One of the ways in which late ancient authors approached questions of the self was by means of a form of the Socratic elenchus that I have elsewhere called the inner dialogue.1 Augustine makes extensive use of this type of dialogue, for example in De Ordine and the Soliloquia, where his interlocutor is the personification of his rational faculties,2 and in the Confessions, where he is in conversation with his own past.
In this chapter I offer a sketch of the evolution of this literary form in the late Hellenistic period and in late antiquity, drawing on illustrations from the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, Augustine, and Boethius. My concern is with the relationship between the literary and philosophical elements in the inner dialogues utilized by these authors and can be viewed as a contribution to the inquiry in recent years into literary forms of expression in philosophy, in particular in Plato and the Platonic tradition.3
Although it was Augustine who invented the term soliloquium4 to describe the literary and philosophical soliloquy, the form was already well established as a genre of discourse by the fourth century A.D. There are speeches that qualify as soliloquies in Homer, as well as in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.5 Soliloquies are attributed to Pythagoras6 and the Presocratics.7 Socrates comments positively, if briefly, on their function in the Sophist, Theaetetus, and Philebus. Plato makes use of the technique in the Crito and Hippias Major.8
The number and variety of internal dialogues employed in philosophy increased during the Hellenistic period and late antiquity. By the time Augustine composed the Soliloquia, in the winter of 386–387, the soliloquy had become an independent literary genre in both Greek and Latin thought and was recognized as an alternative, or complement, to the open dialogue.9 Augustine is highly original in the uses to which he puts inner dialogues and does not appear to be imitating earlier writers who employ the technique. However, among authors whom he is known to have read, it should be noted that Cicero speaks highly of inner dialogue, although he does not utilize the form often, and Horace, who occasionally speaks to himself in his verse, on one occasion comments on soliloquizing as a method of composition, as he strolls along the Via Sacra in Rome.10
In my view, the rise in interest in the soliloquy within the field of philosophy was the consequence of two parallel and interdependent developments arising in the Hellenistic period. One was the revival of the Socratic method of teaching, common to different schools, in which inner dialogue easily became an extension of outer or formal interchanges of this type.11 The other was the widespread use of internal or reflective interpretive methods for accompanying the classroom discussion of a variety of ancient texts, including those of philosophers. The history of the soliloquy in the late ancient period can be viewed as an intermingling of these traditions, in which training in grammar, rhetoric, and interpretive methods provided a common background for the use of the technique of self-talk in philosophical schools with diverse intellectual allegiances.
In attempting to provide a history of the use of this form in philosophy, it is important to bear in mind that, after the death of the founders of the major schools, the teaching of philosophy was gradually transformed into an academic type of pursuit, in which there were professors, a curriculum of set texts, and institutional arrangements for instruction. Students were initiated into the doctrines of the different schools through the study of the writings of their founders—figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, and Chrysippus.12 Instruction normally took place in two stages: a master first read and commented orally on a school’s foundational or canonical texts, possibly drawing on his personal notes; then he engaged in a discussion with his students on the doctrines found in these texts, sometimes illustrating his views by means of examples.13
In both segments of the lesson the master was obliged to make use of interpretive techniques; these could be based on the written materials on which he was lecturing or, in combination with these, on other readings. What Augustine calls a soliloquium was one type of interpretive procedure within the second stage of instruction, in which a verbal exchange of ideas between a master and his students was replaced or supplemented by a silent dialogue within individual students’ minds. The passage from an outer to an inner mode of communication often went unremarked, since ancient reading and commentary were frequently carried on orally while the lesson was in progress, as contrasted with later periods, when commentary was often a separate activity that took place after the initial reading of set texts.14
During late antiquity, and continuing into the Middle Ages, it was a short step from these voces paginarum, as they were sometimes called, to voices in the minds of readers and interpreters of texts.15 There are references to the use of inner dialogues for interpretive purposes in both Greek and Latin authors; for example, as noted, in Plutarch’s pedagogical treatise, How a Young Person Should Listen to Poems, where students are advised to talk to themselves (pros heauton eipein) after the master’s exposition of literary texts,16 or in Augustine’s early dialogue, De Ordine, where his friends and followers are likewise invited to mobilize their internal resources after classroom readings of Virgil, Cicero, and the Bible.17 In training in philosophy this sort of activity often encouraged rote learning rather than original inquiries; however, a few thinkers working within the system attempted to revive the aims of the Socratic method of instruction and complemented their lessons by means of inner dialogues. It is with their achievements that I am concerned.
It is helpful to begin a discussion of the literary and philosophical elements in the period’s soliloquies with Seneca, since he provides the most detailed description of the soliloquy as a technique of self-examination among the writings of Hellenistic thinkers.18 This is of course a Stoic version of the inner dialogue, and it is valuable as a point of departure for a broader inquiry into the genre because “eclectic” Stoics like Seneca considered themselves to be among the authentic heirs to the Socratic tradition.19
The relevant passage appears in De Ira,20 where Seneca recalls the practice of self-scrutiny in a little-known Stoic teacher, Quintus Sextius the Elder (fl. ca. 50 B.C.). This is recommended as a way of calming unruly emotions and establishing a tranquil frame of mind. Seneca notes that “the senses have to be governed in a way that brings about firmness or stability (firmitatem),” as contrasted with an approach that can contribute to their “enfeeblement, owing to . . . the subject’s mental disposition (animus).”
In pursuit of this goal, Sextius went over his daily activities and routines every night before going to bed, asking himself such questions as “ ‘What bad habit did you cure today?’, ‘What vice did you resist?’, ‘In what way are you a better person?’ ” By following his example, Seneca argues,
our anger will be somewhat reduced and made more manageable, if we know that the emotion will come before this kind of judgment every day. In the light of this fact, what could be more attractive than this practice of thoroughly sorting out each day (hac consuetudine excutiendi . . . diem)? How beautiful is the sleep that follows this recollection (recognitionem), how tranquil, how profound and undisturbed (quam altus et liber), when the mind has either approved or criticized itself, and when this secret investigator and judge of oneself (speculator sui censorque secretus) has become acquainted with one’s behavior (cognovit de moribus suis).
Seneca adds that he personally makes
good use of this potential (potestate). Every day I plead my case before myself (cotidie apud me causam dico). When I no longer see the light, and my wife, conscious of my habit, has fallen silent, I examine the whole of my day (totum diem meum scrutor) and judge the value of my deeds and words (factaque ac dicta mea remetior). I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing. For why should I fear any of my errors, when I am able to say the following words to myself: “See that you no longer do this.” “I will overlook it this time.” “In that debate you spoke too belligerently. In future do not argue with the uneducated: those who have not learned anything evidently do not wish to learn anything.” “You criticized that person more frankly than was necessary; consequently you have not improved him but only caused offence.” “Moreover, see that you not only speak the truth but that the person whom you are addressing is in a frame of mind that is receptive to the truth. A good man is always happy to be corrected; however, the worse the man is, the less he takes to any sort of advice.”
As practiced by Stoics and by members of other philosophical schools interested in the Socratic heritage,21 this type of self-scrutiny is a personal affair: it takes place in solitude, its medium is the human voice, and it works by means of questions and answers within the mind. In Pierre Hadot’s words, its purpose is nothing less than “the mastery of the subject’s inner discourse,”22 and as such it forms a critical part of a program for personal advancement by attaining an equilibrium between mind and body. It is a technique midway between the traditional form of spiritual guidance23 and a more personal type, later developed by Augustine, in which direction is largely carried on internally by the subject himself. If philosophy is divisible into scientia and habitus animi,24 as Seneca proposes, routines of this type are among the practices that ensure the soul’s advancement by means of its own activity: animi bonum animus inveniat.25
Seneca’s outline of Sextius’s practice is evidently the result of reading, personal contacts, and instruction. This is revealed by his form of presentation, in which he describes soliloquizing as a received doctrine and provides a discussion of its usefulness, thereby reiterating the two stages of the master’s normal form of teaching. Also, in his handling of the frequently encountered theme of spiritual direction,26 he pictures himself acting as a guide for his friend Novatus, to whom De Ira is dedicated, just as Sextius is mentor for him. This is the setup for discipleship that is found throughout the dialogi and epistulae. Finally, he cannot resist the temptation of playing before an audience. As he reports, he and Sextius reexamine their daily activities before going to bed; however, in his case this takes place in the presence of his wife, who is accustomed to his routine and remains quiet in order to permit him to concentrate (et conticuit uxor moris iam mei conscia). She clearly represents ambient talk, dramatizing his need for outer silence while engaging in self-scrutiny.
It is also clear that a deliberate design is at work in the literary setup of the dialogi. These writings may not have been conceived as “dialogues” in the traditional sense of the term, but as a hybrid of external and internal types of discourse.27 In view of this intermingling of genres Miriam Griffin legitimately asks:
Into what category does the description dialogi put these works, which have no named characters, no organized conversation, no definite setting? What relation can this use of the word bear to Cicero’s, for whom it meant live debate or a type of literary composition exemplified by his own philosophical and rhetorical works? In the early Empire, the word still seems to be used, as it always had been, of philosophical works with named characters and organized debate.28
Seneca does not take up the question of genre; however, he hints at the manner in which soliloquies may have made their way into his process of composition in an aside at De Tranquillitate Animi 1.14, where he states:
In my literary studies I think it is surely better to fix my eyes on the theme itself (res ipsas) and, keeping this uppermost when I speak, to trust meanwhile to the theme to supply the words so that unstudied discourse (inelaborata . . . oratio) may follow wherever it leads.29
Here inner dialogue is viewed as both a compositional and an instructional device, and that is how it is envisaged in the dialogi. Within these works the represented conversations normally takes one of two forms. In the simpler version, the soliloquy consists in a pair of speaking voices within Seneca’s mind, as in De Vita Beata.30 Here the soul, interrogating itself,31 develops its inner resources,32 frees itself from emotion,33 and acquires virtue,34 as Seneca (or the reader) takes control of the shaping of his (or her) life.35 In the more complicated version, the internal speeches take place within an external dialogue, as in De Tranquillitate Animi, where the (imagined) interlocutors are Seneca and the prefect Serenus (d. A.D. 63). Here soliloquies arise in the mind of each speaker during (or after) conversations and follow a similar strategy for the soul’s improvement.36 Serenus is said to learn of the source of his illness (enslavement to emotion)37 by means of self-inquiry (inquirenti mihi),38 and Seneca confirms that the situation arises from the emotional disposition of his mind (adfectum animi) by means of silent questioning within himself (quaero . . . tacitus).39 The starting point for the discovery of the malady and the healing process that follows is self-assessment Ante omnia necesse est se ipsum aestimare.40 Once emotional health is restored, these internal conversations maintain the soul’s tranquility and contentment.41
A still more complicated scheme is worked out in the Epistulae Morales,42 where Seneca acts as both teacher and thinker, imparting doctrines while at the same time taking part in the discussions as a participant. He can thereby benefit from the very instruction he desires for his disciple.43 He alternates between being a real and a fictional person, while his correspondent plays the role of alter ego. Talking to Lucilius, therefore, Seneca is frequently talking either to himself, to himself through his pupil, or to himself and his pupil at the same time. In the early letters the image of a living correspondent is kept before the reader, whereas in the later and lengthier epistles the personal connection is less emphasized. In these letters the presentation of Stoic doctrines takes precedence over the open discussion of Stoic, Epicurean, and Aristotelian themes.44 In this respect, the rhetorical techniques utilized in the dialogi and the Epistulae Morales can be considered variants of the same model, in which personal characterization of the speakers in the dialogue has both a philosophical and a dramatic function.45 What differs in the letters is the part played by the implied reader, which is considerably amplified while nonetheless remaining within the compass of the Stoic notion of spiritual direction.46
A different approach to the philosophical soliloquy is taken by Epictetus, who lived between roughly A.D. 50 and 120. In his Discourses, self-scrutiny and teaching are taken up in a series of open dialogues, while inner dialogues are often employed in handling topics in pedagogy or theology.
Through the recording of these outer dialogues, the Discourses allow us, as readers, to become witnesses to the classroom discussions that took place between Epictetus and his students during normal periods of instruction in philosophy.47 The participants in these classes were chiefly young men from the city of Nicopolis, where Epictetus taught after the expulsion of philosophers from Rome in 94. Owing to his fame as a teacher, there were frequently visitors in his school from privileged families elsewhere in the Empire.48
The lessons were based on the teaching methods of Socrates, for which Epictetus never tires of expressing his admiration.49 However, the Discourses differ considerably from their acknowledged source of inspiration, and chiefly in four ways. The dialogues that have come down to us are on the whole shorter than those of Epictetus’s model; they are recorded in a less literary style than that of Plato (i.e., in colloquial Greek or koine);50 they contain more repetitions in themes and methods than do the originals;51 and their subject matter is in general more limited in scope.52 It has been observed more than once that these qualities give the Discourses a false appearance of spontaneity, and thereby make them “deceptively simple to read.”53 We are apt to overlook an important fact: in Epictetus, the inner dialogue, as a by-product of the exterior dialogue, is presented as an alternative, perhaps deliberate, to the Socratic form of dialogue, principally by deformalizing its language and style of presentation.54 Not only is the language of discourse simplified. There are no privileged partners in these conversations, which take place with persons named55 and unnamed,56 as well as with a variety of invented figures.57
Epictetus thereby suggests that the study of philosophy can be more open and accessible than in the form in which it is presented in the more elitist writings of Plato. He nonetheless adheres to Socrates’s view that persons pursuing the philosophical life must engage in some form of regular self-examination, for which, in the Discourses, soliloquies are sometimes employed.58 His point of departure in these exercises is Socrates’s teaching on the dual function of reason. In this view, reason is self-reflective, that is, it is able to understand itself,59 while, as a tool for rational or logical thinking, it works alongside other disciplines that employ comparable principles of organization, such as those of the liberal arts.60 Within this framework the inner dialogue in Epictetus serves a traditional instructional purpose,61 supplementing the master’s formal lessons62 while at the same time addressing a variety of everyday ethical and philosophical problems among his students.63
In Epictetus’s view, inner discourses of this type are solo performances, like short dramatic speeches, whereas the open dialogue is comparable to the chorus in an ancient drama, in which there is a joint expression of views by a group of people at once.64 He makes ample use of both forms, and does not always distinguish clearly between them. Inner dialogue is mostly reserved for moments when his students mull over their lessons in solitude,65 notes in hand, so that they can at once read, write, and commune with themselves.66 In the master’s view, they should engage in inner dialogues while he is teaching67 as well as during the classroom discussions that follow.68 It is in this manner, he points out, that he himself often reflects on personal ethical questions, such as the theft of his bedside lamp from his study,69 as well as more general philosophical matters, such as the role of hypothetical syllogisms in framing arguments.70
His use of soliloquies in these contexts is not formalized, and arises in most cases out of the type of discussion that take place in normal conversation. A typical example of his approach is found in the opening chapter of book 3, where Arrian records the visit to his school by a student of rhetoric from Corinth.71 The young man arrived in the classroom too ornately dressed for the master’s austere taste; however, instead of offering direct criticism, Epictetus asked the newcomer with mock innocence whether there was not a more worthwhile inner criterion for judging something of beauty than the clothes he was wearing.72 He had in mind the student’s capacity for understanding the nature of justice, which, if allowed to mature, would presumably enhance his attractiveness to others as well as to himself.73 However, in order to comprehend a beauty of this type, the young man would have first to conduct a Socratic inquiry into the kind of person he was, scrutinizing himself rigorously from within.74 After delivering his comments on the theme, Epictetus concluded with these words:
Beyond that (i.e., inner transformation) I do not know what more I can say to you; for if I say what I have in mind, I will hurt your feelings, and you will leave, perhaps never to return; on the other hand, if I remain silent . . . I will not be saying anything to you as a philosopher. . . . If some time in the future you come to your senses, you will have good reason to blame me. “What did Epictetus observe in me,” you will say to yourself . . .: “Although he saw me . . . in so disgraceful a state he . . . let me remain this way and never said a word.”75
Both these putative conversations—that of Epictetus allegedly talking to himself and that of the student, imagining himself talking to his master—provide illustrations of a principle that is central to Epictetus’s thinking about the philosophical life. This is the concept of prohairesis, a term that is difficult to translate by a single word but which means in his writings a combination of will, moral purpose, and ethical commitment. It is a notion that has distant, and perhaps untraceable, Aristotelian roots but clearly develops in an original manner in the diatribai,76 where it refers globally to “the possibility of free moral self-determination”77 and oversees faculties involved in ethical decisions, including both speech and sight.78 In Anthony Long’s words, prohairesis thereby becomes Epictetus’s foundation for self-care:79
Rather than treating the moral point of view as a disposition that is distinct from self-concern, he presents it as all of a piece within the natural or proper understanding of one’s human identity. That identity is one’s volition or prohairesis, the only inalienable thing that we have and that we are. It is in virtue of prohairesis that we are capable of conscience and self-consciousness—knowing ourselves, reflecting on who we are, and reasoning about how we should organize our lives.80
This is a version of what I am calling an “integrated self,” which Augustine will develop along somewhat comparable principles of self-maintenance, however, using the notions of will and linguistic philosophy as his foundations for ethical conduct. Epictetus may have anticipated this view, although he is not a direct influence, by linking the notion of prohairesis to that of prolepsis (preconception), that is, to the manner in which the subject is presented with the possibility of a way of imagining or talking to himself about how events that may potentially affect his emotional state may in fact take place. The combination consists in
applying . . . preconceptions to particular cases . . . in conformity with nature, [and distinguishing between] things that are and are not under our control. Under our control are moral purpose (prohairesis) and all actions with moral purpose (panta ta prohairetica erga).81
These forces permit the individual to choose freely between good and evil,82 and to prepare for unexpected turns of events,83 reducing anxieties.84 A role for interior conversation is thereby created, since these are the sorts of events about which people hear, read, and talk with themselves.85 In Epictetus’s view, such thinking comprises an appropriate “topic of investigation for the person who embarks on philosophy (zetesis tou philosophantos),”86 and frames hypotheses (anastrephometha) about the kind of life he wants to lead.87
A second function for soliloquies is found in Epictetus’s statements that contain a combination of philosophical and theological reflections. The early thesis of Christian influence on these parts of the Discourses has been abandoned;88 however, it is recognized that Epictetus uncannily parallels New Testament and patristic phrasing in such matters as his conception of the Stoic god as a “father,” who knows us, observes us, and listens to our supplications,89 including inner speeches uttered for his consideration. While this god is identified through pantheism with the workings of nature,90 he is envisaged as operating through divine will91 and arranging everything in the universe in a manner that permits mortals to understand his diverse purposes by means of their own investigations.92 Epictetus frequently displays his piety and humility before this awesome force in terms reminiscent of the Psalms:
I came into the world when it so pleased him,
I will leave it at his pleasure;
while I lived this was my purpose—
to sing hymns of praise. . . .93
Also, in parallel with Judaism, Christianity, and Greek polytheism,94 he envisages god as speaking through his chosen disciples, the philosophers, who interpret the logos, which is his word.95 In expressing these views, Epictetus frequently addresses the deity through prayers, and in these are found, as later in Augustine, some of his most profound and poetic soliloquies.96
He is convinced that “it is impossible for man to conceal from god, not merely his actions, but even his purposes and thoughts.”97 The deity has endowed us with an innate capacity for tranquility and happiness;98 however, the constraints of the mortal condition have to be recognized:
Over the things that we seriously care for no one has authority; and the things over which other men have authority do not concern us. . . . Has god not given you that which is your own, unhindered and unrestrained. . . .? Your faithfulness is your own, your self-respect is your own. Who can take these things from you? Who but yourself will prevent you from using them? . . . Since you have such promptings and orientations from the divine . . ., you can produce your own preconceptions (prolēpseis).”99
Those engaged in inner dialogues on these themes are likened to “spectators” in the crowded “theaters” of their own thoughts.100 They effectively become audiences for their own speeches,101 in both his theology and philosophy.102 In this respect, Richard Sorabji notes, Epictetus is comparable to Cicero inasmuch as he
recognizes the same mixture of choice and nature, and uses the same metaphor of an actor’s roles,103 but with the complication that he sees our roles, character, ability, occupation and status, as to some extent assigned by God.104 Nonetheless we all have choice. We must tell ourselves who we want to be (tis einai theleis) and then act accordingly. . . . There are, as in Cicero, a general reference point (koinē anaphora), viz. acting like a human being . . . and an individual reference point, concerning our occupation (epitēdeuma) and will (prohairesis).105
When you mix in society or take physical exercise, or converse with others, are you with you . . . and yet are unaware of it? This is not a god outside, of course. . . . but one inside, whom you can listen to within yourselves . . . , whom, while hearing, you may dishonour. . . . Even before his image you would not dare to do some of the things you do: is it not worse to do them in his presence, since he is always present within you?106 When we are alone, therefore, talking silently to ourselves, we are not truly alone. Just as we listen to ourselves, god listens to us.107
Such self-address begins in a Socratic fashion with the acknowledgment of ignorance.108 In order to advance we have to narrow our focus to essentials109 and acquire the skills needed for dealing with our specific problems. Epictetus is fond of comparing these to the ability to read and write, or to playing a musical instrument, noting on one occasion: “If you want to be a good reader, you have to read; if you want to be a good writer, you have to write,”110 and on another: “What . . . is it that makes a man free from hindrance and restraint in writing? The knowledge of how to write. And what in playing on the harp? The knowledge of how to play the harp. So too in living it is the knowledge of how to live.”111
If we are to benefit from dialogue with ourselves, therefore, we have to practice inner conversation day after day:112 to observe ourselves, as god observes us;113 to think about ourselves,114 having purged our minds of illusions115 and sensory impressions (phantasias).116 “In the way in which we respond to questions involving sophistry,” he notes, “we should exercise ourselves daily to counteract the false images produced by our senses.”117 We cannot free ourselves from such sources of error merely by discussing the views of philosophers, past or present, nor can we acquire the necessary knowledge from different sorts of books.118 We have to withdraw from external things entirely, and turn our attention to inner moral purpose (prohairesin), cultivating and perfecting ourselves through personal analysis.119 Without the processes of reasoning and judgment that such an exercise entails, the works of eminent thinkers have no more value in the shaping of the ethical side of our lives than the telling of mere stories (historias).120
In Epictetus’s view, “that is why philosophers advise us not to be satisfied with mere learning (mono to mathein) but to bring to it meditation (meleten) and training (askesin).”121 Echoing, but transforming, the second part of the normal instructional process in philosophy, he notes:
A little while ago it was god’s will for you to be at leisure, to converse with yourself, to write about these things, to read, to listen, to prepare yourself. You had sufficient time for that. Now he says to you: “Come at length to the contest, show us what you have learned, how you have trained yourself.”122
The exercises have to be performed slowly and patiently over a long period, since we can only observe ourselves taking control in stages.123 In this process inner sight precedes inner words, and inner dialogue, which follows, is an enabling device, comparable, as suggested, to the overcoming of illiteracy.124 Above all, we have to learn to live in society and yet remain apart from it, dialoguing within ourselves:
A person can often find himself in the company of people who are misled in a variety of ways. Such people are ignorant of their sources of error, how they have come by them, and how they can be rid of them. While we are in such company it is always a good idea to engage in self-examination and self-questioning. I can ask myself: “Am I like them? Am I the person I imagine myself to be? Is my conduct appropriate? Am I prudent and temperate? Do I have self-control? Am I sufficiently educated to meet whatever comes, or is that just a claim that I am making?”125
The third author whom I have singled out for attention in the late ancient history of the inner dialogue is Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations marks a new phase in the integration of literary and philosophical techniques.126
The Meditations is thought to have been written a few years before the emperor’s death in 180,127 possibly under the title, “Thoughts to Himself” (ta eis heauton). The book has been described as a set of exercises on “self-discipline and self-address” and as a “private work of self-analysis and devotion;” however, it might equally well have been called “Soliloquies,” since, as R. B. Rutherford notes, its contents “are not predominantly reflections, pensées, or miniature essays . . . but statements in which the author tends to be talking to and at himself.”128 The Meditations is in fact the earliest (extant) philosophical treatise that is entirely composed in this type of discourse.
In giving this form to his thoughts, Marcus moves well beyond the influence of Epictetus, to whose Discourses he was introduced by his tutor, Rusticus.129 Epictetus normally makes use of soliloquies in his external speeches, or in some relation to them, whereas in the Meditations Marcus does not record conversations with anyone else. His readers are given the impression that they are eavesdropping, unnoticed, on a series of interchanges taking place within his own mind.130 They are instructed as much by the manner in which he draws them into the problems he is dealing with as by the solutions he proposes.
It is by means of these studied, inner reflections that he effectively becomes his readers’ spiritual guide. Unlike his predecessors in this activity, such as Socrates, he is a self-effacing type of guide, who never states his purpose openly or spells out his method but encourages his readers to follow him along the silent meditative path he has chosen for himself. One of the sources of the Meditations’ popularity over the centuries has arisen from its capacity to teach philosophy in this informal manner, in which the reader is gradually initiated into a type of contemplative practice that begins with reading itself.
The Meditations is the first work in the history of the subject in which such reflective experience transcends the oral didactic methods of the Hellenistic classroom in this intimate manner. Again the comparison with Epictetus is instructive. On reading the Discourses, one is aware that the discussions in which the master is involved with his students followed the reading of set texts, perhaps after a short break, and that the themes touched upon in these discussions were mostly suggested by the readings themselves. In this context, as noted, we find Epictetus engaging in soliloquies, and encouraging them in his students, chiefly as a supplementary demonstration of what he is talking about in open conversation. By contrast, in the Meditations there is no reference to institutionalized teaching after book 1; nor is there a second type of framework in the form of an editor, who, like Arrian, takes down his master’s thoughts, as a secretary, and later organizes them for publication. As a result, in the Meditations, the process of reading, commenting, and editing is incorporated into the work itself. The most important influence in the creation of this “method,” if that is not too strong a term,131 is Marcus’s habit of scrutinizing texts as he was taught and making notes or memoranda (hypomnemata).132 It is by means of this term that he frequently refers to his book, or to the notes that went into it, as well as to Epictetus’s Discourses.133 However, in contrast to his mentor, who makes use of recognized philosophical strategies in his teachings, the Meditations is an original combination of the literary and philosophical in which it is difficult to separate the one from the other.
There is a two-stage process in Marcus’s lessons, therefore, but it differs from what normally takes place in classroom instruction in philosophy. The practice of close reading and note-taking, in which Marcus apparently engaged over a long period,134 creates the first stage of the disciplinary framework of the Meditations. The second consists in his habit of meditating while writing (and vice versa).135 In this respect he again differs from Epictetus, whose formal and informal discussions have an oral flavor.136 Arrian is emphatic on this point, claiming that the diatribai were taken down more or less as they were delivered and not altered for the purpose of publication, remarking: “Whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial (hypomnēmata), for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech.”137
By contrast, Marcus begins and ends the process of philosophizing with writings in mind, and, in this respect at least, he is a textual thinker.138 His inner dialogues, although presumably spoken within his mind, are derived from a combination of his readings, conversations, and experiences, in which the three are inseparably linked, as much later in Montaigne. Also, unlike Epictetus, who, it is assumed, commented exclusively on philosophical texts, Marcus’s reading included history, philosophy, literature, correspondence, and perhaps theology.139 This mental library, in which genres and disciplines were not clearly distinguished, formed the backdrop of his inner dialogues, which flowed through his mind in what has aptly been called a set of themes and variations.140 From these took shape new memoranda, also mentally recorded, which were expressed in epigrammatic statements, in reflections on selected themes, and in longer passages on topics to which he repeatedly returned, such as the brevity of time.141 Constructed in this way, the Meditations is not simply the record of a spontaneous outpouring of words or ideas, as it sometimes seems to be, but a sophisticated interplay of style and thought.142 It is, in this sense, a philosophical archive for Marcus, as well, perhaps, for his readers, to which they may return at leisure, when ethical guidance is needed.
Little of this complex process of composition reaches the surface of the text.143 As noted, the first impression that one has on taking up the Meditations is that the author is writing for himself alone,144 and this, in a limited sense, is the case. The tone of the work is personal, intimate, and even somewhat esoteric, inasmuch as its philosophical sources are not always declared, and, as a result, Marcus’s thinking is sometimes difficult to follow. The impression of a personal work of reflection is strengthened by the repetition of major themes, the loose organization of chapters, and the unadorned Greek style, which, Matthew Arnold observed, is “without . . . great charm.”145 However, after crossing the threshold of the author’s private world, when one has entered into his innermost thoughts, the reader gradually becomes aware of an instructional dimension, which attempts to connect Marcus’s inner dialogues to the larger question of rational self-government (to hegemonikon).146 As he puts it, “the governing self becomes invincible when it withdraws into itself,”147 adapting to circumstances,148 excluding the irrelevant, and tailoring its thinking to essentials.149 The cultivation of the inner life is the precondition for this type of thinking:
Men look for retreats for themselves, either in the country, at the seashore, or in the hills. . . . Yet all this is unlike the philosopher, who can at any moment retreat into himself. For nowhere does a person withdraw into more quiet or more privacy than in his own mind. . . . Continually, therefore, grant yourself this refuge in order to restore yourself.150
It is within the mind, therefore, provided it is governed by discursive reason,151 that the light of truth is slowly revealed.152 The outside world is left behind, chiefly in order to permit the individual to perceive that he has within himself a force that is “stronger and more divine than the things which create passions and make a mere puppet” out of him.153 To recognize this, it is necessary for him to retreat into his inner self,154 and, once there, to reside within himself and reason with himself. For (as Epictetus remarked): “Things, as objects, stand outside our doors, themselves by themselves, neither knowing nor reporting anything about themselves. What then does report about them? The governing self.”155
Only by this means can one create the tranquility of mind necessary for reliable ethical judgments.156 As the sun rises for each new day, the emperor is in the habit of saying to himself: “I shall today meet many inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and uncharitable men.”157 The question in his mind is what he should do in such situations. At the beginning of book 5 he frames his response with a combination of assertiveness and detachment:
When I dislike getting up, I have this thought ready: “I am rising for a man’s task. Why then am I out of sorts if I am only going to do what I was born to do. . . . Or was I made just to stay in bed, under the covers, and keep myself warm?” “But this is more pleasant,” I say to myself. And I answer: “Were you made for pleasure, that is, to react rather than to act?”. . . . “Do you refuse to assume a man’s responsibilities?”158
He asks himself:
“To what purpose, then, am I now using my soul?” In every instance ask yourself this question and cross-examine yourself: “Am I deploying what is called the ruling or governing part of the soul? And what sort of soul do I have? A child’s, a boy’s, a woman’s, a tyrant’s, a domestic animal’s, or a wild beast’s?”159
We should query ourselves regularly, asking “How does this act affect me?” or “Will I regret it?”160 Self-interrogation is a method for sifting realities from images, impressions, dreams, and fantasies.161 In accord with Stoic teachings, these exercises of the mind or spirit should not be concerned with the entirety of a life, or even a few episodes, but uniquely with specific situations in the here and now, since, like Seneca, Marcus is convinced it is only in the present that we truly live.
This concern is expressed in numerous ways, for example, when he asks:
Will you, my soul, one day be good, simple, single, naked, and more visible than the body by which you are contained? Will you ever feel only love and devotion? Will you ever have no needs or desires, neither longing nor lusting after anything . . . ? Will you ever be happy with the present ?162
Again, he speaks about mental memoranda, which are self-conscious acts of will in which
we . . . create opinions . . . and, so to speak, inscribe them in our minds. Yet we can choose not to inscribe them, or, if we do so without thinking, to erase them whenever we wish.163
Or he reflects on life’s transitory nature, as in a passage written at Carnutum, near the border of Pannonia, during the battle with the Quadi in the 170s:
We ought not to think about the fact that each day a little of our life has passed away and that what is left is less and less. Instead we should think of this. Even if we live for a longer time, it is not at all certain that our minds will be equal to the task of unravelling events, or for speculative thinking. . . . If our minds decline, our bodies may continue as before: we may still be capable of respiration, digestion, perceptions, and desires. But we will gradually lose the right and appropriate employment of ourselves—our sense of duty, our ability to analyse sense-impressions, and our awareness that it may be time to end our lives. All of these topics require the capacity to reason and to make judgements, and these begin to fail before all the rest. And so we must press onwards, because at every moment we are coming closer to the end.164
I now turn to Augustine, who takes the philosophical soliloquy in a new direction in the Confessions, thereby inaugurating a lengthy period in Western literature in which it is recognized as an independent literary and philosophical genre. The chief influence on this dimension of his thinking is a series of reflections on self-consciousness is the Enneads of Plotinus.
Early in his career Augustine reveals that he is an accomplished practitioner of the inner dialogue, which, as noted, was used extensively in De Ordine and Soliloquia, written in 385–386.165 The use of soliloquies is one of the ways in which these and other Cassiciacum dialogues are distinguishable in their technique of argumentation from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, which was their literary model. Within these early writings one finds a wide range of inner conversations on philosophical, theological, and rhetorical topics,166 which include Augustine’s formative thinking on will, time, and the existence of the self.167 This type of dialogue is employed later in his writings in determining the limits of human language to deal with metaphysical questions,168 which appear to Augustine to be more manageable when speaking to himself than when speaking to others.
One of the best-known examples of this sort of thinking arises in his discussion of the nature of time in book 11 of the Confessions, in which he talks at once about the nature of dialogue and time, asking famously:
What is time? Who can explain it easily and briefly? Who can comprehend it even in thought in a manner in which the answer can be articulated in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know. But I confidently affirm myself to know that if nothing passes away, there is no past time, and if nothing arrives, there is no future time, and if nothing existed, there would be no present time.169
Augustine’s lengthiest exercise in the genre of inner dialogue was of course the writing of his life history as an extended Christian version of a Socratic exercise in self-examination. An equally important influence on his thinking was Plotinus, who employed this philosophical form for the dual purpose of instructing others and himself.170 Porphyry, his biographer, provides us with a brief but helpful outline of his approach to self-talk in the following passage:171
He was concerned only with thought (monon tou nou). . . . He worked out his train of thought from beginning to end in his own mind, and then, when he wrote it down, since he had set it all in order in his mind, he wrote as continuously as if he was copying from a book. Even if he was talking to someone, engaged in continuous conversation, he kept to his train of thought (pros to skemmata). He could take part in the conversation to the full, and at the same time keep his mind fixed without a break in what he was considering. When the person he had been talking to was gone he did not go over what he had written, because his sight . . . did not suffice for revision.172 He went straight on with what came next, keeping the connection, just as if there had been no interval of conversation in between. In this way he was present at once to himself and to others.
We are not dealing here with the rhetorical presentation of the dialogue, as in Seneca, the classroom version of the genre, as in Epictetus, or the internal ruminations characteristic of Marcus’s Meditations, but with a form of composition that evolves in the mind before it is expressed in words, and for which, in consequence, the creative phase can be said to take place entirely in silence, as subsequently in Augustine. The only words that are mentioned in Porphyry’s account of Plotinus’s methods are those of the external conversations in which the philosopher took part at the same time as he was engaged in his reflections, which, if Porphyry is to be trusted, had no influence on the argument that he was developing within himself. It would be admissible to speak of this mode of composition as an “inner dialogue,” but only in a special sense, inasmuch as it takes shape in the individual’s thinking without the necessity of a present, remembered, or imagined debate, in contrast to inner dialogues in the Socratic and Stoic traditions, which require the active participation of alternating voices.
We cannot be absolutely certain on this question, since Plotinus himself does not refer to his methods of composition, at least in the edition of his teachings that was organized by Porphyry. However, the possibility cannot be ruled out, since there is a brief utilization of the Socratic elenchus at Enneads 3.8.4, quoted in Chapter 2, where the topic is the role of nature in creation and its relationship to the activity of contemplation. Here there are internal questions and answers in which Nature is pictured as talking to herself, as in the inquiry into the nature of time at Confessions 11. Augustine frequently engages in internal conversations of this type, either talking to himself or picturing a conversation taking place in the mind of God. A later passage in the Enneads involving the notion of silence may have been critical in alerting him to the possibility of using inner dialogue to explore the problem of self-knowledge within the Christian paradigm of sin and redemption. This occurs in a unique autobiographical statement at Enneads 4.8.1, where Plotinus portrays his temporary mental elevation in these words:
Often I have woken up out of the body to myself and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurances that then most of all I belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and come to identify with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body.173
This account does not involve two voices speaking within the mind but two perspectives on events taking place in the mind. It does not proceed by means of a rational argument; on the contrary, discursive reasoning is the point of departure for a higher experience, which, Plotinus suggests, is not so much lacking in words as existing at a level that is beyond words, again anticipating an Augustinian view, in this case on the limitations of human language. Also, one has an impression in this passage of heightened emotion combined with mystical engagement, with the result that, unlike many traditional internal dialogues, in which oppositions of ideas are stressed, the quoted passage emphasizes affective and intellectual integration in a manner that is not dissimilar to what takes place in Christian tradition as a by-product of ascetic exercises, such as early sacred reading, as practiced by the desert fathers.
Central to this conception of the soliloquy are two configurations of time; these consist in the transitory and the timeless, both of which reappear in Augustine’s reworking of the Plotinian model of the soliloquy. In Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—to take the three examples already mentioned—there are abundant references to the passage of time as a factor in life over which mortals have no control; however, these commentators on the theme do not construct their inner dialogues around the phenomenon of internal time-consciousness itself, as do, in different ways, Plotinus and Augustine, in a distant anticipation of the view of Edmund Husserl, which was later reused in an existential context by Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas. In his distinctive rendering of the issues, Plotinus appears to be engaged in an introspective experiment in both self-consciousness and metacognitive self-awareness.174 Also, while he seems to be talking about his normal state of being in the world, he is actually experiencing an enhanced state of mind, which involves the upward movement of the soul. The journey toward heightened awareness and the return to normality are presented as a brief account, or narrative, of the soul’s elevation and subsequent descent, and this is related by the experiencing subject in the first person.
In adapting inner dialogue to these ends, Plotinus takes the first tentative step in the direction of Augustine’s conception of autobiographical and spiritual narrative.175 The second step is taken by Augustine himself, who, based on the theology of the incarnation, introduces into the temporal scheme the history of the body, which is excluded from Plotinus’s more intellectualist speculations.176 Like Plotinus, we might say, Augustine is interested in exploring self-consciousness, but unlike him, he gives this form of interiority a human voice, in fact, his own voice, as reproduced in the subjective tone of his Latin style, which, in itself, is a kind of embodiment. This resonant and commemorative style, which, as noted, is unique among late ancient writers, is a constant reminder in the Confessions that Augustine’s tormented soul cannot ever free itself entirely from his body, as envisaged in Plato’s myth of the cave in the Republic and in a more ethereal context in Neoplatonism.
Ambrose, who was a close reader of the Enneads,177 considered Plotinus’s account of the soul’s elevation to be an allegorical restatement of Paul’s description of the man who was taken up to paradise at 2 Corinthians 12:1–4, which has been discussed in Chapter 2.178 According to Pierre Courcelle, the Ambrosian sermon in which the comparison is found may have been heard by Augustine in the spring of 386, thus suggesting that this was one of the channels by which the Plotinian notion of mental ascent made its way into the “vision at Ostia” at Confessions 9.10.23–25.179 In that passage Augustine reworks the scheme as the story of a pair of self-conscious mental ascents, namely those of himself and his mother, and he does this in each case in two stages, proceeding from words to wordlessness, thus paralleling the contrast between discursive reasoning and intellect at Enneads 4.8.1.180 He thereby incorporates the instructional mode of the soliloquy into the philosophical, as he and Monica each speak to themselves simultaneously within their minds or souls.181
This was the culminating point in a period of development in Augustine’s thinking about inner dialogue in which the technique acquired a place in a hierarchy of types of words. Within his reflections, this intellectual ladder leads upward from spoken words to silent and interior words, next to abstract words in the mind, and finally to the Word of God, which lies beyond the language of mortals.182 Augustine develops this model of language in a number of early writings and presents it in a formal, synthetic manner in books 2 and 3 of De Doctrina Christiana and in book 15 of De Trinitate.
Along with this configuration, and, in my view, as a by-product of it, he established the West’s first consistent and fully articulated theory of the relationship between narrative time and hermeneutics. An early phase of his thinking on these subjects appears in his Cassiciacum dialogues, where he is still speaking principally as a teacher of rhetoric to his Milanese students; however, this is superseded by his development of a method for interpreting biblical texts, which, according to the Confessions, took shape slowly and hesitantly around the same period. His mature thinking on biblical narrative is found in his sermons, his several Genesis commentaries, and in particular in his Enarrationes in Psalmos,183 and must therefore be considered a fundamental orientation of his reflections rather than a phase that was limited to the writing of his autobiography.
As applied to his life history, Augustine differs from his predecessors in the use of this interpretive technique in two respects. First, he takes up his life as a whole (at least down to the moment of his conversion) rather than speaking of isolated episodes, which are used as moral example by Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus, and other Hellenistic thinkers. Also, unlike Stoic writers of autobiographical self-examination, such as Sextius in Seneca’s De Ira, he does not limit his attention to the present but is focused equally on the ethical implications of narratives in the past, present, and future.184 Again differing from his predecessors in this genre, he is concerned with a “hermeneutic” understanding of such events, in which, as Paul Ricoeur has observed, there is no lived experience without some accompanying form of self-reflective interpretation.185 One of the recognized features of his thinking on this theme concerns the use of memory, which is not limited to notes on reading or experience but functions as a form of reconstruction of the continuity of his thoughts and feelings. In this respect, he is the Latin successor to Plutarch, although the latter’s writings were unknown to him, in extending and deepening the hermeneutic dimension of memory until it becomes a framework for self-consciousness itself.
In achieving this goal, and, in doing so, making the philosophical soliloquy into an independent literary genre, Augustine takes a position on the ethical value of literature that differs from that of Plato, the Middle and late Platonists, and the Stoics. He agrees with earlier thinkers on the inappropriateness of epic for teaching ethics because (as Epictetus summed up Socrates’s words in books 3 and 10 of the Republic) “the Iliad is nothing but a sense-impression and a poet’s use of sense-impressions.”186 However, he responds, not by rejecting literary studies and their images on the whole, as an initial reading of books 1 and 3 of the Confessions might suggest,187 but by creating a role for rhetoric and the creative imagination in Christian thinking, which is discernible after 396 both in the Confessions and in book 4 of De Doctrina Christiana.
This view of poetry arises from his conviction that the Bible’s beauty owes a great deal to divinely inspired rhetoric,188 and, as noted in Chapter 2, reflects a broad re-evaluation of the literary imagination which had already begun in Stoic and Neoplatonist thought. This rethinking had for the most part been concluded by the time of Philostratus (d. ca. A.D. 244), who distinguished between two sorts of mental images, one that he called mimesis (imitation), which reproduces what is seen, and another called phantasia (here translatable as “imagination”), which reproduces what is seen physically as well as what is not seen, except in the mind.189 In reworking these distinctions, as noted, Augustine effectively retains Plato’s suspicion of literary images, while agreeing with Aristotle’s view, possibly reproduced in the interpretation of Plotinus, that phantasia can interface with sense and intellect in producing a reliable type of mental impression. From these different streams of thought Augustine fashions his working definition of phantasia as something seen and phantasma as something imagined as if it has been seen.190 The other essential element in the Augustinian conception of the imagination is very possibly drawn from Plotinus, and consists in his subjective interpretation of his personal experience as his mind ascends beyond the senses and proceeds upward toward God.
These developments reach their culminating point in the role assigned to the literary dimension of the imagination the Confessions, in which the combination of lived experience and memory images is effectively transformed into practical form of instruction. On this view, just as the Bible illustrates moral truths by means of timeless and unforgettable narratives, the literary imagination of the individual reshapes his or her personal history into a memorable educational genre, by which, Augustine is convinced, we can give an ethical orientation to our lives.191 Self-analysis and self-address are united, and are jointly concerned with what is experienced in an expansive present as well as with the later interpretation of that experience. This dual feature of Augustine’s thinking marks a transition from earlier spiritual autobiographies to the notion of bios as reading, writing, and rereading, or, as some would prefer, a kind of interweaving,192 in which interior dialogue, reason, imagination, and interpretation work together.
I conclude this sketch of the use of philosophical soliloquies in late ancient authors with a few words about the chef d’oeuvre that brings this tradition to an end, namely Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, written in 524.193
This work is an isolated masterpiece in its century’s literature, and, as Henry Chadwick noted, “something of that isolation belongs to [the author] even during his lifetime.”194 Accused of treason and placed under house arrest in 523, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in the knowledge that on its completion he would very likely be put to death. In this dark moment of his life, the writing of his book was an attempt to reinstate philosophy as the arbiter of justice, liberty, and civic responsibility in the face of tyranny195 and arbitrary judgment, as well as to make a contribution to the traditional philosophical problem of how to achieve the good or happy life.196
As a work of literature, the Consolation is a hybrid of two philosophical genres originating in antiquity, namely the “consolation” (consolatio) and the “protreptic” (protrepticon).197 The consolation was an essay or letter mourning the loss of a relative or friend, drawing attention to the transience of human life, and suggesting reasons for accepting one’s loss.198 The protreptic was an encouragement to convert to the philosophical life, which could be written in a number of literary forms, including the dialogue.199 Book 1 of Boethius’s work is a “consolation,” in which Lady Philosophy offers the author spiritual “medicine” to strengthen his soul in the face of adversity.200 Books 2 to 5 comprise a loosely organized “protreptic,” in which a number of the traditional themes in this genre are touched upon, including the concepts of freedom, necessity, and providence.
A good illustration of Boethius’s approach to the dual functions of inner dialogue is found in the carefully staged entrance of Lady Philosophy in book 1 prose 1. She appears before him as an allegorical figure, whose gown aptly summarizes her traditional functions; and she informs him that his morbid state of mind is understandable to a personage of her background, since he has temporarily lost his source of identity and is effectively alienated from himself.201 Boethius pays close attention to what she has to say, and as the dialogue proceeds, his disposition improves with the aid of her therapeutic words.202 At length he is inspired to ask why such a grand “mistress of virtues” has taken the trouble to visit him in the solitude of his spiritual exile.203
She makes it clear that she has come to offer him consolation in his predicament, over which he has apparently lost control. She reminds him that injustices have been committed against philosophers in the past; she also explains why his sense of isolation is largely self-induced.204 She notes that he has disregarded one of her fundamental lessons; for, “if a person resides within the protection of her ramparts, he need never fear a sentence of banishment; but once he ceases to desire a home there, he likewise ceases to deserve it.” Mere erudition, she adds, is no help in these circumstances: “What I look for is not library walls adorned with ivory and glass, but your mind’s abode; for I have installed there not books, but what gives books their value, the doctrine found in my writings of old.”205 As the letters pi and theta on her gown suggest, Boethius’s problem arises from an inability to relate ethical theory to practice. Philosophy is not something to be read about, as he may have thought during his years as a scholar: it has be studied for self-instruction, and above all to be lived.
The inspiration for the figure of Philosophy in this scene is probably derived from Plato’s Crito, where Socrates relates that in a dream he thought he saw “a beautiful and comely woman dressed in white,”206 forewarning him of his impending execution, which he refuses to forestall despite the compelling if sometimes confused arguments advanced by Crito himself. In this sense, we may view book 1 of Boethius’s Consolatio as a distant and highly contextualized response to Plato’s Apology. However, the source for the philosophical lesson in this prose, which leads Boethius toward a philosophical and theological protrepticon in books 2 to 5, is above all Augustine’s Soliloquia, where Reason interrogates its author from within his mind just as Philosophy questions Boethius, until she discovers the source of his illness and an appropriate form of therapy for his soul.207 In focusing his attention on his personal misfortunes, Boethius has apparently forgotten that it is God who presides over the universe and has endowed the world with its purpose, in which he plays a very small part.208
The Augustinian inspiration is made clear in Boethius’s proof for the cogito, which is adapted from the opening statement at Soliloquia, book 2. By means of this discussion Philosophy leads him out of his melancholy state by proving to him that he knows one thing for certain, namely that he exists as a rational mortal creature, and therefore, in this respect at least has ethical control over mind or soul, even in the face of his impending fate. She thus reuses the argument of Augustine in the Soliloquia to the effect that there are two things of which every person is certain, namely that he is alive and that he is not immortal.209 Here is the interchange, beginning with her words:210
“So will you first allow me to ask you a few simple questions, so as to probe and investigate your mental state? By this means I can decide upon your cure.”
“Ask away at your discretion,” I replied, “and I shall answer you.”
Philosophy asks Boethius whether in his view events take place in a random and haphazard fashion in the world or whether they are divinely guided by means of reason, and if so, how this is brought about. Boethius admits that there are many things he does not understand about universal order, but that he is sure of one thing, “God is the source.” If that is the case, Philosophy adds, disturbances of the type he is experiencing can alter his disposition, but they cannot destroy his inner sense of being. She asks:
“Do you remember that you are a man?”
“Of course I remember,” I replied.
“Can you define what a man is?”
“Are you asking if I am aware that I am a mortal creature endowed with reason? Yes, I know that, and I proclaim it.”
“But are you aware of being anything more?” she asked.
“No, nothing more.”
“Now I know,” she said, “the further cause of your sickness, and it is a very serious one. You have forgotten your own identity.”211
(“Iam scio,” inquit, “morbi tui aliam uel maximam causam: quid ipse sis, nosse desisti.”)212
This restatement of Augustine’s argument can be viewed as a final echo of the Socratic tradition of self-address in late antiquity.213 However, if we recall Socrates’s words on the subject, especially those that are attributed to him as he awaits his unjust but apparently wished for verdict in the Apology,214 it is clear that we are dealing with a different conception of the role of reason in philosophical discourse, and it is on that point that I should like to end my survey.
In employing inner dialogues, Augustine and Boethius are not trying to solve problems through rational arguments, as Socrates claims in his defense that he was doing for his youthful followers in Athens; on the contrary, the allegorical figures representing, respectively, Reason and Philosophy, frame provisional solutions to problems that their authors are convinced reason ultimately cannot solve. In the Soliloquia and perhaps more persuasively in De Magistro, Augustine provides an explanation for this position, suggesting that inner dialogues are clearer, more precise, and less prone to distractions than open dialogues; nonetheless, in their grasp of realities, these forms of discourse are constrained by the fact that they originate in the language of mortals and are therefore unable to rise above human concerns. Similarly, influenced perhaps by Augustine, Boethius complains to Philosophy that her verbal arguments are circular and therefore unanswerable.215
The purpose of these criticisms of the Socratic approach to discovering truth is to advance an argument based on metaphysics Socrates himself would not have accepted. Through internal dialogue, which turns on itself, as Augustine reminds his son in De Magistro, they propose a model for the circularity of all human reasoning and advance the view that an understanding of reality can only come about by means of a type of communication that is superior to words, transcending them and deriving ultimately from God. Recall that in the Theaetetus Socrates proposes that inner dialogue is an essential features of human thinking: a type
of talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under consideration . . . when it thinks it is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself. . . . And when it arrives at something definite . . . we call this its judgment. So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement, and a judgment is a statement which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but silently addressed to oneself.216
To this expression of confidence in human reason, Augustine replies, seconded by Boethius, that in the last analysis rational accounts of realities by means of words are just words—signs, symbols, or mental representations, and, pace Socrates, these words do not acquire a greater power of signifying if they are spoken within the mind to oneself. A measured and defensible response to Augustine’s Sceptical claim will not made until 1641, when Descartes restates the Socratic argument in favor of making certain judgments about realities by means of inner dialogue in Meditationes de prima philosophia.
The initial prose of the Consolation of Philosophy thus provides an illustration of the fact that the soliloquy develops as a literary and philosophical genre in late antiquity in a form that is derived from but differs in structure from the Socratic dialogue, and this difference has a great deal to do with methods of instruction in philosophy. I have proposed that the earliest Latin thinker who utilizes the philosophical soliloquy in this educational fashion is Seneca, in his dialogues and Moral Epistles. He is followed by a number of figures who make use of this literary model for philosophical thinking; among them I have singled out Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, and Augustine. Epictetus employs inner dialogue as a supplement to his external dialogues, and among their other functions these internal speeches provide a means of expressing his notions of prohairesis and prolepsis as well as establishing a literary foundation for his personal and affective theology. Marcus Aurelius conceives inner dialogue as an autonomous literary genre; his originality arises chiefly from his methodology, in which he intermingles literary and philosophical techniques, and from his view of the reading process as a communicable form of spiritual guidance.
Augustine gives the literary genre a name, soliloquium, and makes it the foundation for a conception of autobiography that is indebted to the silent, inner conversational technique and the accompanying notion of self-awareness in Plotinus. While not losing touch with ancient uses for the form, he renews all its traditional applications in a Christian context, including the ancient routine of self-scrutiny and the Socratic approach to problem-solving by means of logical questions and answers. He is followed by Boethius, who effectively terminates the late ancient tradition of the inner dialogue. Using Plato and Augustine as his points of departure in the opening scene of The Consolation of Philosophy, he unites the soliloquy with the genres of the protrepticon and consolatio, effectively bringing the three forms together in a single literary vehicle. The contributions of Augustine and Boethius in turn prepare the way for the development of the philosophical soliloquy in later thinkers such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Dante, and Petrarch, in whom its logical implications and literary form move in new directions.