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Seneca’s treatise On Benefits is the sole surviving representative of a long tradition of Stoic thought on the act of kindness (euergēsia), that is, gift-giving or the supererogatory favor. The work is rich in philosophical content. Favors (beneficia or benefits) are defined strictly in terms of intent, in such a way that the will of the giver becomes interdependent with the receiver’s willingness to reciprocate. In unpacking this definition, the Stoic author finds it necessary to speak not only about the theory of action but also about the observable effects of action, since enacted benefits impose different obligations on the recipient. Moreover, the assessment of motives and the expectation of gratitude create an intersubjectivity of giver and receiver that is revealing for Stoic ideas of friendship. Finally, Seneca takes a strong position on the autonomy even of benefactors who are unable to act otherwise, such as divine givers and entirely virtuous human agents, with implications for questions of volition and freedom.
The chapter studies the several accounts of the wise person’s joy that are found in Seneca’s works, arguing that these can give insight into his working methods as a philosopher. Seneca is clearly invested in the idea that the fulfillment of one’s rational nature would result in a life filled with joy, the virtuous counterpart to the problematic pleasure or delight of ordinary agents. Yet his explanations of how wise joy relates to objects of value are interestingly dissimilar, reflecting different views of the phenomenology of joy, the nature of its objects, and its dependence on social interactions. Graver argues that these discrepancies reflect a tendency to preserve ideas found in his various reading materials without attempting to impose a system, and, further, that the Stoic tradition itself must have had room for divergences of view concerning some specifics of moral psychology, as long as core principles were maintained.
Chapter 4 is an in-depth study of Seneca’s handling of Epicurean material throughout his philosophical writings. It is primarily because of his interest in Epicurus that Seneca in the past was sometimes labeled an “eclectic” philosopher. In reality, he is implacably hostile to the philosophical doctrines of Epicureanism, from atomism and the idleness of the gods to the pleasure principle and the utilitarian basis of friendship and justice. In the Letters on Ethics, however, he signals receptivity to some of Epicurus’s therapeutic strategies, where he finds them psychologically plausible. These strategies include the use of maxims in teaching and certain arguments against the fear of death and of bodily pain. Seneca is able to adapt these to his own purposes without sacrificing his own Stoic principles.
Ego-documents offer a different perspective on the bilious rhetoric that fills the pamphlets and sermons which constitute the normative sources for enmity in this period. Interior self-examination is rare, but writers betrayed their sentiments when they commented on an event or recorded matters for a moral or satirical purpose. The different purposes in writing, the distance between self-reflection and social reality, the style of a text and how it changes over time are themselves as significant as the content in exploring the enmity through the lens of ego-documents. The subject is a vast one. It limits itself to considering personal reflections about public enemies; the varieties of emotions that writers negotiated when describing their enmities; the experience of civil conflict and fashion for stoicism in the seventeenth century; family breakdown; and, finally, through the lens of a particular manuscript diary, it shows how the emergence of new social identities around 1700 changed the perception of enmity.
The chapter reviews the essentials of Seneca’s positions in moral psychology as compared to those of earlier Stoics whose works he might have studied. On the material nature of the mind (or soul); on the mechanisms of thought, belief, and action; and on the nature and management of the emotions, Seneca’s views are consonant with those of his Stoic predecessors; however, his knowledge of the system is not necessarily complete, and his emphases are sometimes different. Thus, he shows some awareness of earlier discussions of phantasia (impressions) but does not explore the topic deeply; on the other hand, he gives assent and impulse the same kind of significance in ethics as Chrysippus had. Contrary to some earlier studies, this chapter does not find Seneca to be innovative as concerns volition (voluntas) or the will. Likewise, his analysis of the emotions and of involuntary emotional response finds parallel in earlier texts. For the good emotions (eupatheiai) of the Stoic sage, he seems to know only that part of the analysis that concerns joy, to which he assigns an important role in his own ethics.
The modern cosmopolitan ideal is often associated to the Enlightenment, but it is important to understand it early modern genealogy, because it defines many of its intellectual possibilities and contradictions, and there was no simple intellectual thread from the Stoic ideal of world citizenship to Kant. The Renaissance cosmopolitan tradition was historically conditioned by the consolidation of political and religious divisions within Europe and by growing colonial rivalries, notwithstanding the existence of a common cultural horizon – humanist and Christian - that supported the pursuit of peace. This cultural horizon compensated for those divisions and rivalries in two ways: with a transnational ideal of travel and learning within Europe, and through an ideal of global commerce that assumed the moral unity of mankind. The chapter emphasizes the impact of travel writing in shaping perceptions of cultural diversity and argues that the definition of human nature through empirical diversity is distinctive of European cosmopolitanism, despite some scepticism about the capacity of human reason to reach a universal moral understanding in all circumstances. However, this focus on describing and explaining empirical diversity opened a paradox never fully resolved: whether the "universal spirit" of the cosmopolitan ethos was not inevitably tied to a particular notion of civilization, or even, at a deeper level, to some particular language and cultural system at the expense of others. In this respect, early modern cosmopolitanism was inevitably hierarchical: internally biased towards urban elites with the kind of education and experience that allowed them to participate in the Republic of Letters, and externally associated with a new idea of polite civilization whose values and institutions were often culturally specific. In this process, the role of non-European cultures as partakers of universal values was increasingly (and perhaps unnecessarily) marginalized.
Seneca stands apart from other philosophers of Greece and Rome not only for his interest in practical ethics, but also for the beauty and liveliness of his writing. These twelve in-depth essays take up a series of interrelated topics in his works, from his relation to Stoicism, Epicureanism, and other schools of thought; to the psychology of emotion and action and the management of anger and grief; to letter-writing, gift-giving, friendship, and kindness; to Seneca's innovative use of genre, style, and humor. Recalling Socrates's critique of philosophical writing in Plato's Phaedrus, this volume gives particular attention to Seneca's ideas about the techniques of reading, writing, and study that make philosophy beneficial to the individual and to society. Clear explanations and careful translations make the volume accessible to a wide range of readers.
Recent theorizing about cosmopolitanism has emphasized the need to embrace diversity as a constituent element informing the shared value of cosmopolitanism. This development suggests the need for an alternative genealogy from received accounts which typically trace cosmopolitanism from the Stoics through Kant, on the premise of moral continuities and consensus. My chapter explores the work of John Locke and his engagement with scepticism as a different way of encountering diversity with implications for a reimagined cosmopolitanism. But Locke’s inheritance is not straightforward and presents as many dilemmas as solutions to the challenge of reconciling difference with universal commitments. His acceptance, at some level, of diversity is not the prelude to an expression of human solidarity, framed around a nascent cosmopolitan ideal. Locke’s ultimate pessimism on these matters is a reminder of the difficulties involved in the contemporary project of accommodating divergent philosophical forces.
There is a tension in military culture between the growing acceptance of moral injury and an idealized view of Stoicism that leaves little room for the guilt and shame, mercy and forgiveness characteristic of moral injury and repair. Does that emotion-lean view do justice to ancient Stoic doctrine? I argue that it does not. The emotions of the Stoic moral aspirant, such as shame and moral distress, bear striking similarities to the negative self-reactive attitudes that P.F. Strawson famously discusses. Notions of mercy and forgiveness speak to the positive reactive attitudes. I develop my argument by turning to Seneca’s essay, On Mercy and his play, the Trojan Woman. Mercy, Seneca insists, makes good on the gentler side of Stoicism. Learning from the mercy others show us, and that we would show them, is one way that soldiers can begin to show mercy towards themselves.
Συνɛίδησις is a relatively rare word, but a favourite for Paul, whose undisputed texts contain nearly half of its New Testament occurrences. In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars debated the origin of the substantive and the possibility of Stoic influence, which led to a consensus that the term was not a technical philosophical one and Paul's use was not affected by Stoic thought. There is evidence, though, that the presence of συνɛίδησις in a few Stoic texts is due to its semantic relationship in Stoic discourse with συναίσθησις, the Stoic term for self-perception, which was a key component in their epistemological and ethical theory. This article argues that a reading of Paul's use of συνɛίδησις as Stoic self-perception explains the distinctive features of his use to which scholars have recently drawn attention, namely, the permanent and continuous operation of the συνɛίδησις, its ability to be passively impacted by the actions of others and the neutral or positive content of its reflexive knowledge. After a review of recent scholarship, I discuss the role of συναίσθησις in Stoic theory and the evidence for its semantic relationship to συνɛίδησις, then offer a reading of 1 Cor 8–10 demonstrating Paul's use of συνɛίδησις as self-perception.
Mikhal Oklot surveys the hazards of imposing philosophical readings on Chekhov while also probing his engagement with specific philosophical traditions – Stoicism, Cynicism, materialism – and the distinct resonance of his moral perspective with such figures as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and especially Schopenhauer as a key interlocutor and influence.
This chapter shows how competing notions of care shape ethical, political, and amorous life in Shakespearean drama. If care is a virtue, it seems unique among other classically recognized virtues such as courage, justice, and temperance, in that care is more ubiquitous as a feature of normative life and yet less conceptually distinct. While sometimes appearing as a virtue in itself — or as a precondition to the sharpening of any particular virtue — care just as often shows up in Shakespeare’s plays as a demanding expenditure of psychosomatic energies that shades into anxious worry or self-consuming attachments. This chapter in turn illustrates how ancient Greek and Roman virtue ethics inform Shakespeare’s articulations of care as an innate and omnipresent facet of human experience, which can benefit self and others but in its extreme forms also weigh upon body and soul to cause harm. Despite cultivating skepticism concerning our human abilities to know and to exercise the virtues of care, Shakespearean drama also stages encounters with care in its rarest guise: as a benefit that alleviates forms of suffering or distress to which human life is invariably susceptible, and which cultivates our capacities for virtue.
Stoic virtue relies on the judgment of internal impressions. This aesthetic and ethical process echoes Shakespeare’s theatrical art, which frequently focuses on its own artifice and capacity to affect reality. While early modern dramatists frequently mocked Stoicism as stuffy and impractical, a closer look at fundamental texts by Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius reveals their interest not in attaining perfect sagacity but instead in the day-to-day reality of attempting to live better. Stoicism, thought of in this way, becomes what Pierre Hadot calls “a way of life,” and allows us to read Shakespeare’s drama more charitably as a mode of philosophical exercise. This chapter surveys Stoic understandings of virtue before turning to A Midsummer Night’s Dream to examine how the play’s testing the imaginative powers of theatricality mirrors the Stoic’s internal processes of judgment. Drawing on key Stoic texts as well as the 1581 translation of Seneca’s Hippolytus, a source for Midsummer, I propose that the play reveals the potential for imaginative impressions to become mere fantasy — but also admits to their power over our consciousness. While this may appear anti-Stoic, Midsummer in fact mounts its apology for the imagination by practicing mercy, a key Stoic virtue.
Heir to a shared Indo-European eudaimonist thoughtworld, Shakespeare’s Hamlet dramatizes the interplay of Buddhist, Skeptic, and Stoic philosophies at the affective-cognitive interface indispensable for virtue in action. Hamlet’s search for appropriate response — in the role of “scourge and minister” thrust upon him to redress regicide — requires equanimity, and equanimity, as the play suggests, ultimately requires other-focused compassion to counteract affective-cognitive affliction: the emptying of self-engrossed mental proliferation prepares the mind for virtuous action. Our ability in Greco-Buddhist wisdom traditions to stand firm by judgment and detachment from destructive emotions and mental disturbances is encapsulated in Hamlet’s famous line in banter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: “There’s nothing either good / or bad but thinking makes it so” (2.2.244-45). This key idea from Buddhist, Skeptic, and Stoic philosophies compresses therapy for emotional control through skepticism, or suspension of judgment. This equanimity in Buddhist-Stoic spiritual practices, moreover, interacts closely with two primary virtues: compassion and wisdom. Throughout most of the play, Hamlet’s quandary is exacerbated by his overactive ruminations until finally in Act 5, his feelings of compassion toward another, Laertes, relieves and releases Hamlet from his psychohumoral affliction and lends him the emotional equanimity and mental clarity to take virtuous action.
The De re publica contains a sophisticated strain of reflection on the place of the honor motive in a good life, and in particular in the good life of public service. Cicero finds a way for a conscientious public servant to be interested in receiving honor while still directing his actions at the public good and that only. Further, he finds a use for merited honor and merited shame in the moral education of citizens and political leaders. The chapter argues that Cicero’s account of how honor motivates a person, both ordinarily and in the normative case, is fundamentally more similar to the views on honor put forward by the Hellenistic Stoics than it is to the tripartite model of psyche used by Plato in his Republic. As so often in De re publica, what we have is Platonism filtered through and modified by subsequent Stoic thought. But Cicero’s own experience in politics has also given stimulus to his reflections; and conversely, the philosophical position on honor that he develops in his writing becomes part of his self-representation as a public figure.
In his De re publica and De officiis, Cicero discusses the conditions that must exist for a war to be justly commenced and waged. In developing his account, Cicero lays the groundwork for many of the principles of the later just war tradition. However, commentators have detected inconsistencies between Cicero’s account of ‘the justice of going to war’ and his reliance on the competitive honor code of the ancient Mediterranean world, which undergirds much of his account of conduct within war. Commentators usually see Cicero’s commendation of wars undertaken for the sake of glory as inconsistent both with the legal and religious principles undergirding his account and with the Stoic account of justice derived from Panaetius, whom Cicero follows in De officiis. In this chapter, I reconstruct Cicero’s account of just war theory and explain why he could plausibly see coherence where the modern commentators see incoherence.
Chapter 2 explores how Sidney uses literary form for passionate experimentation and develops a sophisticated affective vocabulary that intersects with the reformation of contentment. Neither The Old Arcadia nor the revised New Arcadia reproduce Protestant concepts of contentedness or proselytize an idealized Christian psychology. Instead, in TheOld Arcadia Sidney pursues the strategies of romance, including the “wandering,” “error,” and “trial” described by Patricia Parker, and arrives at counter-intuitive and potentially scandalizing conclusions about the emotion. More specifically, Sidney aligns both sexual satisfaction and virtuous endurance with contentment, and he makes the character Pyrocles’s erotic fulfillment in Books 3 and 4 instrumental to his pious suffering in Book 5. However, in TheNew Arcadia, Sidney displaces the most extreme manifestations of desire from the four young lovers onto their antagonists, and he disentangles contentment and constancy in the face of adversity. By pushing contentment to the pastoral peripheries to emphasize the revised work’s more chivalric tenor, Sidney recoils from his most innovative contribution to the Renaissance discourse.
In this book, Benjamin Wold builds on recent developments in the study of early Jewish wisdom literature and brings it to bear on the New Testament. This scholarship has been transformed by the discovery at Qumran of more than 900 manuscripts, including Hebrew wisdom compositions, many of which were published in critical editions beginning in the mid-1990s. Wold systematically explores the salient themes in the Jewish wisdom worldview found in these scrolls. He also presents detailed commentaries on translations and articulates the key debates regarding Qumran wisdom literature, highlighting the significance of wisdom within the context of Jewish textual culture. Wold's treatment of themes within the early Jewish and Christian textual cultures demonstrates that wisdom transcended literary form and genre. He shows how and why the publication of these ancient texts has engendered profound shifts in the study of early Jewish wisdom, and their relevance to current controversies regarding the interpretation of specific New Testament texts.
This book is the first major study of providence in the thought of John Chrysostom, a popular preacher in Syrian Antioch and later archbishop of Constantinople (ca. 350 to 407 CE). While Chrysostom is often considered a moralist and exegete, this study explores how his theology of providence profoundly affected his larger ethical and exegetical thought. Robert Edwards argues that Chrysostom considers biblical narratives as vehicles of a doctrine of providence in which God is above all loving towards humankind. Narratives of God's providence thus function as sources of consolation for Chrysostom's suffering audiences, and may even lead them now, amid suffering, to the resurrection life-the life of the angels. In the course of surveying Chrysostom's theology of providence and his use of scriptural narratives for consolation, Edwards also positions Chrysostom's theology and exegesis, which often defy categorization, within the preacher's immediate Antiochene and Nicene contexts.
The Romans adaptation of Greek philosophy was illustrated by the Stoics and Epicureans. The Stoics held that humanity is determined by the fates of nature, while the Epicureans believed that happiness came from seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Plato was revived by Plotinus and dominated Roman philosophy during the early years of Christianity. Both the missionary zeal of early Christians and the tranquility of Roman administration rapidly spread Christianity. The teachings of Jesus were bolstered by defenders, who gave Christianity form and content. St. Augustine successfully reinterpreted Platonic thought within Christian theology, and the consequent influence on psychology continued well beyond. With the fall of the Western empire, intellectual life came to a virtual halt, and only the monastic movement preserved remnants of Greek and Roman civilization. The papacy assumed a leading role in spiritual direction and civil administration. The power shift to the East saw the Byzantine Empire assume a distinctive Greek character. The rise of Islam threatened the survival of Christianity in the Middle East and in North Africa. But, at the same time, much of the Greek heritage of scholarship was preserved and extended in the great academic centers of medieval Islam.