—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 3.13
IMAGE: Thomas Wyck, A Scholar in His Study (c. 1660)
The Death of Marcus Aurelius
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.8
Why is no good greater than any other good? It is because nothing can be more fitting than that which is fitting, and nothing more level than that which is level. You cannot say that one thing is more equal to a given object than another thing; hence also nothing is more honorable than that which is honorable. Accordingly, if all the virtues are by nature equal, the three varieties of goods are equal.
This is what I mean: there is an equality between feeling joy with self-control and suffering pain with self-control. The joy in the one case does not surpass in the other the steadfastness of soul that gulps down the groan when the victim is in the clutches of the torturer; goods of the first kind are desirable, while those of the second are worthy of admiration; and in each case they are none the less equal, because whatever inconvenience attaches to the latter is compensated by the qualities of the good, which is so much greater.
Any man who believes them to be unequal is turning his gaze away from the virtues themselves and is surveying mere externals; true goods have the same weight and the same width. The spurious sort contain much emptiness; hence, when they are weighed in the balance, they are found wanting, although they look imposing and grand to the gaze.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
At a number of times during my life, when I was convinced that things weren’t going as they should, I was offered some variation of this saying: “There is always someone better off than you, and there is always someone worse off than you.”
I appreciate how there can be great value in such an observation, for it is pointless to define myself by the degrees of my particular circumstances. Do I believe I am the best, just because I happen to have a big house? Look at that fellow over there, whose house makes mine look like a garden shed. Do I believe I am the worst, just because my boss makes it impossible for me to pay for health insurance? Look at that fellow over there, who can’t find any work at all, and whose child has cancer.
At the same time, however, I must be careful not to take the expression the wrong way. Should I even be speaking of conditions being “better” or “worse”, when they are properly matters of indifference, subject only to preference? What is good or bad in me, after all, does not proceed from the lay of the land; if I feel I can be better, I can start doing that right away, as it is relies only upon the integrity of my judgments.
The meaning might be subtly implied, but once I compare myself to another by means of the worldly accidents, I am overlooking the essence of my nature. It is a form of self-imposed ignorance, and it can easily lead to envy of those who “have” more and disdain for those who “have” less. Why am I at all concerned with being better than anyone else, when each and every one of us can choose to be the best at ruling ourselves? This isn’t a competition.
Since virtue is already the perfection of the rational animal, it is vanity to attempt any further addition—the very act of looking elsewhere would turn away from its superiority, and thereby throw us into a misery of diversions. I must resist the temptation to think of my merit as greater or lesser depending on the presence or absence of comfort and convenience.
Where the good of character resides, happiness follows, and its variety or category makes no difference. I am called to self-control through temperance if I am at a banquet, and I am called to self-control through fortitude if I am on the rack. Whether pleasure or pain are the objects of the experience, the disposition of the subject is the root cause of the excellence.
At a number of times during my life, when I was convinced that things weren’t going as they should, I was offered some variation of this saying: “There is always someone better off than you, and there is always someone worse off than you.”
I appreciate how there can be great value in such an observation, for it is pointless to define myself by the degrees of my particular circumstances. Do I believe I am the best, just because I happen to have a big house? Look at that fellow over there, whose house makes mine look like a garden shed. Do I believe I am the worst, just because my boss makes it impossible for me to pay for health insurance? Look at that fellow over there, who can’t find any work at all, and whose child has cancer.
At the same time, however, I must be careful not to take the expression the wrong way. Should I even be speaking of conditions being “better” or “worse”, when they are properly matters of indifference, subject only to preference? What is good or bad in me, after all, does not proceed from the lay of the land; if I feel I can be better, I can start doing that right away, as it is relies only upon the integrity of my judgments.
The meaning might be subtly implied, but once I compare myself to another by means of the worldly accidents, I am overlooking the essence of my nature. It is a form of self-imposed ignorance, and it can easily lead to envy of those who “have” more and disdain for those who “have” less. Why am I at all concerned with being better than anyone else, when each and every one of us can choose to be the best at ruling ourselves? This isn’t a competition.
Since virtue is already the perfection of the rational animal, it is vanity to attempt any further addition—the very act of looking elsewhere would turn away from its superiority, and thereby throw us into a misery of diversions. I must resist the temptation to think of my merit as greater or lesser depending on the presence or absence of comfort and convenience.
Where the good of character resides, happiness follows, and its variety or category makes no difference. I am called to self-control through temperance if I am at a banquet, and I am called to self-control through fortitude if I am on the rack. Whether pleasure or pain are the objects of the experience, the disposition of the subject is the root cause of the excellence.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Joachim von Sandrart, Minerva and Saturn Protect Art and Science from Envy and Falsehood (1644)
Monday, April 29, 2024
Stoic Snippets 238
Accustom yourself as much as possible, on the occasion of anything being done by any person, to inquire with yourself, "For what object is this man doing this?"
But begin with yourself, and examine yourself first.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.37
Epictetus, Golden Sayings 177
If Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this fellow would have had nothing to be proud of. But what is it that I desire? To understand Nature, and to follow her!
Accordingly, I ask who is the Interpreter. On hearing that it is Chrysippus, I go to him. But it seems I do not understand what he wrote. So I seek one to interpret that. So far there is nothing to pride myself on.
But when I have found my interpreter, what remains is to put in practice his instructions. This itself is the only thing to be proud of.
But if I admire the interpretation and that alone, what else have I turned out but a mere commentator instead of a lover of wisdom?—except indeed that I happen to be interpreting Chrysippus instead of Homer.
So when any one says to me, "Prithee, read me Chrysippus," I am more inclined to blush, when I cannot show my deeds to be in harmony and accordance with his sayings.
IMAGE: Rembrandt, Two Scholars Disputing (1628)
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Dhammapada 372
Without knowledge there is no meditation, without meditation there is no knowledge.
He who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana.
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.7
Now friendship in the case of men corresponds to desirability in the case of things. You would not, I fancy, love a good man if he were rich any more than if he were poor, nor would you love a strong and muscular person more than one who was slender and of delicate constitution.
Accordingly, neither will you seek or love a good thing that is mirthful and tranquil more than one that is full of perplexity and toil.Or, if you do this, you will, in the case of two equally good men, care more for him who is neat and well-groomed than for him who is dirty and unkempt.
You would next go so far as to care more for a good man who is sound in all his limbs and without blemish, than for one who is weak or purblind; and gradually your fastidiousness would reach such a point that, of two equally just and prudent men, you would choose him who has long curling hair!
Whenever the virtue in each one is equal, the inequality in their other attributes is not apparent. For all other things are not parts, but merely accessories. Would any man judge his children so unfairly as to care more for a healthy son than for one who was sickly, or for a tall child of unusual stature more than for one who was short or of middling height? Wild beasts show no favoritism among their offspring; they lie down in order to suckle all alike; birds make fair distribution of their food.
Ulysses hastens back to the rocks of his Ithaca as eagerly as Agamemnon speeds to the kingly walls of Mycenae. For no man loves his native land because it is great; he loves it because it is his own.
Accordingly, neither will you seek or love a good thing that is mirthful and tranquil more than one that is full of perplexity and toil.Or, if you do this, you will, in the case of two equally good men, care more for him who is neat and well-groomed than for him who is dirty and unkempt.
You would next go so far as to care more for a good man who is sound in all his limbs and without blemish, than for one who is weak or purblind; and gradually your fastidiousness would reach such a point that, of two equally just and prudent men, you would choose him who has long curling hair!
Whenever the virtue in each one is equal, the inequality in their other attributes is not apparent. For all other things are not parts, but merely accessories. Would any man judge his children so unfairly as to care more for a healthy son than for one who was sickly, or for a tall child of unusual stature more than for one who was short or of middling height? Wild beasts show no favoritism among their offspring; they lie down in order to suckle all alike; birds make fair distribution of their food.
Ulysses hastens back to the rocks of his Ithaca as eagerly as Agamemnon speeds to the kingly walls of Mycenae. For no man loves his native land because it is great; he loves it because it is his own.
And what is the purpose of all this? That you may know that virtue regards all her works in the same light, as if they were her children, showing equal kindness to all, and still deeper kindness to those which encounter hardships; for even parents lean with more affection towards those of their offspring for whom they feel pity. Virtue, too, does not necessarily love more deeply those of her works which she beholds in trouble and under heavy burdens, but, like good parents, she gives them more of her fostering care.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
As Seneca asks Lucilius to consider how he judges the merits of others, I’m afraid I can’t help but wonder how many of my acquaintances would hardly feel any guilt from his lesson. Beyond some half-hearted lip service to the contrary, wealth, good looks, and the nebulous “sense of humor” are the qualities we most admire. If you don’t believe me, just watch a half hour of primetime television, or briefly observe the pecking order in any office or schoolyard.
I need not feel bitter, so let me take Seneca’s challenge to heart. If I don’t like it, it is completely within my power to do differently, and if I complain that it’s too difficult, I’m sadly confusing conviction with convenience. I have failed myself when I “move on” from friends who have ceased to be gratifying.
No, it is far more than merely saying, “He’s a nice fellow, even though his breath stinks,” or “She’s sweet, despite the fact that she doesn’t buy me presents.” This just ends up being a calculating act of balancing pleasant and unpleasant traits, when the true test of friendship is a commitment to moral excellence. Once I have recognized why real beauty is in the heart and in the mind, I will no longer be so diverted by the accidents, since they will pale in significance to a desire for the good within another’s soul.
Virtue is to be loved without condition, and my only concern about my friends should involve helping them to become greater in understanding and in love. Seneca’s example of Ulysses and Agamemnon makes me think of how a proper love of “home” does not prefer a mansion to a hut, as long as it strengthens the bonds of character.
Just as committed parents find it ridiculous to be asked which of their children is the favorite, so those who strive to increase in integrity will no longer distinguish between the utility of one friend over another. We all find ourselves in different places, facing unique struggles, and yet there can be no comparison of value when it comes to that which is priceless, to which nothing greater can be added.
Though opportunistic people will leave you when the going gets tough, because you no longer fit their cost-benefit analysis, true friends will offer you all the more, because their good and your good are perceived as one and the same. Do not think the true friend somehow loves you more during hardship, for he loves without degrees. Rather, it is through his total love that he keeps a watchful eye out for your particular needs.
As Seneca asks Lucilius to consider how he judges the merits of others, I’m afraid I can’t help but wonder how many of my acquaintances would hardly feel any guilt from his lesson. Beyond some half-hearted lip service to the contrary, wealth, good looks, and the nebulous “sense of humor” are the qualities we most admire. If you don’t believe me, just watch a half hour of primetime television, or briefly observe the pecking order in any office or schoolyard.
I need not feel bitter, so let me take Seneca’s challenge to heart. If I don’t like it, it is completely within my power to do differently, and if I complain that it’s too difficult, I’m sadly confusing conviction with convenience. I have failed myself when I “move on” from friends who have ceased to be gratifying.
No, it is far more than merely saying, “He’s a nice fellow, even though his breath stinks,” or “She’s sweet, despite the fact that she doesn’t buy me presents.” This just ends up being a calculating act of balancing pleasant and unpleasant traits, when the true test of friendship is a commitment to moral excellence. Once I have recognized why real beauty is in the heart and in the mind, I will no longer be so diverted by the accidents, since they will pale in significance to a desire for the good within another’s soul.
Virtue is to be loved without condition, and my only concern about my friends should involve helping them to become greater in understanding and in love. Seneca’s example of Ulysses and Agamemnon makes me think of how a proper love of “home” does not prefer a mansion to a hut, as long as it strengthens the bonds of character.
Just as committed parents find it ridiculous to be asked which of their children is the favorite, so those who strive to increase in integrity will no longer distinguish between the utility of one friend over another. We all find ourselves in different places, facing unique struggles, and yet there can be no comparison of value when it comes to that which is priceless, to which nothing greater can be added.
Though opportunistic people will leave you when the going gets tough, because you no longer fit their cost-benefit analysis, true friends will offer you all the more, because their good and your good are perceived as one and the same. Do not think the true friend somehow loves you more during hardship, for he loves without degrees. Rather, it is through his total love that he keeps a watchful eye out for your particular needs.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Jacques Blanchard, Allegory of Charity (c. 1637)
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Friday, April 26, 2024
Aesop's Fables 75
An Eagle was soaring through the air when suddenly it heard the whizz of an Arrow, and felt itself wounded to death.
Slowly it fluttered down to the earth, with its life-blood pouring out of it.
Looking down upon the Arrow with which it had been pierced, it found that the shaft of the Arrow had been feathered with one of its own plumes.
"Alas!" it cried as it died,
"We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction."
"We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction."
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Seneca, Moral Letters 66.6
This can be proved to you by the fact that the good man will hasten unhesitatingly to any noble deed; even though he be confronted by the hangman, the torturer, and the stake, he will persist, regarding not what he must suffer, but what he must do; and he will entrust himself as readily to an honorable deed as he would to a good man; he will consider it advantageous to himself, safe, propitious.
And he will hold the same view concerning an honorable deed, even though it be fraught with sorrow and hardship, as concerning a good man who is poor or wasting away in exile. Come now, contrast a good man who is rolling in wealth with a man who has nothing, except that in himself he has all things; they will be equally good, though they experience unequal fortune.
This same standard, as I have remarked, is to be applied to things as well as to men; virtue is just as praiseworthy if it dwells in a sound and free body, as in one which is sickly or in bondage.
Therefore, as regards your own virtue also, you will not praise it any more, if fortune has favored it by granting you a sound body, than if fortune has endowed you with a body that is crippled in some member, since that would mean rating a master low because he is dressed like a slave.
For all those things over which Chance holds sway are chattels—money, person, position; they are weak, shifting, prone to perish, and of uncertain tenure. On the other hand, the works of virtue are free and unsubdued, neither more worthy to be sought when fortune treats them kindly, nor less worthy when any adversity weighs upon them.
And he will hold the same view concerning an honorable deed, even though it be fraught with sorrow and hardship, as concerning a good man who is poor or wasting away in exile. Come now, contrast a good man who is rolling in wealth with a man who has nothing, except that in himself he has all things; they will be equally good, though they experience unequal fortune.
This same standard, as I have remarked, is to be applied to things as well as to men; virtue is just as praiseworthy if it dwells in a sound and free body, as in one which is sickly or in bondage.
Therefore, as regards your own virtue also, you will not praise it any more, if fortune has favored it by granting you a sound body, than if fortune has endowed you with a body that is crippled in some member, since that would mean rating a master low because he is dressed like a slave.
For all those things over which Chance holds sway are chattels—money, person, position; they are weak, shifting, prone to perish, and of uncertain tenure. On the other hand, the works of virtue are free and unsubdued, neither more worthy to be sought when fortune treats them kindly, nor less worthy when any adversity weighs upon them.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
I sadly know so many people who are intensely cynical and bitter about the human condition; my vocation as a teacher makes this a hazard of the trade. Far too often, I permit it to get to me, with the ironic result that I then make myself just as jaundiced as they are, for there is an unwritten rule in the world of academia that disenchantment is somehow glamorous.
If I speak to all that is best in the human condition, I am usually met with a smug rolling of the eyes and a dismissive wave of the hand. Let this become something good for me—let me respond to rejection with acceptance.
Despite the claims to the contrary, there are many decent folks out there, though the nature of genuine character is such that it does not deliberately draw attention to itself. The sort of good man Seneca describes acts with understanding and love regardless of the circumstances, and he does not ask whether it will bring him any other benefit beyond the exercise of his conscience.
If I assume there is nothing good within me besides feeding my own appetites, it is no wonder when I assume others must be the same; to question the integrity of others is to make an excuse for myself. No, the true proof of my humanity will be when I care little for poverty or riches, pleasure or pain, fame or obscurity, and I instead find peace in virtue fort its own sake, free from greed, from lust, from recognition.
Strip away the conditions, and only the purity and the simplicity remain. Fortune does not alter the equal dignity of every righteous thought or deed, however “big” or “small”, and no modification of the trimmings will add or subtract any of its innate worth.
Back in college, while fellow students in a class on the French Revolution were swept up in the angry tribalism of class warfare, I came across a painting called A Good Deed is Never Forgotten. It portrayed the warm reunion of two men who had been on opposite sides during the Reign of Terror, but who could look beyond political self-interest to embrace unconditional compassion.
Joseph Cange was a peasant who had become a jailkeeper to the aristocratic Monsieur George. When Cange saw the plight of George’s family, he supported them secretly, and when George was eventually released, he promised to seek out and thank his anonymous benefactor. Regardless of the risk or the cost, one man committed himself to charity, and another committed himself to gratitude. What better lesson could history teach us?
I sadly know so many people who are intensely cynical and bitter about the human condition; my vocation as a teacher makes this a hazard of the trade. Far too often, I permit it to get to me, with the ironic result that I then make myself just as jaundiced as they are, for there is an unwritten rule in the world of academia that disenchantment is somehow glamorous.
If I speak to all that is best in the human condition, I am usually met with a smug rolling of the eyes and a dismissive wave of the hand. Let this become something good for me—let me respond to rejection with acceptance.
Despite the claims to the contrary, there are many decent folks out there, though the nature of genuine character is such that it does not deliberately draw attention to itself. The sort of good man Seneca describes acts with understanding and love regardless of the circumstances, and he does not ask whether it will bring him any other benefit beyond the exercise of his conscience.
If I assume there is nothing good within me besides feeding my own appetites, it is no wonder when I assume others must be the same; to question the integrity of others is to make an excuse for myself. No, the true proof of my humanity will be when I care little for poverty or riches, pleasure or pain, fame or obscurity, and I instead find peace in virtue fort its own sake, free from greed, from lust, from recognition.
Strip away the conditions, and only the purity and the simplicity remain. Fortune does not alter the equal dignity of every righteous thought or deed, however “big” or “small”, and no modification of the trimmings will add or subtract any of its innate worth.
Back in college, while fellow students in a class on the French Revolution were swept up in the angry tribalism of class warfare, I came across a painting called A Good Deed is Never Forgotten. It portrayed the warm reunion of two men who had been on opposite sides during the Reign of Terror, but who could look beyond political self-interest to embrace unconditional compassion.
Joseph Cange was a peasant who had become a jailkeeper to the aristocratic Monsieur George. When Cange saw the plight of George’s family, he supported them secretly, and when George was eventually released, he promised to seek out and thank his anonymous benefactor. Regardless of the risk or the cost, one man committed himself to charity, and another committed himself to gratitude. What better lesson could history teach us?
To crave after glory and luxury is to be a slave to Fortune. To love virtue is to be liberated by Nature. Cast aside the trinkets, and a perfect serenity remains.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Pierre Nicolas Legrand, A Good Deed is Never Forgotten (1795)
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Maxims of Goethe 42
Everyone has something in his nature which, if he were to express it openly, would of necessity give offense.
IMAGE: Eduard von Grützner, Mephisto (1895)
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.5
I know what you may reply to me at this point: "Are you trying to make us believe that it does not matter whether a man feels joy, or whether he lies upon the rack and tires out his torturer?"
I might say in answer: "Epicurus also maintains that the wise man, though he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: 'Tis pleasant, and concerns me not at all.'"
Why need you wonder, if I maintain that he who reclines at a banquet and the victim who stoutly withstands torture possess equal goods, when Epicurus maintains a thing that is harder to believe, namely, that it is pleasant to be roasted in this way?
But the reply which I do make, is that there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it.
So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.
Vexation and pain and other inconveniences are of no consequence, for they are overcome by virtue. Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances, and wrongs; and wherever its radiance reaches, all lights which shine without the help of virtue are extinguished; and inconveniences, when they come in contact with virtue, play no more important a part than does a storm-cloud at sea.
I might say in answer: "Epicurus also maintains that the wise man, though he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: 'Tis pleasant, and concerns me not at all.'"
Why need you wonder, if I maintain that he who reclines at a banquet and the victim who stoutly withstands torture possess equal goods, when Epicurus maintains a thing that is harder to believe, namely, that it is pleasant to be roasted in this way?
But the reply which I do make, is that there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it.
So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.
Vexation and pain and other inconveniences are of no consequence, for they are overcome by virtue. Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances, and wrongs; and wherever its radiance reaches, all lights which shine without the help of virtue are extinguished; and inconveniences, when they come in contact with virtue, play no more important a part than does a storm-cloud at sea.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
As with the previous claim on the equality of all the virtues, Seneca’s insistence that pleasure and pain do not determine the value of our lives will sound absurd to the modern ear. Once again, this is because we are so entrenched in an attitude of gratification, of reducing the human person to a merely appetitive animal. Break free from this presumption, and you escape from a slavery to the passions.
Seneca is neither excluding nor diminishing the role of the emotions, but he is rather explaining why the way we feel is to be guided by the way we understand. As an animal, it is natural for me to desire pleasure and to shun pain, and so I will prefer the one over the other. As a rational animal, it is for me to judge what is right from what is wrong, and to interpret my preferences through my conscience.
I will not say, with Epicurus, that pain can be pleasurable, though I will say that he who acts with virtue, whatever the situation, possesses the highest human good, and so embraces the greatest happiness. Here the Stoic stands with the Aristotelian in defining happiness as the act of living well, not simply as a pleasing sensation. We will all face our quotas of pleasure and pain, and the only thing that will make a difference is how we respond to them.
Once I alter the way I think, I then find that the way I feel is also transformed, slowly but surely. I may not enjoy an agony in the body, yet once I am aware of why it is right to surrender a certain comfort, I perceive a sort of satisfaction, what I can only call an inner peace, from having pursued the correct path. Such a feeling is no longer what I seek, and it is instead a natural consequence or a sign of what I seek, to live with decency. How silly of me to have confused the cause and the effect!
While I must resist the urge to get caught up in the scholarly details here, I do often think about how our particular choice of words reflects the subtleties in our intentions. I am wary of using “happy” as an emotional state, when it is really a moral activity, and I avoid treating “pleasure” and “pain” as if they were interchangeable with “good” and “bad”.
For that experience of fulfillment that accompanies trying to do right, I often call it “joy”, for lack of a better term, the Latin gaudium as distinct from voluptas. I struggle when Seneca uses gaudium in this letter to apparently mean pleasure of the lesser sort, but I hope that my principles are still in harmony with his; I attribute the problem to the limitations of my own vocabulary.
But enough of that! The deeper point is about recognizing the priority of conscience over concupiscence, and about discerning how insignificant a suffering in the body becomes in the face of an excellence in the soul. Certain things I once thought I could never live without have now become trivial to me, just as a candle holds nothing to the sun, and a hardship pales in comparison to a virtue.
As with the previous claim on the equality of all the virtues, Seneca’s insistence that pleasure and pain do not determine the value of our lives will sound absurd to the modern ear. Once again, this is because we are so entrenched in an attitude of gratification, of reducing the human person to a merely appetitive animal. Break free from this presumption, and you escape from a slavery to the passions.
Seneca is neither excluding nor diminishing the role of the emotions, but he is rather explaining why the way we feel is to be guided by the way we understand. As an animal, it is natural for me to desire pleasure and to shun pain, and so I will prefer the one over the other. As a rational animal, it is for me to judge what is right from what is wrong, and to interpret my preferences through my conscience.
I will not say, with Epicurus, that pain can be pleasurable, though I will say that he who acts with virtue, whatever the situation, possesses the highest human good, and so embraces the greatest happiness. Here the Stoic stands with the Aristotelian in defining happiness as the act of living well, not simply as a pleasing sensation. We will all face our quotas of pleasure and pain, and the only thing that will make a difference is how we respond to them.
Once I alter the way I think, I then find that the way I feel is also transformed, slowly but surely. I may not enjoy an agony in the body, yet once I am aware of why it is right to surrender a certain comfort, I perceive a sort of satisfaction, what I can only call an inner peace, from having pursued the correct path. Such a feeling is no longer what I seek, and it is instead a natural consequence or a sign of what I seek, to live with decency. How silly of me to have confused the cause and the effect!
While I must resist the urge to get caught up in the scholarly details here, I do often think about how our particular choice of words reflects the subtleties in our intentions. I am wary of using “happy” as an emotional state, when it is really a moral activity, and I avoid treating “pleasure” and “pain” as if they were interchangeable with “good” and “bad”.
For that experience of fulfillment that accompanies trying to do right, I often call it “joy”, for lack of a better term, the Latin gaudium as distinct from voluptas. I struggle when Seneca uses gaudium in this letter to apparently mean pleasure of the lesser sort, but I hope that my principles are still in harmony with his; I attribute the problem to the limitations of my own vocabulary.
But enough of that! The deeper point is about recognizing the priority of conscience over concupiscence, and about discerning how insignificant a suffering in the body becomes in the face of an excellence in the soul. Certain things I once thought I could never live without have now become trivial to me, just as a candle holds nothing to the sun, and a hardship pales in comparison to a virtue.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Pierre Woeiriot, The Bronze Bull of Phalaris (c. 1550)
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Stockdale on Stoicism 43
The old was the political prison routine mainly for dissenters and domestic enemies of the state. It was designed and run by old-fashioned Third-World Communists of the Ho Chi Minh cut. It revolved around the idea of "repentance" for "crimes" of anti-social behavior. American prisoners, street criminals, and domestic political enemies of the state were all in the same prison.
We never saw a "POW camp" like in the movies. The Communist jail was part psychiatric clinic and part reform school. North Vietnamese protocol called for making all their inmates demonstrate shame, bowing to all guards, heads low, never looking at the sky. It meant frequent sessions with your interrogator, if for no other reason than to check your attitude. And if judged "wrong," then you were maybe down the torture chute of confession of guilt, of apology, and then the inevitable payoff—the atonement.
The new regime, superimposed on the above, was for Americans only. It was a propaganda factory, supervised by young, English-speaking, bureaucratic army officers with quotas to fill, quotas set by the political arm of the government: press interviews with visiting left-wing Americans, propaganda films to shoot (starring intimidated people they called "American Air Pirates"), and so on.
—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison
Monday, April 22, 2024
Sayings of Ramakrishna 241
So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get Divine Illumination.
Forget all the worldly knowledge that you have acquired, and become as ignorant about it as a child, and then you will get the knowledge of the True.
IMAGE: Hugh Cameron, Buttercups and Daisies (1881)
_-_Buttercups_and_Daisies_-_NG_1763_-_National_Galleries_of_Scotland.jpg)
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.4
"What then," you say, "is there no difference between joy and unyielding endurance of pain?"
None at all, as regards the virtues themselves; very great, however, in the circumstances in which either of these two virtues is displayed. In the one case, there is a natural relaxation and loosening of the soul; in the other there is an unnatural pain.
Hence these circumstances, between which a great distinction can be drawn, belong to the category of indifferent things, but the virtue shown in each case is equal. Virtue is not changed by the matter with which it deals; if the matter is hard and stubborn, it does not make the virtue worse; if pleasant and joyous, it does not make it better.
Therefore, virtue necessarily remains equal. For, in each case, what is done is done with equal uprightness, with equal wisdom, and with equal honor. Hence the states of goodness involved are equal, and it is impossible for a man to transcend these states of goodness by conducting himself better, either the one man in his joy, or the other amid his suffering.
And two goods, neither of which can possibly be better, are equal. For if things which are extrinsic to virtue can either diminish or increase virtue, then that which is honorable ceases to be the only good. If you grant this, honor has wholly perished.
And why? Let me tell you: it is because no act is honorable that is done by an unwilling agent, that is compulsory. Every honorable act is voluntary. Alloy it with reluctance, complaints, cowardice, or fear, and it loses its best characteristic—self-approval.
That which is not free cannot be honorable; for fear means slavery. The honorable is wholly free from anxiety and is calm; if it ever objects, laments, or regards anything as an evil, it becomes subject to disturbance and begins to flounder about amid great confusion. For on one side the semblance of right calls to it, on the other the suspicion of evil drags it back.
Therefore, when a man is about to do something honorable, he should not regard any obstacles as evils, even though he regards them as inconvenient, but he should will to do the deed, and do it willingly. For every honorable act is done without commands or compulsion; it is unalloyed and contains no admixture of evil.
None at all, as regards the virtues themselves; very great, however, in the circumstances in which either of these two virtues is displayed. In the one case, there is a natural relaxation and loosening of the soul; in the other there is an unnatural pain.
Hence these circumstances, between which a great distinction can be drawn, belong to the category of indifferent things, but the virtue shown in each case is equal. Virtue is not changed by the matter with which it deals; if the matter is hard and stubborn, it does not make the virtue worse; if pleasant and joyous, it does not make it better.
Therefore, virtue necessarily remains equal. For, in each case, what is done is done with equal uprightness, with equal wisdom, and with equal honor. Hence the states of goodness involved are equal, and it is impossible for a man to transcend these states of goodness by conducting himself better, either the one man in his joy, or the other amid his suffering.
And two goods, neither of which can possibly be better, are equal. For if things which are extrinsic to virtue can either diminish or increase virtue, then that which is honorable ceases to be the only good. If you grant this, honor has wholly perished.
And why? Let me tell you: it is because no act is honorable that is done by an unwilling agent, that is compulsory. Every honorable act is voluntary. Alloy it with reluctance, complaints, cowardice, or fear, and it loses its best characteristic—self-approval.
That which is not free cannot be honorable; for fear means slavery. The honorable is wholly free from anxiety and is calm; if it ever objects, laments, or regards anything as an evil, it becomes subject to disturbance and begins to flounder about amid great confusion. For on one side the semblance of right calls to it, on the other the suspicion of evil drags it back.
Therefore, when a man is about to do something honorable, he should not regard any obstacles as evils, even though he regards them as inconvenient, but he should will to do the deed, and do it willingly. For every honorable act is done without commands or compulsion; it is unalloyed and contains no admixture of evil.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
This is the sort of passage that can only make sense in the context of a profound Stoic insight, that the human good depends in essence upon the excellence of our own thoughts and deeds, whatever the accidents of circumstance might be. Yet once this truth is grasped, one cannot help but undergo a remarkable transformation, a “Stoic Turn” of character, where the priorities of value are forever altered.
It may initially seem odd to say that all virtues are equal, when one man is being virtuous while playing with his children, and another man is being virtuous while resisting torture. Surely both men are good in kind, but is not the latter superior to the former in degree? The bearing of pain is seen to be so much nobler than finding rest in pleasure.
And yet we are failing to distinguish between the act itself, which proceeds from within, and the conditions for the act, which are offered from without. However different those circumstances, my choice to respond with integrity and conviction is always the same in merit, and so I have acted to the fullness of my humanity whenever and wherever I take my stand; I can’t make this any “more” virtuous, since it already perfects my nature at that time and place.
Yes, going for a walk is a mundane deed, and going to war is an extraordinary deed, and there is certainly a vast difference of degree in the weight of such events. Nevertheless, these acts share an identical inner dignity if they proceed from a knowledge of the true and a love of the good. It is high time I reevaluate my measure of the greater and the lesser, finding worth in the depth of my commitment rather than in the breadth of the setting.
This will seem quite ridiculous to some, though that is because they continue to define character by its trappings. The trick is to stop believing that bigger is always better, and to discover how the best is often to be found in the humblest of packages. The strength of conscience is the only benchmark, and the limit is reached when understanding and love are pure and simple.
While people will often speak of certain actions as being more or less important in this life, each choice, regardless of its sweep, expresses the totality of a particular person, and each choice is also equally necessary to the workings of the whole—the smallest nail is as significant as the mightiest king.
Like some highbrow historian, I can stack up all kinds of consequences to an action, and I can argue its effects on countless other lives. Still, the only thing that can make the action good or bad, virtuous or vicious, is the individual freedom with which it was done, and that makes a lowly herdsman on the Asian steppes as noteworthy as a Caesar or a Napoleon. Scholars should pay more attention to morality than to economics.
This is the sort of passage that can only make sense in the context of a profound Stoic insight, that the human good depends in essence upon the excellence of our own thoughts and deeds, whatever the accidents of circumstance might be. Yet once this truth is grasped, one cannot help but undergo a remarkable transformation, a “Stoic Turn” of character, where the priorities of value are forever altered.
It may initially seem odd to say that all virtues are equal, when one man is being virtuous while playing with his children, and another man is being virtuous while resisting torture. Surely both men are good in kind, but is not the latter superior to the former in degree? The bearing of pain is seen to be so much nobler than finding rest in pleasure.
And yet we are failing to distinguish between the act itself, which proceeds from within, and the conditions for the act, which are offered from without. However different those circumstances, my choice to respond with integrity and conviction is always the same in merit, and so I have acted to the fullness of my humanity whenever and wherever I take my stand; I can’t make this any “more” virtuous, since it already perfects my nature at that time and place.
Yes, going for a walk is a mundane deed, and going to war is an extraordinary deed, and there is certainly a vast difference of degree in the weight of such events. Nevertheless, these acts share an identical inner dignity if they proceed from a knowledge of the true and a love of the good. It is high time I reevaluate my measure of the greater and the lesser, finding worth in the depth of my commitment rather than in the breadth of the setting.
This will seem quite ridiculous to some, though that is because they continue to define character by its trappings. The trick is to stop believing that bigger is always better, and to discover how the best is often to be found in the humblest of packages. The strength of conscience is the only benchmark, and the limit is reached when understanding and love are pure and simple.
While people will often speak of certain actions as being more or less important in this life, each choice, regardless of its sweep, expresses the totality of a particular person, and each choice is also equally necessary to the workings of the whole—the smallest nail is as significant as the mightiest king.
Like some highbrow historian, I can stack up all kinds of consequences to an action, and I can argue its effects on countless other lives. Still, the only thing that can make the action good or bad, virtuous or vicious, is the individual freedom with which it was done, and that makes a lowly herdsman on the Asian steppes as noteworthy as a Caesar or a Napoleon. Scholars should pay more attention to morality than to economics.
I know an elderly woman who has spent the last thirty years in silent mourning for the loss of her husband. She showed me why this is no less of an achievement than enduring the brutal torture of Prometheus. There is the same nobility in both the common and the uncommon.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, Prometheus Bound (c. 1612)
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Stoic Snippets 237
And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled.
And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind.
And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, "Let my dear children live," and "Let all men praise whatever I may do," is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.35
Ralph Waldo Emerson 7
—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits
IMAGE: by James Gillray (1786)
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Dhammapada 371
Do not direct your thought to what gives pleasure, that you may not for your heedlessness have to swallow the red-hot iron ball in hell, and that you may not cry out when burning, "This is pain!"
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.3
Therefore, the power and the greatness of virtue cannot rise to greater heights, because increase is denied to that which is superlatively great. You will find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more temperate than that which is temperate. Every virtue is limitless; for limits depend upon definite measurements. Constancy cannot advance further, any more than fidelity, or truthfulness, or loyalty.
What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing, otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honor, also, permits of no addition; for it is honorable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned. What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.
The good, in every instance, is subject to these same laws. The advantage of the state and that of the individual are yoked together; indeed, it is as impossible to separate them as to separate the commendable from the desirable. Therefore, virtues are mutually equal; and so are the works of virtue, and all men who are so fortunate as to possess these virtues.
But, since the virtues of plants and of animals are perishable, they are also frail and fleeting and uncertain. They spring up, and they sink down again, and for this reason they are not rated at the same value; but to human virtues only one rule applies. For right reason is single and of but one kind. Nothing is more divine than the Divine, or more heavenly than the heavenly. Mortal things decay, fall, are worn out, grow up, are exhausted, and replenished. Hence, in their case, in view of the uncertainty of their lot, there is inequality; but of things Divine the nature is one. Reason, however, is nothing else than a portion of the divine spirit set in a human body.
If reason is Divine, and the good in no case lacks reason, then the good in every case is Divine. And furthermore, there is no distinction between things Divine; hence there is none between goods, either. Therefore, it follows that joy and a brave unyielding endurance of torture are equal goods; for in both there is the same greatness of soul relaxed and cheerful in the one case, in the other combative and braced for action.
What? Do you not think that the virtue of him who bravely storms the enemy's stronghold is equal to that of him who endures a siege with the utmost patience? Great is Scipio when he invests Numantia, and constrains and compels the hands of an enemy, whom he could not conquer, to resort to their own destruction. Great also are the souls of the defenders – men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty.
In like manner, the other virtues are also equal as compared with one another: tranquility, simplicity, generosity, constancy, equanimity, endurance. For underlying them all is a single virtue—that which renders the soul straight and unswerving.
What can be added to that which is perfect? Nothing, otherwise that was not perfect to which something has been added. Nor can anything be added to virtue, either, for if anything can be added thereto, it must have contained a defect. Honor, also, permits of no addition; for it is honorable because of the very qualities which I have mentioned. What then? Do you think that propriety, justice, lawfulness, do not also belong to the same type, and that they are kept within fixed limits? The ability to increase is proof that a thing is still imperfect.
The good, in every instance, is subject to these same laws. The advantage of the state and that of the individual are yoked together; indeed, it is as impossible to separate them as to separate the commendable from the desirable. Therefore, virtues are mutually equal; and so are the works of virtue, and all men who are so fortunate as to possess these virtues.
But, since the virtues of plants and of animals are perishable, they are also frail and fleeting and uncertain. They spring up, and they sink down again, and for this reason they are not rated at the same value; but to human virtues only one rule applies. For right reason is single and of but one kind. Nothing is more divine than the Divine, or more heavenly than the heavenly. Mortal things decay, fall, are worn out, grow up, are exhausted, and replenished. Hence, in their case, in view of the uncertainty of their lot, there is inequality; but of things Divine the nature is one. Reason, however, is nothing else than a portion of the divine spirit set in a human body.
If reason is Divine, and the good in no case lacks reason, then the good in every case is Divine. And furthermore, there is no distinction between things Divine; hence there is none between goods, either. Therefore, it follows that joy and a brave unyielding endurance of torture are equal goods; for in both there is the same greatness of soul relaxed and cheerful in the one case, in the other combative and braced for action.
What? Do you not think that the virtue of him who bravely storms the enemy's stronghold is equal to that of him who endures a siege with the utmost patience? Great is Scipio when he invests Numantia, and constrains and compels the hands of an enemy, whom he could not conquer, to resort to their own destruction. Great also are the souls of the defenders – men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty.
In like manner, the other virtues are also equal as compared with one another: tranquility, simplicity, generosity, constancy, equanimity, endurance. For underlying them all is a single virtue—that which renders the soul straight and unswerving.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
The problem with relativism is that while it claims to admit of degrees of more or less, it lacks a standard of an absolute by which to measure those very degrees. It would be much like trying to sell fresh meat and produce without the use of a scale, or, for that matter, without agreeing on a currency to pay for it.
We are similarly confused about the concept of perfection, for in our befuddlement we assume that it is impossible for anything to even approach an ideal, and so we settle for lazing about in bland mediocrity. I suggest it would best if we simply admitted our true motive, which is to have an excuse from the burden of responsibility, and thereby a license for indulgence.
If we are speaking of a perfection that encompasses all of being, and so admits of no absence whatsoever, then such a superiority can only be attributed to the infinite Divine. Yet each type of finite creature, with its own distinct identity, possesses its own particular perfection, which is the fulfillment of its nature, as but one part within the whole of Nature.
“Well, nobody’s perfect!” Distinguish. What hinders a man from being the most excellent man he can possibly be? Only his own judgements and actions. Given his freedom, he is indeed made with the power to fail, though such failures are themselves opportunities to continue making progress toward the goal. Providence has arranged it so that each step of becoming better is a slow but steady advancement to embracing the best.
In this way, it is within our reach to be virtuous, and hence to be happy, and this is what constitutes a human perfection. Do not confuse what is difficult with what is impossible, for the most difficult things are oftentimes the most important things. It is an encouraging compliment, and not a harsh insult, to remind someone of the incredible capacity for good already present within him.
Virtue, therefore, as action habitually in agreement with Nature, is the pinnacle of who we are. As such, nothing further can be added to virtue, as it performs everything necessary for achieving peace of mind, and anything lesser receives its value to us from the presence of an all-encompassing character. This is further true of honor, rightly understood as the due merit that follows from virtue, and it can indeed be said of all the things we call good in our lives.
Now even as all creatures are changeable and perishable, the powers of reason and will share more fully in the Divine, and thus they participate in a perfect unity, indicating how all effects are bound together by their cause. Accordingly, each human virtue is something like a reflection of the perfection and the simplicity of God. Any man of wisdom and humility knows how he was made in a certain image and likeness.
My religious friends will surely object here, because such an account seems to ignore the role of grace. I wish to remind them that reason and faith are not properly in conflict, and any discussion of what we ultimately believe in theology must be in harmony with what we first know from philosophy. The presence of any supernatural agency would never work against the natural virtues, but it would rather work with them; please remain open to the harmony of Athens and Jerusalem. I do not presume to prove the ways of Providence.
In any case, where the virtues are present within us, they are all of a one, and none of them are in themselves individually superior or inferior, because they are all expressions of the same human excellence. List the nine billion names of God, and you are still pointing to the same God; provide any tabulation of the virtues you wish, and the distinctions are but aspects of a single essence.
The problem with relativism is that while it claims to admit of degrees of more or less, it lacks a standard of an absolute by which to measure those very degrees. It would be much like trying to sell fresh meat and produce without the use of a scale, or, for that matter, without agreeing on a currency to pay for it.
We are similarly confused about the concept of perfection, for in our befuddlement we assume that it is impossible for anything to even approach an ideal, and so we settle for lazing about in bland mediocrity. I suggest it would best if we simply admitted our true motive, which is to have an excuse from the burden of responsibility, and thereby a license for indulgence.
If we are speaking of a perfection that encompasses all of being, and so admits of no absence whatsoever, then such a superiority can only be attributed to the infinite Divine. Yet each type of finite creature, with its own distinct identity, possesses its own particular perfection, which is the fulfillment of its nature, as but one part within the whole of Nature.
“Well, nobody’s perfect!” Distinguish. What hinders a man from being the most excellent man he can possibly be? Only his own judgements and actions. Given his freedom, he is indeed made with the power to fail, though such failures are themselves opportunities to continue making progress toward the goal. Providence has arranged it so that each step of becoming better is a slow but steady advancement to embracing the best.
In this way, it is within our reach to be virtuous, and hence to be happy, and this is what constitutes a human perfection. Do not confuse what is difficult with what is impossible, for the most difficult things are oftentimes the most important things. It is an encouraging compliment, and not a harsh insult, to remind someone of the incredible capacity for good already present within him.
Virtue, therefore, as action habitually in agreement with Nature, is the pinnacle of who we are. As such, nothing further can be added to virtue, as it performs everything necessary for achieving peace of mind, and anything lesser receives its value to us from the presence of an all-encompassing character. This is further true of honor, rightly understood as the due merit that follows from virtue, and it can indeed be said of all the things we call good in our lives.
Now even as all creatures are changeable and perishable, the powers of reason and will share more fully in the Divine, and thus they participate in a perfect unity, indicating how all effects are bound together by their cause. Accordingly, each human virtue is something like a reflection of the perfection and the simplicity of God. Any man of wisdom and humility knows how he was made in a certain image and likeness.
My religious friends will surely object here, because such an account seems to ignore the role of grace. I wish to remind them that reason and faith are not properly in conflict, and any discussion of what we ultimately believe in theology must be in harmony with what we first know from philosophy. The presence of any supernatural agency would never work against the natural virtues, but it would rather work with them; please remain open to the harmony of Athens and Jerusalem. I do not presume to prove the ways of Providence.
In any case, where the virtues are present within us, they are all of a one, and none of them are in themselves individually superior or inferior, because they are all expressions of the same human excellence. List the nine billion names of God, and you are still pointing to the same God; provide any tabulation of the virtues you wish, and the distinctions are but aspects of a single essence.
Finally, the presence of virtue in one need never be at the expense of virtue in another. Since happiness is in what we do, not in what is done to us, every person on Earth can live well—there is more than enough to go around for all of us. By extension, the good for the individual and for society as a whole are also naturally in harmony, and both the Roman and the Numantian can leave this world assured that they fought with integrity, whichever side of a war they happened to be on. Anything else is an illusion begotten of needless divisions.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Robinet Testard, The Cardinal Virtues (c. 1510)
Friday, April 19, 2024
The Basel Dance of Death 4
Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Empress (1616)
"I dance before you, Lady Empress,
Dance after me, the dance is mine.
Your courtiers have left you,
Death has here snuck upon you as well."
Dance after me, the dance is mine.
Your courtiers have left you,
Death has here snuck upon you as well."
"My proud body had much pleasure,
I lived as an emperor's wife.
Now I am forced to this dance.
All spirit and joy have been taken from me."
I lived as an emperor's wife.
Now I am forced to this dance.
All spirit and joy have been taken from me."
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Sayings of Publilius Syrus 143
Avoid the sweet which is likely to become bitter.
IMAGE: Adriaen Brouwer, The Bitter Draught (c. 1635)
Seneca, Moral Letters 66.2
Now, though Claranus and I have spent very few days together, we have nevertheless had many conversations, which I will at once pour forth and pass on to you.
The first day we investigated this problem: how can goods be equal if they are of three kinds?
For certain of them, according to our philosophical tenets, are primary, such as joy, peace, and the welfare of one's country.
Others are of the second order, molded in an unhappy material, such as the endurance of suffering, and self-control during severe illness. We shall pray outright for the goods of the first class; for the second class we shall pray only if the need shall arise.
There is still a third variety, as, for example, a modest gait, a calm and honest countenance, and a bearing that suits the man of wisdom. Now how can these things be equal when we compare them, if you grant that we ought to pray for the one and avoid the other?
If we would make distinctions among them, we had better return to the First Good, and consider what its nature is: the soul that gazes upon truth, that is skilled in what should be sought and what should be avoided, establishing standards of value not according to opinion, but according to nature—the soul that penetrates the whole world and directs its contemplating gaze upon all its phenomena, paying strict attention to thoughts and actions, equally great and forceful, superior alike to hardships and blandishments, yielding itself to neither extreme of fortune, rising above all blessings and tribulations, absolutely beautiful, perfectly equipped with grace as well as with strength, healthy and sinewy, unruffled, undismayed, one which no violence can shatter, one which acts of chance can neither exalt nor depress—a soul like this is virtue itself.
There you have its outward appearance, if it should ever come under a single view and show itself once in all its completeness. But there are many aspects of it. They unfold themselves according as life varies and as actions differ; but virtue itself does not become less or greater.
For the Supreme Good cannot diminish, nor may virtue retrograde; rather is it transformed, now into one quality and now into another, shaping itself according to the part which it is to play. Whatever it has touched it brings into likeness with itself, and dyes with its own color. It adorns our actions, our friendships, and sometimes entire households which it has entered and set in order. Whatever it has handled it forthwith makes lovable, notable, admirable.
The first day we investigated this problem: how can goods be equal if they are of three kinds?
For certain of them, according to our philosophical tenets, are primary, such as joy, peace, and the welfare of one's country.
Others are of the second order, molded in an unhappy material, such as the endurance of suffering, and self-control during severe illness. We shall pray outright for the goods of the first class; for the second class we shall pray only if the need shall arise.
There is still a third variety, as, for example, a modest gait, a calm and honest countenance, and a bearing that suits the man of wisdom. Now how can these things be equal when we compare them, if you grant that we ought to pray for the one and avoid the other?
If we would make distinctions among them, we had better return to the First Good, and consider what its nature is: the soul that gazes upon truth, that is skilled in what should be sought and what should be avoided, establishing standards of value not according to opinion, but according to nature—the soul that penetrates the whole world and directs its contemplating gaze upon all its phenomena, paying strict attention to thoughts and actions, equally great and forceful, superior alike to hardships and blandishments, yielding itself to neither extreme of fortune, rising above all blessings and tribulations, absolutely beautiful, perfectly equipped with grace as well as with strength, healthy and sinewy, unruffled, undismayed, one which no violence can shatter, one which acts of chance can neither exalt nor depress—a soul like this is virtue itself.
There you have its outward appearance, if it should ever come under a single view and show itself once in all its completeness. But there are many aspects of it. They unfold themselves according as life varies and as actions differ; but virtue itself does not become less or greater.
For the Supreme Good cannot diminish, nor may virtue retrograde; rather is it transformed, now into one quality and now into another, shaping itself according to the part which it is to play. Whatever it has touched it brings into likeness with itself, and dyes with its own color. It adorns our actions, our friendships, and sometimes entire households which it has entered and set in order. Whatever it has handled it forthwith makes lovable, notable, admirable.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 66
People will often say they wish to do the “good” or the “right” thing, vaguely accepting it as some sort of highest human standard, and yet they then attach so many conditions and exceptions to it that the very concept becomes meaningless. The moral relativism so especially in fashion these days isn’t really a coherent theory at all, since it is grounded in a contradiction, but it is rather a practical consequence of foolishly assuming the premise that the beneficial is only to be found in whatever happens to be convenient or gratifying at the moment.
Or, as Plato would put it, we believe something to be good because it is subjectively desirable, not that something is desirable because it is objectively good. This is one of those contrasts we must come to terms with if we wish to procced in life, and which side we end up on will make a world of difference.
Now while philosophers do like to distinguish and categorize, this should not deter us from embracing the good as being supremely one. While it expresses itself in many aspects and manifestations, that which is the fulfillment of a nature is also that which binds it together and grants its highest purpose. It is not subject to any other ends, and it may not be compromised for any further gains. The good is the absolute measure of human action, and it cannot be relative to what is inferior.
The three “classes” of good things, as often presented by the Stoics, are hardly a dilution of this integrity, and they simply distinguish between different layers, so to speak, of application.
First is virtue itself, and the happiness it brings, which is the innate perfection of any creature endowed with reason and will. It is inherently good for a man to find joy in being prudent, brave, temperate, and just.
Second is the presence of hardship, which is certainly not in itself a good, but does become good when it is transformed into a means for the exercise of the virtues. It is consequently good for a man to bear sickness, or poverty, or contempt if this practice strengthens his character.
Third is the presence of certain attractive qualities, which are properly matters to which we should be indifferent, however much we may prefer them. We speak of them as being good if they happen to accompany or reflect an inner nobility, though they can just as easily appear in the company of vice.
I often turn to the passage where Seneca describes the First Good, as it combines a profound meaning with a noble style. When I wish to describe the sort of person I admire the most, and the sort of person I yearn to be, these words embody what is best about us, and encourage me to find what is great in our condition, however sullied it may seem during the darker times.
While the good proclaims itself in many ways, and under wildly varying accidents, it stands firm as always being one and the same. The good does not admit to degrees, for it is complete and self-sufficient, even as its instances can admit of containing more or less. The good cannot be added too, and it cannot be reduced, for in its perfection it is purely simple. As that which is preeminent in human nature, it bows to nothing but the Divine from which it springs.
The Stoics regularly speak of the way the totality of Nature is constantly being transformed, while the Logos that guides it remains firm and constant. So it is with the virtue within us, and the countless ways we are called to practice it.
People will often say they wish to do the “good” or the “right” thing, vaguely accepting it as some sort of highest human standard, and yet they then attach so many conditions and exceptions to it that the very concept becomes meaningless. The moral relativism so especially in fashion these days isn’t really a coherent theory at all, since it is grounded in a contradiction, but it is rather a practical consequence of foolishly assuming the premise that the beneficial is only to be found in whatever happens to be convenient or gratifying at the moment.
Or, as Plato would put it, we believe something to be good because it is subjectively desirable, not that something is desirable because it is objectively good. This is one of those contrasts we must come to terms with if we wish to procced in life, and which side we end up on will make a world of difference.
Now while philosophers do like to distinguish and categorize, this should not deter us from embracing the good as being supremely one. While it expresses itself in many aspects and manifestations, that which is the fulfillment of a nature is also that which binds it together and grants its highest purpose. It is not subject to any other ends, and it may not be compromised for any further gains. The good is the absolute measure of human action, and it cannot be relative to what is inferior.
The three “classes” of good things, as often presented by the Stoics, are hardly a dilution of this integrity, and they simply distinguish between different layers, so to speak, of application.
First is virtue itself, and the happiness it brings, which is the innate perfection of any creature endowed with reason and will. It is inherently good for a man to find joy in being prudent, brave, temperate, and just.
Second is the presence of hardship, which is certainly not in itself a good, but does become good when it is transformed into a means for the exercise of the virtues. It is consequently good for a man to bear sickness, or poverty, or contempt if this practice strengthens his character.
Third is the presence of certain attractive qualities, which are properly matters to which we should be indifferent, however much we may prefer them. We speak of them as being good if they happen to accompany or reflect an inner nobility, though they can just as easily appear in the company of vice.
I often turn to the passage where Seneca describes the First Good, as it combines a profound meaning with a noble style. When I wish to describe the sort of person I admire the most, and the sort of person I yearn to be, these words embody what is best about us, and encourage me to find what is great in our condition, however sullied it may seem during the darker times.
While the good proclaims itself in many ways, and under wildly varying accidents, it stands firm as always being one and the same. The good does not admit to degrees, for it is complete and self-sufficient, even as its instances can admit of containing more or less. The good cannot be added too, and it cannot be reduced, for in its perfection it is purely simple. As that which is preeminent in human nature, it bows to nothing but the Divine from which it springs.
The Stoics regularly speak of the way the totality of Nature is constantly being transformed, while the Logos that guides it remains firm and constant. So it is with the virtue within us, and the countless ways we are called to practice it.
—Reflection written in 7/2013
IMAGE: Andrea Mantegna, Triumph of the Virtues (1502)
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