of the population. The number of the
inhabitants is to be kept as far as possible always near the same
figure. Aristotle is not frightened by the proposal that weakly
children shall be allowed to die of hunger, and that unborn children
shall be got rid of by intentional abortion. That the Spartan State,
on the contrary, regards the increase of the population as desirable,
and exempts a citizen from all imposts as soon as he has four
children, does not seem to him to be reasonable.
Again, just as these two thinkers cannot work themselves up to a
general idea of a national State, so they are unable to reach the idea
of mankind. They make a strict line of division between the unfree on
the one side, and the free on the other. The former they regard merely
as creatures made for work, who are to maintain the material
well-being of the State. What becomes of them as human beings is to
them a matter of very little interest. Such beings as they are not
meant to have any share in the growth towards perfection which is to
be brought about by means of the civilized State.
Slavery was, indeed, attacked now and again by the Sophists from their
point of view, not, however, on the [pg 049] ground of humanity but
from a desire to raise doubts about the accepted justification of
existing institutions. Aristotle defends it as a natural arrangement,
but recommends kindly treatment.
Artisans, and in general all who earn their living by the labour of
their hands, are not to be allowed to be citizens. “One cannot
practise virtue, if one leads the life of an artisan, or of one who
labours for pay,” says Aristotle. An ethical valuation of labour as
such is still something unknown to him, even though he conceives of
happiness as “activity in accordance with the law of excellence.”
Plato and he are still entirely under the influence of the ancient
view that only the “free” man can have full value as a man.
In details of the ideal of the State, however, the two part company,
and Aristotle argues against Plato, though, unfortunately, just those
parts of the _Politics_ in which he sketches his ideal State have not
come down to us complete. The main difference is that Aristotle keeps
closer than Plato to the historically given. He builds his State upon
the family; Plato makes the State into a family. In his _Republic_ the
free men live with property, wives, and children owned in common. They
are to possess nothing as their own, so that they may not by private
interests be held back from working for the general welfare. Moreover,
the general welfare allows the State to breed its citizens
systematically. He prescribes the connections which men and women are
to form, and permits only such as allow the expectation of a new
generation which is sound both in body and mind. The offspring of
unions not approved by the authorities are either to be killed before
birth, or got rid of by starvation.
Aristotle contents himself with guaranteeing the quality of the
offspring by legal regulation of the age for marriage. Women may get
married at eighteen, men not till they are thirty-seven. Moreover,
marriages are to take place preferably in winter, and as far as
possible, when the wind is in the north.
[pg 050]
In what, then, does the good consist which is to be realized by this
civilized State? To this decisive question Aristotle and Plato have in
reality only the answer that it is meant to make it possible for a
number of its members, viz. the “free” men, to devote themselves
entirely to their own bodily and mental culture free from care about
material things, and to take the lead in public affairs. It is not
established with a view to the production of anything ethical in any
deeper sense, nor for the sake of an ideal of progress on lines which
could be described as in any sense great and noble. Nowhere do the
characteristic limitations of ancient ethics reveal themselves so
clearly as in the poverty of their ideal of the State.
The ethical valuation of man as man has not yet been reached. Hence
the State has for its object, not the growth to perfection of all, but
only that of a particular class.
The nation, too, is not yet recognized as a great entity both natural
and ethical, and therefore no consideration is given to the question
of uniting the various city communities for the joint pursuit of
higher objects. Each remains isolated. Plato thinks he has satisfied
the claims produced by membership of the same nation by requiring that
in wars waged by Greek States against one another the houses shall not
be destroyed nor the fields laid waste, as if the war were against
barbarians.
The idea of humanity as a whole has not yet come in sight. It is,
therefore, not possible for Plato and Aristotle to make their State
work in co-operation with others to promote the general progress of
mankind.
They therefore establish their civilized State on a type which is
hemmed in in every direction by narrow horizons. Moreover, the
political community which they adopt as the type is at the very time
when they are writing already a dying entity. While Aristotle is
writing his _Politics_, his pupil, Alexander the Great, is founding an
empire, and Rome is beginning to subject Italy to her rule.
More important still than all external faults in their ideal [pg 051]
of the civilized State is the fact that these two thinkers are unable
to introduce into the community the energies which are needed for its
maintenance. The idea of the civilized State is present with the
vitality needed, only when the individual is by the impulse contained
in his world-view moved so far as to devote himself to organized
society with enthusiastic activity. Without civic idealism no
civilized State! But to assume anything of that kind in the members of
their State is impossible for Plato and Aristotle, since both have
already reached the ideal of the wise man who withdraws himself
prudently and gracefully from the world.
Plato admits this. His wise citizens who are destined to be rulers
devote themselves to the service of the State only when their turn
comes, and are glad when they are set free and can again in retirement
busy themselves, as wise among wise, with the world of pure Being.
Aristotle, when he raises in the _Politics_ the question whether the
contemplative life is not to be preferred to that of political
activity, decides in theory in favour of the latter. “It is a
mistake,” he says, “to value inactivity higher than activity, since
happiness consists in activity.” But in the doctrine of virtue in the
_Nicomachean Ethics_ there is nothing which could lead the individual
to place his life at the service of the community.
Plato and Aristotle cherish undoubtedly the ancient conviction that
the individual ought to devote himself to the State, but they cannot
find a foundation for it in their world-view. Like Epicurus and the
adherents of the Porch, they are under the spell of an ethic in which
there is present no will to attempt a transformation of the world.
How much greater than the two Greeks is Mencius, when he is thinking
out the ideal of the civilized State! He can make it as large as he
likes and take men into its service with their best thoughts, because
it results in the most natural way from a large-scale world-view of
ethical activity.
Plato and Aristotle, lacking such a world-view, can do no more than
guess at the nature of a civilized State, and invent one for
themselves. Plato’s _Republic_ is a mere [pg 052] curiosity.
Aristotle’s _Politics_ is valuable, not on account of the theory of
the civilized State which is there presented, but only for his
magnificent practical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of
the various State-constitutions, and of their economic problems.
The decadence of antiquity does not begin, then, with the suppression
of the individual by the Empire, and its destruction of the normal
mutual relations between the individual and the community. It sets in
immediately after Socrates, because the ethical thinking which started
with him cannot really lead the individual beyond himself, and set him
as an effective force in the service of the moralization and the
perfecting of social relations.
There is no middle term between the ethic of enthusiasm and that of
resignation. But an ethic of resignation cannot think out, much less
bring into existence, a system of social relations which can be called
really civilized.
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius
“In imperial times Stoicism shrivels up into a moralizing popular
philosophy” is what we are usually told in treatises about ancient
philosophy. As a matter of fact what we have to deal with is by no
means a shrivelling up, but a serious struggle for a living ethic
which begins unexpectedly in the later period of Græco-Roman thought,
and leads to an optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy.
The pillars of this movement are L. Annæus Seneca (4 B.C.—A.D. 65),
Nero’s teacher, who at the command of his pupil had to open his veins;
the Phrygian slave, Epictetus (born _c_. A.D. 50), who in A.D. 94 was
with all philosophers banished from Rome by Domitian; the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180) who, brought up by pupils of Epictetus,
defends the Empire at a time of great danger, and writes his
philosophical _Meditations_ while in camp._(_8_)_
[pg 053]
In their classical period Greek ethics offer us either egoistic
considerations of advantage, or cold doctrines of virtue, or ascetic
renunciation of the world, or resignation. In whichever direction they
turn, they never lead men out beyond themselves.
In Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, they lose this
self-regarding character. Renouncing the spirit of the earlier time
they develop to an ethic of universal brotherhood, and busy themselves
with the immediate, altruistic relations of man to man.
Whence comes this understanding for humanity, which is never seen in
classical antiquity?
The older Greek moralists are concerned with the State. Their interest
is absorbed in the maintenance of the organization of society which is
embodied in the city-republic, so that the free citizens can continue
to live the life of freedom. The type of complete manhood is to be
realized. All around there is the activity of men who receive no
consideration except so far as they are means to this end.
But amid the mighty political and social revolutions which lead to the
creation of the Empire this mentality ceases to be accepted as a
matter of course. The fearful experiences it goes through cause
feeling to become more human, and the horizons of ethics are widened.
The city-republic, on which ethical thinking had been built up, has
disappeared, but an empire now crushes men down just in the same way.
Thus the individual man as such becomes the object of reflexion and of
ethics. The conception of the brotherhood of all men appears. A
disposition to humanity makes itself heard, and Seneca condemns the
gladiatorial shows. Nay more: even the [pg 054] inner relationship
between mankind and the animal world is recognized.
So now when they have caught sight of mankind as a whole and man as
such, ethics reach such a depth and breadth as allows them to try to
comprehend themselves in a universal world-will. Henceforth
nature-philosophy and ethics can work together. Stoicism had from the
very beginning a vision of this, but had not been able to make it a
reality, since it had not at its disposal the needful living and
universalist ethic.
But there is another reason why optimism and ethics can now in
nature-philosophy come into power. The old school of the Porch was
crushed down into resignation just in proportion as it submitted to
the necessity for critical thinking. But as time goes on, the
practical and religious instincts which were always present in its
world-view, gain in strength. The antiquity which is passing away is
no longer critical, but either sceptical or religious, and therefore
the later school of the Porch can let itself be guided by the ethical
demands of its world-view much more completely than the old one could.
It becomes at once deeper and more simple than the latter, and, like
Chinese ethical monism, rises to such freedom from limitations as to
be able to interpret the world-will as ethical. So now Stoics appear
who, like Confucius, like Mencius, and like Chwang-tse, and indeed,
like the Rationalists of the eighteenth century, preach ethics as
something grounded in the nature of the universe and of mankind. They
cannot prove the truth of this world-view any better than could Zeno
and his pupils, who also resorted to it, but they announce it with an
inner conviction which the former could not command, and produce their
results by means of an enthusiasm which was denied to their
predecessors.
When the later school of the Porch reaches the stage of exalting the
world-principle more and more to become a personal and ethical god, it
is following laws which are at work also in Hinduism.
[pg 055]
Yet the world-view of resignation, which it has inherited from the
older school, it never succeeds in rendering entirely impotent. In
Seneca and Epictetus this is still strongly maintained side by side
with the ethical conception of the universe. It is only in Marcus
Aurelius that the optimistic motives sound victoriously through.
Stoicism was from the beginning a multiform elemental philosophy, and
it is because it ventured to be this in such comprehensive measure
that the later Stoicism is so rich and so full of life.
Moral Sayings of Seneca
No man is nobler than his fellow, even if it happen that his spiritual
nature is better constituted and he is more capable of higher
learning. The world is the one mother of us all, and the ultimate
origin of each one of us can be traced back to her, whether the steps
in the ladder of descent be noble or humble. To no one is virtue
forbidden; she is accessible to all; she admits everyone, she invites
everyone in: free men and freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles. She
regards neither birth nor fortune; the man alone is all she wants.
It is a mistake to think that the status of a slave affects the whole
of a person’s nature; the nobler part of it is not touched thereby.
Every single person, even if there is nothing else to recommend him, I
must hold in regard, because he bears the name of man.
In the treatment of a slave we have to consider not how much we can do
to him without being liable to punishment, but how much the nature of
right and of justice allows us to, seeing that these bid us treat
gently even prisoners and purchased slaves. Although in the treatment
of a slave everything is allowed, there is nevertheless something
which through the common right of every living being is stigmatized as
not permissible in the treatment of a man, because he is of the same
nature as thyself.
This, in fact, is the demand which is laid upon each man, viz. that he
works when possible, for the welfare of many; if that is
impracticable, that he works for the welfare of a few; failing that,
for the welfare of his neighbours, and if that is impossible, for his
own.
It is through untiring benevolence that the bad are won over, and
there is no disposition so hard and so hostile to loving treatment ...
as to refuse love to the good people whom it will in the end have to
thank again for something more. “Not a word of thanks did I get! What
am I now to begin to do?” What the gods do, . . . who begin to shower
benefits on us before we are aware of it, and continue them even
though we do not thank them.
Moral Sayings of Epictetus
Nature is wonderful, and full of love for all creatures.
Wait upon God, ye men. When He calls you, and releases you from [pg
056] service, then go to Him; but for the present remain quietly in
the position in which He has placed you.
You carry a god about with you, and do not know it, unhappy one! You
have him within yourself, and do not notice it when you defile him
with unclean thoughts or foul deeds.
Cultivate the will to satisfy yourself, and to stand right before God.
Strive to become pure, one with yourself and one with God.
Think silence best; say only what is necessary, and say it shortly.
Above all, do not talk about thy fellow-men, either to praise them, or
to blame them, or to compare them with others. Do not swear; never, if
possible, or at any rate as seldom as possible. Your bodily
wants—food, drink, clothing, housing, service—satisfy in the simplest
way. Avoid unseemly joking, for there is always a danger of becoming
vulgar, and joking away the respect of your fellow-men.
As you are careful when walking not to tread on a nail or to sprain
your ankle, so take care not to let your soul get hurt.
Moral Sayings from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Everything that happens, happens right, and if you can observe things
carefully, you will recognize that it is so. I do not mean only in
accordance with the course of nature, but much more that they happen
in accordance with the law of righteousness, and as if controlled by a
Being who orders all things according to merit.
If I am active, I am so with due regard to the general welfare. If
anything happens to me, I accept it and consider it in relation to the
gods and the universal source from which, in close connection, come
all our happenings.
He who commits unrighteousness is godless, for universal nature
created rational beings for one another; to help each other where
there is need, but never to injure one another.
Love mankind; obey the godhead.
If thou art unwilling to get up in the morning, reflect thus: I am
waking in order to go and work as one of mankind.
Seek all thy joy and contentment in advancing, mindful always of God,
from one generally useful deed to another.
The best way to avenge oneself on anyone is to avoid returning evil
for evil.
It is a privilege of man to love even those who do him wrong. One can
reach this level by reflecting that all men are of one family with
oneself; that their shortcomings are due to ignorance, and against
their will; that in a short time both of you will be dead.
What is good is necessarily useful, and that is why the good and noble
man must be concerned about it.
Nobody gets tired of seeking his own advantage. But doing so procures
us an activity which is natural. Never get tired, then, of seeking
thine own advantage, provided thou procurest thus the advantage of
others also.
[pg 057]
Treat as befits a man endowed with reason, that is magnanimously and
nobly, the animals which are not so endowed, and indeed all creatures
whatever that can feel but have no reason. But other men, since they
are endowed with reason, treat with friendly affection.
Thou has existed till now as a fragment of the universe, and wilt some
day be absorbed in thy producer, or rather, thou wilt suffer a
transformation and reappear as a new germ of life.
Many grains of incense are destined for the same altar. Some fall soon
into the flame, others later, but that makes no difference.
The Optimistic-Ethical World-View of the later Stoicism
In their optimistic-ethical world-view the later Stoics find those
impulses to effort which were not available for the ancient ethics of
the classical age. Marcus Aurelius is an enthusiastic utilitarian like
the Rationalists of the eighteenth century, because, like them, he is
convinced that nature itself has bound up together what is ethical and
what is advantageous to the individual and to the community.
That being so, the classical question of ancient ethics whether the
thinking man is to busy himself with public affairs or not must again
be discussed. Epicurus taught that “the wise man has nothing to do
with State affairs unless exceptional circumstances arise.” Zeno’s
decision was that “he will take part in the business of the State
unless obstacles prevent it.” Both schools leave the retirement into
oneself to the decision of the Wise man, only one lets the grounds for
the decision be given somewhat earlier, the other somewhat later. The
thought of a devotion to the general good which is to be kept active
for its own sake and under all circumstances is outside the circle of
vision of their ethic.
With the later Stoics it emerges, because the conception of “mankind”
has come in sight. Man, as Seneca works out in his treatise on Leisure
(_De Otio_), belongs to two republics. One is a large and universal
one, extends as far as the sun shines, and embraces both gods and men;
the other is that into which through the fate assigned us by our [pg
058] birth, we have been adopted as citizens. Circumstances may bring
it about that the wise man cannot dedicate himself to the service of
the State, but, to escape the storm, must “take refuge in the
harbour.” It may happen—and Seneca has in mind his own time—that not
one of existing States is of such a character as to put up with the
activity of the wise man. Nevertheless, the latter does not wholly
withdraw into himself, but he serves the great republic by working to
improve the general outlook of mankind, and to hasten the coming of a
new age.
In Epictetus also this deepened and widened notion of duty is to be
found. Marcus Aurelius does not even consider any impossibility of
taking part in public life. In him there speaks the ruler who feels
himself to be the servant of the State. His ideal is the citizen who
“from one activity which makes his fellow-citizens happier goes on to
another, and undertakes with alacrity anything whatever that the State
lays upon him.” “Do what is needed, and what is bidden by the reason
of a being who is destined by nature to membership of a State, and do
it as it is bidden.”
In the middle of the second century A.D. ancient thought arrives at an
optimistic-ethical world-view which holds within itself living ideals
of civilization, and therefore anticipates those which later on in the
eighteenth century will bring into activity so mighty and universal a
movement of civilization. But for the men of the Græco-Roman world it
comes too late. It does not permeate the masses, but remains the
private possession of an _élite_.
It cannot permeate the masses, because there are forces at work among
them with which it cannot combine. It is true, indeed, that the ethic
of the later Stoicism is so near akin to the universal charity of the
Christian ethic, that by the tradition of later times Seneca is
declared to be a Christian, and that the Church father, Augustine,
holds up the life of the heathen emperor, Marcus Aurelius, as an
example for Christians.
Yet the two movements cannot amalgamate, but have [pg 059] to fight
each other. Marcus Aurelius is responsible for most terrible
persecutions of Christians, and Christianity on its side declares war
to the knife against the Porch.
Why this strange fatality? Because Christianity is dualistic and
pessimistic, the ethic of Stoicism is monistic and optimistic.
Christianity abandons the natural world as evil, the later Stoics
idealize it. It helps not at all that their ethical teaching is almost
identical. Each appears as part of a world-view which is
irreconcilable with that of the other. All contradictions in the world
may be concealed, but not that between two world-views, and the
struggle ends with the annihilation of the optimistic-ethical
world-view of the Stoics, which is defended by officers without an
army. The attempt that was undertaken as the ancient world was coming
to an end, to restore the Empire and make it an empire as wide as
mankind, was a failure.
The horizons of the philosophy of the ancient world had remained
narrow too long. No ethical thinkers had appeared who at the right
time might have led that world to an ethical optimism about reality.
It was a calamity, too, that the natural sciences, which had started
in such a promising way, came to a standstill, partly through the
fault of fate, partly because philosophy turned away from them, before
mankind discovered the law of the uniformity of nature, and obtained
thereby control over it. Hence the men of antiquity never acquired
that self-consciousness which in their descendants of modern times has
kept alive, even through the darkest periods of history, the belief in
progress—even though it be sometimes progress of the most superficial
kind. This psychological factor is of great importance.
It is true that artistic ability, which in the Greek spirit meets us
in such abundant measure, is also control over the material, but this
creative power was unable to draw the man of antiquity up to a higher
life-affirmation and to belief in progress. It served only to let him
express himself, in words and in form, in the antagonism between
primitive [pg 060] world- and life-affirmation, and thinking world-
and life-denial. It is the puzzling intermixture of serenity and
melancholy which produces the tragic charm of Greek art.
From every point of view, then, a strong ethical world- and
life-affirmation is made difficult for the ancient world. It therefore
falls more and more a prey to pessimistic world-views, which draw its
thoughts away from reality, and celebrate the liberation of the
spiritual from its bondage to the material in a succession of cosmic
dramas. Gnosticism, Oriental and Christian, Neo-Pythagoreanism, which
arose as early as the first century B.C., the Neo-Platonism which
originated with Plotinus (A.D. 204-269), and the great
Mystery-religions, all come to meet the religious, world-shunning
disposition of the masses during the breaking-up of antiquity, and
offer it that deliverance from the world of which it is in search. In
this chaos of ideas Christianity emerges victorious because it is the
most robust religion of redemption, because as a community it
possesses the strongest organization, and because beneath its
pessimistic world-view it has at its disposal living ethical ideas.
The optimistic-ethical monism of the later Stoics is like a sunbeam
breaking through in the evening of the long, gloomy day of antiquity
while the darkness of the middle ages is already drawing on, but it
has no power to waken any civilization to life. The time for that is
past. The spirit of antiquity, having failed to reach an ethical
nature-philosophy, has become the prey of a pessimistic dualism in
which no ethic of action is any longer possible; there can only be an
ethic of purification.
The thoughts of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius are the winter
seed of a coming civilization.
[pg 061]