My station and its duties: Ideals and the social embeddedness of virtue

Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society

Volumn 102, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 109-123

  Annas, Julia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 35449007991     PISSN: 00667374     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0066-7372.2003.00045.x     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Seneca, On the Private Life 4
2. from the translation by John Cooper and John Procopé, Seneca, Moral and Political Essays, Cambridge 1995
3. Cf also Epictetus II 15, 10
4. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI 44
5. Epictetus, Discourses II 10
6. IV 12, 16-18, Handbook 30
7. Seneca, Letter 92, 11
8. Epictetus III 3, 5-10
9. Cf P.A. Brunt, 'Marcus Aurelius and Slavery', Modus Operandi: essays in honour of Geoffrey Rickman, ed M. Austin, J. Harries and C. Smith, British Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 71, Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1998, 139-150. The evidence Brunt cites suggests that Marcus might have done more, functioning within the emperor's traditional role, to mitigate the institution. If so this would be a failure to act as a Stoic
10. Cf Epictetus I 2, on Romans who were executed for failure to go along with ureasonable emperors. His answer to the complaint that these actions were no use is that they set a fine example, whatever other people do
11. Marcus IX 29. He goes on to ask whether past rulers who thought they changed the world did anything more than strut around theatrically; he is keenly aware of the possibility of undue self-importance
12. Epictetus, IV 6, 3-6. What you can achieve, he adds, is to convince yourself; until you have succeeded in that, what are you doing trying to convince others?
13. Epictetus III 24, esp 88 ff
14. Marcus XI 34
15. There are several passages urging us to detach ourselves from our individual concern for family in particular in order to achieve the appropriate point of view; see Discourses IV 1, 111-113
16. Handbook 3, 7, 11, 15, 26. These are shocking, attention-grabbing passages in isolation, but as part of an overall attitude they simply make clear what the Stoic must be ready for: your child is mortal, may die tomorrow, and, if this happens, the moral theory you live by should not collapse
17. For the Stoics all that happens is for the good of the whole, and therefore for the good of the parts as parts of the whole. Insofar as the Stoic takes the viewpoint of a part of the whole, she will therefore think of what has happened as good, because part of the workings of a good whole, and so something she would have had an impulse for, had she been able to foresee it, as Chrysippus says that he would have had an impulse towards being ill, had he known it was bound to happen (see Epictetus II 6, 8-10)
18. Cf Epictetus I 13, 15
19. Handbook 46. In the last passage, Epictetus puts the point pithily: at a banquet, don't tell people how to eat; just eat as you should. Sheep have wool to show as the result of what they have digested; similarly, the virtuous person should display her principles in living them, rather than in spouting them
20. P.A. Brunt, in his classic article, 'Stoicism and the Principate,' Papers of the British School at Rome XLII N.S. XXX, 1975, 7-35, is oddly indifferent to this. '[Panaetius'] teaching justified Romans in treating their own traditions as equivalent to moral laws' (15); 'What the Stoics supposed to be right ... was largely settled by the ideas and practices current in their society' (32). It is doubtful if this is a coherent idea, and in any case the Stoics are constantly insistent that social roles and commitments must be fulfilled in a way that aspires to one of the most demanding moral ideals
21. F.H. Bradley (1962), Ethical Studies, second edition, with introduction by R. Wollheim, Oxford University Press