It was ethics, and not epistemology however quotidian, that formed the heart and soul of Hellenistic popular philosophy in the High Empire. Philosophy at this period was largely conceived along the lines of therapy, a way to burnish the character flaws from one’s personality and to find peace amidst the surging tides of worldly misfortune (Hadot 1995). This philosophical therapy cut across school and class divisions, as everyone from the lowliest slave to the emperor himself could benefit from a proper understanding of the emotions.
Stoic therapy was both cognitive and practice-oriented. The theoretical component comprised a psychology of mind that originated in the Ancient Stoa (with perhaps some modifications by Panaetius); the practical component was elaborated as a series of meditations or philosophical exercises meant to be cultivated in everyday life. Pierre Hadot, Martha Nussabuam, and Richard Sorabji have done much to familiarize us with these practical therapies that Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius deploy extensively throughout their writings (Nussbaum 1994; Sorabji 2000; Hadot 1995). In the next section, we shall see how the epistemology of the Stoa combines with its psychology and creates a context in which the ‘‘therapy of desire,’’ as Nussbaum has famously called it, can be applied in ordinary settings.
For the early Stoa (the Stoa of Zeno and Chrysippus), the emotions originated as cognitive dispositions to evaluate states of affairs in terms of the advantage or disadvantage that they possessed. Thus Stoicism in general is characterized by a radical rejection of Plato’s tripartite psychology according to which emotion and desire operate independently of reason. Yet for the Stoics, emotion can be defined as consisting in an incorrect opinion, to the effect that a given situation is inherently good or bad (Inwood 1985: 130-1). We find a good summary of Zeno’s doctrine in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations: ‘‘pain is an opinion about a present evil, and in this opinion there is this element, that it is right to feel pain’’ (Tusc. 3.74; Inwood 1985: 148). All emotions, as for example greed, anger, lust, cowardice, etc., flow from this one central channel, viz., the belief that states of affairs can be, in themselves, either good or bad (Stob. 2.90). Not so, for the later Stoics. In fact there was only one good, moral virtue, and one bad, moral vice. These terms (‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’), then, refer in the strict sense only to states of affairs in the human soul. Every other state of affairs, that is the conditions or objects of infinite variety, falls technically under the heading of‘‘indifferent.’’ Nevertheless, one may and ideally should prefer certain kinds of ‘‘indiffer-ents,’’ viz., those which fully accord with nature, such as health or wisdom.
The sage alone is able to treat indifferent things as truly indifferent; ordinary people experience emotions as a result of their ability or inability to acquire items in the category of ‘‘indifferents,’’ that is, things that are preferable, although not inherently objects of moral choice. Therefore the Stoic sage is able to see things from the point of view of Zeus. As Seneca puts it, the sage is not just a part of nature, but becomes an ally of Zeus himself (Ep. 92.30; Inwood 1999: 683). All things form part of a seamless universal nexus of events, the heimarmene or fate that is identical with the body and will of Zeus, the ultimate rational principle. Although every human mind is a spark or apospasma of this rational principle, only the sage is able to live a life in accord with this fact. The sage alone recognizes that since all things are willed by Zeus, this universe is the best possible world. Everything that happens within this world is necessarily a part of the total perfection. Stoic philosophy is designed, at the highest end of the philosophical spectrum, to help the practitioner acquire the mind of the sage who constantly attends to the perfection (Long 2002: 38-66). Epictetus’ favorite saying was a quotation from Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus:
Lead me, Zeus, and you Fate, wherever you have ordained for me. For I shall follow
Unflinching. But if I become bad and unwilling, I shall follow none the less. (Ench. 53)
Sagacity is the summum bonum of the Stoic school. The sage represents the human quest for perfection, expressed in the Platonic curriculum as the culminating stage of one’s studies, when one attains ‘‘likeness to god.’’ The very concept of the sage looks backwards in time, to the charismatic influence of particular philosophers such as Socrates, Zeno, Epicurus, or Diogenes. As David Sedley has shown in an important article, Hellenistic school philosophy was very much grounded in the philosophical circle that developed around a central intellectual figure who inspired imitation, if not emulation, in his or her students (Sedley 1997a). Yet the sage also anticipates Christian ideas of the blessed person or saint, one who shares properties of the deity and leads other human beings in developing these same qualities.
At the lower end of the philosophical spectrum, one can at least practice the therapies, that is, cultivate apatheia, or detachment from emotional conditioning, even if perfection remains on the distant horizon: the Stoics referred to the ordinary person’s career in philosophical training as ‘‘making progress’’ (prokopton) (Sorabji 2000: 194-227). For such students, the handbook was a useful tool. In works like Epictetus’ Encheiridion, extracted from the Discourses by Arrian and meant to serve as a constant companion for the aspirant, or in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, we find self-help techniques designed with the learner in mind. These passages contain instructions on how to calm the savage fires of anger or greed, or how to get through the bouts of grief and loss that inevitably come our way as human beings.
The student is reminded to treat indifferent things with indifference, to attend to the character of her representations, not assenting to the suggestions of emotion, and to label all thoughts appropriately. Some meditations help the reader/disciple more readily attain to this emotional detachment through the themes of impermanence, mortality, death, and human insignificance more generally:
Set before your eyes all the plays and sets, all alike, that you know from your own experience or from the history of older times: for instance, the whole course of Hadrian and the whole course of Antoninus and the whole court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus - for all of those were just the same only different actors played the parts. (Marc. Aurel. Med. 10.57, with R. Rutherford 1989: 166)
Attention, watchfulness, looking over the condition of one’s mind, categorizing thoughts - all of these techniques would not be out of place in a Christian or Buddhist meditation manual. Even though some of the practices look more like our own Chicken Soup for the Soul manuals than truly serious philosophy, in fact they were profoundly influential in the development of monastic and desert spirituality. Some 700 years after Zeno, we find Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth-century Cappadocian renegade, turning up in Nitria, possibly fleeing from a scandal at home. But after a period of adjustment he made great progress in the deserts near Alexandria. Evagrius’ instructions for monastics have come down to us under the name of St. Nilus - Evagrius himself was excommunicated during the fifth-century Origenist controversy (see E. Clark 1992 and Edwards, this volume) - as Treatise on Prayer and On Evil Thoughts. Evagrius uses Stoic teaching on emotions as a foundation for a system designed to help monks battle the eight demons or evil thoughts that block the way to tranquility (apatheia). In fact, Evagrius’ Stoic-inspired manual has become the basis for the contemporary Christian tradition of the seven deadly sins (Sorabji 2000: 357-71).
Even Neoplatonists employed meditation techniques to help their students assimilate their difficult metaphysics and radical teachings on the illusoriness of our ordinary world (Rappe 2000: 45-66). Many such meditations can be found in Plotinus’ Enneads, Porphyry’s compilation of his master’s essays that perhaps owes something of its stylistic difficulties to Plotinus’ method of personal instruction. In one very well known passage, Plotinus appears to be leading the student in a just such an exercise:
So far as possible, try to conceive of this world as one unified whole, with each of its parts remaining self-identical and distinct. So that whatever part of, for example, the outer sphere is shown forth, there immediately follows the image of the sun together with all of the other stars, and earth and sea and all sentient beings are seen, as if upon a transparent sphere. (Enn. 6.8.9.1-6)
Invoking the cosmic spirituality that enjoyed a long tradition in Platonic writings but also more generally prevailed in the religiosity of the empire, Plotinus brings the student into a vision of an immaterial world (Fowden 1977). These meditations, whether on time or on the cosmos, offer us a firsthand look at how philosophy was taught in the second and third centuries of the Roman Empire. Although philosophy involved the study of texts, there was as well an emphasis on personal training, on seeing the truth for oneself, and on assimilation to the truth seen (as Plotinus exhorts his students, ‘‘make yourself the vision!’’).
It is time to turn from generalization and spend a few moments dwelling on a figure who perhaps epitomizes Roman philosophy in the first and second centuries CE. Epictetus was born c.50-60 ce in what is now Turkey, near Ephesus. He was a slave by birth, but as fortune would have it, was purchased by Epaphroditus, Nero’s secretary. While still a slave Epictetus began to listen to the lectures of Musonius Rufus. He moved to Greece, to Nicopolis, after Domitian banned all philosophers from the Italian continent. A. A. Long has written instructively about the contrast between the Stoicism of the former slave, Epictetus, and that of his older contemporary, Seneca:
Epictetus without any [social climbing] achieved renown simply by being a dedicated teacher, impervious to all external markers of success. In this he contrasted radically with the immensely wealth and powerful Seneca, who was not a practicing teacher and whose Stoicism, though certainly sincere, was fully tested only in old age when Nero forced him to commit suicide. (Long 2002: 11)
As Long points out, Epictetus’ own experience of slavery surfaced in his lifelong habit of taunting his freeborn students with the jibe, ‘‘slave.’’ His style with the interlocutors who appear in the Discourses is rough, haranguing, and in the manner of the Cynic diatribe:
I have to die! Do I also have to die groaning? I have to be fettered. While moaning too?
I have to go into exile. Does anyone prevent me from going with a smile, cheerful and serene? Tell your secrets. I refuse, because that is up to me. Then I will fetter you. What do you mean, fellow? Fetter me? You can fetter my leg but not even Zeus can overcome my volition. (Arr. Epict. 1.1.21-3)
Epictetus, like his spiritual ancestor, Socrates, taught groups of wealthy youths in public, writing nothing, but directly ministering to the spiritual needs of his students. His was a philosophy of self-transformation consistent with the Socratic exhortation to virtue. Perhaps the greatest affinity with Socrates, however, lay in Epictetus’ emphasis on the god within.
In Greek, the word that Epictetus uses as the focal point for his philosophical instruction is prohairesis (Long 2002: 27-31). We might literally translate this word as ‘‘choice,’’ which in turn might raise in the modern reader some analogous notion of freedom of the will. But for Epictetus, prohairesis refers to the authentic self, the character that one has come to form, and the possibility to realize one’s identity as an apospasma (spark) of Zeus:
My friend, you have a prohairesis that is by nature unimpeded and unconstrained. This is inscribed here in the entrails. I will prove it to you, first in the sphere of assent. Can anyone prevent you from assenting to a truth? No one can. Can anyone compel you to accept a falsehood? No one can. (Epict. 1.17.21-2, with Long 2002: 209)
This faculty of assent is fundamental to the whole structure of Stoic psychology and epistemology. In assent (Greek katathesis) lies the essence of our rationality and the essence of our freedom (Inwood 1985: 76-7). It is the faculty of assent that distinguishes humans from other animals and hence brings us into the sphere of the divine. One way of understanding this faculty is to consider that for the Stoics, there are actually two parts to any given thought. The first aspect is the presentation (Greek phantasia), which is something like a thus-ness or so-ness. All thoughts flow through the mind as presenting certain qualities. The other part is the affirmation, the assent to the presentation as true. The affirmation is like an inner voice that stamps a kind of inner commitment on the presentation. This inner voice says, ‘‘It is like this! This is how things truly are.’’ This ability to say ‘‘yes’’ or to withhold our inner commitment is our prohairesis. For Epictetus this faculty, and only this faculty, lies in our power: no one can compel our inner commitment to the truth of an appearance. Epictetus identifies this inherent capacity to recognize the truth, the mind’s inner light, as the inner deity:
Whenever you are in company, whenever you take exercise, whenever you converse, don’t you know that you are nursing God, exercising God? You are carrying God around, you poor things, and you don’t know it. (Epict. 2.8.12-13; Long 2002: 142)
This style of face-to-face teaching is clear on every page of Epictetus’ discourses. Here we see it employed in the context of inculcating a specific doctrine, the god within, that is particularly suited to the method of personal instruction. This inner light and its location at the center of human consciousness is a theme that ran throughout imperial philosophy. Though Epictetus’ Discourses have little in common with the speculative metaphysics that developed in Middle and Neoplatonism, in fact, just this god within is the focus of Neoplatonic contemplative askesis, a topic to which we shall return shortly. We move in the meantime to another feature of imperial philosophy that applies across school divisions, the student-teacher relationship.
World History
