The Virtues of Cicero: The De Inventione

MOST OF THE WORKS OF THE STOIC philosophers have been lost. What we do have is mainly fragmentary evidence and the secondary sources of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, and Stobaeus. However, the Stoic doctrines were popular with the Romans, and we find their doctrines, we may assume faithfully expressed, in the works of the Roman stoics, Cicero and Seneca being perhaps the most important.

One of the works of Cicero (106-43 B.C.) to which we may turn for discussion of the virtues based upon Stoic principles is his De inventione.  That youthful work was written (in Latin) circa 87 B.C.  In it, as in his other works, Cicero adopts the Chrysippian model of the four principal or cardinal virtue (we might view them as the genera), with a whole panoply of subordinate virtues that are species of the four genera.  The four principal virtues--prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice--together constitute the sum total of duty (kathēkon (καθήκον), officium), but they are filled out, as it were, with these subordinate virtues.

Although Cicero wrote of the virtues in other works, in particular his De officiis, a work whose very title incorporates the sum total of the virtuous life and the product of the virtues, the De inventione is important because it, more than any other work,* is the source that fed the medieval writers and their virtue taxonomy.  From Cicero's lips, as it were, to the ears of Philip the Chancellor, St. Albert the Great, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Bust of Cicero

Cicero's De inventione is a manual of rhetoric,** and it is only as an aside that it handles the virtues.  Cicero distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic goods.  The intrinsic good is called the "honorable good," the bonum honestum.  Ultimately, the bonum honestum is the fruit of virtue.  Extrinsic goods or bona utilia are things that are extrinsically good (such as money) or things that are intrinsically neutral but useful.  These extrinsic goods or intrinsic but neutral goods are the handmaidens as it were of the intrinsic good, the bonum honestum.

For Cicero, virtue is "a habit of the mind in agreement with the way of nature and reason."  Nam virtus est enim habitus naturae modo atque rationi consentaneus.  (De inv., 2.159)  This is a classic Stoic definition.  It stresses the interior component (habit or habitus), being something of the mind, something interior, and unconcerned with consequences or external actions.  The notion of "agreement" (consentaneus)   coincides with the Greek Stoic Zeno's famous formula of harmonious living with nature, the "to live in agreement" ( to homologoumenos zēn ).  The standards to which the habit conform are nature (natura) and  that reason (ratio) which lies behind nature.  Here, the natura-ratio notion is a direct adoption of the physis-logos formula of the Greek Stoics.

It is within this notion of a greater law of reason that is found within nature that the virtues must be understood.  In the next posting, we shall look at the virtues as Cicero understood them in his De inventione.  But it should never be forgotten that the concept of virtues presupposed a natural law, a law found in nature which was ultimately based upon a reasonable order, an ordo rationis.

_______________________________________
*Other works that informed the medieval scholastics included lists by the Greek Aristotelian Andronicus of Rhodes (1st century B.C.) known as De passionibus and the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero by Macrobius. But these did not have the influence of Cicero's De inventione.
**"Invention" is the discovery of or coming upon (invenire) of arguments, one of the five traditional components that governed the rhetorician's art.  The others were arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

Man, Like the World, Has an End: Existential Readiness in Yves Simon's Thought

ALTHOUGH ARISTOTLE USED THE NOTION OF HEXIS or habitus to encompass both intellectual and practical realms of human activity, he distinguished between a hexis or habitus related to scientific knowledge and a hexis or habitus that related to the moral realm. Virtue, at least in the manner that we modernly use it, pertains only to the moral habitus. The scientific habitus (or for that matter the artistic habitus) is value neutral. Both art and science can be used for both good or evil. "With science, as with art, one can do as one pleases." Simon, 69. These hexeis or habitus do not have necessarily the disposition to goodness, to reliability, to imperativeness, to oughtness that the moral hexis or habitus displays.

Aristotle points to this distinction in an interesting way. The rational part of man is divided into to, one containing the rational principle proper (τὸ μὲν κυρίως καὶ ἐν αὑτῷ), and the other rational part being "obedient to its as a child to its father" (τὸ δ᾽ ὥσπερ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκουστικόν τι). The moral habitus is, as it were, imperative. It has the voice of command of a father to his child. Nic. Eth., 1103a.

We seem to have become aware that science and art are value-free. They do not provide the means for their own governance, and are utterly incompetent to self-govern. Both science and art can be used for good or evil, and, though they can define what is good or evil from a purely technical or particular way, they cannot define what is good and evil from a largely, human use.* Unfortunately, our recognition that science and art are value-free has led many to think that as a consequence they ought not to be governed by any other standards except their particular standards. Thus scientists enter into realms like in vitro fertilization and experimentation on human embryos with reckless abandon, thinking they must do something because they can, and never pose the question of whether they ought to do something irrespective of the fact that they can. Similarly, we have artists that demand absolutely freedom from any restrictions, including moral restrictions, and so put out works that are offensive, immoral, and morally corrosive. There is a moral enormity in Pablo Picasso's view that "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. . . . Where it is chaste, it is not art."** Far better, more artistic, and more authentically human is Pieter Breugel's message in his wood print "Following the Vice Unchastity." Breugel understood that vice darkens the mind, and hence also darkens art. LVXVRIA ENERVAT VIRES, EFFOEMINAT ARTVS. Lust enervates the strength, and weakens the arts. Luxurÿe stinckt. Sÿ is vol onsuuerheden. Sÿ breeckt die Crachten, en Sÿ swackt die leden. Unchastity stinks, it is full of dirt. It breaks one's might, and weakens limbs. All this is as graphically represented by Breugel as boldly as anything Picasso ever painted:

Pieter Breugel's Following the Vice Unchastity (Luxuria)

Simon contrasts the scientific habitus with the moral habitus, the former which relates to science, the latter which relates to moral virtue. To do so he uses the notion of "readiness," and distinguishes two kinds: qualitative and existential. Simon, 71. Science and virtue both contain a "qualitative readiness," and this is why Aristotle finds hexeis or habitus as encompassing both science and morals. However, virtue involves a sort of readiness which science does not, an "existential readiness," which Simon equates with "finality" or to the teleological question. Simon, 72. "Whenever we think of finality," we confront teleological questions which ask us what the purpose, end (telos), or meaning of an act or thing is, and so "we inevitably think of the good." Simon, 72. Therefore, the distinction between scientific or artistic habitus and moral habitus is that the latter inevitably is linked to the good, whereas for the two former, it is not.

Finality (or existential readiness in Simon's words) is found in all things, animate or animate. It is thus found in the affinity between Silver (Ag) and Chlorine (Cl), in the purpose or function of kidneys, of the pancreas, or of the gall bladder, or in man, or even the entirety of the cosmos, as a whole. There is, however, a sort of veil between us and the finality of things that are inanimate. We are somehow shielded from knowing, in any adequate way, the finality between Silver and Chlorine's combination, or any chemical process or affinity for that matter, or in the finality or purpose behind natural disasters such as earthquake, or a plague, or the eighteen men who died at the falling of the Tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4).

[T]hose who believe that finality is not totally irrelevant to our efforts to know the world invariably support their arguments with examples from the world of the living. Yet finality may not be the exclusive property of living things, and I rather think that there is finality wherever there is movement or process. The only trouble is that we do not know and may never know what most movements and processes in nature are good for. . . . [t]he good, or goodness, or a process--which is its finality--is most easily perceived in an among living things. . . . Thus while I remain convinced that wherever there is movement or process there is finality by metaphysical necessity, I also believe that in our common efforts to understand inanimate nature, we can do better with existential readiness [as a concept]. Because even the most stubborn mechanists cannot help recognizing this readings whenever they turn in nature . . . .

Simon, 72-74. There is therefore an analogous relationship between the finality of the movements and processes of inanimate nature (which we have difficulty knowing) and the movements and processes related to animate nature (which we have less difficulty knowing). The ancients (that is those before the 17th century and the Enlightenment, or die Aufklärung, or la Lumière when mechanistic notions of reality began their prevalence) recognized this overlap, and so they used the term "virtues" to refer both to the natural existential readiness (or finality) of both animate and inanimate movements or processes. Simon points to such a use of the term virtue in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (act II, sc. ii):

The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, yet all different.
O, mickle [great] is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action dignified. . . .

Thus virtues broadly understood are found in rocks, in herbs and plants, as well as in man. All the world, and each part of it, even the most rude, then, tended toward an end. And all life had meaning, purpose, an end given to it under the design and watch of the Providential God, the Creator and Father of all. The world, of course, was then "enchanted," or perhaps more accurately not yet "disenchanted" by intellectually clumsy men whose intellectual hands were all thumbs, and the natural law (understood in its most generic, broad sense) encompassed both inanimate objects and animate objects, including that rational animal, man. "In fact, seeing natural as well as human virtues grounded in 'natural laws' is a usage that stretches all the way back to classical antiquity." Simon, 74. Post-Enlightenment moderns divide the "laws of nature" from the "natural moral law," and there is cause for these two to be distinct, and in this regard they are not different than classical man. Yet the division that modern man has made between the "laws of nature" and the "natural [moral] law" has gone too far, the cut has been made too deep, so that nature has nothing to teach man, and man is separated from nature as a whole. Kant, it would appear, seemed to have nailed the last nail on the coffin of classical and traditional thought:

In the classical view, there are enlightening communications and similarities between these two worlds. In Kant, the emphasis is almost exclusively on their contrasts, on what sets them apart. I do not say that you cannot find in Kant some qualified recognition that morality may have something to do with nature. He is after all a profound thinker, and such people never get locked in absolutely untenable dogmatic positions. But there is little doubt that when Kant speaks of the starry skies above and the moral law within, he wants to bring out not what they might have in common but what sets them apart. By contrast, in Shakespeare no less than in Aristotle, there is continuity between the laws of nature and the laws of morality, and the 'virtue' of a physical thing is so called because of perceived resemblance to moral virtue. They are both seen as instances of existential readiness, which makes for trust, confidence, dependability, reliability, and indeed predictability.

Simon, 74-75.

__________________________________________
*For the distinction between the particular and human use of something, see the blog posting A Good Man is Hard to Find: Nature and Use.
**Pablo Picasso, quoted in Antonina Vallentin, Pablo Picasso (ch. 11, p. 268) (1957).

Virtue as Habitus: In the Realm of Knowledge

IN OUR LAST BLOG POSTING we reviewed the notion of "habit," and how such a term is unable to render adequately the concept of Aristotelian hexis. An understanding of the Aristotelian notion of hexis or the word that Yves R. Simon uses to translate hexis, habitus, is however, essential for understanding virtue in any traditional sense. The notion of hexis or habitus is "absolutely indispensable in a realistic theory of ethics." Simon, 56. There is no ready English word that sufficiently incorporates the complex reality underlying the Aristotelian concept of hexis, and that obviously causes problems in understanding the meaning of Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics, indeed any traditional, natural law and virtue-based theory of moral philosophy, including any Biblical notion of such as may be inferred by the teachings of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans.

The Aristotelian concept of hexis or its Latin equivalent, habitus, might plausibly be translated by the words "state of character" (as W. D. Ross defines it in his translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics) if it is confined to the moral context; however, the concept of hexis in Aristotle extends out much further than the moral context or the practical realm. The concept of hexis extends out into the speculative or intellectual realm as well. For Aristotle, science as well as morals are hexeis. We could hardly speak of biology or mathematics as a "state of character," yet Aristotle could easily view such human knowledge as the fruit of hexis. Additionally, for Aristotle as well as St. Thomas, the four "intellectual virtues" of understanding, art, science, and philosophical wisdom are hexeis or habitus, but in no wise can be called "states of character" or "habits." So the translation of hexis or habitus by the words "state of character" is not adequate.

Yves R. Simon

Much less is the translation of hexis by the term "habit." For Aristotle as for St. Thomas, the four moral virtues--temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence--are hexeis or habitus. But to characterize these dynamic virtues as "habits" is to do them an injustice since the term "habit" implies an involuntary or deterministic quality which the virtues do not have. The only thing that "habits" and hexei or habitus share is "stable dispositions established through repetition of acts," but beyond this, they are as opposite as can be. Simon, 58. Whether in Aristotle or in St. Thomas, Yves Simon observes, the "moral virtues are paragons of voluntariness, and thus the very opposite of habits." Simon, 58. In both Aristotle and St. Thomas, in contrast to the notion of habit, the hexeis or habitus, whether intellectual or moral, have a basis in objective reality. Habit and habitus also differ in their form of operation. While habits operate automatically or mechanically, or nearly so, "the operation of habitus is characterized by unmistakable vitality. Habit relieves us of the need to think; but habitus makes us think creatively. . . . Compared to habit, habitus represents thought that is truly alive." Simon, 60.

Not only must habitus or hexis be distinguished from habit, but it must be distinguished from opinion. Both Aristotle and Plato distinguish between objectively-grounded science or knowledge which they call epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη) and subjectively-grounded opinion which they call doxa (δόξα). The notion of doxa also encompassed the entire gamut of human decisions that were contingent, accidental, affected by chance, and so not absolutely true. The hexis or habitus which is the foundation of virtue, whether that virtue is one of science or one of morals, is, for Aristotle, clearly a matter of epistēmē, objectively-grounded knowledge.

The distinction between epistēmē and doxa is not always perfectly clear, as there is a whole world of human thought that seems to hover between both pure epistēmē and pure doxa.

In considering the relationship between science and opinion, then, let us make sure we understand when they mix and they they do not. True science, episteme, or the "capacity to demonstrate," excludes opinion by definition. But science in a looser sense includes also speculative hypotheses, probable judgments, and educated guesses, which we collectively call "scientific opinion." Because leak-proof demonstrations are as a rule very hard to com by in any field of knowledge, these opinions are very useful. But we must always remember that the function they play in science, that is, with regard to matters that in themselves are not matters of opinion, can never be more than substitutional, and that any such opinion my at any time be replaced by a better one, or, one hopes, by demonstration. By contrast, with regard to matters that in themselves can be otherwise than they are, our opinions play not a substitutional but an essential role. In the world of accidents and contingencies, doxa rules supreme, and episteme is excluded by definition.

Simon, 64-65.

The role of opinion in the life of humans is, of course, huge. And this presents significant problems for those who seek the purer, more rarified forms of both scientific and moral knowledge. Like habits, opinions are thicker than knowledge, and so have a similar lasting power which impede the acquisition of or the ruling by knowledge.

Despite the mutable nature of their subject matter, our opinions can be frightfully stable and enduring, while our scientific knowledge despite the certainty of its subject matter, is quite perishable. . . . Despite their merely subjective necessity, opinions like habits tend to be quite stable.

Simon, 66. As an example of this unfortunate quality of opinion, we might point to the popular and persistent opinion that that, following conception, that is the joinder of ovum and sperm, the zygote is not a human being, though though the scientific knowledge is absolutely unquestionable that it is. Just as it takes an effort to overcome a habit, so likewise does it take great effort to overcome opinion.

The Aristotelian/Thomistic notion of hexis or habitus resides outside the world of opinion or doxa. It is part and parcel of the world of knowledge or epistēmē. Both scientific and moral knowledge are objectively-founded and, for Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the entire tradition, need to be distinguished from mere routine, unthinking habit or contingent, conditional, accidental, and unreliable opinion.

In order to understand what Aristotle means when he defines moral virtue as a "stable state of character concerned with choice," it is necessary to keep habit, scientific habitus, and opinion separate and distinct. And we can do so here, if we remember that we recite Shakespeare's lines out of habit; that we predict election results on the basis of opinion; and that we grasp the Pythagorean theorem by mathematical habitus. Clearly, we need all these things and could not do without them. But in order not only to tell right from wrong but also to do the right thing, we still need moral virtue.

Simon, 66-67. The distinction between scientific hexis or habitus and moral hexis or habitus, that is the hexis or habitus that relates to speculative or theoretical intellect (which seeks the true) versus that which relates to the practical intellect (which seeks the good), is what we shall tackle next.