It was.
It became a value.
The value became a concept.
The concept became a political slogan.
The political slogan became an ideal.
The ideal became individual, collective and universal.
The universal ideal became law.
The collectivist ideal became a social motto.
The individual ideal became a belief.
As law, as a social motto, and as a belief, it developed into a revolutionary
weapon.
Croce characterised it as a « religion ».
J. Evola called it a « fetishism ».
It is no longer more than a word, neurotically parroted by the masses and
cantillated on all the media 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its
pathological character cannot be doubted.
What J. Evola points out in the introduction to his `Il Mito del Sangue' about
race in antiquity can also apply to freedom at that time : « … in aristocratic
traditions [racism was not theorised, but experienced]. As a result, it is very
rare to find the term `race' in the ancient world : the Ancients did not need to
speak of race in the modern sense, since they had race, so to say. »
This absolutely fundamental fact has been well discerned by K. A. Raaflaub in
his examination of the scarce occurrence of the term `freedom' in archaic Greek
literature : « the free – or, more precisely, the noble elite... - did not
ordinarily regard their freedom as a fact worth noting. Freedom was thus either
unimportant or taken for granted. » (1) In this context, it is normal that «
members of Homeric society seem to have thought and talked of freedom only when
they perceived a threat to their own freedom, which they had hitherto taken for
granted. » (2) The two explanations offered to account for this fact demonstrate
a deep understanding of ancient Aryan-derived traditional cultures : « first,
generally, the status difference between free and unfree may have meant less in
Homeric society than it did later because other social distinctions and criteria
were more important and contributed to minimizing that difference. Second, in
particular, the scant attention paid to freedom reflects and is based upon
specific traits of the elite. Their social organization and relationships, norms
and values, ways of thinking, and relations to the community apparently afforded
no means by which freedom could attain a high value. » (3) `Freedom' did not
play any part in the political life and institutions of the early Hellenes
either. « Freedom of speech was no formalized right ; it was simply taken for
granted by those who enjoyed it. Freeman status was not recognized as a
criterion to determine `rights,' such as participation in assembly or debate ;
and the freedom of individuals or the community was no issue of public
discussion. » (4)
The community was homogenous and organic, and its homogeneity and its organicity
were due, as insightfully explained by J. Evola, to the regular and closed
hereditary transmission of a force that as a magnet established contacts,
created a psychic atmosphere, stabilised the social structure and determined a
system of coordination and gravitation between the individual elements and the
centre in view of the regular development on the part of single individuals of
prenatal determinations on the plane of human existence. It was a racial
community, the only community worth of the name, and this explains why, even
though full awareness of individual freedom and of its value may have existed
from early times, it did not, and could not, transcend individual feelings to
the point of leading the `polis' to value highly `freedom' and to conceptualise
it. Even better, it was one of the « deep-seated condition in the aristocratic
way of life which prevented freedom, in whatever context, from being brought to
general attention and entering the political arena as a programmatic rallying
cry in its own right. » (5) There was a higher concern, which was the
`autonomia' of the `oikos' and of the `polis'. (6)
The fact that the nobles took freedom for granted can account for the fact that
no positive definition of freedom (`eleutheria') is found in the early Greek
literature, and that « From its earliest appearance… eleutheros… forms a pair of
opposites with doulos. In Homer donlion emar and eleutheron emar illuminate the
same event from two sides. Both expressions are used only when attention is
focused on the fact and moment of the loss of freedom… lack of freedom is
determined on the one hand by subjugation to force and a foreign will — in other
words, by restricted freedom of action — and on the other by loss of protection,
home, and country, » so that it seems reasonable to assume that the Homeric idea
of `being free' must at the very least include control over one's own person and
actions and the security of living in an intact, stable community. (7) The
adjective `eleutheros' is « primarily used in a single fixed formula referring
to the moment when freedom is lost ; that is, it refers not directly to a person
but to a change in the condition of that person. Eleutheros in Homer never
designates the status of individuals or a group among the free or dominant part
of society in contrast to those who are unfree or dependent. Thought of the
community is prompted by only one phrase containing eleutheros. » (8)
So we have to understand exactly what caused `freedom' to become a highly
praised value, both in the political and in the social sphere. Various
consistent assumptions can be put forward : « The customs of war might change so
that armed conflicts resulted no longer in the destruction of cities but in
their subjugation, and in the enslavement not just of women and children but of
men as well. As a result, male slaves would become less exceptional, and with
increasing frequency, slavery might change its character, prompting a change in
awareness among the free as well. Moreover, free farmers might come to depend on
the nobility not merely for the arbitration of conflicts but also economically,
which might lead to exploitation and new forms of dependence. Consequently, the
loss of freedom would no longer be blamed only on intangibles — war, piracy, or
god-sent fate — but on individuals, members of the same community, who were
known and could therefore be criticized or attacked. All this might happen not
simply in isolated cases but in increasing frequency and according to
recognizable patterns. Then again, the aristocratic value system might be
questioned and elite power challenged ; in the aristocratic self-perception, new
alternatives to status based on predominance might emerge… Finally, the
relationship within the community between the private and public spheres might
shift ; the latter might become more intense and be structured by regulated
institutions, procedures, and laws ; new forms of accruing power might emerge,
new identities become possible or be demanded, and the principles previously
determining the individual's ability to participate in government lose their
validity. » (9) Solonian Athens illustrates to a limited extent the possibility
of such developments, which, however, could hardly have occurred without a drop
in the aforementioned force, as a result of the interbreeding of some Hellenes
castigated by Menexenus. (10)
The economic and social crisis of the late seventh century created the
conditions for the emergence of a typology of slave and free and for the
burgeoning of a concept of political freedom. The small farmer was used to face
economic difficulties, which caused him to borrow from wealthy landowners. «
Since the farmer's land was inalienable, he could not offer it as a pledge for
the loan ; some other item had to be found. In this case it was his own person
and that of his family which secured the loan. When he was unable to repay the
loan, the lender foreclosed on the pledge and the farmer and his family fell
into a state of servitude. » (11). The increased availability of imported
slaves, combined with other factors, such as the big impact on grain of the
cheaper grain grown by slave labour in the colonies and exported to Attica - the
same causes always produce the same effects in economic matters - only made
matters worse for him. A stage was reached when a substantial and growing number
of small farmers lost their economic freedom and, as a result, were about to
lose their civic freedom. Solon banned debt bondage, passed an amnesty law,
prohibited loans in future on the security of the debtor's person, and restored
the economic and civic freedom of the bonded or enslaved farmers. However, the
damage was done : `eleutheria', together with `doule', was infused de facto with
a political charge. « The consequences for an entire community of loss of
freedom in various forms were experienced in a context other than war and not
mainly regarding women and children ; freedom (in the form of the citizen's
freeman status) was recognized as a basic precondition for the polis's
well-being ; the citizens forged ties of solidarity that reached far beyond the
immediate victims of social abuse and assumed responsibility for the
individual's freedom so that the entire community could survive and prosper. For
the first time, the significance of freedom was understood in its political
implications, and awareness of its value became general. » (12)
The freedom of the individual, as has been seen, was bound up with `eleutheria'
and, more importantly in the eyes of the `polites', with the `autonomia' (having
one's own laws, having the power of living and being governed by one's own laws)
of the `polis'. The loss of `autonomia', or the threat of losing it, was bound
to impinge upon the way `euletheria' was perceived in the community and to give
it greater prominence. The Persian invasions of Greece by Darius and by Xerxes
in the early fifth century, as told, without, to be sure, any Churchill-like
melodramatic, by Herodotus, were certainly crucial for the development of the
idea of `eleutheria' along political lines. In `The Histories', « Freedom
becomes more than a political… fact ; it is a value that characterizes the
Greeks and distinguishes them from their adversaries. » (13) However, it was
seen and experienced strictly as a communal fact, and understandingly so, as, in
times of war in any political entity, the matter of freedom within it tends to
be relegated to a lower priority than that of freedom of it : « Herodotus…
deliberately portrayed the Greek war as one of liberation. Time and again he
uses the words `freedom' and `servitude', whereas the traditional notions of
fame and arete, much more applicable to individuals, appear less and less. »
(14). An indication of the increasing perception of freedom as a value and of
its conceptualisation is given by his statement that the Greeks were able to
achieve victory over the Barbarians' superior power because « they love freedom
».
In Thucydides, if `eleutheria' is still used « as an indication of one's
personal status, such as the status of a free person, as opposed to that of a
slave or a Helot », and as « a description of the personal freedom of action in
daily life, » its main sense, against this background, is unsurprisingly that of
« the freedom of a community from foreign authority, and as the freedom of
Greece from oppression by the Persians. » (15)
It was not long before the urge for freedom which had led Greek city-states to
form an alliance against foreign domination at the conclusion of the Persian
wars boomeranged, developing in internal affairs and exerting an effective
influence on the relations between the individual and the city-state. Freedom
was invested with such a significance, with such a value, in home affairs, that
it became, with equality, the second pillar of democracy. `Eleutheria' developed
into a concept as the opposition between free and slave came to be used
metaphorically in the political discourse : « Eleutheria was regularly invoked
as a basic democratic ideal in debates that contrasted democracy and tyranny.
The opposite of this form of eleutheria was being enslaved in a metaphorical
sense, i.e. being subjected to a despotic ruler. The concepts of freedom and
slavery are transposed from the microcosmos of the household (oikia) to the
macrocosmos of the city-state (polis) and used in a metaphorical sense. » (16)
By the end of the fifth century, `eleutheria' had thus become a concept in three
different contexts. In the social sense, `eleutheros' meant to be free as
opposed to being a slave. In the political sense, `eleutheros' took on the
meaning of « autonomous as against being dominated by others », as illustrated
by the call to fight for the freedom of all Greek states against the barbarians
in the Persian wars, and, later, by Demostenes' call to defend it from
Macedonian domination. « As a constitutional concept, however, eleutheria was
associated both with political participation in the public realm and personal
freedom in the private realm. » (17) If, of course, `euletheria" was highly
praised as a social and political concept by both oligarchies and democracies,
the aspect of `eleutheria' that was rejected by both the oligarchs and the
monarchs was the constitutional one, that which pertains, not to the external
policy of the `polis', but to its internal policy. Besides, the fact that
monarchies and oligarchies emphasised the freedom of the `polis', whereas the
ultima ratio of democracies seems to have been the freedom within the `polis',
is immensely suggestive.
The second major stiff problem with Athenian democracy from an aristocratic
standpoint is not really that it was a majority rule political system, since the
democratic body of citizen was constituted of only the adult males of Athenian
descent, (18), that is, a very small minority of the population, a criteria
which, if applied to modern democracies on our continent, would result in the
ineligibility of masses of political schemers currently in office in countries
like France and in the exclusion of the political institutions, of the whole
political sphere, of the most sincere apologists of this political system and of
the so-called `freedom of speech'. The problem lies in the idealisation of the
concept of freedom : « as a democratic ideal eleutheria (in the sense of
personal freedom) applied not only to citizens but also to metics and sometimes
even to slaves. Thus, a slave, who in the social sphere was deprived of
eleutheria, might well, in a democratic polis, be allowed a share in, for
example, freedom of speech, though only privately and of course not in the
political assemblies » (19) - this point cannot be emphasised enough. It is only
one step further to argue, minus the pathos, that « Freedom began its career as
a social value in the desperate yearning of the slave to negate what, for him or
her, and for nonslaves, was a peculiarly inhuman condition », that, to be more
specific, « Freedom began its long journey in the Western consciousness as a
woman's value », (20) provided that sight is not lost of the fact that this
degenerative process started at a later period of Greek culture than that we are
here noticing, when the relatively low number of slaves and their effective
integration into the `oikos' prevented them from developing a socially-oriented
`group (self-)consciousness', and patriarchy was still intact.
Generally speaking, the rise of democracy fostered an increased interest in the
`individual' in more than one way, whereby every concept came to be interpreted
in a subjective and relativist manner. (21) With Protagoras' statement that «
"man is the measure of all things" the figure of the naturally free and
self-serving individual entered the historical scene. This spirit of
individualism set the Sophists against the objectivism of both the traditional
understandings of physis and nomos. » Traditionally, `nomos' is the divine
economy of Zeus, on which human justice must model ; (22) from Hesiod to the
Pseudo-Demosthenes, an uninterrupted series of authors assert that the `nomos'
is Zeus will, in keeping, as rightly stated in `Revolt against the Modern
World', with the transcendent realism on which the traditional notion of law
(`rta') is based. In early Greek culture, « the nomoi and physis were one and
the same. Legal authority did not ultimately rest in a pyramidal hierarchy of
officials in a city-state nor in a similar hierarchy of gods and goddesses in
the netherworld. The nomos-physis binary was unnecessary as an explanatory or
justificatory tool. Laws just seemed to be all-controlling. They were not
written down in scripts such as Solon's Code. The unwritten laws could not even
be identified with a personalized author or source. Being unwritten and
authorless, the laws could not be traced to some higher authority. Indeed, legal
authority did not rest with an authorizing origin or arche to which conventions
could be traced. Nor were they the subject of reflection when enforced. And yet,
the unwritten laws were believed to constrain both the gods and tribal members.
The constraints seemed natural, universal, everlasting and uncontrollable. No
mortal could ignore or override the universal spirits of the netherworld. » (23)
Traditional man « either ignored or considered absurd the idea that one could
talk about laws and the obedience due them if the laws in question had a mere
human. origin—whether individual or collective. Every law, in order to be
regarded as an objective law, had to have a `divine' character. Once the
`divine' character of a law was sanctioned and its origin traced back to a
nonhuman tradition, then its authority became absolute ; this law became then
something ineffable, inflexible, immutable and beyond criticism. » (24)
Later, the term took on a political dimension within the context of the polis.
It was conceived of as an embodiment of the `polis', and absolute precondition
for its existence (« where the laws have no authority there is no constitution.
» (Pol. IV.41292a32-33)) It meant `anything assigned', `custom', `usage', 'law',
`ordinance made by authority', `rule' as an authoritative, prescriptive
direction for moral and legal conduct, `convention', and, as the transcendent
basis of `nomos' became obscured and `nomos' came to be understood in a legal
and rationalist sense, this `convention', now seen as based on human criteria
alone, was bound to be challenged, opposed and impugned. « The people of the
society agreed to be governed by certain rules. The only sanction for such rule
was that it had been agreed upon by the citizens, and it could be changed at
their subsequent pleasure. This conception of law became possible beginning in
the second half of the fifth century BC because of the presocratic philosophers
or physiologoi.
« The physiologoi had secularized the universe and all that was within it. They
removed from the cosmic scene the Homeric gods and their allied divine forces.
The world as a whole was physis, whatever is, and there was in physis no place
for the gods. Secondly, the universe did not owe its existence to divine
intervention. The initial attempts by some of the presocratics like Thales or
Anaximenes to find a universal substance from which all else in the universe was
derived evolved into explaining, as Heraclitus for example attempted to do, the
unvarying principles which governed the operation of the universe. Common to
these speculative thinkers was the assumption that all that took place in the
universe was interaction among its parts which had the same physis or nature.
Anaxagoras attempted to propose mind or an intelligent principle as underlying
the workings of the universe, but he reduced such a principle to mechanical
operation immanent within the world. The order of the universe was imposed by
physis itself and did not come from a source outside it.
« The attempts of some of the earlier presocratics like Heraclitus and
Anaximander to find common principles which applied to both the physical world
and the moral and political world of man were jettisoned by the later atomistic
philosophers. Democritus and Leucippus, who removed from physis any relationship
to human values. Values could only be human and agreed upon by convention among
men. Democritus affirmed the separation of nomos from physis : "by convention
[nomos] are sweet and bitter, hot and cold, by convention is colour : in truth
are atoms and the void." » (25) The distinction between `nomos' and `physis'
would govern the development of Greek political thought and, by implication, of
Greek thought on freedom from the second half of the fifth century onward.
Whether it was first articulated in Hippocrates of Kos' `Peri aeron, hydaton,
kai topon' (`Airs, Waters, and Places'), (26) or by Archelaus, the Ionian
physicist and teacher of Socrates, it is not by chance that this distinction
incubated in the `mixing of cultures' that took place in the Peloponnesian wars,
of which these physicists were contemporaries, and which saw a deep change in
the economic circumstances. « The growing complexity of life in the Greek
city-states generated a demand for technical knowledge because of the growth of
business, manufacturing and trade. Political leaders had to acquire the
necessary knowledge and skill to deal effectively with the economic, social and
political problems arising from the increase in all forms of commercial
activity. » (27) A group of itinerant professional teachers were able to cater
for such needs, as long as one could pay their fee : the Sophists.
Despite their lack of interest in scientific ideas and activities, they came to
depend heavily upon pre-Socratic philosophy in terms of both form and content. «
They consciously attempted to apply the methods of abstract thought that had
been developed by the speculative philosophers for explaining the physical
universe to practical questions of public and private life. And this led rapidly
to a series of crucial questions about the origins and legitimacy of law and
morality. » (28) Not all Sophists supported `physis' against `nomos' as the
primary source of human law, customs, and mores. Not all the Sophist supporters
of the primacy of `physis' went as far as Antiphon in claiming that there are no
natural grounds for distinguishing either between high and low birth or between
different races, « since by nature we are all made to be alike in all respects,
both barbarians and Greeks. » (29) « This does not mean, however, that the
majority of Sophist ideas on politics, religion, or morality were traditional or
conservative. Nor does it mean that their doctrines were not fundamentally
shaped in response to the doctrines of pre-Socratic natural philosophy. The
Sophistic supporters of nomos differed from traditionalists largely because they
could no longer accept the notion that conventions were divinely inspired and
sanctioned. They developed a new notion of the significance of convention in
human affairs.
« The framework for the Sophists' new discussions of the meaning of human
conventions developed out of questions raised by pre-Socratic philosophers
concerning the possibility of knowing or learning the nature of the universe.
Science is a search for universally valid knowledge, and the notion of validity
implies some criteria, either for testing the conformity of our knowledge to the
reality it purports to illuminate or for otherwise judging the `truth' of our
knowledge. The question of validity never arose — at least in a conscious and
explicit way — in connection with traditional religious and mythopoetic
understandings of the world. The appropriateness of a traditional myth was
established by its very survival, and mutually contradictory mythopoetic
accounts of any given phenomena or social practice seemed to be tolerated
without generating overt unease. The notion of establishing some criterion for
assessing the validity of knowledge, however, was a critical problem for the
pre-Socratics. And from the outset it led in two closely related but separable
directions. » (30)
According to Democritus, who was the first to explore the second, our knowledge
of the world is derived from sensory experience. « That the experiences of all
men should be largely the same (i.e., universal) arises from the fact that we
are similarly constituted and that we are all affected by the same events. These
events give rise to sensations when the atoms of external objects interact with
the atoms that make up human beings, and we simply agree among ourselves to call
certain kinds of sensations by certain names. But it is possible for a variety
of reasons… for different individuals to experience the same real events
somewhat differently. Thus, although sensory evidence underlies our knowledge of
reality, there is no strict one to one correlation between real events and our
perceptions of them. The basic regularity of experience is overlaid by a
contextually determined variability. » (31) It was the Democritean emphasis on
the possibility of subjective sensory states that the Sophists retained to
develop their moral and political core arguments. Archelaus, a student of the
naturalist philosopher Anaxagoras before becoming Socrates' teacher, and a man
held to mark the turning point of Greek philosophy from natural to human themes,
stepped into the breach, arguing that « if hot and cold, bitter and sweet, have
no existence in nature but are simply a matter of how we feel at any particular
time, then we can hardly suppose that justice and injustice or right and wrong
could have a more constant and less subjective existence… Some early arts, like
medicine and agriculture, merely assist the forces of nature, and may have
substantial power. But political art and legislation are quite removed from
nature. They are artificial, as are the gods, varying from place to place
according to local customs. Because both the gods and the laws exist by
convention and artifice, justice has nothing to do with nature but owes its
existence entirely to design. And if justice is merely an artificial human
creation, then it is subject to change at any time that humans choose to
re-create it. » (32)
So « In place of the old understandings, the Sophists introduced a contrast
between physis and nomos of their own. On the one hand, laws were dismissed as
artificial human creations which lacked any objective foundation in justice. On
the other, nature was reduced to the free play of human passions and instincts.
At its most radical, the Sophists claimed that nomos was an unjustifiable and
artificial curb on the natural operations of physis. The real task of the legal
philosopher was to free physis from these contingent constraints. » (33)
`Nature' was praised as `being free', as opposed to the `constraints of the
law'. This view was expressed in its most radical form by Callicles, the person
credited with coining the phrase "natural law".
Under the influence of the Sophists, or, at least, of some Sophists, not only
`physis' became the measure of all things ethical, and `nomos' was lowered down
to a corpus of mere arbitrary conventions, but also the very terms `physis' and
`nomos' came to be used in a sense entirely different from that traditionally
attached to them. What was conceived of as one and immutable, in that it was
attributed to the gods, was `physis' and no longer `nomos', now thought to be
valid only in certain groups and in certain peoples, on the grounds of the
emphasis put on the mutability of customs.
This opposition did not remain `wisely' in the field of philosophical
speculation and science, but was soon used to justify attacks on tradition in
the ethical and political field. The relativity promoted by the Sophists on the
ontological plane was logically reflected in their ethical and political
conceptions.
Ethically, the assumption of the primacy of nature led to « enhance in nature
the power of self-affirmation and the overbearing quality of the passions, » to
claim that natural instincts should be allowed to have their sway. « Any citizen
can justify a conduct on the basis of what he deems to be his own `physis', that
is to say, of his own best interests, or legitimate his fight for another
`nomos', which, while being just as relative, is more advantageous to him. »
(34) The revolutionary significance of this Sophistic analysis of the law did
not escape the notice of Antiphon's commentators, nor Plato's. (35)
Politically, it served to discredit the sovereignty of the `polites' and, more
generally, to challenge the laws of the state ; freedom came not to be regarded
any longer as a political status enjoyed exclusively by free-born citizens
possessing the right and the duty to participate in the life of the state and
thus eligible to public offices, but as a natural quality possessed by all human
beings without distinction of race, of sex, and of social and economic
condition. The Sophist Alcidamas declared that : « God has made all men free ;
nature made none a slave. » (Aristotle, Rhet. 1373b 18 (ed. Rabe. p.74)) « And
this was no idle school declamation ; it formed part of a stirring appeal to all
Hellas in favour of the Messenian helots then struggling for their liberty
against the Spartan power. » (36) Because of the subjectivist implications of
the Sophistic moral relativism that posited that all legal distinctions between
individuals were purely arbitrary, that `nomos', the law itself, was purely
artificial, there soon lingered the idea that all human beings were entitled to
rights, and, one thing leading to another, to equal rights. (37) « Lycophron
called for the abolition of the privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy, Alcidamas
set out to abolish slavery, Phaleas demanded equality with regard to property
and education for all citizens and Hippodamus was the first to sketch the
contours of an ideal polity. The Sophists even used the physis/thesis opposition
to formulate a demand for political equality between men and women. » (38)
The ethical and political implications of Sophistic philosophy were the logical
result of its theoretical principle, that « the individual Ego can arbitrarily
determine what is true, right and good, » and that, since « all thought rests
solely on the apprehensions of the senses and on subjective impression…
therefore we have no other standard of action than utility for the individual. »
(39) That was not all : if Sophism was a protest against the existing state of
things, against the `nomos', there was one law to which the Sophist had to
submit unconditionally : that « which every human can discover by a persevering
examination of himself. » (40)
« For Aristotle and his contemporaries, perception was essentially a cognitive
process, apprehending the forms of sensible objects without the matter. Such
apprehension of external objects was regarded as direct, the awareness as
awareness of the objectively real character of things. A mind as such perceiving
was foreign to their modes of thinking… In the earlier period, therefore, mind
was studied in its manifestations in nature and society ; with the close of
ancient speculation, the investigation was based predominantly on introspection
and the analysis of mental operations of the individual thinker. » (41) Then, «
The Sophist discovered the world to be himself and hence all inquiry had a
personal aim. Doubting any positive knowledge of the world of nature, he turned
to the more comprehensible life in society. Now appeared the first attempt at a
study of mind, which was further developed by Socrates. Thus the Sophists from
an individualistic, and Socrates with his followers from a universalistic
standpoint investigated the human mind in its social aspect. » (42)
It remained for the Cynics to bring the Sophistic views on `nature' and
`freedom' to the next level along these subjectivist lines.
For man, as perceived by the Cynics, « `nature' clearly meant the functions and
processes and sensations which constitute man's life. With these he must put
himself in agreement.
The intimations of sense and instinct were the sure utterance of nature,
convincing and unimpeachable ; in agreement with them, virtue and will would
find their natural exercise, and attain full and undivided self-realisation. The
one sufficient way to happiness lay in obedience to the primary mandates of
Nature, as expressed in impulses of appetite, of function, and of natural
propensity, and satisfied by inner self-satisfaction of the will. Centring on
these, the wise man would refuse to implicate himself in disturbing
sensibilities, or in any gratuitous distractions of thought or affection or
exterior deference or obligation. Praise, blame, and the whole array of social
sanctions were extraneous to the man's own nature, and must not be suffered to
impair that unconditional self-assertion and self-mastery which were
indispensable to moral independence. Still less could any weight attach to
purely external appendages, such as wealth, rank, costume, reputation, or
environment. These things are not to be decried as in themselves baneful or
undesirable or to be regarded as temptations, which the wise man must by virtue
of his profession eschew ; they fall strictly into the same category as their
opposites, poverty or squalor or obloquy. The inner satisfaction is found in
ignoring, not in mortifying the desires. » (43)
This general picture of the Cynic conception of `nature' already suggests how
unwise it is to draw parallels, as once did G. Stucco, between the Cynic
approach to freedom and J. Evola's, if only because the emphasis is put on
`autarkeia' in both. In fact, J. Evola's `autarkeia' and the Cynics' are
diametrically opposed. Indeed, to the followers of Diogenes, the attainment of
sufficiency required the return to a natural state. « The Cynics held that the
lower animals were superior to men in some respects, since they were independent
of shoes, clothing, shelter and special preparation of their food and that they
were worthy of imitation in these respects as far as men were able. » (44) They
took the dog as their model, not « the watch dog, the house dog or the hunting
dog, but the homeless and ownerless vagrant. » (45) The vagrant ownerless dog
was free and on this account was regarded by the Cynics as worthy of emulation,
in their quest for freedom and happiness. Whether The Cynics sought happiness
through freedom or freedom through happiness is not entirely clear from the
primary sources, and is still a matter of debate among commentators. In the
first case, Cynic freedom would not be purely negative : `freedom from' things,
« from desires, from fear, anger, grief and other emotions, from religious or
moral control, from the authority of the city or state or public officials, from
regard for public opinion and freedom also from the care of property, from
confinement to any locality and from the care and support of wives and children
», (46) from marriage (Pseud. Diog., Epist. 47, 1-6, in M. Billerbeck, Epiktet.
Von Kynismus, Brill, Leyde, 1978, p. 131) and even from procreation (47), would
have an object : happiness…
Cynicism is a form of eudemonism, and, as such, an immanent ethics. But « those
who point "the way of happiness" in order to make man follow a certain
behaviour" must be responded with incredulity : « 'But what does happiness
matter to us ?' » (48) Besides, « The philosophical concern with freedom as a
good of the individual's soul rather than of the body », « with the freedom of
the individual and his mind apart from government and society…,» (49) which
contributed enormously to the growth of individualism and humanism, is radically
opposed to actual freedom, which lies nowhere else than in man's « superiority
to his own individuality » (50), when unconditional authority was given by the
Cynics to the criteria of individual experience and will.
What's more, the Cynic conception and practice of askesis, a cornerstone of this
movement, in which it is supposed to lead one to sufficiency and freedom, bears
the most superficial and peripheral resemblance to the `Doctrine of Awakening'.
The Cynic is an ascetic « by compromise rather than upon principle, a precaution
and in some sense a confession of weakness, rather than a counsel of perfection…
» To regain « one's true nature, » the Cynic is expected to go through `ponoi'
(`suffering'), `athloi' (contests') and much `talaiporia' (`wretchedness,
misery'). « These words are most associated with athletics, the Olympic Games
and their mythic founder, Heracles. Heracles' twelve labours were athloi ;
according to Cynic and Stoic allegory, he endured them for the good of mankind.
He killed the Nemean Lion with his bare hands, shot down the Stymphalian Birds,
and in general cleared the earth of monsters and criminals, so great was his
philanthropia. All of this was hard labour, athlos. The related adjective athlos
means `wretched' and `in pain', and an athlete (athletes) is literally one who
is in pain, either because he is training for competition, or competing in the
hot dust at the Games themselves. Another word that the Cynics played on is
ponos, meaning both `labour' and `pain' at once (e.g. D. Chr. 8.16 ; Epict.
Ench. 29.6-7)… The Cynics played even more extensively on this conceit, as they
undergo ascetic `labours' to train themselves for the wise, natural life. These
ponoi involve physical pain : rolling in the hot sand, embracing snowy statues,
walking barefoot on snow and enduring summer heat, winter cold, hard beds and
little food. Their labours also include exercises in disappointment and
psychological pain. » (51) Even though Cynic asceticism may be described as « a
cheerful and hedonistic, not a world-denying, asceticism », as Cynics «
paradoxically welcomed pain as a necessary condition of elemental pleasure » and
« Askesis made them true hedonists, to such an extent that they might even get
pleasure in their self-chosen pains : "the scorn of pleasure is the greatest
pleasure" (DL 6.71) », (52) it is certainly no accident that so great a
connoisseur of Christian asceticism as Origen singles out « Antisthenes,
Diogenes and Crates as champions of pagan asceticism and likens them to the
Hebrew prophets ; even more radically, he implicitly compares them with Christ
(C. Cels. 2.41, 7.7 ; cf. 6.28). » (53)
The widespread view that Cynicism was a way of life rather than a doctrine calls
for some nuance. With the later Cynics `kaprepia' (`endurance') came to mean the
ability to endure the hardships incident to the Cynic form of life. With respect
to poverty, another cardinal virtue of Cynic ethics, « the avoidance of money
seems to have been a theory and a tradition with the later Cynics, rather than
an actual practice. » Cynic expressions in regard to pleasure lack consistency :
Crates of Thebes, a pupil of Diogenes, « held that pleasure seeking was a form
of slavery and should be avoided. The Cynics retained this idea as a theory but
did not always carry it into practice. But the idea gained prevalence that
pleasures were to be found in the Cynic form of life and this probably
facilitated acquiring converts. » Finally, it seems that, after all, words spoke
louder than action in the Cynics' commitment to « defacing the currency » : «
Parrhesia was a political prerogative at the time : it granted all Athenian
citizens the right to voice their opinions at public assemblies. When the
Cynics, many of them wanderers or exiles, laid claim to parrhesia, they brazenly
appropriated and transformed the notion. They turned parrhesia, once the
state-sanctioned privilege of the few, into the prerogative, indeed duty, of all
human beings, and they broadened the concept to signify not only the right to
speak out publicly on matters that concerned the polis but also the right to
speak one's mind in any and all circumstances, on public as well as private
matters, whether formally invited to do so or not. » (54)
« The main importance of this school lies in the fact that it was the first to
abandon altogether the ideal of the city-state… The theoretical basis for the
Cynic philosophy is the assumption that the wise man, of whom Socrates is
supposed to be the type, is completely self-sufficing. Only that which is fully
within his power, that is, the world of his own thought and character, can be
necessary to make a happy life. Everything except moral character is
indifferent, and in this wide circle of the indifferent the Cynic includes not
only the amenities and even the decencies of life, but also property and
marriage, family and citizenship, learning and good repute, and all the
practices and conventions and pieties of civilization. For the wise man is
ruled by the law of virtue and not by the law of any city. He will not desire
even the independence of his native city. It follows that for the Cynic the only
true social relation is that between wise men, and, as wisdom is universal in
its nature, the relation has nothing to do with the local limits of earthly
cities. All wise men everywhere form a single community, the city of the world,
which is the only true state. To the wise man no local custom is foreign or
strange, for he is a citizen of the world. He stands out as intrinsically
superior to all the conventional and customary stratifications of society… All
the customary distinctions of Greek social life could thus be subjected to an
annihilating criticism. Rich and poor, Greek and barbarian, citizen and
foreigner, freeman and slave, well-born and base-born are reduced at a stroke to
a common level. »
« In the Cynic school, then, we see the first appearance of cosmopolitanism, and
not without reason did the ancients themselves perceive a relation between this
philosophy and the rise of the Macedonian empire. Nevertheless, there was little
that was positively significant in the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics. » (55) The
Cynic politeia, the Cynic `state' is nothing other than a moral `state' : that
is, the `state' of being a Cynic. » (56) Cosmopolitanism was produced by the
intellectualisation and the psychologisation of personal freedom : « Turning
inward, the philosopher rejects the constraints of the institutions that were
previously thought to form the citizen's character. Rather than protecting
freedom as a value that is essential for political participation, the Cynics
sought to defend freedom from the political sphere, which they saw as an
external constraint imposed on naturally free humans… The freedom that it seeks
to protect is universal ; it is treated as the highest of goods to be protected
against political institutions' particular demands. » (57)
Cynic cosmopolitanism was « a leveling attack upon the city-state and all its
typical social institutions. It looks not so much to the setting up of a new
social principle as to the destruction of all civic ties and the abolition of
all social restrictions. It aims at a return to nature in a sense which makes
nature the negation of civilization. The Cynic philosopher, dirty, witty,
contemptuous, shameless, a master of billingsgate, is the earliest example of
the philosophical proletarian. » (58)
The Cynics did much to pave the way for Christianity « by destroying respect for
existing religions, by ignoring distinctions of race and nationality and by
instituting an order of wandering preachers claiming exceptional freedom of
speech. Tertullian says that early Christian preachers adopted the Cynic cloak
(De Pallio 6), and Augustine mentioned the club or staff as the only distinctive
feature of the Cynics (De Civitate Dei 14, 20). Julian mentioned the similarity
of methods of the Cynics and the Christians in their public discourses and their
collections of contributions (7, 224). Lucian describes cooperation between
Cynics and Christians (Peregrinus). The early Christians worked side by side
with
Cynics for three hundred years and were to some extent influenced by them. We do
not know of any early Christian arts, music, literature or sciences. Early
Christian orders of priesthood accepted celibacy and poverty as virtues. The
Dominicans explained their designation by saying that they were "Domini canes"
(dogs of the Lord). » (59)
« Diogenes became a Stoic hero, playing the role in their literature of a model
wise man. » (60), even though, to use a most felicitous expression, it was
Diogenes without the hub. To Juvenal, the only distinction between the Cynics
and the Stoics lay in the coat they wear. The Stoic doctrines contained little
that had not been taught by its predecessors : the self-sufficiency of virtue,
the identification of virtue with knowledge, the unconditional supremacy of the
moral will in the determination of life, the independence and responsibility of
the individual as the unit of morality, the distinction of things good, evil,
and indifferent, the ideal picture of the wise man, the whole withdrawal from
the outer world within the precincts of the mind, and the strength of a moral
will, are ideas taken from the Cynics. (61)
The personal touch they added to previous `Greek' philosophical schools was
however decisive in their success.
« Aristotle had viewed the world as a system of specific forms ; these complete
organisms could be explained by studying the parts in reference to the whole, as
means to an end. Thus his investigation of soul was a biological treatise in
which development, the transition from potentiality to realization, was the
keynote. The underlying motive was the desire to exhibit the universal form in
the empirical data of nature and life, since the universal exists potentially in
the concrete.
« Aristotle's problem was determined by his epistemological position (based on
the Socratic concept and the Platonic mediation between ideas and particulars)
that universals are the only objects of scientific knowledge and that the
concrete particulars, reality in the strict sense, are presented in
sense-perception. Hence no regulating principle was demanded or furnished ; and
the search for it became the dominant problem of post-Aristotelian philosophy.
« Discarding the Aristotelian conception of transcendence, the Stoics developed
the other side of the latent dualism, the view of the world as an organism, by
adopting the Heraclitean notion of primordial fire, eternal, divine, possessed
of thought and will. All existing things partake of this divine substance which
appears as hold or bond of union in inorganic matter, as vital principle in
plants, irrational soul in animals, and rational soul in man. Together with
significant contrasts in ethics the ideal of Aristotle was carried to its
logical conclusion ; but a new spirit was introduced with the doctrine of
universal law and still more by the ever-increasing emphasis on will,
self-determination, which involved a practical instead of a theoretical standard
of life. The concrete was the object of study ; but not the individual in
general so much as the particular person. The introduction of assent or
acknowledgment into the cognitive process by Zeno was the entering wedge of the
subjective standpoint. As the volitional attitude gradually became basal in
psychology and epistemology, the need of a standard became imperative. It is
possible to trace in the older Stoicism the growing emphasis on assent as
fundamental in knowledge, the increasing skill in psychological analysis, while
the criterion of truth remained distinctly objective. The problems thus raised
were bequeathed to the Middle Stoa ; then the stress fell on attention and the
need of reason in all forms of knowing was recognized. In later Stoicism the
judgment, the interpretation, the "view" became of sole importance. The relation
between universal and particular, abstract and concrete, remained a vexing
problem while the tendency was ever toward a subjective interpretation of the
universal. Thus when the individual as such asserted himself, the will began to
be treated as a specific function, just as Aristotle in contrast to Plato had
discriminated activity from the other functions of the soul ; the more analytic
point of view tended toward a transformation of the philosophical attitude. »
(62)
To Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, ethics was the climax of philosophy
; so the study of human nature in its individual and social aspects was basal.
Moreover, his physics is eminently psychological. It works on the assumption
that « (1) The whole universe is governed by the providence of God. This
providence is the activity of his Reason, his Logos, which is expressed in the
world as the Law of Nature. (2) Man is the only creature in the world which has
been endowed by God with reason, and this is a bond between God and man… The
"highest reason" is simply the Logos working in nature ; but there is the
necessary implication that the Logos is a moral force, at least in its
subjective aspect, in the minds of men. » (63) While, in Cleanthes, the
successor to Zeno as the scholarch of the Stoic school in Athens, nature was
used as an objective factor character and the emphasis was put on the
unification of macrocosm and microcosm and the agreement of nature and the
universal law, the main interest for Chrysippus, his pupil, was centred on human
nature, harmony and rational control of though and action, and, in general,
`virtue'. « In the Middle Stoa the introspective attitude came to be distinctly
recognized and employed. The consequent difficulties with the objective
criterion and the still more emphasized assent brought these philosophers to
find some solution in a subjective standpoint… Panaetius held that knowledge and
morality must be based on the logos common to all men, and that differences in
opinion are due to the specific character of the individual reason… This
insistence on the universality implied in rational thought in opposition to the
individualistic point of view of the Skeptics combined with due recognition of
individual differences signalized the adoption of a subjective standpoint. This
attitude is also manifest in the Platonic conception of soul held by Posidonius
[of Apamaia, in Syria]. For the difference in point of view is significant : no
explanation is required, said the Stoic, introspection is the only verification
needed. The transition from social to introspective psychology had been
definitely accomplished. » (64) « While in the Middle Stoa the introspective
analysis was concerned predominantly with the problem of knowledge, in Roman
Stoicism as inaugurated by Cicero and continued by Seneca it was in ethics that
the subjective attitude developed… In the transition from the teleological to
the jural view of morality and from an external to an internal standard in which
Stoicism played the chief role, Cicero is of great importance in the history of
ethics. His belief in the importance of the state and the duty of citizenship is
dearly set forth ; but in his strictly ethical works the individualistic
standpoint is prominent. » (65)
Seneca made further advance toward a subjective standpoint by defining « reason
primarily in individual terms, as human nature, and not as a part of the
rational cosmos ; this is what is referred to as identity today : "Animum
intuere, qualis quantusque sit" (76.32). The self in its rational scrutiny of
itself ("se sibi adplicere"), in its use of its own rational resources to manage
its relation to the world in fulfillment of its own nature, comes its own
gaudium. » (66) He gave ethics an introspective turn by associating moral
progress with self-knowledge, confession of faults, and self-examination.
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius put an even greater emphasis on
self-consciousness, the latter from an individual standpoint, the latter from a
universalist standpoint. « The emphasis which Epictetus put on reflective
consciousness finds its climax in the self-consciousness involved in his
doctrine of the daemon, the divine element in man, reason as the better self,
conscience. For Posidonius the daemon had been the objective, unchangeable,
divine nature in man ; for these later Stoics the daemon was subject to
modification for better and worse as an explanation of the reality of sin. In
Epictetus, the feeling of the high destiny and worth of man is intense, the
close connection with God is vital. The inner consciousness of the divine is the
dearest and most certain fact of experience. The likeness to God is moral rather
than intellectual ; in respect to will the ressemblance is perfect. » (67) In
keeping with this moral standpoint, the centre of moral life is not so much
identified with apprehending and knowing as with feeling and willing. Man's good
is the will and progress consists in the exercise and in improvement of the
will. The inner self is the object of all analysis in the `Meditations'. « In
this self the immanence of the indwelling God comes to light. » (68) « Man's
brotherhood with all mankind is not by blood or physical descent but by
community in mind ; and each man's mind is God, an efflux of deity. In social
relations all considerations must be directed toward men's inner self. Civil
obligation was thus superseded by the cosmic ; citizenship became
world-citizenship in the Dear City of God. This conception came to include the
whole range of social duties and endeavor, and because of the position of the
emperor was invested with new conviction and reality. In the hands of the great
jurists the lex naturae was being formulated jus naturale which Stoic influences
helped to secure as the moral basis of the imperial code of laws.
Cosmopolitanism thus became self-consciousness of Rome's mission. Too exclusive
emphasis on reason and the intolerance that results from purely individualistic
morality were ameliorated by recognition of the social bond. Although Stoicism
from the first had insisted on inwardness of morality and hence on disposition
and motive, at the beginning mere self-consistency satisfied the demand of
conformity to nature. Such self-centered egoism proved a failure in the relation
of the individual to society. Hence gradually, while the emphasis on the motive
and on self-consciousness was increased, the social outlook was broadened so
that the individual was in peril of being absorbed in the cosmic world. It was
in the stress of this conflict that the subjective point of view developed. For
this conception of a cosmic order, of a cosmic standard, cosmic
interrelationship and cosmic duty were based on self-consciousness. It was
"within the little field of self" that M. Aurelius found the ground of all
reality », (69) the basis of right conduct.
« From its inception and throughout its history Stoicism insisted on this
interaction of the human and the divine, the individual and the whole. All
speculation must start from things human and advance continuously to the divine,
all-comprehending principle of existence. The theoretical cannot be severed from
the practical, was a Stoic maxim. The material monism of Zeno had included
everything — inorganic and organic, thought, feeling, will, man and God — under
the category of matter ; hence metaphysical materialism. For conduct an equally
comprehensive rule was laid down. When philosophy was looking for a canon of
right living, a formula to serve as a standard, "nature," which had been the
subject of investigations for centuries, met with universal favor. » (70)
Like Diogenes, the Stoics considered philosophy as a way of life, as a practice
(`askesis'), and adopted from the Cynics various techniques, such as apatheia
and parrhesia, but rejected the latter's animalistic aspects of scandalous
behaviour and provocative dialogue that were regarded by Cynics as necessary
steps to a life « according to nature » ; the nature to which the Stoics had in
mind and wished to return was however different : « They looked to the ideal,
and refused to copy the habits either of the lower animals or of primitive man.
Hence, they rose to the conception of a pure and noble individual, sharer in the
divine, and of a universal brotherhood of mankind and preached the necessity of
the individual regarding himself as a citizen of the world and discharging
social duties. » (71) « `Return to nature,' so far from implying reversion to
animalism, and the reduction of man's needs to the level of the beasts, was
found to involve fundamental differentiation of reasoning man from the unreason
of the brute or the inertia of matter, to place man on a unique spiritual plane,
and eventually to summon him from individual isolation to conscious brotherhood
with kind and harmony of will with God… » So, for man « to live according to
nature » means « the concordance of human actions with the law of nature, the
conformity of the human will with the Divine Will, life according to the
principle that is active in nature and in which the human soul shares. The
Stoics in this fashion cancelled out the difference between nature and reason :
to act according to reason and to act according to nature are identical, law and
nature are united because the law is the product of reason ; therefore, we are
allowed to think in terms of a natural law. The ethical end of the Stoic sage,
his summum bonum, is perforce submission to the divinely appointed order of the
universe. But it must be now made clear that man conforms his conduct to his own
essential nature, reason. Both statements are in fact identical, since the
universe is governed by the law of nature. It is therefore plain that the
universal law of nature is, simultaneously, the ruling principle of the cosmos
as well as the goal and norm of man. Among the Stoics, it follows no difference
exists between the ethical fulfillment of the individual, the ethical
fulfillment of the entire community of man…, and the rational law of nature. »
(72)
To be sure, to act according to reason and to act according to nature were
identical insofar as the correct use of reason allowed one to grasp nature as a
universal order. If a person did not use reason to guide his actions and to
follow nature, such person was no better than an animal.
« One of the first effects of the reinstatement of reason in its `natural' place
was to reintroduce the whole order of `things indifferent' to the purview of
morals. So long as virtue was solely right condition and exercise of will,
acting upon the intimations of instinct and sense, no alternative was possible
but absolute acceptance or rejection ; no intermediate course, no parleying or
suspension of decision, could be allowed without admitting the fallibility, and
surrendering the independent autocracy of the moral organ. But with the
appearance of reason on the scene, with its power of discrimination, of
valuation, and, above all, of `suspense,' the position changed. Technically,
indeed, the supremacy and independence of the will was left untouched, and its
disregard of things indifferent was as unqualified and uncompromising as its
rejection of things undesirable but reason, notwithstanding, made allowances
which the virtuous will could not admit ; it established from its own point of
view classifications and degrees of merit, it attached conditional values and
preferential claims to recognition, according as things tended to advance or to
retard the life according to nature, and so reduced the number of things
strictly indifferent to a remnant which stood out of all determining relation
with the will, and to which reason itself could not ascribe such secondary
value, positive or negative. » (73)
« By these steps Stoicism entirely altered the physiognomy of the `Wise Man.'
Reason, when once its place in Nature was vindicated and re-established, tended
to become the dominant partner in each exercise of will. It alone could supply
criteria of self-conformity, and interpret and direct the impulses of sense ; it
alone could justly pit reduction of needs against surrender of independence.
Thus on all sides it was necessary to right action, and held, as it were, the
casting vote in the adjustments of nature to life. Control came to be regarded
as more important than first momentum, and thus the very essence of personality
and `nature' was found to lie in the dominion of reason. Gradually it usurped
more than mere directive power, and claimed to decide the prior question of use.
It might refuse assent to any line of movement and pass sentence of inertia on
any impulse or emotion. At this point the reversal of original position has
become complete. For the `nature' in which reason at first had no admitted place
is now placed wholly at its mercy, and may be set aside as unauthorised, and in
conflict with the mandates of the premier authority. Nature has become contrary
to nature, and must therefore cease to be. Suppression of the emotions
(apatheia) — a self-determination distinct from the imperturbability secured by
disallowance of needs — takes a cardinal place in the Stoic scheme of life. And
thus… the idea of personality — of the ultimate unity of the individual will and
conscience, of an Ego distinct from physical organism and environment —
eventually dawns upon Greek thought…» (74) and, even more importantly, reveals a
deeper dualism new to `Greek' philosophy and, more generally, an antithesis
previously unknown to Aryan peoples.
Indeed, « Hitherto the emphasis on nature had been on the physical and sentient
side of nature ; the inclusion of reason and the consequent social relationship
changed the conception of the wise man and things indifferent. In the gradual
clarification of the implications in pantheistic immanence and social
fellowship, return to nature involved separation from the brutes and inert
matter, and a recall from individual isolation to conscious brotherhood with
human kind and harmony of will with God. As long as sense and impulse pronounced
the verdict there could be only absolute rejection or acceptance. When reason
became dominant, directing sense and impulse, a graduated scale of things
indifferent as they aided or retarded life in agreement with reason resulted.
The consequent suppression, or rather attempted annihilation, of the emotions
made the nature from which reason had been excluded subservient. From the
sovereignty of reason, personality as the ultimate unity of individual will and
consciousness, distinct from the physical organism and environment was gradually
revealed — with the final antithesis not between thought and sense, but between
spirit and flesh, in later Stoicism. »
For the Stoic, the task was to bring man's thoughts and action into harmony with
the laws of the universe, man's reason with « universal reason ». This could
only be accomplished by the « wise man », through the practice of virtue. It was
made easier by the teaching of Zeno of Citium, who, in his Republic, a work
composed while he was with the Cynics and which was designed to subvert Plato's,
redefined political concepts such as freedom and citizenship in terms of virtue
(75), and, to begin with, altered the traditional meaning of virtue, which, to
Plato, was an hereditary capacity shared only by nobles. (76) To Zeno, on the
contrary, virtue is « a rational life, an agreement with the general course of
the world, » which may be potentially reached by anyone, regardless of race and
sex : « only the wise or virtuous are true citizens or friends or kindred or
free men. » (77) To Epictectus, freedom is a moral quality, a state of mind,
which only the wise man possesses ; the term is connected with tranquillity of
mind. The wise man is free, because he has liberated himself from inappropriate
emotions and, therefore, he is in a state of calm tranquillity (`apatheia'), or
– perhaps - « inward neutrality ». (78)
For a reason that will become crystal-clear in the second part of this study,
Stoic thought on freedom can be best captured in relation to its ethical views
on slavery. They can be summarised in four points as follows :
« 1. Slavery according to the law, institutional slavery, is an external, beyond
our control, and therefore not worth caring about ; 2. Slavery as a condition of
the soul is both within our control and all important ; 3. Only the wise or good
man is free and independent ; the inferior/foolish or bad man is dependent and
slavish ; 4. The wise are very few, while virtually all of humanity is inferior.
Most men are (moral) slaves. » (79)
Legal slavery was marginal to stoic philosophical discourse. « There is no sign
that the Stoics debated the origins and justification of legal slavery in the
terms of the argument that surfaces in Aristotle's Politics. They do not appear
to have argued, as Aristotle's opponents had done, that slavery was a man-made
institution, and an unjust one at that, based on force. The reason is that in
terms of their philosophy the whole debate was an irrelevance. Of course legal
slavery was a product of nomos, law or convention. But it was also, from the
point of view of the individual, an external and an indifferent, not something
to engage our attention, excite our emotions or exercise our intellects. » (80).
The essence of slavery for the Stoic was the loss of the power of autonomous
action. « To the Stoic, legal slavery, the kind of slavery that befell Diogenes,
is of no significance. It is not in our control, it is one of the externals,
like health and illness, wealth and poverty, high and low status. As such, it is
to be judged as neither good nor bad, but, rather, indifferent. True slavery
like true freedom is a condition of the soul, not the body. Therefore a free
soul or mind can exist within an unfree body. The soul, specifically the
reasoning faculty, is under our control, through the dispensation of the gods.
Whether or not we are free and independent and exercise free choice
(prohairesis) is a function of our attitude to externals. We can either not be
constrained and dominated by them and be free, or allow them to constrain or
dominate us and be slaves. » (81)
On that basis, it should be expected that most Stoics would reject Aristotle's
theory of natural slavery. The doctrine of the very few wise men who are free
and the mass of inferiors who are slaves is not laid out as a doctrine of people
who are divided in this way by virtue of natural disposition, and the claims
made by some Stoic texts about the potential of all human beings to become
virtuous, while they should not be exaggerated, should not be downplayed either.
(82) In fact, the Stoics even taught, far ahead of their time, the possibility
of moral progress - a view which seems to be at odds with their contention that
they are no degrees of virtue and vice, no intermediate positions. To Seneca,
slaves are virtuous, or at least potentially so ; far from being inferior to
their masters, they might be their moral equals.
The contribution of Stoicism to slave theory « was to shift the focus of
attention from legal to moral slavery. In so doing they were no longer asking,
as Aristotle was forced to do, how the starkest form of legal exploitation of
some people by others could be justified, but how humans could free their souls
from oppression by the passions and emotions, and bring their moral attitudes
and behaviour into line with a higher law than the law of man, the law of
Nature… Their point of departure was an acceptance of the rationality of all
humans. In the late Stoa this blossoms into the thesis that all men are related
in nature. They were putting distance between themselves and Aristotle simply in
establishing this base-line. » (83) They developed the cosmopolitanism of the
Cynics into a doctrine of the common kinship of all people as rational beings. «
Slaves and free are pronounced to be brothers, descended from the same stock,
from the divinity or `the world'. » (84) Epictetus « infers the existence of the
world community, the cosmic city, from the fact that God and men are kin, that
men are sons of God. » (85) The common theme in many texts by Hierocles and
others is universality : « all men are related ; we are all sprung from the same
source ; all men have rationality ; we have an affinity towards, and a
responsibility to care for, `the whole human race'. » (86) To Marcus Aurelius,
this « natural affinity of rational beings » entails « an ethic of social
responsibility, » which in turn implies that each of these « rational beings »
conform to the « intelligence of the universe, » that « has made the inferior
things for the sake of the superior, and… has fitted the superior to one
another. » (Meditations, 5. 30). In other words, hierarchy according to Stoic
thought is a lot of hot air. (87)
Admittedly, « There is not much sign that they were prepared to advance much
beyond [this] (sic). » « Stoicism (the Stoicism of the paradox `Every good man
is free and every bad man is a slave', the Stoicism of Epictetus) was
unoptimistic about the chances of attaining moral freedom and independence. All
might be born with the impulse towards virtue, and inferiors can become wise.
But the wise are very few. » (88) But there was nothing stopping any of those
who were sensitive to its teaching to believe, true to the human, too human,
tendency to vanity which, given the eminently psychological method of inquiry of
Stoicism, Stoics may have been aware of, that they were among the « very few ».
Admittedly, « Stoicism was deterministic. Fate or Providence has planned in
advance the main details of one's life. It has assigned one a role to play, and
it is one's moral responsibility to apply oneself willingly to this role… The
message for slaves, explicit in the Late Stoics, was to stay put and serve their
masters well. Therein lay moral goodness, and therefore happiness… Slavery
itself, and the doctrine of the externals which helped to prop it up remained
untouched. » (89) History has demonstrated that the audience of the Stoics were
not as fatalistic as the Stoics.
Stoic ethics had a tremendous impact on the Roman ethos and on the Roman society
: « Stoicism… had no belief in social progress. Nevertheless, by placing its
practical ideal, not in the isolation of the individual human being, but in his
union with the great whole of nature and humanity - an abstract universal,
instead of an abstract particular - it favoured the very social progress which
it seemed to deny. It was the fitting creed of the best citizens of a universal
empire ; it gave an intellectual justification for the breaking down of the
barriers of race and caste. Earlier than Christianity it proclaimed that all men
were brothers, and that all might be by adoption the sons of God. In its
contempt for "things external" as things indifferent, like Christianity, it
escaped the need of directly facing many social problems ; but it introduced a
cosmopolitan and humanising spirit into the minds of practical citizens, who
were engaged in the work of administering and interpreting the law of the Roman
world. » (90) Last but not least, as freedom is internalised, as it is in
Stoicism, external slavery becomes irrelevant. « It's all a question of your
self-awareness, self-assessment. Whether you are a slave or a consul, as a Stoic
you act out the social role, while remaining free within. » (91)
This « humanising spirit » can be best seen at work in the pre-modern views of
Stoics on the concept of rights, which is interrelated to that of `natural law'
: « For Aristotle… any rights operating in a community are conferred on specific
individuals in virtue of the fact, and solely in virtue of the fact, that they
hold specific political or legal offices. One might be tempted to call such
rights natural in some extended sense, since they are based on natural justice
and for Aristotle, the polis is itself rooted in nature. However, none of these
political or legal rights is inalienable or attaches naturally to individuals by
the mere fact of their humanity. If, for instance, an individual of pre-eminent
virtue were to appear in the city, all political rights and privileges would be
off, since Aristotle thinks it would be best if the virtuous person rules. In
contrast, the Stoics are the first thinkers in antiquity to develop a view of
rights that are natural in the stronger sense of being naturally attached to
individuals by the mere fact that they are human beings and, as such, members of
a natural human community. » (92)
Once again, « The primal scene of the Greek eleutheria is public, not private ;
its setting is the public square (agora), not the inner citadel of the human
psyche. Eleutheria was a combination of play and duty, an obligation and a
potential for creative civic action. Ancient cultures did not have our
contemporary understanding of the notion of individual freedom. Considerably
later, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135 CE), himself a freed
slave who experienced many misfortunes in his life including physical handicap
and exile, developed the doctrine of inner freedom as the individual's only
refuge, an "inner polis" and an "acropolis of the soul." » (93). « The principle
of internal liberty sufficient in itself for happiness, Denis Caulfield Heron
writes, plagiarising Paul Janet's' `Histoire de la philosophie morale et
politique dans l'antiquité et dans les temps modernes, Vol. 1,' conducted
Stoicism to the separation of the man from the citizen, and to his
enfranchisement from the state. The stranger, the barbarian, the slave might be
a man : the citizen might not. » In defining man without any reference to
citizenship, in going so far, in the same direction, as to assert, on the basis
of a moralistic understanding of the principle of universal order, the unity of
the human race, Stoicism undermined and shook the whole traditional system of
the Greco-Roman world. Moreover, the Stoic abstract definition of freedom
stresses only the subjective free will of the agent, whereas the Roman libertas
was in the first place the objective right to act. The Romans conceived of
libertas, not in terms of the autonomy of the will, but in terms of social
relations, as a duty no less than a right : a right to claim what is due to
oneself, and a duty to respect what is due to others, the latter being exactly
what acceptance of the law amounts to, for to be law-abiding ultimately means to
respect rights other than one's own.