This is part 4 of the transcript of an invited talk examining a complex and often misunderstood Stoic doctrine, that of the “indifferents”, provided to the 52 Living ideas community. Here we finish the Q&A portion. You can watch or listen to the talk in full here.

Question: I really appreciate it actually, that this topic is coming up because there’s something here that for me is always a confusing thing about Stoics. I guess I’m wondering about like the deeper physics or the metaphysics behind this question of virtue versus indifferents. It seems to me like the things that matter, the things that are good and bad have to do with the use of our freedom, and the things that are external in some way end up being indifferent. For me that all opens the question of the difference between mind and body for the Stoics.

There isn’t one. They’re materialists.

Question: Right, I’ve heard that. But then how do they make the difference then between the sense of an inner world, or an inner freedom, Marcus talks about this for example going within

Oh yeah, the inner citadel right? Epictetus also talks about inner citadels but there were the vices, so not all the inner citadels are good.

I think it’s better to look at it as the human being is kind of this thing inside, and there’s like a membrane, whatever we want to call it, between them and the external world.. But then there’s all these ways in which the external world penetrates into us and we’re connected with it. Our desire goes out to meet things, so it’s not like there’s like a little boundary made of iron, and everything inside is our freedom area and everything outside isn’t. It’s more like we’re this this messy boundary that sometimes extends itself further out than it should, and then gets taught an object lesson: “don’t do that”. But then, in a lot of cases has to do that.

We were doing a Stoic parenting meetup earlier today and one of the things that we all talked about is how when you have kids, whatever you want to call it, your region of vulnerability to the world vastly increases because you’ve got these little creatures that almost seem hell-bent on injuring or killing themselves, or doing stupid thing and you have to wait until they develop some guidance systems on their own.

The Stoics are materialists. They think that you can use terms like soul and body, but what you’re really talking about is something that’s a continuum of substance. I think what they’re saying fits in very well with materialist ways of looking at things now. You think about our brains or anything, they are up here, but look at what we’re doing right now. We’re in this communication with each other. It’s not like we’re just these isolated things that are passing signals back and forth. There’s something more happening. Every time that that happens, we become vulnerable. So I think the Stoics are teaching us how to manage that more effectively, if that makes sense.

Question: My question is essentially is there some major chasm between

Epicureanism and Stoicism? In our world Epicureanism is usually associated with just wanton gluttony and you know living the “good life”, but in the ancient world for Epicureans at least all you need for a good time is a bowl of figs and conversation with friends. It’s not quite Stoicism.

There were there were some real big differences between the Stoics and the Epicureans on some key issues. The Epicureans, they they genuinely thought that pleasure or freedom from pain and trouble is good ,and everything else has to be centered around that, and that would guide your practical reasoning and decision-making. The Stoics said pleasure is a preferred indifferent. It’s nice if you have it, but you don’t actually need to have it. And what’s most important is the honestum, the morally good, the noble if we want to translate it.

That led to different ideas about how you ought to live your life in relation to other people. The Epicureans deliberately withdrew as much as possible from what we translate as politics, but really it means social life. It means engagement with your neighbors, people like that. Now modern-day Epicureans, and there’s a there’s a large neo-Epicurean movement out there, I think they’ve they’ve put quite a bit of that aside. They they are quite often involved in neighborhood groups or in local politics or things like that. But the classic Epicureans withdrew as much as possible from that

Although it’s interesting. There is a discussion of it Cicero’s On the Ends book one where this this one epicurean tries to make the case that you everything that these other virtue ethics perspectives, like the Aristotelians or Stoics, everything that they do we we’ve got that too. But it’s all because one needs it to have a more pleasant life. I don’t know that anyone was really that convinced by it. Cicero takes a book to to deconstruct all of that afterwards.

The Stoics thought that you really need to be involved in your community, not in such a way that you’re constantly jockeying for power, things like that, but they thought that you live within a matrix of relationships, and those have duties, and you shouldn’t try to withdraw from it. There were a lot of polemics between the Stoics and the Epicureans on that very point. So I think you can say that there are some points of similarity, but even the notion of tranquility isn’t the same from the Stoics to the Epicureans.

Question: What is your opinion on having standards. Isn’t having a standard a form of pride which is a dispreferred indifferent?

No. . . I mean, having standards isn’t necessarily prideful. I think there are a lot of people who are sort of egocentric. They impose their standards in prideful ways. But the old saying goes: the abuse doesn’t negate the proper use of a thing. Everybody’s got standards of one form or another, even if it’s just what’s good is what’s good for me, a pure egoist. So I don’t I don’t see how you can get away from having standards. The question is whether you can get better and better standards or not

It’s interesting to bring up pride. I’m going to totally shift gears here. So one of the other people that I do work on is John Cassian, this monastic author. He’s he’s one of the people that we eventually get the seven deadly sins from in Christian literature, which were originally the eight capital vices in the Desert Fathers with Cassian and Evagrius Ponticus. He talks about pride as being this really problematic thing, because it can use even the virtues as raw material for its its activities. If I’m a courageous person, I could be prideful about my courage. So there is there is a danger to look out for there. Maybe the Stoics aren’t sufficiently attentive to that.

One of the common criticisms of the Stoics made, not in ancient times but in the Renaissance and early modern period, was that they were too prideful about the capacities of human beings, that they didn’t take into account our, at that time they called depravity, what we could call our our usual state of screwed-uped-ness. May be the Stoics weren’t sufficiently attentive to that, but I don’t think that having standards by itself is prideful.

Question: My question is about fun, because that’s in that middle of good and bad, that you don’t measure. But fun is a little bit different. What you call indifference has always been a bit cold to me, so I find to be more of an Epicurean, to have fun. And I see between your smile and your sparkling eyes that you are having fun with the Stoic, finding that’s fun.

Some people think I joke around too much! That’s a great question. If we look at the classical Stoics, some of them we can say were definitely not fun people. Cato was a great example, areally wonderful guy, but I do not think there was anything fun about him at all. With Epictetus there’s some humor going on there, but you’ve got to really dig into it to find it.

This is actually a great question, because it’s come up when we eat, when we have this annual Stoicon every year, which unfortunately is going to be virtual this this time around because of the Covid crisis. We all get together and we have presentations, and we talk about things, and we do indeed have a lot of fun together. And then some people come along, and they’re like: You’re not being properly Stoic. Or if I say: I’m excited to go to Stoicon, well that’s not Stoic either. I think that this is one of the areas where the classical things are not not that helpful for us. And where modern Stoicism has to forge a new path.

Interestingly I’ll tell you they do this psychological assessment stuff with Stoic Week every year. One of the categories that Tim Lebon found that the greatest rise in is what was called “zest”. It’s not the same thing as fun, but it’s closely related to it. That’s like capacity to get enjoyment out of life. He was like: That’s kind of a weird result. Why would doing Stoic practices lead to this? And the answer, we never really did figure out the answer, was maybe there’s something about doing the discipline that liberates a space in you. You can do that, because having fun requires spontaneity and a certain kind of freedom not to take things so seriously. But this is a very good thing to think about

Question: If what we’re interested in was creating an imaginary utopia, other than Plato’s Republic, would you recommend any other philosophers who study utopia or talk about the ideal?

Well as it so happens, Zeno wrote a book called The Republic as well, and we just don’t have it unfortunately. It could be good for the reputation of Stoicism that we don’t, because apparently not only did he advocate free love, but that may be cannibalism is okay. Nobody quite knows what to make of that. In ancient philosophy, there’s literary stuff some of which is kind of silly like Lucian of Samosata. I don’t know if you’ve ever read him. He’s a very fun author. He’s a satirist and he’s also the first science fiction author with his True History, but I don’t know that anything he does is serious, like let’s sit down and try to come up with a blueprint for the perfect society sort of thing.

There’s Thomas More’s Utopia of course, and there’s a lot of stuff coming after that about perfect societies. You might say there was actually a kind of cottage industry. There is an interesting thing from a feminist perspective, Christine de Pizan’s Book of Ladies which advocates an ideal city in which women don’t have quite the hard time that they have on the outside, because of all the stuff that the men are doing and take seriously. That’s actually a good question. I don’t have a very good sort of synoptic view on utopian literature unfortunately.

Question: I just wanted to ask do you see any parallels in the notion of indifference with Deleuze’s notion of difference? Would you say they’re both against the trope of identity?

I have to I have to punt on because it’s been a long time since I’ve been reading anything other than Logic of Sense when it comes Deleuze, and I don’t want to get things wrong.

Question: You mentioned briefly before that more progress or moral development is a preferred indifferent. Can you clarify what you mean by that? It seems like an indifferent is a thing we could do without. Can we do without moral development?

Not if we want to get to virtue. But by itself, and this is something where you ask: Can I clarify it? Not not too well, because we’re not quite sure what the Stoics meant by saying it. We get this one offhand remark,and then we get all this other stuff where the Stoics are constantly stressing how important it is that we devote ourselves to moral development. It’s coming from Diogenes Laertes, who’s not himself a Stoic but is reporting on what the Stoics standard doctrine was.

The best understanding that I am at it is that they had to place it in there because it wasn’t yet at the point of having attained the virtues. It’s good if you can do it, but it doesn’t in and of itself get you there. And that’s a weird thing to say, because if anything gets us to the virtues, wouldn’t it be making the continual effort from developing? So it may be one of those areas where the Stoics are actually just incoherent, but I don’t you know. I don’t quite know what to make of it at this point.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is part 3 of the transcript of an invited talk examining a complex and often misunderstood Stoic doctrine, that of the “indifferents”, provided to the 52 Living ideas community. Here we shift to the Q&A portion. You can watch or listen to the talk in full here.

Question: I’m going to ask just one clarification question I’m gonna not use the term indifferent and try to pose the same question. So Stoic ethics is a virtue ethic, and the alternative to that is a value ethic.

Well . . . I don’t accept that.

Question: Let me complete the question and then you can disagree. So most people kind of automatically start thinking in terms of value ethic, of saying is this a value to me or is this nota value to me. It looks like the term “indifferent” is saying that it has nothing to do with virtue. Indifferent is something that has nothing to do with virtue directly, but at the same time it seems to say that there are values. So values are being expressed as preferred indifferent, as opposed to. So mapping this Stoic terminology of indifference, this is the way I see it, mapping into virtue ethics and value. Is that fair?

Well I’ll say this. I usually resist these kind of dichotomies splitting things down the middle, because when we get into substantive looks at things, most virtue ethics are quite complex. You have all sorts of value aspect. A lot of ethics with value, Max Scheller for example, there’s plenty of room for virtue in what he’s saying.

But let’s say we accept that sort of split. I guess that could wor. There probably aren’t any better ways of talking about what the Stoics call the indifferents. This was a problem even back in their own time. They coined this terminology.

But I will say about what you’re proposing, these wind up being technical terms, and we have the same challenges as we’re using them. There isn’t any nice intuitive (at least in English maybe there is in other languages) way to reexpress this that gets it across That’s kind of a shame a

Question: Do opinions that other people have of you do, like a public opinion like about something about you, is that indifferent or not indifferent?

So that’s a great question and we can talk about it in terms of the individual, and then sort of like larger scale, what what your society thinks about. We could call it social status, or public opinion of one’s self. That’s a preferred indifferent. It’s better if people like you. It’s worse, but not in the sense of like leading to happiness or misery, if people think that you’re a bad person when you’re not. A lot of our judgments about other people are whether they’re good or bad people, in what respects. So you can say that about the individual thing

So if my my daughter comes up here to college, and let’s say she decides she starts taking some classes, and she’s like: “I think my professors are way smarter than my dad. I’m not gonna listen to him about anything. He’s an idiot.” Those are very strong judgments and opinions about me. The Stoics would say that’s still within the realm of the indifferents. And if I want to be happy, it’s probably better not to care too much about that.

Now on her part, as the individual that she is, it’s not indifferent, because it’s not good to have wrongheaded ideas about things. Maybe it’s not wrongheaded. Maybe the the professor she has will be better than me.. In that case it would be quite good but if I have the wrong view about you, that’s an indifferent to you from the Stoic perspective, but that’s not an indifferent where I’m sitting because I’m the one who’s actually in some respect damaged or harmed by having wrong wrong views about things.

Think about products. So if I don’t like a certain brand of butter and I won’t buy it, that’s within the realm of the indifferents. But if I’m so fixated on it, then if I need to use butter to make omelets or something, and I won’t use it because it’s the only one in the refrigerator, I’m kind of badly off all right.

Question: My question is mostly personal. I’m very interested in what keeps you internally motivated, especially in philosophy, and how do you learn about all of these philosophers, these concepts and how do you explain them so clearly to people?

Those are actually really good questions. Some of them, I don’t actually know the answer to. I’ve been studying philosophy either as a student or as a professor for 30 years now, and so some of these things become a matter of habit. It’s hard to get a good sense of what I did back then. I don’t really remember. I know that having to go through the the really rigorous comps and preliminary exams that we had back in the day. Those no longer exist because they were kind of academic hazing. But they were incredibly helpful for me, because I had to learn mass amounts of the history of philosophy and store it all in my head. It’s sort of like going through an intensive exercise regimen Your body still retains quite a bit of it later on.

I don’t really think that hazing is a great idea for people! What I can talk about is the passion for philosophy. I can talk about like being able to talk about it in a accessible way. I would say in a way, I’m kind of coasting on other people’s achievements. I don’t do a lot of original work of my own, nor do I want to. I tell people I’m a salesperson. I’m selling Aristotle, or I’m selling the Stoics, and the product if I do a good job it sells itself. I really enjoy the things that I study. People ask: who’s your favorite philosopher? I don’t I don’t have one, because I like to read so many different people, and I see applications to ordinary life

I think it also helps that I didn’t come from an academic family, and I didn’t intend originally to go to college. I worked, and then went in the military and came out, and worked, and then finally went to college. My first main teaching job was teaching in a maximum-security prison, and I’ve always taught what are called service classes. So Intro to Philosophy, Ethics, Critical Thinking. A lot of professors view those as kind of like slumming, wasting their time with these non majors. I want to be teaching my graduate level class on Hegel.

You don’t get to teach graduate level classes, but the the real apprenticeship for doing philosophy in a way that can connect up with ordinary people are those service classes, because you have a whole class of people who don’t want to be there, and they have no idea what philosophy is. Or if they if they do, it’s probably they got it from some high school teacher who may have been cool or may have been a jerk You’re going to have to make these things connect with them.

So doing that year after year after year turned out to be really good for me. It developed those skills. I think it’s one thing to teach graduate students or even philosophy majors. They’re already sold on the thing that you’re doing, and they know the terminology, and they can come up with examples and they’re all kinda go-getters anyway. Being able to talk to business majors, fashion majors, culinary arts majors, people like that, that’s where you really test yourself, whether you can get ideas across.

And it’s fun too. I like teaching those kinds of majors because you can use their experiences and what happens in their field for raw material. Can Plato actually say something about this? Maybe. If not, then screw Plato!. Usually it turns out they can once once we dig deep enough.

Question: I have two questions. I’ll keep keep them brief. So the first one is if you can expand a little bit about them idea that what is good is what in accordance with nature. I would love to hear what that means. The second one, I’m not sure if I understood it correctly but it seems as if there’s a spectrum of good on one hand, and bad on the other, and then indifferent in the middle, and we can have the freedom to make use of either good or bad and what’s in the middle, and they’re indifferent. I’m thinking, can’t we say that about the entire spectrum, that we can decide what used to make out of everything?

Well, you can’t make good use out of vice, so it’s not all on the same level. And if you are genuinely virtuous, you’re not going to make bad use out of courage or wisdom or things like that. You could think of it, if you want to represent it visually, it’s like you’ve got virtue, vice and the other associated things that are genuinely good or bad on a higher level. And then you can say there’s a spectrum beneath it of the indifferents. But nothing, none of the values, across that spectrum wind up leaping to the level of the good or the bad

This “in accordance with nature” is a very complicated idea. It’s one that I’m actually writing a book about because it gets used a lot, and there’s a lot of different discussions of it running throughout the Stoic texts. In sort of a thumbnail sketch of it, everything that exists has its particular nature, and you could say its principles of development. In this respect the Stoics are kind of similar to the Aristotelians or other philosophers who think there’s a teleology to things. As opposed to the other animals, because we’re rational animals, at a certain point we we move to a different level, and we begin to recognize something that transcends the natural impulses that we we have as animals, towards for example staying alive and doing certain things with our own kind.

We recognize according to the Stoics the the value of truth understood not just as something useful but but having intrinsic value in itself, and we come to understand in some dim way the right and the wrong as not just being what produces what we might call lower-level good outcomes or bad outcomes. That’s that’s one place where the Stoics kind of differ from from other thinkers like the Epicureans

So developing that nature is part of what it means to live in accordance with nature. A lot of it involves living, choosing, acting in accordance with the virtues. And it gets more complicated yet, because when we have the virtues usually we don’t have them fully developed. So we’re kind of figuring it out as we go along. The picture gets clearer and clearer the more virtuous that we become. Correspondingly the more vicious we become, the more unclear it gets. Or we have the wrong sort of clarity. We think we have everything figured out, and we actually have some quite wrong.

Question: I know you have covered MacIntyre in the recent past on your YouTube channel. Can you compare and contrast the Stoic concept of virtue being the proper use of indifferents, or parenthetically playing the game well, and MacIntyre’s concept of gaining internal goods within a practice?

Well I would say that’s only part of what virtue is, but we can talk about proper use of of indifferents. Virtue also uses the things that are genuinely good, like say friendship. Now MacIntyre, the notion of, you want to say gaining, he would say lachieving or attaining, internal goods within the practice. Internal goods are those that can only be realized within a particular practice or an analogous practice. So he uses the example of chess. It’s not the only game that you can develop certain goods of strategic thinking. You could probably also do it with go, but you probably can’t do it with checkers or backgammon in the same way. There’s all sorts of other practices that he talks about as well.

I would say that there’s a lot of overlap there but that we have we have a different emphasis. MacIntyre doesn’t think that virtues are just about achieving internal goods either. There’s actually there’s so much overlap between MacIntyre and Stoics, Anthony Long wrote a piece specifically saying: Hey MacIntyre, you’re talking about the Aristotelian tradition and all of these interesting elements of it. Stoicism also has this as well. So I would say that if you look at what MacIntyre himself has to say about Stoicism, you you come away with the idea that he didn’t read as deeply as he probably ought to have.

I say this as somebody who actually loves and respects MacIntyre. I got to study under him years ago, and I’ll tell you that when it comes to virtue ethics he’s the genuine deal. He actually practices what he preaches. I don’t want to say he’s a sage, but he’s pretty pretty darn close, but even sages have some blind spots to them. So I would say that there isn’t that much contrast between the. They’re emphasizing different aspects.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is part 2 of the transcript of an invited talk examining a complex and often misunderstood Stoic doctrine, that of the “indifferents”, provided to the 52 Living ideas community. You can watch or listen to the talk in full here.

So how do we clarify the value that they have? That’s one of the central questions for the Stoics. One of the terms that they use, that again I think a lot of people get mixed up about is, they use this framework of “in accordance with nature” or “in contradiction to nature” or “out of harmony with nature”, however you want to translate it, “contrary to nature”.

So this is actually a very complex notion for the Stoics, and when they’re using this notion of in accordance with nature, they don’t just mean accepting you the universe as it is, because we’re also part of that nature. Human beings in our capacity for development are part of that nature. They don’t mean nature in the sense like when we see somebody doing a bad thing, and we say “Ah that’s human nature, you know, people are jerks.” That would actually be contrary to nature for the Stoics.

So think about what a fully developed fully realized human being would be like, and that provides us with a model for what is in accordance with nature. Arius Didymus tells us that some things can be in accordance with nature as such, others by participation. So he gives us examples of that. Having a steady hand and a healthy body. It’s the way things want to be developing. But you could still be happy without having a hand that doesn’t shake, or a body that’s not in the best shape entirely

Seneca in Letter 119 tells us that what is good is what is in accordance with nature, but what is in accordance with nature is not immediately good as well. There are some things that are that are in accordance with nature, that stem from the kind of creatures that we are and our interface with the world ,that aren’t automatically good. What’s going to make them good is some sort of connection to the version Diogenes Laertes tells us, that indifferents that are preferred contribute to what he calls harmonious living.

He also tells us that some preferred indifferents are there for the sake of something else. There’s something useful. So we might think here about money, which we’re going to talk about again a little bit later. Money is not a bad thing . It’s not a good thing either. It’s an indifferent from the Stoic perspective. But it’s a preferred indifferent, because when you have money you can use it to purchase things that you need. You can use it to accomplish tasks that actually are your duties or moral obligations. It can be used within the service of virtue.

They can also be misused, right? A vicious person with money is in a bad state. It’s probably better that they don’t have too much money, because they can accomplish much more harm with it. But money can can actually be quite useful. It can be conducive to other types of things that could in fact be genuine goods, or it can be good for purchasing other preferred indifferents, or keeping at bay other rejected indifferents.

Interestingly, another thing that they talk about as being a preferred indifferent, and I think this helps to give us a bit of perspective, is moral progress or moral development. In Greek it’s prokopē, and we get the the word prokopton meaning the person who’s not yet a sage (if there are indeed any sages), the person who’s in the process of development or studying Stoicism. That is also a preferred indifferent according to the Stoics, because it’s not yet there in terms of virtue and vice.

Seneca later on in Letter 82 talks about death, and he says that death is an indifferent, and he recognizes that it is a hard sell. He says that it’s among the things that are not bad, but they have a semblance of badness. There’s all these things that we, in our normal natural attitude, view as bad by themselves, even though if we analyze them perhaps they’re not. So he says it’s not something that we can easily ignore.

The last thing I’ll say about the value of the indifferents is that those that are either preferred or rejected, they do have a value. You might call it exchange, for a transaction in relation to each other. Diogenes of Babylon, and then again this is in Cicero’s On The Ends, says again wealth is quite good because you can in fact use it to purchase things that will make you healthy (if you think about buying medicine), or you can use it for other things that are preferred indifferents.

The one thing that you can’t do with it, well actually two things he can’t do with it, one of them is you can’t become virtuous just by purchasing something. And you also can’t keep yourself from being vicious by accumulating wealth and spending it. But it’s very useful for all sorts of other things. And we can say similar things about our capacities or our skills that we learn, or our bodily attributes. All of these things are in fact valuable in some sense they’re just at that lower tier.

So if we think about what we’re supposed to do with indifferents, one of the things that I mentioned a little bit earlier that’s quite important for the Stoics is what they called khrēsis in Greek, and in Latin it’s usus, and we translate this typically by the word “use”. It’s a little bit misleading, because it also means dealing with, or the attitude that we take to things, or the application that we make of them.

Epictetus is actually one of the best people in talking about this there’s there’s an entire chapter in his Discourses, it’s book 2, chapter 6 that is devoted to, it’s called “On Indifference in Things”, just adiaphoria in Greek, indifference as opposed to indifferents with the plural. He gives you an example of the hypothetical syllogism. So I don’t know if any of you have ever done logic or not. Probably quite a few of you can. People do get worked up about logic, believe it or not, in philosophy classes and other venues as well. A lot of times that’s probably misplaced because in itself, who cares?it’s not that important of a thing, the hypothetical syllogism, but the judgments he says that we make about them, they’re not indifferent

So we can have something that in itself is indifferent, but the attitude that we take towards it, the approach that we have ,the use that we make of it, is not indifferent Epictetus tells us that we really need to be careful not to be lackadaisical. There’s a way we can translate it. His term there is ameleis. It’s not giving care to something. We don’t want to be careless when it comes to different things, because the use of them is not indifferent. So we’ve got things that are indifferent, but what we do with them, the uses that we make of them is definitely not indifferent, and has a great effect on us morally speaking

In an earlier chapter, five of book two, he says that the materials that we work with are indifferent, but the use that we make of them is not indifferent. And he suggests that what we want to do is imitate those who play games. He has in mind a dice game. We don’t know exactly what game it is. It clearly it involved counters of some sort. So maybe it was like backgammon .Then he also talks about playing the ball game, and he uses Socrates defending himself in the law court as an example of somebody who’s playing the ball game well. The game itself doesn’t matter as such, but playing it well that is up to us, and that is something important.

So there’s all these things that are indifferents, and in themselves they don’t have value, but we give them value by what we do with them. It can be positive value or it can be negative value. The things that are indifferents could be used well or badly. So wealth is an example. We can also think of physical health. It’s nice to be healthy. I mean in this time of coronavirus, we’re very concerned with it. We wash our hands, socially distance. I wear a mask when I go outside. I know a lot of my fellow citizens here in Milwaukee don’t. Maybe they have a very different attitude towards physical health. It’s something that we can decide to use well or use poorly

I could use my vitality to rob banks. I mean probably not. I probably would be a bad bank robber, because it’s not in my skill set. But there are some who randomly accost people on the street and knock them down ,or things like that. So health can be used in all sorts of ways. And we can talk about all sorts of other examples as well.

This brings us to the issue of virtue. The Stoics are virtue ethicists, and we’ll talk about the specific virtues in a bit. One common mistake that gets made, not just in the present but also the ancient world, was thinking that because virtue is good and indifferent things are not good, they’re indifferent, that virtue would not be concerned with things that are indifferent. But to be virtuous would actually be to push those things away. Don’t get too entangled with them. Don’t focus on those things at all.

In fact the opposite is the case for Stoics. iI wasn’t the case for some other philosophers, including somebody who was very close to Zeno the founder of Stoicism. He had a student called Aristo, or maybe an associate, we’re not quite sure whether they were you know on a parallel or one was a student. Aristo said that virtues the only thing that matters and indifferents, we don’t have to care about them at all. As a matter of fact, so long as we’re virtuous that’s great. The only thing that could possibly be bad would be being vicious.

So the Stoics rejected what we can call ‘indifferentism”, thinking that anything that’s indifferent it’s all really on the same level. None of it matters very much. Cicero has Cato tell us, and there’s no reason to think that this wasn’t Cato’s view, and Cato’s would just be the orthodox Stoic view: “if we maintain that all things were completely indifferent, the whole of life would be thrown into confusion, and no function or task could be found for wisdom ,since there would be absolutely no distinction between the things that pertain to the conduct of life, and no choice need be exercised among them.”

See for the Stoics, in order to exercise wisdom, you have to evaluate things. You can’t be totally detached from them. You can be detached in the sense of recognizing that indifferent things are indifferent, that they’re not genuinely good or bad, but that doesn’t mean withdrawing from them. That doesn’t mean putting up a wall and saying I don’t think about these sorts of things. If you think about the people who do that, it’s usually motivated by some sort of rejection on their part, this we might call it hyper-ascetic attitude that isn’t genuine Stoicism. It wasn’t genuine Stoicism back in the day. It’s not genuine Stoicism for modern Stoicism.

Seneca in Letter 92 talks about pursuing and using preferred indifferents, and he says that taking them as an exercise of good judgment — and some of the examples that he gives are putting on clean clothing, taking a walk in the proper way, and dining as as we should — he says that the key thing there is an intention of maintaining proper measure that pertains to reason. You see what he’s saying there is that the wise person uses any natural tools at his disposal or her disposal in order to accomplish the right things.

There’s actually a nice discussion there about these working for the human being, and if you think about this, you can say (we’ll use Stoics I think): why do you care whether I’m in rags that are dirty and falling apart, or putting on a nice clean shirt and taking a shower every so often? Why does that matter at all? Isn’t that totally indifferent? Yes it is indifferent, but you’ve been getting the body you’ve been given the things you ought to use in the right way.

Letter 82 where he’s talking about courage, he says, and this is very interesting, that nothing is glorious that does not involve indifferents. “Illness, pain, poverty, death none of these are glorious in itself ,but nothing is glorious without them.” They give us, you could say, the ballast against which we can we can push off. Or they give us something to fight against or resist. He says that the virtue meets these and handles them. Another thing that he says in that letter is that each object takes on a splendor not its own when virtue is added to it.

So it’s not suffering as such that somehow ennobles us. It’s displaying courage in relation to suffering that is what ennobles us. A lot of people tend to treat being victimized today as if that somehow is heroic, and the Stoics would say: No, bad things can happen to you, and you can have responses to them that are that are not virtuous but rather vicious, for example just placing it onto other people and repeating a cycle of abuse. That would actually be a bad use of those things.

In On The Happy Life, a really nice short work, if you haven’t read that work by Seneca it’s well worth taking a look at, he talks again about wealth. I mentioned we would get back to wealth, He says that the the virtuous person and the foolish person might both pursue and use wealth. Seneca was a rich guy right and he drew upon his contacts in order to make his money. A lot of people criticize him and say: How could you be a Stoic when you were so rich?

What he had to say, and you can you can decide whether you think that he’s entirely consistent with this or not (I think that the general point is quite good) is that the virtuous person and the foolish person both could pursue and use wealth, but in the case of the wise person, wealth is in servitude. It’s being used as a tool. On the part of the foolish person, wealth is in command. So the desire, what we often call greed, which the Greeks recognized as a major problem back then, even had a special term for it, pleonexia, wanting more than you deserved, or thinking that money by itself is going to provide you with security or with happiness, these are the things that will will take people off track.

The Stoics recognize that when people do that it’s because they’ve got some vicious dispositions. They may be foolish. They may be unjust. They may be cowardly, and courage and cowardice doesn’t just have to do with fear. It can also do with willingness to endure toil, it’s called philoponia or “industriousness”. Or with magnanimity, rising above things, and then with self-control.

So one of the things that I think we want to think about when we’re talking about the indifferents, and much of our life is really concerned with these indifferents. Whether Zoom works or not? Indifferent. Whether I turn the lights on or off? Indifferent. The coffee is is an indifferent. All these things that were surrounded with, we want to think about how do the virtues, you might say, not just command from on high but penetrate into all the aspects of our lives. That’s what a Stoic would say is important.

Correspondingly, if we find that we have vices we will usually discover that they have also managed to penetrate deep roots into all the parts of our life. I don’t know if any of you do any gardening There are some plants that when you’re weeding, you can’t just pluck it out. You have to slowly ease it out, and get the root system, and then you discover that there’s more of that there, and you come back the next week and find that there’s new sprouts for that kind of plant. These these sort of analogies I think can be quite helpful in thinking about virtue advice.

So with each of the Stoic virtues they will remind you what they are. Wisdom, which not only has to do with thinking about heavenly things, but very much about earthly mundane everyday things. What’s good for us, what’s bad for us. How we ought to treat other people. Motivational structures, and all sorts of things. That all falls in wisdom.

Justice: how it is that we want to be treating other people in practice, realizing our our social nature, following through on commitments that we’ve made. Those are all aspects of justice. Courage I already talked about that quite a bit. And then temperance or self-control, which isn’t for the Stoics just about bodily desires. It pertains to all sorts of other things as well that we could have wrongly oriented or wrongly structured desires for.

Versions about each of these can apply to indifferents, and if we do it well according to the Stoic sort of narrative, we eventually become happy, or at least happier, less miserable. And if we screw it up or we do it in a lackadaisical way, and don’t pay attention to what we’re doing, or tell ourselves all sorts of false stories about how courageous we are when we really aren’t, we’re going to be miserable, because of the way in which we’ve used indifferents.

The last thing I want to talk about that I think kind of ties this moral side together about use and virtues, is that many people when they first read Stoic authors like Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Seneca, they come away with this sense that the Stoics are very duty driven. That’s all they talk about. Duties to do things you’ve got to follow throughout. Now again you might say: This stuff is really indifferent. Who cares? Why should I have these duties to fulfill?

Most of the duties that we do in fact have, or “appropriate actions” (if you don’t like the word “duty” because it’s got too much of a moralistic sense just use appropriate action. Thats a perfectly good legitimate translation of the Greek kathēkon) the Latin officium), most of these have to do with things that are within the realm of the indifferent. So I’ll go a little bit further with that.

Stoics would actually say that our family, our neighbors are strictly speaking indifferents to us as well. We have to qualify that pretty heavily. They are persons. They do matter as persons. They are like their own little worlds onto themselves. But even the people that I have been I’m closest to, my immediate family, my long-standing friends, colleagues who I hold in great respect, they are something external. They are something indifferent. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have all sorts of important relations to them

This is where the Stoics say (there’s actually a really wonderful book by Brian Johnson called The Role Ethics of Epictetus that goes into this quite quite well) that that we have a whole panoply of moral obligations that are essentially arising from the relationships that we either found ourselves in, or have willingly placed ourselves in. Fulfilling those is often a matter of how we use indifferents.

I’ll give you just an example from my own life. My daughter is 18 now and is going off to college. She’s actually coming up here to Milwaukee to go to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and enroll in the musical theater program which she was accepted into. There’s all sorts of decisions that have to be made, many of which have to do with finances, and filling out paperwork, and stuff like that.

Now a Stoic would not actually say none of that stuff matters, that’s all just indifferents. How I actually do those things Do I do them diligently? Do I plow through all the different things that I have to do, and try to help her with finding financial aid, trying to model for her what following through on these phone calls would look like?These are all within the scope of what it means to be a parent. I suppose you could say all of those things bear on indifferents, but they have the possibility of creating virtue for her as a developing human being, and also expressing (I mentioned the emotions earlier) what the Stoics would call familial affection, philostorgia, which they thought was incredibly important. Marcus will also talk about love quite a bit.

These are things that can be done with differents within the framework or the fabric of our relationships, and so what we do with them is not indifferent. What we do with them is either good or bad or a mixture of both.

To bring this to a close, what we can see is that the whole notion of the indifferents is quite a bit more complicated than its it’s sometimes presented, where there’s good that’s virtue, bad that’s vice, and everything else doesn’t really matter. It’s all indifferent. Just withdraw yourself from it. That’s not a Stoic point of view, and you won’t find that being espoused in Seneca or Marcus or Epictetus, or and these other works that I’ve mentioned. So duties or moral obligations, virtues, use, these are all you might say lenses through which we can see the right path at each moment that we need to take with respect to these indifferents

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is part 1 of the transcript of an invited talk examining a complex and often misunderstood Stoic doctrine, that of the “indifferents”, provided to the 52 Living ideas community. You can watch or listen to the talk in full here.

The topic that I wanted to talk about is one that’s really central to Stoic philosophy in practice, and sometimes gets misunderstood. So I thought this would be a useful opportunity to do some clarification. And it’s very simple: what’s good, what’s bad, and then what’s indifferent, which sounds like a very simple trichotomy to work with.

It’s not just an important aspect for Stoicism as such, but virtue ethics in general. People are mixed up about what’s good and bad, and how to choose and prioritize between them. But the Stoics introduced this wrinkle into it, using this term the indifferents. That was really a distinctive to them

So what I’m going to do here is giving an overview of what the classical and canonical Stoics thought and taught about what’s good, and what’s bad, and what’s indifferent, which is a little bit more complicated than some of the ways in which it gets presented. Then here and there, I’m going to try to address some common misunderstandings of these, particularly about the range of the indifferents.

So what’s good and what’s bad from a Stoic perspective is what I’m going to start with, and then we’ll talk about how it’s connected to other key concepts, and then we’ll talk about this this whole realm of the indifferents. And why do they pick this term the indifferents? Then we’ll talk about the different ranges of value within the indifferents. You might say some indifferents are less indifferent than others, either towards the good or towards the bad. And then we’ll talk about something that the Stoics called “use”, and it’s how we translate this very important term khrēsis. I’ll talk about and that’ll lead into discussion the virtues and their relationship to the indifferents. And then finally, I’ll talk about what gets translated as duties or appropriate actions, and how those bear upon the indifferents.

So if we’re thinking about what’s good and what’s bad — again if we think about virtue ethics in general, we can also say this about religious traditions and about psychotherapy, which you know has very early roots in ancient philosophy as well in some cases — part of what the big project is, is helping people understand and move towards genuine not just apparent goods, and away from genuine bads or evils and not just apparent ones, to extricate themselves from from what’s really bad .So that’s an important thing to bring in.

Another key thing is to be able to frame things in terms of higher or lower, or greater or lesser, goods and evils, goods and bads. This is a matter of prioritization that’s just as important to ethics as figuring out what it actually is good and bad. So if we get away from the Stoics, and we think about pleasure for example, the Platonists and the Aristotelians would say that pleasure is a good. It’s not the good. So we have to figure out, where does it fit into how we ought to structure our lives? We don’t want to reject it entirely. But we don’t want to be dominated by the desire for pleasure.

Stoics have a different view on pleasure, which we can talk about in a bit. And Stoicism seems kind of like an outlier among ancient philosophy, since they use this term the indifferents and they work a lot of things into it. So on one side, we have the things that are genuinely good, and the other side things that are genuinely bad. And then we have this vast space in between.

Now sometimes you’ll hear people trying to summarize stoicism and they’ll say that Stoicism teaches that virtue is the only good. That’s not quite true. The Stoics did recognize other things as being good besides virtue, but virtue is you might say paramount among what’s good. So if you look at Cicero in the Stoic Paradoxes, the very first Stoic paradox is only what is noble, or only what is right is good, in Latin quod honestus est solem bonum, right? So virtues fit in there but they’re not the only thing that’s that’s good. And the opposite of the virtues, vices, are bad but they’re not the only thing that’s bad.

Before I jump into talking about all this, I do want to say a little bit since people may or may not have a lot of exposure to Stoicism. If you want to see relatively systematic summaries of what the Stoics did in fact think, the places to go to are Diogenes Laertes’ Lives of the Philosophers book seven, Arius Didymus’ Epitome of Stoic Ethics some of Cicero’s works like On Ends, On Duties, and Tusculan Disputations. And then we have some of the big heavy hitters that people dive into in their reading about Stoicism, Seneca and Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are a really wonderful book, but they don’t present things in a very systematic way at all. So if you want to do a deeper dive, Epictetus and Seneca are the places that you go.

So coming back to talking about virtues, virtues are definitely on the side of the good, and vices are definitely on the side of the bad. The Stoics recognized four main types of virtue. They associated these with what we call the cardinal virtues: wisdom or practical wisdom depending on how you translate it, temperance, justice, and courage. And their corresponding vices are folly or foolishness, sometimes translated stupidity, lack of self-control or self-indulgence, cowardice, and injustice. And those things are considered to be definitely good and definitely bad by the Stoics.

Each of them is divided into, you might call, them sub-virtues or different modalities of virtues. So for example earlier today, we were talking about courage and Stoics divided courage up into a number of different things, only one of which actually has to do with dealing with fear. Being able to get through the daily slog or grind, and persevere, that’s another part of that virtue of courage So these are good things for us.

What else are good? Well, the Stoics thought that certain emotions or passions were good or bad. Actions are good or bad, very often reflecting virtues or vices. People themselves can be classified as good or bad. Friendship and hatred, as we’re going to talk about in a bit, are good or bad. Then of course there’s certain things that, you could call them the overarching states that we’re aiming at like happiness, tranquility, freedom, good things. Misery, being disturbed by things, slavery or a lack of freedom those are bad.

So the Stoics talked about a wide range of things, and they talked about them in a variety of ways. Sometimes they framed it in terms of means and ends, or being productive of things, or being things that were good in themselves. Sometimes they use the term “participation”, which is always a little bit murky when we try to figure out what it means.

I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the other things besides virtues that are good and bad, because that’ll help us then see what’s neither. So the emotions I mentioned that the Stoics think that some emotions are good and some emotions are bad. A common misunderstanding of the Stoic says that the Stoics think that we should get rid of our emotions or repress them. That definitely is not what they taught. But they thought that some of our emotional states and emotional reactions are subversive of reason, or resistant to reason. They lead us off into tracks that are not good for us and very often vicious. So those would be considered bad

But there are some good emotions the eupatheiai, and those would be for example caution, instead of feeling irrational fear or anxiety. There are some cases where we want to feel some fear because it’s genuinely rational to do so. Or joy, another very important thing. The Stoics are not joyless, or loveless, or anything like that. That is an integral part of it, so the emotions can fall into both sides. We can also talk about actions themselves. Are they in accordance with our social nature, aligned with virtue?

And the Stoics made some distinctions we can go into, if you’d like to, later on between things that are totally virtuous, and then actions that are just in accordance with virtue. Kind of similar to what Aristotle does in the Nicomachean Ethics

Epictetus a very important late Stoic thinker talks about good and evil for human beings lying within the scope of our faculty of choice, or sometimes it’s translated moral purpose, the prohairesis, the part of us that does the choosing ,which which for Epictetus is basically the same as the ruling part of ourselves

Another thing that’s classified is as good or bad in a real sense is friendship. Friendship and its opposite, hatred or enmity, this is where we get to something quite interesting. Friendship is is classified strictly speaking as something external to ourself. It makes sense, right? Our friend is not us, however we may talk about being one soul in two bodies. Is there any of that Aristotelian stuff? The Stoics recognize that our relationships are between separate people. But friendship is indeed something that that is quite good, and so friends are classified among good.

There are things that are not friendship in a full sense, for the sake of what we might call common benefit, where I give you something and you give me something. But where it’s genuine friendship, that is something that is good both in the relationship and in the state that I have within myself of being, and friendly with the other person

So what then is the middle part? We’ve got the good on one side and the bad on the other side. The Stoics talk about indifferents and that’s a translation of the Greek term adiaphoria, literally meaning the things that don’t make a difference. There’s a lot of different characterizations of this but one of them coming from Diogenes Laertes is that these are things that are neither good, nor evil or bad things, that don’t benefit or harm a person.

He clarifies that the Stoics actually say there’s two different meanings to this term. There are things that don’t contribute at all to our happiness or unhappiness. We can be happy or unhappy without them, but the use of them in certain ways contributes to happiness or misery.

A great example this would be wealth, which we’ll talk about a bit later. You can pile up as much money as you want and it won’t make you happy. If you’re already a miserable person, as a matter of fact, it might make it easier for you to be miserable in new and exciting ways. And vice versa, if you’re poor and you are a good person, somebody who is free, who’s untroubled, being poor is not going to make things worse but you can use that money in such ways that it conduces to good things. So no amount of wealth, or pleasure, or bodily health, or physical attractiveness is going to tip you over the scale into happiness, but it can be it can be used for that. We’re going to get back to that in just a moment. Then there’s things that are, you might say, even more indifferent things, that have no power to stir our inclinations or choices towards or against them.

If we look at examples, the Stoics stock ones are wealth versus poverty, pain versus pleasure, health versus illness, living or dying, high social status versus low social status, being given great positions being in menial positions, physical attractiveness physical ugliness. All of those things fall in the realm of the indifferent, and why are these indifferents? They can possess a certain value, but they don’t possess enough value, no matter how many of them you you pile up or connect with each other, to make us happier and miserable in the genuine sense. As persons, they don’t make us good or bad either.

Epictetus actually has a really nice sort of deconstruction of mistaken lines of reasoning when he says: people say to themselves, I have more money than you, therefore I’m better than you, when really the only thing that you can draw as a conclusion is that they can buy more things than you can. These these are not actually connected. So part of Stoic analysis is disentangling these things from each other and seeing indifferents as indifferents.

Now there’s kind of a common mistake, I think that’s largely due to our language. We we see this term “indifferents” ending in the plural, and we think that that means we automatically ought to feel indifferent towards those things. That doesn’t actually follow for the Stoic philosophy. There were some ancient philosophers who did see things that way, but they weren’t the Stoics.

There’s also a tendency to map certain categories onto each other. Once you start learning about Stoicism you learn about the dichotomy of control, what’s in my power what’s not in my power. You learn about internals and externals. It’s really easy to say: “Well those all connect up with each other.” What’s indifferent is what’s external, is what’s not in my control. Not completely. Those those are overlapping categories, but they’re not, you might say, coinciding categories.

So we have to think about whether indifferents have any sort of value at all. The Stoics say that they do, some of them do at least. Some of them don’t. There are some genuinely indifferent matters and I’d invite you, as I go through these examples, to think about things that you don’t care about one way or another, and it’s not because you’re pushing it away and rejecting. It just doesn’t matter to you at all.

Some of the classic examples that the Stoics give are whether the number of the hairs on your head is even or odd. Who cares? That doesn’t make a difference to anything that we could possibly think of. You could construe some situation in which that might matter, like let’s say the government decides that all the even-numbered hair people are going into one field and all the odd are going into another, and then people who don’t have any hair I suppose in a third category. But that’s so artificial it doesn’t it doesn’t really connect up with us. Whether your finger is straight or bent, they say. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. Picking up something along the way, like a twig or a leaf, is another example that they give. Now that applies to a lot of things. They really are genuinely indifferent. We have no stake in them at all.

Here’s where it starts to get tricky. There’s things that are indifferent, and the Stoics were willing to say that they were indifferent, but they have some sort of value. The word that’s used there in Greek is axia, meaning something that has some some sort of stake, some sort of value. It’s worth something. They talked about what we translate as “preferred “ and “rejected” indifferents. These could have positive or negative value, but they weren’t going to be the sort that would actually cross the the threshold into what’s genuinely good or bad

The place, by the way, if you really want to see the best discussion of this to go to, is in Cicero’s work On the Ends where he’s having Cato the great Stoic stateman and philosopher presenting the Stoic doctrine on this. That’s probably one of the best places to go to, book three of that work. So a lot of these indifferents do in fact have some value, some positive or negative value. They don’t have the same kind of value.

You might actually think about it like a two-tiered system where you’ve got what’s genuinely good or bad up here. It can really determine whether we are happy or miserable. Then we’ve got everything else down here, and there are higher and lower, and we can trade them off against each other. But no matter how much of that we we accumulate or you know manage to get rid of, we’re not going to be happy or miserable on account of that.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

Just a few years back, we lost the last member of the “four-legged family” who my wife adopted, when they were two kittens and two puppies, in 2020. Our 19-year-old cat Sassy outlived her sister (they were the two survivors from their litter) and her canine brother and sister. She was an assertive, curious, loving old girl.

Sassy was both my wife’s and my cat, but for over a decade she picked me out as her person, and we developed a close, deep, and rich relationship. There’s more that could be written, but I’ve done that elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Sassy’s death, like the death of anyone close to us, presents a challenge for practicing Stoicism.

You can correctly say that when it comes to the emotions, the Stoics view grief as something bad. It’s bad to the person who suffers it. Grief also feels bad, washing over you with waves of pain, loss, loneliness, yearning, and sadness. It can lead to isolating oneself, brooding, ruminating, especially if one moves in circles where after sympathy dies down one is encouraged to put the death in the past, to “get over it”.

For Stoics, grief is also problematic because like other types of “pain” or “distress” (one of the main genres of emotion), it arises from and reflects mistaken conceptions and reasoning processes. The grieving person views the loved one’s death, their absence, and the loss of the ongoing relationship — all of which are strictly speaking indifferents — as bad things. So in some respects, the official Stoic “party line” might be that grief is bad and that we should try to avoid or cut it off as much as we can.

How would we do that, though? Should we take Epictetus’ seemingly austere advice in Enchiridion chapter 3, and when we kiss our child, our spouse, or our pet, remind ourselves that they are mortal? Then when they die, we won’t be upset or troubled? One might read this and mistakenly think the Stoic approach is one of avoiding attachments.

Don’t get too close, or you might get hurt!

Don’t develop affection, let alone love for others, because that makes you vulnerable to a world that will inevitably snatch them away!

But that’s actually not what Stoics suggest. In that very passage by Epictetus, he writes of “those who you feel affection towards” (stergomenōn). The assumption is that, if you are a decently developed human being, you will become attached, you will feel and display affection, and you will come to love (in whatever form that takes).

Would the legendary Stoic sage feel grief? Probably not, but noting that isn’t particularly helpful for those of us who are just studying and practicing without unrealistic hopes of attaining sagehood.

Is there any helpful Stoic advice then about grief over those we love and lose? Seneca offers some, telling Lucilius who has lost a friend, that it is to be expected that one will feel some grief, and even express it, but that it is possible to do so in a way that remains within some rational limits.

Extravagant gestures, words and wailing, those don’t serve the person who has died, the person feeling grief, or anyone else for that matter. Many people mistakenly assume that, if you cared for a person, you show it by the amount and intensity of grief you display, but a Stoic would easily recognize that as a mistaken opinion, judgment, or assumption.

What if you do find yourself overcome by sadness and grief? Should you just push it away? Some people might think that’s what Stoicism requires of them, but they’re labouring under a misconception. Instead, one should pay attention to what one is feeling, and then examine it, unravelling the impressions, appearances, or imaginations (phantasiai) that are involved, assessing and evaluating them.

One can recognize what right, good, or true elements go into producing the grief one feels, while identifying what other thoughts one might do better to suspend or reject. Two months in, I still grieved for my cat companion, to the point of feeling sadness and shedding tears, but I could also begin to deliberately choose to shift my mind’s focus to the wonderful memories of the portion of life we shared together.

This piece first appeared in the July 2022 issue of the online magazine The Stoic (and has been slightly updated here). If this piece has you now interested in Stoicism, and you would like to know what to read next, this might be helpful for you.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

“[A]round the definition of Christian philosophy there has been a good deal more of deductive than inductive reasoning – and especially we may add, in Christian quarters” — Etienne Gilson

“This is what is happening: Catholic rationalism is waging a lively offensive at the moment when skeptical, or naturalist, rationalism is transforming itself in its depths, so that what the former retains of reason and values corresponds to what the latter reduces to the rank of purely verbal dialectic.” — Raymond Fenandez¹

A debate took place in 1930’s France over the possibility, actuality, and nature of Christian philosophy, an important debate because it involved several major philosophers and theologians, whose positions, arguments, and claims are both well-articulated and of continued relevance today. A good deal of the debate involved making and arguing claims about reason or rationality and philosophy as an activity or product of reason, and tying these claims into judgements about the relationships between Christianity and philosophy. That there was a debate about this at all, of course, stemmed from the interlocutors holding and articulating quite different and in many cases incompatible positions, coherent in their own right and in their own terms to be sure, but varying considerably in their capacity for philosophically engaging their opponent’s positions in dialogue. In the case of certain interlocutors vis-à-vis each other, they viewed their positions as incompatible when perhaps they are really compatible or even complementary.

Alisdaire MacIntrye’s work in moral philosophy can be used to illuminate this debate, particularly his understanding of how philosophical conflicts between rival traditions, within traditions, and in the development of traditions, stem in part from rival conceptions of rationality, and how in modernity new currents and conditions of thought emerge, both hostile to and susceptible to becoming traditions of their own, but also, due to their form and development, incapable of adequately conceptualizing and promoting practices, virtues, and traditions. Bringing MacIntyre to bear on the Christian philosophy debate admittedly involves relocating some of his key concepts and distinctions from their usual context in moral philosophy, primarily concerned with the nature of practical rationality, practices, and the virtues, most notably justice. But, in my view, this relocation is not a forced one, but rather one suggested by a virtue of his work in moral philosophy, namely that in order to make sense of positions in moral philosophy it explores and extends to the connections between moral philosophy and philosophy conceived more generally.

In return, using MacIntyre’s thought to interpret the Christian philosophy debate raises several questions. Can Christian philosophy, in at least some of the ways its notion is articulated in the debate, be understood as a tradition or traditions in MacIntyre’s sense of the term in After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? , or as Tradition in the related sense it takes in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry ? Can MacIntyre’s own philosophical effort be understood as a kind of Christian philosophy, in a stronger sense than that of the mere sociological category² of philosophy done by a Catholic Christian³, namely in one or more of the senses of the term articulated by the main Catholic interlocutors in the debate? And, do certain critiques made in the course of the debate problematize this interpretation of MacIntyre’s work?

These questions are answered in the course of this paper, but the paper is not structured according to these questions. Rather, the first part of this paper interprets the debate in light of MacIntyre’s thought on tradition, rationality, and modernity. The second part presents Gilson’s and Maritian’s positions, rasing and answering the motivating questions at appropriate points. The third and last part presents Blondel’s position, which critiques Gilson’s position, in the process raising and resolving some questions about MacIntyre’s philosophy and the supernatural order.

I.

The 1930s debate, often wrongly summed up in Anglophone literature as the Bréhier-Gilson debate⁴, actually involved (depending on how one interprets it) at least six and perhaps as many as ten different main interlocutors,⁵ a host of minor interlocutors and commentators, and ranged from 1931 to 1934 in a host of Francophone journals and societies. Calling it a debate may give the mistaken impression that there were two clearly defined positions debating a clearly defined topic, with a definitive resolution in favor of one side, when none of these conditions actually held.

First, while the figures involved can be divided into Catholics and largely secular Rationalists,⁶ the debate, almost from the start, developed into an intra-Catholic debate. The rationalists made their contributions early on, and in the course of the debate, some figures intervened with similar positions,⁷ but the rationalist position(s) gained little traction, and the debate evolved into deep disagreements articulated among the many Catholic interlocutors. If any binary disjunction is possible and useful here, it was between Gilson and Maritain on one side, and Blondel on the other. Making that disjunction, however, raises other problems, for then one would have to oppose to all three of these figures the interlocutors and later commentators that regarded these positions as not only compatible but complementary.⁸ One might put a cap on this by simply noting that the “Catholic position” in the debate was overdetermined.

The topic was not clearly determined prior to the debate, except as a term, for a variety of reasons. First, as Bréhier noted from the start, it involved normative as well as factual issues.⁹ Or as Bréhier did not realize, the possibility and nature of Christian philosophy involves many normative as well as factual issues. Simply defining the meaning of the terms was already contentious, not least because one’s definition already involved determinate commitments for or against Christian philosophy.

Second, the major Catholic interlocutors themselves disagreed about the meaning(s) of the term,¹⁰ a disagreement also affecting the resolution of the debate. Resolution is not the correct term, however, for none of the major contending interlocutors ever admitted that any of the other interlocutors forced them to alter their position. The debate, at least as far as its institutional expression in journals, simply petered out,¹¹ but, interestingly, each of the positions in the debate has (often, particularly in the cases of the Rationalists, without these proponents being aware of their intellectual pedigree) contemporary proponents. No resolution took place, one is tempted to say, because these interlocutors were not really interlocutors, in the sense of sharing a common set of concepts and ways of resolving disputed philosophical issues.

This raises an interesting issue that can be formulated explicitly through themes central in MacIntyre’s work. The spectacles of Gilson and Blondel, both prior to the debate and in the beginning of the debate, mutually misunderstanding each other’s position,¹² of Blondel and Maritain doing likewise and taking jabs at each other through the 1930s, and, most importantly, that of observers, not only after the debate (e.g. de Lubac), but in its midst (e.g. Sertillanges, de Solages, Marcel) regarding the positions not as incompatible, but as complementary, or to use de Solages’ metaphor, as three paths ascending a single mountain with three neighboring peaks,¹³ evoke a familiar theme of MacIntyre’s work, confrontation between philosophical standpoints in disagreement, between differing accounts, embodiments, and employments of rationality.

Philosophers differ on major issues, for instance the possibility and nature of Christian philosophy, at times within a single tradition or community of inquiry, but at other times from fundamentally incompatible or even incommensurable standpoints. The differences in these cases involve not only varying views on the issue ostensibly under debate, but different views on what constitute valid rules or forms of inference, what counts as evidence, the scope and nature of rationality as well as what rationality opposes itself to, the legitimacy of appeals to authorities, authorities themselves being conceived in different ways, the relationships between morality, moral dispositions (e.g. the intellectual and moral virtues and vices) and truth.

Typically, those debating each other in these latter situations are not entirely conscious of and reflective about these more fundamental differences.¹⁴ Often, interlocutors grounded in different positions will do precisely what MacIntyre describes in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, simply attempt to translate best as they can the statements and discourses of the other interlocutors into the vocabulary and fundamental assumptions of the position the interlocutor is grounded and works within. This typically involves a reduplication of the differences already in play, which, to be sure, is even the case to a lesser extent when one imaginatively enters into the other interlocutor’s position, trying to see it from the inside.

The 1930s Christian philosophy debate displays incommensurability in two very different ways. First, the debate did originate officially as a debate between Catholic philosophers and Rationalist philosophers¹⁵ in a French setting where the state schools (e.g. the École Normale) were dominated by the latter, but where Catholic institutions still had a very significant role. Interestingly, the most important Catholic participants in the debate (Gilson, Maritain, Blondel, Marcel) were all lay Catholic philosophers who had their post-secondary philosophical formation in the secular state institutions. They also had significant contacts within clerical circles, and participated in Catholic intellectual life, not only in France, but in Italy and the Anglo-American countries.

Two of them, Gilson and Blondel, were what we would now call “cradle Catholics”, while the other two, Maritain and Marcel, were converts, in the latter’s case quite recently in relation to the debate. All of these major Catholic interlocutors were in a condition similar to that which MacIntyre ascribes to Thomas Aquinas (a condition that also applies to MacIntyre himself), of being conversant with two rival institutionalized intellectual traditions and viewpoints on rationality, a modern, secular, rationalist view, and a view grounded within and by Catholicism.¹⁶

The two Rationalist philosophers participating in the debate, Emile Bréhier and Léon Brunschvicg, argued positions that held that Christian philosophy could not be philosophy in the proper sense, and examining their texts indicates that they clearly fall within the set of interrelated perspectives, both philosophical and theological, that MacIntyre calls Enlightenment in After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?and Encyclopedia in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. In brevity’s interest, I cite only a few points in their texts.

Bréhier argued that “Christian philosophy” could have only two meanings. It could be a philosophy “in agreement with dogma” as defined by some particular religious authority.¹⁷ But then, it is not really philosophy, since reason is subordinated to the irrational and arbitrary. Alternately, Christian philosophy could be philosophy in which “Christianity, as such, insofar as revealed Dogma, has been the starting point of any positive philosophical inspiration.”¹⁸ This, astonishingly for a historian of philosophy, Bréhier entirely denies, contending that all that is philosophical in purportedly Christian philosophy really derives from pre-Christian Greek philosophy.¹⁹

The other Rationalist participant in the debate, Brunschvicg articulated a much subtler position,²⁰ essentially making two main points. First, he argued that, prior to the 17th century, reason was immature, and he thereby disqualifies all of the pre-17th century claimants to the title of Christian philosophy, precisely because, on that understanding they cannot really be philosophy. It is worth noting that this would also disqualify Bréhier’s own rationalism, based in a pre-Christian Hellenic conception of Logos.²¹

Brunschvicg then poses a trilemma. One who is first a philosopher may also be a Christian, but that does not make that person’s philosophy Christian philosophy. Alternately, one can be a Christian before and rather than being a philosopher, but then one’s thought is Christian but outside of philosophy. Brunschvicg takes Pascal as the model of this “way of philosophizing that is not that of philosophers.”²² Last, there is a position, represented by Malebranche, where a philosopher concludes that philosophy cannot resolve the problems it raises, so that one then accepts solutions from Christianity, again leaving behind philosophy in the properly rational sense.

These two Rationalist positions represent the sort of rationality characteristic of Enlightenment or Encyclopedia. But, who is counterposed to them? Catholic thinkers, to be sure, but what exactly do they represent philosophically? In the lecture “Too many Thomisms?” MacIntyre points out that Catholic thought, even Thomist thought, can often be articulated from within an Enlightenment perspective rather than a perspective of Tradition.²³

Gilson, Maritain, and Blondel point out in their works, focusing particularly on contemporary neo-Scholastics, how accepting Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment perspectives²⁴ as starting points for the articulation of one’s philosophical position concedes too much and leads to a position mirroring, opposed to, but impotent in the face of secular modernity dismissive of any invocation of, let alone appeal to, supernatural revelation. In the course of the debate, Gilson notes the underlying similarity of perspective “pure rationalism”, “pure theologism”, and certain types of neo-Scholasticism share. Blondel pointed this out long before the debate, during the Modernism Controversy, but he reiterates this in his critical response to Van Steenberghen.. Maritain for his part discerns a need to distinguish himself from the neo-Scholastics Gilson criticizes.

What these discussions point out is that, over the course of the Christian philosophy debate, the positions of the Catholic thinkers do not all fit MacIntyre’s characterizations of Tradition, but included several making significant concessions to the type of thought he calls Enlightenment or Encyclopedia. Van Steenberghen’s neo-Scholastic contribution, and Noël’s phenomenological contribution²⁵ to the debate fall within these portions.

However, what is most interesting, and what MacIntyre’s thought offers a productive way to understand, is that the most significant disagreement of the debate (continuing long afterward) was not between the Catholics and Rationalists, nor an intra-Catholic division between those who were called neo-Scholastics at the time and Gilson and Maritain (called neo-Scholastics today), but between Gilson and Maritain on one side and Blondel on the other. And, filling out both this interest and MacIntyre’s discussions are the commentators who realized these three thinkers’ compatibility and complementarity.

These three interlocutors fall within different traditions in one sense, but fit within a common tradition in another sense. The paradigm of Tradition as opposed to Enlightenment, not only for MacIntyre, but for Gilson and Maritain, is the thought of St. Thomas and his interpreters.²⁶ But, Blondel²⁷ and Marcel do not fit this mold, nor, however, can they be easily set within the Augustinian tradition either. They could be placed under the rubrics of Christian existentialism or phenomenology, although these titles would be anachronistic applied to Blondel.²⁸ Such placement opens up another long-developed possibility, however, since phenomenological and existential philosophy employed and developed by Catholic philosophers have arguably come to be acknowledged as a second major source of both content and methodology for Catholic thought.²⁹

The Fides et Ratio of the late Pope John Paul the Great³⁰ might be productively contrasted with the Aeterni Patris functioning as the paradigm document for Tradition in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Such a contrast would be anything but forced, given MacIntyre’s account discussing how Pope Leo XIII could issue the Aeterni Patris precisely because he had been the Gioacchino Pecci formed in the heart of a long-developing pre-encyclical Thomist revival, an account that corresponds to Pope John Paul the Great being at one time the Karol Wojtyla formed through the Lublin School not only in Thomism but also in what phenomenology had to offer Christian thought. One would not have to stretch MacIntyre’s characterizations very far to construe this as part of the ongoing and continually renewed Tradition, thereby bringing Blondel explicitly into a common tradition with Gilson and Maritain, a common tradition that seems to be presupposed and participated in by the interlocutors who saw complementarity rather than irreconcilable conflict in their positions.

All of these interlocutors were in agreement about the importance of three basic issues. First, there was a modern world, formed by the changes that took place in modernity, particularly modern philosophy, that had to be addressed. Second, there was something antedating and continuing on through the adventures, successes and failures of modernity, Christianity, best understood and lived through the Catholic Church, which had produced not only a way of living, but ways of thinking. Third, fruitful interpretation of Christian thought could not be allowed to degenerate into something static, nor could they be simply fit into the categories of modernity.

The interlocutors understood differently what addressing the situation of modern thought required. Gilson, as a historian of philosophy, delved into the thought of the long-dismissed medieval philosophers. Maritain engaged particularly with the thought of St. Thomas, articulating it in often startling but fruitful ways. Blondel attempted to derive and deploy a new method specifically designed to engage modern thought on its own ground and lead it elsewhere, into contact with Christianity.³¹ Yet, all of them were engaged in the ongoing project of rearticulating Catholic thought in relation to modernity, making use of modernity’s resources (e.g. the modern university, publishing), and all of them were deeply involved, personally and publicly in the intellectual life of the Church and the University. In the end, despite more than merely surface appearances of discord, they all fit into the Tradition MacIntyre speaks of, a tradition that remains vital not least because of discussion at times (for instance between these three) quite antagonistic, but ultimately made sense of within and using the resources (some of which are past, some appropriated from and through the present) of that tradition.

II.

The positions articulated in the debate, both pro and contra Christian philosophy, productively engage MacIntyre’s thought in three ways.

First, as noted already, the rationalists’ positions provide an example of MacIntyre’s contention that there are fundamentally differing understandings of rationality and that the types of rationality predominant in modern philosophy have not understood, or been able to understand, rival rationalities in this case, those of Christian philosophy, as rational. The rationalists, defining philosophy and reason in ways ruling out any relation to Christianity where Christianity would influence, motivate, or even generate philosophies that would nevertheless remain philosophies in the full sense, never effectively engage their Catholic opponents’ positions.

Second, Gilson’s and Maritain’s positions provide different though compatible articulations within the viewpoint MacIntyre has called Tradition.

Third, certain criticisms that Blondel addresses explicitly to Gilson and implicitly to Maritain would also address MacIntyre’s work, if it is used to interpret the debate as a conflict between Tradition and Enlightenment and as a conflict within Tradition. My assessment is that, although MacIntyre does not explicitly address the problems Blondel raises, their solution is implicit in his work. For reasons of space and focus I discuss here only the second and third sets of positions.

Gilson provides several different but complementary characterizations³² of Christian philosophy in the course of the debate. He provides the first two in a portion of his summary of his presentation to the S.f. P.

It is a matter of knowing this: whether Christianity has played an observable role in the constitution of certain philosophies? If there exist philosophical systems, purely rational in their principles and in their methods, whose existence is not explained without the existence of the Christian religion, the philosophies that they define merit the name of Christian philosophies. This notion does not correspond to a concept of a pure essence, that of the philosopher or that of the Christian, but to the possibility of a complex historical reality: that of a revelation generative of reason.³³

The second sentence supplies his first characterization, and it emphasizes three key aspects. Christian philosophies must be purely rational in their principles, which means, practically speaking, not only their first starting points, but also other principles brought in during the course of philosophical exploration, articulation, and argumentation. They must also be purely rational in their methods, not only in the way that they ultimately systematize, but also in their operations of inference and classification. Third, explanation of their existence must require reference to the existence of the Christian religion. This last aspect is stated better in the first sentence, where Christianity must have played an observable role in these Christian philosophies.

His second characterization is, perhaps because of its concision, one frequently referred to in the literature on the debate. Reflecting on the passage, however, “revelation generative of reason” actually characterizes the Christianity that plays a role in the development of philosophy. There is a risk, which Blondel will later call attention to, of too easily assuming this generation, and even the revelation, into a Christian philosophy. “Revelation generative of reason” describes what Gilson here calls the “possibility of a complex historical reality”, and the notion of Christian philosophy corresponds to this. One might assume that Gilson’s reference to possibility here is disingenuous, since he clearly believes that there are actual Christian philosophies, but there is another (pun intended) possible explanation. Though he does not develop it here, Gilson leaves open the ongoing and continued possibility of the Christian revelation playing a role in contemporary philosophies.

A third characterization emerges from Gilson’s critique of what he construes as neo-Augustinian positions on Christian philosophy. He argues that both Augustinian philosophy and Thomist philosophy are philosophies of the concrete³⁴, but that the Thomist tradition, which he seems to identify with here, is superior because its activity culminates in expressing the real though concepts, which the (neo-)Augustinian tradition rejects. Relevant here, however, is not Gilson’s critique, but his characterization of what is right in the Augustinian position. He argues that it contains an important truth:

the real unity of the elements of the concrete in the subject where they are realized. Whatever may be the doctrine that one identifies with, it is a fatal blow to philosophy to consider the unity of being to be made of the combination of other beings. And, what is true of being is true of thought. If there were in us a faith and a reason, whose being was radically distinct from that of a thinking substance to which they belong, we could not say of any of us that he was a man. In this sense, everyone agrees that faith and reason are rooted in the unity of the concrete subject.³⁵

This leads to another characterization, again, not a precise definition, but an articulation of the relations between philosophy and Christianity in Christian philosophy.³⁶ “[E]very Christian philosophy will be traversed, impregnated, nourished by Christianity as by a blood that circulates in it, or rather, like a life that animates it. One will never be able to say that here the philosophical ends and the Christian begins; it will be integrally Christian and integrally philosophical or it will not be.”³⁷

A fourth characterization emerges from Gilson’s discussion of rationality, deferred here momentarily. “What is peculiar to the Christian is being convinced of the rational fertility of his faith and being sure that this fertility is inexhaustible. That is, if one pays attention, the true meaning of Saint Augustine’s credo ut intelligam and Saint Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum: a Christian’s effort to draw some of reason’s knowledge from faith in revelation .”³⁸ At that point in his presentation, Gilson makes the important claim that “these two formulas are the true definition of Christian philosophy.” ³⁹

Here, we must pause this sequence of characterizations of Christian philosophy to bring in MacIntyre, or rather highlight a MacIntyrian theme. Gilson, philosophizing about Christian philosophy, at this point exemplifies MacIntyre’s category of Tradition, both in the sense of the Thomist tradition and of the rationality embodied in traditions in general. First, in the latter sense, he makes reference and recourse to the thought and work of past thinkers he clearly identifies himself, not with, but as in a same and continuous tradition of thought.

Second, he mimetically reproduces what is best in the Thomist tradition, exemplified in St. Thomas’ works, a reference and recourse to past Christian thinkers that assimilates them to a more comprehensive and adequate perspective.⁴⁰ In the chapter “Overcoming a Conflict of Traditions” in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? , MacIntyre rightly characterizes Thomas’ effort as dialectic in the proper Aristotelean sense of that much overworked term,⁴¹ and that is precisely what is going on in Gilson’s reappropriation in the Christian philosophy debate.⁴²

Immediately following the passage providing the fourth characterization, Gilson repeats, word for word, his first characterization, but adds important qualifications and amplifications.

They are philosophies, since they are rational, and they are Christian, since the rationality that they have contributed would not have been conceived without Christianity. For the relation between both concepts to be intrinsic, it is not enough that a philosophy be compatible with Christianity; it is necessary that Christianity have played an active role in the very establishment of that philosophy.⁴³

Again, if Christian philosophy is to be philosophy, it must be purely rational. It can be generated and nourished by Christianity, and Christianity can make contributions to it, but it must still be entirely philosophical. But, does this not pose an insurmountable problem, since Christianity would seem to confront philosophy, an irrational confronting a rational? Gilson rightly places this problem of rationality on its proper ground, reflection on the concrete realities of philosophizing subjects, as opposed to deductions from an abstract conception of rationality. He notes that the Christian philosopher’s reason is “not a reason of a different type than that of non-Christian philosophers, but a reason that labors under different conditions.”⁴⁴

This difference of conditions works both ways. The Christian philosopher’s reason labors under different conditions than the non-Christian philosopher, but this does not mean that the conditions that the non-Christian philosopher’s reason works within are an unproblematic and pure norm for philosophy that the Christian philosopher would then differ from, for all philosophical activity is within different determinate conditions. Gilson concedes that the Christian philosopher’s reason works within a subject “in which there something non-rational, his religious faith,”⁴⁵ but this cohabitation with the non-rational is really the normal situation of reason.

Gilson issues two challenges. “I am waiting for someone to show me a pure philosopher, the concrete realization of an unique concept, in whom reason would not cohabit with any irrational of this sort. And, I ask especially whether the philosophical life is not precisely a constant effort to bring what is irrational in us to the state of rationality.”⁴⁶ Both of these provide justification for Christian philosophy as philosophy in the face of typical Rationalist (the debate’s term) or Enlightenment/Encyclopedia (MacIntyre’s terms) critiques.

These challenges bring Gilson close to issues thematized in MacIntyre’s works. Clearly, though he speaks of philosophy being “purely rational”, or later of “pure rational critique”, he does not view any philosophy or philosopher as being purely rational, let alone representing pure reason. Reason only functions, we might say in explicitly MacIntyrian terms, as determinate forms of rationality, supported by communities, practices, narratives, pedagogical institutions. The pretension and promise of Enlightenment was a rationality that would fully embody reason, stripping away and subordinating everything that was irrational, other-than-reason. For Gilson, however, there are two important distinctions that cannot be made adequately within the type of rationality Enlightenment presents and offers. “What is difficult for us is distinguishing between the irrational and the not-yet-rational. And, once one’s choice is made, there is still an issue of knowing the time when the possibilities of the rationality of the non-rational one has chosen are exhausted.”⁴⁷

There are always some things that are genuinely irrational, and making those dominant moments in one’s philosophy vitiates it as philosophy. But, the genuinely irrational is easily confused and distinguished only with difficulty from the not-yet-rational. One must actually make an effort rather than simply applying a methodology or classification.⁴⁸ Here, MacIntyre’s distinction between Tradition and Enlightenment is pertinent, for its implication is that making this distinction well (and it is a distinction that has to be made over and over, in differing circumstances) requires a more robust form of rationality than Enlightenment can offer, in short something like the cultivation of the intellectual and moral virtues, as well as guiding articulations or accounts of them. There is another issue of discrimination as well, knowing when the possibilities of the non-rational have been exhausted. This too, seems to require something like MacIntyre’s Tradition, if it is to be done well.

In a passage cited above, Gilson characterized the Christian philosopher as “being convinced of the rational fertility of his faith and being sure that this fertility is inexhaustible.”⁴⁹ The second conviction has important implications, not least that the Christian philosopher will understand him- or herself as needing to constantly return in their philosophizing to this inexhaustible source. Christianity will never become a mere concept whose content has been fully explored and exhausted, as it is, for instance, in one of the Enlightenment philosophers arguably most convinced of the value and richness of Christianity, G.W.F. Hegel.⁵⁰ More importantly, for the Catholic Gilson, this return will be to a complex revelation and a community.

After all of this exposition of Gilson’s position, what light does it shed on MacIntyre’s work? One might argue that there are two aspects related and important to his work relevant here. From After Virtue on, MacIntyre continuously develops what can be called a general theory of virtues, practices, and traditions, one which is critical of and counterposed to two main currents of modern thought, Enlightenment/Encyclopedia and Nietzsche/Genealogy. To be for virtues and traditions is, of course, not necessarily to be a Christian philosopher.⁵¹

The second moment of MacIntyre’s thought, however, places it within Gilson’s conception of Christian philosophy, for MacIntyre accords a priority to the Christian Thomist tradition. MacIntyre, in short, accepts and fits into Gilson’s characterizations of Christian philosophy. He does so, of course, in the much more visible aftermath of Enlightenment’s failure, in a different historical condition than both Gilson himself and the philosophers he engaged with did. Gilson’s discussions of rationality also fill out MacIntyre’s discussions of the rationality of tradition, but only in the second moment of his thought, where the rationality of the Thomistic tradition, and more broadly the Catholic intellectual tradition not only assumes but explores the endless rational fertility of and afforded by Christianity (an exploration, it should go without saying, returning over and over again to Christian thought as well as Christian life, embodied in texts and communities of interpretation).

Maritain explicitly notes the harmony between his position and Gilson’s, regarding the latter as historical and the former as doctrinal or theoretical.⁵² A key distinction underpins his entire position, a distinction he articulates in Scholastic terms as that between the order of specification and the order of exercise, and in more immediately accessible terms as that “between the nature of philosophy, of what philosophy is in itself, and the state in which it is found factually, historically, in the human subject, and which relates itself to its conditions of existence and exercise in the concrete”.⁵³ The essence or nature of philosophy, he concedes, is an abstraction, but, again making recourse to Scholastic distinctions, he notes that it is not an unreality but an “abstractio formalis , abstraction of the thinkable reality or the complex of the formal notes with respect to the subjects that are as it were their bearers.”⁵⁴

Philosophy is actually found as a reality only in particular states, and Maritain criticizes both neo-Scholastics and Rationalists for having neglected this, for attempting to substitute the abstract essence of philosophy for its actual concrete exercise in and by concrete human subjects. In its essence, philosophy is purely and perfectly rational, extending itself to all of the natural order. In its actual states, however, rationality can not be so easily and immediately presupposed. “[I]n order to acquire in us its full normal development, philosophy demands many rectifications and purifications from the individual, an ascesis not only of reason, but of the heart, and that one philosophize with one’s entire soul just as one runs with one’s heart and one’s lungs.”⁵⁵

The Christian philosopher will philosophize differently from the non-Christian philosopher because they will philosophize in different states. One manner of difference is the conception of philosophy’s own powers. Both the non-Christian and the Christian can realize and even thematize the weakness of our nature, particularly our reason, “although the Christian, knowing that nature is wounded, knows these matters better.”⁵⁶ MacIntyre’s category of Genealogy in fact represents philosophies that thematize the debility of reason in a way radically different from, and radically deficient when compared to Christian thought. The Christian philosopher’s fundamental viewpoint, and the state he philosophizes in is radically different in another set of ways, not only from Genealogy and Enlightenment, but also from pre-Christian traditions.

[T]he Christian believes that grace changes the state of man, by raising his nature to the supernatural order, and by making him know things that reason left to itself cannot attain. He also believes that in order for reason to attain the highest truths naturally accessible to it without admixture of errors, it needs assistance, whether from within by internal reinforcements, or from without by objects being proposed to it, and he believes this from the fact that under the New Law such an assistance has taken on an institutional value that creates a new regime for the human intelligence.⁵⁷

The scope of rationality is expanded for philosophy under a Christian regime, and in several particular ways. Christianity directs philosophy toward objects that, in principle, philosophy could have discovered and investigated independently, but which in fact it did not. In some cases, Christianity illuminates objects that philosophy did not develop, while in others, it allows hesitations and doubts to be overcome, cases where Maritain says it is a case “not of revelation, but of confirmation.”⁵⁸ There are also cases where Christianity proffers supernatural mysteries, which do not in themselves fall within philosophy’s range. But, even these cases are not without import for philosophical development, for precisely by being the handmaid of theology in these matters, philosophy can “learn much in being led in this way along paths that are not its own.”⁵⁹

Like Gilson’s position on Christian philosophy, Maritain’s bears implications for MacIntyre’s work, which can be viewed, in both earlier noted first and second moments, as working within a Christian regime, philosophy in a Christian state. To be sure, some of the traditions MacIntyre discusses and draws upon as sources of his own thought are non-Christian, but they are ultimately appropriated by, articulated through, and understood within a Christian philosophical perspective informed by Thomism. MacIntyre’s work could of course be read in a purely secular way, as simply a philosophical defense of the rationality of tradition(s) and the need for the virtues, neither making nor entailing claims about religion, faith, theology, grace, or the supernatural order. That would be a rather truncated reading, however, for several reasons.

MacIntyre provides a persuasive account of rationality in which tradition(s) and the virtues, and all that they entail⁶⁰ play a central role in philosophical discourse and work, where rationality could not be unproblematically self-defined a priori (as is the case in Enlightenment and Genealogy) through exclusion of texts, notions, institutions, procedures and assumptions of interpretation, and practices deemed “superstitious”, “too religious”, or religious in the wrong way (e.g. Catholicism as opposed to rationalist conceptions of the “true meaning” of religion), or in the case of the most radical secularists, bearing any odor or trace of religion whatsoever. MacIntyre’s philosophical position on rationality at the very least opens the door to philosophical traditions and communities that draw in many ways on Christianity, allowing Christianity to fructify reason and philosophy, to use Gilson’s metaphor, to develop philosophy and the range of reason further through the ways in which this takes place, as Maritain explains, in a Christian state.

All of this bears very important implications for the field of philosophy outside of Philosophy of Religion’s artificial preserve, to which Christian philosophy is all too often banished.⁶¹ MacIntyre’s arguments for the rationality of tradition(s) and humans’ need for the virtues would grant Christian philosophy its place in philosophical discourse, particularly in moral philosophy. But, it would do more than simply restore to it a place that, if the contemporary rhetoric of pluralism were to be more than mere rhetoric, it ought to be granted anyway. It would reintroduce teleological considerations, or, more properly, lay bare the complex of teleological assumptions that are already in play even for philosophical perspectives that attempt to dismiss teleology, and indicate how these have already been articulated by pre-modern traditions in ways that do not seem to have been fundamentally surpassed by modern thought.

The virtues and traditions assume their importance because of the ultimately (even in its absence, its privation, its perversion) unavoidable issue of living or being well (Aristotle’s eu zēn or eu ekhein ), of human flourishing. Christian philosophy articulates this in a radically different and fuller way than the pre-Christian (or, in the case of certain later Christian philosophers, post-Christian) traditions and bodies of thought it draws upon and into new syntheses as well as contrasts itself against. Both Augustinian and Thomist traditions take part in this rearticulation, as do the various positions not only on but also in contemporary Christian philosophy, including MacIntyre’s.

III.

Blondel entered the debate in a polemical manner.⁶² His first contribution was a severe, and in more than one way partly unfair, critique of Gilson’s, and by implication Maritain’s position. ⁶³ Setting aside the issue of fairness, Blondel’s contribution raises some very important issues that, while they may have been off-mark in relation to Gilson, pose problems once MacIntyre’s philosophical work is viewed as a kind of Christian philosophy along the lines suggested by Gilson and Maritain. These problems are, in my view, implicitly resolved, if not explicitly addressed in MacIntyre’s work, but attaining a view on the problems Blondel articulate is worthwhile, since it allows these implicit aspects of MacIntyre’s philosophy to emerge.

Blondel makes four criticisms of Gilson, two largely in passing, and two as “presuppositions” that “invisibly bar the path to the very possibility of Christian philosophy.”⁶⁴ First, Blondel defends himself against Gilson’s interpretation of his philosophy, an interpretation in fact incorrect on several counts. This defense, however interesting it may be for Blondel scholars, is less important than the brief remarks that Blondel makes before moving to the two presuppositions.

In order to call itself Christian, a doctrine, according to the rules of historical method, should have to attach itself directly to the primitive stimulation, not to commentators or to intermediaries. Is it not strange to seek Christian philosophy in philosophers professing a doctrine that bears the restrictive characters of their intellectual personality and their particular horizons? If, in the precise meaning of the term, Christian philosophy can exist, it must be Christ and not a disciple that it invokes; and by this the our problem’s paradox is manifested even better, for Christ is not at all a philosopher or a master of rational speculation. There exactly resides the difficulty to be elucidated, not in the later debates between Augustinians, Thomists, Scotists, or others.⁶⁵

Blondel’s remarks here have to be placed in their proper context, for his position he risks being taken for the (Reformed) Protestant position(s) later taken on the debate.⁶⁶ His criticism bears on a sort of reification of Christian philosophies, in which they are deracinated from their Christian origins, from their living connection with Christ, turned into philosophical systems and methodologies whose use, whether as a whole or in part, could be uncritically assumed to represent Christian philosophy. Simply invoking Thomas, citing passages from his work, employing distinctions he articulates, even if done in a systematic manner, does not by itself assure fidelity to the contours and directions of Thomas’ thought.

Some norms, which for Blondel are embodied particularly in the body and practice of the Church and in Tradition⁶⁷, but also immanently in and essential to the practice of philosophy, must be relied upon and employed in reappropriating Christian thought. ⁶⁸ These norms can be discerned, embodied and governing, within the work of Christian philosophers, particularly Fathers and Doctors of the Church, but this is precisely because Christian philosophy does invoke Christ, degenerating when it only invokes disciples.

Blondel criticizes Gilson on account of two presuppositions he takes Gilson to hold. The first is conceptualism, maintaining:

philosophical doctrines, as diverse as they may be, aim in sum at closing themselves up into closed, sufficient, and exclusive systems; these systems organize themselves and terminate in concepts, and all that does not succeed in being raised into concepts repulses philosophy. But, this is precisely what is in question: can it not be philosophical, is it not “conceivable”, is it not even normal, that philosophy opens ulterior perspectives, holds the trampoline steady, so to say, but orients and stimulates spiritual life’s dynamism by posing inevitable problems whose complete solution it does not provide, even though it should serve to not allow them to be misunderstood nor falsely resolved?⁶⁹

Blondel does not reject concepts, as Gilson charged, nor does he view them pragmatically as merely instrumental, valid only insofar as they terminate in action. He rejects Gilson’s view that a philosophy of the concrete would “use religious experience without concepts like a matter elaborated by life, thanks to the mediation of action, without reflection being able to analyze this mixture of the two heterogenous orders of nature and grace, in short without this confused concrete or this experimental immanence being able to be analyzed and raised to ideas”⁷⁰ In Blondel’s philosophy, thought and action, theory and practice, are coordinated with each other dialectically, and one of the strong points of his philosophy is that he grasps thinking as not only related to, nourished and enriched by action, but as also a type of action. Action, or practice in turn is conditioned by thought and theory, including philosophical concepts and systems.

There is an option in philosophy, of which one term is conceptualism, a term that as a presupposition denies the existence or even possibility of this option for philosophy. The other term of this option is “an open philosophy and one which, at the same time, recognizes its limits, by being ready to accept ulterior data.”⁷¹ This readiness consists in a willingness to accept ulterior data on their own terms, rather than simply within the confines of a system of concepts already taken as final and absolute. It means philosophy, and the philosopher working with it and working it out, being willing to allow ulterior data to call their systems of concepts into question. This does not mean of course that one simply abandons concepts and their often hard-won systematization in this contact with something new, something different, even something old but not previously grasped. Rather, what Blondel describes is something similar to MacIntyre’s characterization of Thomas’ dialectic.

Blondel indicates that this open philosophy is motivated by a general problem, going beyond “an always deficient character of particular systems which . . . remain contingent [caducs] and are always to be surpassed,”⁷² as well as “the perpetual renewal of the philosophical tradition in general, always perfectible because it is always incomplete or inadequate, even where it is sure of itself and grounds its incessant movement on definitive acquisitions.” ⁷³ The general problem poses this question:

yes or no, philosophical doctrines, at whatever degree of development they make it to, can they, should they aim at being sufficient. . . at providing by themselves. . . all the light and all the strength necessary for thought and life, so that they would be, even under their transitory form, the provision for the journey and the supreme explanation? Or, on the other hand, by reason, by duty, constitutionally, if one can talk in this way, must philosophy end up, whatever may be the level of its development, in recognizing how it is normally incomplete, how it opens in itself and before itself an open space prepared not only for its own ulterior discoveries and on its own ground, but for the lights and the contributions whose real origin it is not and cannot become?⁷⁴

This option’s second term, recognition of incompleteness on the part of philosophy, is itself philosophical since it does not “proceed from a revelation”, but is alone “in spontaneous and deep accord with Christianity.”⁷⁵

Recognition of this incompleteness is an ongoing activity of philosophy. The philosopher remains grounded in a context of concepts, texts, narratives, fundamental assumptions and rules of inference, and conception of rationality surrounding and informing philosophical activity, and these are not nullified or cast aside when ulterior perspectives are opened, when philosophy recognizes its limits and takes an attitude of receptivity to further data, or when it opens an empty space within and before itself, to use Blondel’s three formulations. This is how philosophical progress takes place, for this empty space can be, and has often been, subsequently filled by philosophy, for some of the ulterior data or discoveries are philosophy’s own and on philosophy’s own ground, as for example progress in moral philosophy through a better understanding of the passions, for instance when Thomas Aquinas resolves certain difficulties arising from Aristotle’s distinction between anger and hatred⁷⁶.

The perspectives philosophy opens in the course of its own normal activity, and what enters into the empty space it clears, is not all within the orders that philosophy can then reassimilate. Philosophy goes beyond the philosophical, so that recognition of its limits, particularly with respect to the Christian supernatural, involves realization that these limits cannot be established in finished and rigid fashions typical of Enlightenment thought and covertly and continually assumed by Genealogy, as MacIntyre points out. Philosophy discovers itself with one foot on the other side of whatever border it think to establish from its own side between itself and Christianity, or framed in a different way, what it discovers filling or already occupying the empty space it clears is the supernatural.

Blondel’s critique of conceptualism does not apply to MacIntyre’s philosophy, whose reflection on and reappropriation of tradition(s) over against but also within modernity is anything but a philosophy attempting to close itself up and suffice onto itself in systems of concepts that require only application, a characterization that does fit Enlightenment/Encyclopedia. In fact, Blondel’s and MacIntyre’s philosophies share much in common, particularly appreciation of how theory is supported and illuminated by the tissue of practice, without downplaying theory’s role and importance. But, the direction Blondel’s critique takes does raise some issues for MacIntyre’s thought, not so much for its critique of Enlightenment and Genealogy, but for its reappropriation of a Tradition that developed through its fertilization by Christianity, where conflux, conflict, transmission, and modification of traditions was mediated by and within Christianity, which brought its own lights, made its own contributions, imposed its own demands in the process.

Blondel’s criticizes Gilson for a second presupposition, namely that the discipline of history could provide a resolution to the problem of Christian philosophy’s possibility by indicating where Christianity has played a role in the development of philosophical systems, where dogma has “been generative of reason and of philosophical initiatives,” ⁷⁷ thereby indicating the actuality of Christian philosophies. Blondel calls this a “hybridization” that, purporting to reconcile philosophy and Christianity actually “abandons the essential interests of both of them conjointly,”⁷⁸ in two interrelated ways. The first immanentizes, or improperly rationalizes the contributions of Christianity, while the second simply and uncritically appropriates Christianity’s contributions, vitiating philosophy’s rationality in the process.

Historical research, when it seems to adequately address itself to revealed data, to dogma, to faith, the religious life and experience, even to the institution of the Church, modifies the objects of its research, “forcibly stripping them of their supernatural originality.” ⁷⁹ This results in an unacknowledged double use of the revealed data one wants to bring into philosophy through history.

one seems to use them just as they give themselves to be, but really one transsubstantiates this revealed, this supernatural, into human ideas and moral experiences, whereas in order to remain faithful to the Christian view, in these data one would have to respect their specific traits, that is to say, what is neither discovered, nor assimilated, nor acting solely by human lights and forces by themselves. ⁸⁰

This does not mean, of course, that historical research, such as Gilson’s⁸¹, claiming to indicate the historical existence, and further to delineate general traits and themes, of Christian philosophies, becomes totally inadequate to its objects. Although Blondel speaks of “a clandestine mutation, a transvaluation”, what he notes is a risk of “emptying Christian philosophy of the specific signification without which it is only a deceptive brand-name,”⁸² not that this is always and necessarily the case.⁸³ While this risk can be noted and thematized philosophically, philosophy cannot remedy or banish it.

Alternately, when philosophy turns to history in a different way, no longer the discipline of history, but rather directly to historical realities, “wanting to integrate in itself dogmas, ideas, ascetic practice, mystical experiences which come to it from outside. . . by the very care not to alter the supernatural character of Christian data,”⁸⁴ it “introduces into its flesh a foreign body”, something non-rational it cannot assimilate philosophically. This does not mean that philosophy should have no contact with Christianity, let alone not take its data into itself, examine and reflect upon it, but it requires philosophy to have “preliminarily opened it itself this empty space of which we spoke.” ⁸⁵

Where, then, does MacIntyre’s philosophy fit in here? His philosophy does not thematize the problem of relationship between the supernatural and natural orders, but does that mean that his philosophy can avoid this problem, that it can for instance, discuss, interpret, and reappropriate Christian philosophers such as Thomas or Augustine (or their interpreters), as grounded in, nourished and formed by, representing, and developing traditions and bodies of thought that, in Gilson’s characterizations, could not have existed without Christianity, in which revelation was generative of reason? And, raising the two questions posed at the start of this paper in light of Blondel’s critique, can MacIntyre’s philosophy be understood as a type of Christian philosophy, and can his philosophy provide additional (self-)understanding of Christian philosophy?

In terms of Blondel’s critique, the central issue is again which term of the option MacIntyre takes, conceptualism or an open philosophy. An open philosophy allows fruitful contact between philosophy and Christianity, as well as interpretation and reappropriation of such contact. As noted earlier, MacIntyre’s work avoids what Blondel calls conceptualism, and seems in practice not only to possess but to rely upon the openness he describes, although MacIntyre does not thematize it in exactly the same way. This openness of philosophy might be productively viewed not so much as a type of rationality in MacIntyre’s sense, but rather as something involved in rationalities that allows them to continue being rational in a full sense in their activity, rather than degenerating into ideology merely imitating rationality.⁸⁶

Viewed in light of the issue of Christian philosophy, this openness allows philosophy to legitimately extend itself to all of its possible objects, into all of its fields, even to those opened or offered by Christian revelation, instead of closing them off a priori ⁸⁷ as not fitting presupposed conceptual categories or concepts, including conceptions of rationality. It allows rationality its conditions for flourishing. To continue this shift from Blondel’s terms to MacIntyre’s, this openness, particularly with respect to Christianity, is best sustained and articulated, “most open” one might say, in the types and traditions of rationality that MacIntyre calls Tradition. ⁸⁸ And, correlatively, it is in Christian philosophy that Tradition both culminates and finds its most philosophically fruitful expressions, both past and present.

Blondel’s contribution to the S.f.P session is not simply critical, and he articulates this open philosophy (which he prefers to call Catholic philosophy rather than Christian philosophy) in a more substantive, albeit brief, manner. Philosophy raises and uncovers problems which it cannot itself resolve, “inevitable problems that it serves to define, to precise, to turn away from false paths, to equip against abusive extrapolations.”⁸⁹ In its critical activity, philosophy sheds some light on them, showing them “not insoluble, but incompletely resolved by philosophy, whether in the speculative order, or whether for the practical solutions they invoke.”⁹⁰ Precisely at this point, Blondel’s open philosophy becomes explicitly open to the supernatural in a more than merely hypothetical way. The empty space that philosophy opens within and before itself is not a “black hole. . . an ocean for which neither ship nor sail would seem possible,” ⁹¹ nor is it, in terms that apply to MacIntyre’s category of Genealogy, “a chimerical fiction, projection of restlessness, sickness of the soul.”⁹²

The empty space is not amorphous, for it has “contours to discern,” ⁹³ and in fact, it is not even really empty, nor is its content without rational structure. After this empty space has not only been opened but thematized within philosophy, as philosophy of insufficiency, philosophy and the rationality inherent to it do not simply draw themselves up short.

it is not a matter only of a vital immanence whose obscure secret the believer or the practitioner would alone have for himself. . . To the contrary it is a matter of considering, with all of the demands of the most intellectual critique, the advances, the responses, the claims, the interventions of this Supernatural whose possibility one must recognize and about whose reality one must discern whether it in fact is, even under the most paradoxical incarnations; and perhaps then one perceives that the demands, at first disconcerting, correspond intelligibly to the spontaneous requirements of this autonomous and open philosophy we described above.⁹⁴

An open philosophy can enter in a fully philosophical, fully rational, way into the empty space it clears, discovering what is not only there, but what has also been there all along without philosophy being able to grasp it previously. This opens the way to recovery and reappropriation of and within Tradition in a way that remains entirely philosophical.

If MacIntyre’s philosophy, particularly in its reappropriation of the rationality and the resources of tradition, is understood as an open philosophy, uncovering or recovering the past Christian philosophies informing Tradition as open philosophies, one can interpret his reappropriation of tradition both as a Christian philosophy and as contributing to the (self-) understanding of Christian philosophy, the former not only in the weak senses of a philosophy developed by a Christian or a philosophy compatible with Christian doctrine and dogma, but in the robust and truly philosophical senses that Gilson, Maritain, and Blondel each give it in turn. Without an open philosophy, Blondel argues, “the historical solutions and the Christian teachings could not be philosophically admissible in the organism of rational thought,” ⁹⁵ but he also insists that Christian philosophy must not only be open, it must extend itself philosophically to what it finds in this philosophically uncovered open space, this “gap coming from above.”⁹⁶

Christian philosophy must go further than this starting point necessary to it, but not sufficient from that point on when Christian philosophy considers this speculative possibility as actualized in facts. This is what would have to be examined more closely by making use of historical data in the intellectual organism of philosophy, just as M. Gilson rightly demanded.⁹⁷

In return, what Blondel did not adequately address in any of his interventions from 1931-34 in the Christian philosophy debate, is how this open philosophy has its support, and perhaps even its conditions of possibility in the historical existence of previous Christian philosophies, and in the ongoing Tradition encompassing both them and Blondel’s own fertile philosophical effort.

Notes

1: Etienne Gilson, The Spirit Of Medieval Philosophy (1932), p. 10. Ramon Fernandez, “Religion et Philosophie” (1932), p. 903.

Another observer, Jean Rimaud, points out “a rationalism which is, however, not the whole of modern philosophy, though it often presents itself as such. In the recent debates, we have found it as firm as ever in its intransigence and faithful to its tradition: it defines philosophy by its opposition to any faith.” “Nos préoccupations philosophiques” (1933), p. 153.

2: Jude P. Doughtery employs this term in “Christian Philosophy: Sociological Category or Oxymoron?” The Monist , 1992. His claim is that “‘Christian philosophy’ is a label that may be given to what philosophers do when they deliberately relate their professional work to their religious or ecclesiastical commitments. It doesn’t characterize the philosophy related, it refers only to a relation, a relation observable to an historian or perhaps to a trained sociologist.” p. 290. He claims in the course of his article that his position is “not unlike” Maritain’s and Gilson’s positions, which is clearly incorrect.

3: If there were any doubt as to MacIntyre’s Catholicism, this exchange in a 1993 interview ( Kinesis , vol. 20, no. 2, p. 43-4) settles them:

KINESIS: so how would you depict your own religious faith?

MACINTYRE: I am a Roman Catholic. Period.

KINESIS: In a traditional and orthodox sense?

MACINTYRE: There is no other sense. I believe what I am taught to believe by God, through the Church. And when God speaks, there is nothing to do but to obey or disobey. I don’t know in what other way one could be a Roman Catholic. If Roman Catholicism is a theory of mine, or of some group of people, about how the world might be construed, then it’s not a particularly interesting philosophy.

4: Anglophone literature has been too dependent on Gilson and Maritain’s accounts of the debate and its issues, primarily for two interconnected reasons. Gilson and Maritain spent considerable time in the U.K., U.S.A, and Canada, giving lectures, teaching, and (in Gilson’s case) setting up the Medieval Institute in Toronto. Not surprisingly, their works have largely been translated into English.

5: The six would be: Emile Bréhier, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Léon Brunschvicg, Maurice Blondel and Gabriel Marcel. This could be expanded to include: Bruno de Solages, Antonin D. Sertillanges, O.P., Fernand Van Steenberghen, and Léon Noël.

6: One can speak of a later, (largely Reformed) Protestant sub-debate, but this debate takes place much later, in the late 1940s

7: Léon Noël argued, invoking Husserlian phenomenology, that there was no Christian philosophy in a rigorous sense. “La notion de philosophie chrétienne”, Revue néoscholastique de Philosophie , vol. 37. F. Van Steenberghen in “La IIe journée d’études de la Société Thomiste et la notion de ‘philosophie chrétienne’”, Revue néoscholastique de Philosophie , Nov. 1933, took up a neo-scholastic position, which agreed with Rationalists that the term “Christian philosophy” had no meaning. Gilson and Maritain had already discussed and critiqued such neo-scholastics, and Blondel responded to Van Steenberghen in “Pour la philosophie integrale”, Revue néoscholastique de Philosophie, vol. 37.

8: Among these interlocutors, one would have to number Bruno de Solages, Antonin D. Sertillanges, O.P. and Gabriel Marcel (noting that Marcel’s position actually represents a fourth major Catholic position in its own right). Henri Gouhier also argued for compatibility between a historical approach such as Gilson’s and Blondel’s positions, on slightly different grounds, maintaining that their projects are so different as to be unable to exclude each other. Among the commentators, one would have to include Henri de Lubac.

9: “One will say perhaps that the difficulty is here is more normative than factual. If is was just a matter of the simple existence of Christian philosophy, would historical experience not give us a sufficient response, by showing us the existence of doctrines that claim that title? But, we will respond, these doctrines must still justify it; and that is an affair for the historian to judge.” Emile Bréhier, “Y-a-t’il une philosophie chrétienne?”, Revue de Métaphysique et de la Morale vol. 38 no. 2 (1931), p. 133. Translation author’s. Note: all subsequent translations in this paper, unless otherwise noted, are those of the author.

10: So much that de Lubac could later write: “According to Mr. Maritian, Christian philosophy is not , cannot want to be specifically Christian. . . . According to Mr. Gilson, Christian philosophy is no longer Christian. . . . As to Christian philosophy according to Mr. Blondel, it is not yet Christian..” Recherches dans la foi: Trois Études sur Origine, saint Anselme et la philosophie chrétienne (Paris: Beuchesne. 1979), p. 142-3

11: Or, rather, gave way to the larger projects of its eminent interlocutors.

12: Fiachra Long’s article “The Blondel-Gilson Correspondence through Foucualt’s Mirror”, Philosophy Today, Winter 1991, narrates these misunderstandings and proposes a theoretical explanation of them, employing Foucault’s Archeology of Knowledge. Her account of the disagreements between Gilson and Blondel is superior to Shook’s discussion in his Etienne Gilson , which quite simply misunderstands the pertinence of Blondel’s position, uncritically repeating Gilson’s and Maritain’s criticisms.

13: “In our climb to the domain of Christian philosophy, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have made you come along this far. . . on two itineraries, which I will call, for commodity’s sake, the Gilson itinerary and the Maritain itinerary; it remains for me to make you come along another one, the Blondel itinerary. None of the three lead to the same summit, for our mountain has three summits, but it seems to me that the view that one has from each of them marvelously completes the view that one has from the others, and that all three allow one to make for oneself a sufficiently complex and exact idea of this complex reality” Bruno de Solages, “Le problème de la philosophie chrétienne”, La Vie Intellectuelle, 25 Dec 1933, p. 232.

14: Whether one even ought to be so conscious and reflective should remain an open question. From the perspectives MacIntyre discusses as “Genealogy” in Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry , and as Nietzschean in After Virtue, aiming at this would be simply another mask for the will to power.

15: [provide Shook ref. – Gilson’s description of the interlocutors pro and contra ]

16: Cf. Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 166-8. Two points that MacIntyre makes about the Thomistic synthesis are particularly relevant to the situation when “two rival large-scale intellectual traditions confront one another.”

First, he distinguishes two stages in “genuine controversy”, a first stage where “each characterizes the contentions of its rivals in its own terms, making explicit the grounds for rejecting what is incompatible with its own central theses,” and a second where “the protagonists of each tradition. . . .ask whether the alterative and rival tradition may not be able to provide resources to characterize and to explain the failings and defects of their own tradition more adequately than they. . . have been able to do.” Moving from the first stage to the second, MacIntyre claims, “requires a rare gift of empathy as well as of intellectual insight”, a gift that MacIntyre argues Thomas possessed, and which I argue Gilson, Maritain, Blondel, and Marcel possessed, granted to different degrees.

Second, Thomas was fortuitously (or providentially, from a Catholic perspective) “confronted by the claims of two distinct and in important ways incompatible philosophical traditions” after an education that rendered him “trained to understand each from within.” MacIntyre argues that “[p]erhaps no one else in the history of philosophy has ever been put into quite this situation”, and although the conditions of these major Catholic interlocutors is, I argue, analogous, a major difference must be signaled.

The situation for these four with respect to traditions and conceptions of rationality is more complicated, for they work through a conflict between modern secular thought that rejects and marginalizes the Aristotelean, Augustinian, and Thomist traditions, and an ongoing Catholic intellectual tradition rich and varied enough to permit internecine conflicts such as their own.

17: B.S.f.P, p. 50. Bréhier calls this religious authority a magisterium, and argues that “ in every Christian confession, there is, I believe, what is called a ‘magisterium’, which says what is Christian and what is not.” p. 50

18: B.S.f.P , p. 50

19: Bréhier argues for a complete separation of philosophy and rationality from Christianity. “I will conclude that Christianity is essentially the mysterious history of the relations between God and man, a mysterious history which can only be revealed, and that philosophy has for its substance rationalism, that is to say, the clear and distinct consciousness of reason that is in things and in the universe.” B.S.f.P, p. 52

20: In the paragraph beginning his presentation to the S.f.P, Brunschvicg first states that he is far from being an enemy to Christian philosophy, then, second: “I recognize that it is irritating when someone takes the attitude of simply being a philosopher who gives himself the role of an impartial and disinterested observer, when he is perhaps the only one to accept these epithets as applying to him.” B.S.f.P, p. 73. Finally, he concedes: I would not recognize myself in what I think and what I feel if the entire movement of Christianity had not existed”, p. 73.

21: Blondel noted this in a note in his response to Bréhier,“Y-a-t’il une philosophie chrétienne?”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol 38, no. 4, 1931 p. 601.

22: B.S.f.P , p. 76

23: Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 58-81. From the perspective of the present, we can see as well how some purportedly Catholic positions, which in MacIntyre’s schema (as well as the continuously articulated self-understanding of the Catholic Church) ought to fit into the type of moral inquiry he calls Tradition, actually fall not only into the type he calls Enlightenment, but also Genealogy.

24: In the cases at least of Maritain and Blondel, the case can be made that they were aware not only that the Enlightenment had failed in its aims and promises, but that another kind of thought, both anti- Enlightenment and anti-traditional, but willing to appropriate parts of them (as for instance post-modernism and deconstruction self-consciously and explicitly do), had arisen. In Blondel’s case, this is clear already in the first two parts of Action (1893).

25: Noël bases his position on Husserl’s phenomenology, placing it squarely within the type of moral enquiry MacIntyre calls Enlightenment/ Encyclopedia (Cf. Husserl’s Ideas and Crisis), arguing that Christian philosophy cannot be philosophy in the rigorous sense of the term, rigorous, that is, in the sense that Husserlian phenomenology uses the term. Had he used Heidegger, a case could be made that he was moving into Genealogy. Interestingly regarding Heidegger, Bréhier was later considerably influenced by him. [Blondel and Heidegger’s student Ernesto Grassi]

26: Maritain, of course, is a neo-Thomist, but during the course of the debate, Gilson accords a priority to Thomistic thought over Augustinian thought. “Both St. Thomas’s philosophy and St. Augustine’s philosophy are philosophies of the concrete, but their attitude with respect to the concrete is not the same. St. Augustine always seeks notions comprehensive enough to embrace the concrete in its complexity. St. Thomas always seeks notions precise enough to define the elements that constitute the concrete. In a word, the former expresses the concrete, the latter analyzes it.” B.S.f.P, p. 45

27: Blondel, to be sure, while never an interpreter of St. Thomas, found his later work more and more in consonance with Thomas’ work. Cf. Presentation of 26 November, 1932 Meeting of the Société française de Philosophie: “Le problème de la philosophie catholique”, Maurice Blondel, Les Etudes Philosophiques (1933). Interestingly, a commonplace criticism of and excuse for not engaging with Blondel’s later Tetralogy, made by Blondel scholars who favor his earlier works is that he approaches too close to Thomism.

28: Blondel’s major early works Action (1893) and Letter on Apologetics (1896) antedate both the phenomenological and existential movements, to which resemblances have been noted. [discuss Blondel’s relations with Scheler, Heidegger. Dumery, and Cartier’s interpretations]

29: Interestingly, as Van Steenberghen indicates in the course of the debate, the first Day of Studies of the Thomist Society at Juvisy, 12 September 1932 was dedicated to phenomenology. The second day, 11 September 1933, was dedicated to the issue of Christian philosophy, and saw a contribution by Dom Feuling, O.S.B. “whose technical vocabulary was borrowed from the phenomenological school”, “La IIe journée d’études de la Société Thomiste et la notion de ‘philosophie chrétienne’”, Revue néoscholastique de Philosophie, Nov. 1933, p. 542 Dom Feuling argued a thesis similar to that of Noël’s contribution, “La notion de philosophie chrétienne”, Revue néoscholastique de Philosophie vol. 37, May-Aug 1934.

30: Blondel, unlike the other main Catholic interlocutors in the debate, is mentioned only obliquely in Fides et Ratio, “others produced a philosophy which, starting from an analysis of immanence, opened the way to the transcendent.” (par. 59). For discussions on Blondel’s influence on John Paul the Gret in general and on Fides et Ratio in particular, Cf. Peter Reifenberg, Verantwortung aus der Letzbestimmung: Maurice Blondels Ansatz zu einer Logic des sittlichen Lebens (Freiburg: Herder. 2002), p. 19 nt. 24, and , John Sullivan, “Philosophy as Pilgrimage: Blondel and John Paul II”, The Downside Review, Vol. 117, no. 406 (1999)

31: After the debate, Blondel would explicitly employ a different method, no longer the “method of immanence”, but the “method of implication”.

32: I use the term “characterization” here rather than definition, as a more inclusive term

33: B.S.f.P, p. 39

34: “Both St. Thomas’s philosophy and St. Augustine’s philosophy are philosophies of the concrete, but their attitude with respect to the concrete is not the same. St. Augustine always seeks notions comprehensive enough to embrace the concrete in its complexity. St. Thomas always seeks notions precise enough to define the elements that constitute the concrete. In a word, the former expresses the concrete, the latter analyzes it.” B.S.f.P, p. 46.

35: B.S.f.P, p. 45-6

36: Gilson clearly views this as what is correct in what he takes to be the Augustinian position. “These are not secondary concessions made to the Augustinian position on the problem, but the open recognition of the fact that this position is the true position on the problem and that the reality that it defines is really the reality to be explained.” B.S.f.P, p. 46.

37: B.S.f.P, p. 46

38: B.S.f.P, p. 48.

39: B.S.f.P, p. 48

40: Augustine figures highly in Thomas’s work, as MacIntyre signals by discussing Thomism as a synthesis of the Aristotelean and Augustinian traditions in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry

Anselm also has some place as a productive source for Thomas’ thought. I confine my reference here to the portion of the S.T. dealing with original sin and Thomas’s Commentary on the Psalms , not because these encompass Thomas’s references to Anselm, but rather out of my confessed ignorance on these matters, which I hope to remedy in the near future with an exhaustive study of references to Anselm in the entirety of the Thomistic corpus.

41: Cf. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? esp. p. 171-5.

42: Cf. also Gilson’s “Le problème de la philosophie chrétienne”, La Vie Intellectuelle , 10 Sep 1931 and “Autour de la philosophie chrétienne”, La Vie Intellectuelle , 10 May 1933.

43: B.S.f.P, p. 48

44: B.S.f.P , p. 47. In making this point, Gilson replies in advance to Brunschvicg’s dismissal of the Christian philosopher in the second and third terms of his trilemma.

45: B.S.f.P, p. 47

46: B.S.f.P, p. 47

47: B.S.f.P, p. 47-8

48: Marcel explicitly criticizes Bréhier along these lines. “The separation that Mr. Bréhier crudely effects in Saint Augustine’s works, between his philosophy, that of ‘Plato and Plotinus’, and his Christian faith gives one simply the feeling that this historian, whose knowledge and probity nobody contests, is perfectly incapable of penetrating into a doctrine where precisely the elements that his analysis disassociates are intimately grounded. Mr. Gilson, who in contrast communicates with Augustinianism from the inside, has made the most remarkable effort to show how, in the works of the great Doctors and perhaps above all in Saint Thomas’s works, the notions borrowed from Greek philosophy were affected by a radically new index that deeply modifies their nature. By proceeding simply to inventories, by confronting in isolation terms rather than ideas, one cannot hope to reach this living truth that, even, and perhaps before everything else, for philosophy, is the only important one.” La nouvelle Revue des Jeunes , vol. 4, no. 3, p. 310-1.

49: B.S.f.P , p. 48

50: Cf. the authors’s Hegel and Religion: The Second Enlightenment”, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association , 2000

51: MacIntyre also points out the problems raised by attempting to provide a justification for virtues or traditions while working within Enlightenment/Encyclopedia’s and Genealogy’s conceptions of rationality. WJWR 175-6

52: B.S.f.P, p. 59

53: B.S.f.P, p. 59

54: B.S.f.P, p. 60

55: B.S.f.P, p. 63

56: B.S.f.P, p. 63

57: B.S.f.P, p. 63

58: B.S.f.P, p. 65

59: B.S.f.P, p. 65

60: e.g. communities, pedagogical relationships as well as the many other relationships that make pedagogy possible, narratives, conceptions of what human flourishing means in determinate situations and in general.

61: Gilson notes, “if there are Christian philosophies, one can predict that their fertility will be manifested in the domain of metaphysics, anthropology, and morals more than in any other,” but they will extend also to “accessory types of knowledge the different Christian philosophers will consider as required for the knowledge of God and oneself.” B.S.f.P, p.49

62: For two different views on this, see Shook, and Long

63: Not to excuse Blondel’s criticisms insofar as they are unfair, but to provide some historical context, it must be noted that at the start of the debate, Blondel was (as it turns out unfairly) targeted by both the rationalist Bréhier (as the last possible contender for the title of Christian philosophy) and Gilson (as the representative of contemporary Augustinian philosophy), and that he responded to both in the first part of the debate. Three other points are important.

First, Blondel had been publicly engaged (albeit at times pseudonymously) in some of the issues of the debate for nearly forty years. Cf. Action (1893 ), The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma , the latter of which Blondel refers to obliquely in his criticism of Gilson in terms of “philosophical historicism”, B.S.f.P, p. 89

Second, Blondel, in the 1880s, even before the defense of his thesis and consistently afterwards, had been critical of both rationalists and neo-Scholastics, and seemed (wrongly) to number Gilson and Maritain among the latter.

Third, if Blondel’s lack of full knowledge and appreciation of Gilson’s and Maritain’s positions should be viewed as inexcusable (and Blondel has a better excuse, having gone nearly blind since the late 1920s), their correlative lack of full knowledge and appreciation of Blondel’s position should come under equal censure. In my view it is probably best to extend charity to all of these interlocutors.

64: B.S.f.P., p. 87.

65: B.S.f.P., p. 87.

66: Cf. Roger Mehl, The Condition of the Christian Philosopher trans. Eva Kushner. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1963) and the essays by Jean, Boisset, P Arbousse-Bastide, Paul Ricouer, Edmond Rochedieu, Jacques Bois, and Maurice Neeser, in Le Problème de la philosophie chrétienne (Paris: P.U.F. 1949).

67: For Blondel’s use of this term, Cf. History and Dogma

68: Maritain raises this issue as well, highlighting the necessity for Christian philosophy to genuinely be philosophy. “[I]t goes without saying that philosophies can be Christian and diverge more or less from the nature of philosophy: then it is less a matter of a Christian philosophy than of the decadence or dissolution of it. That is what we have seen, for example, in the time when Occamism reigned in the University.” B.S.f.P., p. 68.

Marcel makes a correlative point, echoing but also going beyond Blondel. “I would be disposed for my part, to think that there is Christian philosophy only there where this paradox, this scandal [of revealed datum, particularly the Incarnation] is not only admitted or even accepted, but embraced with a passionate and unrestricted gratitude. From the moment on when, to the contrary, philosophy seeks by some procedure to attenuate this scandal, to mask the paradox, to reabsorb the revealed datum in a dialectic of pure reason or mind, to this precise degree it ceases to be a Christian philosophy.” Gabriel Marcel, “A propos de L’esprit de la Philosophie médiévale par M. E. Gilson”, Nouvelle Revue des Jeunes, vol. 4, no. 3, p. 312.

69: B.S.f.P., p. 87-8.

70: B.S.f.P., p. 87. Gilson’s criticism, it must be noted, does legitimately apply to Bergson.

71: B.S.f.P., p. 88

72: B.S.f.P., p. 88

73: B.S.f.P., p. 88

74: B.S.f.P., p. 88

75: B.S.f.P., p. 88

76: Cf. ST. ... and Aristotle’s Rhetoric

77: B.S.f.P. p. 89

78: B.S.f.P. p. 89

79: B.S.f.P. p. 89

80: B.S.f.P. p. 89

81: One could argue, relying solely on his presentation to the S.f.F, that Gilson makes a weaker claim, namely that the . . .

82: B.S.f.P., p. 89

83: If that were his position, – similar to those denying Christian philosophy possible. Also an interpretation made of Blondel later by Henri Dumery and Maurice Nédoncelle

84: B.S.f.P., p. 89

85: B.S.f.P., p. 89

86: This fits in well with Blondel’s realization that modern thought has both imposed new demands for philosophy, often by its obtuseness and its conceptualism, and has also opened up some new possibilities, has had some genuine achievements. [Letter on Apologetics].

87: A priori in a degenerate and deceptive sense of the term, for of course, there is no necessity to this, and these impositions are actually a posteriori, as the history of ideas reveals. MacIntyre’s work contributes to revealing where these decisions have been made, as well as the motives for these decisions.

88: It might seem odd to suggest that Blondel would fit into MacIntyre’s category of Tradition. Several remarks are pertinent. First, while he believed that modern thought had imposed or uncovered new exigencies that had to be addressed, Blondel himself discussed Tradition in a very positive light. [History and Dogma and discussion of literal practice in Action (1893)]. Second, it is clear that Blondel himself was formed by tradition. Third, most likely Blondel could not have carried out his philosophical project had he not been formed by tradition. [de Lubac’s remarks p. 135-6]

89: B.S.f.P., p. 90

90: B.S.f.P., p. 90

91: B.S.f.P., p. 90

92: B.S.f.P., p. 90

93: B.S.f.P., p. 90

94: B.S.f.P., p. 90

95: B.S.f.P., p. 90-1

96: B.S.f.P., p. 91. Blondel’s terminology changes here, from an “empty space” [vide] to a “gap” [trou], and this formulation corresponds to Maritain’s in An Essay on Christian Philosophy .

97: B.S.f.P., p. 91.

Earlier this month, I started to make good on a promise to follow up a first post about the twelve remedies for anger that Marcus Aurelius articulates in Meditations book 11, chapter 18, the majority of which he identifies point by point and attributes either to the Muses or to Apollo. In that second post, I explored remedies six through nine, in which he explicitly uses what we can call “anger-language”. I noted that there remained six more remedies to examine in detail, and subsequently decided that I’d write two more posts, each of which would discuss three. This third post will focus on the first, second, and third remedies for anger Marcus sets out for us.

What are these? Here’s the text itself, in in Hayes’ translation:

1. My relationship to them. That we came into the world for the sake of one another. Or from another point of view, I came into it to be their guardian—as the ram is of the flock, and the bull of the herd.

   Start from this: if not atoms, then Nature—directing everything. In that case, lower things for the sake of higher ones, and higher ones for one another.

2. What they’re like eating, in bed, etc. How driven they are by their beliefs. How proud they are of what they do.

3. That if they’re right to do this, then you have no right to complain. And if they aren’t, then they do it involuntarily, out of ignorance. Because all souls are prevented from treating others as they deserve, just as they are kept from truth: unwillingly. Which is why they resent being called unjust, or arrogant, or greedy—any suggestion that they aren’t good neighbors

Notice that none of these three directly refer to anger, or even use vocabulary tied to the range of emotion from frustration to outright rage that we might associate with anger. The closest we come to this is in the third one, where “resent” translates akhtontai, which has the sense of being burdened or vexed, in this case a typical response on the part of other people to being criticized for exhibiting bad qualities.

Instead of bearing directly on anger, each of these passages introduces a consideration or connected considerations that, in Marcus’ mind, would help him avoid, reduce, or end anger that he might otherwise feel. Each of them is intended as a strategy that can help him change his perspective on matters. They are cognitively oriented philosophical practices, or if you like, Nussbaum’s term “therapeutic arguments”. The full structure of them isn’t entirely evident in the text we have, of course, so you might think of them as analogous to enthymemes, where some of the argument remains implicit (through effective), and can be reconstructed, as we’ll do shortly.

Remedy 1: Recalling Our Relationships

Marcus brings up first “my relationship” (skhesis) to the other people (pros autous) with whom he is liable to get angry. When we do get angry, we are focusing upon the aspects of a situation that can lead to that emotional response, for example how someone else is treating us, how they are talking to us, or what attitude they are displaying. We might also be focusing on what we perceive as unfairness or injustice in the situation and their behavior, which might well be a function of what we take as what’s due to us in the situation.

Instead, Marcus suggests focusing on the relationship and two important interrelated aspects to it. We can view the relationship in terms of the Stoic notion that we human beings have come into existence (gegonamen) for the sake of each other (allēlōn heneken). That is, to do good to or benefit each other, rather than to do something the other person will perceive as harming them, the sorts of things we aim to do to those we are angry with. That reminder might be enough to shift a person from feeling and acting upon anger to viewing the other person as someone who might be harmed by one’s anger.

Then again, though, it might not be. Why not? Well, that coming into existence for the sake of each other does go both ways. So if I consider that the other person who has offended me in some way has themself come into being for the sake of others, and I’m after all one of those others, then I could get myself riled up by focusing on how they’re not behaving how they ought to.

Marcus reminds himself of a second aspect of relationships, drawing upon a new line of reasoning (kath’ heteron logon). He came into the world with additional responsibilities towards others, namely to be set over them (prostēsomenos), a term that could be read as being their ruler or their guardian. The first is in fact Marcus’ position, but the second connotation is favored by the analogies he draws, like the ram for the flock or the bull for the herd. If one’s role or function is to watch over and protect others, then anger at them becomes not just counterproductive in that, but could in fact contradict that role. Keeping them from harm or danger entails making sure that one’s emotions don’t lead to those negative outcomes.

This notion of “coming into being for others” as well as being ordained to watch over them might be viewed as a bit of stretch. Marcus steels himself by invoking Stoic doctrine, which doesn’t think the universe is just “atoms” or randomness, but rather a nature that is is providentially ordered and ordering, quite literally managed like a household of the whole (ta hola diokousa), with weaker, lower, or less valuable things (ta kheirona) for sake of the stronger, more valuable, or higher things (tōn kreittonōn), that is, non-rational being for the sake of the rational. But the higher, rational beings, following this ordering of nature, exist for the sake of each other. And we humans are among those higher beings.

Remedy 2: Reminding Oneself What People Are Like

Considering what people are like (hopoioi tines), literally the sort of people they are, their qualities, can prove useful for lessening or curbing the anger one might feel towards them. Notice how Marcus starts this process, suggesting he consider what people are like during activities we all engage in, eating at the table (epi tēs trapezēs) or lying in bed (en tōi klinariōi). There’s on the one hand a common humanity that evokes, which could help one with one’s feelings of anger at them. On the other hand, one could also consider that they do these things in the wrong way, for example in slovenly or ostentatious manners, so perhaps it might not be as helpful.

Then, Marcus shifts the focus to how they are prone to two important ways that they go astray, and suggests this is more important to consider (malista de) what sort of “necessities set down” (hoias anankas . . . keimenas) in their beliefs, or if you like, judgements or opnions (dogmatōn) that these people have. Their views on things are bound to contain errors, and they will necessarily draw erroneous inferences about how they ought to behave. When they wrong us, they do so out of some sort of mistake on their part.

One specific example of this going wrong on their part, but also a sort of confirmation of it as well, comes at the end of this passage. The things that they do, they do so with such “pride” (hoiou tuphou), a term that can also be translated as “vanity”, “arrogance”, or even “delusion”. In fact, that very sense of the term is a technical one for the Cynic school, used to refer to the sort of nonsense or foolishness that many people buy into. They aren’t just mistaken about one thing or another. They’re mixed up about many of the matters of life, and they are so bollixed up that they can actually think they’ve got things right.

When we understand how badly off they actually are, emotionally and cognitively, in the habits they’re stuck with, their lifestyles, their mindsets, the equally messed up people they take cues or advice from, we can realize that they’re more pitiable (as Epictetus said) than objects of anger.

Remedy 3: Whether They Do Rightly Or Wrongly

The third follows up on this theme of error, but also introduces another important consideration before that, framing matters in terms of a dilemma, but you might say, a fortunate one. Why do people do the things they do, that tend to make us upset and angry? Marcus considers two possible answers.

If what the other person is doing is right, or more literally, done rights (orthōs), then you don’t need to (ou dei) be vexed or annoyed (duskherainein) by what they are doing (or for that matter what you assume or feel that they’re doing). As the messed-up creatures we are (I can say this from my own experience), we sometimes do in fact get angry with people who are actually doing the right thing, when it interferes with what we desire, or when we don’t like how they’re doing it. That’s just a sign of our as yet imperfect rationality and unfinished personal development. Learning that we were wrong in our reaction to their doing the right thing can certainly take the edge off our anger, providing we’re not too prideful or obstinate.

The other possibility is that what they’re doing is done wrongly (ouk orthōs), that they are indeed doing something wrong. The general Stoic position on this, which Marcus endorses at many points in his Meditations, is precisely what he tells us here. They quite clearly (dēlounti) do what they do involuntarily (akontes) and in ignorance, “not knowing” (agnountes). If we look at matters in this light, we can acknowledge that the person does something wrong, but that doesn’t have to mean that we have to take it as something we ought to get upset, let along angry about. It’s their mistake, and we don’t have to commit one ourselves as a response.

One might counter though: what if they are doing the wrong action deliberately and voluntarily? What if they do know that what they’re doing to us is wrong? What if they’re not ignorant, but well informed, having put some thought into it. It might seem a bit too pat an answer, but the standard Stoic response is to say: They’re still ignorant and mistaken, and also doing something involuntarily, because they’ve got something mixed up about what they’re choosing to do. One some level, they think it makes sense, or even is the right thing for them, to do what they realize is wrong.

The point that Marcus makes immediately following reinforces this. Every soul is prevented, or more literally, “deprived” (steretai) unwillingly. And from what? Two things. One of these is the truth. Nobody really wants to be deprived of the truth. If there are cases when a person does attempt to keep things from themselves, it’s always because they value something more than a truth that might be embarrassing or painful to them. The other is to deal with people as each of them deserve. Even those who treat people badly, Marcus would say, do so because they mistakenly think they don’t deserve to be treated better.

One bit of support for this, that might be helpful for using these reflections to move away from anger at others, is the last thing Marcus writes here. The fact that they are deprived or prevented from treating people as they deserve and from grasping the truth about matters is precisely why they get upset when hearing (akountes) others say certain negative things about them. People don’t like being called or thinking that they are unjust, or that they are arrogant or “hardhearted” (agnōmones), or greedy, prone to demanding or taking more than their fair share at the expense of others. Or, any sort of suggestion (kathapax) that they are the kind of person to harm or wrong (hamartēkoi) their neighbors. Why? They’d like to think they’re better people than they actually are.

Realizing how mistaken they are, that they really aren’t doing what they want to (or should want to) in behaving badly, can furnish us with a way to lessen or even let go of our anger at them.

There’s one more post to come in this set on the 12 remedies for anger Marcus provides in Meditations 11.18, examining numbers 4, 5, and 10. That one will get published later on this month.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

A bit earlier this month, I had a somewhat difficult conversation with a colleague from an organization we both belong to. It was difficult for both of us, I imagine, for quite different reasons. For my colleague, who wanted to have the conversation, the difficulty stemmed from being upset over perceiving themself as having been disrespected, jumbling together different matters a bit too indiscriminately, not getting the reactions they wanted or expected from me, and having to hear some uncomfortable responses and pushback on my part. For me, it was more a matter of my time being taken up late in the evening in a conversation I had no plans to be in, that required a good bit of work to untangle and perhaps fell on deaf ears.

(As a side note, my wife was not happy with the conversation having delayed our dinner plans, and rightly so. Our time as busy people is at a premium, and I already give more freely of it than perhaps I ought to. She also pointed out that I had in effect given some straight-talking, thoughtful, and needed coaching time away for free, something for which I generally charge clients a hourly rate. So there’s another aspect of difficulty.)

The situation that the colleague and I were in, and the points that I made to them, bear upon matters of “respect”, as people perceive, desire, expect, and speak about it. As I’ve been mulling the conversation over, it occurred to me that certain of the dynamics I recognized and outlined to my colleague could be useful for a wider audience to read about, not least since it can be helpful to think about this always-emotion-laden ambiguous thing that people call “respect”. I’m not going to try to define it, by the way, but instead just count on the experience that most people have some general idea of what it means, but recognize that people do have differing ideas about what respect looks like.

Outlines Of The Situation

The colleague felt that they had been disrespected, both by me and by other people. That wasn’t where the conversation started, but that was the kernel of it on their side. It really bothered them that, in their view, a number of tasks on a list that they had recently produced and posted were not being completed by other people by a certain time. And since these were tasks that absolutely had to be done, those tasks unfairly fell upon them. Other people were being disrespectful by leaving more than their fair share of tasks to be done by my colleague.

In point of fact, they had a legitimate complaint about a previous occasion involving another colleague who did show up late, and thereby did displace those tasks onto them. In our case, they had a much more tenuous case for complaint. These are pretty simple, non-onerous tasks, one of which I’d completed before my colleague even showed up, another of which I got to after they got a tad bit passive aggressive about how badly it needed to be done (as it turned out, it kinda didn’t). Another colleague had also pitched in. The colleague who felt disrespected blurred the two distinct situations from different days together, resulting in some initial unnecessary confusion when they were raising their complaints.

Clearly the amount of emotion they invested into their read on the situation was quite out of proportion to what actually took place and the relative importance of the tasks in question. But that makes sense when it’s framed in terms of how they interpreted what happened. They were disrespected in their eyes. Pretty trivial matters, when you look at them through the lens of feeling like someone else is showing disrespect or a lack of respect to one can produce some significant effects. That’s a fairly universal and timeless human dynamic that won’t go away in our lifetime and may be the case long after all of us are gone. So it’s understandable that my colleague, feeling disrespected, would be upset.

I’m not the kind of person who aims to police other people’s emotions, or even their judgements. People get to feel and think what they’d like, even if it’s not entirely on-point and well-founded. I know I make plenty of my own cognitive and emotional mistakes. But there’s a difference between forbidding or requiring emotions or thoughts, and making the judgement “what you’re saying you think or feel doesn’t really make a lot of sense, when you look at it more closely, and here’s why.” They’re then free to do what they want with that.

When we got to the point in the conversation about five minutes in where my colleague was able to articulate that they felt that they had been treated disrespectfully, I laughed briefly, which understandably made them even more frustrated, and they said that the laughing was also disrespectful. I responded that it was hard (for me, not necessarily for everyone) not to laugh at that point, because their insistence upon how they had been disrespected was incongruous with how they had themselves behaved disrespectfully towards other people. It seemed very odd to be so focused on disrespect towards oneself but at the same time seemingly oblivious to the disrespect one had directed at others.

A First Issue: Expecting Respect Without Giving It

So right at the start, when it comes to considerations of respect and disrespect, an issue of what we might call reciprocity or consistency can be raised. It’s perfectly fine for a person who feels they have been disrespected by another person to bring that up with them or with someone else. In fact, it’s often necessary, healthy, or useful to do so.

But a person involved in relationships with others, where respect is an expectation, also needs to be cognizant of whether they actually display respect or disrespect to the others they are saying disrespect them. As we often say, respect is a “two-way street”. It is supposed to go both ways when there’s an adult relationship between people who are more or less equals, concerned with some common activity or work. There would be a different sort of disrespect in assuming that respect is something that others have to show to oneself but one does not have to equally show to others.

Hearing from me that they had themselves been disrespectful towards others (including but not restricted to myself), rather than stopping to reflect on those concerns about consistency or reciprocity, my colleague shifted the focus of the conversation along three lines, to which I responded to rather explicitly during the conversation. Each of them can be fleshed out into important considerations about how respect or disrespect emerges within interpersonal relationships, precisely in how people deal with respect or disrespect. You could call them “reflexive” or say they involve a “meta-” level.

A Second Issue: Intentions Alone Don’t Determine Respect

One of these shifts is a familiar response not just when it comes to respect or its opposite but all sorts of other attitudes or valuations one person can perceive, assume, or ascribe to the behavior of another. My colleague was unwilling to believe at first that they had themselves behaved disrespectfully towards others. Their basis for that claim was that they had not intended any disrespect. So since they had not meant to behave disrespectfully towards others, in their mind they had not shown any disrespect. My response was to point out that whether or not they had shown disrespect or been disrespectful was not a call that was entirely up to them. The other person involved in a situation also gets to determine whether they feel or think disrespect has been shown to them.

It is common for people to dismiss or downplay the words of other people expressing to them that they have disrespected those other people along precisely those lines. “I didn’t mean it”. “That wasn’t my intention”. Even: “No disrespect.” Those claims made by the person about whether they aimed or deliberately chose to disrespect might indeed be true (though admittedly some people use that as as sort of cover, which I don’t think was the case in this conversation). But it kind of doesn’t matter. If another person has perceived disrespect, and they’re not just being unreasonably touchy, or chronically prone to take offense, or clearly misinformed about what occurred, it’s worth taking their perspective into as serious consideration as one’s own.

To conclude that because one didn’t intend to show disrespect to another person, one definitely didn’t disrespect them, and the other person is simply wrong in claiming they have been disrespected, that’s an incorrect inference. And people do make wrong inferences all the time. Those can be corrected, when one realizes that they’re wrong. But there’s another important step that people often take, and that is doubling down.

Going further, making the claim that one didn’t mean or intend to disrespect the other person who feels disrespected, the main or even only response to the person who feels themselves disrespected, that will then tend to be perceived (on some level) as an additional instance of disrespect on one’s own part. It’s in effect telling the other person: “Since I didn’t mean to show you disrespect, you’re wrong in feeling what I did was disrespectful”. If the goal is to respect the other person, telling them they haven’t been disrespected, and thus adding a new additional instance of perceived disrespect seems an inherently counterproductive course to take.

A Third Issue: Communicating About Disrespect

Another turn the conversation took was my colleague raising a response that, taken entirely by itself, is actually quite reasonable. If other people found what they were doing disrespectful, why hadn’t they brought it up personally, in conversation with them, precisely like they were doing with me. That does seem to be an expectation for many people in relationships, in the workplace, in schools, or the like. We might frame it along the lines of: “If I’ve done anything you don’t like, by all means tell me, and I’ll think about it”. Maybe even, if one is told by another person that what they are doing conveys disrespect, even apologize for and stop doing that thing.

Now the situation in this case was admittedly a bit more complicated. My colleague didn’t in fact bring up their own perception of having been disrespected with all of the people that they felt had done so by not doing their fair share of the tasks. They didn’t bring it up those occasions at all with the other people. Just with me. After they let themselves get frustrated and stewed a while, and then decided to talk about it. So the “why didn’t they just do the appropriate thing, like I characteristically do?” response rings a little hollow. But having noted it, let’s set that aside.

What we have here again is a mix of some reasonable ideas and some mistaken assumptions, rolled ultimately into a wrongheaded inference. It would indeed be a good thing, provided we are dealing with reasonable people, who have decent emotional management, motivated by good will, if when one person does something the other views as disrespectful, that person who feels disrespected brings it up with that person. Ideally they do so in a calm but assertive manner, relatively near in time to the occasion of the perceived disrespect.

Does this mean, we can ask, that there’s any sort of requirement or obligation to do so? Meaning that a person who feels disrespected should or ought to follow that course? It might be useful, even prudent, but it doesn’t seem like it’s morally incumbent upon them to do so. People deal with others disrespecting them in all sorts of ways, certain of which might be more appropriate responses than going to the offender each time and communicating with them.

Letting the disrespect slide (without pretending it didn’t happen) and then moving on with one’s work or further conversation, that is often a perfectly fine response, at least from where I sit. I pointed out to my colleague that other people who feel themselves treated or talked to disrespectfully might also choose not to say anything, and might just disengage going forward, thinking “I’m not dealing with this prick”. Others might do something they intend as disrespect, as a sort of retaliation for the disrespect that they perceive has been shown to them. If there are power differentials or other perceived relevant differences (for example the person displaying disrespect being significantly older than the other), the person disrespected might feel reticence in raising the issue.

I pointed out to my colleague that other people didn’t actually have any sort of obligation to communicate to them that they felt like they were disrespected. As a grown adult human being with a good bit of experience in life, relationships, business, and organizations, they ought to be able to figure out whether the ways they interact with others are going to be viewed as respectful or not. Not with 100 percent accuracy, of course, but not on the other extreme, where their colleagues would somehow be emotional “black boxes” until they communicated. If their colleagues don’t seem particularly interested in interacting with them, which will likely prove the case if they’re passively-aggressively “managing” them, they probably want to consider their own attitudes, expectations, words, and conduct, rather than passively waiting for others to come to them.

A Fourth Issue: The Golden Rule Isn’t Enough

At this point in the conversation, I asked my colleague an honest question. “Do you treat everyone else how you would like, and expect to be, treated?” And they emphatically said “Yes”. It made some sense why they would have the level of frustration and the perceptions of disrespect that were clearly weighing on them. It also made some sense, given this, why my colleague would get perceived as disrespectful by other colleagues and myself (not least when insisting on their having been disrespected, and them not having disrespected others).

We’re all familiar with what has come to be called the “golden rule” in one formula or another. One of these is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. That is, treat other people as you yourself would like to be treated. In order to work well as a moral rule, it does require some qualification, or you might say, establishing some guard rails.

What if someone has such poor self-esteem and has been routinely treated so badly that they expect, even want other people to treat them like crap? Should they then treat other people that way? Probably not. What if someone has odd and false beliefs about what treating someone well involves, for instance if they somehow acquired the idea that sarcasm and putdowns are the proper way to show affection to another person? We could come up with plenty of other such cases that would problematize the golden rule (or even its negative variant, the “silver rule”)

Setting aside those sorts of clearly problematic exceptions, which fortunately weren’t an issue in this situation, there’s still another, likely more common, problem that can arise. People do differ widely in what they consider to be respectful or disrespectful. These divergences might stem from differences in cultural background. The set of attitudes and style of interactions that get called “Midwest nice” can come across positively to some people and negatively to others. And it’s not just a matter of that satisfying cultural expectations in the Midwest that work there but don’t translate well elsewhere. There are plenty of places, situations, and people right there in the Midwest where or with whom that kind of engagement might not be welcome, and could even seem disrespectful.

We could easily multiply examples for this as well, but really the key point is that important differences do exist between people in what they regard as respectful or disrespectful behavior, words, attitudes, or even expectations on the parts of others. Grasping this reality doesn’t mean that one must therefore entirely abandon anything like the golden rule of treating others as one would like or expect to be treated by them. But it does mean that the golden rule requires some qualification.

It would be thoughtless to expect that simply because one is behaving towards another person in a way that feels or is thought respectful when directed towards oneself, that the other person should therefore view one’s behavior as indeed respectful, rather than disrespectful. The further we go down the level of specificity away from a rather abstract conception of “behaving respectfully” to something like “behaving respectfully by acting and speaking in this particular way when in this sort of situation”, the more good judgement (or even having some understanding or knowledge about the other person) becomes required.

Why? You can’t just assume that because you’re giving what you’d like to get from the other person that they are getting what they’d like from you. At a high level of generality, you can say: I give respect to others that I’d like to get from them. And they should do the same. That’s reciprocity or consistency in the abstract. But if I’m only giving the straightforward, unembellished, frank and direct speaking about issues or problems to other people that is a preferred mode of communicating for me, they might not like that. It might even come across as disrespectful, rather than respectful to them. And if my response to that is to justify myself by invoking the golden rule, I’m arguably being rather self-centered and willfully foolish.

To bring this to a close, these reflections aren’t intended as some comprehensive lessons about respect, let alone a general theory of it. They’re more an occasioned set of points that I made to my colleague along with additional thoughts filling them out a bit more adequately than how I made them in that conversation. Perhaps they might be useful for some readers. Quite likely not for all! But there they are.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

Accept, the end of my foolish exhortation, I beg you, in memory of my mutual affection. My talk I call foolish because it is mine, but not its content, for that comes from God. - St. Anselm to Odo and Lanzo.[1]

I. Wisdom as Divine Attribute

At several points in his works, Anselm provides listings of divine attributes, and wisdom (sapientia, or being wise, sapiens) invariably falls in these enumerations.[2] Before examining Anselmian treatments of divine wisdom, it might be useful to recall certain of Anselm’s teachings about the nature of the divine attributes. In order to save time, rather than going into interpretative exegesis of Anselm’s texts, which I and others have done elsewhere,[3] I will simply set a few points out and provide only barest explanations needed.

The first is that each divine attribute is fully, perfectly, and entirely what God is. So, he says, e.g. of justice (meaning for this to extend in parallel to other attributes) that it indicates what God is (quid sit) rather than what kind of thing or to what degree (qualis vel quanta) God is. Accordingly, God does not properly speaking have justice or participate in justice. Rather God is (existit)[4] just and is justice; He is supreme justice, and is the justice in which all other just things participate in a variety of differing but sometimes analogously related modes.

The second point is that, simplicity and unity being rightly counted among the divine attributes, we ought not be surprised to find that attributes are actually not different things from each other. While distinguishable, they are not separate, and each one of them is entirely what God is and entirely what each other are. So, though in our reasoning about them, representation (whether intellectual or imaginative) them, naming them, or affective relations towards them, me may distinguish them from each other, the attributes are in reality the same substance, supreme, existent, and entire justice, wisdom, goodness, etc. A few implications about this are worth dwelling upon.

First, in God, wisdom is intimately intertwined with all the other attributes, including reason, truth, justice, and eternity. Second, we can never know or represent, let alone comprehend, any of these attributes in their fullness. Given the real unity of what we easily over-rigidly distinguish apart from each other as epistemological, metaphysical, or moral attributes, we might overlook on the one hand that adequately understanding any of these requires extending our intellects to the others, and on the other that our very knowledge, understanding, reasoning, or wisdom calls to be understood as more or less adequate participation in the divine wisdom. Third, through the Trinity each attribute possesses a depth I have elsewhere termed “reflexive intensity,” a sort of reduplication and intensification of an attribute through the relations and simplicity of the divine persons. In the divine nature “repeated [attributes] always harmonize [convenit] with each other in perfect unity. . . [P]erfect harmony is what harmonizes in a one sameness and same oneness [unam identitatem et eandem unitatem]”.[5]

In Monologion, Anselm writes of the Son as being “perfect understanding [intelligentiam] or perfect knowing [cognitianem], or knowledge and wisdom of the entire Paternal substance, i.e. he understands, and fully knows [cognoscit et scit] and is wise about the Father’s very essence.”[6] This leads then to the realization that: “if the Father’s very substance is understanding, and knowledge, and wisdom, and truth, consequently it can be gathered that just as the Son is the understanding, and knowledge, and wisdom, and truth of the Father, He is understanding of understanding, knowledge of knowledge, wisdom of wisdom, and truth of truth.” [7] This is a manner of being-wise fundamentally excelling human modes. A human being does not coincide with her wisdom,[8] through which she is wise.[9] “A human cannot be wise through herself [per se]”, but only though her wisdom or wisdom more generally, itself (however mediatedly) a participation in wisdom itself. “The supreme wisdom,” however, “is always wise [or enacts wisdom, sapit][10] through itself,”[11] dynamically.

Anselm identifies the Son or the Word with wisdom, as well as other associated attributes which in human beings we tend to identify as operations or faculties of the soul. At least in the divine substance, attributes such as knowledge, understanding, right affective response, even action are constitutive of and coextensive with wisdom. Integral to the nature of the Word is his knowing and understanding all created things, of which he is their '“true and simple essence.”[12]

All created things reside in the Word[13] in a way exceeding and preceding even their actual existence in themselves (not to mention our knowledge or experience of them), and the Word understands all of them,[14] understanding and knowledge[15] both of created beings and of the triune God being involved in wisdom. The Word’s wisdom also takes the form of memory or mindfulness [memoria],[16] and even extends to loving.[17] Anselm is also clear that the incarnate Word, fully human and fully divine, entirely possesses the plentitude of divine wisdom; he spells out implications:

That assumption of human [nature] in one person of God will not be done by the supreme wisdom except in a wise manner, and thus he will not assume in that human [nature] what is in no way useful, but rather detrimental to the work for which that very human [nature] was made. And indeed, ignorance would be of no usefulness to Him, but rather in many things harmful. For, how would he do so many and such works as He was to do, without measureless wisdom?[18]

When his student expresses doubts whether Christ as an infant would have been born wise, Anselm reasons:

God will wisely assume mortality, which since indeed usefully, He will use wisely. But, He would not be able to assume ignorance wisely, since it is never useful but rather harmful (unless perhaps when a bad will is held back from its effect, which will never be the case in Him) . . . From the moment when that man [i.e Christ] comes to be, He will always be God, just as his very self. So, He will never be without His power and fortitude, and wisdom.[19]

II. Wisdom and The Providential Ordering

Divine wisdom takes on fuller determinacy in the Anselmian view when understood in terms of God’s providential ordering of all things. Explicit mentions of this fundamental aspect occur in works where reasonability of the divine disposition comes into question, thereby furnishing an object of discussion and study. Rather than attempting full treatment of this massive topic which not only ultimately but quickly leads into mystery, here I will mention four main interrelated ways in which providence naturally expresses and embodies the divine wisdom in Anselm’s texts, briefly discussing the first three ways: creation of all beings ex nihilo; rational wills and their destinies of eternal punishment or reward; God’s promotion of good and derivation of good from evil; and the intelligibility [ratio] underlying the Fall (both of humanity and of the Devil and other angels), the Incarnation, and the Atonement.

All created things are made not only through God’s goodness, but also just as radically and intimately through His wisdom, about which Anselm remarks near the end of Monologion: “The term ‘wisdom’ is not enough to indicate to me that by which all things were made from nothing and are maintained [servantur] from nothing.”[20] The context is a discussion of our language’s (and by extension, thought’s) adequacy in the face of the divine, and it is not that the term “wisdom” is inappropriate to apply to God. Rather, there is no being to whom it is more appropriate to apply the “term,” whose signification we only partly, even dimly grasp, and only God entirely grasps, is, and rejoices in.

As noted earlier, all things, in the fabric and fullness of their being, exist in the Word eternally, so creation ex nihilo is thereby not separable from the providential ordering. When, in His wisdom, God creates and sustains all things in being, He endows them entirely with their specific natures and possibilities,[21] including for some those involving a freedom and rationality which can and in actuality does embroil them in complex historical, developmental, and volitional narratives and a history of salvation.

Rational creatures, i.e. human beings and angels, possess two faculties inextricably connected in Anselmian moral theory: reason and will.[22] Granted, animals also possess wills, but theirs are not reflexive, capable of self-determination and fundamental reorientation. Reason and the rational creature’s will also possess a complex teleology woven into their natures, the very nexus of created being, and analogically reflective of the divine economy. Anselm outlines the purposes of reason and will. The creature:

is rational so that it might discern between the just and the unjust, between the good and the evil, and between the more good and the less good. Otherwise it would have been made rational in vain. . . By a similar reasoning, it is proven that it received the power of discernment so that it would hate and avoid evil, and it would love and prefer the good, and even more greatly love and prefer the greater good.

He draws a further consequence, with implications for human wisdom: “It is certain then that the rational nature was made for this, that it should love and prefer the supreme good above everything else, and not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake.”[23] This purpose in its turn bears further intellectual implications: “the rational creature ought to apply all of its capacity and will [posse et velle] to remembering, understanding, loving the supreme good, for which end he knows himself to possess his very being [ipsum esse].”[24]

Now, for the rational creature so greatly endowed with freedom that it can even cast that freedom away, enslave its will and reason, and resist divine grace, there is an eternal destiny involving punishment and reward. Again Anselm explicitly connects this ordination with divine wisdom. It is wrong to think that “the supreme wisdom would make the soul [who loves God] so that it might at some time despise such a great good or while willing to keep it lose it by force.” Accordingly, the soul must be made to love God eternally. Anything else, Anselm says, would be “unbefitting to the supremely good, supremely wise, and omnipotent Creator,”[25] who provides and arranged for such a soul eternal beatitude. The soul which ultimately despises God will likewise suffer eternal misery, rather than the alternative of simply lapsing back into nothingness, since in that case, “the supremely wise justice would not discern between that which cannot do any good and wills no evil, and that which can do the greatest good and wills the greatest evil. And it is sufficiently clear that this would be unbefitting.”[26]

One centrally important aspect of divine wisdom exhibits that attribute’s identity with divine eternity, justice, and reason, namely that through it the providential ordering brings good even out of evil, right order out of bad order or disorder. Nothing is left unordered in the divine plan, which not only allows for and encompasses human and angelic freedom with all of their fateful consequences not only for individual beings but even for the cosmos and the history of all created being; within the providential order, it also encompasses all the complex interwoven workings of grace, offering, suggesting, reinforcing free choices towards or accepting of the good, an economy of grace in which rational creatures not only participate by accepting and using it, but also by being channels and collaborators.

When Anselm focuses on God bringing good out of evil, he typically frames this in terms only implicitly involving divine eternity and reason, but very explicitly justice and wisdom. The Devil unjustly torments human beings: “he d[oes] not do this by God’s command, but rather by permission of His incomprehensible wisdom, which even orders evil things well.”[27] In complex, unfolding ways involving human freedom and divine grace, God brings good, indeed even in the grand scheme the greatest goods, out of the fall of the Devil and other angels, the fall of Adam and Eve and ensuing original sin, the Incarnation of the Word, and the atoning death of the Son.

One De Veritate discussion illustrates this in ways usefully leading to the next and last section. Many actions (and by extension, volitions, thoughts, words, relationships, and states of affairs), which seemingly ought not to, do occur. In this chapter literally peppered with cognates of sapientia,[28] the central problem is how one can judge that evil actions “should not exist, when such goodness and such wisdom,” in one way or another “causes or permits”[29] them to be. The solution involves making a proper distinction between different respects in which the same action ought to be and also ought not to be.

The “supernal wisdom and goodness”[30] permits actions which in some respects are evil, and thus ought not be, but which in other respects are good, and thus ought to be. Christ=s death furnishes an example in two respects. Entirely blameless, he ought least of all to have been put to death, and yet his sacrificial death allowed and enacted reconciliation between humanity and God. In the order of volitional actions, his hands are those which ought least to have been pierced by the iron, and yet in the natural order it is entirely right that the iron penetrated his hands and inflicted agony upon him.

Two last points need be made about this. First, Anselm does not spell this out explicitly, but rather enacts this: making such distinctions and making them well is the proper function of reason and wisdom. God makes distinctions perfectly, and so far as we make them and make them more adequately, we make proper use of (and perhaps even expand our store of) what reason and wisdom we possess, thereby participating in wisdom and reason itself. Second, not every case of such distinctions so explictly involves the dramatic whole of salvation history.

Anselm discusses show how the human being might align himself with the divine wisdom, thereby acquiring more wisdom not only through intellection but also volition, even affectivity, action, and relationship. He acknowledges a commonplace of theological reflection in noting that God allows or even “creates detrimental things [incommoda], by which he both punishes the unjust and he tries and purifies the just,”[31] but also (in relation to Christ=s example) highlights the liberty a rational being possesses in understanding and making use of these, reasoning: Ait is not misery for one wisely and uncompelled by any necessity to grasp and accept any detrimental thing in accordance with one’s will.”[32]

III. Human Wisdom as Participatory in Divine Wisdom

Having sketched bare and necessarily dim outlines of divine wisdom as Anselm understands it, it is time to set out his conceptions of human wisdom, which he nearly always frames in relation to divine wisdom, but in rather varied ways. Given a few key features of Anselm’s writing and thought, this makes perfect sense.

First, mentioned earlier, Anselm’s writings are largely occasioned; he treats topics systematically only when he needs to and to the degree that Christian mysteries admit (even to admittedly one of the most powerful theological minds of his times).

Second, Anselm was a Benedictine monk and archbishop, and these preoccupations steered his focus; while 11th-12th century monasteries preserved, studied, continued, and commented on the heritage of classical pre-Christian thought (including discussions of wisdom), we actually know that the mundane application of wisdom in secular business wearied him.

Third, given Anselm’s Christian Platonic metaphysics, human wisdom will necessarily be such ultimately through participating in the divine wisdom; nevertheless, this participation will take place and form in a number of differing modes. Fourth, wisdom in inextricably central to Anselmian moral theory, which develops and possesses general principles, but employs them in very nuanced, progressive, and contextually reflective ways, so that the demands and the shapes of wisdom look quite different in one situation than in another.

A sort of composite picture can be pieced together from Anselm’s explicit statements about human wisdom. He ascribes wisdom to some, for instance in De Incarnatione, where he speaks of “such holy and wise people everywhere existing,@ who can provide reasoned defense and understanding of the faith.[33] Their wisdom is presumably something which can be cultivated, improved upon, and imparted reproducing itself in others. While the wisdom which a wise person teaches another is not the wisdom itself in which it participates, the wise person’s wisdom Ais not unbefittingly said to produce” the wisdom in the other person. “But although my wisdom would have its being and its exercising-wisdom [sapere] from his wisdom, still, when it now is, it would not be without its own being [essentia], and it would not exercise-wisdom except from itself.”[34]

Anselm also contrasts the wise against the foolish, quipping: “it is not always easy to wisely answer one who is asking questions foolishly,”[35] an experience to which professors might relate. Of course, in an Anselmian context, the paradigmatic representative of folly who comes to mind is the Fool of Proslogion 2-4, on whose behalf Gaunilo writes, whose foolishness in epistemological and metaphysical registers takes the form of allowing himself to be led astray in play with images and terms not adequately understood and not corresponding to intelligible realities.

The mind of the Fool of the Psalms and other biblical Wisdom Literature, however, is much more deeply corrupted in the moral dimension, shot through by flaws which (in light of Anselm’s theory of truth) inevitably extend themselves into interrelated wrongheaded metaphysical and epistemological commitments. Examples of such folly abound in Anselm’s works, for instance in De Incarnatione, where he faults those who “are unable of grasping [the faith], and instead out of foolish pride judge that nothing which they are not able to understand can be, rather than acknowledging out of humble wisdom that there can be many thing which they are not capable of comprehending.”[36] They allow themselves to be misled by a facsimile, employing the Pauline trope “human wisdom, relying upon itself [in se confidens],”[37] unaware of the moral and spiritual concomitants for genuine wisdom, whose hallmark for Anselm remains participation in divine wisdom.

The opposition between wisdom and foolishness, and fuller understanding of their natures, assumes starkest contrast in De Humanibus Moribus, where Anselm discusses them as parts of happiness and misery. “A human being assesses himself as possessing [wisdom] and lacking [foolishness], if he knows something that another does not know.” This, however, only reveals the imperfection of what wisdom we do possess. “[W]hat is this wisdom,” Anselm asks. when a person is ignorant of their own self?” In that passage, among the matters which full wisdom will know is “what type of thing one’s soul is.”[38] He also sketches an eschatological fulfillment of wisdom and an absolute deprivation through folly:

the good person will be filled with perfect wisdom, which is God, and will contemplate [intuebitur] that wisdom “face to face.” And while one so attentively gazes at it, one will see the nature of the entire creature, which more fully dwells [melius . . . consistit] in God than in its very self. If, however one should be evil, then, entirely deprived of true wisdom, one will be driven by pains so that one becomes not only foolish, but entirely so, and loving [one=s foolishness].[39]

Several later De Humanibus Moralibus passages elaborate Anselm’s treatment of wisdom. In his discussion of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, he writes that the last two, “understanding and wisdom, are oriented to the contemplative life. . . [T]he Holy Spirit sets these two over the other five, so that the edifice of its gifts might be entirely completed.”[40] Understanding, and all the more wisdom, have and perform integrative functions for human beings, dimly mirroring perfectly integrated and integrative divine wisdom. Interestingly, though Anselm calls these contemplative, contrasting them with the active, understanding and wisdom are clearly practical just as much as theoretical.

Through its participatory gifts, the Holy Spirit “kindles [the human] mind to understanding why God gives this or that precept. . . . afterwards it adds even beyond these wisdom, so that one clearly understands through reason what is best tasting [sapidum] or delightful for oneself, and through love of rectitude alone pursues what one understands to be what ought to be pursued.”[41] Wisdom is also the source of the other gifts, whose progressively developed structure in the soul Anselm likens to a house being built, moving directly then into discussion of “qualities and moral dispositions of the soul,” leading into explicit identification of these with virtues and vices. Anselm does not spell out the relationship between wisdom and virtue in general, and a number of moral virtues he mentions or discusses seem involved in various manners with wisdom. Three mutually interrelated and virtues architectonic stand out, however: humility, justice, and love.

IV. Virtues, Relationships, and Wisdom.

Anselm likens humility to a mountain whose seven degrees one ascends intellectually, relationally and affectively, escaping the valley of pride, in which one roves in fog and shadows of self-deception, and is attacked by beasts representing the other vices. Along the ascent, “the very good people, that is, the virtues, approach him. But when he climbs to the highest level of humility, he rests with these very virtues in clear knowledge of self,”[42] or as he says later “perfect knowledge of self.”[43] Such knowledge, the product of humility is as we have seen a component of wisdom in Anselm’s view, and in turn wisdom participating in divine wisdom guides the person through the determinate grades of humility.

No virtue is as explicitly central and well-developed in Anselm’s moral theory as is justice. A sizable literature exploring and explicating Anselm’s views already exists, so here let us recall just two aspects connected with wisdom. First, Anselm defines justice as “rectitude of will kept for its own sake” (rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata),[44] and glosses this by adding “keeping rectitude of will for the sake of that very rectitude is, for each person, to will what God wills that person to will.”[45]

Stated as such, these are rather bare and abstract formulae, and require some exercise of wisdom in application to actual situations, on the part of the agent, on the part of someone advising or instructing him or her, even on the part of one judging another’s actions, volitions, words, thoughts, affections, or relationships. One ought to discern rightly, and must have some knowledge, even experience or appreciation of genuine goods (as opposed to merely apparent goods) for human beings generally and for the specific human beings with whom one is dealing.

There is another interconnection as well, which involves participation in divine wisdom in a yet more concrete and robust manner, namely wisdom as the means and the expression of discerning and enacting one’s place in the providential plan, aligning oneself with the divine will in extended into the particulars and temporality of human life and history.

Love or charity is more than merely an affection, passion, or desire for Anselm. God is love itself, in which all other loves, however mediatedly, corruptedly, misdirectedly they may be, participate, and so love indivisibly resides at the very heart of all other divine attributes: being itself, goodness, justice, eternity, truth, reason, and all the others. Anselm stresses at many points that justice in the will and truth in the intellect or reason remains incomplete (though nevertheless good and meritorious) so long as it does not assume shape, directedness, and constancy through desire, delight, and love.[46]

He also counsels a wise approach towards love understanding and expressing a grasp of true conditions,[47] for instance when he argues: “We should always strive more to love than to be loved, and to rejoice more, realizing that we gain more when we love than when we are loved.”[48] Reciprocally, even the eminently contemplative virtue of wisdom, which might be oriented towards God alone, in Anselm’s view, must be oriented towards others through loving action, evidenced both by his own example and by his advice to Gunther: “I consider it more advantageous for you to preserve the peace of contemplation by love in your mind and the obedience of brotherly charity in your actions than to wish to chose contemplation alone by despising the prayers and the need of others.”[49]

Human wisdom participates in divine wisdom dynamically and developmentally by integrating the human person=s affections, desires, emotions, will, actions, and relationships through moral virtues, but also extends just as naturally into the intellectual faculties and virtues. The triune God, supreme wisdom, is not only perfect love, but also perfect understanding and remembering or mindfulness. God acts and is these within the divine economy and in relation to all created being. The rational human mind dimly reflects this: ”it can remember not only itself but also that very supreme wisdom, and it can understand that [wisdom] and itself. For if the human mind were not able to possess any of its memory or understanding, it would not distinguish itself at all from irrational creatures and that [wisdom] from all creatures.”[50] In fact, only by turning not only its will and affections but its intellect towards the divine, can the rational creature hope to adequately understand itself, or even just its intellectual faculties, since the divine mind is not “after any likeness [to created minds], but rather [exists] paradigmatically, and the [created] rational mind is after its likeness.”[51]

To bring this paper to a close leaving sufficient time for discussion, several last remarks about human wisdom as participation in divine wisdom must be made with little supporting exegesis or argument. Genuine wisdom not only integrates all of the dimensions of human being, but strives to use these to more and more fully grasp the created world and its determinate natures, the human person, its history and relationships, the structures of the human mind, the ordering of providence, and the Triune and mysterious God. Some central functions of wisdom are employment, refining, judging, and ordering of the various means towards this, whether these be educable human reason working through discernment and argument, the moral virtues in what truths they reveal and make possible, the restructuring of the human will towards true freedom, or the self-revelation of God in Scripture.

One passage in De Processione suggestively ties together divine wisdom, the action of the incarnate word, and Scripture’s intelligible intentionality. After suggesting exegeses of the Johanine recollection of Christ’s breathing on the disciples, saying: “receive the Holy Spirit,” Anselm argues: “When divine Scripture signifies something hidden through likenings to sensible things [per sensibilium similitudines], the things that signify and the things signified cannot be entirely alike in every respect,” which suggests a deeper meaning to the act, and adds: “Unless perhaps someone would want to say that this breathing-upon was so done by God’s wisdom without any spiritual signification. But, I think, nobody is so senseless as to hold that sentiment.” [52]

I will close by tying together two suggestive Anselmian discussions providing a concrete example of interaction between divine and human wisdom in everyday life. A central issue in De Concordia is the interaction between divine agency and human agency, involving divine grace and human choice. God’s providential ordering is through and from eternity, but also develops temporally, through human actions and interactions, relationships, and development. For example, that preachers are sent to others occurs through their own volition following God’s will, but it is nevertheless a grace, because “what derives from grace is a grace.”[53]

There is constant interplay between the immanently human, involving free choice and agency, and the transcendently divine, in ways incredibly complex, but nevertheless possessing a simple schema. God often supplies grace to human agents faced with situations of free choice, and the mode in which he does so is through other past or present rational agents likewise confronted with the fateful choice: wisely cooperate and align oneself with the divine will, in which case one volitionally assumes one’s allotted place in the providential order, or foolishly pursue one’s own will (propria voluntas), surrendering one’s will to other agents or to objects of one’s poorly formed, oriented, or ordered desires.[54]

Imparting human wisdom to, refining in, and transmission through others not only illuminates, and ought to inform such willed participation in the workings of grace, it also represents a product of such interaction, so that in accepting and working with the wisdom of another person, one may also collaborate with grace. We know that Anselm imparted wisdom himself not only to monks, nuns, and clergy, and not only to secular authorities, but also to married people.

The texts which treat of this are tantalizingly brief, but revealing. His teaching to married people included duties, or modes of love, both reciprocally owed by each spouse to each other as well as those structured by what we now call complementarity. “To married people [conjugatos] he taught how great was the fidelity, love [qua. . . dilectione], and companionship [familiaritate] with which they should be [mutually] bound together [sibi invicem copulari] just as much in matters pertaining to God as in temporal matters [tam secundum Deum quam secundem seculum]. He also taught “that the man should love [diligeret] his wife as himself, knowing no other but her, caring for her body as he does for his own, and entertaining no evil suspicions; that the woman . . . . should diligently spur him [incitaret] to well-doing, and calm his mind by her easygoingness [affabilitate] should he wrongly get riled up with anyone.”[55] All of these are guided by the basic purpose of willing the good for the other, very similar to Anselm’s more explicit and common counsels to those living monastic discipline.

All of his advice about the sort of marital relation a couple ought to grow into reflects the Anselmian understanding of the intricate interaction of divine grace with the free rational wills of human beings in determinate relations, indeed within the providential order, consistently acting, willing, loving, even one hopes understanding, remembering, reasoning as they ought do, as they are called to do. Through the sacrament of marriage, divine grace is bestowed. Within married life, grace is worked with and recirculated. Needless to say, human wisdom participating in divine wisdom, not least through allied virtues of humility, justice, and charity, ideally permeates a marriage’s entire structure, and ongoing shared history. In return, in the Anselmain view, marriage becomes a site in which spouses willingly become occasions and channels through which participatory wisdom is uncovered and offered to each other.

Notes

[1] Ep. 2. References to Anselm’s letters are from The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. trans and ed. Walter Frölich (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications). All translations from Anselm’s treatises are the author’s (I have consulted and greatly benefitted from translations by Hopkins and Richardson, Williams, Deane, and Charlesworth) and are from S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archepiscopi opera omnia, ed. Dom F. S. Schmitt, O.S.B. 5 vols (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1940-1961), or from Liber Anselmi de Humanis Moribus, in Memorials of St. Anselm, R.W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt, O.S.B., eds. (London: Oxford University Press. 1969). All citations of Anselm’s texts will give the chapter number (prefaced where appropriate by the book number), and the page number of the appropriate volume of the Opera Omnia or Memorials Each text will be cited with these abbreviations.

M Monologion P Proslogion DI De Incarnatione Verbi DV De Veritate DL De Libertate Arbitrii DC De Conceptu Virginali et de DCD De Casu Diaboli CDH Cur Deus Homo Original Peccato DC De Concordia Praescientiae et Praedestionis et Gratiae Dei cum Libero Arbitri DM Liber Ansemi Archiepiscopi de Humanus Moribus per Simultudines DA (Alexandri Monachi Cantuariensis) Liber Ex Dictis Beati Anselmi

[2] In Monologion 16, God is supreme essence, life, reason, salvation, justice, wisdom, truth, goodness, greatness, beauty, immortality, incorruptibility, immutability, blessedness, eternity, power, unity. P 5 provides a much shorter explicit list: “Thus you are just, true, blessed, and whatever is better to be than not to be,” p. 104. This last term opens the door to other attributes (or accidents not changing God’s nature): “sensitive, all-powerful, merciful [not an attribute, but follows from them], impassible,” P 7, p. 105; “living, wise, good. . . eternal”, P 11, p. 110; “that very life, light . . . eternal blessedness and blessed eternity.” P 14, p. 11.

[3] Cf. eg. my “A Perfectly Simple God and Our Complicated Moral Lives: The 2008 Saint Anselm Lecture,” Saint Anselm Journal, v. 6, n.1.

[4] In translating Anselm’s Latin into English, occasionally esse as well as existere need to be rendered as “exist(s).” Anselm does use existere at critical junctures of his work, for instance, in the very end of his Proslogion c. 2 proof (Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid . . .p. 102), where one might instead expect continued use of esse. Clearly, there is some emphasis or difference in signification, rather than just variation or synonym, at work. Determining precisely what Anselm means in such uses of the verb existere at critical junctures is a topic admittedly calling for much further study and discussion.

[5] DI 15, p. 33, he develops this point using eternity, but is clear in the context that his account applies to every other attribute. In M 43, he speaks in a related manner of harmony: the Father and the Son Aare so harmonious by nature that either one always retains the essence [or being, essentiam] of the other.@

[6] M 46, p. 62.

[7] M 47, p. 63.

[8] In fact, on a related point, discussing divine unity, Anselm also contrasts human ways of being with the divine way: “when a human being is said to be a body and rational and human, he or she is not said to be these three things in the same way or from the same perspective. From one point of view, he or she is a body, from another, rational, and neither of these is entirely what it is to be a human being,” M 17, p. 31. There is also ontological distinction (though not separation) in the human soul: “neither reason nor will are the whole of the soul, but are something(s) in the soul,” namely instruments, which architectonically make use of all other instruments, DC 3.11, p. 279.

[9] M 44, p. 60.

[10] This is an active verb, and contrasts with Anselm=s use of esse sapiens; he uses the active consistently throughout the passage, and given his careful distinctions between speaking and thinking properly and precisely (proprie) and looser, perhaps misleading ways of speaking and thinking.

[11] M44, 60

[12] M 31, 50

[13] M 34, 53-4: The Word is “the supreme wisdom and supreme reason, in which all things that are made exist. . . . Before they were, and now that they are, and when they are corrupted or in any way change, they are always in that [Word], not as they are in themselves [in seipsis], but rather what that very same [Word] is. For in themselves they are mutable being [essentia] created in accordance with immutable reason. In that very [Word] they are that first being and first truth of being , to which the more any of these things are alike, the more truly and more excellently they are [existunt].

[14] M32, p. 51

[15] Among the passages supporting this intrinsic connection between gnoselogical divine attributes, is: “it is essential to the Supreme Wisdom that it knows and understands,” M 63, p.73

[16] “In the way that the Son is the understanding or the wisdom of the Father, he is also the paternal memory. For whatever the Son exercises wisdom in [sapit] or understands, he also likewise remembers,” M 48, 64.

[17] “For, each of these three singly is the Supreme essence and Supreme wisdom, so perfect that it remembers, and understands, and loves through itself,” M 60, p.71.

[18] CDH 2.13, p. 112.

[19] CDH 2.13, p. 113. Cf. also DCV 21, where he says of Christ: “Since that very soul, indeed entirely this man and the Word of God, and God, always existed [extitit] as one person, it was never without perfect justice and wisdom and power,” p. 160-1.

[20] M 65, p. 76.

[21] A passage near the end of Monologion (M 80, p. 87) ties all this together: “For just as it is established that all things are made and maintained [vigent] by that supremely good and supremely wise omnipotence, it would be entirely unbefitting if it were to be judged that He does not rule over the things made by Him, or that the things made by Him are ruled by something less powerful or less good or wise, or [that they] are not ruled by any rationality but only by an unordered randomness of happenstances.”

[22] In DC 3.2, alignment of these two is a criterion for either one of them being rightly ordered or properly functioning.

[23] CDH 2.1, 97. A similar discussion takes place in M 68.

[24] M 68, p. 79. Cf. also CDH 1.20, where there is a sustained discussion of what we owe to God, extending even to affectivity

[25] M 69, p. 79.

[26] M 71, p. 81. Two features of Anselm=s account are important to note here:

1) In his view, the relationship between one=s volitions and actions, one=s fundamental commitment in this life, and one=s reward or punishment, eternal happiness or misery, is not an extrinsic one. Anselm is not a voluntarist, and his moral theory is not a divine command theory, but rather, as Stanley Kane has named it, a “divine will theory” (and as Kate Rogers has demonstrated, also a form of eudaimonism, and as I have argued, concomitantly a sort of virtue ethics.

2) Anselm also acknowledges the difficulty of knowing these matters in specific cases, and for entire classes of beings, e.g. infants. (M72 and 74, and P 11)

[27] CDH 1.7, p. 57. Cf. also DCD 25, p. 273, where God teaches, via the Devil’s fall and its consequences, “not out of impotence, as if he could not have done it any other way, but rather out of the greater power which could produce good out of evil, so that no unordered evil would remain in the kingdom of omnipotent wisdom.”

[28] Sapienter or sapientia occur seven times.

[29] DV 8, p. 186. F or how it is that God Acauses” actions, cf. in particular DC I. 7, p. 259: God “causes all actions and all movements, because he makes the things with which and from which and by which and in which [actions and movements] occur; and no thing has any power of willing or doing unless He gives it.” Cf. also the accounts of doing and willing in the Phil. Frags, and CDH.

[30] DV 8, p. 186. Cf also CDH 2.18.

[31] DC 1.7, p. 258

[32] CDH 2. 12, p. 112. Numerous examples of this occur in the Letters and the Vita Anselmi

Virtue being the principal good, though not (as some people mistakenly claim) the only good, seems an absolutely central doctrine in Stoic philosophy. Of the texts by Stoic authors we currently possess, and the several summaries of Stoic doctrine, nearly all of them discuss the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance quite a bit. And although they do not entirely agree in their listings of and references to the subordinate virtues falling under those four principal ones, a student of Stoicism reading across those texts can certainly develop a robust picture of virtues’ full extent from those works.

And yet, in the works of one of the most important Stoic authors we have, Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Discourses, we find surprisingly few references to, let alone systemic discussions of, the virtues. One might even speculate that if Epictetus were the only Stoic author whose works had survived from antiquity, we might get the idea that virtue was only one of a number of important concepts for the Stoics, rather than being an absolutely central one.

Why is this the case? Did Epictetus think that virtue wasn’t really that important a component of Stoic philosophy and practice? Having given a lot of thought to this on my own and discussion with thoughtful friends and colleagues, my verdict is that this is not the case. But then, why don’t we see as much discussion of virtue and virtues in Epictetus as we do, say, in Seneca, Musonius Rufus, or Marcus Aurelius, or in those authors providing us summaries of Stoic thought like Cicero, Arius Didymus, or Diogenes Laertes?

There are two main reasons that I would say best make sense of this.

One of these is a reminder that we need to make when we see something seemingly missing or given little space in Epictetus’ works, and then are tempted to make definitive statements from that absence. And that is that technically, what we have are not Epictetus’ works but rather those authored by his student Arrian, intended to convey to readers the thoughts and frankness of speech of his teacher. Of the original eight books Arrian wrote, we unfortunately have only four. So there might have been considerably more, longer, and fuller discussions of the virtues in those lost books, or for that matter within the many years of Epictetus’ teachings and conversations that weren’t set down by Arrian.

Another plausible reason might be that Epictetus took it for granted that his students were already conversant enough with Stoic perspectives on virtue already articulated for centuries. He points out in:

Who of us are not able to discourse competently [technologēsai] about matters good and evil? That some are good, some evil, and some indifferent? The good include the virtues and those things participating in [metekhonta] virtue. - Epictetus, Discourses, 2.9

What is needed, philosophers tell us, is more than simply learning (mathein) doctrines. We also must give attention (melētē) and engage in discipline or training (askēsis), otherwise all we will be able to do is discuss other people’s doctrines (allotriōn dogmatōn).

It’s clearly not the case that Epictetus thinks the virtues don’t require any discussion. In fact, if you’re familiar with the breakdowns of cardinal virtues into more specific subordinate virtues, you’ll see him referencing a number of those throughout his works. Look at the chapter already mentioned, where he notes that works or actions (erga) of virtuous sorts preserve that person as virtuous in those ways, and that vicious ones destroy that virtuous character (2.9).

What examples does he use? Virtues of being modest (aidēmōn) and trustworthy (pistos). Vices of not only the opposites of these, but also being abusive (loidoros), prone to anger (orgilos), and greedy (philarguros, 2.9). This is just one example of many. Throughout his works, if we know where and how to look, there are a number of virtues and vices named, praised, and criticized, and cautioned about.

Virtues and vices do bear importance within Epictetus’ Stoic philosophy, but they get reframed in terms of his own characteristic concepts and emphases. Consider his stress on developing, breaking, and replacing habits, particularly in 2.18, 3.12, and 3.25. This is precisely one key dimension of training or discipline. And what ultimately are we doing this to? Ourselves, and in particular the most central part of ourselves, our very core, the prohairesis, typically translated as “faculty of choice”, “moral purpose”, or even “will”.

This is the part that, as he says, makes use (khrōmenon) and takes care of (epimeleitai) everything else, and which can only be hindered (empodizein) by itself or its own distortion (autē d’heautēn diastrapheisa). This leads him to declare that in prohairesis alone (monē hautē) is where vice and virtue develop (ginetai, 2.23).

If we want to more fully understand Epictetus’ understanding of what virtues and vices are, and how they are developed or rooted out, we arguably need to focus on his many interconnected discussions bearing upon how we share our prohairesis through learning, attention, and discipline.

This piece first appeared in the February 2025 issue of the online magazine The Stoic. If this piece has you now interested in Stoicism, and you would like to know what to read next, this might be helpful for you.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is the fifth and final portion of the transcript of an online talk I was invited to give to the Dionysius Circle. It continues the question and answer portion of the talk. You can watch or listen to the full talk here.

Question: So when I’m reading that, I’ve always thought that there are two key things you gotta get your mind around. The first is really speaking to the formula of that than which nothing greater can be conceived, because that implies this sort of limit case and then beyond and continue beyond. The other thing is that I think the key assumption, and I could be wrong about this, is that it’s greater to be in reality than in the mind, and that’s like the driving force making the jump.

So that’s that’s one of the places where you could attack it. You could say like, let’s think about nerve gas. I can imagine the room here being filled up with nerve gas, and you dying from nerve gas is a horrible way to go. When I was in the Army, 30 years ago, we had to learn what the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning were, because we were worried that the Soviets would use it on us. We’d get all paranoid because you’d like think maybe you had some of them. That’s horrible stuff. So I can keep that in my mind. Let’s not have that in reality! It’s not greater than that in reality. So you could say: Well what about problems like that? Or the room being filled up with spiders. I like spiders but I wouldn’t want a room that’s all wriggly spiders biting me. So then you have to think your way through it. I think this may be something that Anselm would be cool with.

You know these meditations, which is what the Proslogion and the Monologion are, not designed to be treatises that answer every single thing, but provide us with like almost like a catalyst for our own dynamic thinking about this kind of stuff. Maybe we have to then say: All right, put those kinds of worries aside. What about something that is truly great? For that, is it greater to exist in reality than to exist in the mind?Maybe we have to do some qualification in order to make Anselm’s argument work. Maybe he’s a little bit too bold in the formulation there.

And this jibes with his response to Gaunillo, because Gaunillo brings up that I can think of a logically, not logically but a perfect island — the logically perfect, that’s 20th century language that gets used by people like Plantinga and Hartshorne, and later interpreters of Anselm’s argument. Anselm says: Well what you’re trying to do here, you know what you’re saying, it doesn’t work in the case of an island. It does work in the case of God. Maybe that’s what we have to do if we buy into it.

I’ve been grappling with Anselm’s argument now for roughly 30 years, and I go back and forth on it. I don’t know what what about the rest of you? Do you buy it or not? Now Anselm himself in the process of working on it, at one point, if you read the prologue to it, thought that it might be a tool of the devil to distract him from prayers. So all that that wavering back and forth, maybe that’s not a good thing.

In reading a lot of secondary lit, I know a lot of Thomists give it a really bad rap. It’s very strange because at one of our Thomisic meetings, we tried to understand why Thomas rejects it in Prima Pars q. 2, and a lot of us that were there. We could not understand why, and it seems to have something to do with how the argument (or at least as Thomas portrays it) assumes that you know the divine essence, which you don’t. But Anselm never makes that move, explicitly he never makes that move. So I did go and look at the Commentary on the Psalms, and Aquinas does in there seem a lot more open to some type of argument like Anselm is giving

Well he says that Anselm actually is correct, but he’s still framing it there in terms of saying that deus esse is something that’s per se nota. That the predicate is contained in in the subject is the way Thomas likes to talk about, and that’s what sort of set the agenda all the way to Kant’s time.

To go to the other question Thomas thinks that claiming that deus esse is per se nota, that’s correct but it’s only per se nota to the sapientes, to the wise. So it’s not going to be a good argument to make the ordinary people. It’s definitely not. So if the beginning of your Summa Theologiae has to start after you’ve explained the different kinds of readings of scripture with proving that the thing that you want to talk about actually exists, this is not going to be the way to do it. Because who’s the Summa actually written for? It’s not written for the sapientes, the wise. We think of it as a tough text. It’s actually written for incipientes, beginners.

So Aquinas is basically saying that whole idea of like pulling something out of the idea of God to show that that being necessarily exists, that works but it’s not going to work for the people that you have to target. At the beginning we got to go about things a different way. And then Aquinas is also interested in exploring causality and it’s not just let’s get that over with, with the five ways, and then we’ll move on to all the cool stuff that parish priests need to know. The five ways kind of set the agenda for Thomas’s whole approach to wow the creative trinity engages with us and the rest of creation, and how we can know you know something about that being through the effects that we see here, enough to guide our our actions and decisions and stuff like that.

So it kind of makes sense that he would reject Anselm, not because he thinks you’re just totally wrong, throw you in the flames, to use Hume’s famous phrase, get rid of Anselm’s books. No he appropriates Anselm over and over and over again on points where he thinks that he’s helpful to bring into the the structure of the Summa Theologiae, but Anselm’s Prosologion argument just is going to be kind of a non-starter. But somebody else has that point of view, John Locke about Descartes’ argument.

There’s kind of a three-prong tradition that runs throughout the history of philosophy when it comes to whatever we want to call ontological arguments. You’ve got one where they’re like: Yeah ontological arguments, they work. Here’s a version of it. You’ve got Anselm in the middle ages and a few other people as well picking up on him, and then Descartes very famously, and then Hegel. And each one is a totally different animal.

And then you’ve got this: No way! This is garbage! Get rid of it. So you got Gaunillo, and then you got Pierre Gassendi in the the modern period doing so for Descartes, and then you’ve got Kant.

And then you’ve got this more pragmatic: Well it’s a great argument. Yoo bad nobody’s going to buy it. That includes Thomas and Locke.

So you’ve got at least three different possible ways of going at the ontological argument in a serious way. You could have a non-serious way like saying: This is just silly nonsense or something like that, which is not quite the same thing as what the rejectors are doing.

Question: Maybe the last thing I would ask is all this supreme being talk in Anselm would probably raise some flags with people concerned with ontotheology. This question of God’s being sort of being comparable to creatures being. Platonists might want to say: Well no, God is a completely transcendent unity that’s beyond being um. What would be the answer to that be? Would he speak of analogy? Would he speak of univocity? Does he even have these terms?

Well, he doesn’t use those terms at all. It’s not “supreme being”. It’s supreme essentia that we translate as “supreme being”, and that’s only one of, for example in Monologion 16, like 18 different supreme things. Each one is conceived of as in a dynamic way. So supreme essentia is the same thing as supreme ens, and ens is not like an entity it’s like be-ing, you’re doing something. But God is just as much supreme justice, or here’s a weird one, supreme refuge, supreme solace. What the hell is that, you know? He’s not like he’s more supreme being than he is all these other supremes.

And Anselm has pointed out too, “supreme” is a relative term. He said: Well why do you use it so much then? It’s just kind of a marker. You could just as easily instead of saying supreme justice, say as he does justitia existens, whatever is at the top of the hierarchy. Now that’s a great question, is that beyond being conceived of an ontotheological way. I don’t know. I haven’t given that much thought. I mean interestingly, I know Marion has a piece on Anselm. But it’s been a long time since I’ve read it.

I would suspect that what’s going on in Anselm is not what Heidegger called “ontotheology”. And Heidegger was pretty fast and loose with with that term and made some huge sweeping assumptions of his own in deploying that against what he calls “epochal metaphysics”, with Christianity essentially being summed up as a new conception of being which places the supreme being, God as you know creating out of nothing and then everything following from from that. I think Heidegger’s depiction of Christian thought is kind of deficient. But here we’re getting way out of my area of competence.

Thanks very much for having me here. I’m glad to contribute something to such an interesting new initiative, and I hope that things continue to grow. Thanks for the questions and comments. I’ve got some good things to think about.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is the fourth portion of the transcript of an online talk I was invited to give to the Dionysius Circle. It continues the question and answer portion of the talk. You can watch or listen to the full talk here.

Question: Alex wants to ask in the chat: Does Anselm use the term “spiration” for the procession of the holy spirit from the father and the son as Aquinas does, and if he does what does this mean?

He doesn’t use that. He just uses you the word “procession”. What does “spiration”? mean? I’m not a good person to answer that because just looking at it, it’s essentially a cognate for spirit, like it’s becoming spirit. It’s kind of a weird way to think about (I mean, what the hell does proceeding mean though?), Its both of these terms that we use in in the trinity talking about the relations, like begets, generates, but it’s not born. He’s thinking of being born. Whatever is going on there has got to be something quite impressive, if we could ever think it (but we don’t really know what it is we’re gesturing at), with metaphorical language.

Proceeding gives you the idea of walking from something. I guess one of the hints is that the holy spirit is love between the father and the son, so that’s there in both Anselm and Aquinas. So loving, is it in its fullest sense something that overflows from the two? The thing is that none of these take place in time, as Anselm stresses and Aquinas thinks as well. The holy spirit has always been just as much as the son just as much as the father. Anselm actually clarifies that in On the Incarnation of the Word and On the Procession of the Holy Spirit. There was never any point in time when these relations that we talk about happened. So I don’t have a good answer for that at all, I think.

Well that’s all good. That’s all helpful. Thank you. I appreciate it

I’m extraordinarily surprised that it was, because there must be something going on in your brain that’s doing better than what’s in mine when it comes to that, because I don’t understand it.

Oh no, you’re good. I’ve mainly read Aquinas’s discussion of the trinity in the Summa and your analysis of Anselm’s understanding of the trinity did help me to make some more sense of what Aquinas is saying in there.

I will say this about the connection between Aquinas. Aquinas brings up Anselm quite a bit in the Summa. There’s entire sections, like on the discussion of original sin, where he’s going to say Anselm basically has this right. Or the discussions of truth and Aquinas is trying to take what what Anselm has provided and go a bit further with it. So I don’t know. Maybe he brings Anselm up in that, although there’s so many other people who have written on the trinity, right? Boethius and Augustine. So by the time that Aquinas is on the scene, there’s so many people to draw upon

Question: As something of an internet atheist myself i’m probably having some of the hardest time here wrapping my head around this, but so to start off my question, I can kind of understand how we can arrive at finitude in one God from these infinite number of attributes, how all of these attributes become one and the same attribute in God. But then it seems to me there’s almost kind of another degree of finitude reinserted in that, through the trinity, that the trinity of personhood which complicates it for me. I assume Anselm is not just trying to take this doctrine of simplicity and mesh it with the trinity after the fact. So maybe to pose the question another way for Anselm: does the triune nature of God have kind of a necessity?

Is the idea of God necessarily trinitarian? That’s the whole point of the Monologion.

Okay if you can parse that out a little bit more. Why is God necessarily trinitarian?

I mean that’s that’s argumentation from, you could say that it begins from chapter 29 and runs all the way to chapter 63, right? That’s what’s going on in the Monologion. The Proslogion provides a shorter, not really argument, for it. More just like an exposition for it. But there isn’t a “here’s the simple argument for why God has to be a trinity”. I don’t know that finitude is the idea that you want. There’s a multiplicity from our perspective of divine attributes. That doesn’t mean that that’s what’s in God, that a multiplicity all of these attributes are what God is, which turns out to be a super unity, a unity that goes beyond what we typically think of as unity. These are difficult things to to conceptualize.

Question: I wonder if he makes more like a defense that the trinity is not against reason, and maybe he starts with his faith. Or do you think he’s going so far as to like rationally deduce the trinity? Because it seems like you were saying he doesn’t want to either.

I would say it’s neither. He’s not deducing, because he’s not providing some sort of straightforward, simple, syllogistic, deductive argument. I’s running through probably half of the Monologion, and he’s sort of taking stabs at it from this side and this side, and then looking at this and looking at this. Dialectical would be a better way of describing what’s what’s happening there. And yeah, he is starting from faith.

But starting from faith means a lot of different things. People start from faith by taking stuff out of the Bible and using it as premises in an argument that they take as incontrovertible starting points, and some would say: That’s terrible theology and terrible philosophy. You actually have to figure out what the scripture passages actually mean, and a lot of the time they don’t mean what the ordinary person thinks that they mean, according to Anselm. This is why he gets accused of being a rationalist by some people. He goes so far as to say when we understand scripture we have to understand what actually makes sense, not the surface level thing that might be leading us astray, which sometimes would get people kind of scared I think hearing that. So he’s he’s not trying to provide a defense. He’s not engaging in apologetics or anything like that.

Again what was the the whole point of the Monologion? This is the stuff Anselm was teaching as prior to these monks as meditations on the nature of the divine substance. He didn’t want to write them down, and they kept on bugging him until he finally said: All right, fine. I’ll write a book for you. Here you go. It’s the Monologion. So he’s not somebody who neatly fits into the ways in which we typically categorize, let’s call them activities. He thinks that God has given us rational minds so that we can make our way to understanding him.

He thinks that we we do have to start from some sort of basis of faith, but that basis, we’d better make it way more secure than the rudimentary, messed up, half picture- thinking starting points that we begin from. He wouldn’t say “pissed off” but I’m going to say that God would be pissed off at us for squandering our intellectual resources by just appealing to the Bible or something like that as a stop gap.

Question: So probably the most prominent in the last 300 years objections to Anselm’s argument, particularly in the Proslogion, is Kant right? So I think I’ve gotten a good enough sense about you might just say like Immanuel, you know we’re not predicating being. But God is being. But I’m still trying to make sense of: is the objection just completely misunderstood?

So Kant’s objection in the Critique doesn’t target Anselm’s argument at all. It targets Descartes, Spinoza, people like that. Anselm didn’t produce an ontological argument. It’s never called that until Kant’s time. And what’s going on in Descartes and Spinoza is quite different than what’s happening in Proslogion 2-4, that quo maius cogitari non posest being the linchpin is really the central thing to his argument. Even Aquinas by the way in Summa Theologiae gets Anselm wrong, because Anselm is not saying deus esse is per se nota. That’s not his his argument at all

He’s saying if you think out the implications of God being quo maius cogitari non posest, that then which nothing greater can be thought, if you like linger with that idea, you wind up seeing that God has to not only . . . it’s interesting too because he uses the language of esse there, being. But he also uses deus vera existit at the end of chapter 2, God truly exists, with existence being something perhaps more intensive than just mere being. So Anselm’s doing his own weird wacky thing over here.

And then people like Descartes and Spinoza come along and say: God’s essence necessarily includes existence, or God’s idea has to be that of something that necessarily exists. That’s more what Kant is targeting there. In his Lectures on Theology, Kant actually does target Anselm’s argument a bit more more closely. I don’t remember, it’s been a long time since I’ve read that.

Interestingly, all those of you who’ve read through the Critique of Pure Reason know that Kant is not going after the ontological argument just to knock that down. He’s also claiming that if you if you show the ontological argument doesn’t work, the cosmological and the design argument, the teleological argument, they both presume that. So you knock out all three with one blow. But Kant doesn’t appear to make, at least to me what’s a very convincing counter argument. He hits what he’s targeting, but that’s not every ontological argument, you could say right. And then Hegel comes along, he’s got a great retort to Kant saying the existence is not a predicate thing, that a hundred imaginary dollars isn’t 100 real dollars. Hegel says it makes a big difference whether one’s in your pocket or not, doesn’t it? Is that a great retort? No but there’s something to that. But the ontological argument, it’s an interesting one.

Anselm’s unum argumentum is not Proslogion 2-4, because the unum argumentum is supposed to show three things: that God exists or is; that God is the supreme good that all other things need in order to be good, which sounds very neoplatonic; and all the other things that we believe about God, which is sort of a miscellaneous junk drawer. And it’s supposed to be a resuming of of the Monologion and condensing it all into one unum argumentum. That is the totality of the Proslogion perhaps including chapter 1 which is a prayer, all the way to the last three chapters. The three chapters are conjectures. He calls them conjectiones. So they’re not actually part of the argument. They’re like adjuncts to it. But everything else is part of that unum argumentum, which means that if Anselm is making an ontological argument, that’s sort of a side piece you know.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is the third portion of the transcript of an online talk I was invited to give to the Dionysius Circle. It shifts to the question and answer portion of the talk. You can watch or listen to the full talk here.

I’m sure you’ve got some questions or comments. And comments could be: Well this doesn’t make any sense. Which is an understandable response to some of this

Jack: That was great. That’s a great overview of not only simplicity but Anselm’s take on the incarnation, so I guess we’ll move into the question and comment phase. I can open it up with a first one. So we were wondering, while we were working through some of the text (I think most of us were using the Hackett, but we have some different versions). So he starts off the Monologion with these two arguments getting to some sort of supreme good, and then getting to some sort of supreme notion of being. So we were wondering if you could kind of walk us through how he gets to this fundamental good and this fundamental being?

Well so the the being is coming in chapter 3. Before I do that too I want to say it’s kind of cool that he doesn’t, like so many people would do, start with proving that God exists, and then once we’ve got that, then that’ll be the springboard to go forward on everything. Instead he’s like: Let’s let’s start with good.

So his argument here is that he does sort of an analysis of goods that you see him working out. He’s not trying to provide like a complete theory, but he says there’s different types of ways in which things that are good. Later on he’s going to say: Who would doubt that this thing through which all goods exist is a very great good? So he’s going to argue that that there is something through which everything is good. Is this a good argument, by the way? Not really. That might be part of why he wanted to reappropriate that, and rework it in the Proslogion.

And so he says he is good through himself, since every good exists through him. No good that exists through another is equal to or greater than that good who alone is good through himself. Now you could say: Well what if there isn’t any such thing? What if everything is just good through some other good? And he doesn’t say it here, but it seems to be an assumption that sooner or later you have to hit something that is like the bedrock, the good through which other things are good. Even if we made a really complex web of let’s call them participatory or causal relations, you’re going to have to sooner or later have some sort of node that you wind up hitting. That seems to be the argument there to me. That that winds up giving us the supreme good.

You could say: Well there’s a lot of assumptions built in there, aren’t there? What if we’re wrong about the assumption that any good Platonist would make, and actually I think a lot of other traditions would make, that whatever something is good through, whatever makes that thing good, let’s call it. So we’ve got thing b and we’ll call it thing a. If thing a is providing the reason or whatever it is that thing b is good, thing a is going to be more good. There’s an assumption there that somehow the cause is going to be greater than the effect. Is that always warranted?

I could think of philosophical positions that would not make that assumption, but maybe in the case of the supreme good, that has to be the case, which sounds a little circular though, doesn’t it? What do the rest of you think? Does that sound circular to you? I think the supreme good is the the supreme good because it’s the supreme good i mean if we put it like that sounds totally circular

Yeah that is an interesting point

I mean, either you have a supreme good that is a unity, or you have to have a whole bunch of supreme goods and then you’ve got to be able to account for their connection with each other, and is one higher than the other? Well then, drop that one out of the picture. This is kind of a dynamic process of thinking, I think. But just let me ask all of you: Is that satisfying for you or not? Because i go back and forth on this with Ansel, just like with the ontological argument. Sometimes I’m like yeah, actually that’s really good, and then sometimes I’m like there’s something wrong with this somewhere.

Now what is that a reflection of? Is that a reflection of there being something wrong with the line of thinking or is that a reflection of our own problematic status as understanders?

Question: The example he gives is interesting where he presents his own potential counter example to the claim that there’s a single good from which everything kind of inherits its goodness. He talks about a horse. He says the horse and the robber. So it seems like the horse is good because it’s strong or swift, and on the other hand um the robber he can be strong or swift and not be good. So it would seem to suggest that there’s kind of a multiplicity of ways of being good. I guess that’s the conclusion.

Anselm wants to recognize that there are a multiplicity of ways of being good, and this will run throughout his treatises. In terms of the will, there’s the good as justice, and the good as the entire range of things that make us happy, the commoda in On the Fall of the Devil, But that being so doesn’t mean that there can’t be some ultimate supreme good that all of their goodnesses in some way participate in

Does he does he ever provide a systematic exposition of how all these multiple modes of goodness participate? Not really, but he doesn’t seem bothered by that either, which is kind of a funny thing. He does mention that nothing is thought to be good except because of a certain usefulness, or because of some kind of excellence, honestum.

Question: So it was the idea like okay, there there would seem to be a multiplicity. This thing is good by being swift, that thing is good by being strong. But when you really analyze it, both of those are actually good, and so far as they’re both useful in that particular context, and thus we kind of return to . . .

Well in that context, yeah. Although that doesn’t preclude some things being good by being honestum. The ancients had this distinction that comes from from originally from like Aristotle talking about the good as useful, good as pleasurable, good as kalon or as beautiful. That gets translated almost immediately into latin as the utile, there’s a bunch of different Latin words for the pleasurable, um and then the honestum. The honestum just means intrinsically good.

And then later on some will bring in further distinctions like justice by itself as something honestum, but there’s a whole range of things that he calls commodum, which could be useful mor they could be pleasant, or they could also be good intrinsically, but they’re not justice. In the Dicta Anselmi, he actually talks about there being three different, well not different, three distinguishable ranges of good: justice the commodum, and then just being esse. So by being itself, you’re already good, which kind of makes sense. But any of them can be kind of misappropriated.

So you know what’s what’s wrong with the robber being swift and strong, which normally we’re cool with? Well he’s gonna use it for evil, so it’s it’s not like the robber’s swiftness by itself is no longer good. Strictly speaking it’s the perversion of the good that he has. I mean actually, let’s transpose that. Roscelin is sort of the the archetypical bad guy for Anselm, one of those dirty dialectician. He’s not by virtue of of having a rational mind, or even having an imagination, he’s not a bad guy because of that. It’s the ways in which he’s using it, and ordering it ,and then attacking the Church, and having somehow to write stuff in response that is actually bad.

This is sort of outside the scope of this, but Anselm has a typically Augustinian idea that evil is just privation or corruption of the the good.

Jack: I think that’s consistent with his thinking, because he’s got that solution where he talks about God’s power. Basically the famous objection that you get a lot of times from internet atheists as well. If God’s all-powerful, why can’t he think dirty thoughts?

That’s a new one to me. I’d say I haven’t been looking at internet atheists for quite a while, because I would get the can he make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it kind of kind of nonsense. So is that is that where they are now? Anselm’s response is: Well that’s not power. That’s weakness. I mean this is a little bit off topic, but I can think of a way in which God could be said to think about dirty thoughts. If God wants to make me a better person, and I think dirty thoughts, then God is giving some thought to how to get me to no longer think dirty thoughts. Which is not him thinking dirty thoughts directly, but you know presumably he knows what he’s about.

Some of the stuff that people bring up, I mean again off the topic, you wonder about the motivations. You’re like: do you really think that’s a good argument that you’re making, or are you just doing the argument equivalent of posting? What’s going on with that? What’s your motivation? Are you just trying to get a rise out of people?

But Anselm would have an answer to that. He’d say you’re trying to think your way towards something that’s already hard to wrap our heads around, and you’re using some of the most inadequate of tools to do so. So you know you’re bound to to go astray in doing that

Question: You were talking about how the trinitarian persons, each of them wholly have justice, or are justice. So I was wondering about that. Because that seems like a problem. If you say God is justice, it seems like you are forced to make a distinction between, I mean you wouldn’t say the persons are justice. And that’s it. I mean they’re distinct persons, and they all are justice. As soon as you do that it seems like you’ve got a distinction between something in God, and having justice or being justice. So I was wondering if you could maybe elucidate a little bit what that distinction is. Maybe it’s just a distinction of the persons, and if that’s the case how does he think it’s a distinction?

For Anselm, God, whether we think of God as the supreme substance, or whether we think of God in in terms of the trinitarian persons, God can’t have justice because that would be lesser than being justice. So it’s not like there’s justice first in you know the divine substance, and then it gets parcelled out to each of the members of the trinity. That wouldn’t work at all for conceptualizing what’s going on there. Each by virtue of each of these persons of the trinity being entirely God, every one of these attributes is entirely what they are. But it also gives us a kind of, like I mentioned, as he says a repetition, or a replication, or intensive reflexivity in each of these attributes y

Question: I wonder about like being a creator or something that relates to creation. Would that be not intrinsically the same as God? And then you have a distinction between attributes.

Well it’s not intrinsically the same as God, because God is the creator. It’s not like first there’s God, and then God’s like what kind of God do I want to be? Let’s create! There just is that. And creation for Anselm is involving both persons of the trinity or both of the first two people of the trinity. Because everything that exists exists in the word before it’s created, but the word is not doing the creating. It’s the father who’s creating. But is it just like God gives instructions to the word or says: Hey give me the blueprints? No it’s not like that. We use all these these ideas that we draw from our own, as Anselm would say, imagination. And none of them are adequate to the ineffable way, as he calls it, that this is happening. Strictly speaking, the holy spirit’s lurking around there somewhere too in creation, but he doesn’t he doesn’t tell us anything about that.

Question: Thank you very much I was wondering also, there’s this argument in Proclus, where you need a distinct monad to account for any distinct class of things. So for example all beings, or all living things, or all things that have capacity for intellect, that would require a distinct monad, sort of like a form to account for that. So you would need, for example, being, life, and wisdom as sort of like prior forms to all the classes of beings living things and wisdom. For Proclus, these prior forms have to be distinct from each other to account for the distinctness of the different classes and so therefore being, life, and wisdom for example will not be the same as the one or God for Proclus.

And in Dionysius he has the main processions that he talks about in the Divine Names. After the good are being, life, and wisdom. So i was wondering if Anselm would disagree with that argument and say: No, being, life and wisdom that just is God and they’re all the same

Yeah that’s exactly what Anselm does. That’s what’s going on in those parts of the Monologion that we we looked at, and then he just reiterates that over and over again in the Proslogion. Basically anytime Anselm has a chance in one of his treatises to consider two things that we would predicate about God, which are God, he stresses not only that they are God. Like God is the very life by which he lives. God is the very wisdom by which he is wise, etc. But that they are the same thing in some way.

So he’s rejecting any sort of ultimate distinction between them, and this is where there’s a kind of you either got to go this way or go this way in Platonism itself. Because this is a really centrally important thing. If you do believe that there are these unities or forms or whatever you want to call them, are they distinct from each other? Or are they all in one thing? For example Seneca is not a Platonist but Seneca will talk about the Platonic forms and say that they exist in the mind of God as the seminal reasons. That’s one option right?

Another option would be like what you’re talking about with Proclus, where these have to be distinct from each other, and maybe they can even be arranged hierarchically or something like that right. And then you’ve got somebody like Anselm, and I also think Augustine fits in there as well, where these all have to be what God is. And when we’re looking at them, it’s not it’s not impossible to look at things as say Proclus would, but that would be a mistaken point of view from Anselm’s point of view It’s mistaken about God. It’s also mistaken about how supreme justice, supreme life, supreme you know all these things relate to each other.

Question: I think that’s interesting. Dionysius, I think Divine Names 5,1: God is sort of the possessor of these divine names or processions. So it seems like Anselm might say: Well hold on a second, you can’t really possess being, life, and wisdom, yet be somehow beyond it.

Well you’re not even beyond it. You are it. So, the reason you can’t possess is just because you’ve already got (you notice I almost slipped into the “having” language there), you already are it in a superlative way. The most just way that justice can be is is God, so just having justice would be a step down. You know it gets really trippy! And justice is pretty easy for us to think about that way. But now think about three other things: being, simplicity or unity, and eternity.

God is being. God doesn’t have being, because to have being would be less than being being. Boy that’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, for me at least! Unity is even tougher. And eternity, which I’ve mentioned just a little bit ,is even even tougher. But it’s a good thing for us to try to challenge ourselves with.

I think to to go to your question, maybe what we have to talk about here are like fundamental decisions that have to be made within the the grand Platonic tradition about which way you go on on understanding these things.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is the second portion of the transcript of an online talk I was invited to give to the Dionysius Circle. You can watch or listen to the full talk here.

So if we look at the trinity stuff, in Proslogion there’s only one chapter (and all the chapters are pretty short in the Proslogion). He tells us in chapter 23: Oh God the father it is your word, that is to say your son, for there cannot be anything other than what you are, or anything greater or less than you in the word by which you utter yourself. And this is coming from the Monologion. It’s coming from traditional Christian theology. The second person of the trinity is the word, who is also the son.

Then he says: You are so simple that nothing can be born of you then that is other than what you are, and this good is the one love shared by you and your son, that is the holy spirit who proceeds from you both. This love is not unequal to you to you or to your son, since you love yourself and him, and he loves himself and you as much as you. So you’ve got sort of a pretty traditional exposition. very short, of the trinity. You’ve got the the father, the son is begotten of the father, and holy spirit proceeds from both. This is something that will be a controversy that Anselm will get into with the Eastern christians of course.

So some of the things that he says there is each person of the trinity individually (singulas) is the tota trinitas simul, the entire trinity at the same time, pater et filius et spiritus sanctus, right? And it’s also the summa simplex unitas, so the supreme simple unity, et summe una simplicitas, the supreme unified one, however you want to say it, simply simplicity. So simplicity itself is playing a bigger role there.

It’s already playing a role within this this notion of God as trinity in the Monologion, which I’m going to justrun through very quickly, and skip over some of the things I was going to mention. There’s a lot of discussion of the word as divine reason and utterance of the things that that exist before they’re made, and the word is the understanding, the intelligentia, of the creating spirit. He calls this the summa simplex natura, the supreme simple nature, and he spends a lot of chapters outlining how the the word and the the creator are are interconnected with each other.

He says that it makes sense to call this generation or being born. Obviously it’s not like natural birth or something like that, and we would do wrong in order to just try to analogize that into itt. He’s just he’s saying this is the best language that we have, or the best concepts that we have. The second is born from the first, the creator from the creator, the supreme from the supreme, the very same from the very same, he says in Monologion 39.

Eventually he brings in the love of the supreme spirit for itself, and this is the holy spirit which he talks about in Monologion 49 through 58. I’m actually running through a lot of stuff that you want to go back to and dig around in, but I’ll bring it to close by by saying this. In 63 he tells us that whatever is essentially present in the supreme nature belongs completely to, or applies completely to, perfecte convenire, the father, son, and their spirit individually. So the persons of the trinity individually, singulatum. But if the same thing is said of all three of them together, it does not admit of plurality.

Now what does all this mean? So think about God as being justice. This means that if you call God justice, that’s something that is present in the supreme nature. That belongs completely to the father, completely to the son, completely to the spirit, individually. So considering the father just on his own, or its own, or whatever is going on there, and the son completely on his own or its own, it’s completely just. Or it’s not even completely just. It is complete justice. It is justice itself. Same thing with goodness. Same thing with eternity. Same thing with simplicity.

This is where we start to get very trippy. But that doesn’t mean that there’s three different justices that are distinct from each other. There’s only one. And so there aren’t three justices, or three eternities, or three unities. There’s only one father and one son and one spirit who proceeds from them. There’s not a son of the son, or a father of the father, or any of that sort of thing, he clarifies.

He ends the Monologion, well not completely ends but gets close to the ending, bringing us in and saying in a typically Augustinian manner (that all of you I think who are familiar with Augustine will recognize), that the rational human mind is an approach to an image and mirror, a very imperfect one of this divine substance. So the human rational mind remembering, understanding, and loving itself, and the trinity which also is you know capital-R remembering, capital-U understanding, capital-L loving, that is how we get to know the the trinity

And notice one thing, before we go on to the Incarnation of the Word, in the Monologion and the Proslogion Anselm doesn’t do what some people do on occasion, which is to invoke some higher faculty that we have, by which we would grasp the divine. I mean you see something like that in Boethius, where you’ve got the senses, and then imagination, and then reason, and then the intellect would also be there. And then you’ve got this whatever you want to call it, intelligence, intuition, something like that, which we don’t really have but but is the way that God understands God’s self. Anselm doesn’t do anything like that. He’s much more, on the one hand, confident about capacities to use our our cognitive faculties to get this sort of thing, and he’s also more circumspect in saying: Well we’re not going to get this entirel. A lot of this is gonna remain just dimly glimpsed by us.

When we go on to the on the incarnation of the word, which again I’m not going to hit on everything, I just wanted to bring up a few interesting points. So there’s this guy Roscelin, right? And Roscelin is a typical, I mentioned him as a “smart ass” earlier. That’s basically what he is. He’s somebody who’s making arguments and claiming the sort of if you believe this, then you must also be committed to this or this, so therefore your thoughts, your understanding is a muddle, you orthodox Christians.

He’s basically arguing this with the trinity idea: You christians who are supposed to defend yourself against pagans, and jews ,and and muslims, you’re not doing a very good job,. Because your your notion of the trinity either winds up with God being three gods, and you clearly don’t want that because you defined that as heresy earlier, or every person of the trinity is equally incarnate, so it’s not just the son who becomes human or takes on humanity, however you want to talk about it. It’s also the father and the holy spirit at the same time. And this is a trap from which you christians cannot escape.

Anselm comes along and he’s got an interesting set of responses. He calls Roscelin one of those dialecticians, dialecti (he actually uses that several times in there), who think that universal substances are just vocalizations. And he says that the power of reason in their souls is so bound up in corporeal imaginations, imaginationibus corporalibus, that they cannot extricate themselves from this. They can’t distinguish between their imaginations from the matters that they should contemplate. Now he’s not saying don’t imagine things, that imagination is totally inapplicable to God or anything like that.

What he is saying is that sort of like with Boethius, there is a hierarchy of human faculties, and imagination, if we want to be kind of Hegelian about this, we could call it “representation” or “picture thinking” that’s not going to be adequate to a higher reality that can’t be pictured in that way. So to insist upon that is setting yourself up and your interlocutors for misunderstanding things. In chapter 4 he tells us if you have a simple intellect (and simplicity is entering in here), simplicem habet intellectum, not one that is bound up or buried in a multiplicity of phantasies, the latin word there is actually phantasmatum, so it’s no longer just imagination but you could say particular imaginations, then we understand that simple things exceed ,or surpass, or excel composite things

Then he goes on and says if God is composed of three things then we have a problem. Either there’s no simple substance at all, or there’s another substance that in some way surpasses God. So what we see here is something similar for those of you who are familiar with the Prosologion argument about the being or existence of god which gets used throughout the Prosologion. Quo maius cogitari non potest, which is not a definition of god by the way Anselm says, but a way of understanding God. Sort of a rule: If there’s anything that’s greater than God, God isn’t God. Whatever it was that you were calling “God” wasn’t God.

Augustine also says stuff like this in On Free Choice of the Will, and in in other places. If you can imagine something that’s better than God, something has gone wrong somewhere. Whatever you’re calling God isn’t, is just sort of a phantasm or an imagination, not really an understanding of the divine. And if you think there’s something that’s going to be the criterion, or canon, or judge, or that God is going to be subject to, you may as well start worshiping that thing, because it’s it’s the greatest thing.

Now Anselm points out another part, another you could say aspect to this. A person claiming that God is composite says that he can understand something greater than God, so that the human intellect goes beyond God, something that no intellect can actually do, although we can we can lie to ourselves or deceive ourselves into thinking that we can actually understand something greater than God. And that’s what he thinks that Roscelin is doing, and not just Roscelin. I think he would think a lot of people are doing that sort of thing. So instead we have to look at God as being completely simple and yet being a trinity

In chapter 8 he says the supreme good does not allow multiplication of itself into several supreme goods. There’s only one supreme substance, one supreme essence or nature. Then in 9, he says the father and the son are the same substance, the one and the same substance. But with respect to person, they are multiple, and distinct from each other. This is how we can get our heads around it. God doesn’t assume a human being into God’s substance. The son, the single person, the son assumes a human being into the unity of his person. The son became flesh by reason of the unity of the person.

Then in chapter 11 he goes on to say there aren’t two persons in Christ. There is a divine and human nature in one person. So we’ve got a lot of metaphysics terms playing a big role there, a lot of distinctions going on. But this is how Anselm makes sense of that. A little bit later on, going back to these, sort of how we understand our understanding, it says if if his adversary doesn’t understand all this, let him understand there’s things in God that his intellect could not understand. Let him not compare the nature that is superior to everything, the nature free from every law of time and space and composition of parts, to things that are characterized in that way Instead let him profess that there are in that nature the divine, what cannot be in the latter things.

In 15 he’s going to say that God is nothing but simple eternity itself, ipsa simplex aeternitas. There are not several eternities. There’s not an eternity of the father, an eternity of the son, and an eternity of the holy spirit, but there is a “repetition”, or a nice translation for this in Davies and Evans is “replication”. I like to think of this as part of what goes on with these divine attributes, and how active they are, there is a intensive reflexity involved in there. So he says that God is a nature that is replicated upon itself, always one with itself in perfect unity. the latin there is a “repetita. . . in perfectam unitatem”. Because this is the case, God is of a higher rank, dignior (God is the highest rank really) than what admits of plurality.

We can say that about other things, not just eternity but also so there it’s not as if there’s an eternity inside of an eternity, but eternity is itself reflected upon itself. Same thing with divine justice. Same thing with goodness. Same thing with simplicity, weirdly enough, right? And this allows us to at least partly cognize what these divine attributes are like in God, how simplicity as we understand it is not quite the same thing as the real simplicity that is God.

He tells us in 16 that the divine substance preserves an eternal and unique unity, and at the same time has an inseparable plurality of these relations that that allow God to be understood as father, son. holy spirit. You can have the trinity and unity at the same time, and it’s not going to be like any other thing. It’s not going to be like St Patrick supposedly holding up the clover with three three parts to it, or anything like that. Nevertheless, and this is this is where I wanted to end, Anselm does provide us with an analogy in On the Incarnation of the Word, which he admits is not a great one. But nevertheless he’ll throw it out there anyway, and then reappropriate in On the Procession of the Holy Spirit.

So he says imagine the Nile, and he doesn’t mean the real Nile in Egypt. He’s just talking about it as a fictional thing. There’s a source, a beginning, of it, a river or a stream, and then a delta. In the later reappropriation he’ll call it a lake. Each of these individually is called the Nile. If you put two of them together, so like the source and the river that’s also called the Nile. You put all three of them togethe, that’s also called the nile. And it’s the same water going through all of them. The running water, the water that’s in motion is one. It’s not three running waters, or three bodies of waters, or three substances. And yet you can distinguish between the source, which is not from the river or the delta. The river is not from the delta. The entire river is from the entire source, and the entire delta is from the entire source in the entire river. You’re probably seeing the parallelism here. Just like the son is entirely from the father entirely begotten, and the holy spirit proceeds from both the entire father and the entire son.

So he says that this works for understanding the trinity, and then you can say: Well what about the incarnation of the word? What about taking on flesh? Well that’s like taking a pipe and having that river now no longer flow through the land but through a pipe. It’s still flowing, and you still have all the same relations between things. It’s just becoming piped, just like the son has become incarnate.

Now Anselm says after he provides this: This isn’t very good. Don’t be misled by this But in On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, he he apparently thinks it’s good enough to bring up again. He adds to it. He says the water rising from the depths bubbles up in the spring or the source, descending from the spring flows into the stream or the river, and is collected and stays in the lake. The stream is not such from what we call water or spring, but from what the stream is, that is the wate,r and so on.

So God, whatever God is, the attributes God is, is what the father is, and the son is, and the holy spirit, and though their relations are maintained without God losing God’s simplicity or unity, even though there is a plurality in that. You can even have enough of a seeming plurality that one of them can be, in the case of the incarnation of the word, can be incarnate without the others being so. You can also have the big concern about one of them proceeding from the other two without losing that unity or simplicity as well. So how do we put all this together?

This is this is where we can kind of wrap up, and then we’ll open it up for discussion. I imagine some of the discussion is like: What the hell was that about?

We’ve got these these attributes, each of which is what God is, so it’s not as if they’re separate or God exists prior to them. As a matter of fact, justice is just as good a name for God as “God” is, or goodness or anything else. And they’re all the same. So they’re distinguishable by us to some degree. But you kind of get the idea that in Anselm’s mind, in God these are not separated things. These are not even distinct things. God’s eternity is the same thing as God’s justice, a hard thing for us to wrap our heads around, I think. I know it certainly is for me. I won’t speak for all of you. I’d be very pleased if one of you is like: No, no! I totally understand it, and then laid out exactly how that works, because I’ve been wrapping my head around this for for quite a while.

So we’ve got that on the one hand, and then we’ve got all this trinity business on the other hand. They’re all one unity, and at the same time there’s enough going on here to allow one of the persons of that trinity to be incarnate, and to even be prayed to in in prayer. Anselm has a prayer to Christ. So this is not abstract metaphysics at all. This is trying to penetrate into the heart of what ultimatelyhas to be conceded to be a mystery, but not a mystery in the sense that like we throw up our hands: Oh we just don’t understand any of this stuff, we’ll just stick with negative theology, and not say we know anything.

No we’re being invited to try, as best as our messed up human puny minds can, to figure some of this stuff out with the very help of the thing that is being cognized, that is, God. So that is a lot uh to throw at you, I know!

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

This is the first portion of the transcript of an online talk I was invited to give to the Dionysius Circle. You can watch or listen to the full talk here.

Thanks to the Dionysus Circle. I’m really happy to see this sort of initiative going on. Thanks to Jack for the invitation to present. Anselm is a thinker who I’ve been grappling with for about a quarter of a century, and I never expected to become an Anselm scholar. But there’s there’s something about the guy that is really quite compelling.

So I’m supposed to speak for about half an hour. I haven’t actually timed this presentation. I might go over considerably. And I’ve been a little bit under the weather lately, so if there’s anything that’s unclear, I’m going to blame it on that and not on Anselm or anything in his thought. Once i’m done, I’m happy to field whatever questions you’ve got for me, or to follow out threads of discussion. Once I’ve said my part for Anselm, I’m at your disposal.

A lot of what I’m going to be doing is is simply telling you what it is that Anselm himself says, and trying to put together, you could call them, pieces of a complex puzzle that Anselm himself is not articulating quite that way. He’s got different, if we want to mix metaphors, fish to fry. So this talk is exploring the attribute of divine simplicity in Anselm’s works, and then to a certain extent how it how it plays out in the Trinity.

What we find out, I think fairly quickly when we look at Anselm’s works, even just with the Monologion, is that simplicity is not as simple a matter for us as we would typically think it to be, or want it to be, and that wanting it to be simpler or wanting it to be a certain kind of simplicity that it’s not gets us into a lot of trouble. We can talk, maybe in the Q&A about Anselm’s views on how the intellect and will are connected. This is a matter that Anselm really devoted a lot of thought to. I do want to say that the thought that Anselm devoted to it ,we get to see the tip of the iceberg in the written works, and also in his prayers and his letters, and and stuff like that. There’s much more to Anselm’s thinking than the traces that we find in his treaties

The other thing I’ll say is that his thought is not static. So he’s not proceeding in a syllogistic manner, saying “I’ve established point A. Now let’s move on to point B.” It’s really quite fluid and dialectical, and the dialectic to make it even more complicated is not just between ideas or within ourselves, or within our mind or language. It’s a direct engagement with God. And God turns out to be kind of a weird being, we’ll say, in Anselm’s works, but one around which everything else is going to be centered. And so as we’re working through his his treatises and the ideas in them, if we’re doing it right, there should be kind of a transformation that’s taking place in our thinking. Thinking is an activity for somebody like Anselm

There are some interpreters that are very well attuned to this, the entire French "reflective” tradition, which would include writers like Henri de Lubac and Jacques Paliard who write about this. Some of the more recent English writers on Anselm, like Gillian Evans and oh I’m blanking on her name, she’s at Boston College and I can see her right in front of my face. Maybe I’ll recall it later on. Eileen Sweeney! They’re very good at bringing out this dynamic aspect to Anselm’s thought as well.

So I’m going to get started with the actual talk in a bit, but after just a bit of digression. We’ll look at Anselm’s examination of the divine attributes mostly in the Monologion, and then we’ll focus in on one of those, simplicity, and its implications. And then we’ll shift to looking at how anselm thinks about God as as a trinity in his works, because that kind of naturally comes to mind. If God is simple, then what’s this three business, right?

So the main texts that I think are the most germane are two of his earliest treatises, the Monologion and the Proslogion, and then two later occasioned texts. One is On the Incarnation of the Word and the other is On the Procession of the Holy Spirit. I’m not going to talk much about the second one, in part just to try to keep things as short as possible.

Before the digression though, one other remark. So I’m going to treat all of you here in the audience like Anselm treats his critic Gaunillo, responding not to the Fool but to the Christians, so to speak. It’s possible to be very unsympathetic to Anselm’s point of view, and his works and thought. He is, as Kate Rogers wrote an entire book about early in her career (which was her dissertation at Notre Dame and then turned into her first book), a Christian Platonist. I’m guessing here with the Dionysus Circle, I don’t have to make a case for Platonism being a good thing or anything like that.

But you know, other people will watch this. I just want to point out that one of the things that Kate Rodgers writes about in an article is that you could say about Anselm: Well, I’m not a Christian Platonist, so I don’t have to buy any of his stuff. Rogers points out the sort of thing that Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out in his works. Nobody comes from a purely neutral metaphysical perspective, and Rogers argues, I think quite persuasively, why Christian Platonism could be a very good starting point, particularly if the goal is to understand what Anselm is getting at, It’s at least as good and reasonable as others one might adopt in the present, I would say.

So the digression by way of preparation: I’m not going to assume any great familiarity on your part with Anselm ,and I just want to say a few things. He’s one of the great Benedictine monastic thinkers. He’s from a noble family, and he left that behind settled upon a monastic life, and what does that mean? So the monastic life was called by that time “Christian philosophy”, and it took a lot of different forms. Even just within the Benedictine order, back where he was, it took a particularly intellectual form. So you’ve got prayer, community, work, study, teaching, obedience, in Anselm’s case the exercise of authority and rule that he never asked for but wound up getting stuck with. He ends up becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

And he’s an unusual thinker for his time. You can assume that Anselm would have read and re-read everything that was available to him in monastery libraries. And we know that things are circulating from libraries to libraries, because we see people bugging him: Can you send me Gregory’s Moralia on Job, so we can copy it over here? So that’s going to include a lot of pagan authors like Seneca and Cicero. It’s going to include all the Church Fathers, some of whom he’ll reference occasionally. Augustine of course, as Jack has pointed out. Later thinkers like Alcuin and Boethius, or John Scotus Eriugina.

But unlike most of the other thinkers of his time, Anselm almost never cites or invokes authorities, so he’s rather unusual in that way, which means that oftentimes if we see something, we’ll be like: Well did that come from Augustine? It kind of looks like what’s going on there. But Anselm’s not citing him. Or did that come from Boethius? It could be. We have to kind of guess at it.

He also appears to have been an extraordinarily gifted teacher, initiating students less to the life of the mind as something set aside from and above the rest of life, and more into an integrated life, fully developing the minds that God has endowed us with, which again i think fits in very well with the Platonic motif. It’s not about contemplation as total withdrawal from the world that you live in, but rather participating more fully in whatever is being understood through that.

So the works like the Monologion, the Proslogion, On the Incarnation of the Word, Anselm writes them not to provide scholastic treatises on anything. He’s pestered basically into writing the Monologion by his fellow monks, because he’s been teaching them, and they’re like: The stuff you teach is so cool! Can you write it down for us? And at first he’s like: Nah i’m not the guy for that. And then they keep bugging him and bugging him, so finally he does it, and it turns out to be this incredible meditation on the divine attributes and and the trinity and things like that. The Proslogion arises out of his attempt to try to resolve the many arguments, the fabric or or contexture of many arguments in the Monologion into a single argument, the unum argumentum, and then once he’s actually done that to share the joy that he found in that. So it’s got a emotional or aesthetic motivation behind it.

On the Incarnation of the Word is him trying to respond to a local, essentially nominalist smart-ass Roscelin, who was making arguments that god is either three gods, or all three persons became flesh. And he gets started on it, and then Roscelin gets called up for heresy, and recants. Anselm puts away his his manuscript and then people start circulating it without his knowledge or his consent. Then he returns to it later on, and because Roscelin is actually back on the arguments again, Anselm works it into a full treatise. So he never writes this stuff to set the record straight about it, to create a summa or anything like that. It’s a very different kind of motivation

The last thing that i’ll say by way of digression before we get started: There’s kind of a paradox about Anselm. He’s viewed by a lot of people as an ultra-rationalist because he’ll try to prove the incarnation and its logic, or he’ll get into the trinity and try to explain that, tinkering around with the inner workings you could say. But he also is somebody who’s sometimes portrayed as a fideist. And you know where he is? Somewhere in between. He actually thinks that these things can be explored and understood by human reason to some extent, but you need some help, and you need some starting points. He’s really just as impressed as Augustine is by this quote that comes from Isaiah: “Unless you believe, you will not understand”. Coming from the Septuagint version of Isaiah. He takes as sort of his motto: faith seeking understanding. He’s not a person who thinks: We’re going to start from faith in a propositional way, and that’s going to feed all of the input in, and then we’ll just reason. No it’s again much more fluid and dynamic

So let’s start by considering the divine attributes. The divine attributes are what God is. There are things that we can say about God. The term that Anselm uses in the Monologion is “substantive”. So what can we say about God as a substance, as the entity that God is? In Monologion 15 he says: it’s okay to use relational terms. You can call God, for example, “supreme”, but it doesn’t actually tell you anything. Not very helpful. I mean, it’s not going to resolve your problems. Why is “supreme” an issue? Well because take away the rest of creation, and God is no longer “supreme”. God just is God.

So what is God? Well we can look at non-relational terms. Anselm in the Monologion says that these are two kinds. There’s those that what that term signifies is in every respect better than what its negation signifies. And then there’s some where its negation is in some respect better than it. So examples of this, because that sounds pretty abstract: true and not true. It’s better to be true than not to be true, right? Same thing like material object and non-material object. In the case of spirit and matter, one is better than the other. But a prime example of this is wisdom.

Anselm says it’s always better to be wise than not wise, and not wise is not unqualifiedly better than wise. So if you try to think of situations where you’re like: Well wait a second! Wouldn’t it be better for me to be not wise, if being wise got me into trouble, or made me feel bad or something like that? Well that’s qualified. You’re making up some some hypothetical that would allow you to say that sort of thing. You put that sort of stuff aside, and being wise is going to be better than not being wise.

Same thing with true, just, living. As it’s going to turn out it’s always better to be just than unjust right. So what’s an example of something, and I really like this example of something that’s not always better? Golden. It’s better to be golden than lead, if we’re just comparing the two by themselves. If this this cup was gold, that would be kind of nice. You know I could sell it or something like that. It probably still would hold coffee. Coffee doesn’t get so hot that it would melt the gold. But would it be good for you to be made of gold? No that would be terrible, right? That would be essentially the end of you as a human being.

He goes on and he says that God or this substance is alone that than which nothing at all is better. And it alone is better than all things that are not what it is So God is going to be living, wise, powerful, all-powerful, true, just. These are sort of a listing that he gives in Proslogion 5. He is going to say God is whatever it is better to be than not to be. If we go a little deeper into the Monologion, he says: Okay we’ve got these predicates that we can say about God. God is just. God is good. What are they telling us about God? Are they telling us what God is? Or are they telling us what kind of thing God is or how much god is, qualis or quantis?

He says if we think about justice, if God is just through participating in justice, then god is just through something else. Justice is in a certain way greater than God then. God is just sort of the best or the justest thing, compared to let’s say the Platonic form of justice. And so Anselm says: Well that’s not going to work. God is going to be the very justice through which god is just. So if we invoke the Platonic form, the Platonic form of justice would be God. Not god would be participating in that form he even uses the word justitia existens. “Existing justice” is sort of a immediate way to translate it. Or god excelling in being as justice, if we wanted to be a little periphrastic.

And so he says that this works for justice. The intellect discerns rationally that what we’ve established of justice holds true for everything predicated similarly of the supreme nature. So he gives us a longer list now. He says that the supreme nature is supreme being (essentia), supreme life, supreme reason, supreme refuge, supreme justice, supreme wisdom, supreme truth, I’m not going to go through all of them. Then he says these are also the same as supremely being (summe ens), supremely living. So at least with the highest thing in in each of these, it’s not just a static thing. It’s dynamic and active. And God is not some sort of super-substance that has all of these awesome attributes. God is these attributes themselves.

Now in Monologion 17, here’s where we start to get to the simplicity issue. Anselm starts out with this really rich multiplicity of all the best stuff, these great attributes that God doesn’t just have but is, and is what everything else that just has them participates in. So you and I are just, because we participate in some way in the justice that is that is God. We are living because we participate in some way in the life that is God. Does Anselm ever explain this? With the justice part, maybe a little bit. You know in terms of justice as rectitude of will preserved for its own sake, and the discussions in the other treaties. When it comes to the others like living, he doesn’t he doesn’t explain that at all. But what this does show us is that God is all of these really great attributes,

Now here’s where we get to the simplicity thing. Can these be a multiplicity, or plural, or different? If that was the case, then God would be a composite being, and that can’t be the case according to Anselm. So he says: the whole necessity of previously established truth destroys and overthrows by means of clear reasoning this blasphemous falsity, which is pretty strong language for Anselm. And so what do we have then? Well all these divine attributes must be one good signified by many names.

But that raises some problems that we’ll we’ll think about in just a bit. He tells us each attribute is the same (idem) as all the others, or rather all of them (omnia) whether together or considered distinctly. And then he says this is what it means to be simple, simplex. So when justice or being is spoken of, the same thing is signified as the othersm whether all together or distinctly. Now he doesn’t, by the way, use the word simplicitas in that listing in Monologion 16. He’s using unitas, unity instead. But these are going to be the same thing.

And it gets even trippier, because that means that divine life is the same thing as divine goodness, as divine reason. Now we get to even weirder attributes: eternity or unity. Unity itself is the same as all the things that it’s unifying. You know if your head starts spinning when you hear this stuff, that’s fine because we’re running through this very quickly. These are things you’re supposed to meditate on over a lot of time

Now in Proslogion chapter 18, he approaches this this same issue, and he says there’s no parts in God or the eternity that God is. Anselm asks for God’s help at this point, because he admits he’s in confusion and darkness and neediness. He needs God to illuminate his intellect. Shortly after he says God is all these good things, and his mind, Anselm’s mind, cannot see them all in one glance or view. So presumably our minds aren’t going to get them either, even though we’re thinking about them and referencing them now.

Then he says whatever is made of parts is not entirely one or a unity, but in a sense it’s multiple and other than itself, and it can be broken up either actually (in actu) or in the mind (intellectu) It can be broken up, it can be analyzed. So Anselm is saying that God isn’t able to be broken up like that, even though you and I might think that we can do that. We’re doing you know we’re doing something like that right now ,and listing off these divine attributes, and saying: Is God justice? Okay God’s justice over here and goodness over here, and then maybe we’ll put the eternity over here. We are the ones that are thinking of things in that way.

Anselm is showing us that that’s an inadequate way of understanding thing. It’s not really even understanding things to see it that way. So he concludes in Prosologion chapter 18 by saying that God is unity itself, ipsa unitas, not divisible by any mind. We could you know bring up other texts as well. De Veritate 12 has in God will and rectitude are not different. There’s no difference between power and divinity. And if we think about some of the implications of this, we can say a few things that might be good launching points a little bit later on.

So unity is one of the things that God is but it also describes the relation between all these things that God is. It turns out that they’re all unity. They’re all the same. And so whatever we think simplicity is we’re probably not getting it. We’ve got a notion of simplicity or unity. God’s unity or simplicity is beyond that. Which means that we don’t really know what unity or simplicity is, and we don’t really know what reason is, or any of these other divine attributes that we’ve rattled off.

Now you can say well that means we have to get really abstract in our thinking. Maybe this is kind of a negative theology. That’s not really the direction Anselm is going though in in his work

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

Some time back, I authored a post about one of the richest passages in Stoic works about how to manage our anger, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations book 11, chapter 18. At that point in his work, he writes about nine “gifts from the Muses”, that is, considerations that a person can use to prevent, remove, or at least temper their emotion of anger. He also throws in an extra one as a bonus, saying it comes from Apollo, but then without adding to the explicit number, provides two additional considerations, for a total of twelve.

In that earlier post, I discussed those two extra remedies for anger, which had to do with thinking about it in terms of selfishness, on the one hand, and in terms of real and spurious “manliness” and strength, on the other. I promised two follow-up posts about the philosophical practices Marcus outlined for dealing with anger in that section. One of them would look at the four passages where he explicitly uses anger-vocabulary. The other would examine the six which don’t use that terminology, but nevertheless do bear upon and provide resources for dealing with anger. Perhaps that last one will need to be divided into two posts, each treating three of the passages. Today, however, I intend to focus on those four passages explicitly treating anger. These are points six through nine in book 11, chapter 18.

Here they are, in Hayes’ translation:

6. When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side.

7. That it’s not what they do that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our own misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe . . . and your anger is gone. How do you do that? By recognizing that you’ve suffered no disgrace. Unless disgrace is the only thing that can hurt you, you’re doomed to commit innumerable offenses—to become a thief, or heaven only knows what else.

8. How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.

9. That kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere— not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight—if you get the chance—correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he’s trying to do you harm. “No, no, my friend. That isn’t what we’re here for. It isn’t me who’s harmed by that. It’s you.” And show him, gently and without pointing fingers, that it’s so. That bees don’t behave like this—or any other animals with a sense of community. Don’t do it sardonically or meanly, but affectionately—with no hatred in your heart. And not ex cathedra or to impress third parties, but speaking directly. Even if there are other people around.

Notice that in points six through eight, Marcus is speaking to himself as the person liable to get angry with another. These considerations are intended to prevent, lessen, or remove anger that he could feel. The ninth point is different from these in two notable manners. The first is that he’s writing to himself as someone who is dealing with another person’s anger, rather than his own. The second goes right along with that, since he advises not just not being angry, or approaching these people calmly (praōs). He suggests being kindly or gentle (eumenes) with the others who are gripped by that emotion.

Let’s now look at each the approach and remedy in each point in turn.

The Brevity Of Life

Anger tends to make us focus on the present, where we’re feeling the emotion, as well as on part of the past, where the person we’re angry with presumably did something that caused that anger. To some, shifting our attention deliberately to an unavoidable part of the human condition, the fact that all of us at some time will die, could perhaps seem too bitter a remedy. Why remind ourselves of our mortality? The Stoics in general, and Marcus in particular, do make that a regular practice, not just so that we can lessen the fear we often feel towards the prospects of ourselves or those we care about dying, but also because it helps us to develop a fuller sense of perspective about matters while we are still alive.

The terms Marcus uses in this passage are aganktēs, translated as “lose your temper” and duspathēs, “feel irritated”. Both are decent English equivalents. Aganaktein is a common anger-vocabulary verb, a synonym with other verbs that incorporate Greek words that denote anger itself. Duspathein quite literally means to have a bad emotional state, but it also has the connotation of impatience, a condition which can also contribute to feeling anger.

When we consider how short life can be, that our own might end tomorrow, or that the person who we are angry with could likewise die at any time, that can contribute to lessening or even letting go of our anger. How this works can be fleshed out quite a bit more, and Seneca does precisely that at end of his treatise On Anger, where he notes that soon enough we will draw our last breath (3.43). If because of our anger, we want the other person to die, that will happen eventually without ua needing to hasten it. In the meantime, instead of indulging our anger, he counsels living among fellow human beings with humaneness (humanitatem), and that we bear difficulties with magnanimity (magno animo . . . feramus incommoda)

Dealing With Our Own Misperceptions

The next passage sets out a practice at greater length, beginning with a idea quite likely familiar to anyone studying Stoicism, the distinction between what other people do and our responses, both emotional and cognitive, to those. What a person does and the judgements we make about what they do, are two different things. This is all too easily forgotten when a person makes another person’s actions, words, attitudes, or even what that person doesn’t do or say, the cause of their feeling angry, claiming “you made me angry”. Or even in the case of this passage , “bothered” or “annoyed” (enokhlousi).

What we ought to take responsibility for Marcus says, is our own misperceptions, or more literally, the assumptions (hupoleipseis) that we are making. Interestingly, the term that Hays translates as “their minds” in this particular remedy is actually their “ruling parts” (hegemonikois). The reasons why they do what they’re doing reside there, and we can’t be entirely sure about what is in their ruling parts of their minds. If we can hold ourselves back from making assumptions like “they behave this way towards me because of their malice or envy, we can avoid getting angry with them.

He notes that we have a choice in how we look at the situations. We should choose (thelēson) to let go (aphienai) the judgement or determination (krisin) that what is happening is something dreadful (deinou), or as Hays somewhat hyperbolically calls it, a “catastrophe”. How can we bring about that change of perspective? The answer is to reason with ourselves (logisamenos) that while something may have happened to us, it is nothing shameful (ouk aishkron).

And why would that be the case? The justification that Marcus provides might seem a bit odd to some of us readers, until we remember that he is not writing for us but to himself. And here Hays has not exactly been helpful with his translation. A more literal reading would say: Unless only the shameful is something bad (kakon), you will make many mistakes (hamarteneis), for instance becoming a thief, or all sorts of others (pantoion). He’s reminding himself and us that when people do things to us that we take to be something bad for us, those things aren’t bad in the real sense, and the only thing about them that could be genuinely shameful or dishonorable would be our own excessive, angry reactions to them.

Putting Anger’s Damage Into Perspective

Our third remedy is also a very short passage, a veritable one-liner philosophical practice. Marcus suggests comparing two sets of things against each other, determining which of them is more difficult for us (khalepotera). It is worth pointing out that he doesn’t actually use language of “damage” in the Greek. Khalepos, “difficult”, here in the comparative, does actually have resonances with anger-language, since one type of angry people, distinguished as such going all the back to Aristotle, are the “difficult'“, and the verb khalapainein is used for getting angry in many authors.

What are the points of comparison we are supposed to make? On the one side, we have the occasions of anger or of “grief” (since they’re both in the plural). “Grief” is probably not the best translation, since the Greek is lupai, literally pains. Now pain is a broad category in the Stoic theory of emotion, which does include grief, but not just that emotion. What are these instances of getting angry or feeling pained more difficult or troublesome than? Or better put what do these instances bring (epipherousin) to us or impose on us, that is more troublesome, than what?

The other side of that comparison is translated as “the things that cause them”, which is not entirely accurate. The Greek reads “auta. . . eph’ hois orgizometha kai lupometha”, so more literally those things at which we get angry or are pained. Those matters don’t simply cause those emotions in a simple, mechanical manner. We ourselves bear some responsibility for how those generate anger or pain in us.

So we have the emotions which we feel, and we have the matters we take as reasons or occasions to feel those emotions. Marcus is making the point that those things that we often do take as causing our anger or pain are not as troublesome or difficult as those emotions themselves are, for us. This doesn’t deny that the things we get upset by could indeed be weighty and important matters, where there are serious consequences to them going wrong. But that needn’t trouble us in the ways that the emotions themselves do. We might also add a consideration Marcus doesn’t here, namely that feeling angry or pained isn’t going to make the situation any better for us if we’re going to respond to it, let alone resolve it.

Approaching The Angry

As I noted earlier, this remedy is at most only indirectly one for the person engaging in it, since it has to do primarily with how to approach other people who are in the grips of anger. Marcus mentions a number of attitudes one can exhibit towards an angry person, which he says will help to defuse the situation. One of the natural tendencies many of us do struggle with when dealing with someone else who is angry, is to get angry on our own part at them, which then typically just extends, intensifies, and confuses the conflict. Of the terms that describe the ideal attitude to adopt, one of them is particularly revealing in this respect, “gently”, which in the Greek original is praōs. That is a very important term, since in ancient virtue ethics, whether in the Stoic, Aristotelian, Platonist, or other traditions, that term designates a virtuous disposition with respect to anger.

It’s also important to point out another term that got a little mistranslated by Hayes, who chose a word that could understandably be quite misleading. “[E]ven the most vicious person” would be a somewhat strange superlative in a Stoic context, given that the official Stoic position is that there isn’t a greater or lesser for virtue or vice. But that’s somewhat of a moot point, given that Marcus doesn’t write of that person being vicious, but rather of being hubristikōtatos, ‘the most insolent”, or “injurious”, or “insulting”, or even “bullying”. Now that doesn’t rule out that person being vicious, but the emphasis here is rather on the behavior of that person. It is interesting to note that hubris was for Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition (which we know Marcus is familiar with since he cites Theophrastus, Aristotle’s student, about anger earlier in the work), one of the main triggers for anger.

Now back to those attitudes or dispositions. Marcus writes about “kindness”, which is eumenēs, a term that appears many times in the Meditations, including a second time in this passage. He also references calmness or gentleness, as we have already noted. What are the others? The “cheerfully” as Hayes translates it is euskholōn, which is more literally “well-leisurely”, which could possibly have a connotation of cheerfulness. “Gently“ here is euaphōs, which can certainly be translated that way, but also carries a sense of having a soft or gentle touch. Lastly, the term “affectionately” is philostorgōs in the Greek, a word often used (for example in Epictetus) for the affection one feels towards friends or family members. So he’s advising himself to bring to bear an entire panoply of attitudes, some of which we can recognize as modalities of what the Stoics called the “subordinate virtues” that fall under the cardinal ones, particularly that of justice.

He also provides a number of things to avoid. The kindness needs to be genuine, not one that just “grins” (sesēros) or involves acting or pretense (hupokrisis). He also counsels against being “sardonic” or more literally “ironic”, eirōnikōs, or “meanly”, oneidistikōs, better rendered more strongly as “reproachfully” or “abusively”. “Without hatred in your heart” is a bit too strong, since adēktōs means something more like “not being upset”, or more literally “not being bitten” or “gnawed”. And then bringing it to a close, not speaking “ex cathedra”, that is, like an authority, someone who has a lot of leisure (hōs en skholē)? And not aiming to impress (hina thaumasē) another person who is there, but just engaging the angry person themself directly.

Notice one other important aspect of this. Marcus doesn’t say: Just be nice to the angry person. Be non-confrontational. Don’t say anything that might set them off. He says to “set them straight”, to “correct them”, if it’s possible (ei houtōs etukhe). He even uses the term teknon to address them, literally calling them a “child”, sort of like calling a grown man “lad” or “son”. You can be assertive and precise with the angry person, exhibiting the right attitudes and avoiding counterproductive ones. As a final side note here, it is worthwhile stressing that this passage provides a Stoic counter-example to Seneca’s insistence in On Anger that once a person is actually angry, you cannot reason with them in any meaningful way. Marcus clearly thinks you can.

We’ve now looked closely at six of the twelve passages, the remedies against anger, in Meditations book 11, chapter 18. We’ll examine and unpack the remaining six in one or two additional posts in this series.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

What exactly is the will in Locke’s Essay Concerning the Human Understanding ? This is a puzzle, but not a minor one, as the notion of the will plays a major part in Locke’s understanding of moral action later in the Essay , as well as playing a role in Locke’s discussion of knowledge and belief in Book IV, Chap XX ¹. If Locke is unable to provide an account of the will that does not merely reduce the will to some set of other things, or does not merely leave the will blank, as pure spontaneity or indeterminism, then his accounts of rational subjects who form political associations by acts of their will, and moral relations that rest on the conformity of the will to a rule, become mere fictions.

The difficulty turns on two demands that, I claim, Locke is unable to reconcile. On the one hand, one wants to know how the will is determined , that is, one wants a general explanation of what happens when somebody wills something. On the other hand, one wants to know how the will is determined, that is, one wants a general explanation of what the will is. Both of these are demands that take place in terms of intelligibility, that is, they are demands that an author allow the reader of understanding what it is that is being written of. Neither can be answered satisfactorily by saying “it’s simply this way”, or by explaining the will and its determination simply in terms of itself. But, neither of them can be answered by an appeal to indeterminacy either, for then it appears that the will is either simply a spontaneity which cannot be understood except by its contingent effects after the fact, or worse, the will is simply a chance occurrence. In either of these latter cases, one wonders why the word “will” should be used at all.

For Locke, neither of these attempts at resolution can hold, the first set because they don’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and the aim was for us to come to understand something we don’t already understand, and the second set because they don’t tell us anything except that we can’t understand the will and its determinations. Locke is struggling with a real and difficult problem here, a problem that is one of the characteristic problems of the Modern period, whether the will can be understood as a faculty of its own in human nature, or whether it must be understood as grounded in some structure of human nature more fundamental than it, such as thought, for Descartes, or the material mechanisms of both body and mind, for Hobbes. Is moral action, which depends in its intelligibility on the will, to be understood in terms of an accordance with laws of reason, as having undergone a process of deliberation and assent, on one side, or, on the other side, is moral action to be understood as action in relation to sentiments, driven by desire and emotions, action in a certain accord with the passions?

The will, or more broadly speaking, a principle mediating between and distinct from reason and discursivity on the one side and passion, emotion, affectivity, desire, appetite, or impulsion on the other side, has always been problematic, and the problem of explaining such a principle is not new to the Modern period. But, the orientation towards this explanation is.

The problem can be put in the following way: The transparency of reason, discursivity, or understanding by itself does not suffice to motivate a person to choice, especially choice that opposes itself as an act to the call of the more opaque forces of desire, passion, or even impulsion (understood in a mechanistic way). On the other hand, from one’s patheticity, from the fact that one suffers passions, one does not come to experience the admittedly limited transparency of consciousness. In both cases, there is a requirement for some sort of mediating function, and the problem is making sense out of this mediation.

The will, of course, is not the only possible way to figure this mediating function or set of functions. One can also appeal to habitude or character, but, in the Modern period, these become increasingly drawn into one or the other of the sides, the transparency of reason, or the opacity of passion. The problem is particularly acute because this mediating function can be only partially figured in terms of a positivity. In contrast to reason that comes to be understood as being able to figure itself, as being able to be transparent to itself, and in contrast to this patheticity that can be observed and denoted,² either with deductive certainty or by some sort of empirically founded agreement, the mediating factor can only be figured tentatively, and the provisional expressions by which it is figured do not withstand the requirement for the justification of this figuring. This mediating function, then, must be figured in terms of one side or the other, reason or passion.

This leads to the problem presented above, a difficulty of satisfying two simultaneous demands of intelligibility. One must explain how the will is determined; one must explain how the will is determined. Locke attempts to reduce the problem to a single demand, that of explaining the fact of determination, and thereby avoids meeting the second demand to give an explanation of the will. More precisely, he gives an explanation of this latter, in terms of a power of the mind, that can only be made sense of in terms of the former, how the will is determined.

Locke treats the will at greatest length in his chapter on Power in Book II of the Essay . He explains how we come to have the idea of the will as a power:

[W]e find in our selves a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds, and motions of our Bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or as it were commanding the doing or not doing of such a particular action.”³

Here he makes several distinctions. This power takes place in the absence of the action, either initiating it or not initiating it, and it takes place in the presence of the action, continuing it or ending it. Put otherwise, this power allows four configurations: absence to absence (forbear), absence to presence (begin), presence to absence (end), and presence to presence (continue). He makes a second distinction as well, between actions of the mind and motions of the body, but this does not apply to the other distinctions of the combinations of presence and absence, but rather is worked out in terms of the last phrase of the sentence, by a thought or preference of the mind ordering or commanding. This last phrase does not establish a set of oppositions, like the preceding ones, but rather amplifies the second distinction.

The power of the will is experienced in terms of actions of the mind or movements of the body, these being the effects of that power and not the power itself. Accompanying these effects, which can be figured in terms of the combinations of presence and absence, go an ordering or a commanding by a thought or preference of the mind. How, though, can one distinguish this latter from the effect that it produces? In certain cases, it is not so difficult. In a volition (a particular act of this power of the will) to move a part of one’s body, one can distinguish the thought or preference of the mind from the movement of the body, presumably by the fact that the mind and the body are known by reflection and sensation respectively. And, in cases where one wills a bodily movement and is physically unable to perform that movement, the mental action and the non-existent bodily movement are easily distinguished. But, in the case where the effect is an action of the mind, how is one to distinguish this effect from the ordering or commanding, which itself is presumably an action of the mind?

To put this more concretely by using an example, what distinguishes my willing to think about something and actually thinking about something for Locke? What, for instance, is the difference between willing to think about what I am going to eat for dinner and thinking about what I am going to eat for dinner? The fact that I willed it? But, this fact that I willed it would seem to consist precisely in that I think about what I am going to eat for dinner, because I exercised an ordering or a commanding by a thought or preference of the mind. But what content does this ordering commanding, or preference have, if not precisely in part the content of the thought (partly, because willing to think about something might not entail willing all of the thoughts that follow, e.g. I will to think about what I will eat for dinner, and then realize I have left the refrigerator door open, so the meat will be spoiled)? Where is there any thing that would be distinguishable from the thought willed?

The difficulty becomes more pronounced when we consider that the will is just the power and not the actual use of that power. “This Power which the mind has, thus to order the consideration of any Idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice versâ in any particular instance in that which we call the will. The actual exercise of that power, by directing any particular action, or its forbearance is that which we call Volition or Willing .”⁴

The difficulty becomes more tangled at this point by iteration. If there is a difficulty in explaining how the will as a power is distinct from its effects, there is also a difficulty in explaining how the will is distinct from the actual willing or volition, and how the individual willing or volition is distinct from the effect, the action or the movement. There are therefore, in explaining the will as a power of the mind, three things that have to be adequately distinguished: the will itself as a power of the mind, willing or volition as the actual exercise of that power, and the effects, the combinations of presence and absence of the actions of the mind or the movements of the body.

The gravest difficulty comes in the fact that Locke also makes the experience of the will as an active power a simple idea of the understanding. He argues that the idea of active power can come only from reflection at first, although he leaves open the possibility that it can later come from sensation.

I thought it worth while to consider here by the way, whether the mind doth not receive its Idea of active Powerclearer from reflection on its own Operations, than it doth from any external Sensation.⁵

This means that the distinctions which have to be made, in order to make sense out of what I have called the second demand, that of explaining what the will is, would seemingly have to be framed in terms of the mind alone. This becomes a grave difficulty because, on those grounds, it becomes very difficult, not only to see how these distinctions can be given some content, but how they can be given content and determination in a way that does not simply reduce the will to the understanding.

In the same section where he explains what the will is, Locke explains the other power of the mind, the understanding. “The power of Perception is that which we call the Understanding .”⁶ This is rather brief, and we must go to the chapter on perception in order to better understand what Locke is saying here. Locke gives a certain primacy to perception in first sentence of that chapter. “ Perception, as it is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our Ideas; so it is the first and simplest Idea we have from Reflection, and is by some called Thinking in general.”⁷ Locke carefully distinguishes here, however, between willing and perception. “Thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation of the Mind about its Ideas, wherein the Mind is active; where it with some degree of voluntary attention, considers any thing.”⁸ It is clear that Locke aims at preserving a distinction between will and understanding, between volition and perception.

In that chapter, Locke seems to confine perception, and therefore the understanding, to sense alone. The following chapters, however, detail operations which belong to the understanding, such as retention, memory, and discerning, where the understanding works reflectively. Indeed, in the chapter on power, Locke claims:

Perception, which me make the act of the Understanding, is of three sorts: 1. The Perception of Ideas in our Mind. 2. The Perception of the signification of signs. 3. The Perception of the Connexion or Repugnacy, Agreement or Disagreement, that there is between any of our Ideas.⁹

It still seems, however, that understanding is contrasted to will as passive to active. The difficulty remains in explaining this activity.

One would be tempted at this point to attribute to Locke the following account. The will and the understanding are powers of the mind. In the case of the understanding, the power is one of receptivity, of being able to grasp certain contents of the mind and their relations to each other. In the case of the will, the power is an active one, of altering, by an act of the mind, the contents of the mind, and in like wise, changing the conditions of the body. Both of these would take place in time, and in relation to the external world. The mind would receive its ideas of perception and reflection partly by having those ideas, so to speak, imposed upon it through perception and thereby grasped by the understanding, partly by the will imposing a condition of movement on the body so that other ideas of perception would be grasped by the understanding, and partly by the will imposing a condition of activity on the mind so that other ideas of reflection would be thereby grasped by the understanding. The active power of the will would then seem to be a sort of relation between previous states and subsequent states, between the grasp of a certain set of ideas by the understanding and the grasp of another certain set of ideas by the understanding.

But what then is the will? How is it not simply a certain relation of succession between sets of ideas that the understanding grasps? One possibility of explaining this is by claiming that the will is simply a primitive fact or experience which lies outside of these ideas that the understanding grasps, and which can be figured in discourse. This, however, would make the will into simply an indeterminacy, into the lack of an explanation, for presumably, the understanding does in fact grasp the idea of the will in reflection as a power of the mind, and uses this idea in composition with other ideas. Another possibility would be claim that the will is a freedom of determination by the person, a certain way in which the mind works upon itself so as to determine its relation to itself. Locke rejects this possibility by distinguishing will from freedom and claiming that there can be iteration of the will. Or rather, more precisely, he limits this possibility.

Locke does in fact take up both of these options which were just proposed.

Such is the difficulty of explaining, and giving clear notions of internal Actions by sounds, that I must warn my Reader that Ordering , Directing , Choosing , Preferring ,etc. which I have made use of, will not distinctly enough express Volition , unless he will reflect on what he himself does, when he wills .¹⁰

Locke thereby makes an appeal to a certain primitiveness of volition.

Volition, ‘tis plain, is an Act of the Mind knowingly exerting that Dominion it takes it self to have over any part of the Man, by imploying it in, or withholding it from any particular Action. And what is the Will, but the Faculty to do this? ¹¹

In this second passage, Locke presents the will as a mastery or control exercised over oneself, and makes this control explicitly conscious.

The will, as a power, is limited, however, by freedom or liberty, another power.

Liberty ... is the power a Man has to do or to forbear doing any particular Action, according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the Mind, which is the same thing to say, according as he himself wills it.¹²

A person is free if he or she can in fact do what he or she wills. Freedom, in this respect, although Locke calls it a power, and steadfastly maintains that a power cannot be of another power, seems to be a certain modification of the will. If we understand the will as a power that produces certain combinations of presence and absence of actions of the mind and movements of the body by a thought or preference of the mind ordering or commanding, that is, if we understand the will as a power which comprises but is not reducible to certain mental or bodily effects and a certain mental origin, freedom introduces yet another term, the capacity for this power to actually produce those results.

This does not seem to present any great difficulties when it is a matter of willing to do something bodily, for it makes sense to speak of a thought to which a certain bodily condition would correspond, but cannot correspond to when one is not at liberty. In these cases, it makes sense to think of will as internal, mental, or private, and freedom as external, bodily, or public. But, when it is a matter of thoughts, and the power to bring a certain idea to mind or to focus attention upon it, once again the issue becomes much murkier.

Locke rightly puts the matter in terms of the question “Whether a Man be free to will ” at the end of §22. Putting aside the instances Locke notes though, that once one is willing some action one cannot not will that action at the same time, and that when one is presented with “proposals of present Action” one has to will to act or forbear,¹³ and considering willing that has actions of the mind as its effect, it becomes difficult to see, given that freedom is the ability for the will to actually produce its effects, how one could possibly be aware that one’s volition did not produce its effect, namely an action of the mind. If willing an action of the mind is characterized only by the thought or preference of the mind ordering or commanding (the origin) and the thought or action of the mind that is commanded (the effect), it would seem that this could always take place. And, given that we have only mediate access to the minds of other people, how could we ever know or even believe that somebody willed an action of his or her mind which that person was not free to think or perform? It would seem that, given Locke’s account, freedom and the will would coincide so far as actions of the mind are concerned.

Locke does not accept this, however, and he resolves this by further limiting the scope of the will. He does this in two ways. On the one hand, Locke further limits the will by distinguishing it from desire, and then explains the will in terms of its determination by desire. This risks, however, making the will only an unexplained part of a chain of determination by mechanical causality. On the other hand, Locke will attempt to overcome this by figuring the will as a power of suspension of judgement.¹⁴ This, however, produces other difficulties, among them the fact that this does then allow the circularity of “willing to will” and, at the same time, there is not reason why this suspension could not itself be explained in terms of a mechanistic causality. Neither of these are successful, and Locke’s account is confined in the end to either explaining the will as a lack of determination or by determining it only at the cost of making it an epiphenomenon of a mechanistic causal process.

When Locke first distinguishes between will and desire, it seems that will is a power completely distinct from desire, for he uses examples that bring this capacity of the will to be opposed to desire.

Whence it is it is evident, that desiring and willingare two distinct Acts of the mind; and consequently that the Will , which is but the power of Volition , is much more distinct from Desire.”¹⁵

In the very next section, however, we find that desire determines the will.

[W] hat is it that determines the will in regard to our actions? .... But some (and for the most part pressing) uneasinessa Man is at present under. This is that which successively determines the Will , and sets us upon those Actions, we perform. This Uneasiness we may call, as it is, Desire; which is an uneasiness of the Mind for want of some absent good.¹⁶

The will, since it is determined by desire or uneasiness, must now be understood in a somewhat different manner. In the previous discussion, the will could be characterized in part by its effects, combinations of presence and absence of actions and movements, and by the thought or inclination that commanded or ordered. The will could not be reduced to these, but it could not be adequately explained in terms of anything else either. Locke appeals to a certain experience which one must make of the will, and he also appeals to the notion of the will being a kind of self-mastery. Neither of these are very definite. The will, then is something still rather mysterious that we can figure in the order of succession as accompanying both the thought or inclination and the effect.

Now, given that desire or uneasiness determines the will, we have a new term in the succession. First, there is a desire or uneasiness. Then, this condition, which is one of the mind, determines the will, that is, gives the will determination as a particular volition, the volition of willing that a certain effect take place. Whether the effect does indeed take place depends on whether the agent is free with respect to that action. But now, in this order of explanation, where is there anything that one would call the will? The will seems to be reduced to a mere intermediary¹⁷ between the desire or uneasiness in the mind that determines a particular thought, namely one that is supposed, given the other knowledge of the agent, to alleviate this uneasiness. What content is there now in saying that an action is voluntary or involuntary, since the actions, whether the agent feels like he or she wills or whether the agent claims to feel so, would seem to be just as determined by the desire or the uneasiness in either case?

This attempt at explaining the will in terms of its determinations leads us to a conceptual determinism. The action of the will, in this case, seems to be that one set of ideas in the mind lead to another set of ideas in the mind through the intermediary of the will, which in its turn seems to be really only the first or the second set of ideas. Given that Locke has already argued that ideas in the mind have their origin either in perception of qualities outside of the mind or in the action of the mind on itself through reflection, and given that the simple ideas of reflection are either that of will, which has yet to be explained, or of understanding, which itself is a reflection of perception, and given that Locke has argued that secondary qualities and powers are in fact grounded on configurations of primary qualities, it seems that this explanation of the will in terms of its determinations amounts to a causal determinism. Locke is, as certain of this commentators point out, anxious to avoid this conclusion.¹⁸

In the first Edition of the Essay, Locke allowed this conclusion. In the later editions, Locke added a section in which he proposed a “Liberty in respect of willing”, the possibility of a suspension of judgement. This would allow a person to place him or herself, so to speak, outside of the causal chain, at least long enough to suspend the movement from one set of ideas to another, from uneasiness determining the mind, which then determines the will, which then produces the action or movement. Locke takes pains in this to maintain his distinction between liberty and the will.

As we shall see, this distinction cannot be maintained in this discussion, and this failure will yield a concept of the will as a suspension of the causal chain. This in turn, since the will has previously been given content as a part of causal chain, will raise again the problem of the determination of the will. If the will is outside the causal chain, outside of all of the various connections of ideas, how does it come to be determined at all? Or better put, if the will is not simply reducible to the connections of ideas within a causal chain, and if the determination of its action can take place outside of the causal chain, in a suspension of judgement, how does it come about that the will returns to a place within the causal chain?

Locke extends the range of liberty in certain circumstances.

Liberty ‘tis plain consists in a Power to do, or not to do; to do, or to forbear doing as we will . . . . But this seeming to comprehend only the actions of a Man consecutive to volition, it is further enquired, whether he be at Liberty to will , or no? And to this it has been answered, that in most cases a Man is not at liberty to forbear the act of volition; he must exert an act of his will , whereby the action proposed, is made to exist, or not to exist. But yet there is a case wherein a Man is at Liberty in respect of willing , and that is the chusing of a remote Good as an end to be pursued. Here a Man may suspend the act of his choice from being determined for or against the thing proposed, til he has examined, whether it be really of a nature in it self and consequences to make him happy, or no.¹⁹

In this passage, the will appears to be somewhat more limited in its scope than it has in other passages. Previously, Locke considered situations in which one was presented with a choice, and for that reason had to will, that is, had to choose to determine the situation by producing one of the options of the combinitorics we developed above. Now, it appears that the will, belonging to the Man, cannot help, in most circumstances, being determined, not because he has the capacity will any of the alternatives and then does in fact do so, but because he must will, that is, “he must exert an act of his will ”. In light of the previous discussions of the process of determination of the will, what this means is that the will stands between the original state of a certain set of ideas in the mind and a set of effects determined by the possible combinations detailed earlier. What is the contribution of the will in this case? What make the difference between the person having the original set of ideas and the particular action or movement being produced when that person wills it, and the same occurring without the person willing it? There seems to be, given Locke’s account, no difference which could be observed.

At least, from the perspective of an outside observer, this could be argued. For, as an outside observer, one cannot observe the willing or the will of another person. All one can observe are the determining conditions (although this could include the person observed telling us about him or herself) and the effects produced. All one could observe, in these conditions, would be, not whether the person willed the action or movement, but whether he or she was at liberty to perform the action. The observer would not even be in a condition to judge whether the other person was a liberty to will the action, but only whether that person was a liberty to do the action. What about self-observation? Could this give some content to this notion of the will?

Presumably, one could tell whether one had willed an action, or whether one had simply performed it compelled by something other, uneasiness for example. But, what would this consist in? Would it be the simple idea of the will? But, presumably, this simple idea is gotten from reflection on acts of willing. To make recourse to this to explain what difference willing makes would be circular. Is it simply some sort of subjective feeling accompanying all of the other ideas, the ideas that determine and the ideas that represent the determinations? But, then, this subjective feeling would itself have to be an idea, and it would be difficult to see how this would not fall among the ideas that form the set at the beginning or the origin of the process of willing an action or movement.

Locke is committed to a view of the will, thus far, that makes the will and the act of willing simply extraneous to the rest of the mind. Willing something seems to add nothing determinate, nor even anything tangibly determining, to the process that takes place when one “wills”. If that is so, then one wonders why Locke talks about the will at all. The other option is to say that willing does contribute something to the process, but that Locke cannot make any sense out of this within his system. Part of the reason for this is that Locke has so sharply separated freedom and the will, with the important consequence that the will has no role in determining itself, in giving itself determination that would be something other than that of desire.

Freedom, in the case of being free to will, means a suspension of the determining forces of desire, and lack of physical impediment. One can suspend judgement as to the goodness or badness of something until one has rationally determined whether it is good or bad. Then, one presumably allows the process suspended up until this point to ensue. “For when he has once chosen it, and thereby becomes a part of his Happiness, it raises desire, and that proportionably gives him uneasiness , which determines his will , and sets him at work in pursuit of his choice on all occasions that offer.”²⁰

One way to resolve this difficulty is to follow Locke’s progress here, to maintain the distinction between liberty and will, to conclude that perhaps the notion of the will, despite the fact that it is one of the simple ideas of reflection, does not really have such an important role to play. Perhaps what Locke had in mind was to simply give us an understanding of why people do the things that they do. Perhaps in the Essay he aimed at providing us with a genetic psychology, and perhaps the difficulties of morality are less a matter of the action of the will than a matter of the use of liberty. The rest of §56 would seem to support this, in particular this passage. “If the neglect or abuse of the Liberty he had, to examine what would really and truly make for his Happiness, misleads him, the miscarriages that follow on it, must be imputed to his own election. He had a power to suspend his determination: It was given him, that he might examine, and take care of his own Happiness, and look that he were not deceived.”

This way of resolution is inadequate, however, for several reasons. First, it is not liberty but the will that Locke will discuss in Chapter XXVIII, “On Moral Relations”. Second, it seems difficult to account for how all desire is to be suspended. If all desire is not suspended, it would seem that what would determine the exercise of liberty, which then determines the use of the will, would be yet another uneasiness, in which case, the difference between will and liberty becomes very unclear. Third, and most importantly, the distinction that Locke makes between liberty and the will is untenable within his system, precisely because the way he has previously explained the will makes what he is now calling “liberty” or “freedom” look precisely like a sort of iteration of the will, which he has already ruled out. His language gives him away. In what sense is this “own election” not to be attributed to the will? Let us turn to each of these three points.

First of all, as pointed out at the beginning of this paper, Locke uses the terms “will”, “willing”, “volition” and “volitional” in important passages throughout the Essay and in other works as well, notably the 2nd Treatise on Government . In Chapter XXVIII, §4, Locke, introducing moral relations, writes, “There is another sort of Relation, which is the Conformity, or Disagreement, Men’s voluntary Actions have to a rule, to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of.” Here Locke does not speak at all of liberty or freedom, but only of voluntary actions, that is actions which take place or do not take place because of the will. One could try to get Locke off of the hook at this point by claiming that he is using his terms imprecisely, but in fact, quite the opposite is supported by the text. Immediately after naming moral relation, Locke adds, “as being that, which denominates our Moral Actions, and deserves well to be examined, there being no part of Knowledge wherein we should be more careful to get determined Ideas , and avoid, as much as may be, Obscurity and Confusion.”²¹

In a footnote, where Locke defends his notion of moral relation from a Mr. Lowde, he writes:

For I was there, not laying down moral Rules, but schewing the original and nature of moral Ideas , and enumerating the Rules Men make use of in moral Relations, whether those rules were true or false.²²

It seems clear in this light that any ambiguity here is likely not one brought about simply by careless usage, but rather by problems with Locke’s system.

At least from these texts, the will occupies an important place in moral reasoning; and, although Locke later claims that moral ideas could be known exactly if we paid enough attention to a judicious usage of language, since they are really complex modes, this does not make moral relations simply descriptive, since the rules (themselves the products, in the case of two of three of Locke’s “Laws” of a will) are prescriptive. Once again, a difficulty of adequate description arises. Locke does not want to claim that morality is merely a matter of desires, drives, and appetites. If anything, his account of morality, as many have pointed out, is intellectualist or rationalist²³.

But neither of these allow any explanation of how the moral is different from the intellectual or the affective. The problem of this distinction is bound up with the problem of distinguishing the will. Failing to give an account of the will that does not simply reduce the will to something else, or make of the will a certain je ne sçais quoi ²⁴, suspiciously similar to Locke’s notion of substance, means a similar failure with respect to morality, one which cannot be remedied by an appeal to liberty.

The suspension of judgement of judgement that Locke writes of seems, at first glance, quite possible. His considerations in this respect make sense, for, given that one knows that one’s will is often determined by the uneasiness of present desires, and that one’s comportment, guided by what one deems good at one moment, may lead one to greater and greater evil and calamity, the possibility of suspending immediate judgement would allow one to think out one’s actions. At the very least, it seems, this would preserve the role of the intellect in the determination of the will, which, however, must eventually, as Locke knows, be determined. What Locke has in mind is actually a philosophical commonplace of the Modern period. One can find a similar suspension in, among other texts, Descartes’ Les passions de l’âme , and in Spinoza’s Ethics.

The structure of Locke’s suspension is particularly revealing, for he does not think that the suspension merely places the person in a sort of stasis. This would be very difficult to explain, given Locke’s mechanistic understanding of the desires, and given the fact that the production of this suspension would have to be itself explained be recourse eventually to some desire (for instance the desire to use the mind properly, as God intended). Instead, the suspension is simply a suspension of those desires operative in the moment that one performs it, and this allows other good and evil things to be discerned by the subject. Locke figures how this takes place in §58.

Here a man may suspend the act of his choice from being determined for or against the thing proposed, till he has examined, whether it be really of a nature in it self and consequences to make him happy, or no.

This seems to imply that this suspension is itself determined by a project or practical aims or circumstances. It is never completely general. In fact, Locke argues that it would not make any sense if it were to be general.

A perfect Indifferency in the Mind , not determinable by its last judgement of the Good or Evil, that is thought to attend its Choice, would be so far from being an advantage and excellency of any intellectual Nature, that it would be as great an imperfection, as the want of Indifferency to act, or not to act, till determined by the Will , would be an imperfection on the other side.²⁵

At the same time, there are many different relations of desire in this suspension. First of all, there is at least one desire that is suspended (and probably more, given the complexity of human events). Second, there is some sort of desire or uneasiness that determines the agent to suspend judgement (this could be, e.g. a cultivated habit of considering one’s actions before one performs them). And, third, there is at least one desire or uneasiness that is now apparent to the person.

For good, though appearing, and allowed never so great, yet till it has raised desires in our minds, and thereby made us uneasie in its want, it reaches not our wills ; we are not in the Sphere of its activity; our wills being under the determination only of those uneasinesses , which are present to us, which, (whilst we have any) are always soliciting, and ready at hand to give the will its next determination.²⁶

With the suspension of the present uneasinesses, other uneasinesses, such as those of the projected consequences of one’s actions, can impose themselves.

But, understanding the suspension in this way, have we not simply reproduced the original problem of making sense out of Locke’s notion of the will? Doesn’t this explanation simply give us a slightly longer causal chain, but one which is still just as ultimately and completely determined by desire? In the suspension, even accepting that the distinction between liberty and will is valid, what takes place is the following. The will, which would have been determined by a desire or set of desires, to produce or forbear from an action or movement of the mind or body, is not allowed to be immediately determined by the desire(s).

Instead, the agent uses his or her liberty to suspend the desire(s), which then allows another good to come to light, and the desire for this then determines the will to act or forbear action. Before this, however, the act of suspending judgement has taken place, and this in its turn is ultimately motivated, even if through long causal chains, by some other desires. The distinction between liberty and will seems to break down here; both are ultimately causally determined by desire, so what difference does it make if the causal chain is long or short, if the determinants are all ultimately desires?

This brings us to the third problem. It seems that the distinction between liberty and will does not hold up in any case, because, given the way Locke originally defined the will, the suspension itself would have to involve the will, and Locke does not allow that the will can be iterative, that is, one can not will to will. The distinction that Locke makes between the will and liberty, both understood as powers, has a paradigmatic example, namely the prisoner in the room. The prisoner may will to leave the room, but be unable to do so, that is, not be at liberty to do so, if the door is locked.

Similarly, if I can will not to get sick when I drink a poison, but my will is inefficacious. I am not at liberty not to get sick. In cases like these two, it seems to make sense to speak about a distinction between will and liberty, mainly because we can easily point out how the “Power to do, or not to do; to do, or to forbear doing as we will”²⁷ is something distinct from, not simply the act of willing, but an act of willing, since it is a lack or presence of physical constraint.

But, what about the case of this “chusing of a remote Good as an end to be pursued”? When Locke writes, “[h]ere a Man may suspend the act of his choice from being determined for or against the thing proposed, til he has examined, whether it be really of a nature in it self and consequences to make him happy, or no”, what is the difference between this suspension of the act of choice, and an act of willing, a volition? On the account that he gave of the will, which we elaborated in terms of an exhaustative combinatorics, the suspension itself, since it clearly fits the definition “a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds”²⁸, in this case willing, cannot be distinguished from an act of willing²⁹.

Locke’s language in describing this use of liberty is unequivocally that very language which he previously used to describe the will. When he writes, “in most cases a Man is not at liberty to forbear the act of volition”,³⁰ he uses the very same word “forbear” that he used to describe the effects of the will, or the end of the causal chain in which the will figures as a middle point. Let us be very clear here; Locke does not, I argue, simply confound liberty and the will. Rather, the use of liberty to suspend judgement and willing, to which we turned in following his account in order to avoid a determinism of desire (and implicitly physical states), cannot explain how the will is determined other than by a determinism of desire, precisely because such a use of liberty involves the action of the will. This means that the will is determined, at least in part, by its very own action, namely that, sticking to Locke’s account, an act of willing, if it is not simply to be causally determined in its entirety by desire and the extra-volitional circumstances, is determined in part by another act of willing.

There are several possibilities given Locke’s failure to account for the will. One can , arguing from within some reading of Locke’s position, take this to mean that there really is no account that can be given of the will, precisely because the will is reducible to something else, namely the complex configurations of desires mediated by the human intellect. This response would still labor under the difficulty of having to somehow explain away Locke’s insistence that our idea of active power has one source, namely our refection on the action of our will, and the fact that Locke makes willing a simple idea of reflection.

Another possibility is to conclude that Locke’s failure to make sense of this concept that is so important to the rest of his work reflects inconsistencies within his system. I would argue that these inconsistencies are not peculiar to Locke, however, and that they characterize, to a certain degree, the philosophical thought of Modern period. If one believes, as I think there is good reason to, that the will is neither simply an epiphenomenon of some other principles or structures nor an inscrutable and unfigurable spontaneity, then the question, which this paper can only conclude with, must be one of the adequacy of the representation of the will in terms of the other faculties.

Notes

1: The importance of the notions of will and liberty for the social contract worked out in the 2nd Treatise on Government has been noted by Raymond Polin. La politique morale de John Locke . (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), 1960. p. 26-7 and 170. J. B.Schneewind, in The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1998, summarizes this succinctly. “To be subject to rules or laws, we must have wills” , p. 146, and argues as well, “We know that the Essay grew out of discussions concerning morality”, p. 145. See also John Colman, Locke’s Moral Philosophy . (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) 1983, p. 206-207.

2: Hence two of the great continual projects of the Modern period, the figuring of reason, discursivity, or understanding in terms of itself, by using it upon itself, and the investigation into the mechanics and classification of the passions

3: John Locke. An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 1975. Peter Nidditch, ed. (Hereafter simply cited by Book, chapter, and section), Book II, Chap XXI, § 5.

4: Book II, Chap. XXI, §5.

5: Book II, Chap XXI, § 4.

6: Book II, Chap XXI, § 5

7: Book II, Chap IX, § 1

8: Book II, Chap IX, §1

9: Book II, Chap XXI, § 5

10: Book II, Chap XXI, § 15. Locke makes this point again at §30, “yet it being a very simple Act, whosoever desires to understand what it is, will better find by reflecting on his own mind, and observing what it does, when it wills , than by any variety of articulate sounds whatsoever.” Some commentators do not see any difficulty implicit here. Polin writes, “Or il est clair que, pour Locke, c’est l’idée de pouvoir actif qui est primitif. . . . l’esprit acquiert l’idée de pouvoir en en faisant en lui-même l’experience: le pouvoir est découvert dans l’aptitude à penser.” p. 167. Schneewind laconically observes, “. . . experience shows us how the will works.” p. 146. Ollion simply writes, “Il serait vain de s’efforcer de définir l’idée du pouvoir,” but there is something very strange in his repetition of Locke’s position, “on ne saurait pas la communiquer à quelqu’un qui ne le connaîtrait pas par sa propre expérience”, p. 211, since, this idea being one of the simplest, anyone asking for an explanation of active power and the will is not simply asking for it the idea to be pointed out to them (if indeed that were possible). H aving argued that will is known by one’s own reflection, it is not evident that Locke is not entitled to assume that everyone else has the same experience in their reflections. Furthermore, the problem is not that of simply having to be told to examine one’s own experiences, but rather of being provided an intelligible account of the idea of the will, in particular, in relation to one’s other ideas.

11: Book II, Chap XXI, § 15

12: Book II, Chap XXI, § 15

13: Book II, Chap XXI, § 23-24

14: That these two strategies take place in different versions of the Essay has become a commonplace of the literature. See, in particular, Chappell, “Locke on the Freedom of the Will” in Locke’s Philosophy: Content and Context . G. A. J. Rogers, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1994. p. 101-2, and Colman p. 215-222.

15: Book II, Chap XXI, § 30

16: Book II, Chap XXI, § 31. This specifies the determination of the will which Locke attributed to the mind in § 29. The mind determines the will, and the mind itself is determined in certain states of uneasiness.

17: This is, in fact, Polin’s interpretation. “La volonté en tant que pouvoir actif ne dépasse par consequent jamais le rôle d’un moyen, d’un instrument, d’un intermédiaire. Le véritable pouvoir actif, c’est la liberté, qui est le pouvoir d’agir ou de ne pas agir selon notre volonté.” p. 169. This would, however, seem to conflict with Locke’s insistence that it is through willing that we have any idea of active power. And, given that, in many cases, such as a the paradigmatic prisoner example, liberty is simply the lack of restraints, it is difficult to see how it could be the “true active power”.

18: Cf. Schneewind, p.144-7 and Colman, p. 215-22. Schneewind and Colman call attention to the fact that Locke aims to avoid a causal determinism of the will. Chappell claims that Locke is, at the same time, a libertarian, “he believed in human freedom”, and a “volitional determinist” (p. 101), and argues that there is no ultimate contradiction in this. Raymond Polin does not even consider the possibility that Locke could have held such a view or felt it to present a problem.

19: Book II, Chap XXI. §56

20: Book II, Chap XXI. §56

21: Book II, Chap XXVIII, §4

22: Book II, Chap XXVIII, footnote to § 1

23: Polin writes: “Le pouvoir est, dans son principe, pouvoir de liberté. Et cette liberté est une liberté pour le bonheur, une liberté pour le bonheur par la raison.” p. 170. He claims that this happiness, “cependant imprecis” in the Essay , must be understood by reference to Locke’s political works, in which reason has an even greater role. Colman (p. 235-6) and Schneewind (p. 147) do not see any inherent contradiction between Locke’s emphasis on desire and uneasiness and his intellectualism or rationalism. All three of these commentators are motivated by the task of reconciling the Essay with Locke’s political preoccupations. Chappell, who has a different project, does not see any contradiction, precisely because he argues that Locke is a volitional determinist.

24: Leibniz’ formulation in the Discours de métaphysique , section XXIV, for something known clearly but not distinctly, that is, that one has an experience of, but is not able to give an account of.

25: Book II, Chap XXI, §48

26: Book II, Chap XXI, §46

27: Book II, Chap XXI. §56

28: Book II, Chap XXI. §5

29: Chappell argues a related point. “. . .Locke certainly did hold that suspension is voluntary, although he never says so explicitly. And if so, then m suspends her desires by willing to do so. And thus it is by willing also that she forbears from willing s .” p. 115

30: Book II, Chap XXI. §56. Colman makes this point, “. . . notwithstanding the care he takes to distinguish between a voluntary and a free action, Locke tends to conflate the power of willing and the power of freedom. Thus, the initial definition of the will as a power to produce actions barely by a preference of the mind given at II.XXI.5, is very nearly identical with the definition of liberty given at II.XXI.15. This is not due merely to carelessness of Locke’s part; it reflects an ambiguity in his notion of willing.” p. 211.

Many people incorporate Stoic principles and practices into their life in order to help them understand and deal with the challenges, setbacks, disappointments, and problems they either encounter or envisage. Those modes of adversity often stem from one’s involvements with other people.

One recurring theme to classic Stoic philosophy corresponds well to the later-coined proverb that “no man is an island.” Like other ancient virtue ethicists, Stoics tell us that human beings are social creatures, and that this is both reflective of and stems from the defining trait of the sort of animals we are, namely rational ones.

We exist, most of us, within complex fabrics of relationships with other people, connected to us by a variety of roles. Even those who live lives of isolation and solitude may experience their social nature precisely by what is missing in their lives, the lacking or lapsed connections with others.

Some of those relationships we have are not really results of our choice. We just happen to be someone’s children or grandchildren, neighbors, co-workers, or classmates. Other relationships are products of our choices and commitments, like relationships with friends, romantic partners, business partners, and to some degree our children. You can certainly decide whether to have children, but you don’t have as much control as people often assume over how they turn out.

Whatever relationships we find ourselves in, however, we do have choices about what we make of them, how we understand them, and whether or not we fulfill the duties that go along with them.

If we are trying to live our lives as Stoics, interconnected with other people, one potential source of adversity lies precisely in what happens with and to the people we care about. Since we’re all mortal, limited, rather messed-up human beings, the same things that can go wrong with our own lives can go wrong with theirs.

The externals we get concerned about, despite those matters lacking the genuine goodness of virtue and the things that participate in it, those other people are likely even more concerned over.

Making money or just getting by, illnesses and pains, pleasures one hopes to enjoy, opportunities and social status, opinions of other people, disappointments and losses, just to name a few, these are the sorts of matters that occupy most people. Whether right or wrong about this, their happiness or misery becomes dependent on such matters largely residing outside of their control.

It is naturally hard for us when we see those we care about focusing their attention on, placing their own care and concern onto, hitching their happiness to what the Stoics call externals or indifferents. This is especially so when we see them experiencing the consequences of tying their emotional states, their judgments and opinions, their desires and aversions into whether or not they enjoy what they view as success in these matters.

The adversity they experience might be unnecessary and the product of mistaken views, but that doesn’t mean at all that what they feel isn’t real, that it doesn’t affect them. And when we see things going badly for them, these people we are close to, their adversity can become our adversity as well.

Watching my own family members and friends struggle with the troubles entailed by jobs, bosses, and co-workers, friendships and romantic relationships, health issues, scares, and crises, money problems and worries, disappointments and distractions, witnessing all this, I’ll admit that it is easy to be tempted into thinking one can and should do more than is really possible for them.

It’s also easy to overact to this realization of the vulnerability of those we care about to this same tough, confusing, messy world we live in. A student of Stoicism might mistakenly think the right response is to withdraw our own affection, our concern, our involvement from people we are close to, so when they get hurt, we don’t have to feel hurt ourselves. But if we look at examples and teachings provided by the classic Stoics, indifference to others isn’t remotely how they would suggest we deal with their travails and difficulties.

We can of course, when it might prove helpful, provide them with advice, consolation, or even Stoic teachings. But more often what they need is us to fulfill the specific duties of our roles towards them. And to fulfill a much more universal duty, that of a human being, just being there for them when they need us, as they deal as best they currently can with the adversities they run into.

This piece first appeared in the July 2024 issue of the online magazine The Stoic. If this piece has you now interested in Stoicism, and you would like to know what to read next, this might be helpful for you.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.

The bit of advice that I have for you here could be applied to more than just academic or intellectual pursuits, but we’ll keep it focused in those domains for the most part. I’m going to start it with some storytelling that focuses on several of the libraries where my own education and research took place. I’ll try to keep these accounts relatively short, so I can get to what I’d like you to draw from them.

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Aristotle’s moral philosophy is complex and sophisticated, and for that reason worthwhile to study. It resists being reduced to merely a set of rules or generalizations that can be fully understood and applied in isolation from each other and from the commonsensical contexts of moral life, decisions, discourse, and reflection. His thought requires that readers be able and willing to enter into the phenomenology of moral life his works rely upon and elaborate, but also that readers make the many only implicit connections in his work explicit.

His views on revenge, retribution, and punishment are a prime example, for Aristotle nowhere develops a general theory of these matters that are both important to and common in personal and public life. He does discuss them at various points in his work, but is left up to readers and commentators to deduce and derive the general outlines and principles underlying his views. One of the more promising connections to follow out and make explicit is the relationship between the dynamic specific to the emotion of anger and revenge, retribution, and punishment.¹

Aristotle avoids several flawed assumptions of much modern moral theory and discourse bearing on these matters. All of these assumptions stem from one other overarching assumption, namely that affectivity, or emotion should not play any role in general theorizing about punishment or retribution, nor in deliberations, decisions, or judgements applying to particular cases, nor in the execution or enforcement of these.

One reason for this is the flawed assumption that in matters of justice, under which punishment, retribution or rectification fall, emotional involvement on the part of those involved must be avoided or set aside, because it represents an intrusion of the merely subjective and personally interested into matters that must be treated in a purely objective, passionless, even impersonal manner.

From such a viewpoint, punishment becomes less morally problematic than retribution, let alone revenge, because punishment seems to hold out the prospect of instantiating or reestablishing justice while setting aside or neutralizing any emotions of those involved. Retribution opens the door to more emotional involvement, especially if we rely on Aristotle’s distinction between “punishment” (kolasis) which is fundamentally for the punished, and retribution (timōria), which is fundamentally for the one who has been or feels harmed or wronged (1369b12-14). Revenge, of course, is intimately bound up with the particular emotions of an individual person or group of people.

In late modern liberal democratic societies there is still some connection between notions and judgements of right and wrong, good and evil, morally fine and shameful, and the emotions. There is a range of acts, a range of particular cases, even a range of particular people, at which anyone who wants to be regarded as a responsible moral agent is supposed to feel and to exhibit certain emotions ranging from disgust through righteous indignation to anger and even hatred, for instance acts of child molestation, particular cases such as the 9-11 attacks, and particular people such as Adolph Hitler. There are persons affected by other person’s wrong acts who are typically expected to feel emotions like anger towards their attackers, abusers, persecutors or the like. In some contexts, demands that they feel such emotions are actually imposed on them. Media consumers, in effect practically the entire citizenry, also indulge themselves and their emotions in revenge narratives that bring right and wrong, good and evil, into play and prominence.

Yet, for the most part, emotions such as anger, indignation, or hatred, are usually taken as an index that the person feeling such emotions cannot make an objective, morally correct assessment of morally problematic situations. When we go beyond the relatively small number of stereotypical acts, cases, and persons in relation to which antagonistic emotions are generally considered acceptable, even obligatory,² and beyond the affected people expected to have such emotions towards those who do wrong,³ there is a great distrust of emotional reactions or investments on the past of those involved in situations, and there is a more profound condition that is both an expression and a source of this distrust, a fundamental lack of consensus about when emotional reactions, expressions, and investments are acceptable, appropriate, or even praiseworthy.

Consider two idealized and invented personas illustrating this lack of consensus: Barfight Billy and Sensitive Stan. In Barfight Billy’s view, a component of the proper moral response to any perceived or inferred injustice is indignation, anger, or hatred. Not only are actions stemming from such emotions and directed against those engaging in injustice fundamentally right or good, anyone who does not act in such ways, standing up for themselves or for others is morally deficient. At the other extreme is Sensitive Stan, in whose view, with the exception of unproblematic cases mentioned earlier, such antagonistic emotions are never appropriate. In between are many views, some of them not entirely self-consistent, differing from each other over the very matters that, in Aristotle’s view determine the moral status of anger: when one ought to be angry (hote dei); in which situations (eph’hois), towards which people (pros hous); on account of what matters (hou heneka); and how one ought to (hōs dei ,1106b21-2).

There is something valid to distrusting emotions in matters involving or calling for punishment and retribution. Aristotle himself defines the emotions in his Rhetoric specifically by their capacity to influence or change the judgements of those affected by them. And, it is clear that rectification of wrongs through punishment and retribution can open the door to individuals taking advantage to indulge themselves in revenge, even malice or cruelty, motivated by various emotions.

Some emotional states that could be involved in these, such as envy and shamelessness, Aristotle considers to be by their very nature morally deficient. Others, such as anger and hatred, have a more ambivalent status, for Aristotle rightly considers it not only possible but quite often the actual case that people feel, express, and act on these emotions wrongly in one way or another. He discusses other emotions or affective drives that could easily corrupt one’s judgement, but which could also be felt and enacted in proper ways: fear, desire (epithumia), the rivalrous drives of ambition (philotimia) and competitiveness (philonikia), friendliness and unfriendliness, shame.

For Aristotle, however, it not only is possible to be affected by emotions in the right ways, being properly affected is even a central component of moral life and of moral excellence. This extends even to matters involving punishment and retribution, or better put, especially to matters involving punishment and retribution, for these are the cases and matters in moral life that, if not in themselves difficult to rightly assess (which is often the case), are usually highly contested, with not only competing and incompatible claims made by the various parties but also claims that the other parties have got matters wrong.

Typical paradigms for how such situations are to be handled, drawing on the conceptual resources offered by modern moral philosophy, are largely unable to do what Aristotelean moral theory does, which is not only to account for and provide space for emotional involvement in the theory and practice of punishment and retribution, but to provide a well-articulated and coherent account of these matters.

Taking a brief survey of the moral theories taught in summary in typical ethics classes, either they distrust emotion altogether, as do Kantian deontological ethics, or regard emotional involvements, reactions and expressions as largely irrelevant, as do the various ethics grounding themselves on the concept of rights; or, as the varieties of utilitarian and other consequentialist ethics do, they can take emotions into account but only in terms of the outcomes of actions or policies, i.e. as good or bad consequences, or, as in the recently elaborated “ethics of care”, they criticize other ethical theories for ignoring or downplaying the importance of emotion, but are so selective about the emotions and the agents whose emotions they consider morally relevant as to shed practically no light no matters of retribution and punishment.⁴

Aristotlean theory does address and explore the moral significance of the emotions. Among the most fundamental moral categories for Aristotle are virtue, or moral excellence, and vice, or moral deficiency or depravity, and he conceptualizes these repeatedly in terms of the emotions. Virtues and vices are habitual dispositions that have to do with the emotions, human actions, the varieties of goods, and relationships between human beings. In the virtuous person, these are brought in line with (right) reason (orthos logos). But, while there may be some general rules that aid in discerning and developing emotions, actions, and relationships according to reason, Aristotlean ethics, like any other virtue or character ethics is not reducible to a rule-constituted and defined moral system.

Instead, it recognizes the limitations of such systems, the complexity and ambiguity of moral life, formation, and decisions, and focuses on all the other components required: discernment of the relevant or “ethically salient” features of situations in moral life; proper habituation to take pleasure in and desire the right things and to feel pain in and aversion from the wrong things; development of proper discernment and distinguishing of moral values and gradations; learning how to model oneself after virtuous people; developing self-control and a directedness towards virtue and away from vice; the functions of the laws and legal enforcement; even the roles of moral exhortation and modeling through narratives and rhetoric. Particularly when we descend from abstract universal principles to concrete cases these components become integrally essential.

Of the emotions and drives Aristotle discusses in his work, many are of moral relevance in punishment and retribution. I set aside some of these here precisely because they are in most cases likely to corrupt moral judgement, for instance envy (phthonos) which Aristotle considers a sign of bad character, or the sort of desire for goods (epithumia), which is a motive for injustice, taking more than one’s fair share of good or less than one’s fair share of bad things.

There are several other emotions that have a more ambiguous status, for while they could skew moral judgement, they could also play key roles in properly forming moral judgement, they could call attention to what Nancy Sherman, among others, has called “ethical salience,” perception⁵ of the morally relevant features of situations in which one acts, feels, judges, is affected, etc. Among these are: pity, fear, shame, righteous indignation (nemesis ), hatred, and anger. Some of these are closely connected with each other, can give rise to each other, share some of their essential characteristics in common, and all of them can and do play roles sometimes, for better or for worse, in punishment and retribution. Anger has a particularly interesting and illuminating role, however, which is why it is the focus here.

Before elaborating anger’s role, however, two brief sets of points have to be made. First, it must be stressed that, in Aristotle’s view, punishment and retribution, and the characteristically involved emotions, like anger, are always the product of situations of imperfect, even deeply flawed and disjointed moral life and conditions. His moral theory is intended both to understand human beings as they actually are and in light of what they could and ought to be, but the difference between these is never a matter of a simple and single step. Just acts of punishment and retribution (hai dikaiai timōriai kai kolaseis) are, as he puts it in Politics book 7, things that are not unqualifiedly good or morally fine, but are rather necessities (ta’nankaia) imposed by determinate situations (ex hupotheseōs). As he says: “It would be preferable for a political community or for a man not to have any need for these kind of things.” (1332a14-16)

This can be understood as meaning both that political communities and individual people need to impose punishments and retributions, and that political communities and individual people need to suffer punishments and retributions. They are necessary, but they also are “from virtue,” and do participate in moral goodness to some degree, because they remove or prevent something evil or vicious (1332a17). ⁶ It is highly significant that Aristotle views both punishment and retribution as necessary to common life and to political communities, because as noted earlier, punishment and retribution are distinguished in terms of their objects and intents.

Punishment is for the one who does wrong, to straighten them out, and by implication of course, it is for everyone else who might be wronged by the punished person. Retribution is for the one wronged, and this can take place when one is not oneself directly wronged, but those who one is related to, cares for, is responsible for, or in some way identifies with, are wronged. Because retribution, the object aimed at by anger, is for the one wronged, it can quite easily shift over into revenge, or be transformed further into malice, cruelty, or hatred. Yet, Aristotle seems to consider retribution as necessary as punishment.⁷

The second point is that Aristotle distinguishes the emotion and response of anger from several other emotions. First, there is a set of emotions, pity, righteous indignation, jealousy, and emulousness that can bear some similarity with anger because they both have to do with responses to what others do, undergo, or receive, and are oriented at least in part by notions and perceptions of justice and injustice. Pity and righteous indignation center on unmerited or unjust bad or good accruing to others, not affecting oneself. Jealousy and emulousness do involve comparison with oneself, and perceptions of what ought to belong to one and to the other person with whom one compares oneself, but although they could lead to anger, they do not have the same structure.

Anger is also different from hatred (1382a1-15), for anger is a more immediately affective emotion, involving a mixture of pleasure and pain, whereas hatred can be colder, in certain ways more committed and resolute. Anger, in Aristotle’s view, centers on individual persons, whereas hatred, while it can be directed against individuals, is really against classes or types of persons.⁸ And, one who is angry wants the other to suffer in turn ( antipathein ), whereas one who hates wants in some way to obliterate the other, or quite literally, “that they not exist” ( mē einai 1382a15).

Aristotle’s most complete definition of anger, in Rhetoric book 2, is very illuminating: “a desire (orexis), accompanied by pain, for apparent or perceived retribution (timōrias phainomenēs), arising from apparent or perceived slighting (dia phainomenēn oligōrein) against oneself or one connected to oneself, the slighting being undeserved (mē prosēkontos , 1378a30-2). Anger is also accompanied by a certain pleasure deriving from the hope of imposing retribution (1378b1-2). By “slighting,” Aristotle means a variety of ways of treating a person as being of less value than oneself, and of less value than they estimate themselves at, ranging from contempt (kataphronēsis), even as little as mere neglect of one’s obligations, all the way to the sort of insolence or wanton outrage and injury for which the Greeks reserve the term hubris.⁹ There are three key things to note here about his definition.

First, the goal of anger, what it is directed by and towards, is something that can be translated as either retribution or revenge.

Second, views about justice and injustice, what is merited or unmerited, appropriate or inappropriate, are central to anger. One only becomes angry if one feels that something wrong, or at the very least unmerited or inappropriate has been done to oneself or one’s own. That is precisely why one feels slighted, or more literally, “made little of”, and that is precisely why one seeks to impose retribution. As Aristotle says, perhaps too optimistically, people are less angry or do not get angry when “in their view, they have done wrong and they rightly suffer, for anger does not arise against what is just” (1380b16-7).

Third, appearance or perception plays an absolutely central role in anger, appearing twice in the definition, for both the slighting is apparent or perceived by the person who gets angry, and what counts as retribution is characterized in the same way, as apparent or perceived. It is quite possible for one to get angry, and to act on that anger, seeking and imposing retribution, for a purely imagined insult or injury. Likewise, it is possible for one to misread or misinterpret the degree or kind of injury or insult, since the emotion of anger depends on the perception or imagination of the one getting angry.

Retribution and revenge will not differ from each other in involving the emotion of anger, and perhaps even other emotions as well. How then can they be distinguished from each other? Aristotle’s thought offers us several ways to make this distinction, and all of these involve his notions of virtue or moral excellence and vice, in this case those concerned with the emotion of anger, discussed in Nicomachean Ethics, book 4 (and Eudemian Ethics book 3). There are cases in which one ought to get angry in Aristotle’s view, and to never get angry would in fact be a defect, perhaps indicating that one has wrongheaded notions of justice and injustice, of one’s personal worth, or of one’s capacity to seek redress. That vice of deficiency, however, is not nearly as common as the rather numerous opposite vices of excess in anger Aristotle distinguishes and discuses.

It is possible to go wrong in all the determinations of anger, though not in every way all at once: “one can be angry with those at whom one ought not, on account of things one ought not, to a greater degree than one ought to, or more quickly, or for a longer time” (1126a9-12). To these can be added an “unwillingness to be reconciled without [inflicting] retribution or punishment” ( mē diallattomenous aneu timōrias ē kolaseōs , 1126a28), since one characteristic of the virtuous, i.e. mild-tempered, person is that they are not habitually seeking retribution or revenge (ou. . .timōrētikos) but rather are habitually disposed to forgiveness (alla mallon sungnōmonikos, 1126a2)

Key to this view is that, even when rightly perceiving insult or injury, actual and not merely imagined injustice, the virtuous person determines whether the situation, the person involved, the conditions, do in fact call for the response of anger and the drive for retribution, or whether forgiveness is in order. Put in another way, one way in which retribution and revenge, both involving anger, are differentiated, is that even though emotion is involved, the one engaged in seeking retribution is also able to rein it in and replace it by its opposite, forgiveness, while the one seeking revenge cannot or is less able to carry this out.

Another way to distinguish them is in terms of the object and the matter of the anger. Being angry at the wrong people, for the wrong reason, or on account of the wrong things, all of which can be habitual and therefore vicious, easily stem from misperceiving or misunderstanding justice or injustice, as well as the motives ascribed to others, and one’s own perhaps inflated sense of self-worth. These lead one into seeking revenge rather than retribution, into a sort of distortion of justice that stems from a distorted sense, understanding, or perception of justice.

The very characteristics of the emotion itself suggest a third way of differentiating revenge and retribution. The affectivity of retribution will be to the right extent, as quickly as merited, and for as long as is right. These may, of course, be of great quantity, if that is what reason, right judgement, properly formed habits and desires rightly dictate, but there will be bounds, whereas revenge, if not in every case as it is in some potentially unlimited, will involve anger to an inordinate degree, more quickly than is merited (perhaps being easily expanded to others involved too quickly, and for too long a time.

Determining precisely where these bounds or limits lie is of course, a complex and difficult question, and in interest of time and space, I must beg off from explaining it in detail. Suffice it to say, Aristotle’s thought does provide resources (certainly not the only ones, though) for answering that question and other connected questions that inevitably get raised. Revenge and retribution, even punishment can involve, indeed ought to involve anger and other emotions, and this is so far from necessarily invalidating or vitiating just punishment or retribution that it is even a necessary motivating and orienting component of them.

Notes

1: It must be pointed out that the English language moral terminology used here does not correspond exactly to the moral terminology in Aristotle’s Greek. Specifically, there are two words Aristotle uses that can both be translated as “retribution”: kolasis , which also and primarily means “punishment”, and timōria, which also covers the semantic range of our term “revenge”. In this paper, “retribution” is used only to translate timōria, not kolasis .

2: Forgetting of course that there is always room for contestation of even these – historically, even at the present day there are those who see and defend these things as good rather than evil.

3: That these emotions are expected to take rather stereotypical expressions is evidenced by the behavior and language of interviewers and interviewees: “I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” for example, is a stock phrase meaning precisely the opposite, providing verbal cues to the interviewee.

4: Not to mention other defects of the ethics of care. Largely an outcome and a sub-discourse of feminist ethics, and unfortunately ends up engaged in the very reliance on binary oppositions it criticizes and characterizes as “male”. Main proponents of the ethics of care have also shown themselves ignorant and poorly read in the classics of moral philosophy, particularly in the ancients and medieval, and have wrongly written off, e.g. Thomas Aquinas, not realizing what allies they would have in them.

5: By using the terms “perception” here, I do not mean to imply that Aristotle thinks that these are merely “opinions” etc. Nor is the perception of moral qualities merely sense-perception followed by some sort of inference, as some modern philosophies have made it, nor is it merely “intuition”. cf. Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989), L.A. Kosman, “Being Properly Affected: Virtues and Feelings in Aristotle’s Ethics”, in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics , Gisela Striker, “Emotions in Context: Aristotle’s Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and His Moral Psychology”,Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric , and Deborah Achtenberg, Cognition of Value in Aristotle’s Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press. 2002)

6: In his discussion of specific offices in the political community in Politics Book 6, Aristotle nuances his views on punishment and retribution by making some interesting remarks at length about the offices concerned with executing legal judgements and with custody of prisoners. To summarize: 1) for several reasons, these offices are at the same time the most absolutely necessary (anankaiotatē) and the most difficult (khalepōtatē , 1321b40-1); 2)it is better for these offices to be divided as much as possible; 3) because they involve unpopularity and tension, there are problems involved in determining who should have and carry out these offices, namely, the better people (epieikeis) avoid the offices, but they cannot be entrusted to the base or vicious (mokhtherous), since they themselves need to be watched (1322a23-6)

7: Aristotle repeatedly pairs kolasis and timōria so frequently in his works that one could make the argument that in some cases where he only mentions one of them, the other is assumed. This pairing is particularly evident in his discussions of law, virtue and vice, and good and bad people in the Nicomachean Ethics, at 1113b23-26, 1130b22-26, 1179b4-20, and 1180a2-12. He also introduces kolasis in verbal forms into his discussion of anger in Rhetoric book 2, at 1380b18-20.

8: Aristotle does say however, that one’s anger at one individual can be lessened by having taken retribution on another, and gives several examples (1380b6-13), which could be taken as indicating that one is angry at a kind of person. Note, however, that while the individuals can be similar, they are still individuals.

9: Aristotle provides pages of insightful specifications about the sorts of things or occasions that anger people in Rhetoric book 2, giving anger and its opposite, calmness or mild-temper, the longest and most in depth discussion of all the emotions. Anger also comes in for significant discussion in works ranging from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics through the Politics (book 5) and other parts of the Rhetoric to the De Anima and even the Topics.