Volume 49, Issue 2 -

This paper focuses on the influence of the language of medical diagnosis, prognosis and treatment at an important juncture in the inquiry into psuchē Plato undertakes in the Republic: the discussion of degenerate regimes and forms of soul in Books 8 and 9. I argue that the work that is accomplished by Plato’s critical appropriation of medical terms and concepts is crucial to the dialogue as a whole: it gives us insight into the deepest questions and problems animating the dialogue, namely, how to choose the best life possible, and what role philosophy has in this task. More specifically, I argue that the medically inflected psychological and political diagnostics that Socrates employs in the analysis of civic and psychic decay in Books 8 and 9 produces a sophisticated critical theory, one which takes as its object of analysis neither the city nor the soul by themselves, but rather the peculiar degenerating operation of desire that is common to both, and which hinges upon the capacity for self-analysis of the diagnostician. This critical theory is further developed by the fusion of medical and juridical stances that is operative in the judgment of lives with which Book 9 concludes.

One of the most discussed parts of Cicero’s De Officiis is a theory (1.107–121), attributed by Cicero to a Stoic scholarch Panaetius, which attributes to all human beings four different roles ( personae ): our universal or rational nature; a set of our individual natural dispositions or traits; what we are by external circumstances; and the vocation or lifestyle that we freely choose. An appropriate action ( officium ) is to conform to constraints associated with one or more of these personae . Since Cicero does not provide any clear model for weighing up or harmonizing constraints corresponding with different roles, scholars have worried that this theory is unstable and even conflicting. In particular, our individual inclinations often seem to pull against our reason or virtue. The aim of the first part of this article is to vindicate the cogency of the four- personae account by interpreting the relationship between the first and second persona in terms of the Stoic distinction between virtue and indifferent things. Our individual psychological dispositions are quasi-externals that are to be used well by our reason: they are first-order constraints on our reason, which itself is the second order constraint. Therefore, the first and second personae cannot directly conflict with each other. We are to use the individual dispositions well by choosing in the given circumstances (the third persona) a profession or a way of life (the fourth persona) that best suits these dispositions. In the second part, I am trying to show that this two-order psychological model of the self was adopted by other Stoics after Panaetius, particularly Epictetus and Seneca. All these thinkers distinguished between our universal psychological traits, i.e. our rationality, and individual natural psychological dispositions that are to be used well by our reason. I also provide an assessment of how this psychological model bears on recent debates in the scholarship about the Stoic philosophy of self, and suggest how it was motivated by developments in the Stoic ethics.

The members of the Stoics’ ideal society are bound together by friendship. The structure of this harmonious society and the manner in which it is able to remain harmonious can therefore be inferred from the nature of the friendships its members maintain with one another. It can be argued that the Stoics give content to the virtues of friendship reportedly possessed by members of the ideal society, explaining in what these virtues consist, then indicating how those who possess them trend to form the kinds of relationships, i.e. friendships, of which the social fabric is ideally woven. The person who possesses these virtues (i.) refrains from harming others, and (ii.) extends goodwill to other people where it does not conflict with prior obligations. The Stoics thus describe the manner in which virtuous peoble are able to befriend, and maintain friendly relations with other people by practicing the virtues of friendship. Thus, the number of mutually beneficial relationships is multiplied as virtuous people extend friendship to as many people as are capable of returning it. As a result, the ability of virtuous people to bring about the ideal society is limited only by the unwillingness of others to return their gestures of friendship.

The discussion on Aspasius’ philosophical background has benefited in recent years from a wide consensus. According to this consensus, Aspasius should be regarded as a Peripatetic, or even as an “orthodox Peripatetic” (Barnes’ phrase). It is true that Aspasius’ commentary is generally in tune with Aristotle. It is true that he shows an extensive knowledge of Aristotelian research pertinent for the discussions and that he uses Aristotelian concepts, principles, and doctrines with ease as if they were his own, thus denoting an old assimilation of those materials and a long accommodation to them. In a word, it is true that Aspasius is an Aristotelian. He is, however, as I will try to show in this paper, an Aristotelian strongly influenced by Stoicism. I will do so by selecting those points from Aspasius’ commentary on book I of the Nicomachean Ethics where the Stoic influence is most flagrantly evident, namely in his interpretation of art (τέχνη), his conception of continence and incontinence and, especially, his interpretation of the relation between happiness, virtue, and external goods in Aristotle.