Certainly a horse would not be considered to have fulfilled its purpose by eating and drinking and mating at will, and doing none of the things which are the proper work of a horse; no more would a dog if it simply enjoyed all kinds of pleasures like the horse and did none of the things for which dogs are considered good; nor would any other animal if kept from the functions proper to it and allowed to have its fill of pleasures; in short, according to this, nothing would be said to be living according to Nature but what by its actions manifests the excellence peculiar to its own nature.
For the nature of each guides it to its own excellence; consequently, it is not reasonable to suppose that when man lives a life of pleasure that he lives according to Nature, but rather when he lives a life of virtue.
What Musonius describes will make immediate sense to someone who is in even the slightest way familiar with the natural world, though you might be hard pressed to explain it to the lustful or gluttonous fellow, who has confused his deeper purpose with gratification.
An animal will not find contentment merely by feeding and fornicating, since all of its instincts are calling it to the pursuit of a certain function, particular to its breed. It is fulfilled in its actions, in the quality of what it does, whether it is the bee making honey, or the dog hunting, or the horse running free, or the bird building a nest. If you simply lock it in a cage and spoil it, you will immediately see its misery, how incomplete and stifled it has become.
I have always been amazed, for example, at how readily an animal will surrender its pleasures, and be willing to endure pain, to follow its innate inclinations. When we as humans learn to work together with animals, each providing for the other, those deeply rooted roles become even more apparent.
The beast, of course, does not judge in the same way as a man does, yet it still follows its distinct nature. I can speak of the animal living according to its own excellence, much as I can speak of a human being living according to his own excellence.
The great difference, however, is that the human, endowed with reason and choice, is made complete not by running, or swimming, or flying, but by the exercise of virtue. This is not some arbitrary imposition on who he is, but a necessary expression of his very identity.
Should Rex be a good dog? He most certainly should, and I should, in turn, be a good man. Just providing us with toys and treats will not be sufficient.
My passions are refined by my character, and my feelings are given meaning by my understanding. This insight about pleasure being relative to virtue is one of the ways the Stoics differed from the Epicureans. Whenever I find my desire for gratification crowding in on my sense of right and wrong, I recall the words of Marcus Aurelius:
In the constitution of the rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue which is opposed to the love of pleasure, and that is temperance. (8.39)
Written in 4/2000
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