Cicero: The Cardinal Virtues and their Subparts

CICERO HAS NEVER BEEN regarded as a philosophical innovator; rather, he was a philosophical conservative: a traditionalist who handed down, we may assume quite faithfully, the teachings of the Stoics which he regarded as important, especially in his early works, which is where we should place his De inventione.

We might expect Cicero then faithfully to hand down the Stoic teaching of the four cardinal virtues, and he does not disappoint.  He also appends to the four cardinal virtues, the Chryppian sub-parts that were ordered underneath these four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  The entire virtue taxonomy of Cicero is of course under the umbrella of living in agreement with the law of nature, a law which is ultimately founded upon a cosmic reason.

Cicero defines prudence using the characteristic Stoic categories of the morally good, the morally evil, and the morally indifferent.  "Prudence is knowledge of things that are good or bad or neither.  Its parts are memory, understanding, and foresight."  Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia.  Partes eius: memoria, itnelligentia, providentia.  De inv., 2.160.

Justice for Cicero is "the habit of mind (habitus animi) that preserves the common utility while also giving to each what is his due."  Jusititia est habitus animi communi utilitate conservata suam cuique tribuens dignitatem.     De inv., 2.160.  Justice, of course, is the most extrinsic of the virtues since it is concerned with those other than the subject: the common good or the private good of another person.  Yet even here , in the most extrinsic of the virtues, we find the characteristic Stoic interiorization of virtue.  While concerned with externals, the focus is on the interior disposition, the habitus animi, of the virtuous person.  "In this way, the traditional Platonic and Aristotelian matter of Cicero's definition--concern for the common good and the private good of others--is given a Stoic form."  Houser, 27.

Cicero further explores justice and finds species or sub-parts of justice.  However, he divides these into to general categories depending upon whether the "law of nature" (ius naturae) or the "law of custom" (consuetudine ius) is involved.

Under the rubric of the law of nature, Cicero finds six sub-parts or species of justice: religion (religio), piety (pietas), consideration (gratias), retribution (vindicatione), honor (observantia), and truth (veritas). These sub-parts will be adopted and developed by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Under the rubric of the law of custom, Cicero finds three sub-parts: agreements (pactum), equity (par), and written judgments (iudicatum).  The notion of equity will be used by St. Thomas Aquinas, but the other two sub-parts--agreements and written judgments--are too legally-focused for St. Thomas Aquinas to be concerned with.

Houdon's Cicero inveighing against Cataline. 1803. Louvre Museum

Courage or fortitude is next.  Courage is defined as the "considered undertaking of dangers and endurance of hardships."  Fortitudo est considerata periculorum susceptio et laborum perpersio.  De inv., 2.163.  To some extent, the Ciceronian notion of fortitude is broader than the Aristotelian notion of fortitude.  The latter saw it as resolve in the face of death.  The sub-parts of fortitude or courage are identified by Cicero as magnificence (magnanimitas), confidence (fidentia), patience (patientia), and perserverance (constantia).*

Temperance Cicero defines as the "domination of reason over desire and over other incorrect inclinations of the mind, domination that is firm and attains the mean."  Temperantia est rationis in libidinem atque in alios non rectos impetus animi firma et moderata dominatio.  De inv., 2.164.  Here is the characteristic Stoic ratio or logos.  An interesting feature of the definition is that we have here not the "political" rule of Plato of reason over the passion, but more of a "tyrannical" rule of reason over passion.  Reason dominates over desire and passion in the Stoic view of things.**  Another interesting feature is the broadening of this virtue relative to the Aristotelian notion.  While Aristotle limited temperance to sex and nutrition, Cicero clearly extends it to cover any potentially improper inclination (libido).  Cicero does, however, adopt the Aristotelian notion of "mean."

Three subordinate virtues are identified by Cicero as being ordered under temperance: continence (continentia), clemency (clementia), and modesty (modestia).  Clemency is defined as "sympathy of the higher ranks for the lower," and "it seems a peculiarly Roman virtue and original with Cicero."  Houser, 29.  On the other hand, the other two notions, continence and modesty, are clearly Stoic in origin.  We find these for example, in Stobaeus, Plutarch, and Diogenes Laertius.

For Cicero, continence is defined as "that by which cupidity is ruled by the governance of good counsel."  Continentia est per quam cupiditas consili guvernatione regitur. De inv., 2.164.  The extent of continence is, of course, directly tied to the understanding of what cupidity comprehends.  If cupidity is understood to be limited to nutritional or sexual desires (as was largely understood to be the case by the medieval schoolmen, then continence will likewise be limited by this understanding).  It appears that Cicero had a broader notion of continence than was later to be the case with the scholastic understanding of the term, which limited it to nutritional and sexual desires.

Cicero was again not an original thinker.  "Cicero himself tended toward syncretism."  Houser,30.  But he was the link or bridge as it were between the original Greek Stoic thinkers and the later medieval thinkers.  "The main challenge for the scholastic masters was to try to bring a millenium-old Stoick skeleton present in lists of virtues they found in old books like Cicero's."  Houser, 30.
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*Houser observes: "Cicero's definition of magnificence shows he actaully had magnanimity in mind, and with this emendation the list of virtues subordinate to courage is thoroughly Stoic, and all four will be adopted by Philip [the Chancellor], Albert [the Great], and Aquinas."  Houser, 28.
**The Stoic conception of the passions and desires as being slave to reason is, of course, totally the opposite of Hume's famous formulation that reason is the slave to the passions.

Stoics: The Chrysippian Synthesis

THE STOICS NOT ONLY HAD a negative principle, the principle of apatheia, indifference to passions, but they also had a positive program that focused upon the Platonic four cardinal virtues, each ontologically  different, but all operationally connected so that if you had one you had all, and if you had all you had one.  For the Stoic, wisdom was the necessary and sufficient condition for acquiring moral virtue.  The Stoics therefore seemed to have adopted the Socratic formula that knowledge was virtue.

But there were different strands of thinking regarding the positive program.  Zeno, while maintaining the Platonic four-virtue schema, further described the interaction of these virtues as being interlaced.  Plutarch described Zeno's insight as being that the four virtues of prudence, courage, temperance, and justice "as being not separate yet other and different from each other."  Virtue for Zeno according to Plutarch "is on, though it seems to differ in its actions in relation to its disposition relative to things."  The four virtues which seems in practical application to be one, worked hand in glove, with prudence being the chief virtue.  Thus justice could be described as prudence in distribution of goods.  Temperance could be defined as prudence in choices regarding goods.  Courage could be defined as prudence in endurance of evils.  Effectively, then, Zeno could say that all virtue is prudence.  Houser, 24.

Chrysippus

Chrysippus, while not rejecting the four-fold division of Plato and the operational unity of the virtues under the banner of prudence, yet believed that each virtue had its "peculiar quality."  The distinction between the virtues was real, not simply a distinction in the mind.  Chrysippus apparently expanded on the four-fold nomenclature since he was accused of building up a "swarm of virtues" both unusual and unknown."  Houser, 24.  Though Plutarch excoriated Chrysippus, Chrysippus' idea ultimately bore fruit.  As Houser expresses it:

[I]n truth, Chrysippus made a great contribution to virtue theory, by showing how to make room for more than Plato's four virtues, while keeping the four. He did so by inventing the distinction between four "primary" virtues and the other virtues "subordinate to them."

Houser, 24-25 (quoting Plutarch, De virtute morali, 440e-441d).

Ultimately, the Chrysippian taxonomy stuck.  It stuck because it had the merit of avoiding two extremes.  It avoided on the one hand the extreme of "too much reductionism, as found in Socrates, Plato, and Zeno," where the "four" virtues were really "one," the difference between them being almost virtual or nominal.  But Chrysippus also avoided the Aristotelian extreme where one had a "hodge-podge of virtues related only by prudence."  Houser, 25.  The Chrysippian model, therefore, took the insights of Aristotle and adapted them to the taxonomy of Plato and yielded a multiplicity of virtues, but all ordered under the four cardinal virtues.

It was this schema which ultimately became mainstream, and it would "come to dominate Stoicism and prove attractive to virtue theories from Cicero to Aquinas" and beyond.  Houser, 25.

Stoics: Apathy as the First Step to Virtue

THE STOIC MORAL PROGRAM consisted of a negative and a positive content.  The first, negative concern was control of the passions, to achieve a state of apatheia or passionlessness.  Once the passions were controlled and replaced with their reason-based opposites (eupatheia), the soul could be channeled to conform within the guidance of the four cardinal virtues.  Subject the soul to the guidance of the virtues once the state of apatheia was achieved was the positive part of the Stoic program.

In analyzing the passions, the Stoics rejected the teachings of Plato and Aristotle as to the composition of the soul.  They rejected Plato's famous teaching (in his Republic) that the soul was the city or polis writ small, and that it was tripartite, composed of a spirited (θυμητικὸν), concupiscent (ἐπιθυμητικὸν), and rational nature (λογιστικόν): two stallions being guided by the driver of reason into virtue.  They rejected Aristotle's view that virtue was a sort of harmony or mean among the virtues, an interrelationship of various parts.  They saw the passions as competitors with reason, not as something needing to be controlled by reason.  For this reason, the passions had to be suppressed and replaced with good passions, one's entirely in accord with reason.

Plutarch outlines the Stoic view of things as it came to the soul (which had no real parts) and virtue (which was equivalent to reason):

All [the Stoics] commonly hold that virtue is a certain character (diathesin) and power of command in the soul, generated by reason, or rather, virtue is reason, consistent and firm and unchangeable. And they think that the passionate and irrational part is not distinguished by some distinction in nature from the rational part of the soul, but the same part of the soul, which they call the reasoning and commanding part, when as a whole it turns or changes during passions or changes in character or habit it becomes vice or virtue. It has nothing irrational in itself, but is called irrational when a strong and dominant excessive impulse has carried it off toward something wrong and contrary to reason.

Plutarch, De virtute morali, 441c-d* (quoted in Houser, 22-23).  The logos or reasonable part of man was the chief of virtue.  The objective was to have the whole soul act in common with reason, and to avoid its opposite: that the whole soul instead should be under the guidance of passion.  The Stoics, of course, are famous for their recipe of control over the passions.  The recipe for virtuous living was to live a passionless life, the famous apatheia.

Apatheia by Don Michael, Jr. 

In categorizing the passions (so as to try to overcome them), the Stoics developed a sophisticated taxonomy.  For example, Diogenes Laertius identifies twenty-six different species of passions, but they can be placed within four main categories or types: desire (epithymia), fear (phobos), pleasure (hēdonē), and pain (lupē). (See Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 7.111-14).  Interestingly, they viewed these passions as intellectual judgments, kriseis, and therefore controllable.  Virtue was achieved, not by controlling the passions or subjecting the to the guidance of reason, but by routing them out of the soul altogether.  Then, one expected to replace them with their good opposites.

The good opposites of the passions, the "good passions" or eupatheia, were identified as proper willing  or rational appetite (boulēsis) which was the counterpart to desire  (epithymia), caution or rational avoidance (eulabeia) which was the counterpart to fear (phobos), and joy or rational elation (charan), the opposite of pleasure (hēdonē).**  (See Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 7.117)

Replacing the irrational and therefore bad passions with the reason-inspired and therefore good passions was the goal of the negative project of the Stoics.


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*κοινῶς δ᾽ ἅπαντες οὗτοι τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς διάθεσίν τινα καὶ δύναμιν γεγενημένην ὑπὸ λόγου, μᾶλλον δὲ λόγον οὖσαν αὐτὴν ὁμολογούμενον καὶ βέβαιον καὶ ἀμετάπτωτον ὑποτίθενται: καὶ νομίζουσιν οὐκ εἶναι τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ ἄλογον διαφορᾷ τινι καὶ φύσει ψυχῆς τοῦ λογικοῦ διακεκριμένον, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸ τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος, ὃ δὴ καλοῦσι διάνοιαν καὶ ἡγεμονικόν, δι᾽ ὅλου τρεπόμενον καὶ μεταβάλλον ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ταῖς καθ᾽ ἕξιν ἢ διάθεσιν μεταβολαῖς κακίαν τε γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀρετήν, καὶ μηδὲν ἔχειν ἄλογον ἐν ἑαυτῷ.
**Diogenes Laertius does not give an account of the good passion associated with the bad passion of pain (lupē), but we might suppose that irrational pain would be replaced by some sort of rationally-inspired avoidance of what is harmful or vicious.  "Such an expansion [in avoiding the seeming good and acquiring the truly good] seems but another word for virtue."  Houser, 24.

Stoics: The Exaltation of Moral Intention

IN OUR LAST POSTING, we discussed the Stoic concept of duty--a notion encapsulated in Greek in the word καθῆκον, kathēkon, pl., καθήκοντα, kathēkonta, and the Latin word officium--a term which ought to be understood as meeting fittingness or conformity with nature.  While this was an important, even central, concept of Stoic ethics, it ought not to be understood as being sufficient for virtue.  There was more to virtue than mere conformity with nature.

For example, in his De finibus (written ca. 44 B.C.), Cicero outlined five steps requisite for moral development.  In order to do one's duty, in order to comply with nature, five things were required. These five steps were viewed as a sort of hierarchical ladder, from low to high, and it was only in completing the fifth and highest rung that one could say that virtue had been achieved.

The first such rung in the Ciceronian schema was the lowest, and it was one that humans shared with the brute animals.  This was the innate inclination that all animals have to preserve their own nature or existence.  The inclination towards self-preservation is a strong natural instinct, and it is one found present in both brute animals as well as reasonable man.  It was expected that man, to comply with his duty, should strive to effect, to realize that inclination towards self-preservation and therefore avoid self-destructive behavior and strive also to incorporate behavior that allowed one to thrive (eating, procreation, etc.)

Life alone was clearly not sufficient to live a virtuous life.  What had to be done was to develop a sort of habitual preferential attitude toward duty, so that duty became a sort of second nature.  Cicero viewed this process as having three steps, each one being an increased perfection of the virtue of duty.  (See De finibus, III.20)  The first step occurred as one held on to what is good and rejected what was evil so that one developed a preference for the former and a dis-preference for the latter (ut ea teneat quae secundum naturam sint pellatque contraria; qua inventa selectione et item rejectione).  That developed preference matures into a dutiful preference (cum officio selectio), then finally a permanent dutiful preference, which leads to the threshold of an unwavering, constant and harmonious accord with nature (ea perpetua, tum ad extremum constans consentaneaque naturae).  It is in this final step where good, that is virtue, can be said to first exist.

Young Cicero Reading, fresco by Vincenzo Foppa

This internalization of what is in accord with nature is at the heart of Stoic virtue.  It should be stressed that this interiorization was not a utilitarian or consequentialist ethic.  The focus is not on the external act as much as the internal disposition of the actor.  Though at first focus is on the act and its conformity with nature, the objective is to develop an keen sense of the order in nature, of the desirability of one's acts in conformity with that order, and an interior disposition and ready duty to conform to that order, and so, finally, to live a life fitting and harmoniously compliant with the order of nature.

As Houser puts it:

At first, we concentrate on 'things done in accord with nature,' but virtue refocuses on 'seeing the order of things that should be done,' order that is not an individual action but the plan that organizes individual actions. Virtue leads us to perform actions with consequences 'finely done (honeste facta),' to be sure, but virtue consists in 'the fine itself (ipsumque honestum),' that is, in the inter character and habit of virtue. The safe focuses on inner intention and character (diathesis), because these are what constitute virtue, properly speaking. The Stoic conception of virtue, then manifests 'the exaltation of moral intention.'

Houser, 22 (quoting Cicero, De finibus, and P. Donini, "Stoic Ethics," in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, 717)

Taking the Aristotelian example of an archer striving to hit the target, for the Stoic hitting the target--while important--is not what determined whether the archer was virtuous.  What was important was not the success of hitting the target, what was important was "to do all he can do aim straight."  If external forces resulted in the arrow missing the mark, that was not the result of lack of virtue, but rather non-moral forces at work.  Virtue consisted not so much in success, but in an internal disposition which strove for success by conforming oneself to the order in nature steadily and with unflappable resolve.

This internal disposition, of course, reached full flower in the apothegms of Epictetus, the words of Seneca, and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

The Stoics and Virtue: The Adiaphora

ALTHOUGH THE STOIC PHILOSOPHERS took their inspiration from Socrates, sidestepping the developments of Plato and Aristotle, their contribution to virtue theory was the addition of the notion of logos or reason underlying the entire virtue inquiry.  However, the Stoic thinkers did not disdain Plato or Aristotle in their entirety.

For example, the Stoic thinkers accepted the four-fold division of Plato, and thought it convenient to divide virtue into the four cardinal virtues that Plato had identified: fortitude, temperance, prudence, and justice.  They also followed the notion that these virtues were related to each other and mutually supported each other.  The Stoics found that the inter-relatedness of the virtues also applied to their corresponding vices.

The Stoics, however, rejected the Aristotelian moderation of virtue/vice distinction.  Whereas Aristotle saw vice and virtue as two extremes to a continuum, with most of mankind in between the two extremes, the Stoics saw virtue and vice as all-or-nothing qualities.  One either was virtuous in toto or not, and if not, one was vicious.  This led to a sort of moral rigorism for which the Stoics were famous.  As Diogenes Laertius put it in his work on the life of the philosophers (Vitae, 7.127), "'while the Peripatetics [Aristotelians] say that progress lies between virtue and vice,' the Stoics'believed there is nothing between virtue and vice.'"  Houser, 19 (quoting Laertius).

Cicero--himself a disciple of the Stoic moral school--described this Stoic position in his De finibus (3.14.48) thus:

For just as those who are submerged in the ocean cannot breath, whether they are so close to the surface that they are just about to emerge or they are down deep . . . so too whoever is making a little progress toward the habit of virtue is no less in misery than one who has progressed not at all.

(quoted in Houser, 19)

The Stoic Chrysippus

Another contribution of the Stoic school is that they did not adopt Plato's "philosopher king" (philosophos basileus) or Aristotle's "great-souled" man (spoudaios) as the exemplar of the virtuous soul.  These notions were too tied to the political life of the polis or were too practical in perspective.  Rather, consistent with their Socratic emphasis and their notion of the logos as the underlying standard, the Stoics looked toward the wise man or sage (sophos) as the paradigm of the virtuous human.

By putting a cosmic and cosmopolitan twist on Socrates' search for universal definitions, the Stoics thought [the sage's] single-minded devotion to the logos allowed [the sage] to submit with equanimity to death, seemingly the worse of evils . . . . The Stoic sages was conceived as a paragon of moral virtue.

Houser, 19.

It should be noted that the Stoic sage's equanimity before death in his devotion to the logos was a quality that was quite compatible with the martyr's devotion to the Logos made flesh, Jesus the Lord, which led him to spurn death and witness to the truth.  The heroism of the sage and the heroism of the martyrs were thus analogous.

The Stoics recognized that virtue was not only something that made a man extrinsically excellent (in his relations ad extra), but that virtue was something that pertained to the inner life and so made a man excellent in his interior life (ad intra).  Indeed, it was the inner aspect of virtue which was emphasized.  Thus virtue's intrinsic goodness is not necessarily measured by results, but rather by what is right and good.  The Stoics therefore came to see virtue as its own reward, irrespective of consequences or happiness.  The Stoic philosopher Zeno, for example, "concluded that virtues are not one among many things that are intrinsically good, they are the only things that are good intrinsically (agathon, kalon; honestum); and likewise th only thing intrinsically bad is vice (kakia; vitium)."  Houser, 20.

Diogenes Laertius (Vitae, 7.102-3) summarized the Stoics' view thus:

The virtues--prudence, justice, courage, temperance, and the others--are good (agatha); and their opposites--imprudence, injustice, and the others--are bad (kaka); neither good nor bad are those things which neither benefit nor harm, such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, good, reputation, noble birth, and their opposites death, disease, pain, ugliness, weakness, poverty, bad reputation, low birth, and such things . . . . For these things are not good, but things indifferent (adiaphora) in the category of preferred things (proegmena).  For just as heating, not cooling, is a property of the hot, so benefiting, not harming, is a property of the good; but wealth and health do not benefit any more than they harm; therefore, neither wealth nor health is a good.

(quoted in Houser, 20).  The Stoics therefore saw a great many goods as pre-moral goods to which a sage ought to be indifferent; whereas Plato and especially Aristotle tended to see man and his good (happiness) as more a blend of extrinsic and intrinsic qualities.  The Stoic man could be "happy" lacking all things but virtue.  The Aristotelian man could not be "happy" even if virtuous, if he was lacking health and a certain level of wealth.

As we shall see in the next posting, this scheme of the Stoics--which labeled a whole host of things seen as intrinsically good in the Platonic-Aristotelian analysis as morally indifferent.  In order to explain which humans gravitated to such supposedly indifferent goods and avoided such supposedly indifferent evils, the Stoics had to develop some explanation.  They therefore developed a sort of dualistic moral theory that distinguished between animal impulse and desire tied to man's animal nature and the higher reason-based nature of rational man.