Massimo Pigliucci recently wrote an excellent article on Stoicism and slavery.  He was responding to a message, which said “I know that Epictetus was a slave and embraced Stoicism, but I find it difficult as an African-American to embrace this philosophy which is quite silent about slavery.”  Massimo mentioned in passing that “no Stoic questioned the very institution of slavery”.  This article looks at what the Stoics said about slave-owning.  There are some passages which suggest that Stoics may actually have questioned the institution of slavery or even stated that slave-owning was wrong but they’re not very well-known and there’s a bit of interpretation and reconstruction required.

In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell quotes a passage in which Marcus Aurelius set forth the Stoic egalitarian political ideal.  Russell argues that although the Stoics could not realistically achieve this political goal in the ancient world, their ethical teachings ultimately inspired the emancipation of women and slaves via Stoicism’s lasting influence on Christian values:

This was an ideal which could not be consistently realized in the Roman Empire, but it influenced legislation, particularly in improving the status of women and slaves. Christianity took over this part of Stoic teaching along with much of the rest. And when at last, in the seventeenth century, the opportunity came to combat despotism effectually, the Stoic doctrines of natural law and natural equality, in their Christian dress, acquired a practical force which, in antiquity, not even an emperor could give to them. (History of Western Philosophy)

On the other hand, in contrast to Russell, some people question whether the ancient Stoics really did oppose the institution of slavery.

First of all, it’s worth noting that many people feel that the ancient Stoics should have viewed slavery negatively.  Why?  Well, consideration for others as our equals or fellow-citizens in the cosmos, ethical cosmopolitanism, is central to Stoic Ethics.  The Stoics were also firm believers in the concept of natural law and they agreed that no man is a slave by nature.  Some ancients believed, by contrast, that slavery was the natural state of certain races.  The view that some men are “natural slaves” is usually attributed to Aristotle and the Stoics are taken to have opposed him by rejecting the whole concept of natural slavery.   For instance, according to Seneca, Chrysippus defined a slave as a “hired-hand for life”, a man-made condition not a natural one (On Benefits, 3.22.1).

However, there are only a few scattered passages in the surviving literature where the question of slave-ownership is addressed explicitly.  There are also a handful of historical details and a few pieces of textual evidence, which can potentially be viewed as revealing Stoic attitudes toward slavery.   Nevertheless, I noticed recently that Diogenes Laertius, one of our main sources for early Stoic fragments, does appear to state that the founders of Stoicism condemned slave-owning as morally wrong.  Massimo extended his article above to acknowledge this passage in Diogenes “where he seems to suggest (second part) that the Stoics actually directly condemned slavery”.  In his summary of early Stoic Ethical doctrines, Diogenes writes of the Stoic wise man:

They declare that he alone is free and bad men are slaves, freedom being power of independent action, whereas slavery is privation of the same;  though indeed there is also a second form of slavery consisting in subordination [subjugation], and a third which implies possession of the slave as well as his subordination; the correlative of such servitude being lordship [slave-ownership]; and this too is evil.  (7.121-122)

I also checked my interpretation of this passage with John Sellars and Christopher Gill, two of my colleagues on the Modern Stoicism team.  Chris is emeritus professor of Ancient Thought at Exeter university and an authority on Stoicism, having published several academic books on the subject, including an analysis and commentary on the first half of The Meditations.  He agreed that “the passage does appear to say that slave-ownership is bad (not just the extended [metaphorical] forms of slavery normally discussed by Stoics)”, although it’s surprising to see an ancient author expressing this view.  John Sellars, an academic  philosopher and author of Stoicism and The Art of Living, pointed out that we might potentially expect the Stoics to “attack slavery in general as something unjust, especially given their cosmopolitan ambitions”.

Diogenes is mainly quoting sayings from Zeno and Chrysippus in this section, although he also refers to Apollodorus of Seleucia, a student of Diogenes of Babylon who wrote an important handbook on Stoic Ethics, around 150 BC.  He’s almost certainly referring to Zeno and Chrysippus here as “they”, probably based on summaries of their core teachings in Apollodorus and later authors, such as Arius Didymus.

Here are a couple of interesting references to that passage…  In his Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité (1879), Jacques François Denis cites the passage above from Diogenes Laertius and interprets it as follows:

There is, says Zeno, such slavery that comes from conquest, and another that comes from a purchase: to one and to the other corresponds the right of the master, and this right is bad. (p. 346)

The American author Robert G. Ingersoll, famous for being an early proponent of agnosticism, cites Denis’ comment on the same passage, remarking:

I read Zeno, the man who said, centuries before our Christ was born, that man could not own his fellow-man.  “No matter whether you claim a slave by purchase or capture, the title is bad.  They who claim to own their fellow-men, look down into the pit and forget the justice that should rule the world.”  (Why I am an Agnostic)

The first sentence is a paraphrase of the passage in Diogenes Laertius, although the second appears to be derived from the Epictetus passage  quoted below (Discourses, 1.13).

As Denis and Ingersoll observed, the passage in Diogenes Laertius is most likely derived from a saying of Zeno, or possibly Chrysippus.  Crucially, as they both note, it identifies two ordinary meanings of “slavery”: capture and purchase.  (This is important for reasons we’ll return to later.)

In addition, though, it also distinguishes these from the special technical sense in which the word is used in the Stoic paradoxes, to refer to the lack of inner freedom.  So actually the passage in Diogenes distinguishes three senses of the word “slavery”:

1. The sense in which the majority of people (bad men) are enslaved to their passions and externals, in contrast to the inner freedom of the ideal Stoic Sage
2. The forced subjugation (ὑπόταξις) of one person to another, e.g., capture and enslavement by pirates or brigands or by enemies in war
3. The legal possession of a slave as property, i.e., through purchase, which entails their capture and forced subjugation (or that of one of their ancestors)

The passage above goes on to say that the correlate of such enslavement (items 2 and 3) is despoteia (δεσποτεία) which most definitely means slave-ownership in the Greek original, although translated into English here more vaguely as “lordship”.  He then adds in “and this too is evil” (phaule, φαύλη), which means wretched, base, immoral, etc., a term used as a synonym for vice in Stoic Ethics.  Indeed, throughout the chapter, Diogenes employs this same term very frequently (about eighteen times!) as a synonym for vice.  I don’t think there can be any question that he means slave-ownership is morally wrong.

As we’ll see below, when comparing this passage with the discussion of slavery in another Stoic text, by Dio Chrysostom, Zeno (or possibly Chrysippus) appears to have argued that slaves are either purchased or captured; capturing slaves is theft, and unjust, because no man is born a natural slave; but purchased slaves must either have been captured in the past or are descendants of those who have been captured; therefore all enslavement is unjust, because it’s a form of robbery, or the theft of a man from his natural state.  Ingersoll and Denis both read this passage in the same way.

Some people boldly claim that it was totally unheard of to question the institution or practice of slavery in the ancient world.  They’re most definitely wrong about this, though.  The Sophist Alcidamas of Elaea, a student of Gorgias who flourished in the fourth century BC, was probably the first thinker in Athens to do so.  He wrote “God has left all men free; Nature has made nobody a slave”.  Around the same time, Socrates is also portrayed by Xenophon as stating that the capture and enslavement of free men (andrapodizo) is a form of injustice (adikia), a vice.   His student Euthydemus even says it would be “monstrous” to refer to the capture of slaves as “justice” (Memorabilia, 4.2.14).  However, Socrates goes on to qualify this by saying that if an elected general enslaves a city that could be considered just if the city itself were behaving in an unjust and hostile manner.  So he believed that enslavement of conquered aggressors was acceptable.  Plato portrays Socrates exhibiting a slightly different attitude toward slavery in Book Five of The Republic, where he says that the ideal state would never enslave other Greeks, but only barbarian races.

These accounts of Socrates’ attitude toward slavery conflict, and both show him endorsing enslavement under certain circumstances.  However, what they do have in common is the suggestion that the circumstances in which many slaves were captured are fundamentally unjust.  Albeit in their own limited way, these comments may have raised quite penetrating questions about the institution of slavery in general.  They certainly prove that Greek philosophers were capable of drawing the radical conclusion that some common forms of slave capture were unjust.

By contrast, others, such as Aristotle, argued that some people are slaves by nature.  He wrote that:

[…] those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned. (Politics, 1)

The Stoics, probably adopting arguments forwarded by much earlier authors, categorically rejected the notion that any human being is naturally born to be a slave.   (With the possible exception of the Middle Stoic, Posidonius, who embraced elements of Aristotelianism and appears to have reintroduced the notion of natural slavery.)  Zeno argued that all men should ideally live together as though in a common herd.  Chrysippus’ definition of a slave as a “hired-hand for life”, a social contract based solely on their purchase, is usually interpreted as an explicit rejection of the Aristotelian theory that some people are slaves by nature.

However, the injustice of capturing and enslaving someone who is naturally free-born is perceived as infecting and undermining the whole institution of slavery, as we’ll see.  (Some authors believe that Antisthenes’ earlier book Of Freedom and Slavery may have contained similar arguments, which potentially influenced the Cynic-Stoic tradition.)

Zeno of Citium

Zeno’s Republic, arguably the founding text of Stoicism, was a scathing critique of Plato’s book of the same name.  In it Zeno argued in favour of an ideal political state in which all men and women would be equal, living like brothers and sisters in a single community. According to Lactantius, an early Christian author, the Stoics said that both women and slaves should be taught philosophy, because he says they saw no difference between their capacity for wisdom and that of free men.  This is very clearly a rejection of Aristotle’s notion of natural slavery.

Moreover, the much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field. (Plutarch, On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander)

Now in the few fragments that survive there’s nothing explicitly referring to the role of slaves in relation to Zeno’s Republic.  However, it seems to stand to reason that if everyone is equal, like brothers and sisters (one flock or herd), and each has equal rights then there can be no slaves.  Also, as slaves are property, if all property is held in common then there could arguably be no slaves.  (And without law courts, it would also be impossible to administer laws governing slave-ownership.)  So it does seem impossible that slaves could have been envisaged as forming part of the ideal Stoic Republic.  Of course, that’s an ideal and not advice for real world politics.  Nevertheless, it is supposed to denote what Zeno considered to be a good society, and the social goal of Stoicism.  Slavery must have been abolished in the Stoic Republic described by Zeno.

Some people have taken the following anecdote from Diogenes Laertius to imply that Zeno owned a slave:

We are told that he was once chastising a slave for stealing, and when the latter pleaded that it was his fate to steal, “Yes, and to be beaten too,” said Zeno. (7.23)

However, this passage makes a point of saying “a slave” not “his slave” – there’s nothing in it to suggest that Zeno was the owner of the slave in question, it’s more likely that it refers to someone else’s slave.  At least according to one account, Zeno lost his fortune at sea and subsequently lived like a beggar, as follower of the Cynic Crates, and he continued in a similar austere lifestyle after founding the Stoic school.  If he had no property, he’s unlikely to have owned slaves.  The Cynic way of life is generally taken to involve renunciation of wealth, and by implication slaves.  According to tradition, the true Cynic only owns what he can fit in his satchel – which would presumably have insufficient room for a slave!

Moreover, Zeno was a metic or foreign resident of Athens, not an Athenian citizen.  As such he had few rights, and his status was somewhat between that of a slave and a citizen.  Technically, foreign residents could own slaves, by law, but they could not own property.  So unable to own his own home, Zeno appears later in life to have lived as the household guest of his student Persaeus.  Without property at Athens, though, it seems unlikely that Zeno would have owned slaves.  Indeed, Seneca says that it was well-known in his time that Zeno had no slaves:

It is well known that Homer had one slave, that Plato had three, and that Zeno, who first taught the stern and masculine doctrine of the Stoics, had none: yet could anyone say that they lived wretchedly without himself being thought a most pitiable wretch by all men? (Consolation to Helvia, 12)

There is another interesting anecdote in Diogenes Laertius, incidentally, in which Zeno appears to rebuke another man for beating his slave:

Once when he saw the slave of one of his acquaintance marked with weals, “I see,” said he, “the imprints of your anger.” (7.23)

As we’ve seen, Zeno introduced the convention that all those who are not virtuous are called “slaves”, in a technical sense.  The Stoics believed that only the ideal Sage is truly virtuous and neither Zeno nor the other founders of the school claimed to be perfect.  So this effectively means that all men are “slaves” to their passions, through attachment to externals.  In the Discourses of Epictetus, for this reason, we can see him repeatedly addressing his students, collectively, as slaves.

Elsewhere, Diogenes Laertius says the early Stoics distinguished between evils insofar as they were means or ends.  Among evil ends, things that are inherently evil, he clearly lists “slavery” and “every vicious action”.  Thus slavery is an intrinsically bad activity which participates in a vicious attitude of mind.  However, in this instance, he may be referring to “slavery” in the sense of the Stoic paradoxes, i.e., the inner state of enslavement to our passions.

Lucian

The satirist Lucian, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, describes the Stoic Republic as a Utopian ideal toward which men should strive, even though it’s a distant goal.  He describes it as follows in his dialogue Hermotimus, or the Rival Philosophies.

[…] all the citizens are aliens and foreigners, not a native among them; they include numbers of barbarians, slaves, cripples, dwarfs, and poor; in fact any one is admitted; for their law does not associate the franchise with income, with shape, size, or beauty, with old or brilliant ancestry; these things are not considered at all; any one who would be a citizen needs only understanding, zeal for the right, energy, perseverance, fortitude and resolution in facing all the trials of the road; whoever proves his possession of these by persisting till he reaches the city is ipso facto a full citizen, regardless of his antecedents. Such distinctions as superior and inferior, noble and common, bond and free, simply do not exist there, even in name.

Education in philosophy was  often seen as the province of wealthy, aristocratic young men.  However, this makes it clear that the Stoic school is unusual in accepting absolutely anyone, foreigners like Zeno himself and the other scholarchs, cripples or slaves like Epictetus, the rich or poor such as Cleanthes, and, though he doesn’t mention it here, they were also known for admitting both men and women.  The famous daughter of Cato of Utica, for example, Porcia Catonis, was portrayed by Plutarch as a Stoic.

All distinctions between superior and inferior, slave or free, being abolished from this Republic, and slaves being admitted, it appears once again that the Stoic ideal musts involve the abolition of slavery.

Seneca

In Letter 31, Seneca makes it clear that the human soul is equally divine whether it exists in a Roman knight or a slave:

What else could you call such a soul than a god dwelling as a guest in a human body? A soul like this may descend into a Roman knight just as well as into a freedman’s son or a slave. For what is a Roman knight, or a freedmen’s son, or a slave? They are mere titles, born of ambition or of wrong.

So, once again, you’d think that, in principle, would lead him to conclude that slavery is immoral.  Seneca wrote a Letter to Lucilius entitled On Master and Slave (Letter 47).  In it he emphasised that for Stoics slaves are first and foremost our fellow-humans.

“They are slaves,” people declare.  Nay, rather they are men.  “Slaves!”  No, comrades.  “Slaves!”  No, they are unpretentious friends.  “Slaves!”  No, they are our fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike.

Seneca owned slaves himself.  However, his writings were arguably aligned more with the Middle Stoa.  As we’ve seen, some Middle Stoics, influenced by Aristotelianism, may have reintroduced the notion of natural slavery.  Stoics who were more aligned with Cynicism, like Musonius, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius, though, are likely to have questioned the concept of natural slavery, or rejected it outright, and to have been more influenced by the early Stoicism of Zeno’s Republic.

Seneca does condemn cruelty toward slaves in this letter but doesn’t go so far as to condemn the institution of slavery.  He does, however, repeatedly emphasis that slaves should be treated with respect, as fellow-human beings, and not as inferiors.

Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.

At one point he even seems to acknowledge that he’s skirting around the more fundamental ethical and political questions about slavery.

I do not wish to involve myself in too large a question, and to discuss the treatment of slaves, towards whom we Romans are excessively haughty, cruel, and insulting. But this is the kernel of my advice: Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.

It’s tempting to read this as expressing Seneca’s awareness of a tension between Stoic ethics and the prevailing norms of Roman society.  He realizes that Stoic ethics teaches us to treat all humans, even slaves, as our equals, as fellow-citizens of the cosmos.  However, he doesn’t want to rock the boat too much by questioning the whole institution of slavery.  At least, that’s one way of reading his comments on the subject.

Epictetus

Epictetus, of course, was originally a slave himself, but gained his freedom later in life.  In fact his name just means “acquired” and seems to have been a nickname of sorts, denoting the fact he was the property of another man.  In one of the fragments attributed to him he appears to condemn slave-owning:

What you avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others. You avoid slavery, for instance; take care not to enslave. For if you can bear to exact slavery from others, you appear to have been yourself a slave. For vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor freedom with slavery. As a person in health would not wish to be attended by the sick nor to have those who live with him in a state of sickness ; so neither would a person who is free bear to be served by slaves, nor to have those who live with him in a state of slavery. (Epictetus, Fragments)

In one of the shorter Discourses, Epictetus also directly addresses slave-ownership.  In response to a question about acting acceptably to the gods, Epictetus refers to a slave-owner becoming furious because his slave brought him water that was tepid and not warm enough.

Slave yourself, will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is like a son from the same seeds and of the same descent from above? But if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately make yourself a tyrant? Will you not remember who you are, and whom you rule? that they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus?—But I have purchased them, and they have not purchased me. Do you see in what direction you are looking, that it is towards the earth, towards the pit, that it is towards these wretched laws of dead men? but towards the laws of the gods you are not looking.  (1.13)

Here Epictetus reminds his wealthy students that even their slaves should be viewed as brothers as they are all children of Zeus.  The role of Zeus as father of mankind is a common theme in Stoicism, and the wise man is directed to emulate Zeus by viewing the rest of mankind as his brothers and sisters, without discrimination.  If you have been put in the position of ownership over another man you must nevertheless remember that he is your kinsman, in the eyes of Zeus.  In response to a student objecting “but I have purchased them”, quite astoundingly, Epictetus refers to the Roman laws governing slave ownership as “these wretched laws of dead men”, i.e., mortals, and scolds his students for appealing to them rather than giving precedence to the eternal laws of Nature or Zeus.  Calling the laws governing slave-ownership “wretched”, clearly implies a criticism of the legal institution of slavery, although Epictetus doesn’t really elaborate further on this point.

Incidentally, Epictetus’ teacher, Musonius Rufus, had said that slaves are entitled to disobey masters who instruct them to engage in immoral actions (Lecture 16).  He also said that like Diogenes the Cynic, who was himself captured and sold into slavery by pirates, a slave may not only be the equal of but actually more virtuous than his master (Lecture 9).

Dio Chrysostom

Perhaps our clearest articulation of the Stoic position on slavery actually comes from Dio Chrysostom.  Dio wasn’t a fully-fledged Stoic but rather an eclectic philosopher and orator, influenced both by Stoicism and Cynicism.  He was student of the great Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus, friends with the Stoic Euphrates of Tyre, and probably also an acquaintance of Epictetus.  Marcus Aurelius appears to mention both Dio and Euphrates favourably in The Meditations.

Dio provides one of our most explicit Stoic-influenced condemnations of slavery in his fourteenth and fifteenth orations On Slavery and Freedom: Discourses I and II.  He starts off his initial Discourse by forwarding typical arguments in favour of the Stoic paradox that only the wise man is truly free and the majority of us are slaves because of our ignorance.  This is the special Stoic technical use of the word “slavery”, and refers to our inner state.  As Dio notes, this paradox means that even the great king of Persia, Xerxes, may have been a slave inwardly, to his ignorance and passions, despite his external power; and even someone who appears outwardly enslaved, such as Diogenes the Cynic, might nevertheless be inwardly regal and free, if he possesses virtue and wisdom.  (These arguments and the terminology used by Dio are clearly Stoic in nature and acknowledged as such by modern commentators.)

However, in the second Discourse, Dio proceeds to discuss the ordinary sense of the word “slavery”, i.e., the forced subjugation or legal possession of one person by another.  He argues that all slaves are either captured or are the descendants of those who have been captured.  In the same way that a person can possess land, property, or livestock for a long time but nevertheless unjustly,  says Dio, to capture men in war or by brigandage is “to have gained possession also of human beings unjustly”.  Slaves can also be purchased, inherited, or born into the household as the children of other slaves but all these depend on this earliest method of acquiring slaves by capture, which Dio says “has no validity at all” and constitutes “unjust servitude”.

Those individuals who were initially compelled by force into a life of servitude should not even be termed “slaves”.  Therefore all slavery is “unjust” insofar as it depends, ultimately, on the capture of individuals who were born free.

If, then, this original mode of acquiring slaves, from which all other modes derive their existence, be destitute of justice, none of them can consequently be deemed just; nor can a single individual either be a slave in reality, or be truly and substantially discriminated by such an appellation. (15.26)

Dio repeatedly denies that being captured can legitimately make someone who is free-born into a slave and asserts that this means their descendants cannot be slaves either.  Note that the distinction he employs in this oration between inner slavery, slavery by capture, and slavery by purchase, appears to reflect the distinction made by the Stoics, according to Diogenes Laertius, in the passage cited above, which Denis and Ingersoll plausibly attributed to Zeno.  It seems certain that Dio Chrysostom and Diogenes Laertius are both ultimately drawing upon the same Stoic source in making this distinction and the two texts shed some light on each other.

The presence of the passage in Diogenes also appears to confirm the conclusion of modern scholars that these orations of Dio are thoroughly Stoic in nature.  Likewise, Dio’s discourses confirm that the Stoics meant phaulos (bad or wretched) to mean unjust or morally wrong.  They also clarify that the Stoics are talking about the distinction between slaves who are captured and subjugated by force, usually during warfare but also by bandits or pirates, and slaves who are legally purchased.  Their point is that both practices are unjust, and immoral, because the purchase of a slave depends on the fact that they or their ancestors were at some point captured by force, or stolen from their natural state.

Marcus Aurelius

As we’ve seen, the Stoics believed in the ideal of ethical cosmopolitanism.  All humans, in fact all beings that possess reason, are equally citizens of the same cosmos.  This doctrine is arguably incompatible with slavery, as for cosmopolitans everyone is a citizen, and citizens are not slaves.  Moreover, no man is naturally born to be enslaved.  This theme is particularly prominent in The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, where it’s closely associated with his pantheistic view of Nature.

Marcus’ therefore expressed his political vision as a state with a mixed constitution for which the freedom of its subjects is its highest priority:

[…] the idea of a balanced constitution, and of government founded on equity and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy which values above all things the freedom of the subject (1.14)

C.R. Haines quotes from an imperial rescript attributed to Marcus, which likewise reads: “Let those who have charge of our interests know that the cause of liberty is to be set before any pecuniary advantage to ourselves.”  Another one states: “It would not be consistent with humanity to delay the enfranchisement of a slave for the sake of pecuniary gain.”

Sometimes people object that although Marcus was emperor he didn’t abolish slavery.  That seems very obviously to be an unrealistic expectation, though.  The position of Roman emperor was far too precarious for that sort of radical social upheaval.  The Roman economy completely depended on slave labour.  Moreover, when foreign enemies were defeated, tens of thousands were normally captured.  Often the only realistic option was to keep them as slaves.  If they were returned to their lands, they would simply regroup and attack again.  So the Romans could plausibly argue that enslavement was a more ethical option than mass executions, or genocide, of enemy tribes.

However, Marcus did try to resettle thousands of Germanic tribesman within Italy.  This wasn’t entirely successful as some were involved later in uprisings.  The Historia Augusta actually tells us that Marcus observed the principles of justice even in dealing with captive enemies, choosing to resettle them.  This could be read as implying that Marcus believed enslaving them would have been an injustice.

He scrupulously observed justice, moreover, even in his dealings with captive enemies. He settled innumerable foreigners on Roman soil. (Historia Augusta)

He also caused widespread unrest at Rome by granting thousands of slaves their freedom in exchange for joining the legions during the crisis of the initial Marcomannic invasion, when the armies were severely depleted by the Antonine Plague.

Moreover, as his biographers have observed, Marcus consistently appears to have taken legal steps to improve the rights of slaves in relation to manumission, or obtaining their freedom. For instance, Birley observes that in an official reply to a query put to him by his lifelong friend Aufidius Victorinus, Marcus gave a ruling improving the rights of slaves to manumission, cited nearly twenty times in the surviving legal anthologies. Most often they say “He attains his liberty in accordance with the ruling of the Deified Marcus”, referred to as the “law of liberty”, although the ruling is not quoted in full. Birley concludes that despite the “harsh realities” of Rome’s slave-labour economy:

…it is fair to say that Marcus’ attitude, as revealed not only by the much-quoted reply to Victorinus, but by other decisions made earlier in his reign, was one of deep compassion for the position of individual slaves, and that he did take some steps to improve their position. (p. 200)

It’s true that these were very gradual changes but Marcus himself states that he has to be satisfied with small steps in the right direction politically.  In case there’s any doubt about the delicate balance of power during his reign, it’s worth noting that Marcus actually faced a full-scale civil war in 175 AD, reputedly triggered in part because of unrest over the leniency of his attitudes.  The uprising was put down very quickly but it proves that Marcus couldn’t just do what he liked politically, he faced an opposition faction in the senate and potential usurpers waiting in the wings.

Marcus wrote that he was inspired by learning about Stoic Republicans like Cato of Utica and Thrasea and that he aspired to the political ideal of “a balanced constitution, and of government founded on equity and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy which values above all things the freedom of the subject” (1.14).  This is a remarkable passage.  It sounds reminiscent in some ways of Zeno’s Republic, which was written almost 500 years earlier.  It also seems difficult, obviously, to reconcile the institution of slavery with the ideal of a state that makes its highest priority the freedom of its subjects.

Moreover, in The Meditations, Marcus also wrote:

A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and one man when he has caught a little hare, another a little fish in his net, another boars, another bears, and another some Sarmatians. Now if you look into their judgements, are these not simply brigands? (10.10)

This is a remarkable passage.  Marcus is referring to the capture of enemy Sarmatian soldiers during the Marcomannic Wars, mainly by his own Roman officers.  These captives would potentially have been ransomed or sold into slavery.  The eminent French scholar Pierre Hadot comments on this passage:

The war in which Marcus defended the borders of the empire was, for him, like a hunt for Sarmatian slaves, not unlike a spider’s hunt for flies. (Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 185)

Marcus compares the capture of barbarian slaves to catching fish in a net, hunting boar, and so on, but then astoundingly he concludes that the character of a person who takes pride in doing this is no better than that of a brigand or robber.  In other words, perhaps in an allusion to the Stoic doctrine mentioned in Diogenes Laertius and Dio Chrysostom, he appears to be saying that capturing enemy soldiers is a form of theft, robbing them from their natural state of freedom.  He doesn’t go on to say, as the early Stoics did, that this vitiates the institution of slavery insofar as all legally purchased slaves must have been at one time captured, or are the descendants of those who have been.

This passage is also strikingly similar to the Stoic argument against slavery forwarded by Dio Chrysostom.  Some philosophers believed certain individuals, even certain races, were naturally born to be slaves.  The Stoics categorically rejected this notion.  Marcus here clearly rejects the idea that the Sarmatians are natural slaves.  As they’re freeborn, capturing them is simply unjust, or akin to robbery.  In other words, this passage is clearly a rejection of the assumption that so-called barbarian races are “fair game” for enslavement.

Moreover, Marcus appears to have caused some unrest at Rome by offering many slaves, including gladiators, their freedom in exchange for joining the legions.

And since the pestilence [the Antonine Plague] was still raging at this time, he […] trained slaves for military service — just as had been done in the Punic war — whom he called Volunteers, after the example of the Volones.  He armed gladiators [likewise slaves] also, calling them the Compliant, and turned even the bandits of Dalmatia and Dardania into soldiers. (Historia Augusta)

Marcus’ Legislative Measures

Birley, who provides the most academically authoritative biography of Marcus Aurelius’ life, writes of the evidence regarding his legislative agenda:

In all the legislation preserved three major interests are apparent. The first is the question of the ‘manumission’ – liberation – of slaves; the second is the appointment of guardians for orphans and minors; the third is the selection of councillors (decuriones) to run the affairs of local communities throughout the provinces.

Later, Birley remarks:

This interest in giving any slave the maximum possible chance of attaining his freedom, if there had ever been any question of his master wishing to grant it, was a matter which Marcus was concerned with throughout his reign, and towards the end of it, a decision he made, in a case involving manumission brought to his attention by his friend Aufidius Victorinus, was to be constantly cited by the jurists as the decisive precedent.

The rights of slaves were generally improved throughout Marcus’ reign. Indeed, it was Antoninus Pius, with Marcus serving as his right-hand man, who first decreed that owners should stand trial for the murder of slaves, granting them protection under the law in that regard for the first time.

The French jurisconsult, Firmin Laferrière, reviewed the influence of Stoic philosophy on Roman law in The influence of Stoicism on the doctrine of the Roman jurisconsults (1860). With regard to slavery he observed of the Stoics:

As interpreters of the laws, jurisconsults were obliged to submit to an institution established in the civil law of Rome and other peoples; but they placed in their writings the maxim of natural law next to the civil institution, as a perpetual and morally superior teaching, and they tried to soften the condition of slaves by the influence of feelings of humanity, or to transform it into a free condition by changes in jurisprudence: Quod attinet ad jus civile, servi pro nullis habentur, non tamen et jure naturali. [As it concerns civil law, slaves are regarded as nobodies; this is not the case, however, in natural law.]

Laferrière, p. 26

Noyen (‘Marcus Aurelius: The Greatest Practician of Stoicism’,1955) undertook a detailed analysis of Roman juridical texts in relation to Marcus Aurelius and found 324 references to texts by him or about him. The majority refer to the rights of women, children and slaves. Noyen goes so far as to conclude from his reading of these texts:

The slaves and the freedmen, about whom we possess some sixty laws, constitute the lion’s share in Marcus’ legislature. The latter is completely dedicated to the “favor libertatis“, and makes us think, however daring this opinion may seem, that Marcus, faithful to his Stoic principles, aimed at the complete abolition of slavery.

Noyen, p. 376

Paul Barron Watson’s excellent biography of Marcus Aurelius contains a very detailed account of the specific legislative changes that Marcus enacted in order to improve the rights of slaves. It’s about twelve pages long. I’ll quote some key passages at length below but you’ll have to consult the original for the numerous examples he cites regarding specific pieces of legislation. He opens with the conclusion:

The broad and charitable attitude which men were beginning to take with reference to the rights and duties of the various portions of society can be due only to the principles of Stoicism, which were forcing themselves upon the minds of men […] In no way was this breadth of purpose more marked than in the laws which Marcus passed in aid of slaves. […]

In addition, therefore, to the feelings of benevolence which actuated Marcus Aurelius in relieving this down-trodden class of society, he was induced by political reasons to enact measures to avert the impending danger [of slave revolts]. How to augment the relatively small free population and how to alleviate the distress of the slaves and freedmen, were problems which Marcus kept continually before him. He strove to make real that idea which he speaks of in his Thoughts [i.e., The Meditations] — the idea of a “polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed.”

It was a difficult task that lay before the Emperor. Revolutions sometimes take place in politics — in law, never. The boast of law is that it is founded on justice; and the principles of justice remain eternally the same. The principles of political parties may be overthrown by the weight of numbers or the power of wealth; in law, whatever alterations are accomplished are effected by force of argument alone. To convince the Roman people that a person taken in war is not the property of the captor was more than any one emperor could accomplish. Marcus Aurelius did a noble work-in promulgating this doctrine; but its final adoption could only be effected by the reasoning of ages. As a first step towards the abolition of slavery Marcus introduced a practice which was, in fact, almost a logical consequence of his immediate predecessors’ beneficent laws. [Hadrian had introduced basic rights for slaves by declaring that a master could not kill their slave without just cause.]

Marcus Aurelius was quick to perceive the advantage which had thus been gained; and he at once followed it up by an enactment, framed as a privilege to the master, but in reality a decided benefit to the slave. By this new law the master was empowered to bring an action in the courts for every injury suffered at the hands of his slave.1 Thus the masters were encouraged to lay all their grievances before the tribunals instead of taking the punishment of their slaves into their own hands, as they had done hitherto. It was one step more towards placing both upon the same footing. If the masters could be induced to rely on the courts to award them justice for all injuries from their slaves, it would follow almost as a corollary that the slaves might look to the courts for protection from the injustice of their masters. It is always the oppressed that gain when law is substituted in the place of despotism. A secondary purpose which Marcus had in encouraging masters to lay their grievances before the courts was to do away with a brutal custom known as the quaestio, or torture. This had long been the ordinary way of inducing a slave to confess any crime which he had committed, and also of compelling him to furnish evidence against his fellows. It was a method which failed chiefly in the uncertainty of its result. […]

Even Marcus Aurelius seems to have aimed rather at substituting a more just method of obtaining evidence than at abolishing entirely the older form of procedure. To his cred it, however, it should be said that he urged strongly the propriety of resorting to this method only as a last resource, and even then of using as little violence as possible. Indeed, the compilers of the Digest have preserved a letter in which Marcus recommends that a slave who, under torture, had confessed a crime of which he turned out afterwards to be innocent, should be set at liberty, in recompense for the indignity he had suffered.’

Another humane law, by which Marcus re-strained the cruelty of masters, provided that if a slave should be sold, otherwise than after judgment in the courts, for the purpose of being pitted against beasts in the arena, both the seller and the buyer should be punished.’ As long, however, as the masters were just and kind towards their slaves, the Emperor felt that the slaves were, in return, bound to obey their masters. He therefore published an open letter, in which he proclaimed it to be the duty of all governors, magistrates, and police soldiers to aid masters in their search for fugitive slaves. When found, the runaways were to be returned to their masters, and whoever aided in concealing them was to be punished.’ Indeed, Marcus went further ; and made it lawful for the search to be conducted upon the estates of the emperor as well as upon those of senator or peasant.’

It was not only, however, with a view towards relieving the condition of those in actual slavery that Marcus worked, he sought, also, to render enfranchisement more easy. [Watson recounts several specific legislative changes made by Marcus to increase the rights of slaves to manumission; for example:] In cases where a slave was sold or given away, to be manumitted at the death of the recipient, Marcus insisted, with the utmost imperativeness, that the manumission must be performed. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way.’

The condition, too, of slaves who had already received their liberty, Marcus attempted to alleviate. [Again, several legal examples are provided.] In all doubtful cases with regard to slaves and freedmen Marcus preferred to fail on the side of charity rather than to encourage cruelty; and we hear of some in stances where he even went so far as to allow a freedman to be chosen as tutor to his infant patron. One law more we must notice before leaving the subject of slavery. It is set forth in a rescript of Marcus Aurelius, and reflects clearly the benevolent principles which actuated the Emperor in all his public life. The aim of the law was to prevent masters who had stipulated with their slaves that they should be freed if they performed such and such services before a certain time, from evading their contract.

Marcus adds to this final rescript: “for principles of humanity demand that a money consideration shall never stand in the way of a person’s freedom”. (86-97)

Discussions of Stoic Ethics usually focus on the fourfold division of the cardinal virtues into wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude.  These are frequently mentioned by the Stoics, although they go back to Plato.  They may have originated with Socrates, or possibly even with an earlier source.  However, the Stoics actually refer more often to a threefold structure that permeates their philosophy.  (See Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel for more on this.)  For example, Zeno was reputedly the first to divide Stoicism into the three topics called Logic, Physics, and Ethics in his book Exposition of Doctrine.  Most other Stoics shared the same division, although some treated them in a different order.  All seem to have agreed that these three subjects overlapped, though.  Moreover, according to Diogenes Laertius, some Stoics actually referred to virtues as Logical, Physical, and Ethical.  My hypothesis in this article is basically that Stoic Ethics, particularly the Stoic concept of virtue, can best be understood in terms of this threefold structure, as a way of living harmoniously across three domains or relationships we have in life: with our own self, with other people, and with external events in the world.

1. Living at one with our own true nature, as rational beings, with natural self-love, and without inner conflict, division, or tension.
2. Living at one, or harmoniously, with other people, even our “enemies”, by viewing ourselves as part of a single community or system.
3. Living at one with external events, by welcoming the Fate that befalls us, without complaint, fear, or craving for more.

For example:

But to reverence and honour thy own mind will make thee content with thyself, and in harmony with society, and in agreement with the gods, that is, praising all that they give and have ordered. (Meditations, 6.16)

The Stoics were pantheists, who believed that the totality of the universe, the whole of space and time, is divine.  By contemplating the unity of the whole, and our place within it, as our guide in life, we help ourselves to fulfill our nature and approach virtue and wisdom.  Alienation, conflict, frustration, and complaint, toward ourselves, other people, or our Fate, is symptomatic of vice for the Stoics.  I take it that living wisely and harmoniously across these three levels is part of what Zeno and other Stoics meant by “living in agreement with Nature”.  Even though the Stoic Sage may experience pain, and flashes of emotional suffering (propatheiai), he still retains a fundamental composure in his voluntary responses to self, others, and world.  His life goes smoothly, in a sense, because he responds wisely, and harmoniously, to everything he experiences.

Living in Agreement with Nature

The famous slogan of Stoicism, that encapsulated the supreme goal, was “the life in agreement with nature” (to homologoumenos te phusei zen).  Diogenes Laertius says that Zeno coined this expression in his book On the Nature of Man.  It also resembles the title of another, presumably later, book by Zeno: On Life According to Nature (Peri tou kata physin biou).  The composite Greek word translated “agreement” literally means same-saying, or same-thinking.  To agree with Nature, in other words, means echoing its laws in our thoughts.  For the Stoics, in more theological terms, Nature is synonymous with Zeus, so it’s easier perhaps to think of agreeing with the laws of Nature as agreeing with the teachings of Zeus, by studying them and mirroring them in our thoughts and actions.  We’re told, by Diogenes Laertius, for example, that the Stoics described virtue or fulfillment as a way of being where every action helps to bring our inner spirit into harmony with the Will of Zeus.

The phrase “living in agreement with nature” probably implies both living in harmony with the universe and in acceptance of its nature, or laws.  It means the opposite of being alienated from nature through either ignorance or complaining.  Diogenes says that for the Stoics this life in agreement with nature is identical with virtue because when we follow nature we are guided by it toward the goal of virtue.  We’re told that Chrysippus said living excellently (virtuously) is synonymous with living in accord with our experience of the actual course of nature, because our individual natures are parts of the nature of the whole universe.  In other words, by genuinely understanding the cosmos as a whole, of which we’re part, and living accordingly, we simultaneously flourish as individuals and fulfill our own human nature.

They say virtue, in this sense, also consists in a “smoothly flowing” life, which has the connotation of a state of inner serenity.  Diogenes writes: “By the nature with which our life ought to be in accord, Chrysippus understands both universal nature and more particularly the nature of man, whereas Cleanthes takes the nature of the universe alone as that which should be followed, without adding the nature of the individual.”  This twofold distinction between human nature and cosmic nature appears to become the basis for a threefold distinction between our own inner nature, the nature of other people, and the Nature of the whole.

Consistency and Elenchus

According to Diogenes, Cleanthes said that virtue consists in a “harmonious disposition”, i.e., a habit of living in agreement with nature, or a “state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.”  And he emphasised that virtue is its own reward, and not to be chosen as a means to some other end, i.e., out of hope for something desirable or fear of some unwanted consequences.  Moreover, they say it is in virtue that happiness consists because virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.  The good is defined as “the natural perfection of a rational being qua rational”, which encompasses virtue as well as its supervening healthy passions.  They hold that the virtues involve one another, and that the possessor of one is the possessor of all, inasmuch as they have common principles, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his work On Virtues.  However, virtue or wisdom is also understood as a kind of consistency.  Contradictory opinions must be false, therefore, the Sage’s world view must be totally internally-coherent.

The Stoics admired the Socratic method of elenchus, which attempts to expose contradictions in the opinions of the another person by penetrating questioning.  The Sage would be like someone who has endured this interrogation about his life, and resolved any conflicts between his thoughts or actions.  The connotation of the phrase “living in agreement”, therefore, also appears to be living “in agreement with ourselves” or consistently.  It seems novice Stoics probably had teachers who acted as personal mentors, cross-examining their life and actions in terms of consistency with their moral principles.  Galen, the personal physician of Marcus Aurelius, described this in detail in his writings, apparently drawing on lost works by Chrysippus.  In Marcus’ own case, it’s possible that his main Stoic teacher, Junius Rusticus, served this role.   Marcus mentions that he often felt angry with Rusticus, perhaps because he questioned him very bluntly.  However, it’s easy to see how enduring this cross-examination could lead to a more consistent world-view and way of life.  When Seneca describes cross-examining himself after reviewing his actions throughout the day, at the end of each evening, he may be describing a similar exercise, intended to be used in the absence of a teacher.

The constancy of the Sage is a major theme running through Stoic literature.  The Sage is the same in every eventuality.  His world view is free from contradictions and totally coherent.  His thoughts don’t “flutter” between contradictory opinions, which is one Stoic definition of emotional disturbance or unhealthy passion.  The Athenian decree in honour of Zeno, after his death, highlights the fact that he was known as a teacher whose life was completely in accord with his philosophical doctrines.  He was supremely consistent, his thoughts were in harmony with one another, and his actions were in harmony with his thoughts.  We could say that the Sage is a fully-integrated individual, free from inner conflict, who doesn’t struggle against himself, although he still exerts one kind of inner “tension” in paying attention to and remaining detached from incipient proto-passions and misleading impressions.

Oikeiôsis and Natural Affection

This wisdom and harmony that operates across all of his relationships in life can also be understood in terms of the Stoic concept of oikeiôsis, which is central to Stoic Ethics.  It’s a tricky word to translate but is derived from the Greek for “household” and related to the English word “economy”.  It denotes the action of making something or someone part of your household.  Sometimes it’s therefore translated as “appropriation”, although we could also describe it as a process of taking “ownership”.  However, it seems to me that it’s best understood as a process of moral and metaphysical identification.  Sometimes it’s also translated as “affinity” and I believe it’s much easier to understand oikeiôsis by considering its opposite: alienation.  According to the Neoplatonist Porphyry, those who followed Zeno, the Stoics, “stated that oikeiôsis is the beginning of justice” but it’s much more than that, as we’ll see.  As Porphyry’s words imply, though, oikeiôsis was a concept particularly associated with the Stoic school of philosophy, and their use of it distinguished their position from other Hellenistic philosophies such as Epicureanism.

The most familiar sense of the word is the one in which it refers to the Stoic progressively extending moral consideration to other people and as such it’s closely related to their concept of “natural affection” or “familial affection” (philostorgia).  The Stoics believed that we humans, like many other species, have a natural (instinctive) tendency to care for their own offspring, and also their mates.  Plutarch says that in The Republic of Zeno, perhaps the founding text of Stoicism, the ideal society was described through the analogy of a herd (presumably of cattle) feeding in a common pasture.  The theme of the Stoic hero or wise man as a mighty bull who protects weaker members of his herd recurs throughout the surviving Stoic literature.  The Stoics frequently repeat their fundamental claim, in opposition to the Epicureans, that man is by nature both rational and social.  (So, in one sense, the two most fundamental cardinal virtues for Stoics were wisdom and justice.)  The bull identifies with, and has “familial affection”, for the rest of his herd.  He will face a lion and endure pain and injury from his claws, to defend the weaker members, because their lives instinctively matter to him, as members of his herd or, if you like, his “household”.  (Incidentally, a number of important Stoics came from the great city of Tarsus in Cilicia, which was traditionally associated with the symbol of the bull.)  Stoicism involves progressively applying oikeiosis to other people, cultivating natural affection toward them, and bringing them into our “household” or “family”, as if we were all members of the same herd.

For Stoics, because humans possess reason, we have an obligation to extend our “household” to encompass all rational beings, as our kin.  The ultimate goal is to attain the supremely “philanthropic” (loving mankind) and cosmopolitan (citizen of the universe) attitude of the Stoic Sage, who views his “household” as the cosmic city and the rest of humanity as his brothers and sisters.  The Stoic Hierocles actually recommends that we imagine our relationships as consisting of a series of concentric circles.  We are at the centre, our family and friends in the next rings, then our countrymen, and the rest of humanity.  He advises us to imagine drawing those in the outer circles closer to the centre, i.e., treating others progressively more and more as if we identified with them, bringing them further into our metaphorical household.  He even suggests we call friends “brother” or “sister” and so on, using our language to encourage a stronger sense of kinship.  Indeed, we can see Stoics like Marcus Aurelius actually do remind themselves to refer to others in this way, he even calls strangers “brother”.  When asked to define what a friend is, Zeno said “a second self” (alter ego), which perhaps assumes the level of identification found in the perfect Sage.  Aristotle also uses this phrase several times in the Nicomachean Ethics, saying both that the friend of a virtuous man is a second self to him and that parents naturally treat their offspring as a second self.  On the other hand, the Stoics are keen to avoid alienation from the rest of mankind, which they see as a symptom of vice.  Even toward one’s enemies, there should be a sense of connection.  As Marcus puts it, we should view other people as though we’re the top and bottom rows of teeth, designed by nature to work together, even in opposition to one another.  Zeno reputedly said in The Republic that the good alone are “true citizens or friends or kindred or free men” and that those lacking wisdom, the vicious, are the opposite, i.e., foreigners to the cosmic city, enemies to one another, alienated from the rest of mankind, and inner slaves to their own passions.  Indeed, in the case of humans, he said that even parents and their offspring become enemies, as opposed to having natural oikeiôsis for one another like animals, insofar as they are foolish and vicious.

However, it’s long been understood that for Stoics oikeiôsis functions at two levels: self and social.  The Stoics believed that it was important to give a developmental account of moral psychology.  The explain that human infants resemble other animals but gradually develop psychologically and acquire the capacity for language use and abstract reasoning.  At birth, we’re driven by our self-preservation instincts.  Gradually, we come to identify more with our mind than our body.  If you were to ask someone whether they’d rather lose their mind and keep their body, or vice versa, most people would obviously rather be a brain in a vat than a mindless zombie.  The Stoics think of this increasing identification with the mind, and our capacity for thinking, as a form of oikeiôsis that operates within the individual.  On the other hand, we’re to avoid alienation from our true selves, from reason and our capacity for virtue.  As Epictetus puts it, someone who succumbs to unhealthy passions and abandons the law of reason has, in a sense, turned themselves into an animal, and lost touch with their true nature, which is rational and even divine.  We become divided within ourselves, and at conflict with our own rational nature, when we allow ourselves to be degraded by vice.

When combined with our social instincts, it drives the social oikeiôsis that causes us to feel an affinity with other thinking beings.  For example, if a stone could think and speak, we might come to assign more rights to it than to a human being who’s trapped in a permanent vegetative state, incapable of thought or consciousness.  For the Stoics, this means also that we’re akin to the gods, with whom we share reason.  It should also have meant that Stoics viewed themselves as akin to the people Greeks and Romans called “barbarians”, foreigners who didn’t speak their language.  Race and culture are less important than whether someone is rational and therefore capable of attaining wisdom – that’s what makes them our brother or sister in the Stoic sense.

Those two forms of oikeiôsis are familiar to many students of Stoicism but In The Elements of Ethics, the Stoic Hierocles explicitly states that oikeiôsis was understood by Stoics as operating across the three levels we mentioned earlier: self, others, and world.  That maps the central ethical concept of oikeiôsis directly onto the same threefold model that recurs throughout the surviving Stoic literature.  I would presume that when Hierocles speaks of oikeiôsis applied to the level of the world that actually denotes a theme that’s already familiar and occurs frequently throughout the Stoic literature.  In part, it’s what we call amor fati, borrowing Nietzsche’s phrase: the Stoic acceptance or love of fate.  Alienation from our fate is a common theme in the Stoic literature and is marked by frustration and complaining.  Ownership of our fate requires, first and foremost, that we grasp the indifferent nature of externals.  If we believe that externals are intrinsically good or bad, in the strong sense, then we’ll be disturbed either by the loss of things we desire or by the occurrence of things to which we’re averse.  To avoid being alienated from life, to live at one and in harmony with events beyond our control, we have to view them with Stoic indifference.

The Four Virtues and Threefold Structure

As Pierre Hadot and others have observed, in the Stoic literature, particularly in Marcus Aurelius, it’s possible to discern a rough correlation between the three topics of Physics, Ethics, and Logic, and the four cardinal virtues.  It may also be that Epictetus’ three “disciplines” map onto this triad as suggested below:

Virtues	Relationships	Topics	Disciplines
Wisdom	Self	Logic	Assent
Justice	Others	Ethics	Action
Courage and Temperance	World	Physics	Fear and Desire

Note that there are some passages in the Stoic literature, though, that appear to conflict with this schema.  However, arguably it appears consistent enough to treat those as exceptions.  Even if this model was employed by some Stoics, it’s likely not universal, and would be contradicted by other Stoics.

These are my rough notes for the “Stoicism & Love” workshop I did at the Stoicism Today conference in London, 2014…

To recap from earlier: Christopher Gill mentioned that some modern commentators, such as Richard Sorabji and Martha Nussbaum, question whether there’s much room for love in Stoicism, which they describe as involving “detachment” from other people.  He notes that this was not a criticism that was commonly levelled against Stoics in the ancient world, though.  The Stoics saw themselves, and I think were generally seen by others, as a philosophical school advocating a kind of affection for the rest of mankind, bound up with what is often called a philanthropic and cosmopolitan attitude.  Chris notes that the Stoics do challenge us nevertheless to love others in a way that is brutally honest and realistic about their mortality and our own, the transience of our relationships, and our lack of control over others.

So, on the one hand, many people, and possibly even a few academics, assume that Stoicism and love are somehow incompatible or at least in conflict.  On the other hand, Marcus Aurelius, in the very first chapter of The Meditations, describes the Stoic ideal as being “free from passions and yet full of love” – meaning irrational and unhealthy passions.  I think he later uses a similar expression to describe his own goal in life as a Stoic.  Marcus actually says he should love other people, not just superficially, but from the very bottom of his heart (Meditations, 10.1).  He seems pretty serious about the whole idea of loving mankind as if they were his brothers.  Likewise, Cicero explicitly says of the Stoic concept of love:

The Stoics actually both say that the wise man will experience love, and they define love itself as the effort to make a friendship from the semblance of beauty. (Tusculan Disputations, 4.72)

I’m pretty sure that by “the semblance of beauty” he means here inner beauty or virtue, as Socrates and the Stoics understood it.  So the Stoic Sage definitely experiences love, and presumably loves the virtuous in particular, although the “seeds” of wisdom and virtue are within everyone.  So he potentially loves all mankind in that respect.

Indeed, to start with, I’d just like to point out that philosophy, of course means “love of wisdom”, and that it seems to me the Stoics were very aware of that meaning and took it fairly literally.  Wisdom is more or less synonymous with virtue in Stoicism and love of wisdom is therefore synonymous with love of virtue, which is something the Stoics certainly appear to advocate.  Indeed, the supreme “healthy passion” they describe, rational “Joy” (chara), is basically a kind of rejoicing in the presence of virtue.  So ancient Stoicism entailed rejoicing in virtue and, literally, loving wisdom – and I think those themes are pretty clear in some of the texts, especially Marcus Aurelius.

In the translations of Marcus Aurelius I checked, incidentally, the word “love” is used about 40 times, far more than “virtue” for instance.  He talks about love all the time.  The Stoic literature is actually full of positive references to love, friendship, affection, and similar concepts.  Some of them very emphatic about the central role of “love for humanity” in Stoicism.  For example, Seneca wrote:

No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings, nor more attention to the common good.  (Seneca, On Clemency, 3.3)

Big Questions from Thursday’s Stoic-Week Discussion

1. What does Marcus mean by being full of love, or natural affection, and yet free from (irrational or unhealthy) passions?
2. To what extent does love or natural affection seem to play a role in Stoic philosophy?

Although some people perhaps read the Stoics in different ways on this point, Pierre Hadot thought Stoic philanthropy and cosmopolitanism were very similar to the Christian notion of brotherly-love:

It cannot, then, be said that “loving one’s neighbour as oneself” is a specifically Christian invention.  Rather, it could be maintained that the motivation of Stoic love is the same as that of Christian love. […] Even the love of one’s enemies is not lacking in Stoicism. (Hadot, 1998, p. 231)

There are many Stoic passages that support this, e.g., Marcus wrote:

It is a man’s especial privilege to love even those who stumble.  And this love follows as soon as you reflect that they are akin to you and that they do wrong involuntarily and through ignorance, and that within a little while both they and you will be dead; and this above all, that the man has done you no harm; for he has not made your “ruling faculty” worse than it was before. (Meditations, 7.22)

So the Stoic loves others because they are his kin, as citizens of the cosmos, and rational beings.  What if they don’t love us back, though?  The Earl of Shaftesbury wrote that Stoic love was “disinterested” and not dependent on reciprocation from the people loved:

Come on, let us see now if thou canst love disinterestedly.  “Thanks my good kinsman (brother, sister, friend), for giving me so generous a part, that I can love though not beloved.” (Shaftesbury, 2005, p. 108)

There’s a nice passage in Seneca (Letters, 9) where he says that the Stoic wise man naturally prefers to have friends but that he doesn’t need or crave them, and he is perfectly contented within himself if fate denies him the company of other people.

Big Questions from Thursday’s Stoic-Week Discussion

1. How does love for others in Stoicism compare to the idea of love for others in Christianity, compassion in Buddhism, or brotherly-love in other philosophical or religious traditions?
2. Also: How does Stoic love compare to the way romantic love tends to be portrayed in Hollywood films or in romantic novels?

The Stoics emphasise the concept of “natural affection”, the kind of love a parent has for their children, as the basis of their ethics.  Shaftesbury calls this attitude, extended to everyone as fellow citizens of the cosmos, Stoic “philanthropy” or love of mankind:

What is it to have Natural Affection?  Not that which is only towards relations, but towards all mankind; to be truly philanthrôpos [philanthropic, a lover of mankind], neither to scoff, nor hate, nor be impatient with them, nor abominate them, nor overlook them; and to pity in a manner and love those that are the greatest miscreants, those that are most furious against thyself in particular, and at the time when they are most furious? (Shaftesbury, 2005, p. 1)

Shaftesbury compares this Stoic attitude of natural affection for mankind to the loving attitude of a mother or nurse toward a sickly child.  The Stoics often sought to emulate Zeus, as their ideal, and the paternal affection Zeus was supposed to have for mankind, his children.  Musonius Rufus therefore describes the Stoic Zeus as the patron god of friendship and familial affection.  For the Stoics, to be philanthropic, to love mankind as one’s brothers and fellow world-citizens, is to be godlike, in a sense.

Musonius famously argued that women as well as men should study Stoic philosophy.  He claimed that Stoicism would actually make women more able to properly love their children, rather than somehow repressing their affection for them.  “Who, more than she [a female Stoic] would love her children more than life?” (Lectures, 3).  Indeed there are several places where Stoics suggest it would be fundamentally unnatural to suppress feelings such as parental love, and therefore irrational to do so.  Epictetus actually says that “when a child is born it is no longer in our power not to love it or care for it”; it’s natural for parents to care, for instance, if their child is hurt (Discourses, 1.11; 1.23).  We actually have a whole Discourse (1.11) from Epictetus dedicated to the topic of “Natural Affection” or philostorgia.

This natural affection, though, is clearly to be somehow transformed in Stoicism.  Epictetus asked his students: “How, then, shall I become loving and affectionate?” (Discourses, 3.24).  His answer was that Stoics should become affectionate in a manner consistent with the fundamental rules and doctrines of their philosophy.  In particular, we’re to love while bearing in mind the distinction between what’s up to us and what is not.  He also suggests that if what we’re calling “love” or “affection” makes us enslaved to our passions and miserable, then it’s not “good” for us, and that’s a sign something is wrong.   Put another way, this presumably means that Stoics should love in accord with the “reserve clause”.  So we should wish that others flourish and become wise and virtuous, but we should do so lightly, completely accepting that our wish may not be realised – accepting them as they are, in other words, warts and all.

Exercise: Love as Acceptance versus Well-Wishing

The Stoics wanted others to flourish, become wise and virtuous,

1. Repeat the word “love” to yourself.
2. Contemplate first, the attitude of love as acceptance, accepting yourself despite your imperfections, seeing your current situation as the only one possible given your nature and your past environment and experiences.
3. Next contemplate the attitude of love as one of wishing yourself well, wanting yourself to flourish and attain goodness, virtue, and wisdom, now and in the future, fate permitting.
4. Now try to do the same for another person, begin by contemplating love as acceptance of their flaws, even their follies or vices, etc.
5. Now try to contemplate love as wishing for them to flourish and attain goodness, virtue, and wisdom, fate permitting.

So where does that leave us?  A good summary is in the article “Epictetus on How the Stoic Sage Loves”, by William O. Stephens, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14, 193-210, 1996.

The Stoic loves other people in a very free, giving way.  His love is not at all conditional upon its being reciprocated by the person loved.  The Stoic does not compromise his own moral integrity or mental serenity in his love for others, nor is his love impaired by his knowledge of the mortality of his loved ones.  Rather, the Stoic’s love and natural affection are tempered by reason.  His love and affection serve only to enrich his humanity, never to subject him to [psychological] torment.

Some of the key concepts here:

1. The Stoic ideal of wisdom and virtue definitely included loving other people – the Sage loves others and seeks friendship.
2. The Stoic Sage’s love is unconditional; it doesn’t require reciprocation, which would be an “indifferent” for Stoics because it’s not up to us.
3. The sort of love the Stoic Sage experiences is neither unhealthy nor excessive but healthy and consistent with virtue.
4. This sort of love is inherently realistic about the transience of external things and the mortality of those loved.
5. The love of the Stoic is fundamentally rational, meaning it’s consistent with reason and doesn’t lead to irrational behaviour.

 

Exercise: Hierocles and Metta Bhavana

The Stoic philosopher Hierocles, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, described psychological practices for expanding oikeiôsis, our sense of “affinity” for others.  He says our relationships can be represented as a series of concentric circles, radiating out from ourselves and our closest kin.  Stoics should attempt to “draw the circles somehow toward the centre”, he said, voluntarily reducing psychological distance in their relationships.  He even suggests verbal techniques, not unlike calling acquaintances “friend” or calling close friends “brother”.  Hierocles elsewhere recommends treating our brothers as if they were parts of our own body, like our hands and feet.  Zeno’s saying that a friend is “another self”, perhaps likewise encourages us to take others deeper into the circle of our affinity and natural affection.  Hierocles’ comments about oikeiôsis might be turned into a contemplative exercise.

There’s a popular Buddhist meditation exercise called metta bhavana, which means “expanding loving-kindness”.  We might use this as a basis for developing Hierocles’ advice into a modern contemplative practice.

1. It helps to prepare by choosing your examples in advance to visualise in a moment: yourself, a loved one, an acquaintance, an enemy,
2. Close your eyes; take a few moments to relax and focus your attention inward.
3. Picture a circle of light surrounding your own body and imagine that it symbolises a growing sense of rational self-love or affection toward yourself as a being capable of wisdom and virtue.  If you like, repeat a phrase such as “May I flourish and be happy” to yourself, to help focus on this attitude.
4. Now imagine that circle is expanding to encompass a member of your family, a loved one or close friend, whom you now project natural affection toward, as if they were somehow part of your own body.  Focus on the seeds of virtue within them, and wish them well, perhaps repeating a phrase like “May you flourish and be happy”, while accepting that this is beyond your direct control.
5. Next, imagine that circle expanding to encompass an acquaintance you encounter in daily life, toward whom you normally feel more neutral, perhaps colleagues you work alongside, and project feelings of natural affection toward them, as if they were members of your own family.
6. Again, let the circle expand further to include even someone you dislike, perhaps someone who sees you as an “enemy”, and focusing as much as possible on their positive qualities or virtues, wish them well, picturing the sphere of your affection spreading to include them.
7. Now let the circle encompass all of you together, allowing your feelings of affection to spread over the whole group.
8. Imagine the circle now progressively growing to envelop your surrounding area and finally the entire world and the whole human race as one, allowing your feelings of rational affection to spread out to every other member of the human race, developing a sense of kinship with them insofar as they possess reason and therefore the capacity for progressing toward wisdom.

Try to continue this attitude throughout your daily activity.  Seneca argued that expanding natural affection into a philanthropic attitude that encompasses the rest of mankind teaches us to love more philosophically, without over-attachment to any specific individual.  He goes so far as to say: “he who has not been able to love more than one, did not even love that one much” (Letters, 63).  The Sage is not infatuated with anyone.  He loves everyone as much as he is able, while accepting that they are changeable and that one day they will die.

In a nutshell…

One of the recurring questions that comes up in discussion forums is “What’s an ‘orthodox’ Stoic?”  I think most modern scholars would say that, first and foremost, it’s someone who believes that “virtue is the only true good”, as Cicero put it.  However, one of the main sources for our knowledge of early Stoicism, Diogenes Laertius, sheds some further light on this question.  He provides three examples of important students of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, who broke from the orthodox Stoic teachings of Zeno.  They changed their own beliefs in ways that caused them to be labelled “heterodox” and perhaps in some cases even caused them to split from the Stoic school completely, to go their own way, or join another school of philosophy.

1. Aristo of Chios, discounted the value of studying Physics and Logic, believing Ethics to be the sole concern of philosophy.  He also argued that apart from virtue and vice, everything else is completely “indifferent”, seemingly rejecting the Stoic doctrine of “preferred” indifferents.  He sounds like someone leaning toward the older Cynic teachings.
2. Herillus of Carthage, who argued that knowledge (episteme) in general was the true goal of life, rather than virtue, or knowledge specifically of the nature of the good.  However, he also seems to have argued that there are two fundamentally separate goals in life: the attainment of scholarly and scientific knowledge achieved only by the wise, and a “sub-goal” apparently pertaining to fulfilling one’s social and familial duties, which even the unwise could pursue.  The Stoics, by contrast, argued that the only goal is moral wisdom or virtue, and that this inherently entails acting for the welfare of others.  Herillus perhaps came to resemble the Academics or Aristotelians more than the Stoics, and may have been viewed as going to the opposite extreme compared to Aristo, in his arguments against Zeno.
3. Dionysius of Heraclea, who disagreed with Zeno after suffering from a painful eye-infection, which led him to conclude that pleasure (hedone), and presumably the avoidance of pain, was the true goal of life rather than virtue.  He left the Stoa to join the Cyrenaic school, although this dispute perhaps prefigures the long-running arguments between the later Stoics and Epicureans.

Discussion

One of our main sources for the teachings of the early Stoics is The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius.  The organisation of the book is particularly interesting with regard to Stoicism.  Book Six of the Lives concerns the Cynics and begins with a chapter on Antisthenes, followed by chapters on Diogenes of Sinope, Crates, and several other Cynics.  Diogenes claims that Stoicism is part of a philosophical succession going back to Cynicism and prior to that Antisthenes, who was a friend and student of Socrates.  So the “Cynic-Stoic succession” is thereby traced all the way back to its supposed origin in the teachings of Socrates.  Modern scholars believe it’s unlikely Diogenes of Sinope, the first Cynic, actually met Antisthenes.  Nevertheless, it’s quite possible he was inspired by his writings, so there may be a grain of truth in the notion that Antisthenes was somehow the forerunner of the Cynic, and thereby the Stoic, tradition.  In any case, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was undoubtedly greatly influenced by Cynicism, and we’re told he studied under the Cynic Crates of Thebes for many years before founding the Stoa.

Book Seven of the Lives therefore deals with the Stoic philosophers, starting with Zeno.  The first chapter, which covers Zeno’s life, contains a lengthy outline of early Stoicism in general.  Book Seven also contains chapters on several other important philosophers of the early Stoic school, such as Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno, and it concludes with a lengthy chapter on Chrysippus, the third head of the school.  However, curiously, the chapter on Zeno and the early doctrines of the school is immediately followed by three chapters on lesser-known Stoics, described by Diogenes Laertius as “heterodox”, i.e., unorthodox, or renegades from the school.

[Among the pupils of Zeno were:] Ariston, the son of Miltiades and a native of Chios, who introduced the doctrine of things morally indifferent; Herillus of Carthage, who affirmed knowledge to be the end; Dionysius, who became a renegade to the doctrine of pleasure, for owing to the severity of his ophthalmia he had no longer the nerve to call pain a thing indifferent: his native place was Heraclea. (Diogenes Laertius, 7.1)

It may be noteworthy that although all three are described as pupils of Zeno, only Dionysius is actually labelled a renegade from the school, and he is the only one of whom we are specifically told that he joined another school, the Cyrenaics.  Before introducing these three, at the end of the chapter on Zeno, he also writes as follows referring to them as “Stoics”:

But the points on which certain of the Stoics differed from the rest are the following. (Diogenes Laertius, 7.1)

Diogenes concludes the three chapters on heterodox Stoics by saying:

These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics.  The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak. (Lives, 7.4)

This can be taken as evidence that there were important internal disputes that helped to shape the early development of the Stoic school.  It’s not entirely clear to what extent these three philosophers were subsequently associated with the Stoics, except that we’re told Dionysius left to join the Cyrenaics.  Each was called heterodox because of doctrinal disagreements with Zeno, which happened to be quite different in each case.  Their reasons for being classed as “heterodox” or “renegade” Stoics are worth outlining as they provide an interesting overview of three distinct ways in which an early Stoic could be considered to have strayed so far from Zeno’s teachings that he was no longer considered a Stoic at all.  In other words, this gives us some insight into which beliefs were considered orthodox to early Stoicism.

1. Aristo of Chios

Also spelled “Ariston” and known as “Aristo the Bald”.  Although he came to disagree with Zeno’s teachings, Aristo seems to have been an important and influential teacher in his own right.  We’re told elsewhere that Marcus Aurelius was inspired to become a philosopher, many centuries later, by reading Aristo’s works.

Aristo rejected the value of studying Physics and Logic, and instead claimed that philosophers should only concern themselves with Ethics.  This attitude appears to resemble that of the Cynics.  Zeno started his own philosophical career as a Cynic but began to study at the Academy and the Megarian school, apparently because he felt that some understanding of Logic and Physics was important, and lacking from the Cynic philosophy.  Stoicism was therefore known for its threefold curriculum: Ethics, Physics and Logic.  However, different Stoics appear to have placed different degrees of importance on these three disciplines.  It’s often felt that the late Roman Stoics are primarily concerned with Ethics, and have noticeably less to say about Physics and Logic, although this may be partly a reflection of the fact that only a small fragment of their writings survive.  It sometimes appears that Logic and Physics are important to Stoicism, but perhaps not absolutely essential.  For instance, their heroes, such as Heracles and Diogenes, did not excel in Physics or Logic, and yet were considered role-models because of their moral character.  Aristo appears to have gone too far, though, by completely rejecting the value of Logic and Physics for philosophy.

Aristo also rejected Zeno’s concept of “preferred” indifferents and insisted that apart from virtue and vice, everything else must be regarded as totally indifferent.  In this respect, he also appears more aligned with the Cynics rather than the Stoics.  Although, curiously, he doesn’t appear to be considered particularly aligned with Cynicism by other ancient authors.  Again, some scholars see the introduction of the concept of “preferred” indifferents as one of the key things that distinguished Stoics from Cynics.

2. Herillus of Carthage

Also spelled “Erillus” and sometimes said to be of Chalcedon rather than Carthage, presumably due to an error in the ancient sources.

He argued that knowledge (episteme) should be regarded as the true goal of life, rather than virtue, and he appears to have said also that such knowledge takes different forms in different circumstances.  The early Stoics appear to have argued that virtue itself is a form of knowledge.  The highest virtue, wisdom, is described as the knowledge of good and evil, and of indifferent things, and the other virtues are defined in similar times as ethical knowledge in relation to different forms of action.  This suggests that Herillus broke from the teachings of Zeno by making knowledge in general the goal of life, whereas the Stoics considered only ethical knowledge, or moral wisdom, to be an end in itself.  They probably considered other forms of knowledge, or science, to be of some kind of subordinate value.  For example, Chrysippus reputedly taught that Physics is of value only insofar as it contributes to our understanding of Ethics.  Stoic literature is full of warnings against those who pursue abstract learning for its own sake, without grounding it somehow in the practicalities of living a virtuous life.  Diogenes Laertius has relatively little to say about him, but he writes:

Herillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge, that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects, as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in reply to Zeno.

We’re told he wrote several books on topics including, training exercises (askesis), the passions, on judgements or opinions (hupolepsis), and on Hermes, and Medea.  Diogenes Laertius tells us in his chapter on the life of Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno as head of the Stoa, that he wrote a book entitled “Reply to Herillus”.  This suggests that Herillus’ break from the Stoa and his criticisms of Zeno were significant enough for the second head of the school to attempt to refute them in writing.

It’s perhaps tempting to see Herillus as leaning away from the Stoa and more in the direction of Plato’s Academy, and perhaps the Aristotelians, in this respect.

3. Dionysius of Heraclea

Dionysius of Heraclea (c. 330 – c. 250 BC) was also known as “Dionysius the Renegade”, because of his radical break from the Stoic teachings of Zeno.  The Greek word literally means one who changes sides or changes his mind, i.e., a turn-coat or renegade.  It’s perhaps notable that neither Aristo nor Herillus are labelled as ones who changed sides, or renegades from the Stoic school.  Perhaps this is meant to imply that they remained Stoics, albeit unorthodox ones, whereas Dionysius actually left the Stoa.

He had previously studied philosophy in the Megarian school, before becoming a student of Zeno.  Dionysius left the Stoa because he came to value pleasure (hedone), and the absence of pain, as the goal of life, rather than virtue.  We’re actually told that Dionysius left the Stoa to join the Cyrenaic school, who made pleasure the goal of life.  We’re told Dionysius was driven to this conclusion by the intolerable pain and discomfort of an eye-infection.  In his chapter on the life of Zeno, Diogenes Laertius writes:

When Dionysius the Renegade asked [Zeno], “Why am I the only pupil you do not correct?” the reply was, “Because I mistrust you.”

We know little more about Dionysius. He wrote two books on freedom from passions (apatheia), two on training exercises (askesis), four on pleasure (hedone), among others.

Zeno classed pleasure and pain as key examples of morally “indifferent” things.  So Dionysius’ claim that pleasure is the goal of life would have constituted a very radical departure from “orthodox” Stoic teachings, so much so that he inevitably left and rebranded himself as a Cyrenaic.

The Cyrenaic school was quite different from the Epicurean school, which rose to prominence slightly later.  However, this schism in the early Stoa can probably be seen as prefiguring the subsequent and long-running disagreements between the Stoics and Epicureans.