Series | History of Ancient Western Philosophy, Pt. 17
Fear and Loathing in the Hellenistic World
Greek Philosophy under Foreign Rule
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Hello again!
Welcome to Part 17 of the series!
In this entry we’re transitioning away from the Classical/Hellenic period and into what’s commonly known as the Hellenistic period. The event most often held as the threshold between the Hellenic and Hellnistic eras is the death of Alexander, in 323 BCE.
Since we just finished our treatment of Aristotle, it’s worth noting that he died only one year after his former student. If you’ve missed those previous entries, you can check them out here:
As the name suggests, the Hellenistic period was a time where Greek culture still held significant influence, even though the predominant military powers hailed from places outside the Greek peninsula.
The Collapse of Alexander’s Empire
The conquests of Alexander had spread Greek culture and language from mainland Greece and northern Africa all the way to the Hindu Kush of central Asia.
In the wake of Alexander’s death, his former generals fought numerous wars vying for succession. Eventually the empire was split into 5 separate kingdoms. You can click on the map to see the lands Alexander conquered and the ensuing split.
Although life in the Greek city-states continued as before, and in SOME ways even flourished, the Greeks in places like Athens and Sparta were no longer masters of their own destinies — as nearly two centuries of Macedonian rule eventually gave way to Roman hegemony in 146 BCE.
As foreign kings ruled from afar, life outside the protection of the cities grew treacherous, while life within demanded increasing amounts of thralldom to foreign rule.
Shifting the Aims of Philosophy
As one might expect, the philosophy of the time reflected this shift in cultural and political currents.
Although Plato’s and Aristotle’s lives were by no means free of tumult, their philosophies reflected a kind of confidence in both the internal efficacy and external influence of an individual person, situated within a polis.
We see this in the various ways they tied reflective self-mastery to political reform.
Hellenistic philosophy, on the other hand, took a decidedly inward turn, as the prospects for philosophers to exert any measurable political influence seemed to wane.
As the 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it:
Aristotle died in 322 BC. Some sixteen years or so later, Epicurus began to teach in Athens, and after him Zeno, a Phoenician from Kition in Cyprus. Within a few years theirs are the dominant philosophical schools in Athens. It is as if political philosophy had suddenly vanished away. There is nothing about the city, the education of citizens to perform their tasks within it, bad and good constitutions — nothing at all about this. — from “The Birth of Greek Individualism”
The legacy of Plato at the academy and of Aristotle at the Lyceum gave way to philosophies focused NOT on human flourishing within a community, but rather on achieving tranquility, or ataraxia, in the face of an unstable world.
Schools of Thought in Hellenistic Greece
Although a wide range of philosophies existed during this time, four schools of thought eventually emerged as the most predominant.
Cynicism was attributed to Diogenes of Sinope (d. 323 BCE), who claimed atuphia (or lucidity) was the best avenue for achieving tranquility of the soul. By the Cynic account, lucidity entailed rejecting the norms and conventions of society, which were regarded as antithetical to humanity’s natural inclinations.
Skepticism was first associated with Pyrrho (360–270 BCE), although it would later make its way into Plato’s Academy to form what became known as “Academic Skepticism.” Pyrrho argued that the best means of achieving tranquility was actually through the suspension of judgment, or epochē, regarding statements about the world.
Epicureanism was named for its founder, Epicurus (341–270 BCE), who was the only one of these thinkers to create a formal, physical school at what his followers called “the Garden.” The Epicureans espoused the pursuit of hedonē, or simple pleasures, as the means of attaining tranquility.
Stoicism’s roots can be traced back to Zeno of Citium (336–264 BCE) and his followers, who spent their days philosophizing near the steps of the Stoa Poikile — a colonnade on the north side of the Athenian agora, which displayed painted murals of famous battles. The Stoics believed controlling the passions through the use of reason — or what they called apatheia (equanimity) — was the only way for one to arrive at tranquility of mind.
Let’s take a closer look at each, in turn.
Diogenes: The Cynic’s Cynic
The word Cynic comes from the Greek word for ‘dog-like’ (or kynikós), so the common English pronunciation SIN-I-SISM is actually a perversion of the original.
Basically, you can blame the French… since the shift from the K-sound to the soft C-sound occurred during the transition to Late Latin that culminated in the Carolingian Renaissance.
Diogenes of Sinope, the man who’s considered the first Cynic philosopher, probably didn’t refer to himself as a dog, though. He left no works for us to read, but his legacy has been handed down to posterity through the stories of another man with the same name — the historian Diogenes Laertius.
Here’s a small sample…
“Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances.” (D.L., IV.22)
“When he was sunning himself in the Craneum, Alexander came and stood over him and said, ‘Ask of me any boon you like.’ To which he replied, ‘Stand out of my light.’” (D.L., IV.39)
“Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, ‘Here is Plato’s man.’” (D.L., IV.40)
Although such stories are almost certainly apocryphal, they highlight how Diogenes flouted social norms.
Sadly, this iconoclastic aspect of his philosophy seems to have been adopted on sites like 4Chan and Reddit by internet trolls who don’t really understand its purpose.
It results in memes like these…
BUT, Diogenes wasn’t a non-conformist just for the sake of non-conformity. Neither was his philosophy the result of a puerile neck-beardy angst, or unresolved daddy-issues, or a pretense of persecution created by white fright… despite what those who’ve adopted him as their mascot of subversion may believe.
Instead, Diogenes saw what he was doing as a continuation of Socrates’s mission to be a social gadfly.
It’s true he advocated living in a more natural state — which he believed entailed rejecting the corrupted pursuit of wealth, power, and honor — and he definitely used his sharp wit to point out the hypocrisy of others.
But, his goal was an ETHICAL one, as he sought to bring about MORE truthfulness, clarity, and morality in society.
In the timeline below — which looks a little dated, but is still useful— I’ve tried to show how Cynicism influenced the development of Stoicism around the same time as both Skepticism was adopted into Plato’s Academy and Epicurus founded his school at “the Garden.”
We know that Zeno of Citium — who’s credited with founding the Stoic school — was influenced by the married couple of Cynics, Crates and Hipparchia. Both are interesting figures in their own right, since each gave up an aristocratic life in favor of the asceticism of the Cynic lifestyle, but let’s take a moment to throw the spotlight on Hipparchia — since women thinkers rarely get a chance to shine in ancient philosophy.
As the Ancient History Encyclopedia states:
“[Hipparchia’s] importance in the history of ancient Greek women is undeniable. She was an educated philosopher, she was outspoken, and she was unconventional. There is an epigram ascribed to Antipater of Sidon, as the sort of thing which may have been written on her tomb: “I, Hipparchia chose not the tasks of rich-robed woman, but the manly life of the Cynic. Brooch-clasped tunics, well-clad shoes, and perfumed headscarves pleased me not; But with wallet and fellow staff, together with coarse cloak and bed of hard ground, My name shall be greater than Atalanta: for wisdom is better than mountain running.”
Of course, these weren’t the only schools of thought that existed during this time, but they ARE the ones that endured the longest.
Epicurus and the Four-Part Cure
Epicurus, the founder of the school of thought which bears his name, is thought to have been a prolific writer.
It’s said he produced three main types of work — treatises for those already initiated into philosophy, letters for educated laypeople, and aphorisms for the uneducated masses.
Sadly, only a few of his letters and aphorisms have survived, so scholars have had to reconstruct much of his thought from commentaries by later thinkers like Cicero, Lucretius, and Plutarch.
This is mostly due to the influence of Christianity.
Book burning was pretty common in the early church — especially for pagan texts considered either too dangerous or misleading for the average reader. Even among those texts that weren’t actively destroyed, there was still a good chance of falling into extinction just because of the way books were copied and preserved. After all, the only places where libraries existed in Medieval Europe were Christian monasteries and older books that were on the brink of disintegration would have to be painstakingly copied by hand by a committed scribe. Pious monks weren’t keen on laboring over ideas their church brothers would have deemed sinful.
One way or another, most of the Epicurean corpus was entirely lost.
Thankfully, Diogenes Laeritius’s copy of three of Epicurus’s letters and forty of his aphorisms, or “Principal Doctrines,” were among the pagan texts that continued to be copied.
Of those 40 aphorisms, the first four were considered a complete therapy for the common person looking to cope with anxiety. They became known as the tetrapharmakos, or four-part cure. Epicurus and his followers encouraged others to internalize these basic ideas:
1. Do not fear the gods.
2. Do not fear death.
3. That which is good is easy to obtain.
4. That which is bad is easy to endure.
Doing so, they believed, would lead one to recognizing the true, and simple, components of a good life.
FAR from promoting the sort of sinful decadence which early Christianity had attributed to it, Epicureanism ACTUALLY advocated a pursuit of the most modest kinds of hedonē, or pleasure.
I used to joke with students in my classes that Epicurus was basically the Bobby McFerrin of ancient philosophy. Nowadays, very few students have ever heard his 1988 hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” so I usually just leave that reference out.
But, dear reader, since you’re a captive audience, I offer this bitter-sweet video (R.I.P. Robin Williams) for your listening pleasure:
According to Epicurus and his followers at “the Garden” — the commune they established outside of Athens — the sort of simple goods needed for leading a tranquil existence were really easy to get. Among them were: friends (companionship), freedom (self-reliance), and an analyzed-life (contemplation).
Epicurus’s modest philosophy is perhaps best summed up in one of his collected sayings:
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” (Vatican Sayings, 35)
Greek Stoicism
Stoicism received a kinder treatment over the centuries.
Although its Roman expression became the better known vintage, its roots were found in the work of a group of men who hung around the Stoa Poikile (or “Painted Porch”) in the Athenian agora.
Whereas Epicureanism advocated a life of pursuing simple pleasures as the path to tranquility, the Stoics espoused a life of avoiding emotional extremes.
When compared to those of the Epicureans, the writings of the early Stoics held a greater tenor of indictment against the social ills of their time. They thought anyone who was ruled by their emotions was not only irrational, but also suffered from a kind of insanity.
You can probably see the echoes of Cynicism in this idea. As I mentioned above, Zeno studied with two well-known Cynic philosophers, the husband and wife duo of Crates and Hipparchia.
Zeno’s successors were Cleanthes and Chrysippus. The latter was an especially prolific writer— having written well over a hundred books — but the only surviving accounts of these men’s ideas are in the testimonies of later figures. You’ll find a few of those in the image below.
Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Skepticism got its start a decade or two before Stoicism, with a thinker named Pyrrho of Elis.
The mantra of the Pyrrhonian skeptics was “We determine nothing,” and the proper course of the sage, said Pyrrho, is to consider three ideas:
1) what things are and how they are constituted: “We only know that we do not know.” (akatalepsia = ‘incomprehensibility’)
2) how we are related to these things: “To every assertion the contradictory assertion can be opposed.”
3) what ought to be our attitude towards them: “Opinion we may have, but certainty and knowledge are impossible, hence our attitude should be to suspend judgment (epoche).
Diogenes Laertius recounts a story that sums up the utility Pyrrho saw in this outlook:
“When his fellow-passengers on board a ship were all unnerved by a storm, he kept calm and confident, pointing to a little pig on the ship that went on eating, and telling them that such was the unperturbed state in which the wise man should keep himself.” (D.L. IX.68, tr. R.D. Hicks)
So, it seems Pyrrhonian skepticism wasn’t so much aimed at saying something definitive about the limits of epistemology — as later thinkers like Descartes or Hume did — as it was aimed at existential and psychological coping in an ever-changing world.
In this way, it’s reminiscent of an old story in the Chinese Daoist classic known as the Huainanzi, referenced in the Chinese saying, “Sai Weng Shi Ma” — or “Old Sai Lost his Horse.”
If we can keep in mind — like Pyrrho and Old Sai — that another change is always on the horizon, we might be able to keep a more even keel… neither getting too high nor too low in the waxing and waning of our lives.
Greek Buddha?
In fact, this comparison with Eastern philosophies may turn out to be completely apt.
In the last few years, historical research has suggested there was more cross-pollination between the ancient philosophies of the Mediterranean and Asia than previously realized.
For instance, Christopher Beckwith has suggested that Pyrrho may have had significant encounters with early Gandharan Buddhists.
Although it’s difficult to say with any CERTAINTY (if you’ll forgive the pun), Pyrrhonian skepticism seems like it was more a way of life than a theoretical position — in contrast to the Academic skepticism of figures like Carneades.
The Stoic Theory of Emotions
Although Epicureanism and Skepticism each had Roman proponents (Lucretius was an Epicurean, and Cicero was a Skeptic) it was Stoicism that found the greatest success during Rome’s ascendancy to power.
We’ll be looking at the Roman Stoic ideas of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in a later installment, so it makes sense to spend a little time now on the Stoic theory of emotions.
When I was an undergraduate, I took a statistics class in one of those giant lecture halls with the stadium-style seating. It was easy for students to hide their inattentiveness in a class that size, but there was one student who was totally conspicuous in his disinterest.
He’d ride into class on his skateboard 5 minutes late, sit in the front row, and very quickly fall asleep. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for the prof to learn that kid’s name.
During one particularly dry lecture, the professor looked up from his notes and asked a question of the class. Noticing our skater friend snoozing down front, he redirected the question, “Mr. Anderson, do you know the answer?” The kid shuttered awake and said, “What? Huh? What was the question?” The prof replied, “Mr. Anderson, do you know the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
The student shot back, “Dude, I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
The prof looked up at the rest of us as we slowly broke into laughter at that accidental moment of wisdom…
Even though OUR word apathy is derived from the Stoic virtue of apatheia, the Greek didn’t mean something as simple as not caring. Rather, the Stoics believed that pathē, or passion, had to be assented to by the mind in order to take root in the soul.
They advocated using reason to intervene in appraising the physical feelings attached to emotions.
The Stoics wanted people to realize, in the words of the neo-Stoic philosopher Martha Nussbaum, that “…emotions are appraisals or value-judgments, which ascribe to things and persons outside the person’s own control great importance for that person’s flourishing.”
But, there’s often vagueness and ambiguity involved in interpreting one’s own affective states.
That’s why the Stoics practiced a kind of mental training — not so they’d NEVER HAVE emotions, but so those emotions could be harnessed in ways that were productive and healthy. They wanted to build the kind of cognitive habits that might turn fear into caution, craving into aspiration, and gratification into contentment.
This type of treatment program has since been modernized in contemporary psychology and is central to what’s now called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.
Alternative Theories of Emotion
Of course, the Stoic theory of emotions and its modern CBT reboot aren’t the only theories of emotions out there.
Some have criticized CBT for focusing too much on what might be called SECONDARY EMOTIONS, i.e. the interpretive appraisals of involuntary, physiological responses.
Training someone to rationally harness their physiological response to some traumatic stimulus may be asking quite a lot, especially if that person doesn’t already have reflective mental habits.
Therefore, in some cases, a therapy program focusing on retraining the body to have different reactions to a stimulus, sometimes called exposure therapy, might be more effective than CBT.
Okay, I think that’s enough for now.
In Part 18 we’ll be turning our attention to the Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher — Marcus Tullius Cicero.
See you there!
