Paraphrases, commentaries, excerpts, and
interpretations
formed the chief occupation of the later Peripatetics.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Meteor.
IV.
1, 378 b 11.
Cmaw. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 149
9. With logical consistency the same view is applied by Aristotle to the relation of the psychical and bodily activities ; the latter are but the matter for which the former furnish the forms. There is, with Aristotle, no such dependence of psychical upon corporeal func tions as Democritus, in accordance with the procedure of the older metaphysics, and even Plato, is part (in the Timceus), had taught.
For Aristotle the soul is rather the entelechy of the body, i. e. the Form which realises itself in the motions and changes of the organic
The soul is the cause of bodily formation and motion, a cause acting from ends ; itself incorporeal, it is yet actual or real only as the power moving and controlling the body.
But the psychical life itself is also, according to Aristotle, built up as it were in successive grades or strata, each of which, in turn, presents matter for the higher. The first Form of organic life is the vegetative soul (dpexTucov), which "forms" the mechanical and chemical changes to the purposive functions of assimilation and
body.
The soul of plants is restricted to this purely physio logical significance of a vital force; to this is added in the whole animal kingdom,1 the animal soul, whose constitutive characteristics ire spontaneous motion in space (kivtjtikw Kara rairov) and sensation
tmia&rfTiMoy).
The purposive, spontaneous motion of the animal body proceeds
from desire (ooc&f )< which arises from the feelings of pleasure and pain, in the form of an effort to procure or shun. But these pre suppose everywhere the idea of their object, and are at the same time bound together with the thought that this object is worthy to be striven for or to be shunned. The view of the dependence of all desire upon ideas, peculiar to all Greek psychology, is so strong with Aristotle, that he even sets forth these relations expressly, accord ing to the logical function of judgment and inference. In the practical sphere, also, there is affirmation and denial,1 there is the process of drawing a conclusion from a general aim to a particular mode of action.
The proper seat, or home, as it were, of the entire animal life of ideation is found in sensation. In the physiological psychology which treats this subject8 Aristotle has used in comprehensive
1 Aristotle's History of Animals (cf. J. B. Meyer. Berlin. 1856) treat* in ex- capUrr manner, and with admirable care of detailed investigation, anatomical, pbruoloeica), morpholofrical, and biological problems, and also the questions of •vstraa. The parallel work on plants is indeed lost, but in compensation we ■•«* the work of his friend and disciple Theophrastus.
• fV»ide* the sections which treat this subject, in the treatise on the Soul, the mailer treatises attached to this are also to be compared, viz : on Pereejrtt'on, in Memory, ou Dreams, etc.
propagation.
' Elk Vie. VI. 2, 1139 a 21.
150 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
manner all the particular information and theories which his prede cessors, especially Democritus, possessed on this point; but he overcame the common inadequacy of all earlier doctrines by conced ing a much greater importance to the self-activity of the soul in the
process in which perception arises. Not satisfied to adopt the old theory that perception consists in a co-operation of object and sub ject, he pointed to the unity of consciousness (EinheitUclikeit, fievorryi), with which the animal soul unites what is given in the individual perceptions of the individual senses to form collective perceptions, or perceptions that perceive the object as a whole, and in so doing grasps also the relations of number, situation, and motion. Thus above the individual senses we must assume the common sense
which is also the seat of recollection, both of the involuntary or memory (/uoj/o;) and the voluntary (dra/u^o-is),
by virtue of the circumstance that in it the perceptions remain as imaginative representations (<pavrao-Cai) ; at the same time, however, it is also the seat of our knowledge of our own states. 2
10. Vegetative and animal souls, however, form in man but the matter for the realisation of the Form peculiar to him, — the reason
(koivov alvOriTTipiov),1
(vow — bavoturOu).
(/3ou\>;<ro) ; imaginative representation becomes knowledge
By its operation, impulse (opcfc) becomes will
(ori- It comes as a something new and higher (" from without,"
a-TTjiir]).
$vpaOiv) to all the psychical activities which develop from perception even among the beasts. Aristotle expressed this relation by desig nating the pure rational activity itself as the active reason {vms irotr/TtKos), and, on the contrary, as passive reason (vovs iruft/riicos), the material of perceptions, which arises from the bodily existence, furnishes possibilities and occasions for reason, and is subsequently worked over and formed by it.
Accordingly the " passive " reason signifies the individual phase (Erscheinungsweise) given in the natural disposition of the individ
ual man, and determined by the occasions of his personal experience, — the "active" reason, on the contrary, signifying the pure reason considered as a unity in its nature and principles (principielle Ein- heitlichkeit), common to all individuals. The latter is imperishable, as it is without beginning, while the former passes away with the
1 With regard to physiological localisation Aristotle found the psychical activity to be attached to the vital warmth (fiupvTor 0ep>i6r), which as animating breath (n-reC^a) is mingled with the blood, and his school developed this doc trine still further. Cf. H. Siebeck, Zeitschrifl fur Volkerpsycholngi? , 1881, pp. 364 ff. In consequence of this he regarded the heart as the seat of' the common sense and so supplanted the better insight with which Alcmaeon, Diogeties of Apollonia, Democritus, and Plato had recognised the importance of the brain.
2 This beginning for a doctrine of tuner i>erception is found in Arist. De. An. III. 2, 425 b 12.
Cbaf. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 151
individuals in whom it appears. Personal immortality is put in question by this conclusion just as in the Platonic Timceus, where it was claimed only for the " rational " " part " of the soul, i. e. that part which is everywhere alike and impersonal. It is clear that we have here no longer to do with empirical psychology, but with such doctrines as have been taken from the systematic connection of the whole work, and grafted upon psychology in consequence of ethical and epistemological postulates.
11. In the conception of the reason as the Form peculiar to the human soul, Aristotle found the key to the solution of that feature of the ethical problem which even Plato had sought in vain, i. e. that of the content of the Good. Man's happiness or well-being (tiiaLfiona), which in Aristotle's system also is regarded as the supreme end of all endeavour (riXos), indeed, dependent in part upon external fortune not complete until this has afforded its good things; but ethics has to do only with that which stands in our power (to itf ijutf), only with the happiness which man gains
his own activity (vpaxroy iyaOov). Every being, however, be comes happy by the unfolding of his own nature and of his own peculiar activity — man, therefore, through reason. The virtue of
man is, accordingly, that habitude or permanent state of mind (*&«) through which he made capable of the practice of rational activ ity develops out of the endowments of his natural disposition, *nd has for its fruit, satisfaction, pleasure.
As in the animal soul impulse and perception were to be dis tinguished as different expressions, so, too, the reason develops itself, partly as rational action, partly as rational thought as per fection, on the one hand, of the character or disposition {f/Ovs), on the other, of the faculty of intelligence (cuVrfaW&u in the broadest sense of the word). Thus there result, as the excellence or ability of the rational man, the ethical and the intellectual or dianoetic vir tues.
12. The ethical virtues grow out of that training of the will by Thf-h becomes accustomed to act according to right insight (^■ijirn — SpBot Aoyot). It enables man, in his decisions, to follow
reason, i. e. insight into what correct or projxer. With this doctrine Aristotle transcends the principles of Socrates, — with evident regard to the facts of the ethical life not that he ttoigned to the will psychological independence as over against knowledge the point, rather, is, that he gave up the opinion that
tL* determination of the will arising from rational insight must of cs*lf be stronger than the desire arising from defective knowledge. Since experience often shows the reverse of this, man must gain by
practical
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152 Tlie Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I
practice that self-control (iyKparua) by means of which he follows under all circumstances that which is rationally known, even against the strongest desires. 1
While to ethical virtue in general belong natural disposition, insight, and habitude, the individual virtues are distinguished by the different relations of life to which they refer. A systematic development of these is not given by Aristotle, but we have, rather, a comprehensive and delicate treatment of the individual virtues. The general principle is that rational insight always finds the right mean between the unreasonable extremes to which the natural impulsive life leads. Thus courage is the right mean between cowardice and rashness. A particularly detailed exposition is given to friendship 2 as the common striving for all that is good and beautiful, and also to justice as the basis of the political community.
13. For Aristotle, like Plato, was convinced that the moral excel lence of man, since it always relates to activities which prosper in the life of a community, can find its fulfilment only in the life of a community ; for him, too, there is ultimately no perfect moral life outside the state, the essential end of which was considered by Aristotle, also, to be the ethical training of its citizens. As, never theless, in the case of the individual man, virtue ought to develop out of the natural disposition, so the political relations also are treated by Aristotle from the point of view, that tile historically given relations are to be used for the highest possible fulfilment of that highest end.
Every constitution is right if the government has the ethical weal of the community as its highest goal ; every constitution has failed if this is not the case. The good of the state, therefore, does not depend upon the external form, which is defined by the number of those who rule. 3 The rule of a single individual may be right as a kingdom (fiao-ikiia), bad if a despotism (rvpaww) ; the rule of few may be good if an aristocracy of culture and disposition, if an oligarchy of birth or property, bad; the rule of all as a republic of law and order (woAiTtta) ir. ay be good, as mob-rule
(SrjiiOKpaTia), bad. With profound political intelligence, Aristotle brings together in these expositions' the experiences of Grecian history, and on the ground of bhes>e enters upon the philosophy of
1 In the polemic against the Socratic doctrine which Aristotle brings forward in this line, Eth. . Vic III. 1-8, are developed the first beginnings of the problem of freedom.
• A point of view which ths dialogue the Statesman, passing under Plato's name, had already emphasised, while Plato himself in the Republic constructed the " bad " constitutions Iron, psychological analogies of a predominance of the lower parts of the soul.
a In the eighth book of the Wtcumarhiean Ethic*.
Chap. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 153
littory in giving intimations as to the necessity with which individ ual forms of constitutions pass over into one another and develop out of one another.
After these presuppositions we can understand that Aristotle could not think of projecting in detail the constitution of an ideal state in Plato's manner. He contented himself with a critical emphasising of those elements which had proved requisite in indi vidual constitutions for fulfilling the general task of the state. In this connection he agrees with the Platonic demand for a public system of education ; the ethical community must itself take the care of fitting for their place the elements of which it will in future consist, and it is the task of education (in the treatment of which the fragment of the Politics breaks off) to lead man out of his rude state of nature with the help of the noble arts, to ethical and intel
lectual culture.
14. To the practical activity of the reason (koyurriKov), in the
broader sense of the word, Aristotle reckoned also " making " (nui») in addition to "acting" (rrpu£i? ) ; yet, on the other hand, he made so great distinction between this creative activity, which presents itself in art, and the action directed toward the ends of daily life, that he occasionally set the science of art, poietic phi losophy, as a third independent science, side by side with the theo retical and practical. Of this poietic philosophy, there is preserved besides the Rhetoric only the fragment of his theory of the art of poetry, under the name of the Poetic. This sets out, indeed, from principles relating to the nature of art in general, but in its particu lar subject offers only the outlines of a theory of tragedy. In this, such peculiar relations of this science of art to the two other principal parts of philosophy appear, that it becomes difficult to sub
ordinate this branch under either of the other two.
Art is imitative production, and the arts are distinguished as well
by the objects which they imitate as by the material with which they imitate. The objects of poetic art are men and their actions ; its means are language, rhythm, and harmony. Tragedy, in particu lar, represents an important action as performed immediately by ■peaking and acting persons. 1
Bat the purpose of this imitative representation is an ethical one : the passions of man, in particular in the case of tragedy, fear and fmpathtf, are to be so excited, that by their excitation and en hancement purification of the soul (xo&ifxrtc) from these passions is brought about
> Poet. 6, 1449 b 24.
154 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Par* £.
On the doctrine of the Catharsis, which became so important for the later theory of art, and on the literature concerning cf. A. Doling, Die Kunstlehre des Aristoteles (Jena, 1876).
The attainment of this end is, however, accomplished in such a way, that in artistic representation the particular brought to our view, not as a particular, but in its universal nature or essence- Art, like science, has for its object the universal in its particular realisation offers kind of knowledge, and with this the pleas ure which attends upon knowledge. 1
15. The highest perfection of its development finally achieved by the rational nature of man in knowledge. The dianoetic virtues are the highest, and those which bring complete happiness. The activity of the theoretical reason (eVio-Trjixoviicov) directed to the immediate apprehension of the highest truths, i. e. of the concep tions and judgments which the inductive search of scientific inves tigation only leads up to without being able to prove, and from which all deduction must take its beginning (cf. 12, 4). "
But knowledge of these, the full unfolding of the "active reason in man, again designated by Aristotle as "beholdhig" (Oiwpla) and with this beholding of the highest truth man gains participa tion in that pure thought, in which the essence of the deity consists, and thus, also, in the eternal blessedness of the divine self-conscious ness. For this " beholding " which exists only for its own sake and has no ends of will or deed, this wishless absorption in the perception of the highest truth, the blessedest and best of all.
Poet. 1451 5.
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PART II.
THE HELLENISTIC-ROMAN PHILOSOPHY.
Aj regards the general literature, the same works serve for this part that were cited at the beginning of Part I.
With the age of Aristotle, Grecian civilisation stepped out from its national restrictions and into the great general movement in which the peoples of antiquity that dwelt about the Mediter ranean, through interchange and adjustment of their ideas, became fused into one common civilisation. This process began through the union of Oriental with Greek thought, in the Hellenistic states of Alexander's successors. It found its external completion in the Roman Empire, its internal completion in Christianity. Hellen ism, Romanism, and Christianity were the three stages in which the world's future civilisation developed from antiquity.
The intellectually determining element in this union was Greek science, and herein consists its significance for the world's history. It became, like Greek art, the common possession of ancient civili sation. To it were joined step by step the highest movements in the inner life of the peoples, and it became the forming power for all the longings and impulses that lived within their souls. It was with the fall of its political independence, with its absorp tion into the Empire, that the Greek nation bought the accomplish ment of its task of civilisation; by their dispersal over the world the Greeks became the teachers of the world.
But in connection with this entrance into more extended relations, Greek science experienced a separation of the different elements which were united in it. Together with the purely theoretical interest in which it had originated, and which had found so clear an expression in the personality and teaching of Aristotle, a practi cal interest had in time developed, which sought in science the '"onviction that should govern life. In Plato's philosophy the two
were inseparately fused together, but now these two tendencies of vience became separated.
Scientific thought, which had come to a knowledge of its own
processes in the Aristotelian logic, had arrived at the consciousness 166
156 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part IX
of fundamental conceptions, with the aid of which it could use the abundance of phenomena. The principal opposing theories of the interpretation of the world had developed in the great systems, and in this way a fixed frame or setting was formed for the scientific treatment of detail. But beginning, as it did, with so slightly ex tended a knowledge of detail, the more successful Greek science was
in the development of principles, the more it now experienced crippling, at once of metaphysical interest and metaphysical force.
In consequence of this, however, the theoretical tendency of sci ence was toward details, and the fundamental scientific character of the Hellenistic-Roman time is erudition and the development of the special sciences. The individual man of science, by entrance into one of the great schools, gained a firm support of collective opinion, and a ruling principle for the treatment of separate questions and subjects which interested him. And indifference toward general metaphysical theories was the greater, the more it appeared that fruitful investigation in special provinces, extension of knowledge of facts, and comprehension of special departments of science were possible, independently of the strife of metaphysical systems. The separation of problems, which had been completed typically in the Aristotelian teaching and school, led necessarily to specialisation, and the purely theoretical interest in knowledge for its own sake developed, during the Hellenistic-Roman period, essentially in the individual sciences. The great savants of later antiquity stand, it is true, in loose relations with one school or another, but they always show themselves indifferent to metaphysics. So it happens that during this time production, so far as the theoretical principles of philosophy were concerned, was extremely small, while investiga tion into mathematics, natural science, grammar, philology, literary and general history, had rich and comprehensive results to record. With the great mass of those names which are reckoned as " philos ophers," whether heads of schools or associates in the schools, and which are continued in the schematic treatment of the " History of Philosophy," only literary-historical notices are connected, as that they worked specially in this or that department ; or it may be per sonal information, of no importance to philosophy, as that they attached themselves to this or that one among the earlier teachers, — almost never do we find any formation of new and original con ceptions. So far as theoretical knowledge was concerned, this period turned the old problems of the Greeks hither and thither, and moved along the track which it found already laid down.
So much the more powerfully, during these centuries of appropri ation and elaboration, did the practical significance of philosophy
a,
Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. 157
unfold itself. The need of a scientific doctrine of the ends of human life, of such a wisdom as should guarantee the happiness of
the individual, could but become more urgent as the ideal structure of Greek life fell in pieces, as the religion of the people sank ever more and more to an external tradition, as the crumbling political life, robbed of its independence, no longer awakened devotion, and the individual in his inner life felt thrown back upon himself. Thus tcisdom for the conduct of life became the fundamental problem of the philosophy which followed that of the Greeks, and the nar rowing in the statement of the philosophical problem which Socrates, and after him the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools of Sophistic thought,
had begun, is the general character of the succeeding period.
This did not exclude general theoretical doctrines and their
sharply championed contests from assuming airs of great impor tance during this period ; but, on the one hand, they met with no original interest for their own sake, and consequently developed only in the directions which were determined by the real end in view, i. e. that of wisdom for the conduct of life; on the other hand, they were lacking in originality, they were throughout only the old traditions shifted about, conditioned by the fundamental practical thoughts. Even such comprehensive systems as the Stoic and the Xeo-Platonic work only with the conceptions of Greek philosophy, in order to gain a theoretical basis for their practical ideal. The key to their theoretical doctrines lies always in the fundamental practical conviction, and in so far they are all of them character istic types of the mingling of problems.
With this predominance of practical importance is connected the fact that the dependence of philosophy upon the general movement of civilisation, which had already with the Sophists made its entrance into the quiet circle of disinterested investigation, became in the Hellenistic-Roman period a permanent phenomenon, and this appears most decisively in the changing attitude of this phi losophy toward religion.
The development which Greek philosophy had taken, and the ever more sharply pronounced opposition to the religion of the people into which it had come, brought with it the result that the special task of that wisdom for the conduct of life which the post- Aristotelian philosophy sought, was to find a compensation
for The cultured world, which had lost the support
rttigiouM faith.
afforded by religion, and was obliged to give up that of the state il*o, sought it in philosophy. As a result, the point of view of the
Hellenistic-Roman wisdom for the conduct of life was primarily that of individual morality, and the philosophy which busied itself
158 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part II.
with this had, consequently, a thoroughly ethical stamp. The sharpness of the opposition of this individualistic ethics to religion appears most clearly among the Epicureans. But in the other schools, also, the doctrines of the deity have a purely ethical, or perhaps a theoretical interest, but none that is specifically religious.
This essentially ethical development of philosophy reached its completion in Greece, especially, indeed, in Athens, which, amid all the spread of Greek culture eastward and westward, formed for centuries the centre of scientific life. But soon new centres par ticularly for erudite detailed investigation, arose in the great libra ries and museums, in Rhodes, in Pergamum, in Alexandria, in Tarsus, in Rome, and later, in Antioch and Byzantium. Of these, Alexandria became especially important, where not only did elabora- tive erudition experience so typical a development, that the entire direction of this period is generally called " literary-historical " in accordance with but where, also, the philosophical direction of the time experienced its decided change.
For as time went on philosophy could not remain indifferent to that deep feeling of dissatisfaction which had seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glory of the Roman Empire. This huge empire offered to the peoples which had welded together into mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; granted them neither inner worth nor outer for tune. The draught from the life of earth had become insipid to ancient peoples, and they thirsted after religion. So they groped after the different cults and religious practices which individual peoples had brought with them, and the religions of the Orient became mixed with those of the Occident.
Into this movement philosophy was the more drawn, the more became clear that could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, — could not secure for him the promised happiness. It followed then — at first, in Alexandria — that the mingling, surging flood of religious ideas emptied itself into philosophy, which now sought to build up upon a scientific basis, not only an ethical conviction, but religion as well. Philos ophy employed the conceptions of Greek science to clarify and put in order religious ideas, to give to the importunate demand of religious feeling an idea of the world that should be satisfactory to and so created the systems of religious metaphysics, in more or less intimate connection with the contending religions.
Accordingly, in the Hellenistic-Roman philosophy there are two distinct periods to be distinguished, the ethical and the religious. The last century b. c. to be designated as the time in which the one gradually passed over into the other.
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CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PERIOD.
Thk two schools of the great masters of Attic philosophy, the Academic and the Peripatetic, followed the tendency of the time which separated science into the two branches, ethical philosophy and learned investigation. While in the first generation of the
Academy — that contemporary with Aristotle — a Pythagoreanising metaphysics had predominated, this made room in the next period (or fiopular moralising (cf. p. 101). In the Lyceum, indeed. Then- pkmrtua, and after him, Strato, held fast to the development and re-shaping of the Aristotelian metaphysics, but the associates of Theoprastus, Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and others, as well as Theo- phrastus himself, turned to literary-historical studies and to natural science. Later, the Peripatetics had a great share in the Alexan drian erudition, and the history of philosophy especially found in them its most industrious workers. But in philosophy itself they played only the conservative r61e of defending the system of their school against the attacks of the others, especially upon the ethical domain, and the new edition of the Aristotelian works by Androni- nu gave new stimulus for a zealous reproduction of his teaching.
Paraphrases, commentaries, excerpts, and interpretations formed the chief occupation of the later Peripatetics.
The Academy and Lyceum were, however, injured in their work ing by the two schools which were founded toward the end of the fourth century, and which owed their great success to the fact that they formulated the tendency of the time toward the practical wis dom of life with the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness : namely, the Stoic and the Epicurean.
The first was founded in the Sroa touuXi; by Zeno, a native of Cithtm in Cyprus, and had, both in his time and in that of his suc- ecsaor, Geanthes, more likeness to Cynicism than in the time of its third head, Chrysippus, who succeeded in turning the school into a more scientific course. Epicurus, on the contrary, founded a society which made the Hedonistic principle, in a refined and intellect
IN
160 Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. [I'art 1L
oalised form, its centre, but developed only a slight degree of scientific vitality. While numerous adherents were won to its social-ethical principle then established, and to the view of the world connected with as these were continued through antiquity and especially in the Roman world, the school remained decidedly more unfruitful scientifically than the others, as well in the special sciences as in philosophy. Its doctrines have been presented in an interesting manner by the Roman poet, Lucretius.
These four schools continued side by side in Athens for centuries, and in the time of the Empire they were still maintained in various chairs of instruction, and formed there a sort of university but only in the Academy, and here only with great gaps, can succes sion of heads of the school be traced; while the tradition in the case of the Stoa and the Epicureans breaks off with the first cen tury B. C. , and for the Lyceum soon after that time.
At first, however, these four schools contended with each other in the liveliest fashion during the third and second centuries B. C. , and
was especially in ethical questions, and in metaphysical, physical, and logical questions only in so far as connected with the ethical, that they sought to bear away the palm from one another. 1
But, moving along side by side with the dogmatic doctrines during the whole period was another tendency, which, like the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, originated in the teaching of the Sophists namely, Scepticism. It did not, indeed, take on the form of an association in school, but too, was brought together into a system atic form, and found an ethical culmination. Such concentration, in accord with the spirit of the times, of the negative results of the teaching of the Sophists, was achieved by Pyrrho, whose doctrines were set forth by Timon. This Sophistical scepticism had the triumph of obtaining possession of Plato's grove for time; for, the Middle Academy did not make this doctrine fully its own, made
weapon for combating Stoicism and grounding its own ethics. In this phase of the development of the Academy appear the two heads of the school, Arcesilaus and Carneades, who were separated by about century. In after time, when the Academy again rejected Scepticism, this doctrine met with sympathy principally among the empirical physicians, among whom, even at the end of this period, jEnesidemus and Agrippa are to be mentioned. complete collec tion of the doctrines of the Sceptics, made at much later time,
preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus.
Cicero in his philosophical dialogues gives vivid pictures of these school con- ioveraie. * with dextrous use of the original sources.
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But the deeper significance of this Scepticism was that it brought to expression the fundamental frame of mind which had seized the entire ancient civilisation as it had once seized that of Greece, — a frame of mind at variance with the true ideal import and content of that civilisation ; and the same lack of the spirit of decided convic tion found only another form in the Eclecticism which began to develop in the second half of the second century. With the exten sion of the schools in the great relations of the life of the Roman Empire, the school-spirit disappeared, polemic was crippled, and the need of adjustment and fusion made itself felt instead. The teleo- logical view of the world, especially, formed the basis upon which
Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism could agree in a common opposition against Epicureanism.
The tendency toward such a fusion, toward syncretism, first awoke in the Stoic school, and found its most efficient supporters in Pance- tius and Posidonius. who supplemented the doctrine of the Stoa on all sides by borrowing Platonic and Aristotelian elements. In opposition to them stood the Neio Academy, which, after Philo of Larissa had made an end of the sceptical episode in the develop ment of the school, made the attempt, through Antiochus, to unite philosophy, then so disunited, upon those doctrines in which Plato and Aristotle agree.
Less important, because more devoid of principles, but not, there fore, the less significant historically, was that sort of eclecticism which the Romans employed in taking up Greek philosophy. This consisted in piecing together, from an essentially practical point of view, the different school systems which met their approval. This was the case with Cicero, Varro, and in part with the school of the Sextians.
Of the Peripatetic School (the Lyceum), the co-founder himself is primarily to be noticed, Tneophrastus of Erebus in Lesbos (about 370-287), a somewhat Toaager friend of Aristotle, who through his teachings and writings won great regard for the school. Of his works, the botanical, also a fragment of the MftapAyrfes, extracts from his Characters, from the treatise concerning percep tion, from his history of physics, and some isolated fragments are preserved
edited by P. Wimmer, Breslau, 1842-4)2).
With him appear Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, who
studied music historically and theoretically {Element* der Musik, German by R Weatphal, Leips. 1883), Diceearchua of Messina, a learned polyhistor who wrote a history of Grecian civilisation (piot'EWiSot), and Btrato. of I. ampsncus, •ho was head of the school (287-269) and had as surname "The Physicist. "
Among the Peripatetic doxographers, Ilermippus, Sotion, Satyrus, Heracleides Lcmboa (in the second century n. c), and among the later commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 a. d. in Athens) are to be mentioned.
The Middle Academy begins with Arceailaua of 1'itane in . -Kolia (about 31V241). whose teachings were recorded by his pupil Lacydes, and ends with Caneatdea (in Rome, 166) and his successor Clitomachus, who died 1 10. Noth- af remains of their writings. The sources are, beside Diogenes Laertiua, prin cipally Cicero and Sextus Empiricus.
102 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
Just as indirect and general in its character is our knowledge of the New Academy. Philo of Larissa was still in Rome in 87. His successor, Antio- chua of Ascalon, was heard by Cicero in Athens in 78. To the supporters of eclectic Platonism in this first, essentially ethical form belong among others Alius Didymus, who inclined strongly to Stoicism (in the time of Augustus), and Thrasyllus (under Tiberius), who prepared an edition of the works of Democritus and Plato, arranged according to subjects. An extensive literature of paraphrase and commentary connected with Plato's works also developed in the Academy.
When we consider the personality of the Stoic School, we are struck by the frequency of the descent of its members from the Hellenistic mixed races of the Orient. Thus the founder, Zeno (about 340-265), came from his Cyprian home as a merchant to Athens, and there, taken captive by philosophy, is said to have absorbed the doctrines of the different schools, to found his own in the year 308. His principal pupil was Cleanthes of Assos in Troas, from whose writings a monotheistic hymn to Zeus is preserved, Stub. Eel. I. 30 (Wachs- muth, p. 25). The scientific head of the school was Chrysippus (280-209) of Soli or Tarsus in Ciiicia. He is said to have written an extraordinary amount, but, aside from the titles, only very unimportant fragments of his works are preserved. Cf. G. Bagnet (Loewen, 1822). Among the literary-historical savants of the Stoic School, Diogenes of Babylon and Apollodorus are to be mentioned ; Aristarchus and Eratosthenes stood in close relation to the school.
Panaetius (180-110), who was strongly influenced by the Academic scepticism and who maintained a close relation with the Roman statesmen, began the syn- cretistic development of the Stoa, which was completed by Posidonius of Syrian Apamea (about 135-60). The latter was one of the greatest polyhistors of antiquity, especially in the geographico-historical domain. He taught in Rhodes, and was heard by many young Romans, among whom was Cicero.
Concerning the Stoics of the time of the Empire, cf. the following chapter. Sources for the Stoic doctrines are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, Book VII. , in part also the extant writings of the Stoics of the time of the Empire, and the discoveries at Herculaneum.
D. Tiedmann, System der stoischen Philosophie (3 vols. , Leips. 1776) ; P. Weygoldt, Die Philosophie der Stoa (Leips. 1883) ; P. Ogereau, Essai sur le Systime Philosophique des Stoiciens (Paris, 1885) ; L. Stein, Die Psychologie der Stoa (2 vols. , Berlin, 1886-88) ; [Capes, Stoicism, Lond. 1880].
Epicurus (341-270), born in Samos, the son of an Athenian schoolmaster, had already made attempts at teaching in Mitylene and in Lampsacus, before founding in Athens, in 306, the society which is named after his "gardens"
(ktjjtoi, horti, as also the other schools were named after the places where they
He was much loved as a teacher, on account of his companionable qualities. Of his numerous writings lightly thrown off, the proverbs (iciptat Sdjai), three didactic letters, parts of his treatise rtpl tpiacus (in the discoveries at Herculaneum), and besides only scattered fragments are preserved ; collected and arranged systematically by H. Usener, Epicurea (Leips. 1887).
Among the great mass of his followers, antiquity brings into prominence his closest friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus ; also Zeno of Sidon (about 150) and Phtedrus (about 100 h. c. ). Philodemus of Gadara in Coele-Syria has become a somewhat more distinct figure to us since a part of his writings has been found at Herculaneum (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt, first series, Naples, 1793 ff. ; second, 1861 ff. ) ; the most valuable, repl <riituiui» koX viDieiiictu* (cf. Fr. Bahusch, Lyck, 1879 ; H. v. Arnim, Philodemea. Halle, 1888).
assembled).
The didactic poem of Tit. Lucretius Cams (98-54), De Natura Rerum, in six books, has been edited by Lachmann (Berlin, 1850) and . lac. Bernays (Leips. 1862) ; [Eng. ed. with tr. of the poem by Munro, Lond. 1886. Cf. The Atomic
Theory of Lucretius, by J. Masson, Lond. 1884].
Further sources are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, in the tenth book.
Cf. M. Guyau, La Morale <f Epicure (Paris, 1878); P. v. Gizycki, Ueber das
Leben und die Moralphilosophie des Epikur (Berlin, 1879) ; W. Wallace, Epi cureanism (Lond. 1880); [Wallace, Art. Ep. in Enc. Brit. ; W. L. Courtney, Ep. in Hellenica].
Cmap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage. 163
Scepticism, as accords with the nature of the case, makes its appearance, not as a close school, but in looser form. 1 It remains doubtful whether the sys- temsaiser of Scepticism, Pyrrho of El is (perhaps 366-276), had any intimate relations with the Socratic-Sophistic school of his native city. A certain Bryso, who passes for the son of Stilpo, is looked upon as an intermediate link. He accompanied Alexander on his journey to Asia, together with a follower of Democritos, Anaxarchus by name. The Sinograph, Timon of Phlius (320-230, the latter part of the time at Athens) from Pyrrho's standpoint derides philoso phers. Fragments of his writings in C. Wachsmuth, Dr. Timone Phliasio
(Leips. 1859). Cf. Ch. Waddington, Pyrrhon (Paris, 1877).
The external relations of later Scepticism are very obscure and uncertain.
. Enesidemus from Cnossus taught in Alexandria, and composed a treatise, WvfaimuH Xiya. of which nothing remains. His life falls probably in the first
century b. c, yet it has also been set almost two centuries later. Of Agrippa, nothing in detail can be established. The literary representative of Scepticism is the physician Sextua Emplricus. who lived about 200 a. d. , and of his writ ings there are extant his Outline Sketches of Pyrrhonism (UvfipumoL {nrorvwiivtii), m<i the investigations comprehended under the name Adversus Mathematicos, of which Books VII. -XI. contain the exposition of the sceptical doctrine, with many valuable historical notices (ed. by J. Bekker, Berlin, 1842).
Cf. K. Stiudlin, Gesch. und Geist des Skepticismus (Leips. 1704-06) ; N. Maccoll, The Greek Sceptics (London, 1869) ; L. Haas, De Philosophorum Srrpticorvm Successionibus ( Wttrzburg, 1875) ; [Owen, Evenings with the Scep tics (Lond. 1881) ; A. Seth, Art. Scepticism, tn Enc. Brit. ].
Among the Romans, the admission of philosophy at first encountered violent resistance ; but by the beginning of the first century b. c. it was the general custom for the young Romans of superior rank to study in Athens or Rhodes, and to hear the lectures of the heads of schools, for the same end as that for which the Athenians bad formerly heard the Sophists. The literary activity of Marcus Tullius Clo«ro (106-43) must be judged from the point of view of his purpose, which was to awaken among his countrymen an inclination for general scien tific culture and a comprehension of its meaning, and from this standpoint his work is to be highly prized. Skill in composition and grace of form excuse the '. aek of proper philosophising ability, which is shown in a selection of doctrines based on no philosophical principle. The main treatises are De Finibus, De
Ofirii: Tuseulanot Disputationes, Academica, De Natura Deorum, De Fato, If Divination*. Cf. Herbart, Ueber die Philosophic des Cicero ; in Works, XII. 167 fl. [Trans, of the above writings of Cicero in the Bohn. Lib. ]
His friend, M. Terentius Varro (116-27), the well-known polyhistor and prolific writer, was more learned, but of his labours toward the history of philos ophy only occasional notes are extant.
Qulntus Bextua and a son of the same name and Botion of Alexandria are naaaed as Sextians. Sotion seems to have been the intermediate link in which the Stoic morals were brought into union with the Alexandrian Pythagoreanism, and given that religious turn which characterises them in the time of the Empire. Some of their Sentences, discovered in a Syrian translation, have been edited by r. ildemeister (Bonn. 1873).
On the literary conditions of this whole period cf. R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen r* Cvjtro's philosophischen 8chr\flen (3 vols. , Leips. 1877-83).
§ 14. The Ideal of the Wise Man.
The fundamental ethical tendency of the philosophising of this entire period is still more precisely characterised by the fact that it is throughout individual ethics that forms the centre of investiga tion in this time of epigones. The elevation to the ideals of ethical
' Hence all reckonings by the successions of heads of the school, attempted a order to fix the chronology of the later Sceptics, are illusory.
164 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period.
Cmaw. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 149
9. With logical consistency the same view is applied by Aristotle to the relation of the psychical and bodily activities ; the latter are but the matter for which the former furnish the forms. There is, with Aristotle, no such dependence of psychical upon corporeal func tions as Democritus, in accordance with the procedure of the older metaphysics, and even Plato, is part (in the Timceus), had taught.
For Aristotle the soul is rather the entelechy of the body, i. e. the Form which realises itself in the motions and changes of the organic
The soul is the cause of bodily formation and motion, a cause acting from ends ; itself incorporeal, it is yet actual or real only as the power moving and controlling the body.
But the psychical life itself is also, according to Aristotle, built up as it were in successive grades or strata, each of which, in turn, presents matter for the higher. The first Form of organic life is the vegetative soul (dpexTucov), which "forms" the mechanical and chemical changes to the purposive functions of assimilation and
body.
The soul of plants is restricted to this purely physio logical significance of a vital force; to this is added in the whole animal kingdom,1 the animal soul, whose constitutive characteristics ire spontaneous motion in space (kivtjtikw Kara rairov) and sensation
tmia&rfTiMoy).
The purposive, spontaneous motion of the animal body proceeds
from desire (ooc&f )< which arises from the feelings of pleasure and pain, in the form of an effort to procure or shun. But these pre suppose everywhere the idea of their object, and are at the same time bound together with the thought that this object is worthy to be striven for or to be shunned. The view of the dependence of all desire upon ideas, peculiar to all Greek psychology, is so strong with Aristotle, that he even sets forth these relations expressly, accord ing to the logical function of judgment and inference. In the practical sphere, also, there is affirmation and denial,1 there is the process of drawing a conclusion from a general aim to a particular mode of action.
The proper seat, or home, as it were, of the entire animal life of ideation is found in sensation. In the physiological psychology which treats this subject8 Aristotle has used in comprehensive
1 Aristotle's History of Animals (cf. J. B. Meyer. Berlin. 1856) treat* in ex- capUrr manner, and with admirable care of detailed investigation, anatomical, pbruoloeica), morpholofrical, and biological problems, and also the questions of •vstraa. The parallel work on plants is indeed lost, but in compensation we ■•«* the work of his friend and disciple Theophrastus.
• fV»ide* the sections which treat this subject, in the treatise on the Soul, the mailer treatises attached to this are also to be compared, viz : on Pereejrtt'on, in Memory, ou Dreams, etc.
propagation.
' Elk Vie. VI. 2, 1139 a 21.
150 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
manner all the particular information and theories which his prede cessors, especially Democritus, possessed on this point; but he overcame the common inadequacy of all earlier doctrines by conced ing a much greater importance to the self-activity of the soul in the
process in which perception arises. Not satisfied to adopt the old theory that perception consists in a co-operation of object and sub ject, he pointed to the unity of consciousness (EinheitUclikeit, fievorryi), with which the animal soul unites what is given in the individual perceptions of the individual senses to form collective perceptions, or perceptions that perceive the object as a whole, and in so doing grasps also the relations of number, situation, and motion. Thus above the individual senses we must assume the common sense
which is also the seat of recollection, both of the involuntary or memory (/uoj/o;) and the voluntary (dra/u^o-is),
by virtue of the circumstance that in it the perceptions remain as imaginative representations (<pavrao-Cai) ; at the same time, however, it is also the seat of our knowledge of our own states. 2
10. Vegetative and animal souls, however, form in man but the matter for the realisation of the Form peculiar to him, — the reason
(koivov alvOriTTipiov),1
(vow — bavoturOu).
(/3ou\>;<ro) ; imaginative representation becomes knowledge
By its operation, impulse (opcfc) becomes will
(ori- It comes as a something new and higher (" from without,"
a-TTjiir]).
$vpaOiv) to all the psychical activities which develop from perception even among the beasts. Aristotle expressed this relation by desig nating the pure rational activity itself as the active reason {vms irotr/TtKos), and, on the contrary, as passive reason (vovs iruft/riicos), the material of perceptions, which arises from the bodily existence, furnishes possibilities and occasions for reason, and is subsequently worked over and formed by it.
Accordingly the " passive " reason signifies the individual phase (Erscheinungsweise) given in the natural disposition of the individ
ual man, and determined by the occasions of his personal experience, — the "active" reason, on the contrary, signifying the pure reason considered as a unity in its nature and principles (principielle Ein- heitlichkeit), common to all individuals. The latter is imperishable, as it is without beginning, while the former passes away with the
1 With regard to physiological localisation Aristotle found the psychical activity to be attached to the vital warmth (fiupvTor 0ep>i6r), which as animating breath (n-reC^a) is mingled with the blood, and his school developed this doc trine still further. Cf. H. Siebeck, Zeitschrifl fur Volkerpsycholngi? , 1881, pp. 364 ff. In consequence of this he regarded the heart as the seat of' the common sense and so supplanted the better insight with which Alcmaeon, Diogeties of Apollonia, Democritus, and Plato had recognised the importance of the brain.
2 This beginning for a doctrine of tuner i>erception is found in Arist. De. An. III. 2, 425 b 12.
Cbaf. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 151
individuals in whom it appears. Personal immortality is put in question by this conclusion just as in the Platonic Timceus, where it was claimed only for the " rational " " part " of the soul, i. e. that part which is everywhere alike and impersonal. It is clear that we have here no longer to do with empirical psychology, but with such doctrines as have been taken from the systematic connection of the whole work, and grafted upon psychology in consequence of ethical and epistemological postulates.
11. In the conception of the reason as the Form peculiar to the human soul, Aristotle found the key to the solution of that feature of the ethical problem which even Plato had sought in vain, i. e. that of the content of the Good. Man's happiness or well-being (tiiaLfiona), which in Aristotle's system also is regarded as the supreme end of all endeavour (riXos), indeed, dependent in part upon external fortune not complete until this has afforded its good things; but ethics has to do only with that which stands in our power (to itf ijutf), only with the happiness which man gains
his own activity (vpaxroy iyaOov). Every being, however, be comes happy by the unfolding of his own nature and of his own peculiar activity — man, therefore, through reason. The virtue of
man is, accordingly, that habitude or permanent state of mind (*&«) through which he made capable of the practice of rational activ ity develops out of the endowments of his natural disposition, *nd has for its fruit, satisfaction, pleasure.
As in the animal soul impulse and perception were to be dis tinguished as different expressions, so, too, the reason develops itself, partly as rational action, partly as rational thought as per fection, on the one hand, of the character or disposition {f/Ovs), on the other, of the faculty of intelligence (cuVrfaW&u in the broadest sense of the word). Thus there result, as the excellence or ability of the rational man, the ethical and the intellectual or dianoetic vir tues.
12. The ethical virtues grow out of that training of the will by Thf-h becomes accustomed to act according to right insight (^■ijirn — SpBot Aoyot). It enables man, in his decisions, to follow
reason, i. e. insight into what correct or projxer. With this doctrine Aristotle transcends the principles of Socrates, — with evident regard to the facts of the ethical life not that he ttoigned to the will psychological independence as over against knowledge the point, rather, is, that he gave up the opinion that
tL* determination of the will arising from rational insight must of cs*lf be stronger than the desire arising from defective knowledge. Since experience often shows the reverse of this, man must gain by
practical
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152 Tlie Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I
practice that self-control (iyKparua) by means of which he follows under all circumstances that which is rationally known, even against the strongest desires. 1
While to ethical virtue in general belong natural disposition, insight, and habitude, the individual virtues are distinguished by the different relations of life to which they refer. A systematic development of these is not given by Aristotle, but we have, rather, a comprehensive and delicate treatment of the individual virtues. The general principle is that rational insight always finds the right mean between the unreasonable extremes to which the natural impulsive life leads. Thus courage is the right mean between cowardice and rashness. A particularly detailed exposition is given to friendship 2 as the common striving for all that is good and beautiful, and also to justice as the basis of the political community.
13. For Aristotle, like Plato, was convinced that the moral excel lence of man, since it always relates to activities which prosper in the life of a community, can find its fulfilment only in the life of a community ; for him, too, there is ultimately no perfect moral life outside the state, the essential end of which was considered by Aristotle, also, to be the ethical training of its citizens. As, never theless, in the case of the individual man, virtue ought to develop out of the natural disposition, so the political relations also are treated by Aristotle from the point of view, that tile historically given relations are to be used for the highest possible fulfilment of that highest end.
Every constitution is right if the government has the ethical weal of the community as its highest goal ; every constitution has failed if this is not the case. The good of the state, therefore, does not depend upon the external form, which is defined by the number of those who rule. 3 The rule of a single individual may be right as a kingdom (fiao-ikiia), bad if a despotism (rvpaww) ; the rule of few may be good if an aristocracy of culture and disposition, if an oligarchy of birth or property, bad; the rule of all as a republic of law and order (woAiTtta) ir. ay be good, as mob-rule
(SrjiiOKpaTia), bad. With profound political intelligence, Aristotle brings together in these expositions' the experiences of Grecian history, and on the ground of bhes>e enters upon the philosophy of
1 In the polemic against the Socratic doctrine which Aristotle brings forward in this line, Eth. . Vic III. 1-8, are developed the first beginnings of the problem of freedom.
• A point of view which ths dialogue the Statesman, passing under Plato's name, had already emphasised, while Plato himself in the Republic constructed the " bad " constitutions Iron, psychological analogies of a predominance of the lower parts of the soul.
a In the eighth book of the Wtcumarhiean Ethic*.
Chap. 3, § 13. ] System of Development : Aristotle. 153
littory in giving intimations as to the necessity with which individ ual forms of constitutions pass over into one another and develop out of one another.
After these presuppositions we can understand that Aristotle could not think of projecting in detail the constitution of an ideal state in Plato's manner. He contented himself with a critical emphasising of those elements which had proved requisite in indi vidual constitutions for fulfilling the general task of the state. In this connection he agrees with the Platonic demand for a public system of education ; the ethical community must itself take the care of fitting for their place the elements of which it will in future consist, and it is the task of education (in the treatment of which the fragment of the Politics breaks off) to lead man out of his rude state of nature with the help of the noble arts, to ethical and intel
lectual culture.
14. To the practical activity of the reason (koyurriKov), in the
broader sense of the word, Aristotle reckoned also " making " (nui») in addition to "acting" (rrpu£i? ) ; yet, on the other hand, he made so great distinction between this creative activity, which presents itself in art, and the action directed toward the ends of daily life, that he occasionally set the science of art, poietic phi losophy, as a third independent science, side by side with the theo retical and practical. Of this poietic philosophy, there is preserved besides the Rhetoric only the fragment of his theory of the art of poetry, under the name of the Poetic. This sets out, indeed, from principles relating to the nature of art in general, but in its particu lar subject offers only the outlines of a theory of tragedy. In this, such peculiar relations of this science of art to the two other principal parts of philosophy appear, that it becomes difficult to sub
ordinate this branch under either of the other two.
Art is imitative production, and the arts are distinguished as well
by the objects which they imitate as by the material with which they imitate. The objects of poetic art are men and their actions ; its means are language, rhythm, and harmony. Tragedy, in particu lar, represents an important action as performed immediately by ■peaking and acting persons. 1
Bat the purpose of this imitative representation is an ethical one : the passions of man, in particular in the case of tragedy, fear and fmpathtf, are to be so excited, that by their excitation and en hancement purification of the soul (xo&ifxrtc) from these passions is brought about
> Poet. 6, 1449 b 24.
154 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Par* £.
On the doctrine of the Catharsis, which became so important for the later theory of art, and on the literature concerning cf. A. Doling, Die Kunstlehre des Aristoteles (Jena, 1876).
The attainment of this end is, however, accomplished in such a way, that in artistic representation the particular brought to our view, not as a particular, but in its universal nature or essence- Art, like science, has for its object the universal in its particular realisation offers kind of knowledge, and with this the pleas ure which attends upon knowledge. 1
15. The highest perfection of its development finally achieved by the rational nature of man in knowledge. The dianoetic virtues are the highest, and those which bring complete happiness. The activity of the theoretical reason (eVio-Trjixoviicov) directed to the immediate apprehension of the highest truths, i. e. of the concep tions and judgments which the inductive search of scientific inves tigation only leads up to without being able to prove, and from which all deduction must take its beginning (cf. 12, 4). "
But knowledge of these, the full unfolding of the "active reason in man, again designated by Aristotle as "beholdhig" (Oiwpla) and with this beholding of the highest truth man gains participa tion in that pure thought, in which the essence of the deity consists, and thus, also, in the eternal blessedness of the divine self-conscious ness. For this " beholding " which exists only for its own sake and has no ends of will or deed, this wishless absorption in the perception of the highest truth, the blessedest and best of all.
Poet. 1451 5.
1
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PART II.
THE HELLENISTIC-ROMAN PHILOSOPHY.
Aj regards the general literature, the same works serve for this part that were cited at the beginning of Part I.
With the age of Aristotle, Grecian civilisation stepped out from its national restrictions and into the great general movement in which the peoples of antiquity that dwelt about the Mediter ranean, through interchange and adjustment of their ideas, became fused into one common civilisation. This process began through the union of Oriental with Greek thought, in the Hellenistic states of Alexander's successors. It found its external completion in the Roman Empire, its internal completion in Christianity. Hellen ism, Romanism, and Christianity were the three stages in which the world's future civilisation developed from antiquity.
The intellectually determining element in this union was Greek science, and herein consists its significance for the world's history. It became, like Greek art, the common possession of ancient civili sation. To it were joined step by step the highest movements in the inner life of the peoples, and it became the forming power for all the longings and impulses that lived within their souls. It was with the fall of its political independence, with its absorp tion into the Empire, that the Greek nation bought the accomplish ment of its task of civilisation; by their dispersal over the world the Greeks became the teachers of the world.
But in connection with this entrance into more extended relations, Greek science experienced a separation of the different elements which were united in it. Together with the purely theoretical interest in which it had originated, and which had found so clear an expression in the personality and teaching of Aristotle, a practi cal interest had in time developed, which sought in science the '"onviction that should govern life. In Plato's philosophy the two
were inseparately fused together, but now these two tendencies of vience became separated.
Scientific thought, which had come to a knowledge of its own
processes in the Aristotelian logic, had arrived at the consciousness 166
156 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part IX
of fundamental conceptions, with the aid of which it could use the abundance of phenomena. The principal opposing theories of the interpretation of the world had developed in the great systems, and in this way a fixed frame or setting was formed for the scientific treatment of detail. But beginning, as it did, with so slightly ex tended a knowledge of detail, the more successful Greek science was
in the development of principles, the more it now experienced crippling, at once of metaphysical interest and metaphysical force.
In consequence of this, however, the theoretical tendency of sci ence was toward details, and the fundamental scientific character of the Hellenistic-Roman time is erudition and the development of the special sciences. The individual man of science, by entrance into one of the great schools, gained a firm support of collective opinion, and a ruling principle for the treatment of separate questions and subjects which interested him. And indifference toward general metaphysical theories was the greater, the more it appeared that fruitful investigation in special provinces, extension of knowledge of facts, and comprehension of special departments of science were possible, independently of the strife of metaphysical systems. The separation of problems, which had been completed typically in the Aristotelian teaching and school, led necessarily to specialisation, and the purely theoretical interest in knowledge for its own sake developed, during the Hellenistic-Roman period, essentially in the individual sciences. The great savants of later antiquity stand, it is true, in loose relations with one school or another, but they always show themselves indifferent to metaphysics. So it happens that during this time production, so far as the theoretical principles of philosophy were concerned, was extremely small, while investiga tion into mathematics, natural science, grammar, philology, literary and general history, had rich and comprehensive results to record. With the great mass of those names which are reckoned as " philos ophers," whether heads of schools or associates in the schools, and which are continued in the schematic treatment of the " History of Philosophy," only literary-historical notices are connected, as that they worked specially in this or that department ; or it may be per sonal information, of no importance to philosophy, as that they attached themselves to this or that one among the earlier teachers, — almost never do we find any formation of new and original con ceptions. So far as theoretical knowledge was concerned, this period turned the old problems of the Greeks hither and thither, and moved along the track which it found already laid down.
So much the more powerfully, during these centuries of appropri ation and elaboration, did the practical significance of philosophy
a,
Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. 157
unfold itself. The need of a scientific doctrine of the ends of human life, of such a wisdom as should guarantee the happiness of
the individual, could but become more urgent as the ideal structure of Greek life fell in pieces, as the religion of the people sank ever more and more to an external tradition, as the crumbling political life, robbed of its independence, no longer awakened devotion, and the individual in his inner life felt thrown back upon himself. Thus tcisdom for the conduct of life became the fundamental problem of the philosophy which followed that of the Greeks, and the nar rowing in the statement of the philosophical problem which Socrates, and after him the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools of Sophistic thought,
had begun, is the general character of the succeeding period.
This did not exclude general theoretical doctrines and their
sharply championed contests from assuming airs of great impor tance during this period ; but, on the one hand, they met with no original interest for their own sake, and consequently developed only in the directions which were determined by the real end in view, i. e. that of wisdom for the conduct of life; on the other hand, they were lacking in originality, they were throughout only the old traditions shifted about, conditioned by the fundamental practical thoughts. Even such comprehensive systems as the Stoic and the Xeo-Platonic work only with the conceptions of Greek philosophy, in order to gain a theoretical basis for their practical ideal. The key to their theoretical doctrines lies always in the fundamental practical conviction, and in so far they are all of them character istic types of the mingling of problems.
With this predominance of practical importance is connected the fact that the dependence of philosophy upon the general movement of civilisation, which had already with the Sophists made its entrance into the quiet circle of disinterested investigation, became in the Hellenistic-Roman period a permanent phenomenon, and this appears most decisively in the changing attitude of this phi losophy toward religion.
The development which Greek philosophy had taken, and the ever more sharply pronounced opposition to the religion of the people into which it had come, brought with it the result that the special task of that wisdom for the conduct of life which the post- Aristotelian philosophy sought, was to find a compensation
for The cultured world, which had lost the support
rttigiouM faith.
afforded by religion, and was obliged to give up that of the state il*o, sought it in philosophy. As a result, the point of view of the
Hellenistic-Roman wisdom for the conduct of life was primarily that of individual morality, and the philosophy which busied itself
158 Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy. [Part II.
with this had, consequently, a thoroughly ethical stamp. The sharpness of the opposition of this individualistic ethics to religion appears most clearly among the Epicureans. But in the other schools, also, the doctrines of the deity have a purely ethical, or perhaps a theoretical interest, but none that is specifically religious.
This essentially ethical development of philosophy reached its completion in Greece, especially, indeed, in Athens, which, amid all the spread of Greek culture eastward and westward, formed for centuries the centre of scientific life. But soon new centres par ticularly for erudite detailed investigation, arose in the great libra ries and museums, in Rhodes, in Pergamum, in Alexandria, in Tarsus, in Rome, and later, in Antioch and Byzantium. Of these, Alexandria became especially important, where not only did elabora- tive erudition experience so typical a development, that the entire direction of this period is generally called " literary-historical " in accordance with but where, also, the philosophical direction of the time experienced its decided change.
For as time went on philosophy could not remain indifferent to that deep feeling of dissatisfaction which had seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glory of the Roman Empire. This huge empire offered to the peoples which had welded together into mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; granted them neither inner worth nor outer for tune. The draught from the life of earth had become insipid to ancient peoples, and they thirsted after religion. So they groped after the different cults and religious practices which individual peoples had brought with them, and the religions of the Orient became mixed with those of the Occident.
Into this movement philosophy was the more drawn, the more became clear that could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, — could not secure for him the promised happiness. It followed then — at first, in Alexandria — that the mingling, surging flood of religious ideas emptied itself into philosophy, which now sought to build up upon a scientific basis, not only an ethical conviction, but religion as well. Philos ophy employed the conceptions of Greek science to clarify and put in order religious ideas, to give to the importunate demand of religious feeling an idea of the world that should be satisfactory to and so created the systems of religious metaphysics, in more or less intimate connection with the contending religions.
Accordingly, in the Hellenistic-Roman philosophy there are two distinct periods to be distinguished, the ethical and the religious. The last century b. c. to be designated as the time in which the one gradually passed over into the other.
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CHAPTER I. THE ETHICAL PERIOD.
Thk two schools of the great masters of Attic philosophy, the Academic and the Peripatetic, followed the tendency of the time which separated science into the two branches, ethical philosophy and learned investigation. While in the first generation of the
Academy — that contemporary with Aristotle — a Pythagoreanising metaphysics had predominated, this made room in the next period (or fiopular moralising (cf. p. 101). In the Lyceum, indeed. Then- pkmrtua, and after him, Strato, held fast to the development and re-shaping of the Aristotelian metaphysics, but the associates of Theoprastus, Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and others, as well as Theo- phrastus himself, turned to literary-historical studies and to natural science. Later, the Peripatetics had a great share in the Alexan drian erudition, and the history of philosophy especially found in them its most industrious workers. But in philosophy itself they played only the conservative r61e of defending the system of their school against the attacks of the others, especially upon the ethical domain, and the new edition of the Aristotelian works by Androni- nu gave new stimulus for a zealous reproduction of his teaching.
Paraphrases, commentaries, excerpts, and interpretations formed the chief occupation of the later Peripatetics.
The Academy and Lyceum were, however, injured in their work ing by the two schools which were founded toward the end of the fourth century, and which owed their great success to the fact that they formulated the tendency of the time toward the practical wis dom of life with the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness : namely, the Stoic and the Epicurean.
The first was founded in the Sroa touuXi; by Zeno, a native of Cithtm in Cyprus, and had, both in his time and in that of his suc- ecsaor, Geanthes, more likeness to Cynicism than in the time of its third head, Chrysippus, who succeeded in turning the school into a more scientific course. Epicurus, on the contrary, founded a society which made the Hedonistic principle, in a refined and intellect
IN
160 Hellenistic- Roman Philosophy. [I'art 1L
oalised form, its centre, but developed only a slight degree of scientific vitality. While numerous adherents were won to its social-ethical principle then established, and to the view of the world connected with as these were continued through antiquity and especially in the Roman world, the school remained decidedly more unfruitful scientifically than the others, as well in the special sciences as in philosophy. Its doctrines have been presented in an interesting manner by the Roman poet, Lucretius.
These four schools continued side by side in Athens for centuries, and in the time of the Empire they were still maintained in various chairs of instruction, and formed there a sort of university but only in the Academy, and here only with great gaps, can succes sion of heads of the school be traced; while the tradition in the case of the Stoa and the Epicureans breaks off with the first cen tury B. C. , and for the Lyceum soon after that time.
At first, however, these four schools contended with each other in the liveliest fashion during the third and second centuries B. C. , and
was especially in ethical questions, and in metaphysical, physical, and logical questions only in so far as connected with the ethical, that they sought to bear away the palm from one another. 1
But, moving along side by side with the dogmatic doctrines during the whole period was another tendency, which, like the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, originated in the teaching of the Sophists namely, Scepticism. It did not, indeed, take on the form of an association in school, but too, was brought together into a system atic form, and found an ethical culmination. Such concentration, in accord with the spirit of the times, of the negative results of the teaching of the Sophists, was achieved by Pyrrho, whose doctrines were set forth by Timon. This Sophistical scepticism had the triumph of obtaining possession of Plato's grove for time; for, the Middle Academy did not make this doctrine fully its own, made
weapon for combating Stoicism and grounding its own ethics. In this phase of the development of the Academy appear the two heads of the school, Arcesilaus and Carneades, who were separated by about century. In after time, when the Academy again rejected Scepticism, this doctrine met with sympathy principally among the empirical physicians, among whom, even at the end of this period, jEnesidemus and Agrippa are to be mentioned. complete collec tion of the doctrines of the Sceptics, made at much later time,
preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus.
Cicero in his philosophical dialogues gives vivid pictures of these school con- ioveraie. * with dextrous use of the original sources.
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But the deeper significance of this Scepticism was that it brought to expression the fundamental frame of mind which had seized the entire ancient civilisation as it had once seized that of Greece, — a frame of mind at variance with the true ideal import and content of that civilisation ; and the same lack of the spirit of decided convic tion found only another form in the Eclecticism which began to develop in the second half of the second century. With the exten sion of the schools in the great relations of the life of the Roman Empire, the school-spirit disappeared, polemic was crippled, and the need of adjustment and fusion made itself felt instead. The teleo- logical view of the world, especially, formed the basis upon which
Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism could agree in a common opposition against Epicureanism.
The tendency toward such a fusion, toward syncretism, first awoke in the Stoic school, and found its most efficient supporters in Pance- tius and Posidonius. who supplemented the doctrine of the Stoa on all sides by borrowing Platonic and Aristotelian elements. In opposition to them stood the Neio Academy, which, after Philo of Larissa had made an end of the sceptical episode in the develop ment of the school, made the attempt, through Antiochus, to unite philosophy, then so disunited, upon those doctrines in which Plato and Aristotle agree.
Less important, because more devoid of principles, but not, there fore, the less significant historically, was that sort of eclecticism which the Romans employed in taking up Greek philosophy. This consisted in piecing together, from an essentially practical point of view, the different school systems which met their approval. This was the case with Cicero, Varro, and in part with the school of the Sextians.
Of the Peripatetic School (the Lyceum), the co-founder himself is primarily to be noticed, Tneophrastus of Erebus in Lesbos (about 370-287), a somewhat Toaager friend of Aristotle, who through his teachings and writings won great regard for the school. Of his works, the botanical, also a fragment of the MftapAyrfes, extracts from his Characters, from the treatise concerning percep tion, from his history of physics, and some isolated fragments are preserved
edited by P. Wimmer, Breslau, 1842-4)2).
With him appear Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus of Tarentum, who
studied music historically and theoretically {Element* der Musik, German by R Weatphal, Leips. 1883), Diceearchua of Messina, a learned polyhistor who wrote a history of Grecian civilisation (piot'EWiSot), and Btrato. of I. ampsncus, •ho was head of the school (287-269) and had as surname "The Physicist. "
Among the Peripatetic doxographers, Ilermippus, Sotion, Satyrus, Heracleides Lcmboa (in the second century n. c), and among the later commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 a. d. in Athens) are to be mentioned.
The Middle Academy begins with Arceailaua of 1'itane in . -Kolia (about 31V241). whose teachings were recorded by his pupil Lacydes, and ends with Caneatdea (in Rome, 166) and his successor Clitomachus, who died 1 10. Noth- af remains of their writings. The sources are, beside Diogenes Laertiua, prin cipally Cicero and Sextus Empiricus.
102 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period. [Part IL
Just as indirect and general in its character is our knowledge of the New Academy. Philo of Larissa was still in Rome in 87. His successor, Antio- chua of Ascalon, was heard by Cicero in Athens in 78. To the supporters of eclectic Platonism in this first, essentially ethical form belong among others Alius Didymus, who inclined strongly to Stoicism (in the time of Augustus), and Thrasyllus (under Tiberius), who prepared an edition of the works of Democritus and Plato, arranged according to subjects. An extensive literature of paraphrase and commentary connected with Plato's works also developed in the Academy.
When we consider the personality of the Stoic School, we are struck by the frequency of the descent of its members from the Hellenistic mixed races of the Orient. Thus the founder, Zeno (about 340-265), came from his Cyprian home as a merchant to Athens, and there, taken captive by philosophy, is said to have absorbed the doctrines of the different schools, to found his own in the year 308. His principal pupil was Cleanthes of Assos in Troas, from whose writings a monotheistic hymn to Zeus is preserved, Stub. Eel. I. 30 (Wachs- muth, p. 25). The scientific head of the school was Chrysippus (280-209) of Soli or Tarsus in Ciiicia. He is said to have written an extraordinary amount, but, aside from the titles, only very unimportant fragments of his works are preserved. Cf. G. Bagnet (Loewen, 1822). Among the literary-historical savants of the Stoic School, Diogenes of Babylon and Apollodorus are to be mentioned ; Aristarchus and Eratosthenes stood in close relation to the school.
Panaetius (180-110), who was strongly influenced by the Academic scepticism and who maintained a close relation with the Roman statesmen, began the syn- cretistic development of the Stoa, which was completed by Posidonius of Syrian Apamea (about 135-60). The latter was one of the greatest polyhistors of antiquity, especially in the geographico-historical domain. He taught in Rhodes, and was heard by many young Romans, among whom was Cicero.
Concerning the Stoics of the time of the Empire, cf. the following chapter. Sources for the Stoic doctrines are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, Book VII. , in part also the extant writings of the Stoics of the time of the Empire, and the discoveries at Herculaneum.
D. Tiedmann, System der stoischen Philosophie (3 vols. , Leips. 1776) ; P. Weygoldt, Die Philosophie der Stoa (Leips. 1883) ; P. Ogereau, Essai sur le Systime Philosophique des Stoiciens (Paris, 1885) ; L. Stein, Die Psychologie der Stoa (2 vols. , Berlin, 1886-88) ; [Capes, Stoicism, Lond. 1880].
Epicurus (341-270), born in Samos, the son of an Athenian schoolmaster, had already made attempts at teaching in Mitylene and in Lampsacus, before founding in Athens, in 306, the society which is named after his "gardens"
(ktjjtoi, horti, as also the other schools were named after the places where they
He was much loved as a teacher, on account of his companionable qualities. Of his numerous writings lightly thrown off, the proverbs (iciptat Sdjai), three didactic letters, parts of his treatise rtpl tpiacus (in the discoveries at Herculaneum), and besides only scattered fragments are preserved ; collected and arranged systematically by H. Usener, Epicurea (Leips. 1887).
Among the great mass of his followers, antiquity brings into prominence his closest friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus ; also Zeno of Sidon (about 150) and Phtedrus (about 100 h. c. ). Philodemus of Gadara in Coele-Syria has become a somewhat more distinct figure to us since a part of his writings has been found at Herculaneum (Herculanensium voluminum quae supersunt, first series, Naples, 1793 ff. ; second, 1861 ff. ) ; the most valuable, repl <riituiui» koX viDieiiictu* (cf. Fr. Bahusch, Lyck, 1879 ; H. v. Arnim, Philodemea. Halle, 1888).
assembled).
The didactic poem of Tit. Lucretius Cams (98-54), De Natura Rerum, in six books, has been edited by Lachmann (Berlin, 1850) and . lac. Bernays (Leips. 1862) ; [Eng. ed. with tr. of the poem by Munro, Lond. 1886. Cf. The Atomic
Theory of Lucretius, by J. Masson, Lond. 1884].
Further sources are Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, in the tenth book.
Cf. M. Guyau, La Morale <f Epicure (Paris, 1878); P. v. Gizycki, Ueber das
Leben und die Moralphilosophie des Epikur (Berlin, 1879) ; W. Wallace, Epi cureanism (Lond. 1880); [Wallace, Art. Ep. in Enc. Brit. ; W. L. Courtney, Ep. in Hellenica].
Cmap. 1, § 14. ] Ideal of the Sage. 163
Scepticism, as accords with the nature of the case, makes its appearance, not as a close school, but in looser form. 1 It remains doubtful whether the sys- temsaiser of Scepticism, Pyrrho of El is (perhaps 366-276), had any intimate relations with the Socratic-Sophistic school of his native city. A certain Bryso, who passes for the son of Stilpo, is looked upon as an intermediate link. He accompanied Alexander on his journey to Asia, together with a follower of Democritos, Anaxarchus by name. The Sinograph, Timon of Phlius (320-230, the latter part of the time at Athens) from Pyrrho's standpoint derides philoso phers. Fragments of his writings in C. Wachsmuth, Dr. Timone Phliasio
(Leips. 1859). Cf. Ch. Waddington, Pyrrhon (Paris, 1877).
The external relations of later Scepticism are very obscure and uncertain.
. Enesidemus from Cnossus taught in Alexandria, and composed a treatise, WvfaimuH Xiya. of which nothing remains. His life falls probably in the first
century b. c, yet it has also been set almost two centuries later. Of Agrippa, nothing in detail can be established. The literary representative of Scepticism is the physician Sextua Emplricus. who lived about 200 a. d. , and of his writ ings there are extant his Outline Sketches of Pyrrhonism (UvfipumoL {nrorvwiivtii), m<i the investigations comprehended under the name Adversus Mathematicos, of which Books VII. -XI. contain the exposition of the sceptical doctrine, with many valuable historical notices (ed. by J. Bekker, Berlin, 1842).
Cf. K. Stiudlin, Gesch. und Geist des Skepticismus (Leips. 1704-06) ; N. Maccoll, The Greek Sceptics (London, 1869) ; L. Haas, De Philosophorum Srrpticorvm Successionibus ( Wttrzburg, 1875) ; [Owen, Evenings with the Scep tics (Lond. 1881) ; A. Seth, Art. Scepticism, tn Enc. Brit. ].
Among the Romans, the admission of philosophy at first encountered violent resistance ; but by the beginning of the first century b. c. it was the general custom for the young Romans of superior rank to study in Athens or Rhodes, and to hear the lectures of the heads of schools, for the same end as that for which the Athenians bad formerly heard the Sophists. The literary activity of Marcus Tullius Clo«ro (106-43) must be judged from the point of view of his purpose, which was to awaken among his countrymen an inclination for general scien tific culture and a comprehension of its meaning, and from this standpoint his work is to be highly prized. Skill in composition and grace of form excuse the '. aek of proper philosophising ability, which is shown in a selection of doctrines based on no philosophical principle. The main treatises are De Finibus, De
Ofirii: Tuseulanot Disputationes, Academica, De Natura Deorum, De Fato, If Divination*. Cf. Herbart, Ueber die Philosophic des Cicero ; in Works, XII. 167 fl. [Trans, of the above writings of Cicero in the Bohn. Lib. ]
His friend, M. Terentius Varro (116-27), the well-known polyhistor and prolific writer, was more learned, but of his labours toward the history of philos ophy only occasional notes are extant.
Qulntus Bextua and a son of the same name and Botion of Alexandria are naaaed as Sextians. Sotion seems to have been the intermediate link in which the Stoic morals were brought into union with the Alexandrian Pythagoreanism, and given that religious turn which characterises them in the time of the Empire. Some of their Sentences, discovered in a Syrian translation, have been edited by r. ildemeister (Bonn. 1873).
On the literary conditions of this whole period cf. R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen r* Cvjtro's philosophischen 8chr\flen (3 vols. , Leips. 1877-83).
§ 14. The Ideal of the Wise Man.
The fundamental ethical tendency of the philosophising of this entire period is still more precisely characterised by the fact that it is throughout individual ethics that forms the centre of investiga tion in this time of epigones. The elevation to the ideals of ethical
' Hence all reckonings by the successions of heads of the school, attempted a order to fix the chronology of the later Sceptics, are illusory.
164 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Ethical Period.
