The ‘Hellenistic’ period (traditionally from 323 BC, the death of Alexander the Great, to the end of the Roman republic at the end of the first century BC) is marked by the emergence of two new philosophical schools, those of Epicurus and the Stoics, and also of philosophical movements which were not institutionalized as schools, such as the Cynics, and Pyrrho, the first sceptic. Plato’s school practised a form of scepticism in this period, and several mixed or hybrid schools try to bring together the insights of different schools of thought.
During the first century BC to the second century AD, the early Roman empire, the existing schools continue, and philosophy flourishes. No new major schools emerge, but there is renewed interest in Pythagoras, and also in studying Plato’s ideas positively and systematically.
Late antiquity sees the emergence, in the second to third centuries, of an original new school, that of Plotinus, which revives some of Plato’s ideas and is called ‘Neoplatonism’). As Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman empire, which divides into an eastern and a western part, the dominant world-view becomes Platonism, and this is the tradition most influential on Christianity. The first major western Christian thinker, Augustine, is influenced by Platonism, but has already lost touch with the major traditions of ancient philosophical thinking.
Chapter 1
Humans and beasts: understanding ourselves
Medea, daughter of the King of Colchis, has betrayed her country and family out of love for the Greek adventurer Jason, who has brought her back to Greece. Now they have fallen on hard times, and to mend his fortunes Jason has left Medea and their two sons and is to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth. He does not understand the depth of her outrage; her sacrifice and devotion mean little to him. Medea realizes that there is only one way to bring home to Jason what he has done, what kind of commitment he has discounted. The only way to hurt him as much as he has hurt her is to kill their sons, depriving him of any descendants and leaving his life empty. But can she do this? They are her children too.
In Euripides’ famous play, produced at Athens in the fifth century BC, Medea resolves to kill her sons, then goes back on her resolve when she sees them. Sending them away, she steels herself to do the deed, and speaks words which were to become famous:
I know that what I am about to do is bad, but anger is master of my plans, which is the source of the greatest troubles for humankind.
She recognizes two things going on in her: her plans and her anger or thumos. She also recognizes that her anger is ‘master of’ the plans she has rationally deliberated on carrying out.
What is going on here? We may think that nothing is going on that a philosopher needs to concern herself with; we simply have something which happens every day, though usually not in such spectacular ways. I think it better for me to do A than B, but am led by anger, or some other emotion, to do B instead.
But how do we understand what is going on? How can I genuinely think that A is the better thing to do, if I end up doing B? How can anger, or any other emotion or feeling, get someone to go against what they have deliberately resolved on doing? Until we have some systematic way of understanding this, we and the way we act are mysterious to ourselves. Many people, of course, do remain this way, with many of the sources of their actions and their patterns of behaviour opaque to themselves. But the society in which Euripides’ play was produced and continued to be a classic fostered a kind of thinking, the kind we call philosophical thinking. This kind of reflective, probing thinking regarded Medea’s situation as calling for explanation and understanding in terms that they, and we so many years later, can readily recognize as philosophical.
As already indicated, the question of what, if anything, distinguishes ancient philosophy and its methods will emerge by the end of the book; here we will focus on an issue where we can readily understand what ancient philosophers are doing.
Are there really two distinct things operating in Medea, her plans and her furious anger? How do they relate to Medea herself, who is so lucidly aware of what is going on? One school of ancient philosophers, the Stoics, developed a distinctive view of Medea as part of their ethics and psychology. They think that the idea that there are really two distinct forces or motives at work in Medea is an illusion. What matters in this situation is always Medea herself, the person, and it is wrong to think in terms of different parts of her. After all, she is quite clear about how her thoughts are going. First she resolves to do one thing, then to do another – but these are both her resolves, decisions that she comes to as a result of giving weight to resentment on the one hand or love on the other.
Stoicism is a philosophical school named after the Stoa Poikile or Painted Porch, a colonnaded building in Athens where the first heads of the school taught. The school was founded by Zeno of Citium, who arrived in Athens in 313 BC. After Zeno the most influential head of the school was Chrysippus of Soli (c. 280-208 BC) who wrote extensively on just about every philosophical topic, and produced what became authoritative Stoic positions.
Stoicism often presented itself, particularly at first, in a deliberately harsh light, emphasizing doctrines that are so far from common sense as to be paradoxical. However, Stoicism as a philosophy is holistic – that is, its parts can be developed separately, but ultimately the aim is to understand them all in relation to the other parts. Hence Stoic ‘paradoxes’ increasingly make sense and acquire conviction as they are appreciated against the background of Stoic arguments and connected ideas. There are thus many ways of teaching Stoicism; where you begin depends on the audience’s level of interest and expertise. Epictetus, a later Stoic (AD C.50–130), taught in a way that appealed directly to his audience’s interest in ethical and social matters, and accounts of his teaching have continued to be used as a vivid introduction to Stoic thought. The universal aspect of Stoicism is illustrated by the fact that Epictetus, a former slave, was influential on the Stoic reflections of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180).
Medea as a whole veers now in one direction, now in another. How then can she come to a considered judgement as to what to do, and then act on anger which is stronger than this? What happens, the Stoics think, is that, being in an emotional state, she follows the reasons which go with that state: she seeks revenge because that is how angry people think. But there is no real division within Medea’s self. She oscillates between different decisions as a whole; there is no inner battle of parts of her. She is like the example Chrysippus used to explain emotion: a runner who is going too fast to stop, and so is out of control as a whole. When, therefore, she says that anger is master of her plans, what is meant is that anger is in control of them; she is reasoning, but the way she does it has been taken over by anger and achieves its aims. The angry person does not cease to reason – he doesn’t act blindly – but his reasoning is in the service of anger.
The Stoics think that there are no parts or divisions to the human soul, and that it is all rational. (By the soul they mean the item that makes humans live in a characteristically human way.) Emotions are not blind, non-rational forces which can overcome rational resolve; they are themselves a kind of reason which the person determines to act on. ‘It is precisely this, gratifying her anger and being revenged on her husband, that she thinks more advantageous than saving her children,’ says Epictetus, a later Stoic. Blind fury could not lead to Medea’s carefully planned and self-aware revenge.