This general idea is the only one which is interesting in the Stoics, but even in this very principle, limitations are found to be present. It merely expresses the truth as subsisting in the object, as thought of, yet for that very reason it is still a very formal determination, or not in itself the real Idea. From this point of view Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. X. 183) examines the Stoics, and he considers and discusses them in all sorts of ways. The most striking thing that he says is what relates to the following. The fact that anything is, rests in its being thought—the fact that it is thought in something being there; the one is the pre-supposition of the other. That is to say, the Stoics assert that a thing exists, not because it is, but through thought; but consciousness for its existence requires another, for thought is likewise one-sided. In this criticism by Sextus it is indicated that thought requires an object as an external to which it gives its approbation. There can be no talk of its being here indicated that the thinking mind in order to exist as consciousness does not require the object; this is really inherent in its conception. But the “this” of the object as an external is only a moment which is not the only one or the essential. It is the manifestation of mind, and mind exists only in that it appears; this therefore must come to pass in it, that it must have its object as external and give its approbation to it—that is, it must withdraw from this relationship into itself and therein recognize its unity. But likewise, having gone into itself, it has now from itself to beget its object and give itself the content which it sends forth from itself. Stoicism is only this return of mind into itself, positing the unity of itself and the object, and recognizing the harmony; but not the going forth again to the extension of the real knowledge of a content from itself. We do not find Stoicism getting any farther, for it stops short at making the consciousness of this unity its object, without developing it in the slightest; thus reason remains the simple form which does not go on to the distinction of the content itself. Hence the formalism of this celebrated standard, and of the standpoint from which all truth of content is judged, rests farther in the fact that the thought of thought, as what is highest, finds this content indeed conformable to itself and appropriates it, since it transforms it into the universal, but its determinations are given. For if thought predominates, still it is always universal form alone. On account of this universality thought yields nothing but the form of identity with itself; the ultimate criterion is thus only the formal identity of the thought which discovers harmony. But it may be asked, with what? For there no absolute self-determination, no content that proceeds from thought as such is to be found; and hence everything may harmonize with my thought. The criterion of the Stoics is consequently only the principle of contradiction; yet when we remove the contradiction from absolute reality, it is indeed self-identical, but for that very reason empty. The harmony must be a higher one; there must be harmony with self in what is other than self, in content, in determination; and thus it must be harmony with harmony.
In accordance with this recognition of the principle of the Stoics, both their logic and their morality is judged; neither the one nor the other arrives at being immanent free science. We have already remarked (p. 241) that they also occupied themselves with logical definitions, and since they made abstract thought the principle, they have brought formal logic to great perfection. Logic is hence to them logic in the sense that it expresses the activity of the understanding as of conscious understanding; it is no longer as with Aristotle, at least in regard to the categories, undecided as to whether the forms of the understanding are not at the same time the realities of things; for the forms of thought are set forth as such for themselves. Then along with this comes in, for the first time, the question respecting the harmony of thought and object or the demand that an appropriate content of thought be shown. However, since all given content may be taken into thought and posited as something thought without therefore losing its determinate character, and this determinate character contradicts and does not support the simplicity of thought, the taking of it up does not help at all; for its opposite may also be taken up and set forth as something thought. The opposition is thereby, however, only in another form; for instead of the content being in outward sensation as something not pertaining to thought and not true, as it formerly was, it now pertains to thought, but is unlike it in its determinateness, seeing that thought is the simple. Thus what was formerly excluded from the simple Notion, now comes into it again; this separation between activity of the understanding and object must indeed be made, but likewise the unity in the object as such has to be shown, if it is only something thought. Hence Scepticism cast up this opposition more especially to the Stoics, and the Stoics amongst themselves had always to improve on their conceptions. As we have just seen (p. 250) in Sextus Empiricus, they did not quite know whether they should define conception as impression or alteration, or in some other way. Now if this conception is admitted into that which directs the soul, into pure consciousness, Sextus further asks (since thought in abstracto is the simple and self-identical which, as incorporeal, is neither passive nor active), How can an alteration, an impression, be made on this? Then the thought-forms are themselves incorporeal. But, according to the Stoics, only the corporeal can make an impression or bring about an alteration.[134] That is to say, on the one hand, because corporeal and incorporeal are unlike they cannot be one; and, on the other, incorporeal thought-forms, as capable of no alteration, are not the content, for this last is the corporeal only.
If the thought-forms could in fact have attained the form of content, they would have been a content of thought in itself. But as they were they had value as laws of thought (λεκτά)[135] merely. The Stoics indeed had a system of immanent determinations of thought, and actually did a great deal in this direction; for Chrysippus specially developed and worked out this logical aspect of things, and is stated to have been a master in it (supra, pp. 240, 241). But this development took a very formal direction; there are the ordinary well-known forms of inference, five of which are given by Chrysippus, while others give sometimes more and sometimes fewer. One of them is the hypothetical syllogism through remotion, “When it is day it is light, but now it is night and hence it is not light.” These logical forms of thought are by the Stoics held to be the unproved that requires no proof; but they are likewise only formal forms which determine no content as such. The wise man is specially skilful in dialectic, we are told by the Stoics, for all things, both physical and ethical, are perceived through a knowledge of logic.[136] But thus they have ascribed this perception to a subject, without stating who this wise man is (p. 250). Since objective grounds by which to determine the truth are wanting, the ultimate decision is attributed to the will of the subject; and this talk about the wise man consequently has its ground in nothing but the indefiniteness of the criterion, from which we cannot get to the determination of content.
It would be superfluous to speak further of their logic any more than of their theory of judgments, which in part coincides with it, and in part is a grammar and a rhetoric; by it no real scientific content can be reached. For this logic is not, like Plato’s dialectic, the speculative science of the absolute Idea; but, as formal logic, as we saw above (p. 254), it is science as the firm, secure, unalterable comprehension of reasons, and stops short at the perception of the same. This logical element, whose essence consists pre-eminently in escaping to the simplicity of the conception to that which is not in opposition to itself nor falls into contradiction, obtains the upper hand. This simplicity, which has not negativity and content in itself, requires a given content which it may not abrogate—but consequently it cannot thus attain to a genuine “other” through itself. The Stoics have constituted their logic often in the most isolated fashion; the principal point that is established here is that the objective corresponds to thought, and they investigated this thought more closely. If in a manner it is quite correct to say that the universal is the true, and that thought has a definite content that must also be concrete, the main difficulty, which is to deduce the particular determination from the universal, so that in this self-determination it may remain identical with itself, has not been solved by the Stoics: and this the Sceptics brought to consciousness. This is the point of view most important in the philosophy of the Stoics; it thus showed itself in their physics also.
[3. Ethics.]
Since the theory of mind, the doctrine of knowledge, came before us in the investigation of the criterion, we have, in the third and last place, to speak of the morality of the Stoics, to which is due their greatest fame, but which does not rise above this formal element any more than what precedes, although it cannot be denied that in presenting it they have taken a course which seems very plausible to the popular conception, but which in fact is to a great extent external and empiric.
a. In order, in the first place, to find the definition of virtue, Chrysippus gives some good expositions of practical ethics which Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 85, 86) quotes at considerable length; they are psychological in character and in them Chrysippus establishes his formal harmony with himself. For according to him the Stoics say: “The first desire (ὁρμή) of the animal is for self-preservation, because nature from the beginning reconciled each existence with itself. This first object innate in every animal” (immanent desire) “is thus the harmony of the animal with itself, and the consciousness of the same,” the self-consciousness through which “the animal is not alienated from itself. Thus it repels what is injurious and accepts what is serviceable to it.” This is Aristotle’s conception of the nature of adaptation to an end, in which, as the principle of activity, both the opposite and its sublation are contained. “Enjoyment is not the first object, for it” (the sense of satisfaction) “is only for the first time added when the nature of an animal that seeks itself through itself, receives into itself that which is in conformity with its harmony with itself.” This is likewise worthy of approbation: self-consciousness, enjoyment, is just this return into self, the consciousness of this unity in which I enjoy something and thereby have my unity as this individual in the objective element. The case is similar in regard to man; his end is self-preservation, but with a conscious end, with consideration, according to reason. “In plants nature operates without voluntary inclination (ὁρμῆς) or sense-perception, but some things in us take place in the same manner as in plants.” For in the plant there also is the seed-containing conception, but it is not in it as end, nor as its object, for it knows nothing about it. “In animals inclination comes in; in them nature makes their impulses conformable to their first principle;” i.e. the end of inclination is simply the first principle of their nature, and that through which they make for their own preservation. “Rational creatures likewise make nature their end, but this is to live according to reason, for reason becomes in them the artist who produces inclination,” i.e. it makes a work of art in man from what in the animal is desire merely. To live in accordance with nature is thus, to the Stoics, to live rationally.
This now appears somewhat like certain receipts given by the Stoics for the purpose of discovering right motive forces in regard to virtue. For their principle put generally is this: “Men must live in conformity with nature, i.e. with virtue; for to it” (rational) “nature leads us.” That is the highest good, the end of everything—a most important form in Stoic morality, which appears in Cicero as finis bonorum or summum bonum. With the Stoics right reason and the securing of it on its own account, is the highest principle. But here, too, we immediately see that we are thereby merely led round in a circle in a manner altogether formal, because virtue, conformity to nature, and reason, are only determined through one another. Virtue consists in living conformably with nature, and what is conformable to nature is virtue. Likewise thought must further determine what is in conformity with nature, but conformity with nature again is that alone which is determined through reason. The Stoics further say, according to Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 87, 88) “To live according to nature is to live according to that which experience teaches us of the laws both of universal nature and of our own nature, by doing nothing which universal law forbids; and that law is the right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Jupiter, the disposer (καθηγεμόνι) of the existing system of things. The virtue of the happy man is when everything occurs according to the harmony of the genius (δαίμονος) of each individual with reference to the will of the disposer of all things.” Thus everything remains as it was in a universal formalism.
We must throughout allow to the Stoics that virtue consists in following thought, i.e. the universal law, right reason; anything is moral and right only in as far as a universal end is in it fulfilled and brought into evidence. This last is the substantial, the essential nature of a relationship, and in it we have that which is really in thought alone. The universal which must be the ultimate determination in action, is, however, not abstract, but the universal in this relationship, just as, for example, in property the particular is placed on one side. Because man, as a man of thought and culture, acts according to his perception, he subordinates his impulses and desires to the universal; for they are individual. There is in each human action an individual and particular element; but there is a distinction as to whether the particular as such is solely insisted upon or whether in this particular the universal is secured. It is to the securing of this universal that the energy of Stoicism is directed. But this universal has still no content and is undetermined, and thereby the Stoic doctrines of virtue are incomplete, empty, meaningless and tedious. Virtue indeed is commended in a forcible, lively and edifying manner, but as to what this universal law of virtue is, we have no indications given us.
b. The other side as regards the good is external existence, and the agreement of circumstances, of external nature, with the end aimed at by man. For although the Stoics have expressed the good as being conformity with law, in relation to the practical will, they yet defined it, according to Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 94, 95), as being at the same time the useful, “either absolutely and immediately useful or not contrary to utility,” so that generally speaking the useful is, as it were, the accident of virtue. “The Stoics likewise distinguished manifold good into good having reference to the soul, and external good; the former indicates virtues and their actions; the latter the fact of pertaining to a noble country, having a virtuous friend, and so on. In the third place it is neither external nor is it a matter of self-consciousness alone, when the self-same man is virtuous and happy.” These conclusions are quite good. Morality does not require to look so coldly on what concerns utility, for every good action is in fact useful, i.e. it has actuality and brings forth something good. An action which is good without being useful is no action and has no actuality. That which in itself is useless in the good is its abstraction as being a non-reality. Men not only may, but must have the consciousness of utility; for it is true that it is useful to know the good. Utility means nothing else but that men have a consciousness respecting their actions. If this consciousness is blameworthy, it is still more so to know much of the good of one’s action and to consider it less in the form of necessity. Thus the question was raised as to how virtue and happiness are related to one another, a theme of which the Epicureans have also treated. Here it was, as in more recent times, regarded as the great problem to discover whether virtue gives happiness, taken altogether by itself, whether the conception of happiness is included in its conception. That union of virtue and happiness, as the mean, is thus rightly represented as being perfect, neither pertaining only to self-consciousness nor to externality.