GREEK ETHICS. Greek Ethics during the Pre-Socratic period did not exist in any systematic form. Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.) condemned drunkenness on the ground that the cosmic principle is fire and therefore dry. Protagoras (c. 440 B.C.) and the other Sophists were relativists and concluded that whatever anyone thinks is just, is just for him. The mystery religions, over several centuries, imposed some irrational taboos (e.g., do not eat beans) and engaged either in ascetic or licentious practices.
Plato (427-347) not only pursued ethical studies systematically, but made them essential to his whole philosophy. His early Socratic dialogues seek to define the several virtues: piety, justice, courage, and so on. So doing he concludes that virtue is knowledge and that no one does wrong knowingly. The reason is that no man wants to harm himself, and if he knows, really knows, that injustice and cowardice will harm him, he will avoid them.
In the period of the Gorgias, the Phaedo, and the Republic, Plato, under Pythagorean and Orphic influence, not only attacks Hedonism (q.v.), the theory that pleasure is the greatest good, but even adopts an asceticism (q.v.) in which pleasure is actually evil. This is combined with arguments for the immortality of the soul and an epistemological theory of suprasensible Ideas, among which the Idea of Good is supreme and even superior to God. On this broad and profound philosophy, Plato advocates a civil government in which philosopher-kings enforce a totalitarian control of art, education, and business so as to promote temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom, along with promiscuity and the abolition of the family.
Aristotle (384-322) made an even more detailed study of ethics than Plato, but the subject is more detached from his main system and is of less importance that it was for his famous teacher. Aristotle was just as totalitarian: the state is the supreme community that includes all others, and since communities are always organized for some good, the all inclusive state aims at the all inclusive good. The family, however, and other lesser communities, are natural and should not be abolished, but merely regulated. The good for man (Aristotle drops Plato's suprasensible Idea Good) is determined by nature. Since "all men by nature desire to know," as the Metaphysics says in its opening line, the highest good is the practice and enjoyment of contemplation and philosophy.
The moral virtues, as distinguished from the higher intellectual virtues, are such things as courage, liberality, temperance and so on. He defines these as the right amount (not too much, not too little) of feelings and action. Too much fear is cowardice; too little is foolhardiness; the right amount is courage. So too with liberality; but Aristotle reflects Greek custom when, so far as his means permit, he will keep up with and outdo "the Joneses."
He also investigates distributive and corrective justice, weakness and badness of will, the criteria of responsibility, and adds a long chapter on friendship. The whole, quite secular, is devoid of Plato's religious enthusiasm.
During their life-time Plato and Aristotle overshadowed two very minor schools that had been stimulated by Socrates. The Cynics stressed virtue, and Diogenes with his lamp search for an honest man (cf. Cynicism). The Cyrenaics on the contrary searched for the grossest pleasures of sense. Both schools refused to develop a full philosophy and were essentially anti-intellectual. They are mentioned only because the grace rise, respectfully, to the Stoics and the Epicureans.
The Epicureans accepted Hedonism; but unlike the Cyrenaics they defended their theory with a little logic and an extensive system of physics. Since pain is evil, and since religion causes the greatest crimes and worst pains, especially the fear of divine punishment in a life after death, one's first principle must be that nothing ever comes from nothing by divine power. The universe is a collection of atoms and all phenomena are explained by their bumping each other.
Rejecting the complete mechanism of Democritus, the Epicureans asserted that atoms occasionally swerve for no reason or cause at all. Otherwise men, whose bodies are composed of atoms, could not have free will. Aside from this swerving, the Epicureans explained physical phenomena mechanically in order to show that the gods have nothing to do with the world.
Unlike the Cyrenaics the Epicureans did not recommend gross sensual pleasures. Though good in themselves, intense pleasure produce pains, and therefore the calmer pleasures should be sought. Epucurus even gave a semi-recommendation of celibacy. More to his taste were good meals, dozing in the sun, while avoiding politics and family life. Unjust actions must also be avoided because, even if one escapes civil punishment, one cannot escape the fear of detection, and this fear or pain overbalances the pleasures derived from injustice.
Finally, since the atoms of our body disperse at death, since therefore no pain will be possible, even from the gods, the life of pleasure is best.
Stoicism, in opposition to Hedonism, defined the rational life as a life of virtue. Besides ordinary personal virtues they insisted, against the Epicureans, on political and family responsibilities. It was necessary to insist that most men, maybe all men but Socrates, are totally evil. There are no degrees of evil: a man drowned in two feet of water is just as dead as if drowned in two hundred fathoms. One cannot grow from death to life or evil to wisdom. Moral regeneration must be complete and instantaneous.
A life of virtue and reason was defended on the ground that the substance of the universe itself is a rational fire or energy. Man is a spark of the divine fire and should therefore live according to reason. The Stoics were indeed materialists, or, better, like Heraclitus, hylozoists. They were not atomists. Nor did they allow irrational swerving or uncaused events in their universe. The divine Reason has intelligently planned all things with the result that there can be no free will. After the present cosmos finishes its history in a universal conflagration, things start over again on the exact same course.
Augustine, although he spoke kindly of the Stoic doctrines of fate, providence, and rational causation, deplored eternal recurrence as a pessimism without hope. Christians might also note that the Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was a cruel persecutor of the church. Then too Christianity sees a flaw in the virtue or wisdom that permits suicide when the going gets difficult.
Gordon H. Clark
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