conscious of itself only as the universal. Now could one call this happiness, in distinction to the other, true happiness, happiness would still, on the whole, remain a wrong expression. The satisfaction of rational consciousness in itself as an immediate universal, is a state of being which is simulated by the determination of happiness; for in happiness we have the moment of self-consciousness as an individuality. But this differentiated consciousness is not present in that self-satisfaction; for in that freedom the individual has rather the sense of his universality only. Striving after happiness, after spiritual enjoyment, and talking of the excellence of the pleasures of science and art, is hence dull and insipid, for the matter with which we are occupied has no longer the form of enjoyment, or it does away with that conception. This sort of talk has indeed passed away and it no longer has any interest. The true point of view is to concern oneself with the matter itself and not with enjoyment, that is, not with the constant reflection on the relation to oneself as individual, but with the matter as a matter, and as implicitly universal. We must take care besides that things are tolerable to us as individuals, and the pleasanter the better. But no further notice or speech about this is requisite, nor are we to imagine that there is much that is rational and important within it. But the Stoic consciousness does not get beyond this individuality to the reality of the universal, and therefore it has only to express the form, the real as an individual, or the wise man.
The highest point reached by Aristotle, the thought of thought, is also present in Stoicism, but in such a way that it does not stand in its individual capacity as it appears to do in Aristotle, having what is different beside it, but as being quite alone. Thus in the Stoic consciousness there is just this freedom, this negative moment of abstraction from existence, an independence which is capable of giving up everything, but not as an empty passivity and self-abnegation, as though everything could be taken from it, but an independence which can resign it voluntarily, without thereby losing its reality; for its reality is really just the simple rationality, the pure thought of itself. Here pure consciousness thus attains to being its own object, and because reality is to it only this simple object, its object annuls in itself all modes of existence, and is nothing in and for itself, being therein only in the form of something abrogated.
All is merged into this: the simplicity of the Notion, or its pure negativity, is posited in relation to everything. But the real filling in, the objective mode, is wanting, and in order to enter into this, Stoicism requires that the content should be given. Hence the Stoics depicted the ideal of the wise man in specially eloquent terms, telling how perfectly sufficient in himself and independent he is, for what the wise man does is right. The description of the ideal formed by the Stoics is hence a common subject of discussion and is even devoid of interest; or at least the negative element in it is alone noteworthy. “The wise man is free and likewise in chains, for he acts from himself, uncorrupted by fear or desire.” Everything which belongs to desire and fear he does not reckon to himself, he gives to such the position of being something foreign to him; for no particular existence is secure to him. “The wise man is alone king, for he alone is not bound to laws, and he is debtor to no one.” Thus we here see the autonomy and autocracy of the wise man, who, merely following reason, is absolved from all established laws which are recognized, and for which no rational ground can be given, or which appear to rest somewhat on a natural aversion or instinct. For even in relation to actual conduct no definite law has properly speaking reality for him, and least of all those which appear to belong to nature as such alone, _e.g._ the prohibition against entering into marriage relations which are considered incestuous, the prohibition of intercourse between man and man, for in reason the same thing is fitting as regards the one which is so as regards the others. Similarly the wise man may eat human flesh,[143] &c. But a universal reason is something quite indeterminate. Thus the Stoics have not passed beyond their abstract understanding in the transgression of these laws, and therefore they have allowed their king to do much that was immoral; for if incest, pederasty, the eating of human flesh, were at first forbidden as though through a natural instinct only, they likewise can by no means exist before the judgment-seat of reason. The Stoic wise man is thus also ‘enlightened,’ in the sense that where he did not know how to bring the natural instinct into the form of a rational reason, he trampled upon nature. Thus that which is called natural law or natural instinct comes into opposition with what is set forth as immediately and universally rational. For example, those first actions seem to rest on natural feelings, and we must remember that feelings are certainly not the object of thought; as opposed to this, property is something thought, universal in itself, a recognition of my possession from all, and thus it indeed belongs to the region of the understanding. But should the wise man hence not be bound by the former because it is not something immediately thought, this is merely the fault of his want of comprehension. As we have, however, seen that in the sphere of theory the thought-out simplicity of the truth is capable of all content, so we find this also to be the case with the good, that which is practically thought-out, without therefore being any content in itself. To wish to justify such a content through a reason thus indicates a confusion between the perception of the individual and that of all reality, it means a superficiality of perception which does not acknowledge a certain thing because it is not known in this and that regard. But this is so for the reason that it only seeks out and knows the most immediate grounds and cannot know whether there are not other aspects and other grounds. Such grounds as these allow of reasons for and against everything being found—on the one hand a positive relation to something which, though in other cases necessary, as such can also be again sublated; and, on the other hand, a negative relation to something necessary, which can likewise again be held to be valid.
Because the Stoics indeed placed virtue in thought, but found no concrete principle of rational self-determination whereby determinateness and difference developed, they, in the first place, have carried on a reasoning by means of grounds to which they lead back virtue. They draw deductions from facts, connections, consequences, from a contradiction or opposition; and this Antoninus and Seneca do in an edifying way and with great ingenuity. Reasons, however, prove to be a nose of wax; for there are good grounds for everything, such as “These instincts, implanted as they are by nature,” or “Short life,” &c. Which reasons should be esteemed as good thereby depends on the end and interest which form the pre-supposition giving them their power. Hence reasons are as a whole subjective. This method of reflecting on self and on what we should do, leads to the giving to our ends the breadth of reflection due to penetrative insight, the enlargement of the sphere of consciousness. It is thus I who bring forward these wise and good grounds. They do not constitute the thing, the objective itself, but the thing of my own will, of my desire, a bauble through which I set up before me the nobility of my mind; the opposite of this is self-oblivion in the thing. In Seneca himself there is more folly and bombast in the way of moral reflection than genuine truth; and thus there has been brought up against him both his riches, the splendour of his manner of life, his having allowed Nero to give him wealth untold, and also the fact that he had Nero as his pupil; for the latter delivered orations composed by Seneca.[144] This reasoning is often brilliant, as with Seneca: we find much that awakens and strengthens the mind, clever antitheses and rhetoric, but we likewise feel the coldness and tediousness of these moral discourses. We are stimulated but not often satisfied, and this may be deemed the character of sophistry: if acuteness in forming distinctions and sincere opinion must be there recognized, yet final conviction is ever lacking.
In the second place there is in the Stoic standpoint the higher, although negatively formal principle, that what is thought is alone as such the end and the good, and therefore that in this form of abstract thought alone, as in Kant’s principle of duty, there is contained that by which man must establish and secure his self-consciousness, so that he can esteem and follow nothing in himself in as far as it has any other content for itself. “The happy life,” says Seneca (De vita beata, 5), “is unalterably grounded on a right and secure judgment.” The formal security of the mind which abstracts from everything, sets up for us no development of objective principles, but a subject which maintains itself in this constancy, and in an indifference not due to stupidity, but studied; and this is the infinitude of self-consciousness in itself.
Because the moral principle of the Stoics remains at this formalism, all that they treat of is comprised in this. For their thoughts are the constant leading back of consciousness to its unity with itself. The power of despising existence is great, the strength of this negative attitude sublime. The Stoic principle is a necessary moment in the Idea of absolute consciousness; it is also a necessary manifestation in time. For if, as in the Roman world, the life of the real mind is lost in the abstract universal; the consciousness, where real universality is destroyed, must go back into its individuality and maintain itself in its thoughts. Hence, when the political existence and moral actuality of Greece had perished, and when in later times the Roman Empire also became dissatisfied with the present, it withdrew into itself, and there sought the right and moral which had already disappeared from ordinary life. It is thus herein implied, not that the condition of the world is a rational and right one, but only that the subject as such should assert his freedom in himself. Everything that is outward, world, relationships, &c., are so disposed as to be capable of being abrogated; in it there is thus no demand for the real harmony of reason and existence; or that which we might term objective morality and rectitude is not found in it. Plato has set up the ideal of a Republic, _i.e._ of a rational condition of mankind in the state; for this esteem for right, morality and custom which is to him the principal matter, constitutes the side of reality in that which is rational; and it is only through a rational condition of the world such as this, that the harmony of the external with the internal is in this concrete sense present. In regard to morality and power of willing the good, nothing more excellent can be read than what Marcus Aurelius has written in his Meditations on himself; he was Emperor of the whole of the then known civilized world, and likewise bore himself nobly and justly as a private individual. But the condition of the Roman Empire was not altered by this philosophic emperor, and his successor, who was of a different character, was restrained by nothing from inaugurating a condition of things as bad as his own wicked caprice might direct. It is something much higher when the inward principle of the mind, of the rational will, likewise realizes itself, so that there arises a rational constitution, a condition of things in accordance with culture and law. Through such objectivity of reason, the determinations which come together in the ideal of the wise man are first consolidated. There then is present a system of moral relationships which are duties; each determination is then in its place, the one subordinated to the other, and the higher is predominant. Hence it comes to pass that the conscience becomes bound (which is a higher point than the Stoic freedom), that the objective relationships which we call duties are consolidated after the manner of a just condition of things, as well as being held by mind to be fixed determinations. Because these duties do not merely appear to hold good in a general sense, but are also recognized in my conscience as having the character of the universal, the harmony of the rational will and reality is established. On the one hand, the objective system of freedom as necessity exists, and, on the other, the rational in me is real as conscience. The Stoic principle has not yet reached to this more concrete attitude, as being on the one hand abstract morality, and, on the other, the subject that has a conscience. The freedom of self-consciousness in itself is the principle, but it has not yet attained to its concrete form, and its relation to happiness exists only in its determination as indifferent and contingent, which relation must be given up. In the concrete principle of rationality the condition of the world, as of my conscience, is not, however, indifferent.
This is a general description of Stoic morality; the main point is to recognize its point of view and chief relationships. Because in the Roman world a perfectly consistent position, and one conformable to existing conditions, has attained to the consciousness of itself, the philosophy of the Stoics has more specially found its home in the Roman world. The noble Romans have hence only proved the negative, an indifference to life and to all that is external; they could be great only in a subjective or negative manner—in the manner of a private individual. The Roman jurists are also said to have been likewise Stoic philosophers, but, on the one hand, we find that our teachers of Roman law only speak ill of Philosophy, and, on the other, they are yet sufficiently inconsistent to state it to the credit of the Roman jurists that they were philosophers. So far as I understand law, I can find in it, among the Romans, nothing either of thought, Philosophy or the Notion. If we are to call the reasoning of the understanding logical thought, they may indeed be held to be philosophers, but this is also present in the reasoning of Master Hugo, who certainly does not claim to be a philosopher. The reasoning of the understanding and the philosophic Notion are two different things. We shall now proceed to what is in direct contrast to the Stoic philosophy, Epicureanism.
B. EPICURUS.
B. EPICURUS.
The Epicurean philosophy, which forms the counterpart to Stoicism, was just as much elaborated as the Stoic, if, indeed, it were not more so. While the latter posited as truth existence for thought—the universal Notion—and held firmly to this principle, Epicurus, the founder of the other system, held a directly opposite view, regarding as the true essence not Being in general, but Being as sensation, that is, consciousness in the form of immediate particularity. As the Stoics did not seek the principle of the Cynics—that man must confine himself to the simplicity of nature—in man’s requirements, but placed it in universal reason, so Epicurus elevated the principle that happiness should be our chief end into the region of thought, by seeking pleasure in a universal which is determined through thought. And though, in so doing, he may have given a higher scientific form to the doctrines of the Cyrenaics. it is yet self-evident that if existence for sensation is to be regarded as the truth, the necessity for the Notion is altogether abrogated, and in the absence of speculative interest things cease to form a united whole, all things being in point of fact lowered to the point of view of the ordinary human understanding. Notwithstanding this proviso, before we take this philosophy into consideration, we must carefully divest ourselves of all the ideas commonly prevalent regarding Epicureanism.
As regards the life of Epicurus, he was born in the Athenian village of Gargettus in Ol. 109, 3 (B.C. 342), and therefore before the death of Aristotle, which took place in Ol. 114, 3. His opponents, especially the Stoics, have raked up against him more accusations than I can tell of, and have invented the most trivial anecdotes respecting his doings. He had poor parents; his father, Neocles, was village schoolmaster, and Chærestrata, his mother, was a sorceress: that is, she earned money, like the women of Thrace and Thessaly, by furnishing spells and incantations, as was quite common in those days. The father, taking Epicurus with him, migrated with an Athenian colony to Samos, but here also he was obliged to give instruction to children, because his plot of land was not sufficient for the maintenance of his family. At the age of about eighteen years, just about the time when Aristotle was living in Chalcis, Epicurus returned to Athens. He had already, in Samos, made the philosophy of Democritus a special subject of study, and now in Athens he devoted himself to it more than ever; in addition to this, he was on intimate terms with several of the philosophers then flourishing, such as Xenocrates, the Platonist, and Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle. When Epicurus was twelve years old, he read with his teacher Hesiod’s account of Chaos, the source of all things; and this was perhaps not without influence on his philosophic views.
Otherwise he professed to be self-taught, in the sense that he produced his philosophy entirely from himself; but we are not to suppose from this that he did not attend the lectures or study the writings of other philosophers. Neither is it to be understood that he was altogether original in his philosophy as far as content was concerned; for, as will be noted later, his physical philosophy especially is that of Leucippus and Democritus. It was at Mitylene in Lesbos that he first came forward as teacher of an original philosophic system, and then again at Lampsacus in Asia Minor; he did not, however, find very many hearers. After having for some years led an unsettled life, he returned in about the six and thirtieth year of his age to Athens, to the very centre of all Philosophy; and there, some time after, he bought for himself a garden, where he lived and taught in the midst of his friends. Though so frail in body that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair, in his manner of living he was most regular and frugal, and he devoted himself entirely to science, to the exclusion of all other interests. Even Cicero, though in other respects he has little to say in his favour, bears testimony to the warmth of his friendships, and adds that no one can deny he was a good, a humane, and a kindly man. Diogenes Laërtius gives special commendation to his reverence towards his parents, his generosity to his brothers, and his benevolence to all. He died of stone in the seventy-first year of his age. Just before his death he had himself placed in a warm bath, drank a cup of wine, and charged his friends to remember what he had taught them.[145] No other teacher has ever been loved and reverenced by his scholars as much as Epicurus; they lived on such intimate terms of friendship that they determined to make common stock of their possessions with him, and so continue in a permanent association, like a kind of Pythagorean brotherhood. This they were, however, forbidden to do by Epicurus himself, because it would have betrayed a distrust in their readiness to share what they had with one another; but where distrust is possible, there neither friendship, nor unity, nor constancy of attachment can find a place. After his death he was held in honoured remembrance by his disciples: they carried about with them everywhere his likeness, engraved on rings or drinking-cups, and remained so faithful to his teaching that they considered it almost a crime to make any alteration in it (while in the Stoic philosophy development was continually going on), and his school, in respect of his doctrines, resembled a closely-barricaded state to which all entrance was denied. The reason for this lies, as we shall presently see, in his system itself; and the further result, from a scientific point of view, ensued that we can name no celebrated disciples of his who carried on and completed his teaching on their own account. For his disciples could only have gained distinction for themselves by going further than Epicurus did. But to go further would have been to reach the Notion, which would only have confused the system of Epicurus; for what is devoid of thought is thrown into confusion by the introduction of the Notion, and it is this very lack of thought which has been made a principle. Not that it is in itself without thought, but the use made of thought is to hold back thought, and thought thus takes up a negative position in regard to itself; and the philosophic activity of Epicurus is thus directed towards the restoration and maintaining of what is sensuous through the very Notion which renders it confused. Therefore his philosophy has not advanced nor developed, but it must also be said that it has not retrograded; a certain Metrodorus alone is said to have carried it on further in some directions. It is also told to the credit of the Epicurean philosophy that this Metrodorus was the only disciple of Epicurus who went over to Carneades; for the rest, it surpassed all others in its unbroken continuity of doctrine and its long duration; for all of them became degenerate or suffered interruption. When some one called the attention of Arcesilaus to this attachment to Epicurus, by the remark that while so many had gone over from other philosophers to Epicurus, scarcely a single example was known of any one passing over from the Epicurean system to another, Arcesilaus made the witty rejoinder: “Men may become eunuchs, but eunuchs can never again become men.”[146] Epicurus himself produced in his lifetime an immense number of works, being a much more prolific author than Chrysippus, who vied with him in the number of his writings,[147] if we deduct from the latter his compilations from the works of others or from his own. The number of his writings is said to have amounted to three hundred; it is scarcely to be regretted that they are lost to us. We may rather thank Heaven that they no longer exist; philologists at any rate would have had great trouble with them. The main source of our knowledge of Epicurus is the whole of the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, which after all gives us but scanty information, though it deals with the subject at great length. We should, of course, have been better off had we possessed the philosopher’s own writings, but we know enough of him to make us honour the whole. For, besides this, we know a good deal about the philosophy of Epicurus through Cicero, Sextus Empiricus and Seneca; and so accurate are the accounts they give of him, that the fragment of one of Epicurus’s own writings, found some years ago in Herculaneum, and reprinted by Orelli from the Neapolitan edition (Epicuri Fragmenta libri II. et XI. De natura, illustr. Orellius, Lipsiæ 1818), has neither extended nor enriched our knowledge; so that we must in all earnestness deprecate the finding of the remaining writings.
With regard to the Epicurean philosophy, it is by no means to be looked on as setting forth a system of Notions, but, on the contrary, as a system of ordinary conceptions or even of sensuous existence, which, looked at from the ordinary point of view as perceived by the senses, Epicurus has made the very foundation and standard of truth (p. 277). A detailed explanation of how sensation can be such, he has given in his so-called Canonic. As in the case of the Stoics, we have first to speak of the manner which Epicurus adopted of determining the criterion of truth; secondly, of his philosophy of nature; and thirdly and lastly, of his moral teaching.
1. CANONICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Epicurus gave the name of Canonic to what is really a system of logic, in which he defines the criteria of truth, in regard to the theoretic, as in fact sensuous perceptions, and, further, as conceptions or anticipations (προλήψεις); in regard to the practical, as the passions, impulses, and affections.[148] a. On the theoretic side the criterion, closely considered, has, according to Epicurus, three moments, which are the three stages of knowledge; first, sensuous perception, as the side of the external; secondly, ordinary conception, as the side of the internal; thirdly, opinion (δόξα), as the union of the two.
α. “Sensuous perception is devoid of reason,” being what is given absolutely. “For it is not moved by itself, nor can it, if if is moved by something else, take away from or add to” that which it is, but it is exactly what it is. “It is beyond criticism or refutation. For neither can one sensation judge another, both being alike, since both have equal authority;”—when the presentations of sight are of the same kind, every one of them must admit the truth of all the rest. “Nor can one of them pass judgment on another when they are unlike, for they each have their value as differing;” red and blue, for example, are each something individual. “Nor can one sensation pass judgment on another when they are heterogeneous; for we give heed to all. Thought, in the same way, cannot criticize the senses; for all thought itself depends on the sensation,” which forms its content. But sensuous perception may go far wrong. “The truth of what our senses perceive is first evinced by this, that the power of perception remains with us; sight and hearing are permanent powers of this kind as much as the capacity of feeling pain. In this way even the unknown” (the unperceived) “may be indicated by means of that which appears” (perception). Of this conception of objects of perception which are not immediate we shall have to speak more particularly hereafter (p. 292) in dealing with physical science. “Thus all” (unknown, imperceptible) “thoughts originated in the senses either directly in respect of their chance origin or in respect of relationship, analogy, and combination; to these operations thought also contributes something,” namely as the formal connection of the sensuous conceptions. “The fancies of the insane or of our dreams are also true; for they act upon us, but that which is not real does not act.”[149] Thus every sensuous perception is explicitly true, in so far as it shows itself to be abiding, and that which is not apparent to our senses must be apprehended after the same manner as the perception known to us. We hear Epicurus say, just as we hear it said in everyday life: What I see and hear, or, speaking generally, what I perceive by my senses, comprises the existent; every such object of sense exists on its own account, one of them does not contradict the other, but all are on the same level of validity, and reciprocally indifferent. These objects of perception are themselves the material and content of thought, inasmuch as thought is continually making use of the images of these things.
β. “Ordinary conception is now a sort of comprehension (κατάληψις), or correct opinion or thought, or the universal indwelling power of thinking; that is to say, it is the recollection of that which has often appeared to us,”—the picture. “For instance, when I say, ‘this is a man,’ I, with the help of previous perceptions, at once by my power of representation recognize his form.” By dint of this repetition the sensuous perception becomes a permanent conception in me, which asserts itself; that is the real foundation of all that we hold true. These representations are universal, but certainly the Epicureans have not placed universality in the form of thinking, but only said it is caused by frequency of appearance. This is further confirmed by the name which is given to the image which has thus arisen within us. “Everything has its evidence (ἐναργές) in the name first conferred on it.”[150] The name is the ratification of the perception. The evidence which Epicurus terms ἐνάργεια is just the recognition of the sensuous through subsumption under the conceptions already possessed, and to which the name gives permanence; the evidence of a conception is therefore this, that we affirm an object perceptible by the senses to correspond with the image. That is the acquiescence which we have found taking place with the Stoics when thought gives its assent to a content; thought, however, which recognizes the thing as its own, and receives it into itself, with the Stoics remained formal only. With Epicurus the unity of the conception of the object with itself exists also as a remembrance in consciousness, which, however, proceeds from the senses; the image, the conception, is what harmonizes with a sense-perception. The recognition of the object is here an apprehension, not as an object of thought, but as an object of imagination; for apprehension belongs to recollection, to memory. The name, it is true, is something universal, belongs to thinking, makes the manifold simple, yea, is in a high degree ideal; but in such a way that its meaning and its content are the sensuous, and are not thus to be counted as simple, but as sensuous. In this way opinion is established instead of knowledge.
γ. In the last place, opinion is nothing but the reference of that general conception, which we have within us, to an object, a perception, or to the testimony of the senses; and that is the passing of a judgment. For in a conception we have anticipated that which comes directly before our eyes; and by this standard we pronounce whether something is a man, a tree, or not. “Opinion depends on something already evident to us, to which we refer when we ask how we know that this is a man or not. This opinion is also itself termed conception, and it may be either true or false:—true, when what we see before our eyes is corroborated or not contradicted by the testimony of the conception; false in the opposite case.”[151] That is to say, in opinion we apply a conception which we already possess, or the type, to an object which is before us, and which we then examine to see if it corresponds with our mental representation of it. Opinion is true if it corresponds with the type; and it has its criterion in perceiving whether it repeats itself as it was before or not. This is the whole of the ordinary process in consciousness, when it begins to reflect. When we have the conception, it requires the testimony that we have seen or still see the object in question. From the sensuous perceptions blue, sour, sweet, and so on, the general conceptions which we possess are formed; and when an object again comes before us, we recognize that this image corresponds with this object. This is the whole criterion, and a very trivial process it is; for it goes no further than the first beginnings of the sensuous consciousness, the immediate perception of an object. The next stage is without doubt this, that the first perception forms itself into a general image, and then the object which is present is subsumed under the general image. That kind of truth which anything has of which it can only be said that the evidence of the senses does not contradict it, is possessed by the conceptions of the unseen, for instance, the apprehension of heavenly phenomena: here we cannot approach nearer, we can see something indeed, but we cannot have the sensuous perception of it in its completeness; we therefore apply to it what we already know by other perceptions, if there is but some circumstance therein which is also present in that other perception or conception (_supra_, p. 282).