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Authors: Morton Hunt
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metaphysical rather than the psychological implications of the dichotomy.
The Skeptics
The Skeptics based their ethical system on the familiar doctrine that we cannot be sure our senses correctly report reality, which they took farther than their precursors. Pyrrho (360–270), the founder of the school, held that it is not only impossible to know whether our perceptions are truthful but equally impossible to find rational ground for preferring one course of action to any other. Such skepticism was useful in those times; if nothing was provably wrong, one could legitimately accept the customs or religion of whoever was in power. 5 The philosopher Arcesilaus took the final step, carrying Pyrrho’s skepticism to the ultimate with his mind-numbing apothegm “Nothing is certain, not even this.” 6 The Skeptics, in effect, reduced psychology to the systematic doubt of all thought.
The Stoics
Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium (336–264), based its ethical system on a psychological concept long familiar in Greek thought, namely, that one could achieve tranquillity through control of the emotions. The good life, Zeno held, was one in which the mind is in total control, enabling the individual to feel as little emotion as possible and thereby immunizing himself against suffering. 7 Even desire and pleasure were to be avoided, since they render us vulnerable. 8
His followers stressed that such mastery of the passions requires the exercise of the will; they echoed Plato’s view that the will carries out the directives of reason over the urgings of desire. But this created a problem for the Stoics. They believed, with Democritus, that the universe was made of atoms that operated according to inviolate physical laws, a concept that seemed to leave no room for free will. To solve or at least sidestep the difficulty, they argued that God cannot be constrained by the laws of the universe and so must have free will; and since the soul of each human being is a bit of God, it too must possess the power to act freely. 9 This hypothesis, which obviously can be neither proved nor disproved, was to create one of the most intractable problems of psychology.
Roman Borrowers
As the eastern Mediterranean world was sinking into decadence and lethargy, Rome was becoming ever more vital and aggressive. But even as it conquered the eastern Mediterranean, it was itself conquered by Hellenistic culture. The Romans, empire builders but not innovators, administrators but not thinkers, adopted Greek styles of literature, architecture, sculpture, religion, and philosophy. Between the second century B.C. and the second century A.D. , Rome expanded until, in Gibbon’s words, it “comprehended the fairest part of earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind,” but in all that time it remained a cultural parasite of Greece. As Bertrand Russell says in his
History of Western Philosophy
, “The Romans invented no art forms, constructed no original system of philosophy, and made no scientific discoveries. They made good roads, systematic legal codes, and efficient armies; for the rest they looked to Greece.” 10
But in philosophy they copied the Greeks very selectively. Preoccupiedwith military conquest, the management of subjugated territories, the control of slaves and proletarians, and other practical matters, they had no use for the higher flights of Greek philosophic fancy; all they borrowed from Aristotle, for instance, was his logic. By and large they considered the proper sphere of philosophy to be the promulgation of rules for living wisely amid the uncertainties of life.
Lucretius
Epicureanism, therefore, appealed to certain Romans. Lucretius, a contemporary of Julius Caesar’s, expounded the doctrines of Epicurus in his roundup of science, a long poem titled
On the Nature of Things.
The rational and passive ethics he set forth there did not appeal to the avaricious, aggressive rulers of the Republic but it did to Roman aristocrats, most
The Skeptics
The Skeptics based their ethical system on the familiar doctrine that we cannot be sure our senses correctly report reality, which they took farther than their precursors. Pyrrho (360–270), the founder of the school, held that it is not only impossible to know whether our perceptions are truthful but equally impossible to find rational ground for preferring one course of action to any other. Such skepticism was useful in those times; if nothing was provably wrong, one could legitimately accept the customs or religion of whoever was in power. 5 The philosopher Arcesilaus took the final step, carrying Pyrrho’s skepticism to the ultimate with his mind-numbing apothegm “Nothing is certain, not even this.” 6 The Skeptics, in effect, reduced psychology to the systematic doubt of all thought.
The Stoics
Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium (336–264), based its ethical system on a psychological concept long familiar in Greek thought, namely, that one could achieve tranquillity through control of the emotions. The good life, Zeno held, was one in which the mind is in total control, enabling the individual to feel as little emotion as possible and thereby immunizing himself against suffering. 7 Even desire and pleasure were to be avoided, since they render us vulnerable. 8
His followers stressed that such mastery of the passions requires the exercise of the will; they echoed Plato’s view that the will carries out the directives of reason over the urgings of desire. But this created a problem for the Stoics. They believed, with Democritus, that the universe was made of atoms that operated according to inviolate physical laws, a concept that seemed to leave no room for free will. To solve or at least sidestep the difficulty, they argued that God cannot be constrained by the laws of the universe and so must have free will; and since the soul of each human being is a bit of God, it too must possess the power to act freely. 9 This hypothesis, which obviously can be neither proved nor disproved, was to create one of the most intractable problems of psychology.
Roman Borrowers
As the eastern Mediterranean world was sinking into decadence and lethargy, Rome was becoming ever more vital and aggressive. But even as it conquered the eastern Mediterranean, it was itself conquered by Hellenistic culture. The Romans, empire builders but not innovators, administrators but not thinkers, adopted Greek styles of literature, architecture, sculpture, religion, and philosophy. Between the second century B.C. and the second century A.D. , Rome expanded until, in Gibbon’s words, it “comprehended the fairest part of earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind,” but in all that time it remained a cultural parasite of Greece. As Bertrand Russell says in his
History of Western Philosophy
, “The Romans invented no art forms, constructed no original system of philosophy, and made no scientific discoveries. They made good roads, systematic legal codes, and efficient armies; for the rest they looked to Greece.” 10
But in philosophy they copied the Greeks very selectively. Preoccupiedwith military conquest, the management of subjugated territories, the control of slaves and proletarians, and other practical matters, they had no use for the higher flights of Greek philosophic fancy; all they borrowed from Aristotle, for instance, was his logic. By and large they considered the proper sphere of philosophy to be the promulgation of rules for living wisely amid the uncertainties of life.
Lucretius
Epicureanism, therefore, appealed to certain Romans. Lucretius, a contemporary of Julius Caesar’s, expounded the doctrines of Epicurus in his roundup of science, a long poem titled
On the Nature of Things.
The rational and passive ethics he set forth there did not appeal to the avaricious, aggressive rulers of the Republic but it did to Roman aristocrats, most
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