The Therapy of Desire * MARTIN CL ASSICAL LECTURES New Series, Volume 2 The Martin Classical Lectures are delivered annually at Oberlin College on a foundation established by his many friends in honor of Charles Beebe Martin, forforty-five years a teacher of classical literature and classical art in Oberlin. The Therapy of Desire THEORY AND PRACTICE IN HELLENI STIC ETHIC S * MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright © 1994 by Trustees of Oberlin College Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, We st Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 1947- The therapy of desire : theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics /Martha C. Nussbaum. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 0-691-03342-0 1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Emotions (Philosophy)-History. 3. Ethics, Ancient. I. Title. B505.N87 1994 170'.938-dc20 93-6417 The author's proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Amnesty International This book has been composed in Sabon Ty peface Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 TO THE MEMORY OF GREGORY VLA STO S * Philosophy does not stand outside the world any more than man's brain is outside him because it is not in his stomach; but philosophy, to be sure, is in the world with its brain before it stands on the earth with its feet, while many other human spheres have long been rooted in the earth and pluck the fruits of the world long before they realize that the "head" also belongs to this world or that this world is the world of the head. (KARL MARX, 1842) The philosopher desires And not to have is the beginning of desire. To have what is not is its ancient cycle ... It knows that what it has is what is not And throws it away like a thing of another time, As morning throws off stale moonlight and shabby sleep. (WALLACE STEVENS, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction") * Contents * Acknowledgments lX List of Abbreviations xm INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER 1 Therapeutic Arguments 13 CHAPTER2 Medical Dialectic: Aristotle on Theory and Practice 48 CHAPTER 3 Aristotle on Emotions and Ethical Health 78 CHAPTER4 Epicurean Surgery: Argument and Empty Desire 102 CHAPTER 5 Beyond Obsession and Disgust: Lucretius on the Therapy of Love 140 CHAPTER 6 Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Vo ice of Nature 192 CHAPTER 7 "By Wo rds, Not Arms": Lucretius on Anger and Aggression 239 CHAPTER 8 Skeptic Purgatives: Disturbance and the Life without Belief 280 CHAPTER 9 Stoic To nics: Philosophy and the Self-Government of the Soul 316 CHAPTER 10 The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions 359 CHAPTER 11 Seneca on Anger in Public Life 402 CHAPTER 12 Serpents in the Soul: A Reading of Seneca's Medea 439 CHAPTER 13 The Therapy of Desire 484 CONTENTS List of Philosophers and Schools 511 Bibliography 517 Index Locorum 531 General Index 550 Vlll * Acknowledgments * T.usBOOK BEGAN as the Martin Classical Lectures for 1986. The five original lectures were early versions of chapters1-2, 4, 8, 10, and 12. I am extremely grateful to the Martin Lecture Committee and the Department of Greek and Latin at Oberlin College for the invitation to present the lectures, and for warm hospitality and stimulating comments during my visit. Preparation of the lectures was very much assisted by the members of my National Endowment forth e Humanities Summer Seminar for College Te achers in1985, where I received extremely tough and searching criticism of drafts and early ideas. Further work on the book began with a sabbatical during1986 -87, supported by Brown University, by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, where I found a stimulating and supportive setting for the expansion of the project to its present scope. Final revisions were completed in the fine facilities and the peaceful environment of the Center for Ideas and Society in the University of California at Riverside. Many people have helped me in many ways; most of my individual debts are recorded at the ends of the particular chapters. But I would here like to mention especially the help I have received from conversations with Myles Burnyeat, which turned me toward the serious study of Hellenistic ethics in the firstpla ce; his work in this area has been an inspiration to me as to so many others, and his tough questions have been invaluable. The triennial Symposia Hellenistica, beginning in 1978, have been a rigorous, and also truly collegial, source of information, argument, and criticism-and, among their members, I would like to thank above all Julia Annas, Jacques Brunschwig, Brad Inwood, G. E. R. Lloyd, Phillip Mitsis, David Sedley, and Richard Sorabji. I have received comments on the entire manuscript from Margaret Graver, Brad Inwood, Richard Posner, Henry Richardson, Richard Sorabji, Cass Sunstein, and two anonymous readers; I am enor­ mously grateful to all of them for the time and effort they have expended and the insights their comments afford. For criticisms and suggestions of many different sorts on individual chapters and issues, I am grateful to Julia Annas, Geoffrey Bakewell, Richard Bernstein, Sissela Bok, Dan Brock, Jacques Brunschwig, Myles Burnyeat, Victor Caston, Abbott Gleason, Michael Gleason, Jasper Griffin, Miriam Griffin, Charles Guig­ non, Caroline Hahnemann, Stephen Halliwell, David Halperin, Colonel Anthony Hartle, Dolores Iorizzo, Jaegwon Kim, David Konstan, Mary lX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Lefkowitz, Glen Lesses, Haskel Levi, GeoffreyLloyd, Mark McPherran, Arthur Madigan, S.J., Gareth Matthews, Giles Milhaven, Joyce Carol Oates, Anthony Price, John Procope, Michael Putnam, James Redfield, Amelie 0. Rorty, Stephen Rosenbaum, Christopher Rowe, Malcolm Scho­ field, David Sedley, Charles Segal, Amartya Sen, Nancy Sherman, Albert Silverstein, Ernest Sosa, Zeph Stewart, Holgar Thesleff, Rex We lshon, JeffreyWhitm an, the late John J. Winkler, and Susan Wo lf. I have received many more valuable comments from audiences in the many places where I presented chapters of the book as lectures; I am sorry that I am unable to acknowledge all of those debts individually. I owe special thanks to Jonathan Glover, who allowed me to be his summer "house-sitter" in Oxford fortwo consecutive summers, providing an ideally comfortable and undisturbed setting, full of air and light, in which a great deal of the work was done. During these periods Justin Broackes (now, two years later, my colleague at Brown) very kindly lent me a marvelous IBM typewriter, for which I feel great affection. The cover photograph, for which I thank Rachel Nussbaum, seems to me to capture strikingly some of the imagery of chapter 12: the contrast between a pure white that is linked with death and a green that grows up darkly indefatigably behind it; between clean straight lines and messier shapes of life; between the unsullied blue sky and the strange hot light that cuts straight through both sky and tree, a light coming, as it were, from Medea's countercosmos, set over against the world of Stoic virtue. One debt stands out above others. Forthe past fifteen years, until his death in October 1992, I had the good fortune to be a professional col­ league and a friend of Gregory Vlastos. His capacity for pursuing philo­ sophical understanding tirelessly and without arrogance or defensiveness, his willingness always to subject his ideas to the searching scrutiny of argument, his combination of exacting textual knowledge with philosophi­ cal commitment and of both with social compassion-all this has been exemplary for me, as for so many others. And the warmth and support of his friendship, the way his loving irony could illuminate personal as well as philosophical perplexities-all this supported me in more ways, I imagine, than I know even now. Several months before his death, I asked if I might dedicate this book to him; he agreed. With sadness at the loss of a wonder­ ful friend, I now dedicate it to his memory. Because the damages caused by anger and hatred in public life cannot be addressed by philosophy alone, the author's proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Amnesty International. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Portions of this material have been previously published as follows: A preliminary version of some of the material in chapters 1 and 4 was published as "Therapeutic Arguments: Epicurus and Aristotle," in The Norms of Nature, ed. M. Schofield and G. Striker (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1986), 31-74. An earlier version of chapter 5 was published as "Beyond Obsession and Disgust: Lucretius' Genealogy of Love," in Apeiron 22 (1989) : 1-59. An earlier version of chapter6 was published in Philosophy and Phenome­ nological Research 50 (1989): 303-51. 7 An earlier version of chapter was published as "'By Wo23rds (1990)Not Arms': 41-: 90Lucretius. on Gentleness in an Unsafe Wo rld," inApeiron An earlier version of chapter8 was published as "Skeptic Purgatives: Ther­ apeutic Arguments in Ancient Skepticism," in Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991) : 1-33. 10 20 (1987) : 129- An75. earlier version of chapter was published in Apeiron An earlier version of chapter 12 was published in Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavel/, ed. T. Cohen, P. Guyer, and H. Putnam (Lubbock: Texas Te ch Press, 1993), 307-44.