Peripatetics vs. Stoics

THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL GOODS IN

HAPPINESS

“Happiness evidently also needs external goods to be added, as we said, since we cannot, or cannot easily, do fine actions if we lack the resources. For, fi rst of all, in many actions we use friends, wealth, and political power just as we use instruments. Further, deprivation of certain externals—for instance, good birth, good children, beauty—mars our blessedness. For we do not altogether have the character of happiness if we look utterly repulsive or are ill-born, solitary, or childless; and we have it even less, presumably, if our children or friends are totally bad, or were good but have died.” (1099ab)

ARISTOTLE ON EXTERNAL GOODS

“Some maintain, on the contrary, that we are happy when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided that we are good. Whether they mean to or not, these people are talking nonsense. And because happiness needs fortune added, some believe good fortune is the same as happiness. But it is not. For when it is excessive, it actually impedes happiness; and then, presumably, it is no longer rightly called good fortune, since the limit is defined in relation to happiness.” (1153b)

Do you think Aristotle is relying on intuition in these passages or does he have principled grounds for acknowledging a limited role for good fortune in the happy life?

ARISTOTLE ON EXTERNAL GOODS

Like Socrates, the Stoics identify virtue with knowledge: it is an “expertise concerned with the whole of life.” Virtue is all about reasoning well in life.

And like Socrates, the Stoics suppose that virtue is all you need for happiness: “Virtue is a consistent character, choiceworthy for its own sake and not from fear or hope of anything external. Happiness consists in virtue since virtue is a soul which has been fashioned to achieve consistency in the whole of life.” (Diogenes Laertius)

STOICS AS SOCRATICS

The Stoics are even more extreme than Socrates insofar as they deny that so-called external goods are goods.

What was Socrates’ view of the good in the Protagoras?

By contrast, the Stoics insist that the virtues alone are good!

SOCRATICISM IN THE EXTREME

good indifferent

preferredselected

have valueto-be-taken

accordance w/nature

dispreferrednot selected

disvaluenot-to-be-taken

contrary to nature

bad

EXTERNAL “GOODS” & “EVILS” AS INDIFFERENTS

“For just as heating, not chilling, is the peculiar characteristic of what is hot, so too benefitting, not harming, is the peculiar characteristic of what is good. But wealth and health are not something good. Furthermore they say: that which can be used well and badly is not something good. But wealth and health can be used well and badly. Therefore wealth and health are not something good.” (Diogenes Laertius)

Convincing?

WHY EXTERNALS ARE NOT GOOD/BAD

But if wealth, health, and the rest are not goods, why take them to be preferred?

The Stoic Aristo developed an unorthodox position, which rejects the division of indiff erents into the categories of preferred & dispreferred.

Aristo’s argument runs as follows. The reasoning which shows externals are not unconditionally good also establishes that externals are not unconditionally preferred. (next slide)

ARISTO ON PREFERRED INDIFFERENTS

“Aristo of Chios denied that health and everything similar to it is a preferred indiff erent. For to call it a preferred indiff erent is equivalent to judging it a good, and diff erent practically in name alone… Neither those which are said to be preferred prove to be unconditionally preferred, nor are those said to be dispreferred of necessity dispreferred. For if healthy men had to serve a tyrant and be destroyed for this reason, while the sick had to be released from the service and, therewith also, from destruction, the wise man would rather choose sickness in this circumstance than health. Thus neither is health unconditionally preferred nor sickness dispreferred.”

ARISTO’S ARGUMENT

One problem with Aristo’s position, stated nicely by Cicero, is that it seems to deprive us of any external target or goal in our activities. What is virtuous activity aimed at if not health, prosperity, etc.?

Another problem is that Aristo seems to deny us any grounds for choice in life. Why prefer a bed with clean sheets over one soiled with vomit and crawling with insects?

For these sorts of reasons, the orthodox Stoic position acknowledges that externals have a kind of value.

PROBLEMS FOR ARISTO

As Cicero notes, the Stoic position looks inherently unstable:

On the one hand, they wish to avoid the extremes of Aristo’s position, so they allow that externals have value.

But in allowing that externals have value, their disagreement with Aristotle seems verbal in character. (They call externals preferred rather than good.)

BETWEEN A ROCK & A HARD PLACE

Even if the Stoic position seems a bit precarious, the underlying motivation for the position is easy to appreciate. The Stoics deny that externals are needed for happiness because they think happiness requires confi dence that one’s happiness is here to stay and we lack confi dence in what depends on luck.

In the words of Cicero: “how can someone who lacks confi dence be happy? Yet a man who adopts the threefold division of goods inevitably lacks confi dence. For how will he be able to be confi dent of bodily strength or secure fortune? Yet no one can be happy without a good which is secure, stable, and lasting… The man who would fear losing any of these things cannot be happy. We want the happy man to be safe, impregnable, fenced and fortifi ed, so that he is not just largely unafraid, but completely.”

THE HEART OF THE STOIC POSITION

Just how fragile are the goods of life anyway—if at all fragile?

Could you still be happy knowing that the goods of life could be taken away at any time, as Aristotle supposes? Or are the Stoics right that happiness requires goods known to be shielded from misfortune—fenced and fortified?

Are there any goods of this kind? (A possible view: happiness requires fortified goods but there aren’t any!)

FOR DISCUSSION

Contemporaries of the Stoics raised interesting worries about the Stoic position on so-called external goods. What follows is a brief survey of key objections & Stoic replies.

CONFRONTING OBJECTIONS

According to the Stoics, the end/goal in life (happiness) is selecting well or rationally (among available options).

Objection: Selecting well seems to have a point only if it is directed toward/for the sake of attaining/achieving/getting. But the Stoics insist that selecting well is the aim, not the getting. (The latter is subject to chance/fortune.)

Contrast the Stoic position with Socrates’ view in the Protagoras, according to which virtue (knowledge of good & evil) is instrumentally valuable towards the goal of pleasure.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

The Stoics, as Socratics, think of virtue as like craft knowledge (a kind of know-how).

Objection: In general, crafts are goal-directed, undertaken to achieve something other than their own exercise. So once again getting seems to be the goal.

Any suggestions about how the Stoics should deal with this problem?

A RELATED WORRY

This much is clear. The Stoics do not retreat to the view that there are two ultimate goals in life (i.e. selecting well & attaining).

“Here, though, one must immediately avoid the error of thinking that the theory is committed to there being two ultimate goods. Take the case of one whose task is to shoot a spear or arrow straight at some target. One’s ultimate aim is to do all in one’s power to shoot straight, and the same applies with our ultimate good. In this kind of example, it is to shoot straight that one must do all one can; nonetheless, it is to do all one can to accomplish the task that is really the ultimate aim. It is just the same with what we call the supreme good in life; to actually hit the target is, as we say, to be selected but not sought.” (Cicero)

ARROW ANALOGY

The ultimate aim in action, then, is to do the best one can—whatever is in one’s power.

A related point is that, in morally assessing actions, we do not look to the consequences of action (which can be out of our control):“So it is not elegant clothes which are a good in themselves, but the selection of elegant clothes, since the good is not in the thing but in the quality of the selection. It is our actions that are right, not their results… I shall take good health and strength, if the selection is granted me, but the good will be my judgment regarding them, and not the things themselves.” (Seneca)

ASSESSING BEHAVIOR

Of course, events like death, serious injury, and severe malnutrition can have the eff ect of disrupting our rational activities. Let’s set these cases to one side.

Focus on circumstances which leave our rational capacities intact & serviceable. The Peripatetics agree that a good human life is all about excelling with respect to our rational nature. But won’t a sage like Socrates achieve this end even in poverty, facing false charges, and held in ill repute?

PHILOSOPHICAL MOTIVATION

The Peripatetics can concede that the Sage will always flourish relative to her circumstances. Their point is that some circumstances do not allow an individual to realize her potential as a rational agent.

Illustration. Suppose the sage is held captive and forced to play a pointless game that demands excellent deliberation. Surely this would not be a good human life!

POTENTIAL RESPONSE

The Peripatetics & Stoics share the same broad theoretical approach to human happiness, namely, human nature perfectionism, an approach distinct from hedonism and desire-satisfaction theory.

Where they depart from one another is over the issue of whether specific circumstances are required for human nature to realize its potential.

Aristotle will concede that in one sense Socrates has reached his human potential: he has developed his rational capacities in an exemplary manner. Nonetheless, if he is stuck in prison, he cannot exercise those capacities in an exemplary manner.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISPUTE

How are we to think of preferred indiff erents if they are not required for success in human action?

Cf. playing intramural soccer or checkers.

RETHINKING EXTERNAL GOODS

the target of an action

the goal of an action

reference point the end

objective purpose

How are we to think of virtue if it is not like medicine, which aims at a separate end/goal, namely, health?

Cicero writes: “We do not regard wisdom as comparable to navigation or medicine, but rather to acting… and dancing, so that its end is within itself and not to be sought outside, i.e., the practice of the expertise.”

RETHINKING THE CRAFT ANALOGY

How satisfying are these analogies? Is life reasonably compared to playing intramural soccer? Is expertise in life reasonably compared to expertise in dancing?

FINAL QUESTIONS