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Wrestling with Stoic Ethics: Cicero's On Ends V (Episode 183)
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In this final exploration of Cicero's "On Ends," Michael and Caleb break down Book V, where Cicero reveals his own philosophical sweet spot – an Aristotelian-Platonic approach that challenges both Stoicism and Epicureanism.
Against a backdrop of ancient Athens, Cicero's characters debate the core question: What makes a truly good human life? They navigate the middle path between Stoic rigidity (where virtue alone brings happiness) and Aristotle's elitism (where external goods are required).
(01:53) Awesome Beginning
(07:10) What's Our Purpose?
(26:09) Supreme Happiness
(31:55) Cicero's Objection
(40:39) Summary
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Transcript
Introduction to Cicero's 'On Ends'
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. I'm Michael Tromwade. And today we're bringing you another conversation on Cicero's on-ends. This is our last conversation on the matter.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's over book five, which is a explanation and defense of the philosophy Cicero finds most philosophically defensible.
00:00:29
Speaker
And that's sort of a version of Aristotelianism, Platonism. connecting to these Greek ideas that go back beyond Stoicism. So that's what we'll be talking about today.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, this is, i mean, I've really enjoyed reading this with you, Caleb. We've both read it before, but really fun going through it. And um as you mentioned, the book is kind of this bouncing back and forth of Epicurean position, anti-Epicurean, Stoic, anti-Stoic.
00:00:59
Speaker
And now this is kind of the the final arrival place where Cicero i attempts to genuinely argue for his position, I suppose.
Touring Athens and Philosophical Implications
00:01:08
Speaker
so Right, yeah. You get the sense this the one that Cicero is most so comfortable with, but it's ah interesting that he he also lobs some object and objections at it ah in the end. So ah we should talk about that. But it's a view we've talked about ah little, especially in our Stoicism-type conversation. Cicero brings it in in Book 4, sort of using it as an objection towards the Stoics.
00:01:38
Speaker
But there's a lot more to talk about. in this book. Anything else you want to say by way of intro? No, let's jump into it. This is the, mean, it's the climax. It's, it's, uh, But I think we'll get into it when we talk the content of it. So let's just jump into what Cicero has to say.
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, the way it starts is i think it's really an awesome beginning where you have this group of Roman men touring Athens, essentially. And there's this fellow Piso, Cicero, younger men, and they essentially just list off some of these iconic places and what they bring to mind.
00:02:17
Speaker
So there's Plato in the Academy. Someone else mentions oh this. This is where Epicurus lived. you know The resident Epicurean mentions their founder, of course. And then someone else mentions ah Sophocles. This is where Sophocles walked.
00:02:32
Speaker
I thought that was just a fantastic way to begin the chapter, grounded in a physical place. and mention many of the thinkers, artists, really people who've made exceptional cultural contributions to Greece, then Rome, really West at large, before moving into their philosophical discussion, as it were.
00:02:58
Speaker
I think it ah it once gives ah the conversation a kind of um almost epic feel in the best sense, but also is ah somewhat familiar. you know You're just walking around to you know, visiting someplace with your friends, calling to mind what it reminds you of, and then jumping into a,
00:03:17
Speaker
philosophical discussion or what have you. So, uh, it's, uh, it's a great way to begin the chapter. Yeah. it It also just makes me feel like Cicero is doing the same thing we're doing, right. Which is just engaging with this human achievement or like, you know, Athens is this really weird place where in the span of a hundred years, you had a lot of, you know, I don't know how large Athens was back then. A hundred thousand people was not a big place where you had a lot of philosophical innovation and we're still chewing on that today. yeah Maybe we talk about Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus, but they're deriving their thinking from Chrysippus and Zeno who
Defending and Blending Philosophical Schools
00:03:59
Speaker
are in Athens. and um And so we're kind of wrestling with this, I don't know, this um this peak of human kind of philosophical achievement or this like really important moment in history.
00:04:12
Speaker
And we're grappling with it and trying to digest it and understand how it relates to our own lives. And then Cicero is doing the same project. he's He's a couple hundred years later. So for him, that's the past. And he's still in this kind of there's awe of Athens, but also you know wrestling with it, objecting to it, respecting what the Stoics and Epicureans have to say, but not taking it at face value and wanting to be aware of the criticisms as well.
00:04:36
Speaker
I mean, it just yeah, I just think it's cool that we're doing the same thing Cicero is. It's a great starting spot. Absolutely. So they jump into conversation, they start bringing up different philosophers, and you have this younger man who's maybe just just coming of age, thinking through different philosophies of life, and he says that he finds the philosophy of Carnides plausible.
00:05:01
Speaker
And then Piso is sort of given the task of defending, uh, the views of Antiochus, who is this Aristotelian peripatetic fellow. So just a quick aside on that. I know we're throwing out a lot of different names, but, uh,
00:05:22
Speaker
the the kind of view that's defended is a view from someone a little closer to cicero's time antiochus but what antiochus saw himself as doing was following in aristotle's footsteps who as a student of plato was essentially a platonist that's sort of why it uh or falling in maybe the best footsteps of plato as it were that's why sometimes it's called an aristotelian platonic type view and uh And Antiochus, you sort of saw, is was really one of these philosophical characters who tries to bring people together and say, you know, these different schools agree on substance, even know though they sometimes say, use different words. And that's what he says about the Stoics as well. Yeah, know i was going to say, like maybe we should do maybe we could do an episode on the Neoplatonists and stuff like that.
00:06:07
Speaker
You're going to see the same thing in Plato that you see in... in Sometimes when we talk about Socrates, like one one of the ways that I talk about this is is you have Socrates and then you have a bunch of people different people disagreeing about what core teaching of Socrates was.
00:06:20
Speaker
You get the cynics, um the skeptics in in some forms, the Stoics. And I think you're seeing the same thing with Plato where the academy takes on a lot of different movements through time where sometimes it's more skeptical, sometimes it's more Aristotelian, sometimes it's maybe more...
00:06:38
Speaker
um traditionally platonic or something like this. um But there's this kind of constant wrestling, I think, through tradition of what air what Plato's view was. Because you just referred to the, the aristto if I was understanding, right, you referred to the Aristotelian tradition as being platonic, but it's like, it has its roots there.
00:06:55
Speaker
But it's, it's a there's a lot of contention, I guess, at the time about, you know, the best way to follow Plato as well. Yeah. so of course, I think it's a sort of issue where some Platonists would not see these people as Platonists at all, where others, yeah I think Antiochus in particular, he's trying to take the best aspects of platon it Platonism and say that yeah Aristotle didn't diverge from those and walk away too far from those. Though, of course, they're There are weighty philosophical matters of Platonists and Aristotelians. Other Aristotelians would take themselves to be disagreeing over.
00:07:32
Speaker
um But so it's a... ah think the the view is sort of contrasted with Epicureanism, of course. you know Piso brings up different ways one should think about the end, and he says you know the most plausible way to think of the end for humans, yeah what's our...
00:07:53
Speaker
purpose, what are we meant to pursue, isn't pleasure, isn't the avoidance of pain, but it's the primary objects in accordance with nature. So of course, there's a rejection of Epicureanism and related philosophies.
00:08:08
Speaker
And there's a use of this phrase, which is really ah quite similar to the Stoics. you know, that's not what the Stoics say, live in accordance with nature. and But the way he sees nature is, of course, distinct from the Stoics. And there's this nice rendition of the phrase from the Oracle of Delphi, know yourself.
00:08:33
Speaker
So it's rendered as, the Pythian Apollo then bids us learn to know ourselves. Now, knowledge of ourselves can only mean this, that we should get to know our bodily and mental powers and pursue that kind of life which leads to the full enjoyment of those powers.
00:08:52
Speaker
So I think what that captures really nicely is yeah what does living in accordance mean for, guess for Piso, living in accordance with nature, it means coming to know our bodily and mental powers and being an excellent human where a human is, you know this creature with a body and a mind. So in that way, it draws out this distinction between Aristotelianism and Stoicism.
00:09:23
Speaker
namely that the Stoics focused on the mind, the rational part, the ruling part, as Marcus Aurelius is sometimes translated as saying, whereas the Recitellian, they've got a broader picture of human nature,
Contrasting Philosophical Views on Human Nature
00:09:36
Speaker
right? There's a focus on the body in addition to the mind.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. um So, you know, what you're saying is theres happiness is the perfection of your nature. It's the achievement of your nature, the attainment of your nature.
00:09:54
Speaker
But then there's still this question of what is that nature? And then that really nice, I thought that was a really cool kind of playback to know thyself. Cause know thyself, that's a, that's a common thing in Plato and Socrates was really interested in that and took that as kind of like, um,
00:10:09
Speaker
There was this view of Socrates being like, i I know that I know nothing. And at least that's like one, that self-knowledge is important. That self-knowledge own ignorance is important. And this was kind of this, it was on the Oracle of Delphi.
00:10:22
Speaker
ah And so it was seen as like this, this you know, maybe this, and't know. transcendent or like divine knowledge and it's like well how do you interpret that how do you understand that command and I often think about it in the Socratic way of well it's about understanding your limitations understanding what you don't know understanding like ah recognizing your ignorance and you can interpret that Socratic or stoically I understand my ignorance so can move towards knowledge but there's this play on it here where it's like no you've got to understand your nature because if happiness is the perfection of your nature you've got to understand what you are
00:10:57
Speaker
I thought that was a really cool way of yeah looping back in that that old platonic concept. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a central idea, this focus on nature, understanding what you are, you know just as you know there's something, a good life for a horse involves the goods of you know excellence, perfection in a horse. I don't know, that has to do with running, some amount of sociability perhaps with other horses.
00:11:23
Speaker
Whereas And it's it's given by the, you know, the nature of that creature, you know, it's physical properties, it's mental properties, to say it in an abstract way. But and then they then the question is, okay, well, what's a human and what does it mean to be a perfect, you know what's, or rather, you know, what's the perfection of a human's natural constitution?
00:11:46
Speaker
And there again, you look at the physical properties, kind of animal we are, and especially, of course, our mind, and our, our, ability to reason as ah as a differentiator between other other creatures. Yeah, and I guess to ground this idea, like we still do this today.
00:12:01
Speaker
i think about this is ah um think about sometimes when you see those like small dogs being carried around in a purse or something, and you get this kind of like intuitive sense of like, is that...
00:12:13
Speaker
Maybe that dog is happy. Maybe that dog has achieved pleasure. But is that what a dog is supposed to be doing? Or it kind of feels a bit like that dog is not dogging. Like we almost have that intuitive sense.
00:12:26
Speaker
um I also think of examples. I was thinking of like, you know, orcas at SeaWorld or something. But that that we assume the animal's not really happy in that way, you know?
00:12:36
Speaker
i think I think you still think about this intuition. Just because an intuition doesn't mean it's right, but I think we still have this intuition when we see, you can see kind of things in the natural world, animals especially, not really achieving or living lives that feel natural. It feels wrong, even if maybe they have pleasure. It feels like they're not ah you know doing what they're supposed to be doing, in a sense.
00:12:58
Speaker
And then the Stoics would feel the same way if if you looked at a human that was... really caught up in kind of court politics and Marcus Aurelius's you know entourage and trying to impress people and trying to navigate and trying to achieve but a position of political power and you know getting really nervous like their life would be ruined if they were to be lose out on some sort of promotion or position.
00:13:20
Speaker
They would feel that same kind of way. It would be that that same kind of sadness of like you're not you know you're not living in accordance with your nature. You're not you know valuing the things you should be valuing or doing the things you should be doing. um Yeah, that's my attempt to try try to ground it in an example. yeah well no Yeah, it's really good to ground it. you know I suppose you just think of the caged bird, you know the majestic bird, and you think, oh no, it's not able to live the life that would be best for it. And then, of course, the human analogy here is perfect, thinking about how people might cage themselves in particular ways or make themselves dependent on ah things that have nothing to do with our our nature and such. So yeah, really good to to ground that.
00:14:02
Speaker
um And it's also interesting, as a small aside, I suppose, but Piso gets into some of the bodily goods, some of the mental goods, and he does rank the mental goods as higher, and but in particular the goods of the soul, but he says...
00:14:17
Speaker
in addition to some of the standard mental goods, and these are sorts of things that Stoics get hammered for all the time, you know, not valuing health as a good. But he also says, um so also certain postures and certain contorted and cramped movements, such as lewd or effeminate men effect, are against nature.
00:14:35
Speaker
Thus, in spite of the fact that this happens through some defect in the soul, nevertheless, the perversion of man's nature is outwardly exhibited in the body. And here maybe you can imagine someone who has that cramped posture of looking at their phone or something like this. And you think, oh, maybe that's not, that's sort of interesting that that's included as a bodily good posture, attention.
00:14:59
Speaker
And I think that maybe it has some nice modern ah use, perhaps when it comes to technology or people say this sort of thing about, you know, not being physically active enough or or this sort of thing.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think it also shows the, I don't know if it's a downside, but it's it's a contrast. The Aristotelian position is not going to be ah egalitarian in the same way the Stoic position is going to be.
Virtue and Happiness: A Nuanced Debate
00:15:24
Speaker
The Stoic position is like everybody has access to reason.
00:15:28
Speaker
Maybe they didn't, I'm not aware of the Stoics discussing this. You might have some outlier cases with people with, um, ah cognitive disabilities and then children, people extreme people that are extremely old, for example. There's going to be some outliers, um but everybody kind of has access to this where the Aristotelian position, once you once you it seems very intuitive and positive to add physical goods. you know Why can't we just be a stoic who also likes to exercise and thinks that it's important to have good health?
00:15:57
Speaker
But once you enter that, then you end up with these... um I mean, the the the least judgmental way, you know taken to taken in a negative way, you could say it's like, um I don't know, if elitist is the right word.
00:16:09
Speaker
Anything can be taken incorrectly, but I guess taken descriptively, it is just non-egalitarian. yeah yeah i i will Yeah, I think I've always read Aristotle as an elitist, as someone who thinks if you're physically disabled, if the you know yeah what he he would literally call a deformity,
00:16:25
Speaker
is so intense, then maybe you can't live a good life. Antiochus, though, i think he's trying to do some, he's sort of Aristotelianism plus or something like this. He's actually going to say that you can live a good life.
00:16:38
Speaker
You can be happy, just maybe not perfectly happy or something like that. So this is a distinction we'll have to get into a little bit later. But he does think virtue sufficient for Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
Happiness, but there are that there are levels to it. so And that way he's yeah hes saw he's trying to sort of slide between the Stoic view, perfect egalitarianism, and maybe this more traditional elitist Aristotelian view.
00:17:04
Speaker
Another way – so yeah, I'm excited to get to that um in a moment. Another thing that gets called out here, which I thought was like an interesting way, they almost make this matrix of like six things. You've got like – oh, I don't know if I can do it off the top of my head. But basically it's along the lines of like pursuing – it's like happiness is either achieving, you know, pleasure, absence of pain, or like – physical and mental goods, or it's like pursuing those things.
00:17:33
Speaker
And, um, it's really odd. They basically call out, which I think is interesting. The fact that it's odd for the Stoics to say that like living in accordance with nature is the pursuit of the things in accordance with your nature.
00:17:47
Speaker
It's the appropriate selection and pursuit of indifference, regardless of whether or not you achieve them. And they're like, you know, that's just as silly, maybe not just as silly, but it's kind of put as as if like happiness could be the pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of the absence of pain. It's like, no.
00:18:04
Speaker
ah So it's like when you're stoic, you're so close to just this a really aristocratic position, which is you say, it's just the, it's about the achievement of those things. It's not about the pursuit of those things.
00:18:16
Speaker
And when you reframe stoicism as the pursuit of those things, um I mean, I guess that's not how the Stoic would frame it. The Stoic would put it as the achievement of the good thing, which is virtue.
00:18:26
Speaker
But I thought that was an interesting way of framing Stoicism as you know the pursuit of the things in accordance with nature, regardless of whether or not you get them. um I thought i was kind of it was an interesting criticism.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting taxonomy and is what points out, look, there's no sort of Epicurean view which says happiness is the pursuit of pleasure. You know, that's what's good, the pursuit of pleasure as an end. And he thought you thought, well, that's curious or, you know, the attempt to avoid pain.
00:18:57
Speaker
So, yeah, it does come into a criticism of sorts. Yeah.
00:19:02
Speaker
Well, I suppose there are probably two more things that that we should dive into here to understand the view. So we have this idea that's living in accordance with nature. That includes both our physical and mental nature. I think it's crucial that goods of the soul are best for this.
00:19:18
Speaker
ah view um So I have a quick passage here. So it will come to pass that the excellence of the soul is preferred to bodily excellence, and that the excellences of the soul which are independent of will are surpassed by those which depend on will, to which excellences the name virtue peculiarly belongs, and which are vastly superior because they spring from reason, the most godlike attribute of man.
00:19:43
Speaker
So it's interesting. i think this is interesting because You really can see how this is a view that's trying to capture both Aristotelian and Stoic intuitions. you know Say, you know there are goods of the body, they're important, but what really matters, what's sufficient for happiness are perfection of the soul, in particular, virtue. And as that's um what's most distinct about humans as well, that's ability to reason. So but not not just most distinct, but also
00:20:14
Speaker
Brings to mind some of Epictetus's lines about, you know, this is the divine part in you. This is the fragment of God that, you know, every every human possesses this ability to reason.
00:20:25
Speaker
So I think that's ah that's certainly worth calling out.
00:20:29
Speaker
Okay. um A clear hierarchy and then an association, because I think Aristotle also has a hierarchy, but it's just a stronger hierarchy.
00:20:41
Speaker
And then an association of reason but with really divinity, what kind of has this special status. It's not just special because it's the things humans uniquely do, which I think maybe...
00:20:52
Speaker
maybe is Aristotle's argument, at least as as I recall it, ah part of it. But it's it's special because it it's divine in some sense. it is it is It is different and better than the other things.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And there are different arguments for this. Piso just lists different cases where he thinks you know we can see human nature being revealed, ah as maybe one way to put it. So It sort of brings to mind the lines from Cicero in and books one and two, where he goes over all these heroic, the lives of these heroic Romans who displayed moral virtue and you know it challenges the Epicureans and says, look, do you think these are the sorts of people where you'd want to put, you know he knew how to have a good time on their tombstone?
00:21:39
Speaker
No. No. you know but What we see in those lives is you know moral worth, really. We see you know that that kind of human perfection, to that human ability to perfect ah one's virtue, and that's so that's what we value about it. so there's there's i think there's that kind of argument.
00:21:55
Speaker
There's also a focus on knowledge. and There's an amusing anecdote about Archimedes, who you might know from ah geometry, but you know our Archimedes, he's so devoted in his pursuit of knowledge that when Alexander the Great overruns his city, you know they can't find him anywhere. And then eventually they find him in the midst of battle, you know drawing geometric figures in the sand or something like this. And Pisto says, though, this reveals...
00:22:23
Speaker
reveals man's desire to ah understand things. And, you know, that's one of, that's, it's, you know, it's ah so important to humans that will ah pursue it even in the face of danger and such. So I think that's a, maybe it's not the best argument for the view, but I think it's a nice, nice way to draw it out.
00:22:46
Speaker
It's a funny example. um Yeah, like what I took from this part was, as you said, they go through some examples, like an in an argument of virtue being clearly superior to the bodily goods. They go through some examples of virtuous people or rational people or wise people that are admired.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I just, the the part that stuck out to me about that was was, wow, we often talk about how unintuitive the stoic position is and about how, ooh, it's it's wild that like,
00:23:17
Speaker
virtue is the only good or you know knowledge is is the key to happiness. But then they rightly call out that we actually really admire virtuous people. So maybe it's not as unintuitive as... That that was my takeaway. is like Maybe actually Stoicism is not as unintuitive as we take it to be when...
00:23:33
Speaker
You see these people with amazing character. We all unambiguously, as you said, wouldn't want to write anything else on their tombstone. you know we wouldn't We wouldn't need to clarify with the, also knows how to have pleasure and didn't feel sad.
00:23:47
Speaker
We don't need to clarify it with these other things. We just say, you know was a great person. And even the non-Stoic is like, that's sufficient. The non-Stoic doesn't need to write on the tombstone and was really rich or you know and was super popular.
00:23:59
Speaker
um I thought that was it was just like, yeah, we often get, I think as a Stoic, often get like kind of defensive about it of like, have to justify this position, but we already do, you know, back then and even today, you know, admire really great people.
Degrees of Happiness and External Circumstances
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that's correct. And it is, a yeah, in a way, i think I think you made this comment before, but Stoics, maybe perhaps a Stoic philosophy one way to understand is that it begins with some intuitive judgments and then takes those all the way, applies consistency to those judgments, whether that's you know the the way we value virtue in people.
00:24:43
Speaker
Or I think another example of this is the fact that you know we realize in many cases, externals actually can't ruin you know, the goodness of one's day.
00:24:54
Speaker
You know, you can still have a great day even if something ah apparently bad happens to you. And then, you know, the Stoics take that line to their, to its logical conclusion, is that you can still have a good life even if these apparently external bad things befall you.
00:25:10
Speaker
You know just you just need to, you know, make good decisions, do what's, uh, manage what's up to you in the best way possible. And that's, ah that's, you know, that's how you have good days. That's how you have a good life. So I think there's a, there's certainly that's a,
00:25:24
Speaker
that kind of consistency, and which, of course, whenever you're consistent, now you're going to run into perhaps issues explaining a bunch of other intuitions. But um I think that's certainly a certainly one way to understand Stoicism. That makes sense to me. this this the Again, this the the Stoics, they're famous for these paradoxes. They're famous for these...
00:25:45
Speaker
were Sometimes unintuitive claims, you know, the everybody's everybody's equally vicious except for the virtuous person or something like that. But it's worth remembering that they have some intuitive, you know, there's some just intuitive, clear ideas here as well um that the Stoics are, as you said, building up and taking to the logical conclusion.
00:26:07
Speaker
Cool. Cool. Yeah, so the last, ah ah I think, part of this view that's important to understand is that this difference that we hit on ah briefly is that there is this idea you can have supreme happiness versus happiness as such. So that's something Piso and Antiochus said.
00:26:29
Speaker
and I think my son says Cicero as well, they want to state that things like bodily goods, external events can influence one's happiness.
00:26:41
Speaker
But crucially for these this peripatetic view, they don't render one necessarily unhappy. It's just that you can have a better life if things go well for you. So I think you can You can really draw this out yeah in a case that Cicero talks about.
00:26:58
Speaker
You have these two Romans. One has like the, they're both virtuous. So you need to imagine them both excellent people, both excellent men. You have Quintus Metellus, and he sort of lives the you know the perfect Roman life in Cicero.
00:27:14
Speaker
both internals and externals. you know He has these three sons that are politically accomplished. yeah One of them is made censor, another celebrates a triumph. He had this massive parade due to military success.
00:27:26
Speaker
And his three daughters are happily married, and he himself had political success and so on. And now compare that with another virtuous Roman, Regulus, who died at the hands of the enemy from starvation and wants of sleep.
00:27:44
Speaker
yeah Are you really going to say the two of them are just as happy? And I think on on this view, what you could say that Quintus Metellus, he had supreme happiness, you know virtue plus all these other things went right for him in the world.
00:28:01
Speaker
Whereas Regulus, perhaps he had happiness, but it wasn't perfect. It wasn't ideal. He did what he could, but he ends up starving to death, which is an unfortunate, terrible way to go. so and And you know that he did have evils of some sort of another happen to him, and that influenced his happiness, prevented him from being supremely happy.
00:28:24
Speaker
So I think that's... ah That's that's what the last central part to understand about this view, and it's, of course, different from the Stoic view, which says, which where I think, and this is a place where the Stoics perhaps say something implausible, is they do say, these two men are equally happy.
00:28:44
Speaker
Of course, you prefer to be Quintus Metellus. You prefer for things to go well for you. Yeah. But, you know, that's not up to you. What is up to you is just just being virtuous. And as we both stated, both of these men were equally virtuous. So in that sense, they're equally happy.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah, so like Cicero, so the Stoic view of happiness is binary. It's on or off. It's yes or no. You have it or you don't. um And then you have it or you don't based on whether or not you have virtue.
00:29:16
Speaker
And then Cicero says, well, I really like the idea or you know the position ah you know Cicero is speaking to here, or writing, um it's really nice to have virtue be sufficient for happiness, maybe even necessary for happiness.
00:29:34
Speaker
Those are both nice things from the Stoics. But we also need to explain the phenomenon that it seems like one of those people had a better life than the other. The person who, you know, the famous, well-loved, moral, successful Roman with happy kids had a you know had something better happen to them than the um person who starved to death. And so how do we ah ah account for that? Well, we just allow degrees of happiness.
00:29:58
Speaker
Both had happiness because they were virtuous. ah but one had a greater degree of happiness. It's also this interesting... i mean, i also like to to think of happiness as... you know Think of it again. When when i'm when I'm working with these arguments, I sometimes switch between happiness, great life, flourishing, and kind of like seeing if the intuition lays any better when you start putting in some of those related but you know different in English concepts.
00:30:29
Speaker
And yeah, it seems to me like one of them had a greater life than the other. if we're calling it eudaimonia still, it seems like maybe did one of them flourish more than the other? Well, it depends. And then it it comes back to this idea, you know, is there anything to flourishing other than having virtue? It's just, Rose says, yeah, there is something to flourishing other than having virtue. It's social success, happy family, you know, healthy body, uh,
00:30:54
Speaker
so small part of flourishing because it's not divine reason, but it it contributes to flourishing. And it seems to be quite a plausible position, but that's, but that's the play philosophically is you're just, you're just, you're keeping a lot of the good parts of stoicism, which is this heavy emphasis on virtue, this heavy. And and and then also, I guess the egalitarian aspect, because you're still making a happy life available to anyone because of virtue sufficient for knowledge, then anybody could still have a good life.
00:31:22
Speaker
and Anybody could still have a good life. by making the right choices, by by possessing virtue, And then it just it's just then also acknowledging and dealing with the, ah you know, how do you explain away these other terrible things? Well, you say, well, there's degrees to happiness, but I'm not denying it of other people.
00:31:40
Speaker
It also makes me wonder why the Stoics are so stressed about this binary in the first place, because it's it's such a small shift that I guess resolves so many of the tensions in the Stoic view.
00:31:52
Speaker
um I find it quite plausible. Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, well, I think this is why Antiochus said that Stoics, in the end, they're just playing with words. you know They say one life is more preferable to the other, but then Antiochus just says, so look, why don't you just say these other things really are good, but they can never outweigh virtue, and that virtue is, in fact, sufficient for happiness.
00:32:21
Speaker
So I think that's the...
00:32:26
Speaker
challenge one has for the Stoics. But I think it's interesting that I think this this view in a way is unstable, and that's maybe why the Stoics didn't land on it in the end. So Cicero himself sort of gives this example of these two men, and he says, look, the Stoics are consistent on this.
00:32:47
Speaker
You, Piso, and so anti Antiochus, Peripatetics, and so on, are not. you know If you really think pain is an evil, then a man undergoing crucifixion cannot be happy.
00:32:59
Speaker
If you think children are a good, then childlessness is miserable. If one's country is good, then exile is miserable. If health is good, then sickness is miserable. and And so on. So I think there's that there's this issue where if you think these things are in fact goods or evils, but you're effectively giving them very little weight, what's the grounding for that kind of view? And he and he says, if they are evils, the man who suffers from them will not be happy.
00:33:34
Speaker
And on the other hand, if they are not evils, down topples the whole thing. peripatetic system. So it's just just to make sure I understand. so the So it's something to say, you because the Stoics are very careful with their language. So they define good as something, it's not the only way you have to define good, but the Stoics define good as something that's always selectable, something that's always beneficial. And that's their grounds for calling ah indifference indifferent because sometimes they're beneficial, sometimes they're not.
00:34:05
Speaker
um So you don't call them good, you call them preferable. the The view here sort of saying, well, you've got to have some sort of weight behind calling something good or bad.
00:34:16
Speaker
And if an infinite amount of bad things, like you know starving to death on the battlefield and you know having your house burned down and your family die, if you're calling these things, or you know you're literally crucified.
00:34:28
Speaker
If you're calling pain a bad thing and crucifixion isn't enough to take away happiness, then maybe you're the one playing with language. You're the one that's calling something bad, something that, you know, if if if if that much bad things can't take away happiness, why you even calling it bad? Shouldn't you just call it dispreferred? It's like a kind of a pushback.
00:34:47
Speaker
is Is that right? Yeah, i think so. It's sort of a dilemma of sorts where it's like, Cicero is quite good at this, coming up with different dilemmas for these schools. On one hand, if you're going to say these things apparently have value, but they're never sufficient to make one happy or unhappy, then why aren't you just a stoic?
00:35:14
Speaker
Why don't you just say they're preferred, dispreferred, and such? On the other hand, if you're going to say that they have value and they can, in fact, make one unhappy, you know, if you so undergo crucifixion, if you're exiled, if you're in extreme sickness, then you start sounding more like what I call the traditional Aristotelian, perhaps, where what you need is...
00:35:42
Speaker
a number of these externals to go right for you. And, uh, some amount of evils as it were can outweigh the goodness of virtue in a life.
00:35:55
Speaker
And, um, i think I think that's sort of the challenge. That's the dilemma. is Look, if you give if you want to give these things weight, then – or I suppose you're thinking about these things and you're giving them essentially you know epsilon weight.
00:36:13
Speaker
They're nice to have but not needed for happiness, can't influence one's happiness, and you sound like a stoic. But if you give them you know sufficient weight, then you sound a little ah lot lot more like a traditional Aristotelian perhaps.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's good. I mean, it's good objection. I'm trying to think of what I would counter here. Maybe you already have some in mind.
00:36:38
Speaker
I mean, one view is that it gives us ways to evaluate. One one benefit to Antiochus' view is that it gives us ways to evaluate people that don't have happiness.
00:36:50
Speaker
Like the Stoics have this weird binary view of everybody's equally vicious. So anybody who's not a sage's life is equally terrible. Right. equally unhappy. And then there are no sages. And it's like, oh what? Well, that doesn't, why are you talking like that? That doesn't really help.
00:37:07
Speaker
Um, but now Antiochus has this view where he says, well, no, this person's life does have, you know, this person's because they're have a good job, a nice family security. Their life is better than the, uh,
00:37:22
Speaker
ah other vicious person who doesn't have these things. It allows that kind of evaluation. Maybe maybe it allows more, I guess what trying say is maybe it allows more nuance for the progressor um instead of us just constantly thinking about the sage. It's like a way, you know, hey, if you're a normal person, how can you improve your life?
00:37:39
Speaker
Well, you can improve your life by like acquiring um these things that are in accordance with your physical and social nature. You know, you can, if you if you're homeless and you alleviate your homelessness, your life has become better.
00:37:54
Speaker
um Yeah, if you could be homeless in a sage, maybe you'd be happy anyway, but it gives you kind of a clear path to improvement that isn't just a moral path.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a that's ah that's a good interesting argument for it. maybe makes more sense of the progressor. I think the Stoics have moves here, though, too, and so they end up being pretty similar.
00:38:17
Speaker
trying to think about... i suppose that what they you know what this argument has going for it and what Piso has mentioned is virtue in a way has what's sometimes called lexical priority, um which means if you're choosing between virtue and some other good, you should always assume virtue wins. And that I think aligns both with Greek and Roman value judgments and probably our value judgments as well.
00:38:46
Speaker
And, uh, It might be difficult to come up with a more systematic way. you know, the Stoics are so systematic and they have this excellent theory that I can account for, ah not just their ethics, but also the metaphysics, the logic and such. Yeah.
00:39:06
Speaker
But perhaps if you're trying to defend this view, you might say, well, we're just trying to capture as much evidence as we can and not necessarily be as systematic as the Stoics. anyway, systematicity, when it's when you do it too early, when you try to get systematic too early, ah you'll end up with all these implausible results, so like the Stoics do. So if I were trying to defend this view, I think that's sort of what I would be going for is say, look, this this is the best way we can account for of the data. It's so our best model of the data right now. And um yeah, maybe it doesn't have the systematicity of a Stoic view, but we know the Stoic view is not the right model anyway. So at least this view this view is correct. So that's how we defend it. That's not exactly what i believe. and I think that's kind of the move I would make.
Cicero's Philosophical Exploration and Critique
00:39:50
Speaker
What do you think? Why do we know the Stoic view isn't the right model? Because of... ah Oh, just speaking from this person's point of view, I guess. they did Just because of observation, that like kind of postdoc observation, that one of these lives has gone better than the other.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, one of these lives gone better than the other. They have this a different account of human nature, perhaps. you know The bodily goods are, in fact, good. um yeah they we Also, they have the kind of cradle argument, which we didn't talk about, this idea that early humans, infants and such, they're not corrupted by society, so they have perhaps a better account of the good. The Stoics make this argument, Peripatetics make this argument, and they all think early humans value the thing they do. So anyway, maybe that's not an entirely persuasive argument, but least that's also given this chapter. Everybody loves justifying baby behavior as being their philosophy.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yeah. This baby burping is clear evidence of the Epicurean view. It's alleviating the pain. is where Stoics are like, it's achieving it's like achieving preservation of itself. That's funny.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well so one thing that i'm i mean one thing that I'll add for this, I'm not sure if you have more to say about Cicero's arguments. But kind of in our conversation and and this like framework that I've been developing over the course of our conversations together, Caleb, is you kind of end up now... This is a really nice one because this is something I think I've been looking for for a while, which is kind of like... I don't know if... if if Aristo, we talked about before, is kind of like Stoicism Plus or like hardcore Stoicism.
00:41:31
Speaker
And it's like we indifference are not preferred or dispreferred. They're totally indifferent. Then this is maybe like Stoicism Minus, or I don't know how you would call it. But it's like now what happens if you give slightly more value to indifference?
00:41:43
Speaker
Not enough to take away the sufficiency or the necessity of virtue for happiness. but you give slightly more value to indifference. And that's kind of the play here. And that's a nice positioning, especially for someone who thinks Aristotle's going too far and Aristotle's view that like, yeah, sorry, you were a nice person, but you've got a physical deformity. So I don't think, you know, I don't think you had a good life.
00:42:07
Speaker
And it's like, it's like a somewhere in between there as we're really, you know, if it's a philosophical spectrum, we're really zooming in now and getting some interesting nuance and in between the positions, which I kind of like.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think this you get a ah good sense of, um I think the the sort of options Cicero thinks are live, what he thinks is valuable from the different schools, especially Stoicism and the Saristotelian view. And I think the the way you sort of lay out
00:42:42
Speaker
yeah on one side you have Aristo, Stoicism Plus, but what's something that sort of falls in between Stoicism and ah this traditional Aristotelian view, this peripatetic ah view, perhaps that's it. i think I think it's interesting this, although Cicero says this view is closest to his, he's still wrestling with it. so I think there's maybe a theme there, this sort of philosophical ah theme where Cicero himself ends with this objection to ah Piso, to Antiochus, to the Peripatetics, and basically saying, look, you guys aren't consistent.
00:43:20
Speaker
And Piso responds to it, but it's not exactly a persuasive response. ah So there's a kind of philosophical aporia, almost some kind of uncertainty ah that that you finish with, which which is perhaps appropriate, you know, as I'm as a philosophical dialogue, as some of the philosophical you know progress. A better way to put that is there's a you know Cicero sort of honing in on what he thinks is is the best account for human happiness, very important, serious type question.
00:43:56
Speaker
It says what he thinks is most plausible, but ends with some amount of uncertainty nonetheless. So it's not full on skepticism. ah but also you don't get the sense that he's a dogmatic fellow.
00:44:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. It's still iteration. I feel that way in my own progress sometimes. like I feel like sometimes I see a lot of myself in this book. I see a lot of myself wrestling with this. view I think this is put into view, yeah as we were going through the books and I tried to articulate earlier my problems in my own practice with indifference, you know the fact that I don't feel like stoicism really accounts for the fact that they're I see my identity probably extending a bit beyond my mind. I see my flourishing as extending into my body and into my social relationships and ah things like this. and
00:44:45
Speaker
But I also think that virtue is the most important thing. And it's like this, I think, provides an alternative, not one without issues, but stoicism is also not without issues. So I would say like in my personal practice,
00:44:58
Speaker
um And I feel that way are online sometimes too. i mean, I know online is not real life, but sometimes in Stoicism communities, I think if you like, it's like if you, if you object to Stoicism in any sense, it's like they almost take offense to it. Like, oh we no, we all here agree with Stoicism and we're just still trying to understand what it is. And it's like, how can you agree with it if you're still trying to understand what it is?
00:45:20
Speaker
um Like for me, there's something inherent to like, we're trying to understand what it is to see if we agree with it. And it should always be that kind of at the forefront. And that rejection of dogmatism, I think is really important and and just like a stoic value.
00:45:34
Speaker
um So anyway, I appreciate basically Cicero's project here. I'm saying thumbs up Cicero, good work. It's interesting and it's an ongoing ongoing process.
00:45:47
Speaker
I think so. I think so. I think for me, I've always found something like this peripatetic view, ah very plausible. But over the years, I've come to see stoicism actually as as having more theoretical advantages in this view. I think the peripatetic view really is kind of unstable in some ways that I think make it worse, perhaps.
00:46:13
Speaker
chatted about this the last episode. But I think what comes through for me in terms of uncertainty from from this chapter is you... you almost have the sense that Cicero has ah a little bit of a leaning towards a traditional Aristotelian view, which I think is intuitive. you know Maybe when you talk about cases of physical deformity, it's less intuitive to liberal egalitarians today. But if you think about cases where people just have, they're unlucky, they have tragic events happen to them, their loved ones, you know do you still want to say,
00:46:46
Speaker
those so each of these cases so you know those people could have achieved happiness or something like that you know there is something intuitive to the idea that i think a lot of people would just naturally say no you know they're not happy in those tragic unfortunate situations and uh i think that's sort of you know this this dilemma that cicero's putting towards the and peripatetics i think is uh um It was certainly a challenging one so and one weren't worth wrestling with thinking through.
00:47:17
Speaker
So yeah, we should do some more Aristotle perhaps, do some more Cicero and keep on thinking through these issues and discussing them. Yeah, agreed. And i think I think a point to end on, i mean, just a reiteration of what you were saying before.
00:47:33
Speaker
of how Cicero such a smart guy such a well-read guy, and is still, I think, as you said, taking not a full skeptic position, but still one where it's like, I'm learning, i I'm always understanding the best parts of Epicureanism and criticizing them, the best parts of Stoicism and trying to criticize it, the best part of Aristotelianism and then trying to criticize it, and seeing the value in that as as he develops his own craft of living well, and seeing these schools as you know, answers or guides or instructors.
00:48:06
Speaker
But if we really take that craft analogy, there is something to be said for kind of developing your own style or developing your own nuance within a style and not falling into you know somebody else's style too quickly or being dogmatic and following it. And I think this book on ends,
00:48:22
Speaker
Really recommend it to anybody listening, and I think it's a good example both of a smart person who's taking that question seriously, both reflecting on his own reflecting on ancient philosophy, but then also taking it seriously for how he lives his own life.
00:48:37
Speaker
without being dogmatic or without trying to, you know, it doesn't have that kind of Socratic, that Socratic thing you see in Plato where somebody presents a position and then but Socrates does his counter argument. Everyone's like, of course, Socrates, how could I have ever thought differently?
00:48:52
Speaker
um Which doesn't feel like kind of a genuine skeptical piece. It feels almost like it's leading towards a foregone conclusion, I guess, in like later later Plato. I don't really feel that here. I feel like every chapter I read, I'm like persuaded and then dissuaded and then persuaded and dissuaded. And it's ah that's ah's ah that's a cool experience to see basically steel manning everything before you pick it apart.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. And I think it's also worth just one other note is you have this theme of
00:49:25
Speaker
questioning some skepticism that comes out, but also the philosophies that Cicero lands with, clearly finds most plausible, are those ones that place a lot of value on virtue. So stoicism, he ultimately rejects, but he admires the focus on moral worth.
00:49:45
Speaker
And then the peripatetics, perhaps that's closer to what Cicero believes. They also put moral worth as something that's sufficient for happiness. And then even you sorry and egalitarian reading of Aristotle, he's going to place virtue on a pedestal and think that's essential for happiness, even if perhaps ah externals can also influence one's happiness as essential. So I think there's that common theme running through each of those and you know i think he he clearly doesn't like epic epicureanism there are lots of barbs that aren't epicurious uh throughout these discussions and i think that's maybe one reason why or the essential reason he doesn't uh like the epicureans for perhaps is their uh the fact that they value virtue indirectly it's um it's good because it promotes yeah the pursuit of pleasure avoidance of pain
00:50:38
Speaker
Yeah, they get the...
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:50:39
Speaker
They're they're and they're in trouble. um Cool. Anything else else the to finish off? Our Cicero on ends review? Yeah, I don't think so. I think that's all I got.
00:50:51
Speaker
Thanks for following along. Thanks for listening to these. um If you all have suggestions for other books ah you'd like us to review, certainly yeah let us know. And I should also say, since by the time this will be going out, I think this will be a relevant change.
00:51:08
Speaker
We're updating our newsletter. We're going to be using a different platform. And we really like to use a lot of the community features. So we're moving to Substack. Substack, I think, supports...
00:51:19
Speaker
better commenting, chats, and such. So do check out the Stoic Letter if you haven't already. And I think we'd like to, ah Michael and i are going to be active um online there. And we'd like to, both with the podcast, this newsletter and such, ah ah focus on growing a little bit more of ah of a community. So ah people interested in Stoicism, interested in philosophy, interested in discussions like these. So do check that out.
00:51:46
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Looking forward to it. Cool.
00:51:51
Speaker
All right. See you, Michael. Thanks, Phil. Bye. Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend.
00:52:04
Speaker
If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more stoic.
00:52:17
Speaker
And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientliar.com. And finally, please get in touch with us.
00:52:29
Speaker
Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.