The last episode closed with a thought-provoking passage from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius that places our human reason into the proper Stoic perspective. It reads:
to have the intellect as a guide towards what appear to be duties is something that we share with those who do not believe in the gods, with those who betray their country, with those who will do anything whatever behind locked doors. (Meditations 3.16)
As a transition to this episode, I will highlight the important point Marcus makes in this passage for a second time. Human reason is not the ultimate guide for ethical behavior in Stoic practice. On the contrary, universal Reason—cosmic Nature—is the sole arbiter of good and bad in Stoicism. Chrysippus, the third scholarch of the Stoa, argued this point when he wrote:
For there is no other or more suitable way of approaching the theory of good and evil or the virtues or happiness than from the universal nature and from the dispensation of the universe… For the theory of good and evil must be connected with these, since good and evil have no better beginning or point of reference and physical speculation is to be undertaken for no other purpose than for the discrimination of good and evil.[1]
Again, in his book titled On Ends, Chrysippus argued:
And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus.[2]
In this passage, Chrysippus makes it quite clear a “life in accordance with nature” is one lived in agreement with “the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus” (emphasis added). The Greek word translated as “reason” in this passage is logos. According to the Stoics, every entity that exists is comprised of a mixture of matter (the passive principle) and pneuma(the active principle). Humans are unique among all existing entities because the pneuma within us comprises our soul (psyche) and “constitutes itself as reason, logos.”[3] Seneca articulated this as follows:
What, then, is the distinctive property of a human being? Reason. It is by reason that the human surpasses animals and is second to the gods. Therefore perfected reason is the human’s distinctive excellence; everything else is shared with animals and plants. (Letters 76.9)
As A.A. Long emphasizes, “The [goal-directed] assumptions which this argument requires for its validity are too obvious to need discussion.” Accordingly, “’the goodness of living according to reason’ is derived from, and not the grounds of, ‘living according to Nature’.” In other words, any “goodness” we can attribute to living according to human reason is due solely to the fact that human reason is derived from cosmic Reason (logos). Therefore, the Stoics looked to Nature for ethical norms to guide our lives and society. Chrysippus articulated this in his“third book on the Gods,” where he wrote:
It is not possible to discover any other beginning of justice or any source for it other than from Zeus and from the universal nature, for thence everything of the kind must have its beginning if we are going to have anything to say about good and evil.[4]
In his paper titled The Logical Basis for Stoic Ethics, the renowned scholar of Stoicism A.A. Long points out:
Nature is available to all people as a moral principle through the ‘impulses towards virtue’ which human beings have as a Natural endowment. The wise man is marked out by his voluntary submission to what Nature wills; he chooses, in some sense of choice, to act according to Nature. The actions of bad men are necessarily contrary to Nature’s will… By giving human beings reason, Nature provides the necessary conditions of good or bad actions; for actions are good or bad if and only if the reason of their agents accords with or fails to accord with Nature. By endowing man with ‘impulses towards virtue’ Nature provides conditions sufficient to direct him towards what accords with Nature.[5]
In the conclusion of this paper, A.A. Long argues against the circular reasoning that “life according to nature must be followed because it is the reasonable life or life according to reason.” He refutes the idea that “the reasonable life” constitutes living according to Nature[6] and maintains:
That is a complete misrepresentation of the logical basis of Stoic ethics. Life according to reason is entailed by life according to Nature; but life according to Nature is not obligatory because it accords with reason. Nature stands to human beings as a moral law commanding him to live by rational principles, viz., those principles of thought and action which Nature, a perfect being, prescribes to itself and all rational beings.[7]
Stoic theory and practice rely on the premise that each human mind is a fragment of the universal, divine mind that permeates and orders the cosmos. Therefore, our ultimate human good is developed by bringing our human reason and will into agreement with universal Reason (cosmic Nature, Logos). Again, in the conclusion of his masterful study of Marcus’s Meditations, Pierre Hadot points out:
What defined a Stoic above all else was the choice of a life in which every thought, every desire, and every action would be guided by no other law than that of universal Reason[8]
Additionally, Hadot contends,
all the dogmas of Stoicism derive from this existential choice. It is impossible that the universe could produce human rationality, unless the latter were already in some way present within the former.[9]
It is simply impossible to make Stoic ethical theory and practice fully coherent if we begin with the modern scientistic assumption that human life and human reason are accidental byproducts of a random universe.
We make a serious mistake when we unseat cosmic Nature from its rightful place as the supreme guide for human action and rely solely on our human intellect to guide us towards what appears to be good. This is true of Stoicism and ancient virtue ethics in general. As A.A. Long argues, if we ignore the “symbiosis of cosmic and ethical perspectives” in ancient ethics “we shall not only misrepresent one of its most basic features; we shall also fail to understand why ancient philosophers were so absolute in their claims about the power of reason to guide human life and to deliver prosperity.”[10] Thus, Marcus highlights the fact that using human “intellect as a guide towards what appear to be duties” makes us no different from those who are impious toward divine Nature, disloyal to their country, and engage in soul-destroying behavior. Again, the evil in the world is committed by humans who are using their intellect; they are using their human reason to accomplish their vicious ends. Unfortunately, their human reason is not in agreement with universal Reason. The ancient Stoics understood human reason alone—disconnected from cosmic Reason—is insufficient to guide us toward virtue. Why? Because human reason can be easily corrupted by errant assents to impressions, and desires and aversions that create impulses to act contrary to the will of Nature. The path to virtue requires more. It requires harmony between human reason and cosmic Reason. It requires an understanding and appreciation for universal Reason as the source of our human reason.
The Special Characteristic of the “Good Person”
With that in mind, we can move on to Marcus’ list of characteristics of those who do use their capacities appropriately. He writes:
If you share everything else with those whom I have just mentioned, there remains the special characteristic of a good person (Meditations 3.16)
Love of Fate (Amor Fati)
First on Marcus’s list of characteristics of the good person is the fact they will “love and welcome all that happens to him and is spun for him as his fate.” In his commentary on this passage, Pierre Hadot wrote:
We have already seen that, for the Stoics, what is present for me is that which is currently happening to me: in other words, not merely my current actions, but also the present event with which I am confronted. Here again, as in the case of the present in general, it is my thought and my attention which singles out from the flux of things that which has meaning for me; at which point my inner discourse will declare that such-and-such an event is happening to me. Moreover—whether I know it or not—the overall movement of the universe, set in motion by divine Reason, has brought it about that I have been destined, from all eternity, to encounter such-and-such an event.[11]
I dealt with love of fate extensively in previous episodes, so I’m not going to say much about it here. However, I will remind you of the difference between bowing to the necessity of fate and the Stoic practice of loving every event of Nature. As I have noted in a previous episode:
Bear and Forbear Only Gets Us Half the Way There.
Care of the Daimon
Next, Marcus suggests the good person will exhibit three characteristics with regard to their daimon—the guardian spirit within:
- They will not defile the guardian spirit within.
- They will not trouble it with a host of fancies.
- They will preserve it in cheerful serenity.[12]
Marcus focuses on the care of his inner daimon throughout his Meditations. This daimon is the guardian or inner “genius” that must be cared for lest it becomes corrupted by incorrect assents to impressions and desires and aversions that lead to impulses to act contrary to the universal law of Nature. In Meditations2.13, he pities those who seek happiness outside themselves and fail to understand “it is enough to hold fast to the guardian-spirit within him and serve it single-mindedly; and this service is to keep it pure from passion and irresponsibility and dissatisfaction with anything that comes from gods or human beings.” Then, in Meditations3.7, Marcus praises the person who has “chosen above all to honour his own intelligence and guardian-spirit within, and consecrates himself to the cult of its virtue” and cares for nothing other than this, “that his mind should never be in any state which is alien to a rational and social being.” Finally, in one powerful passage, Marcus highlights how a person whose human reason is in harmony with Nature faces things and events in life:
When the ruling power within us is in harmony with nature, it confronts events in such a way that it always adapts itself readily to what is feasible and is granted to it. For it attaches its preference to no specific material; rather, it sets out to attain its primary objects, but not without reservation, and if it comes up against something else instead, it converts it into material for itself, much like a fire when it masters the things that fall into it. These would have extinguished a little lamp, but a blazing fire appropriates in an instant all that is heaped on to it, and devours it, making use of that very material to leap ever higher. (Meditations 4.1)
The use of fire to represent action in this passage is no accident. The Stoic logos is the creative fire permeating, creating, and ordering the cosmos (DL 7.156). We each possess a fragment of the creative fire—it is our rational faculty or hegemonikon. When the fragment of the divine within us is in harmony with Nature, we become willing co-creators of the good end logos intends. This explains why Marcus places so much focus on keeping his daimon pure. Otherwise, as he points out, our soul becomes “an abscess and a sort of morbid outgrowth on the universe” (Meditations2.16).
This focus on keeping our inner daimon pure and in agreement with the logos (Universal Reason) is prevalent within the Stoic tests. After the ancient historian Diogenes Laertius introduces the doctrine of “living in agreement with nature” as expressed by Zeno and Cleanthes, he provides an elaboration of the doctrine by Chrysippus that makes the explicit connection between our individual human nature and cosmic nature (DL 7.87). Immediately thereafter, we read:
And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe. (DL 7.88)
At the end of this passage, virtue and the resulting well-being are tied directly to the harmony between our inner daimon and the will of Nature—providence. Seneca also refers to the God within on several occasions in his writing. In one he writes:
You need not raise your hands to heaven; you need not beg the temple keeper for privileged access, as if a near approach to the cult image would give us a better hearing. The god is near you— with you— inside you. I mean it, Lucilius. A sacred spirit dwells within us, and is the observer and guardian of all our goods and ills. However we treat that spirit, so does the spirit treat us. In truth, no one is a good man without God. Or is there anyone who can rise superior to fortune without God’s aid? It is God who supplies us with noble thoughts, with upright counsels. (Letters 41.1-2)
Likewise, Epictetus repeatedly refers to our daimon or inner spirit as a guardian.
But all the same, he has assigned to each of us, as an overseer, his own personal guardian spirit, and has entrusted each of us to its protection, as a guardian that never sleeps and is never open to deception. To what other guardian could he have entrusted us that would have been better and more vigilant than this? (Discourses 1.14.12-13)
As professor Keimpe Algra of Utrecht University writes,
In Stoicism the conception of an internal [daimon] is coupled with the idea that our soul, in virtue of its rationality, is of a divine nature and indeed in a literal and physical sense a derived part (apospasma) of the divine soul. Happiness – eudaimônia – is supposed to ensue when “the god inside”, our own daimôn, is in agreement with the “will of the orderer of the universe”. This theory is well known and it was accepted as a cornerstone of Stoicism throughout the history of the school.[13]
Professor Algra notes the concept of daimon correlates to the “self” or higher “normative self” or perfectly rational soul we are attempting to become through Stoic practice. Again, our soul is a fragment of the logos. As A.A. Long writes:
Epictetus’ daimôn is his and every person’s normative self, the voice of correct reason that is available to everyone because it is, at the same time, reason as such and fully equivalent to God.
Long further suggests Epictetus’ representation of the inner daimon as an independent internal entity should be considered a “metaphor” or “a way of articulating the idea that in listening to and obeying one’s normative self one is at the same time in accordance with the divinity who administers the world.”[14] I plan to deal with the topic of the daimon in more detail in a future episode. For now, it is only important to understand the daimon is the divine spirit within each of us. This concept will be important when we conclude this study of Meditations 3.16 in the next episode. Until then, take the time to give some consideration to the fact that you possess a fragment of the logos within you—a God within—which exists to guide you toward the development of an excellent moral character and the experience of well-being.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Plutarch, Stoic Self-Contradictions, 1035C-D, tr. Cherniss
[2] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.88
[3] A. A. Long, “The Logical Basis for Stoic Ethics,” in Stoic Studies(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 134–55, p. 142
[4] Plutarch, 1035C
[5] Long (1996), pp. 140-141
[6] A.A. Long uses “Nature” (capitalized) “to distinguish nature in its cosmic sense from human nature” (Long, 1996, p. 134)
[7] Long (1996), p. 150
[8] Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 308
[9] Hadot (1998), pp. 308-309
[10] A. A. Long, “Eudaimonism, Divinity, and Rationality in Greek Ethics,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy19, no. 1 (2004): 123–43, p. 142
[11] Hadot (1998), p. 138
[12] also seeDiscourses1.14.12-17
[13] Keimpe Algra, “Stoics on Souls and Demons: Reconstructing Stoic Demonology,” in Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy(New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 359–87. pp. 365-6
[14] A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 166
