It ought to be said that Aristotle does not present the formula
just discussed as supplying a criterion of good conduct in any
particular case; he expressly leaves this to be determined by
“correct reasoning, and the judgment of the practically-wise
man (ὁ φρόνιμος).” We cannot, however, find that he has
furnished any substantial principles for its determination;
indeed, he hardly seems to have formed a distinct general idea
of the practical syllogism by which he conceives it to be effected.[1]
The kind of reasoning which his view of virtuous conduct requires
is one in which the ultimate major premise states a distinctive
characteristic of some virtue, and one or more minor premises
show that such characteristic belongs to a certain mode of conduct
under given circumstances; since it is essential to good
conduct that it should contain its end in itself, and be chosen
for its own sake. But he has not failed to observe that practical
reasonings are not commonly of this kind, but are rather concerned
with actions as means to ulterior ends; indeed, he lays
stress on this as a characteristic of the “political” life, when he
wishes to prove its inferiority to the life of pure speculation.
Though common sense will admit that virtues are the best of
goods, it still undoubtedly conceives practical wisdom as chiefly
exercised in providing those inferior goods which Aristotle,
after recognizing the need or use of them for the realization of
human well-being, has dropped out of sight; and the result is
that, in trying to make clear his conception of practical wisdom,
we find ourselves fluctuating continually between the common
notion, which he does not distinctly reject, and the notion
required as the keystone of his ethical system.
On the whole, there is probably no treatise so masterly as Aristotle’s Ethics, and containing so much close and valid thought, that yet leaves on the reader’s mind so strong an impression of dispersive and incomplete work. It is only by dwelling on these defects that we can Transition to Stoicism. understand the small amount of influence that his system exercised during the five centuries after his death, as compared with the effect which it has had, directly or indirectly, in shaping the thought of modern Europe. Partly, no doubt, the limited influence of his disciples, the Peripatetics (q.v.), is to be attributed to that exaltation of the purely speculative life which distinguished the Aristotelian ethics from other later systems, and which was too alien from the common moral consciousness to find much acceptance in an age in which the ethical aims of philosophy had again become paramount. Partly, again, the analytical distinctness of Aristotle’s manner brings into special prominence the difficulties that attend the Socratic effort to reconcile the ideal aspirations of men with the principles on which their practical reasonings are commonly conducted. The conflict between these two elements of Common Sense was too profound to be compromised; and the moral consciousness of mankind demanded a more trenchant partisanship than Aristotle’s. Its demands were met by the Stoic school which separated the moral from the worldly view of life, with an absoluteness and definiteness that caught the imagination; which regarded practical goodness as the highest manifestation of its ideal of wisdom; and which bound the common notions of duty into an apparently coherent system, by a formula that comprehended the whole of human life, and exhibited its relation to the ordered process of the universe. The intellectual descent of its ethical doctrines is principally to be traced to Socrates through the Cynics, though an important element in them seems attributable to the school that inherited the “Academy” of Plato. Both Stoic and Cynic maintained, in its sharpest form, the fundamental tenet that the practical knowledge which is virtue, with the condition of soul that is inseparable from it, is alone to be accounted good. He who exercises this wisdom or knowledge has complete well-being; all else is indifferent to
him. It is true that the Cynics were more concerned to emphasize the negative side of the sage’s well-being, while the Stoics brought into more prominence its positive side. This difference, however, did not amount to disagreement. The Stoics, in fact, seem generally to have regarded the eccentricities of Cynicism as an emphatic manner of expressing the essential antithesis between philosophy and the world; a manner which, though not necessary or even normal, might yet be advantageously adopted by the sage under certain circumstances.[2]
Wherein, then, consists this knowledge or wisdom that makes free and perfect? Both Cynics and Stoics (q.v.) agreed that the most important part of it was the knowledge that the sole good of man lay in this knowledge or wisdom itself. It must be understood that by wisdom they meant Stoicism. wisdom realized in act; indeed, they did not conceive the existence of wisdom as separable from such realization. We may observe, too, that the Stoics rejected the divergence which we have seen gradually taking place in Platonic-Aristotelian thought from the position of Socrates, “that no one aims at what he knows to be bad.” The stress that their psychology laid on the essential unity of the rational self that is the source of voluntary action prevented them from accepting Plato’s analysis of the soul into a regulative element and elements needing regulation. They held that what we call passion is a morbid condition of the rational soul, involving erroneous judgment as to what is to be sought or shunned. From such passionate errors the truly wise man will of course be free. He will be conscious indeed of physical appetite; but he will not be misled into supposing that its object is really a good; he cannot, therefore, hope for the attainment of this object or fear to miss it, as these states involve the conception of it as a good. Similarly, though like other men he will be subject to bodily pain, this will not cause him mental grief or disquiet, as his worst agonies will not disturb his clear conviction that it is really indifferent to his true reasonable self.
That this impassive sage was a being not to be found among living men the later Stoics at least were fully aware. They faintly suggested that one or two moral heroes of old time might have realized the ideal, but they admitted that all other philosophers (even) were merely in a state of progress towards it. This admission did not in the least diminish the rigour of their demand for absolute loyalty to the exclusive claims of wisdom. The assurance of its own unique value that such wisdom involved they held to be an abiding possession for those who had attained it;[3] and without this assurance no act could be truly wise or virtuous. Whatever was not of knowledge was of sin; and the distinction between right and wrong being absolute and not admitting of degrees all sins were equally sinful; whoever broke the least commandment was guilty of the whole law. Similarly, all wisdom was somehow involved in any one of the manifestations of wisdom, commonly distinguished as particular virtues; though whether these virtues were specifically distinct, or only the same knowledge in different relations, was a subtle question on which the Stoics do not seem to have been agreed.
Aristotle had already been led to attempt a refutation of the Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge; but his attempt had only shown the profound difficulty of attacking the paradox, so long as it was admitted that no one could of deliberate purpose act contrary to what seemed to him best. Now, Aristotle’s divergence from Socrates had not led him so far as to deny this; while for the Stoics who had receded to the original Socratic position, the difficulty was still more patent. This theory of virtue led them into two dilemmas. Firstly, if virtue is knowledge, does it follow that vice is involuntary? If not, it must be that ignorance is voluntary. This alternative is the less dangerous to morality, and as such the Stoics chose it. But they were
- ↑ There is a certain difficulty in discussing Aristotle’s views on the subject of practical wisdom, and the relation of the intellect to moral action, since it is most probable that the only accounts that we have of these views are not part of the genuine writings of Aristotle. Still books vi. and vii. of the Nicomachean Ethics contain no doubt as pure Aristotelian doctrine as a disciple could give, and appear to supply a sufficient foundation for the general criticism expressed in the text.
- ↑ It has been suggestively said that Cynicism was to Stoicism what monasticism was to early Christianity. The analogy, however, must not be pressed too far, since orthodox Stoics do not ever seem to have regarded Cynicism as the more perfect way.
- ↑ The Stoics were not quite agreed as to the immutability of virtue, but they were agreed that, when once possessed, it could only be lost through the loss of reason itself.
