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Méthexis X (/997) p. 23-38 Articu/os

IS A STOIC?

JULlAANNAS

It is an honour to contribute this paper to a collection in memory of Conrado Eggers Lan, whose work has been so valuable in so many areas of ancient philoso­ phy, including the study of Plato. While 1 am not confident that he would have agre­ ed with the thesis of this paper, 1 hope that he would ascribe to it sorne value in ad­ ding to continuing discussion of and engagement with the great works of Plato. Conrado be missed in many parts of the scholarly world for his work, and for his great courtesy and collegiality, as weil as for the vigour with which he supported the study of ancient in unpropitious times. His death is a great loss. Is Plato a Stoic? This may seem an absurd question. However, when we are con­ sidering Plato's , which is my concem here, we do sometimes ask such ques­ tions as wh ether he is a utilitarian. Is this any less absurd? The questions reflect the that Plato chooses to write in the dialogue form, giving us arguments in plenty, but without providing us with a ready-made framework in which to put them. The quantity ofwork on the structure ofPlatonic ethics produced today shows that there is no consensus on what this framework is; there is still room for reasonable dis­ agreement over the form of ethical theory which best makes of what we find in Plato's works. It may still seem particularly unpromising to ask whether Plato is a Stoic in ethics; this does not look like a question that can bring us direct insight into his thinking. But it does promise to give us indirect insight. Once Greek eudaimonist ethical theory emerges explicitIy in AristotIe, its central problems are defined by their role in exposition and debate. When it tums out that it was a for contro­ versy what position Plato held on the central issue of ancient ethics - the relation of to happiness - we may reflect that Plato's work is not just difficult for us to categorize, but is elusive in terms ofancient ethical debate also. Plato's position is a problematic one in ancient philosophical terms, notjust ours. Antipater, one of the heads of the Stoa, wrote three books on the theme that Plato held only virtue to be good. 1 ln this work he proved that according to Plato virtue is sufficient for happiness, as weil as c1aiming that many other Platonic ideas were in agreement with Stoicism. Antipater is claiming Plato for one side of a de­ bate about the central question of ancient ethical theory: Is virtue sufficient for hap­ piness, as the Stoics daim, or does happiness require, as AristotIe thought, a certain amount of 'extemal goods' such as health, wealth and success? Ooes the morally good person have everything that in , or is she a failure if she ends up

1 H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta vol III, Antipater, fr. 56 (, Stromateis V 14). Literally, the claim is that 'according to Plato only the fine is good', the fine the aim of virtue. 24 Julia Annas poor and powerless? How far does demand that we revise our everyday in­ tuitive criteria for happiness? We can see why the Stoics might want Plato's authority to support them against AristotIe. It may seem at tirst more surprising that Plato's followers would see themselves as Stoics. But we tind that, after the end of Plato's own Academy (in the frrst century S.C.), when the people whom we cali Middle Platonists2 start interpre­ ting Plato as a philosopher with a system of positive doctrine (in the way that has been standard in the twentieth century) the main dispute over his ethics is precisely this: is he a Stoic or an Aristotelian? This is not really surprising: those were the contemporary categories available to philosophers interpreting Plato on what had now become the central theoretical question of ethics. As John Dillon puts it, '[N]o later Platonist... could be strictly "orthodox", since Plato does not leave a body of doctrine which can be simply adopted, but rather a series of guiding ideas, replete with loose ends and even contradictions, which require interpretation .... By the Se­ cond Century A.D., one in effect had the choice of adopting Aristotelian or Stoic terminology and to give formaI structure to one's interpretation of what Plato meant, and there was no central authority such as a , to ma­ ke ex cathedra pronouncements on how far one could go. Nor, 1 think was Plato­ nism any the worse for that.,3 It is natural that once Stoic and Aristotelian debate had formalized the central question of ethical theory, Plato's position should come to be seen in terms of that debate. We interpret Plato ourse Ives in terms of our own ethical debates, and the questions which they make central. ft is more interesting that there was disagree­ ment on this. Sorne people think that on the question of virtue and happiness Plato and AristotIe converge on a similar position.4 Others violently disagree, thinking to be completely at odds with Plato where virtue and happiness are con­ cemed.5 What 1 want to focus on here is the point that so many Platonists con­ curred with Antipater: Plato agrees with the Stoics that virtue is the only good, and

2 Doubts can easily be raised about the adequacy or helpfulness of 'Middle ' as a term picking out a coherent body of thought: see the helpful article by Pier Luigi Donini on a series of re­ cent publications, especially one by Michael Frede, 'Medioplatonismo e filosofi medioplatonici. Una raccolta di studi', Elenchos 1990,79-93. However, 1 do not think that these doubts matter for present purposes, since 1 am here interested exclusively with the understanding of Plato's ethics in Stoic and Aristotelian terms, a concem shared by writers traditionally labelled 'Middle Platonist' (and by sorne labelled 'neo-Pythagorean'); problems about the boundaries and of '' as a whole do not fundamentally affect this. 3 John Dillon, 'Orthodoxy and in Middle Platonism' in On and Off the Beaten Track, Studies in the History of Platonism, ed. Th. G. Sinnige, Nijmegen 1985,31-50, p. 44. 4 , ap. , 51.15-17 says that Plato gives in different words the same defi­ nition of happiness as has just been described for Aristotle ('preferred use of complete virtue in a complete life') which makes reference to a crucial role for extemal goods. 5 has the strongest views here, insisting loudly that one should not argue to Platonist con­ clusions from Aristotelian premises. 'Aristotle's works [on ethicsJ, the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics and the Magna Moralia, think about virtue in a way which is petty and grovelling and vulgar' (fT. 2 des Places) and completely fails to grasp the nature of Plato's commitment to virtue.