A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

Thus these two points of view were obtained of life-unity: a universe rationally guiding in all its changes; the human individual epitomizing this universe in himself as a rule for his conduct amid his vicissitudes.

The Stoic and Society. Men are divided into two classes,—the entirely wise and virtuous, or the entirely foolish and vicious. There is no middle ground. If a man possesses a sound reason, he has all the virtues; if he lacks this reason, he lacks all. There are only a few Sages; the mass of men are fools. The Stoics were continually lamenting with Pharisaical pessimism the great baseness of men. From their sublime height they looked upon the Wise Man as incapable of sin, upon the fool as incapable of virtue. In thus denying the ordinary distinctions between good and evil, they were dangerous in politics. Their political perspective was not reliable. In general, they did not enter the politics of the democracies where they lived. They were, however, often the advisers of tyrants, and often assisted in removing them (as in the case of Julius Cæsar). TheStoic School of Musonius Rufus made a splendid Puritan protest against Nero and Domitian,and finally his disciples and friends controlled the empire for a century (second century A. D.).[37] The Stoic regarded his Wise Man as attaining the same independence that the Epicurean claimed for his Wise Man. He is lord and king. He is inferior to no other rational being, not even to Zeus himself.

The Stoic differs from the Epicurean in his attitude toward the political state. The two Schools agree that the sufficient Wise Man needs the state but little. The Epicurean teaches that society is not natural and not inherent in human nature. The Stoic, however, maintained that society is a divine institution, which gives way only occasionally to man’s individual perfecting. Since man and the cosmic reason are identical, all men are essentially identical. When men therefore lead a life of reason, they lead a social life. This realm of reason includes not Romans alone, but all men, gods, and slaves. But the political government is only secondary, for the Stoic’s ideal is a universal empire. The Stoic’s interest in practical politics was as weak as his ideal of a rational society was transcendent. His teaching of justice and love for man was, however, a forecasting of the coming religious emancipation.

There are two antagonistic tendencies running through Stoicism. The first is to seek society with its virtues,—justice, love of men, sociability or cosmopolitanism. The second dispenses with society to gain an inner freedom. Yet these two tendencies often coincide.

They may be presented as follows:—

	To seek society.	To dispense with society.
1.	Exaltation of justice and love.	Exaltation of inner freedom and happiness.
2.	World citizenship.	The Wise Man.
3.	Relations and degrees of virtue.	Absolute virtue and absolute vice.
4.	Virtue depends somewhat on conditions.	Knowledge alone is virtue.
5.	Individual should submit to fate.	Individual should make fate.

Duty and Responsibility. The Stoic’s identity of human and cosmic reason elevated the law of human conduct into a strict, universal law of duty. It embodies, on the one hand, the Cynic’s protest against external law, and on the other the construction of the inner moral law. The backbone of Stoicism is sense of responsibility. The Stoics brought out as never before the contrast between what is and what ought to be. They were the most outspoken doctrinaires of antiquity, and formed a school of character building in stubbornness. As time went on they substituted human nature for cosmic nature, and then accentuated human nature as conscience. The individual could then define the right for himself, and this sort of individualism was developed with so much skill that it admitted great laxity of morals. Duty commands some things and forbids others, but there are left a great mass of activities that are ethically indifferent. These indifferent matters offered opportunity for these men of conscience to perform what in the eyes of others were crimes (for example, Brutus). Baseness is only what is unconditionally forbidden.

Yet it must not be supposed that the Stoics generallyemployed the indifferent as an excuse for moral license. On the contrary, the concept of life as a struggle originated with the Stoics, and from them it passed into the common consciousness of man. There was before them (1) the struggle with environment dominated by a false evaluation, (2) the struggle with effete civilization, (3) the struggle particularly with one’s self. The Stoic hero of inner courage and greatness of soul rises above his fellows, not because he gains dominion over the world, but because in indifference to it he isolates himself. He exists in premeditation of doing rather than in the actual doing in which his power would be spent. Still, in the absolute contrast between the good and the evil, in making life a disjunctive, an “Either—Or,” duty got a definite and distinct meaning. Duty, according to the Stoics’ conception, had not so much the nature of an imperative as of what is suitable,—an act adapted to nature, a consistent and justifiable act. In a manner unknown to antiquity the ethical nature of conduct was thus universalized in the new conceptions of philanthropy, of the universality of God and man, in the tendency to suppress slavery and care for the poor and sick. Nevertheless, as a moral force Stoicism accepted the world as it found the world, and did not attempt to make it over.

The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Freedom. On the questions of moral freedom and evil, the Stoics suffered severe attacks from the Academy and the Epicureans. Alone among the Schools of antiquity the Stoics preached the doctrine of Fate. The demands of ethical responsibility, however, required that the individual should determine his own conduct. To suit these demands the Stoic did not modify his fundamentalconception of Nature, but he tried to justify his position on the ground that the individual expressed the law of nature. His argument may be stated thus: Man is like God; Man is one with God; Man is free. It was also stated on psychological grounds. Man can have one of two attitudes toward the world-law: (1) his performance may be through blind compulsion; (2) his performance may be through an intelligent understanding of the law, in which case he is free. The occurrence of his act is fateful, but it makes great difference to the man whether the occurrence is in spite of him or with his intelligent acquiescence. The occurrence is not an evil in itself; for physical evils are no evils, and things that appear to be moral evils are (1) subservient to the good; (2) merely relative to good; or (3) show that God’s ways are not our ways. My will is mine though necessary; my will is mine though it be law. The soul is free when it fulfills its own destiny. God works through man’s will. Outer circumstances are only accessory causes, but the main cause is the assent of the will. At the same time the Stoics did not shrink from the logic of their own fatalism. Chrysippus said that only on the basis of determinism could correct judgments of the future be made. Only on this ground could the gods foreknow. Only the necessary can be known.

The Modifications of the Stoic Doctrine after the First Period. The inherent difficulties in the Stoic doctrine and the attacks upon it gave rise to later concession that only further complicated it. (1) The moral ideal was lowered to make a set of rules for the mediocre man, and thereby the Stoics became the originators of the dangerous doctrine of a twofold morals.