Stoicism (the name derives from the Stoa, the colonnade at Athens where Zeno, the first Stoic philosopher, taught) went through three phases, Early, Middle and Late. Zeno and Chrysippus were the chief writers of the Early Stoa (third to second century BC), Panaetius and Posidonius of the Middle (second to first century BC), and Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius of the Late (first to second century AD). It is by historical accident that the Late Stoa is the most important. The writings of the Early and Middle Stoa survive only in fragments, and in the works of historians, critics and popularisers, such as Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Zeno and Plutarch’s essays against the Stoics in the Moralia. Our chief source for the Early and Middle Stoa is the philosophical works of Cicero, in particular Views of Good and Evil, Tusculan Disputations and Of Duties. Stoicism was first introduced to the Romans by Panaetius, in a form adapted to the Roman view of public life. In the mid-first century BC Cicero (himself a follower of the New Academy, or sceptic) undertook to transmit the Greek philosophical tradition to Rome by translating and popularising works of different Greek schools. He had to find or invent Latin equivalents for Greek philosophical terms, and thus created a philosophical vocabulary that is still in use. In Views of Good and Evil the Stoic point of view is argued by Cato and attacked by Cicero himself; in Tusculan Disputations Cicero’s treatment of Stoicism is comprehensive and extremely sympathetic. (For the importance of Cicero in the Renaissance see Chapter 9.) Although we know the works of the Greek Stoics only at second hand, those of the Romans of the Late Stoa survive: the treatises and epistles of Seneca (4, 5), politician and playwright, the Discourses and Manual (2, 3) of Epictetus, one-time slave, and the Meditations (1) of Marcus Aurelius, emperor. Of the three, only Seneca wrote in Latin (it was in Greek that Marcus Aurelius wrote and Epictetus’ lectures were taken down); hence Seneca, not the most interesting nor original Stoic author, has been historically the most influential.
The Stoics divided philosophy into three branches, physics, logic and ethics. Although the first two were taken seriously in the Early and Middle Stoa, the writers of the Late Stoa (except Seneca, who produced one scientific work) concentrated on ethics. There was some development and modification of Stoic ethics to fit different political situations, but the principal ideas of the school can be summarised as follows. The object of the study of ethics is that man should learn to live well. Each man has reason implanted in him by God; it is his share of the divine (1). The life of virtue is the only road to happiness. Theoretically virtue can be attained by any man who follows nature, which means, since reason is natural and peculiar to man, being ruled by reason. Reason teaches man to distinguish good and evil from things that are indifferent, what is in his power from what is not in his power (2, 7). Of things that are indifferent, some are to be preferred as advantages, and some are to be rejected as disadvantages, but ultimately they are of no importance. The man who is ruled by his reason and learns these distinctions is the Stoic sage. He is characterised by his constancy, firmness and selfsufficiency; he alone is free and a king. He has complete tranquillity and peace of mind: whatever his circumstances he can retire into himself. His state is one of ‘apathy’: he is free from passion. The four passions—fear, lust, delight and distress—are not goods, since they involve reaction to external events and objects. The passionate man is diseased. However, although the wise man is independent of his circumstances, he does not ignore them. He enjoys human relationships, while remembering that friends, wife or children are not his but merely lent to him (3). He has a duty to take part in public life, though in a thoroughly corrupt society it is reasonable for him to retire. He need not lead an ascetic life, provided he distinguishes between slavery to and proper enjoyment of prosperity, which is an advantage, not a good. The unequal distribution of prosperity in the world has a purpose. Providence gives riches and health to the vicious man and poverty and suffering to the virtuous man to teach him that fortune and misfortune are neither good nor evil, that the only reward of virtue is the wise man’s state of mind. The wise man cannot call himself happy until he has been tested by Providence and can show that he is unaffected by misfortune (4). Yet if his sufferings are intolerable, he has the choice of ending his life (5). Thus, whether his circumstances are advantageous or disadvantageous, he is detached and free; suicide is the final assertion of freedom.
It is worth noting two points on which Stoicism disagreed with other classical philosophies. Aristotle and his followers the Peripatetic school assumed that material prosperity is necessary to happiness, not merely an advantage, as the Stoics taught. Epicurus believed the object of life to be the pursuit of happiness, achieved through pleasure, whereas the Stoics regarded happiness as the result but not the object of the pursuit of virtue. Epicurus’ wise man has no obligation to his fellow men, and always seeks his own happiness in retirement.
In spite of the idealistic rigour of Stoicism (there is no intermediate state between virtue and vice, so the man who is not wise is vicious) it was intended as a practical guide for conduct rather than an abstract system. The apathy of the sage may seem an unattainable ideal, yet the Stoics insisted that he was not merely a convenient fiction. Stoic authors came to concentrate less on the definition of the wise man and more on the stages by which the ordinary man could become wise. The forms of Roman Stoic literature—epistle, consolation, handbook, meditation reflect this concern with the individual case. Stoic style tends away from logical argument towards epigram and aphorism. Seneca showered practical Stoic advice on his friends and regarded himself as the physician of their souls, yet he was well aware of his own moral failings, and his works are full of self-disparagement. (He amassed a huge private fortune, and as Nero’s chief minister he was reluctantly implicated in many of his crimes). Seneca tried to rebuke human weakness in himself and others by holding up examples of moral strength. Hence Stoic literature abounds in exemplary heroes who show their freedom of mind and indifference to circumstances by the bravery of their deaths. The chief Greek hero is Socrates, put to death by the Athenians, the chief Roman hero is Cato, who killed himself after Caesar’s defeat of Pompey. Seneca himself, despite his unexemplary life, became a Stoic hero when he killed himself as Nero’s command.
After Marcus Aurelius (second century AD) the importance of Stoicism declined; the chief pagan philosophy of the late empire was Neoplatonism. Yet Stoicism had an indirect influence on many early Christian writers, for example Boethius. Seneca assumed a particular importance in the Middle Ages because of the popularity of his supposed correspondence with St Paul (forged in the fourth century); it was even suggested, though not widely believed, that he had been converted to Christianity. However, although extracts from Seneca were included in medieval and early Renaissance school texts, there was no serious revival of Stoicism until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cicero, the most popular classical author in the Renaissance, was an important source, as was Plutarch, but the texts of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were also available, both in the original and in Latin and vernacular translations. Important editions of Seneca were those of Erasmus (1515 and 1529) and Justus Lipsius (1604). The Belgian humanist Lipsius attempted a synthesis of Stoicism and Christianity known as Neostoicism, in which the Stoic and the ideal Christian were identified, and the heretical aspects of Stoicism (such as the glorification of suicide and the belief in fate) were suppressed. Lipsius’ Of Constancy (1584) (6) was soon translated into English and widely read in the seventeenth century. However, Neostoicism was more influential in Europe, particularly in France, than in England. An exception is Joseph Hall: in Heaven upon Earth (1606) he attempted to identify Stoic tranquillity with Christian peace, but by making it dependent on divine grace he recognised the essential contradiction between Stoicism and Christianity (9).
The development of Christian Neostoicism should be distinguished from interest in secular Stoicism, which seems to have increased in England in the seventeenth century. The poet most influenced by Stoic ethics is Jonson. Jonson preferred Seneca among Stoic authors, copying out passages in Discoveries, his commonplace book, and incorporating them in his poems. He was not interested in the conflict between Stoicism and Christianity, but in that between Stoicism and the values of the Renaissance court—honour, fame and magnificence. His Stoic poems assume that there is a small circle of good men who hold themselves aloof from their society and stand firm in the face of changeable fortune (14). His part is to define the idea of virtue and to urge his friends to live by it. Images of immobility, rootedness and circular perfection express the Stoic ideals of self-sufficiency and indifference to externals (see Introduction 4). Jonson remained a courtier and public servant while supporting himself by a Stoic creed. There is a more restricted use of Stoic attitudes and vocabulary in Cavalier poets like Lovelace (15), forced into retirement by the Civil War. However, the Stoicism of the Cavaliers is diluted with Epicureanism, and owes more to Horace than to Seneca.
One can suggest several reasons why Stoicism was influential in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shorn of its physical and logical basis, Stoicism (unlike Neoplatonism) was easily taught and understood, and universal in its appeal. In Europe it was a creed that provided a refuge from religious persecution and from the rival claims of Catholicism and Protestantism: Lipsius, for example, vacillated between the churches, yet his allegiance was elsewhere. Stoicism was one way in which the intellectual at the Renaissance court could overcome his own political impotence: circumstances might be immutable, but they were insignificant compared with the individual’s state of mind (12, 13). Sixteenth-and seventeenth-century courtiers must have felt a particular attraction to Seneca, tainted by luxury and political corruption, yet kept free and aloof by his Stoic beliefs.
Renaissance objections to Stoicism were made on theological (9, 10), psychological and political grounds. Stoicism assumes that the individual can achieve perfect virtue without reference to anything outside himself, but the Christian cannot act unaided by divine grace. The French essayist Montaigne, after a period of sympathy, came to reject the tenets of Stoicism. Montaigne’s intellectual development was from Stoicism to scepticism, and from theoretical resistance to pain and death to instinctive enjoyment of life. He came to see the Stoic sage as intellectually arrogant, lacking in humility, and ultimately untrue to human nature (8). Stoicism underestimates the human capacity to alter circumstances; it is a creed appropriate to the politically defeated. Hence the fallen angels in Paradise Lost I and II bravely voice Stoic slogans, assuming that they can steel themselves against the pains of hell through strength of will, yet forgetting that hell itself is the result of their own degeneracy. Milton’s comments on the self-deception of the fallen angels should be compared with the Cavalier poets’ pose of self-reliance. Milton’s final refutation of the doctrine of the Stoic sage is contained in the portrait of Christ in Paradise Regained IV (see Introduction 4).
1 In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: Philosophy. To be a philosopher is to keep unsullied and unscathed the divine spirit within him, so that it may transcend all pleasure and all pain, take nothing in hand without purpose and nothing falsely or with dissimulation, depend not on another’s actions or inactions, accept each and every dispensation as coming from the same Source as itself—and last and chief, wait with a good grace for death, as no more than a simple dissolving of the elements whereof each living thing is composed.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations II xvii
2 Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own. Remember, therefore, that if what is naturally slavish you think to be free, and what is not your own to be your own, you will be hampered, will grieve, will be in turmoil, and will blame both gods and men; while if you think only what is your own to be your own, and what is not your own to be, as it really is, not your own, then no one will ever be able to exert compulsion upon you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, will find fault with no one, will do absolutely nothing against your will, you will have no personal enemy, no one will harm you, for neither is there any harm that can touch you.
Epictetus Manual i
3 Never say about anything, ‘I have lost it’, but only ‘I have given it back.’ Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been given back. ‘I have had my farm taken away.’ Very well, this too has been given back. ‘Yet it was a rascal who took it away.’ But what concern is it of yours by whose instrumentality the Giver called for its return? So long as he gives it you, take care of it as of a thing that is not your own, as travellers treat their inn.
Epictetus Manual xi
4 The invulnerable thing is not that which is not struck, but that which is not hurt; by this mark I will show you the wise man… So you must know that the wise man, if no injury hurts him, will be of a higher type than if none is offered to him, and the brave man, I should say, is he whom war cannot subdue, whom the onset of a hostile force cannot terrify, not he who battens at ease among the idle populace. Consequently I will assert this—that the wise man is not subject to any injury. It does not matter, therefore, how many darts are hurled against him, since none can pierce him. As the hardness of certain stones is impervious to steel, and adamant cannot be cut or hewed or ground, but in turn blunts whatever comes into contact with it; as certain substances cannot be consumed by fire, but, though encompassed by flame, retain their hardness and their shape; as certain cliffs, projecting into the deep, break the force of the sea, and, though lashed for countless ages, show no traces of its wrath, just so the spirit of the wise man is impregnable.
Seneca On the Firmness of the Wise Man iii 3–5 (Compare Jonson ‘An Ode to James, Earl of Desmond’)
5 Why do [good men] suffer certain hardships? It is that they may teach others to endure them; they were born to be a pattern. Think, then, of God as saying: ‘What possible reason have you to complain of me, you who have chosen righteousness?… To you I have given the true and enduring goods… “Yet,” you say, “many sorrows, things dreadful and hard to bear, do befall us.” Yes, because I could not withdraw you from their path, I have armed your minds to withstand them all; endure with fortitude. In this you may outstrip God; he is exempt from enduring evil, while you are superior to it. Scorn poverty; no one lives as poor as he was born. Scorn pain; it will either be relieved or relieve you. Scorn death, which either ends you or transfers you. Scorn Fortune; I have given her no weapon with which she may strike your soul. Above all, I have taken pains that nothing should keep you here against your will; the way out lies open. If you do not choose to fight, you may run away. Therefore of all things that I have deemed necessary for you, I have made nothing easier than dying.’
Seneca On Providence vi 3–7
6 These grievous afflictions sent of God do commonly either exercise the good, chastise offenders or punish the wicked; and all this for our good… We see daily the best sort of men to be subject to calamities either privately or else to be partakers thereof with the wicked: we mark and marvel thereat, because we neither sufficiently conceive the cause, nor consider the consequence thereof. The cause is God’s love towards us, and not hatred. The end or consequence, not our hurt, but our benefit. For this our exercising furthereth us more ways than one: it confirmeth or strengtheneth us; it trieth or proveth us; it maketh us mirrors of patience unto others.
Lipsius Two Books of Constancy II viii
7 The meaning of the Stoic assertion that passions do not touch a wise man is probably that passions in no way cloud with error that wisdom in virtue of which he is wise, nor can they undermine and overthrow it. However, they do happen to his soul, but that is because of circumstances which the Stoics call ‘advantageous’ or ‘disadvantageous’, being unwilling to describe them as ‘good’ or ‘evil’… The Stoic insistence that such things are not to be called ‘good’, but ‘advantageous’, should be regarded as a quibble about words, not a question of the realities they signify. What does it matter whether they are more properly called ‘goods’, or ‘advantages’, seeing that Stoic and Peripatetic alike turn pale with dread at the prospect of their loss?
Augustine City of God IX iv
8 ‘Oh, what a vile and abject thing is man (saith [Seneca]) unless he raise himself above humanity!’ Observe here a notable speech and a profitable desire; but likewise absurd. For to make the handful greater than the hand, and the embraced greater than the arm, and to hope to straddle more than our legs’ length, is impossible and monstrous: nor that man should mount over and above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his own eyes, nor take hold but with his own arms. He shall raise himself up, if it please God extraordinarily to lend him his helping hand. He may elevate himself by forsaking and renouncing his own means, and suffering himself to be elevated and raised by mere heavenly means. It is for our Christian faith, not for his Stoic virtue, to pretend or aspire to this divine metamorphosis, or miraculous transmutation.
Montaigne An Apology of Raymond Sebond conclusion
9 The mind of man is too weak to bear out itself hereby against all onsets … The wisest and most resolute moralist that ever was [Socrates], looked pale when he should taste of his hemlock; and by his timorousness made sport to those that envied his speculations. The best of the heathen emperors [Antoninus Pius], that was honoured with the title of piety, justly magnified that courage of Christians which made them insult over their tormentors, and by their fearlessness of earthquakes and deaths argued the truth of their religion. It must be, it can be, none but a divine power that can uphold the mind against the rage of many afflictions; and yet the greatest crosses are not the greatest enemies to inward peace. Let us therefore look up above ourselves, and from the rules of an higher art supply the defects of natural wisdom; giving such infallible directions for tranquillity, that whosoever shall follow cannot but live sweetly and with continual delight; applauding himself at home when all the world besides him shall be miserable.
Joseph Hall Heaven upon Earth iii (NB Hall misrepresents Plato’s account in Phaedo 117B; Socrates did not look pale. The letter of Antoninus is now regarded as a forgery.)
10 There are singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the Stoics, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity: yet herein are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own assassin, and so highly extol the end and suicide of Cato; this is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live, and herein religion hath taught us a noble example; for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job.
Browne Religio Medici I
11 The man of life upright,
Whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds,
Or thought of vanity,
The man whose silent days
In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude
Nor sorrow discontent,
That man needs neither towers
Nor armour for defence,
Nor secret vaults to fly
From thunder’s violence.
He only can behold
With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep,
And terrors of the skies.
Thus, scorning all the cares
That fate, or fortune brings,
He makes the heaven his book,
His wisdom heavenly things,
Good thoughts his only friends,
His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.
Thomas Campion
12 Since all the good we have rests in the mind,
By whose proportions only we redeem
Our thoughts from out confusion, and do find
The measure of our selves, and of our powers.
And that all happiness remains confined
Within the kingdom of this breast of ours.
Without whose bounds, all that we look on, lies
In others’ jurisdictions, others’ powers,
Out of the circuit of our liberties.
All glory, honour, fame, applause, renown,
Are not belonging to our royalties,
But to others’ wills, wherein they are only grown
And that unless we find us all within,
We never can without us be our own:
Nor call it right our life, that we live in:
But a possession held for others’ use,
That seem to have most interest therein.
Daniel To the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford’ ll. 50–66
13 How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.
Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death:
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame, or private breath.
Who envies none that chance doth raise, Nor vice hath ever understood;
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good.
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great.
Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to lend:
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book, or friend.
This man is freed from servile bands,
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.
Sir Henry Wotton ‘The Character of a Happy Life’
14 Thou hast begun well, Roe, which stand well too,
And I know nothing more thou hast to do.
He that is round within himself, and straight,
Need seek no other strength, no other height;
Fortune upon him breaks herself, if ill,
And what would hurt his virtue makes it still.
That thou at once, then, nobly mayest defend
With thine own course the judgement of thy friend,
Be always to thy gathered self the same:
And study conscience, more than thou would’st fame.
Though both be good, the latter yet is worst,
And ever is ill got without the first.
Jonson ‘To Sir Thomas Roe’ Epigrams 98
15 Thou best of men and friends! we will create
A genuine summer in each other’s breast,
And spite of this cold time and frozen fate,
Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.
Thus richer than untempted kings are we,
That asking nothing, nothing need:
Though lord of all what seas embrace, yet he
That wants himself is poor indeed.
Lovelace ‘The Grasshopper’ ll. 21–41, 37–40