Roman Conceptions of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius

Capitoline Hill, Rome

Under consideration in this essay will be certain Classical Greek schools of thought that came to particular prominence throughout the Roman empire prior to the broad acceptance of Christianity (upon which they exercised considerable influence). Stoicism, Neopythagoreanism (alternatively middle Platonism), and Neoplatonism clearly confess a debt to the earlier Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides as well as the schools of Pythagoras, Plato, and the Cynics. However, there is a notable departure from the metaphysics of a cosmos ex-materia wherein Plato in particular assumes a model of pre-existent, eternal, initially chaotic matter that is organised by transcendent forms. 

Such a dualistic conception of matter and form is gradually supplanted in the later schools by an increasingly monistic metaphysics that interprets the cosmos as coming into being ex-deo, as an overflowing of the divine. For the Stoics the world is explained as an unified existence that can be perceived in two aspects: God and Nature. The Platonist schools propose a variation of this in which a process of divine emanation constitutes an hierarchy of being from the divine towards the mundane. As we'll subsequently consider, such pantheistic conceptions of reality have implications for the relative importance and understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness.

Stoicism

“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” - Marcus Aurelius

Stoicism places a preponderance of emphasis on the Good which is associated with God, often referred to as Providence. The Good is the active principle that has infused and animated all of Nature so that they are in fact indistinguishable, two aspects of a single reality. The analogy is often presented of the cosmos as a body that is infused with a soul to constitute a living entity. However, unlike previous conceptions the soul is not a different substance, rather it likewise is material in essence. Entailed in this conception is an implicit trust that Nature is substantially Good; that we in our individual lives are part and parcel of the best possible existence. As Nature can be no other way than the Good, and as we are not separate from it, the conclusion follows that everything that exists and everyone's actions in the world are predetermined towards this end. In such a cosmos what does the Good mean for you and I?

Although our actions may be predetermined, our dispositions towards them are argued by the Stoics to remain free. Therefore, what is good for a rational creature such as man is cultivating a life of virtue, an aligning of the will to accord with Nature. Such virtue would include the specific Classical Greek virtues of justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence. Beyond these, special emphasis is given to arete, the overarching concept of virtue or excellence that permeates and unites all the others. The locus of the virtuous path rests with the individual person and is open to anyone irrespective of social status or circumstance. Two of the most notable Stoics could not have come from more different backgrounds: the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and a man whose wisdom he greatly admired, the former slave Epictetus.

Unique to the Stoics is the virtue of apatheia, freedom from the passions. Stoic apathy is sometimes conflated with a prescription to be unemotional; however, this is not entirely correct. The passions refer specifically to emotions that are elicited by external stimuli that can overwhelm reason if we respond impulsively, passively, and thoughtlessly to them. There is the risk of placing an overemphasis upon or identifying ourselves with various pleasures or pains we may experience. For example, lusting for future pleasure because we conflate it with the Good may lead to our resentment for pleasures enjoyed by the wicked. Conversely, to fear future danger because we see pain as evil may lead us to avoid the development of virtue that comes with endurance through suffering. It is in this sense that the Stoic is encouraged to remain somewhat indifferent to externalities that we cannot control. It is a mistake to identify pleasure with good and pain with evil. To do so engenders a moral evil, a vice that allows the passions to supplant reason and prevent the cultivation of virtue.

According to the Stoics, the soul does not have a conscious pre-existence. Thus the human mind is like a blank slate at birth, possessing neither innate knowledge nor even the categorical structures as described by Aristotle. Although we are born with a predisposition or capacity for reason, everything must be learned through experience. The Stoics were therefore thoroughgoing empiricists who rejected the notion of Plato's transcendent Forms or Aristotle's universals abstracted by intuition from particulars. Rather they proposed what we would today call a representational theory whereby we acquire knowledge either through sense impressions or reflections upon our own mental states. In other words the most we can ever truly know is our own ideas. For the Stoic, the criterion of truth is described as a preconception, in other words a clear, distinct, intuitive awareness that upon reflection and scrutiny is completely irresistible.

However, it should be noted that the Stoics were less concerned with the validity of arguments, logical syllogisms, and deductive certainties than in developing moral character and progressing towards excellence as an human being. As Epictetus describes it: “What does it matter to me … whether the universe is composed of atoms or uncompounded substances, or of fire and earth? Is it not sufficient to know the true nature of good and evil, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and also of our impulses to act and not to act; and by making use of these as rules to order the affairs of our life."

The three topoi or Stoic areas of discipline that Epictetus promoted did not promote truth for its own sake, rather truth as a practical means of developing nobility, necessary for pursuing the Good. It was vital to know the truth concerning desires and aversions to prevent the passions from succumbing to them. Instead, one ought to constrain the impulses under the rule of reason as a guide to proper behaviour in a social setting. Additionally, the Stoic sought to clear his mind of deception so as not to be hasty in his judgements nor quick to give his assent without clear reason.

“Beauty does not consist in the elements of the body (in themselves) but in the harmonious proportion of the parts. The proportion of one finger to another, of all fingers to the rest of the hand, of the rest of the hand to the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the whole arm, and in short, everything to everything else.”- Galen referring to the teachings of the Stoic Chrysippus

The Stoic concept of beauty is wrapped up with symmetry, the orderly and harmonious arrangements of the parts into a unified whole. The human body in this manner was a microcosm of Nature whereas the human soul was analogous to the Good. Everything that was good was likewise well proportioned and beautiful in body and soul. Beauty was thus appreciated as the perceivable outward expression of the Good. The philosophical precursor of the Stoics, Socrates had proclaimed that "the unexamined life is not worth living"; however, it might just be that the examined life that has attained virtue even in death may be considered beautiful.  

Manuel Dominguez Sanchez - The Death of Seneca 1871

Middle and Neoplatonism
 
At a quick glance it might appear that Stoicism and Platonism are quite similar. While it is true that they both were rooted in the teachings of Socrates, had continued to permeate each other in their subsequent parallel development, and shared many perspectives in common, there were also significant divergences between them that mark them as ultimately quite different philosophical outlooks. Whereas the Stoics have a monistic material view of all reality, the Platonists maintain a dualism between a material Nature and an incorporeal God. Furthermore, the Platonic view of the human soul is likewise incorporeal and pre-existent. As such they reject the notion of the mind as a blank slate, holding open the possibility of remembrance of a former, higher existence accessible by reason. A more evident tendency than with the Stoics, the philosophy of Platonism in this later period begins to elide into a primitive theology.

Expanding on the cosmology of Plato in the Timaeus, the middle Platonists begin to construct a model of being that takes the form of emanation. At the head, or alternatively above and outside of the hierarchy altogether, is that which is in some sense beyond being. Although positive descriptions are admittedly inadequate, terms such as the One, the Good, the Beautiful, or simply God are spoken of as a means of indication. That which is indescribable and all-inclusive is clearly antithetical to limitation by definition. As a result the Via Negativa, an entire language of negation is developed to describe the ultimate source of being by what it is not: infinite, immortal, invisible, etc. Being as such is purported to be a metaphorical outpouring from the Good, the Beautiful which permeates all further existence including the cosmos with goodness and beauty.

The first definable outpouring of the One is called Nous or the Logos which represents an ordering intelligence somewhat commensurate with Plato's Forms except that in a shift of viewpoint these Forms enjoy no independent being as distinct entities, rather existing only as archetypal ideas in the mind of the Logos. Whereas the Logos provides the forms of existence, next below it in the hierarchy of being is the World-Soul, anima mundi that permeates the cosmos and brings it to life, carrying along with it the seminal logoi, seeds of the Logos which bring divine intelligence and order to the creation. Together these three conceptions form the Platonic hypostates, literally an understanding or foundation of being. The three are not described as coequal, instead arranged in an hierarchy that we can perhaps think of as a nested trinity, the World-Soul outpouring from the Logos which in turn outpours from the One that contains all existence. 

There are conflicting understandings of the status of Nature in the hierarchy of being among the Platonists. Some cleave to Plato's understanding that unformed matter is eternal and maintains an existence separately from the Good. The continual outpouring upon Nature by the World-Soul imbues it with unity, goodness, and beauty thus creating an intelligible cosmos ex-materia, out of pre-existent matter. However, material Nature is essentially entropic, recalcitrant towards any efforts to keep it organised. Thus viewed Nature is 'evil' in the sense that it is forever resistant to the unity and goodness imposed upon it.

Later Platonists developed a more streamlined view by positing that if God is truly all-inclusive Nature must also be an outpouring of being, just further down on the hierarchy. The entirety of creation then must be ex-deo or out of God. In this alternative model there is no positive sense of evil, it has no distinct existence. To the contrary evil is simply described as privation of the Good, separated by distance, further afield in the emanation. Thus Nature must be good to the degree that the Good is operative within it. In both scenarios human beings are presented as a mixture of body and soul, Nature and the Good. Human beings therefore sit at the nexus of this tension between divine good and natural evil where they can either choose to practise moral virtue by setting their sights upon the Good above or succumb to moral evil, falling even further in the hierarchy by abandoning themselves to animalistic, irrational desires.

Until now we've been considering mostly the downward emanation from the One which from a Platonist view can be seen as a fall or descent. However, the Neoplatonist Plotinus describes this as only part of a cycle, its counterpart being epistrophe, an upward return or ascent back to the One. Whereas the Logos or divine intellect is what outpours into creation, Plotinus explains that eros or Love is what draws us back towards unity with the Good. This path of return begins with contemplation of the order and harmony inherent within Nature which through sensation elicits memory of the beautiful. As with the Stoics, cultivation of the virtues is necessary; however, the method offered by Plotinus is distinctly rational. The dialectical process as practised by Socrates is completely independent of sensation as it relies upon reason to aid the immaterial soul by logical demonstration. The dialectical process recalls from memory the truth of the virtues as the ideas of the Logos as well as its own former existence. The ascent continues as an intuitive direct awareness that culminates in the ecstatic state of dissolution of the self and a reunification experienced as complete identification with the One.

If much of what we've just considered sounds a bit familiar well, that's to be expected. Stoic and Platonic philosophy had a huge influence on the formation of Roman jurisprudence and Christian theology. In our next essay we'll explore how conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness continued to morph and develop in the early Church.


Contributed by Patrick Webb