Ethics in Stoic Philosophy

Jorg Hardy / George Rudebusch (eds.)

Ancient Ethics

V&R unipress

Contents

Note on Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Jorg Hardy / George RudebuschAncient Ethics: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Eastern Traditions

Lauren F. PfisterClassical Debates about the Moral Character of Human Nature in AncientChina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

John BussanichEthics in Ancient India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Early Greek Thought

Catherine CollobertHomeric Ethics: Fame and Prudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Ruben ApressyanHomeric Ethics: Prospective Tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Plato

Gerasimos SantasThe Socratic Method and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Christopher TaylorThe Ethics of Plato’s Apology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. SmithSocratic and Platonic Moral Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Jorg HardyIs Virtue Knowledge? Socratic Intellectualism reconsidered . . . . . . . . 141

George RudebuschKnowledge Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

May SimThe Divided Line and United Psyche in Plato’s Republic . . . . . . . . . . 183

Mark L. McPherranSocrates and the Religious Dimension of Plato’s Thought . . . . . . . . . 197

Aristotle

Mariana AnagnostopoulosAristotle on the Nature and Acquisition of Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Daniel C. RussellDeliberation and Phronesis in Aristotle’s Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Christopher ShieldsGoodness is Meant in Many Ways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Michael-Thomas LiskeBedeutet Aristoteles’ hexis-Konzeption der Tugend eineethisch-psychologische Determination? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Dorothea FredeVom Nutzen und Nachteil der aristotelischen Tugendethik fur das Leben 289

Hellenistic philosophy

Julia AnnasEthics in Stoic Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Brad InwoodMoral Judgement in Seneca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Contents10

Julie PieringCynic Ethics: Lives Worth Examining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Plotinus

Lloyd P. GersonBeing as Goodness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Sylvain DelcomminettePlotin et le probleme de la fondation de la liberte . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

General Topics

Christoph HalbigDie Einheit der Tugenden. Uberlegungen zur Struktur eines Problems . . 403

Wolfgang DetelSemantic Normativity and the Foundation of Ancient Ethics . . . . . . . 425

Otfried HoffeLebenskunst und Moral. Skizze einer Fundamentalethik . . . . . . . . . 467

General Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Contents 11

Julia Annas

Ethics in Stoic Philosophy1

The Stoics divide philosophy into three parts, logic, physics and ethics, and wefind two correspondingly different ways of presenting Stoic philosophy. One is a‘mixed’ presentation, which puts propositions from the three parts together asparts of a single package. Diogenes Laertius tells us that the Stoics made thepresentation or paradosis of their philosophy mixed.2 The most extensive ex-amples of this kind of approach that we have are the Discourses of Epictetus andthe Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In these we find ethical and metaphysicalpropositions (and occasionally in Epictetus the development of logical argu-ments) put together in a way which is ‘mixed’ in that thoughts are developedusing all three types of proposition, moving from one to another withoutcomment and sometimes drawing attention to relationships between them. It is,however, difficult to be sure whether these are examples of what Diogenes (or hissource) had in mind.3

An alternative way is to study the three parts of philosophy separately. Stoicphilosophers had varying orders in which they presented the three parts. Ourevidence fromDiogenes is that Zeno and Chrysippus beganwith logic, thenwenton to physics, ending with ethics. Panaetius and Posidonius began with physics,while Diogenes of Ptolemais began with ethics.4 Sextus tells us of a Stoic orderlogic-ethics-physics, and gives us the rationale for it :

The Stoics too say that logical matters lead, that ethical matters take second place, andthat physical matters come last in order. For they hold that the intellect must first befortified, with a view tomaking its guard of the tradition hard to shake off, and that the

1 This essay is a revised version of Julia Annas: “Ethics in Stoic Philosophy”, in: Phronesis 52,2007: 58 – 87. The editors of this volume are grateful to the editors of the journal Phronesis forpermission to publish this essay.

2 Diogenes Laertius VII 40.3 Marcus is writing a diary for himself, and the works of Epictetus that we have are mostplausibly seen as records of his teachings to students whowere also learning logic, physics andethics in more technical ways.

4 Diogenes Laertius VII 39 – 41; cf. Sextus PH II 13.

area of dialectic tends to strengthen one’s thinking; that, second, one must add ethicalreflectionwith a view to the improvement of character-traits (for the acquisition of thison top of the already present logical ability holds no danger); and that one must bringin physical reflection last (for it is more divine and needs deeper attention).5

Chrysippus explicitly adopted this order also, as we know from a quotation inPlutarch.6

What is the content of the ethical part of philosophy? In our sources we find itdivided into a number of topics. Diogenes Laertius tells us that from Chrysippusonwards the Stoics divided the ethical part of philosophy into the topics ofimpulse, goods and evils, the emotions, virtue, the end, primary value andactions, appropriate actions and encouragements and discouragements. Dio-genes himself does not follow this order closely, nor do our other major ancientsources for Stoic ethics, Cicero and Arius Didymus (if he is the author) in apassage in Stobaeus.7 All our sources add the topics of lives, and of the wiseperson or sage, and they discuss indifferents along with virtue. This is the clusterof linked topics which form the distinctive subject-matter of the ethical part ofStoic philosophy. To understand these topics properly requires mastering sometechnical Stoic distinctions and analyses, such as the difference between virtueand the indifferents and that between choosing and selecting; the distinctiveStoic account of the emotions; the sharp distinction between the wise and thefoolish, and so on.

In Diogenes and Arius we find a fairly dry presentation which has beenplausibly taken as stemming ultimately from handbooks in the Chrysippeantradition.8 In Cicero we find a conscious attempt to put forward Stoic ethics in astrong and attractive form. The cluster of topics that they deal with is, however,the same.

Becoming a good Stoic requires more, however, than mastering the ethical

5 Sextus, MVII 20 – 23; translation from Sextus Empiricus,Against the Logicians, translated byRichard Bett, Cambridge 2005. In the corresponding short passage at PH II 12 – 13 Sextusreports, without rationale, a Stoic order logic-physics-ethics, which is also the order whichSextus himself follows in both his works.

6 Plutarch, de St. Rep. 1035A-B. The passage will be discussed below. Chrysippus introduces thedivision as one of different kinds of theoremata.

7 Diogenes Laertius VII 84; the whole passage is 84 – 116. The division of Eudorus (Stobaeus II42.7 – 45.10) differs in its organization, and appears to cover a variety of theories, but thetopics covered are similar : impulse, action, ends and objectives, virtue and preferred things,as well as more specific topics such as skills and practices, friendship and love, pleasure,reputation and relationships.

8 The Diogenes and Arius passages are compared, and parallel passages listed, in my In-troduction to Ario Didimo, Diogene Laerzio: etica stoica, a cura di Carlo Natali, introduzionedi Julia Annas, Laterza 1999.

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part. Stoic philosophy consists of all three parts strongly unified into a whole (apoint indicated in two of our major sources for the ethical part of Stoicism.9)

Katerina Ierodiakonou has illuminated for us the relation of its parts to Stoicphilosophy as a whole.10 Philosophy here is not philosophia strictly understood,for that is the physical state of the wise person’s soul, like knowledge. It is ho kataphilosophian logos, ‘philosophical discourse’, made up of theoremata or prop-ositions, which has parts.11 Ierodiakonou points out that we find two approachesto the division of philosophical discourse. It could be seen as divided by partitioninto parts (mere or topoi), each of which deals only with some philosophicaltheoremata ; on this approachphilosophy is seen ‘as a unitary whole divided intointerdependent parts which deal separately with a portion of the philosophicaltheorems.’ Or it could be seen as divided by division into species (eide); on thisapproach philosophy is viewed “as a plurality of independent parts which areunited as far as they all share the same theorems from different perspectives”.12

Seeing logic, physics and ethics as species and as parts are different andcomplementary ways of looking at them. Both views imply that studying just theethical part of philosophy will not be adequate for a full understanding even ofethics. Ethics is a part of philosophy ; thus it is a study of a distinguishable areawhich can be studied independently of the other two parts. Further, ethics is alsoa species of philosophy, thus sharing its theoremata with the other parts butstudying them from its own distinctive perspective. Once again, ethics hassomething distinctive, namely its perspective, but the propositions it studiescannot be fully grasped until they have been studied from all three perspectives,as is true of the theorems of physics and logic too.Whether as species or as parts,logic, physics and ethics are items that contribute to a unitary whole. In whatfollows I shall pass over this technical distinction between part and species, andrevert to simply calling logic, physics and ethics the three parts of Stoic phi-losophy, as ancient authors generally do.

The person who has studied ethics, then, needs to go on not only to study theother two parts but to integrate their results with ethics to produce a unifiedunderstanding from all three perspectives.13

9 Cicero, De Finibus III, 73, Diogenes Laertius VII 85 – 89.10 Ierodiakonou 1993. I have learnt much from this excellent article.11 See Ierodiakonou 1993: 58 – 61 for the evidence. We are told that Zeno of Tarsus thought

philosophy itself to be tripartite, presumably into logical, physical and ethical virtues of thephilosopher.

12 Ierodiakonou 1993: 61 – 67, especially p. 67.13 Stoic metaphors for philosophy bring out just how closely unified the parts are, comparing

philosophy to an egg, with logic as its protecting shell, and different pairings of physics andethics with the yolk and the white, or to an animal, with logic as its supporting bones anddifferent pairings of physics and ethics with flesh and animating spirit. See Ierodiakonou1993: 71 – 74. I agree with her that the metaphor of a garden (and that of a city in the

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Seneca, in Letter 89 on the parts of philosophy, gives us some idea of the idealof unified wisdom which would be the result of perfected philosophizing:14

[W]e can be brought more easily through the parts to understanding of the whole. Ifonly, just as the entire face of the universe meets our gaze, philosophy could be presentto us as a whole, a sight very like that of the universe! For philosophy would then seizeon all mortals to wonder at her, leaving aside those things whichwe now think great, inignorance ofwhat is great…Themind of the sage, indeed, embraces its whole structure,and surveys it not less swiftly than our glance does the heavens. We, however, have tobreak through fog, and our sight fails us about things near at hand; for us it is easier forindividual things to be shown, as we are not yet able to grasp the universe.15

Seneca defends the study of parts of philosophy as useful and necessary for theperson striving for wisdom. He defends the Stoic tripartition of philosophy inparticular against those who recognize more or fewer parts.16He clearly regardsethics as the most important for a learner, warning his reader Lucilius to relatehis logic reading directly to matters of character.17

To make progress towards the overall unified view of the sage that we aspireto, we have to learn philosophy by learning ethics, physics and logic, but the aimis clearly an integration of the findings of all three parts in a unified view whichthe sage can ultimately grasp synoptically. As Diogenes Laertius says, “no part ispreferred to any other ; they are mixed.”18

Diogenes passage, which she does not discuss) is less satisfactory for representing the unityof Stoic philosophy.

14 I amvery grateful to Brad Inwood for pointing out tome this very important passage, and forextensive helpful discussion of the issues raised in this paper.

15 Seneca, Letter 89, 1 – 2. The idea of philosophy as a view of the big picture also dominates thefollowing Letter 90, where Seneca relies on it to refute Posidonius’ view that it was philosophywhich discovered technological devices to improve human life. Far from this being the case,Seneca claims, philosophy judges whether such devices when invented do in fact improve,rather than corrupting, human life. The need to integrate our beliefs in order to achieveknowledge is also stressed more informally in Letter 84. (For an English translation ofSencas’ philosophical letters see B. Inwood: Seneca. Selected Philosophical Letters, transla-tion with an Introduction and Commentary by B. Inwood, Oxford 2007).

16 He criticises the Peripatetics for redundancy, the Epicureans and Cyrenaics for claiming toreject parts which they recognized in practice, and Aristo of Chios for wrongly limiting thephilosopher’s sphere of concern.

17 Letter 89, 14 – 18. Ethics is divided into correct estimation of value, ordering of impulse andharmonizing of action with the first two. Physics is the study of the corporeal and incor-poreal. Logic is divided into dialectic and rhetoric.

18 The MSS reading, prokekristhai,has been restored in M. Marcovich’s Teubner text, and inLong and Sedley’s text of the passage (26B in Long and Sedley 1987). Cobet’s conjectureapokekristhai has the merit of making the phrase concern a single issue, the mixing of theparts, whereas the MSS reading brings in two separate issues, that the parts are mixed andthat none of them is preferred. There is no good reason, however, for rejecting the MSSreading, and no reason to think that the specifically Stoic doctrine of total mixture is at issuehere.

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We can call the above familiar account of Stoic philosophy ‘the integratedpicture’.We are aspiring towards the view of the sage, which, as in Seneca, comesto see the findings of all the parts of philosophy as integrated into one overallsynoptic and unified view.

It is at this point that we can come to appreciate Stoic claims about the identityor equivalence of what seem like very different things. Common nature, we aretold, for example, is the common reason of nature, and is fate and providenceand Zeus.19 Statements like these are presented without any indication of howthey are to be understood, and in isolation, like other striking Stoic claims, maywell appear baffling.

We find a claim of equivalence or identity important for the present issue inthe section on the telos or end in Arius Didymus’ treatment of Stoic ethics.20

Arius begins by giving us the accounts of the final end ascribed to various earlyStoics.

Zeno defined the end thus: “living in agreement”:

that is, to live in accordance with a single and consistent reasoning, as those who live inconflict are unhappy. His successors articulated this further and expressed it thus:“living in agreement with nature”, supposing that Zeno’s expressionwas an incompletepredicate. Cleanthes, the first to take over the school, added “with nature” and definedit thus: “the end is living in agreement with nature”. Chrysippus, wanting to make thisclearer, expressed it this way : “living in accordance with experience of what happensnaturally”.21

Arius then adds the definitions given by later heads of the Stoa, Diogenes,Archedemus and Antipater, specifies three ways in which the Stoics talk of thetelos, distinguishes the end, telos, from the objective, skopos, and differentiatesgoods necessary for happiness, eudaimonia, from those that are not. Then hecontinues:

They say that the end is being happy ; everything is done for its sake while it is not donefor the sake of anything further. This consists in living in accordance with virtue, inliving in agreement and, this being the same thing, in living in accordance with nature.Zeno defined happiness this way ; happiness is a smooth flow of life. Cleanthes also usesthis definition in his writings, and so do Chrysippus and all his followers, saying thathappiness is no other than the happy life, though they say that happiness is set up as theobjective, while the end is achieving happiness.It’s clear from this that the following are equivalent (isodunamei): living in accordance

19 Plutarch, de St. Rep. 1050b.20 The passage traditionally numbered 6 in Stobaeus Eclogae II (75.11 – 78.17), pp. 36.25 – 42.8

in Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics, translated and edited by A. J. Pomeroy, Society ofBiblical Literature Texts and Translations 44, Graeco-Roman 14, Atlanta, GA 1999.

21 Stobaeus II, 75-11-76. 8, Pomeroy 36.30 – 38. 9. However, I do not accept his <e > in line 76.3(Pomeroy 38.2).

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with nature, living finely, living well, also the fine and good and virtue and whatpartakes of virtue, and that everything good is fine, and similarly everything shamefulis bad; hence the Stoic end is equivalent (ison dunasthai) to living according to virtue.22

These claims are hard to understand if we look at them in isolation, or ask whichpart of philosophy is best suited to study them. They seem to be rather claimswhichwe can understand only whenwe both have studied more than one part ofphilosophy and are in a position to see their findings as contributing to a unifiedview. They cannot be fully understood from any one part of philosophy alone,but need an integrated grasp of more than one part to be fully understood.23

So far I have presented a conservative interpretation of our evidence for theparts of Stoic philosophy and their relations, going on to a discussion of thepuzzling identity or equivalence statements we find in the Stoics. I shall now lookat a modern interpretative strategy that finds one of the parts, physics, to befoundational for another part, ethics. I argue that this strategy fits the ancienttexts poorly and raises serious theoretical problems. It does pick out somethingvery important in the ancient texts, but this is not foundationalism. There aretwo passages which have been taken actually to make a foundational claim, but Iargue that they do not support it ; they fit into the integrated picture.

Some modern interpreters of the Stoics assume that the above account ofStoic method is compatible with, or even, in stronger versions, demands, animportant asymmetry in one part of the system, and in one part only. That is,they claim that Stoic ethics is grounded in,24 or parasitical on,25 Stoic physics, insuch a way that Stoic physics can be called the foundations, or first principles, ofStoic ethics.26 This, however, turns out to involve severe difficulties as an in-terpretation of Stoic thought.

If one thing is a foundation for a second, there is an important asymmetry. Afoundation is something distinct from and in some way prior to what it is afoundation for. This would, I think, be fairly uncontroversial as an account ofwhat it is for one thing to be a foundation for another, and many ethical theoriesare foundational in this sense.

But how well does this fit the Stoics? We should clearly be cautious beforeintroducing foundationalism into interpretations of Stoicism, given the pictureof Stoic methodology that we have seen, and its great distance from any modern

21 Stobaeus II 77.16 – 78.6 (Pomeroy 40.11 – 32).23 They can well be made from within one part of philosophy, as these are in the ethical part;

they simply call attention to the need to study another part fully to understand these claims.24 “The Stoics’ eudaimonism is principally grounded in their beliefs about the relation inwhich

human beings stand to a determinate and providentially governed world.” (Long 2004c).25 “Stoic ethics is ultimately parasitical on physics.” (Long 1968: 341).26 “The foundations of Stoic ethics are to be sought… in cosmology or theology.” (Striker 1996:

231).

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version of philosophical methodology. The different parts of philosophy,thought of as parts, concern distinguishable areas of study, and can be dis-tinguished as different in that way. However, how can one be prior to another? Itis equally true of each of the three parts of Stoic philosophy that if it is removedwe no longer have the whole. Nothing in the integrated picture supports the viewthat one of the parts is dependent on another.

Still, the integrated view, even though it does not demand it, certainly does notrule out the idea that theremight be an asymmetry such that physics is prior toethics, even though each of logic, physics and ethics has its own distinguishablesubject-matter and is needed tomake up the unifiedwhole. So let us see if we canfind a sense of priority such that physics can be prior to ethics, and thus afoundation for it, without creating difficulties as an interpretation of ancientStoicism.

The desired priority might be priority in content: that is, the idea that even toget right what the distinguishable subject-matter of ethics is we have to gothrough physics to define it. But this has no footing in the ancient texts. Theethical part of philosophy is the study of certain topics such as impulse, virtue,emotion, the sage and so on. These topics are not defined in terms of or derivedfrom pneuma and matter, or Providence. They have to be defined and discussedin their own terms. This is not a point which needs argument but just an aspect ofthe fact that ethics is a distinct part of philosophy with its own distinct subjectmatter.

Some modern presentations of Stoic ethics do not take sufficient account ofthis point. An account of Stoic ethics will begin with repeated assurances thatStoic ethics must be understood in terms of Stoic physics, sketching a provi-dential view of cosmic nature, but will then go on to discuss impulse, emotion,virtue and indifferents and the other ethical topics we find in the ancient sources,and do sowithout once bringing in pneuma or the cosmos, indeed often locatingStoic understanding of these topics in engagement with Socratic and othertraditions of ethical thinking.27 But if virtue, impulse and so on are introduced intheir own right from the ethical part of Stoic philosophy, we have no support forthe claim that Stoic ethics can only be understood in terms of the concepts ofStoic physics.

It can be responded that claims about foundations do have support, eventhough we find no texts in which virtue, impulse and the like are derived fromStoic physics rather than being introduced in their own right. For, it is claimed,foundationalism is supported by the mixed presentations I mentioned earlier. It

27 One example is Long 1986. In contrast, Sharples clearly discusses the topics of the ethical partof Stoic philosophy, in a eudaimonist framework, before raising the issue of their relation toStoic physics (Sharples 1996: 100 – 113).

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is easy to find passages in Marcus and Epictetus where we find ethical con-clusions drawn apparently from considerations about the cosmos and its or-dered nature. We find the following in Marcus, for example,

“In no case is nature inferior to art”; for the arts merely imitate natural things. And ifthat is so, the nature which is the most perfect and comprehensive of all cannot bedeficient in technical proficiency. Now all the arts create the lower for the sake of thehigher, so universal nature surely does the same. And this accounts for the origin ofjustice, and it is from justice that all the other virtues spring; for justice will not bemaintained if we value indifferent objects, or are readily deceived, and hasty in ourjudgement, and lacking in constancy.28

It is important to recognize that the existence of this kind of reasoning, whichinvolves propositions from the different parts of philosophy in a presentationwhichmixes them, raises quite different issues from, and in noway supports, theclaim that physics, as a part of philosophy, is a foundation for ethics, as anotherpart of philosophy. That claim, as we have seen, is a claim that there is one (and,as it happens, only one) asymmetry of a hierarchical sort in the relations betweenthe three parts. And this claim is in no way whatever supported by the obviouspoint that in mixed presentations propositions from the three different parts are– mixed. Given this, it is entirely unsurprising that we often find ethical claimssupported by physical ones.

In any case we should surely be cautious before concluding frompassages likethe above that even in mixed presentations we find ethical conclusions derivedfromphysical ones. Following Christopher Gill, I think that what we find in thesepassages is more like mutual illumination between ethical and physical claims.In this passage justice is said to have its origin in universal nature, but there isnothing that could be called a derivation of justice from a prior account ofnature. Rather, we move between all parts of philosophy. We make a point aboutskill from nature, then argue by analogy from skill to nature; we trace justice tonature but then fill out the thought about justice by considering other virtuesand indifferents, and conclude that what is required if someone is to be justrequires developed intellectual dispositions. What is sought in these passagescan well be seen as integration of ethical thoughts in a unified way with thoughtsabout soundness of reasoning and order in the cosmos as awhole. All three partsof philosophy are involved. Rather than one-way priority between two parts, wefind aspiration to a synoptic view like the one indicated in Seneca, building onand bringing together thoughts from all three parts of philosophy in a synopticunderstanding.

28 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI, 10, translated by Robin Hard in: Marcus Aurelius, Medi-tations,with selected correspondence, translated by R. Hard, with an introd. and notes by Ch.Gill, Oxford 2011.

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Might the desired priority be motivational? The thought here is that what weget from the ethical part of philosophy alone is insufficiently powerful to get us tothe counterintuitive conclusions that a Stoic needs to accept and live by. JohnCooper, for example, points out that Stoic views about virtue imply that an eventsuch as one’s child dying horribly at 15 is not bad, and thus nothing to regret. Hesays, “I can find no pressure [italics mine] from within the ‘ethical’’ that would‘lead us all by itself to this totally new way of conceiving what virtue is, and ofconceiving the value of all things other than virtue itself.” “I cannot,” he says,“see at all how this quite counterintuitive conclusion could be arrived at at all”without reliance on thoughts about Providence and what seems bad for the partbeing really good for the whole.”29

What is here taken to be the scope of ‘the ethical’? Cooper takes ‘the ethical’ tobe ‘our practical attitudes and our motivational set as we come to the study ofphilosophical ethics, plus our commitment to finding a conception of a singleoverall good to direct our lives by.’ This, however, understates what the ethicalpart of Stoic philosophy involves. For this precisely does lead us beyond whatour initial beliefs and motivational commitments provided, to accept counter-intuitive conclusions such as that nothing but vice is bad, and that emotions likeregret are all mistaken. Once we appreciate the difference between virtue andindifferents, between appropriate action and fully right action, between emotionand the virtuous person’s ‘good state’, we do see that one’s child dying at 15 is notbad, and thus nothing to regret. Even the driest epitome forces us to accept thatconclusion. We have not understood Stoic ethics – the part studying virtue,happiness, impulse, appropriation and the rest of these ideas – if we think that wehave mastered it but not already had to revise thoroughly whatever beliefs andmotivational set we brought to it.30

29 Cooper 1995, quotes from p. 596. Similar claims can be found inWhite 2002: 312: “Graspingthe goodness of the kosmos is essential, the Stoics maintain, for an understanding of thevalue of anything whatsoever”, and Striker 1996: 230 – 231.

30 Cooper (1995) sees as very limited any revisions brought about within the motivational setone brings to philosophy, augmented only by a commitment to a eudaimonistic structure;this leads him to identify appeal to Providence as an “external” as opposed to an “internal”reason in BernardWilliams’ sense (Williams 1995a). Williams’ view, however, is that I have areason to do something if there is a sound deliberative route to my doing this from the set ofmotivations I already have. ‘Sound deliberative route’ is not limited to instrumental ef-ficiency, and ‘motivation’ is not limited to desire, but Williams explicitly holds that I do nothave an ethical reason if my motivational set does not antecedently contain ethical motiv-ations. ForWilliams, external reasons are reasons where there is no sound deliberative routeto my motivational set so understood, and he doubts that there are any. In the context ofancient Stoicism, we reach claims about Williams’ external reasons well within the ethicalpart of philosophy, in conclusions about virtue and emotion, for example. Williams’ “ex-ternal reasons”, then, have nothing to do with appeal to the cosmos as opposed to eudai-

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However, Cooper’s talk of pressure from within the ethical suggests a moresympathetic interpretation of his concern. We can take the thought to be that wecould technically reach the counterintuitive conclusion by reading a dry accountlike that of Arius, but we could not take it seriously, could not adopt it as part of away of systematically living our lives, unless we saw it as part of a larger schemeof thought about Providence and the way apparent misfortunes are part of theexcellent working of the whole. This is a thought that we may well sympathizewith.

This point, however, is entirely compatible with the integrated picture, andrequires no priority of physics to ethics of the sort that wouldmake the former afoundation for the latter. It is highly plausible that learning the ethical part ofStoic philosophy, whether from a dry epitome or from a more rhetoricallygripping presentation like Cicero’s, would be effective up to a point in gettingyou to think, act and bemotivated as a Stoic, but would be incomplete in itself toturnyou into a Stoic. To use Cooper’s example, youmight be convinced that yourchild’s death is not an evil, but might find this cold comfort, because it did notenable you to live well, or maybe not even to cope, in the world in which thiscould happen.

This chimes with Long’s claim that Epictetus and Marcus, who frequentlyappeal to Providence and the rational ordering of the cosmos, are more suc-cessful than Cicero, who does not, at ‘conveying the emotional attractions ofStoicism.’31 Strictly speaking, of course, Stoicism should not be appealing to ouremotions, but I take Long’s point to be that seeing ourselves in a providentialworld connects with thoughts which enable us to make considerations of virtueand happiness more rooted and forceful, and thus more motivationally pow-erful, in our lives.Wemakemore effective sense of our thoughts about our lives ifwe see them as part of a larger set of thoughts about the world.

None of this implies that Stoic ethics on its own is too weak to lead us tocounterintuitive and revisionary thoughts about our lives. Stoic ethics, theethical part of philosophy, leads us to conclusions about virtue and happinesswhich already require a thoroughgoing transformation of our lives, our atti-tudes, actions and motivations. These ethically transformative conclusions areindeed strengthened when they are seen not independently, but in the context ofand integrated with physical conclusions about Providence and the rationalordering of the world. Thus ethics is better understood and more stable in theagent’s psychology when integrated with physical conclusions about Provi-dence. But this clearly does not grant physics as a part of philosophy priority

monistic thinking. See Williams, “Internal reasons and the obscurity of blame”, in Williams1995a, and Williams 1995b.

31 Long 2004c: 201.

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over ethics as a part of philosophy. This is patent if we reflect that ethics alsogains comprehensibility and stability from the logical part of philosophy (asillustrated in examples such as the above one from Marcus), and that not verymuch is done for ethics by some parts of physics, parts of which later Stoicsindeed felt free to reject while remaining otherwise orthodox.32

Wehave, then, failed to find a sense inwhichphysics ismotivationally prior toethics.What we have found is a highly general consideration, visible in Cooperand Long and others, namely the consideration that thoughts about Providenceare uniquely powerful in Stoicism.33Thoughts about virtue and happiness, or theindemonstrables, on this view, can be merely academic and fail to lead theaspiring Stoic to the firmly internalized and rationally defended grasp of Stoi-cism that is needed for progress to wisdom; thoughts about Providence, how-ever, are uniquely effective in getting the aspirant to accept and rationally defendthe rest of the system. This is a claim about human psychology, a claim thatProvidence appeals in a deeper and more transformative way than virtue andhappiness alone ever could. For present purposes I shall just accept that this is atrue claim about ancient psychology, and so true of the Stoics and those towhomthey addressed their works.34 It is important that this is a point about the way thesystem is best presented to its audiences.35

There may be other senses of priority worth exploring, in which physics canbe claimed to be, as a part of philosophy, prior to ethics, and so a foundation forit, but our results so far are not encouraging about the prospects of success forthis project.36

It is worth concluding this section of the paper with a general worry about talk

32 Panaetius, for example, rejected divination and the conflagration (Testimonia 130 – 140 inPanezio di Rodi 1997); see chapter 3 of Alesse 1994. Panaetius’ orthodoxy is vigorouslydefended in Tieleman 2007: 103 – 142.

33 As we shall see below, this thought encourages the assumption that physics will be the way topresent Stoic ethics.

34 The appeal, or not, of Providence to moderns is an entirely different issue. As we shall seebelow, one attraction of the foundationalist interpretation of Stoic ethics is that it enablesscholars to make a neat contrast between Stoic ethics, taken to depend on accepting Pro-vidence, and modern ethical theories which do not, and thus to represent Stoic ethics asentirely distinct from modern ethical theories.

35 Does this point support the position argued for here, as opposed to that of the foundatio-nalists? It certainly explains why many modern scholars have thought that physics, parti-cularly Providence, should be in some way essential for ‘Stoic ethics’ (an area which then nolonger corresponds to the ethical part of Stoic philosophy as described in the ancientsources).

36 I have not here considered the possible role, in interpreting ancient Stoicism, of widespreadassumptions in modern ethical debate to the effect that ethics should have foundations of ametaphysical kind. It is possible that scholars have brought these assumptions to the ancienttexts. Modern debates about ethical foundations are too dissimilar to ancient concerns to bethemselves usefully applied.

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of foundations in ancient Stoicism. Foundations are, obviously, what groundsomething else, but the question will ultimately arise of what their own standingis. This is a question which concerns Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in thePosterior Analytics, so it is not unreasonable to think that the Stoics should havean answer to it. Modern interpreters who think Stoic ethics has foundations are,however, surprisingly untroubled by this point, and it is unclear what theiranswer to it would be.

Long does commit himself, saying robustly that Stoic physics is ‘the theo-cratic postulate’ on which the ethics depends.37 The idea of postulating thefoundations of a system is one way of solving the problem of the status of asystem’s foundations, but it is surely foreign to Stoic epistemology. Long ex-plicates what he means by calling it ‘a radical intuition concerning “nature” orthe divine government of the world’, which removes any suggestion of arbitra-riness from that of a postulate, but the idea that the Stoics, with their ideal of aunified system, would take it to be founded on intuition, something by definitionunintegrated with other thoughts, is surely at variance with the ancient texts. Ingeneral we can expect difficulty in fitting any foundations into a holistic systemsuch as Stoic philosophy.

Defenders of the view that Stoic physics is foundational for Stoic ethics may atthis point claim that, whatever the theoretical and textual difficulties, there aretwo passages which simply say that Stoic physics is foundational for Stoic eth-ics.38 This has rightly been found important, and so we should look carefully atthem.

One of these passages is in Diogenes Laertius’account of Stoic ethics.39 Thispassage has often been put into strong contrast with the Arius passage, on thegrounds that Arius presents Stoic ethics entirely in terms of the ethical part ofStoic philosophy, whilst the Diogenes passage allegedly sets it on a physicalfoundation. However, when the passages are compared their approach is inter-estingly similar.

Diogenes begins his account of Stoic ethics by listing the topics it covers, thengiving a brief sketch of oikeiosis,40 rejecting pleasure as the object of our primary

37 A. A. Long 2004c, “Stoic eudaimonism”, p. 186 and later ; the phrase is repeated and em-phasized. The phrase “radical intuition” is on p.185.

38 For example, Tieleman refers to “repeated statements by Chrysippus to the effect that mo-rality trickles down from the cosmic order and that philosophical ethics starts from theo-logy”, Tielemann 2003: 143, in Chrysippus’ On Affections: reconstruction and interpretationby T. Tieleman, Leiden 2003.

39 Diogenes Laertius VII 87 – 88; I use the Teubner text of M. Marcovich (Stuttgart 1999).40 This is a real contrast with the Arius passage, in which this topic is not treated. This may be

due to clumsiness in the way the original has been abbreviated, however, and we should notdraw far-reaching conclusions from it about the passage’s original structure and approach.Malcolm Schofield, in his “Stoic Ethics” (2003: 233 – 256), finds the Arius passage to be an

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impulse and concluding that for the Stoics it is the life according to reasonwhichrightly becomes the life according to nature, since reason is the ‘craftsman’ ofimpulse. He continues:

That is why Zeno in hisOn human nature first said that the endwas living in agreementwith nature, which is living in accordance with virtue; for nature leads us towards it.Similarly Cleanthes in his On Pleasure and Hecaton in On Ends.Again, living in accordance with virtue is equivalent (ison) to living in accordance withexperience of what happens by nature, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his OnEnds ; for our natures are parts of the nature of the whole. Hence the end comes to beliving in accordance with nature, that is, in accordance with our own nature and that ofthe universe, doing no action usually forbidden by the common law, which is rightreason, pervading all things and the same as Zeus, who is this ruler of the ordering ofthe universe. And this very thing is the virtue of the happy person and a good flow oflife, when everything is done in accordance with harmony of each person’s spirit inrelation to the will of the orderer of the universe.41

Diogenes then adds the acounts of the end given by Diogenes and Archedemus.Like Arius this passages gives us the definitions of the end offered by early

heads of the Stoa (adding some by later ones), taking these all to be makingdifferent versions of the same claim. We then (after supplementary material inArius) find the claim that the ethical project of living in accordance with virtue is‘equivalent to’ something explicated in physical terms, as being in accordancewith the nature of the world as a whole. It has been too little emphasized, inconnection with the Diogenes passage, that this is the same claim as the one inthe Arius passage. Moreover, it is just the sort of equivalence or identity claimthat, as we have seen above, cannot be fully understood in terms of any one of theparts of philosophy alone, only as contributing to a unified perspective. We findcosmic nature in a discussion of ethics introduced by one of the statements ofequivalence or identity which, to be fully grasped, require an integration andunification of the parts. Diogenes, unlike Arius, gives us at this point an ex-plication in terms of physics of what living in accordance with nature is. But itwould hardly be appropriate to take him as introducing foundations for theclaims about living in accordance with virtue. To do so, we would have to arguethat the explication given here shows that the physical considerations are priorto the ethical ones in some significant way. We have seen above that no claim ofpriority has been successfully made out, though it remains open whether onecould be argued for.42 Moreover, we have seen that for the Stoics explication in

example of ‘working through the key concepts of Stoic ethics’ as opposed to explaining andarguing for some key Stoic thesis (as Cicero does in De Finibus III).

41 Diogenes Laertius VII 87 – 88.42 It has been under-appreciated that argument is needed to establish that the explication here

in physical terms amounts to providing a foundation – perhaps because of a widespread

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physical terms enlarges our understanding by integrating different parts ofphilosophy, not by ranking them hierarchically. And further, living in accord-ance with nature is explicitly, in both passages, said to be equivalent to or thesame thing as living in accordance with virtue. A foundation can hardly be thesame thing as or equivalent to what it is a foundation for.43

What kind of work is Diogenes drawing from here? The context suggests thatit was an ethical work, but it needn’t have been awork whose content was limitedto the cluster of topics making up the ethical part of philosophy. The notion of anend or telos is one which can be discussed, as it is by Aristotle, both from aviewpoint that discusses it in relation to virtue, happiness and the like, in ethics,and also fromaviewpoint, in physics, which sees ends, human and other, as partsof nature as a whole. Our quotation strongly suggests that the work was one inwhich Chrysippus discussed ends both ‘ethically’ and ‘physically’.

Arius and Diogenes thus both give us examples where early Stoics regard theideas of living according to virtue and living according to nature to be ‘equiv-alent’ or ‘the same thing’, and in Diogenes we get an example of the kind ofexplication that living according to nature gets fromphysics. This illuminates theidea of living according to virtue, which is also in both passages explicated interms of the ethical part of Stoic philosophy. Living according to virtue is livingaccording tomy nature, which is explicated by showing how it fits into the natureof the universe as awhole. Deferring inmy reasonings to thewill of Zeus as that isrevealed in the ordered universe makes my life ‘flow’ well, as is achieved only bythe virtuous. We can see here that physics and ethics are mutually illuminating.We can see how progress is possible from understanding just one part of phi-losophy to gaining a more synoptic view which will grasp how the results of thedifferent parts aremutually supporting, and how this might proceed towards thesage’s viewpoint, as sketched by Seneca.44 We will surely also learn from ex-amination of other passages in the Stoics where claimsmade within the differentparts of philosophy are brought together in mutually supporting ways.45

The other passage alleged to support a physical foundation for Stoic ethics

modern assumption that explanation provides foundations. As we have seen, not only has nosuitable notion of foundation been argued for here, but foundations do not fit into the Stoicproject.

43 Of course there are modern foundationalist theories which do claim this, by reducing oreliminating one kind of item in favour of its foundation, but this modern concern has nofooting in ancient Stoicism.

44 Cf. C. Gill 2004.45 One example suggested tome in discussion of the paper at Oxford is the way that Cicero’sDe

Fato opens with a fragmentary reference to ethics, followed by a fuller one to a problemarising from fate within logic. Gill’s work stresses the way that the treatments of fate anddeterminism in the different parts of Stoic philosophy are mutually fortifying; cf. C. Gill2004, especially pp. 114 – 116.

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consists of some quotations from Chrysippus that have been preserved for us inPlutarch’s polemical work where he claims to find the Stoics contradictingthemselves.46 Plutarch begins by saying that Chrysippus held that young menshould attend lectures on logic first, then on ethics and finally on physics; hethen quotes Chrysippus as saying,

Now I believe first, in accordance with the correct statements of the ancients, that thereare three types of philosophical propositions (theoremata), logical, ethical and phys-ical; next, that of these the logical should be ordered first, second the ethical and thirdthe physical ; and of the physical the final should be the account of the gods; hence theyhave called its transmissions ‘fulfilments’ (or ‘initiations’, teletai).47

Plutarch complains that Chrysippus in fact begins from physics in discussingethical topics.

But this very account of the gods, which he says should be last in order, he habituallyorders first and puts in front of every ethical enquiry. For whether it is about ends orjustice or goods and evils ormarriage and child-rearing or law and government, he saysnothing at all unless (just as those who propose decrees to the city preface them with“Good Fortune”) hemakes a preface of Zeus, Fate, Providence, the universe’s being oneand bounded and held together by a single power – of none of which anyone can bepersuaded who has not been deeply immersed in the accounts of physics.48

So Chrysippus discussed ethical topics in a way which began from providentialphysical doctrines. We have seen this already, in the Diogenes passage, where wehad an example from a work on goals where the subject was treated ‘physically’,and physics was clearly central to its explication of what is appropriate forhuman nature (though we do not know, of course, whether the work Diogenesdraws from actually began with physics). Clearly Chrysippus sometimes dis-cussed ethical issues in awaywhich began from, and explicated them in terms of,physical doctrines. (Plutarch suggests, with his analogy of the preface to a de-cree, that the appeal to physics was perfunctory, but this may well be unfair ; ourevidence from Diogenes and Plutarch suggests rather that Chrysippus’ dis-cussions of ethical topics from a physical perspective were substantial.) WhatPlutarch fails to point out, and what some modern scholars have insufficientlyappreciated, is that this does not at all rule out Chrysippus’ having alsoproducedworks within the ethical part of philosophy alone, works which dealt in-dependently with the topics of impulse, virtue, emotion, the sage and so on in theway we find in the Diogenes and Arius passages.49 Finding that Chrysippus

46 The whole passage is atDe Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1035 A-F. I use the text of H. Cherniss inthe Loeb edition, Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press 1976.

47 1035 A-B.48 1035 B-C.49 Even Long, a staunch foundationalist, accepts that “we may be reading a good deal of

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frequently treated ethical topics from a physical point of view, either alone or incombination with an ethical treatment, does nothing whatsoever to underminethe thought that ethics and physics are distinctively different parts of philosophyand that Chrysippus and others at other times presented them as such.

Plutarch goes on to make the stronger claim that Chrysippus actually con-tradicts himself, juxtaposing the first quotation with three more:

Hear what he says in the third book of On the Gods: “ It is not possible to find anotherstarting-point or another origin for justice than the one from Zeus and from commonnature; for it is from that that every such thing must have its starting-point, if we aregoing to say anything about goods and evils.” Again in his Physical Theses: “For there isno other or more appropriate way of approaching the account of goods and evils, orvirtue or happiness, than from common nature and the organization of the universe.”And further on again, “For one should join on the account of goods and evils to thesethings, since there is no other better starting-point or reference-point for them, nor isphysical theory taken up for the sake of anything other than the discrimination ofgoods and evils.” The account of physics then, according to Chrysippus, comes to be “atonce both before and behind” ethics. Or rather the overturning of the order leaves uscompletely at a loss, if we must order A after B when we can grasp nothing of B apartfromA. The conflict is clear in someone whomakes the account of physics the starting-point for that of goods and evils, but orders it to be taught not before it but afterwards.50

Many scholars have leant heavily on these quotations from Chrysippus,espe-cially the second and the third, to claim that Stoic physics is foundational forStoic ethics. But we can see that Plutarch is pulling passages out of context, andthere are problems in what he is doing. We certainly cannot claim that physics isfoundational for ethics just on the grounds that sometimes Chrysippus putphysics before ethics; for the point of the passage is that he sometimes also putethics before physics. Scholars have not argued from this that Chrysippus alsosometimes made ethics foundational for physics.

There is an interestingly large number of indications in these passages thatChrysippus is commenting on ways of talking about or presenting philosophy.The first quotation takes off from Chrysippus’ views about the order in whichyoungmen should attend lectures, and the quotation itselfmentions theoremata,the logos concerning the gods, and paradoseis or handings-down. The secondquotation is about what we are to say about goods and evils. (‘Say something’indicates saying something worth saying, as opposed to ‘saying nothing’, that is,saying nothing worth saying.) The third talks of ‘the account (logos) of goods

Chrysippus in Arius Didymus”, in passages which discuss ethical topics with no mention ofphysics. See A. A. Long 2004a.

50 1035 C – D. Note that Cherniss translates in a way which builds Plutarch’s view of the lastquotation into the translation; see below n. 55.

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and evils’, and so does the fourth, which also mentions the phusike theoria ortheory of physics.

Moreover, Plutarch in his criticism reveals that it is the order in which sub-jects are handed down or taught which is at issue. He starts by quoting Chrys-ippus on a good teaching order of subjects for youngmen, then complains that insome works he proceeds in the opposite way, which leaves the learner doing thesupposedly advanced subject before the supposedly introductory one. This is agood objection, we should note, only if the audience for the quoted works is thesame young men that Chrysippus was originally concerned for, and the teachingorder employed the same one that Chrysippus was originally talking about. Ifthese assumptions are not justified then Plutarch’s complaint misfires.

We already have, then, several indications that the right way to take thesepassages is that of Katerina Ierodiakonou, who takes it that the quotations showthat on different occasions Chrysippus introduced different pedagogical orders‘because of different expository criteria’, so that there is no contradiction. ‘Forexample, if for a given audience one wanted to present a very strict and highlyscientific account of ethics, this would have to be based on a prior treatment ofphysics; if, on the other hand, the audience required a lower level introduction toethics, an antecedent account of physics would not be necessary.’51

This view is supported by what Plutarch goes on to say :

If someone says that Chrysippus, inOn the Use of Logos, wrote that the person taking uplogic first should not altogether hold off from the other [parts], but should take fromthem too, as provided52 – well, he will speak the truth, but only confirm the charge. ForChrysippus conflicts with himself, in some places telling us to take up the account of thegods last and as a completion, on the grounds that it is because of this that it is called a“fulfilment”, and in other places saying that when we begin we should also take fromthis account at the same time. There is nothing left of the order if in every part we shallhave to take from them all.53

Plutarch’s final point simply repeats what he has already said:

Evenworse, havingmade the account of the gods the starting-point of that of goods andevils, he tells us not to begin from this when taking up ethics. Rather, when taking upethics we are to take from the account of the gods as provided, and then go on to it fromethics, though he says that there is no starting-point of approach for ethics apart fromthe account of the gods.54

51 Ierodiakonou 1993: 71. I do not know what Ierodiakonou has in mind by “strict and highlyscientific account”, but, as we have seen, for the Stoics a ‘scientific’ account is not one inwhich ethics has foundations in themodern sense, but rather one inwhich ethics andphysicsare integrated in a way ultimately progressing towards the viewpoint of the wise person.

52 The phrase is kata to didomenon. Cherniss translates “as opportunity offers”.53 1035 E.54 1035 E-F.

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Plutarch, then, continues throughout the passage to fault Chrysippus for givingallegedly conflicting directives as to the order in which people – presumably theyoung men first introduced – should ‘take up’ the study of each logos – thelogical, physical and ethical.

Chrysippus’ last point, as reported here, is simply sensible pedagogy : mixedpresentations will often be most suitable for a beginner. Interestingly, we findhere a rationale for Chrysippus writing works that mix physics and ethics, suchas the workon ends referred to byDiogenes Laertius.We have seen that this doesnothing whatever to weaken the status of physics and ethics as distinct parts ofphilosophy. Plutarch has no reply other than bluster. He claims that if whileworking in one part of philosophy we can draw from others, then ‘there isnothing left of the order’. But this plainly begs the question at issue, namely,whether there is only one order. Since we have seen that it is plausible thatChrysippus recognized more than one order for presenting the parts of phi-losophy, Plutarch’s objection fails.

We should note that, although there are two indications in the passage thatChrysippus is concerned with beginners, there is no reason to limit the claimsmade in it to elementary teachings. The point is one about the presentation ofphilosophy, and so applies to advanced discussion and engagement as well asintroductory lectures. Hence, although I think it is reasonable to talk in terms of‘pedagogy’, especially given the focus of the quotations from Chrysippus here,this should be taken to cover the presentation of Stoic philosophy at a variety oflevels and, as Ierodiakonou points out, to a variety of audiences.

‘But,’ some will say, ‘the second and third quotations clearly say that there isno other starting-point or origin of justice and goods and evils than from cosmicnature. How can a presentation claiming to be the only one turn out to be just onealternative among others?’ In my experience many think this a decisive con-sideration. If we think so, then we are agreeing with Plutarch that there is such athing as the correct way to present Stoic ethics, so that all we need to find out is,which it is; and sincewe find a claimhere that it is from cosmic nature, that easilysettles the issue. But, quite apart from the difficulties we have seen so far, thereare three considerations here which suggest that this conclusion would be pre-mature.

Firstly, we have equally good evidence from this passage that Chrysippussometimes put ethics before physics. This has to be explained somehow, either inPlutarch’s way or some other. We cannot just claim that Chrysippus madephysics foundational for ethics and leave it at that, for this would be to ignore thefact that the statements come from a source inwhich they are presented as half ofan alleged contradiction. Nor should we be tempted to try to defuse the allegedcontradiction by holding that Chrysippus’ statements about ethics precedingphysics concern pedagogical procedure, whereas his statements about physics

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preceding ethics claim that physics forms a metaphysical foundation for ethics.This claim would be acceptable if based on independent evidence for founda-tionalism, but is obviously not available to anyone appealing to this passage asevidence for foundationalism.

Secondly, we can see from the ancient evidence that there was no such es-tablished thing as the way to present Stoic ethics. Cicero presents it in a verydifferent way from Arius; Epictetus is different again. We also know of the othervariations on the logic-ethics-physics order mentioned above, as well as mixedpresentations. From our evidence we can reasonably infer that how ethics waspresented was a matter of pedagogy ; it could be put forward either from aphysical background or as being the goal of physical understanding. Moreover,this is just whatwewould expect in a holistic system like Stoicism, where the goalis unified and synoptic understanding of the different parts, grasped in an evermore integrated way. What matters is not what your entry-point is, but that youshould go on from limited understanding of eachpart to try to integrate this withother parts. There is no one privileged path to doing this whichwill work equallywell for every audience whatever their background.

Finally, the quotations are clearly ripped out of context, and so it is unsafe toinfer from them that Chrysippus in fact made the claim often ascribed to him onthe basis of this passage, namely that physics is only possible presentation ofethics uberhaupt, in all contexts and for all audiences without exception.Moreover, this would not in any case be a reasonable interpretation of thequotations. When we make claims about the only, or only possible way of pre-senting something, this is generally relative to some expository context. The bestway of presenting material to a given audience is often thought of as the only wayof presenting the material to that audience – within, that is, pedagogical as-sumptions which are taken for granted, usually because they are obvious. Andindeed the last two quotations make it apparent that this is what is going on:Chrysippus says that there is no other or more appropriate way to come to theaccount of goods and evils than from cosmic nature, and that there is no otherbetter starting-point or reference-point. These are odd phrases. If we insist thatthey claim that there really is no other way, the points about better or moreappropriate ways are strikingly illogical. It is surely more reasonable to takethese to indicate that the claim about there being no other way is relative to someassumed framework of presentation, of which Plutarch has deprived us. Thus Isuspect that if we had the contexts from which Plutarch has ripped out thesequotations, we would find that the onlyway of presenting ethics, viz from cosmicnature, is in fact the only appropriate way given an assumed pedagogic context.55

55 There is an under-scrutinized oddity in the fourth quotation, which says that we shouldattach the account of goods and evils to these things (toutois), for there is no other or better

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To sum up: If Chrysippus is saying in these two quotations that there is onlyone way, ever, in any context, to any audience, to present Stoic ethics, namelythrough physics, then he is indeed, as Plutarch says, contradicting what he sayselsewhere, as well as conflicting with much of his own practice and the practiceof other Stoics. We have seen, however, that it would be uncharitable to force onhim the problematic claim that there is such a thing as the way to put forwardStoic ethics. There are many pedagogical orders, the differences correspondingto different audiences and different pedagogical needs. Moreover, this reflectsthe point that Stoic ethics is part of a unified whole, and that we come to graspethical propositions fromdifferent perspectives, going from a specifically ethicalunderstanding to a unified understanding that embraces all the parts of phi-losophy.

There is amoral here for modern scholars, I think, which is that it is amistaketo think that there is such a thing as the correct way of presenting Stoic ethics;there are many ways, all of which can be justified on a variety of grounds. Henceit will be a mistake to insist that one way of presenting Stoic ethics is the onlyproper way to do so, and to disparage other ways of presenting it. Modernscholars have been too quick to follow Plutarch in asking, Which is the correctway to present Stoic ethics? In hunting the chimera of the, or the authoritative,way to present Stoic ethics we have failed to do justice to its sheer difficulty, andto the huge ambitions of Stoic philosophy as a whole, with its goal of integratedphilosophical understanding.

It is also a mistake to rely too heavily on a particular favourite passage forone’s account and claim that an approachwhich does not stress it is wrong. In thescholarly literature there is something of a division between those who think thatthe key text to expound Stoic ethics is Cicero De Finibus III, which does notpresent Stoic ethics via cosmic nature, and those who foreground DiogenesLaertius VII 85 – 89, which does.56My conclusion here, irenic if rather boring, is

starting-point and point of reference for them (auton). Cherniss translates as Plutarchwantsus to read this: ‘since good and evil have no better beginning and point of reference’ –presumably ‘than these things’, assuming ‘these things’ to be physical principles. Yet this isfollowed by oude,which should introduce another consideration to the same effect as we havehad – andwhat follows is a reason for giving ethics some kind of primacy : physical theorizingis undertaken for nothing other than discriminating goods and evils. What precedes theoude should thus likewise be a reason for giving ethics, not physics, some kind of primacy.This is what we get if we read auton as referring not to goods and evils but rather to thepreceding toutois (whatever they are). This gives amuch less convoluted reading of theGreeksentence. If this is right, then Plutarch is forcing this quotation to appear more parallel to, orsupportive of, the previous two than it really is.

56 Long puts extraordinary weight on the Diogenes passage, especially in “The Logical Basis ofStoic Ethics” (Long 2004b), where he says (p. 153) that it “is almost certainly our mostauthoritative testimony for the primary principles”. I have myself countered that what wefind in Cicero “is a normal ancient presentation of Stoic ethics, different in kind from the

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that both are right; each passage is, in its context, the appropriate way of pre-senting Stoic ethics to that audience.

We should, then, recognize a plurality of equally legitimate ways of presentingStoic ethics, none being the, or the authoritative way to do it. For ultimately theambitious goal is to unite the understanding of the different parts in a synopticgrasp of the big picture.

Foundationalists might make a response to this which aims to preserve thespirit of their project while recognizing the problems with it pointed out here.They might claim that a presentation of Stoic ethics which puts it forwardthrough the providential part of Stoic physics has a certain primacy, since thisseems to have been the approach which answered best to ancient psychology ;this is the approach which the ancients themselves found most compelling.Without making it explicit, modern scholars often adopt such a stance; some-times their presentation of Stoic ethics uses Providence to base the appeal of theethics, without formally requiring a derivation of ethical concepts or principlesfrom physical ones.57

This response has a point. It is a goodway for us to see an important attractionof ancient Stoic ethics for its audience. It is also a good indication of the way theaspiring Stoic might begin to move towards integrated understanding of Stoicphilosophy. Moreover, it marks a sharp contrast between this presentation ofStoic ethics, which relies on a providential view of the universe, and modernethical theories which explicitly abjure any such appeal.

Stoic ethics has other attractions, however. As we find it in a presentation likethat of Cicero in de Finibus III, we can see it as offering to thoughtful people anethical framework which can be seen to emerge from and answer to the issuesdiscussed by philosophers for centuries. An Aristotelian framework in partic-ular appeals to many of our deep-seated intuitions, but Aristotle’s own ethicaltheory raises systematic difficulties, particularly about the relation of virtue tohappiness. Stoic ethics presented in a eudaimonistic framework presents arigorous and satisfying solution to these difficulties. Presented in this way, Stoicethics suggests more points of affinity to, than divergence from, modern theo-ries.

The major problem for modern scholars and interpreters I take to be that of

metaphysically based discussions of which we have some fragments,” p. 607 of Annas 1995,on the grounds that Cicero is our most intelligent ancient source and his presentation is theresult of debate and argument. Both approaches try to privilege one text over the other, aproject which now seems to me a mistake.

57 As for example in “Stoic ethics” by Brad Inwood and Pierluigi Donini (1999: 675 – 738).Gisela Striker (1996) introduces physical foundations for Stoic ethics byway ofmeeting whatshe takes to be requirements on ethical theory. I critically discuss her reconstruction of Stoicethics, which she judges harshly, in Annas 1998.

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doing justice to bothways of presenting Stoic ethics, that located in providentialnature and that resulting from rigorous thought about virtue and happiness.Givenwhat I have argued here, it appears that the latter is more suited to thoughtwithin the ethical part of philosophy alone, while the former moves to thethought that living according to virtue is ‘equivalent to’ or ‘the same as’ livingaccording to providential nature, and thus moves us further along the way to thesage’s synoptic understanding.58

We should at any rate be careful how we take the modern pedagogical unit‘Stoic ethics’ to be related to the ancient texts. Some scholars and interpretersdiscuss ‘Stoic ethics’ using, in ancient terms, the ethical part of Stoic philosophy.For others ‘Stoic ethics’ corresponds in ancient terms to the ethical part of Stoicphilosophy plus the providential part of Stoic physics. As explained above, bothapproaches are legitimate and mutually enriching. It is clearly a mistake, how-ever (one not always avoided) for proponents of the latter approach to complainthat the former approach does not do justice to the ancient evidence.

We are under no obligation to conform our use of the term ‘Stoic ethics’ to theethical part of philosophy as understood by the Stoics themselves; but I havesuggested that our understanding of Stoic ethics and its place in Stoic philosophyas awhole is enriched if we do take seriously the Stoic division of philosophy intoparts, and examinewhat they thought about the relations of physics and ethics. Ifwe do so we shall be less inclined to demand foundations for ethics within aphilosophy where living according to nature is not a foundation for, but ratherequivalent to, and the same thing as, living according to virtue.59

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58 We should remember that ‘mixed’ presentations are in themselves no guarantee that theauthor has achieved this level of understanding. Physical and ethical propositions can bediscussed together in mutually illuminating ways without the author having a full grasp ofeither of the parts of philosophy concerned. Marcus’Meditations illustrates this; see Annas2004.

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