CHAPTER ONE
Hellenistic Philosophers on the Sage and Pain
A major debate in Hellenistic philosophy is how the sage, the wise and morally mature person, deals with pain and torture. This is an important question as many Hellenistic philosophers maintained that the sage was always happy. Before I start examining the Hellenistic positions about the tortured sage, three matters have to be discussed. The first is whether their sage is relevant to our normal concerns. The second is getting clearer about the conception of happiness that the Hellenistic philosophers were using. The third point is to show the general credibility of the Hellenistic philosophers’ claims by showing that the latest pain research supports their position.
First, the Hellenistic philosophers are not maintaining that ordinary people are always happy. The philosophers are quite clear that they are discussing the sage or wise person who is also morally pure and totally virtuous. So the philosophers are not making an empirical claim about how all people are always happy, but only how the sage is. Annas claims that this means these philosophers have nothing to say to us because they are not dealing with the realm of normal experience.[1] Nothing could be further from the truth. Hellenistic philosophers were quite consciously presenting ideal models or exemplars to illustrate the power of moral virtue and to inspire us to become more virtuous. Here it is important to realize that these Hellenistic ethical systems were not centered on actions, but character. If these philosophies were merely referring to the acts and deeds of extraordinary people, they might be irrelevant for normal people. Instead, as they are referring to the virtuous person’s character, a virtuous state which we can all aspire to and advance towards, the idea of the sage functions as an ideal model for us all; it presents an example of what we should strive to become.
The relevance of the sage to normal people is further enhanced because these Hellenistic philosophies are also centered on ways to improve a person’s character. For this reason, they emphasized how average people can become like the sage and they tried to help average people progress to sagacity through various training exercises. By giving normal people ways of improving their character and moral virtue, the Hellenistic philosophers are a mix of philosophy and what is now considered spiritual training or popular psychology. For this reason, these Hellenistic philosophers and their sages are quite relevant to the lives and ethical concerns of ordinary people.
Conceptions of Happiness
The second point that needs to be discussed is the Hellenistic philosophers’ conception of happiness. Like Aristotle, the word these philosophers used which we translate as happiness is eudaimonia. While W.D. Ross suggests that a better translation of eudaimonia would be “well-being,” and John Cooper proposes “flourishing,” Richard Kraut disagrees with them.[2] Kraut maintains that the best translation for eudaimonia is happiness, but we have to keep in mind that Aristotle had a different conception of happiness from ours.
The modern conception of happiness is subjective and variable between individuals. Kraut identifies two position within this subjectivist framework. The first is extreme subjectivism which maintains that happiness is a psychological state and nothing more than that.[3] On this conception of happiness, as long as someone believes that he is getting the things he wants and has pleasant affects that accompany this belief, he is happy. This position takes no account of whether the man is correct in his evaluation of his success or not; on this conception “unfounded happiness is still happiness.”[4] Kraut thinks we are reluctant to say such a deceived man is happy and so he offers a second variation on the modern position that he calls subjectivism. On this subjectivist conception of happiness, a person is happy only if he is satisfied with his life and he is also actually attaining the important things he values or at least coming reasonably close to doing so.[5] In both variations of subjectivism, one must be satisfied and content with one’s life. The difference between these two positions is that extreme subjectivism maintains that it is enough to merely believe one is achieving the important things one values while subjectivism maintains one must actually be achieving these things.
The Aristotelian conception of happiness is more objective. On this conception of happiness, one can only be considered happy if one is coming reasonably close to fulfilling the function of a human being which is the same for everyone.[6] Kraut points out that the objectivist conception has similarities to the subjectivist view of happiness as the objectivist view realizes that a happy person must be satisfied with the way his life is proceeding and must find fulfillment in the projects he is pursuing.
The Hellenistic philosophers had neither of these views of happiness. They strongly disagreed with the subjectivist conception of happiness because they thought personal satisfaction and contentment were not enough to make someone happy. Nor did they in general agree with Aristotle that there was one human function that a person had to fulfill to be happy. Their position was that all humans had a certain essential nature and we were happiest if our lives were harmonious with our essential human nature. This kind of happiness was the only really satisfying kind of happiness as we were meant to live this way.
While someone may say they were happy, these philosophers would not agree unless this person’s life was in harmony with human nature. In their view, we may feel happy, but unless our happiness resulted from being aligned with human nature, we were not really happy, but only deluding ourselves. While we might consider ourselves happy, this was only because our past training and social conditioning had misled us. Once we viewed the situation correctly, we would agree that real happiness comes from being in harmony with human nature.
Pain Research
The third preliminary matter to bring up is the modern research into pain. While the Hellenistic philosophers’ claim may seem implausible, there is extensive modern research in pain management and control which strongly supports the truth of what the Hellenistic philosophers are maintaining. For recent research in understanding pain has established that pain is considerably more than a sensory process and it is closely bound up with our cognitive and affective situations. For this reason people experience pain in considerably different ways and it is very possible that the sage experiences it differently from normal people. In this research it is shown that pain is not what we think it is. To understand this recent research concerning pain, we need to first look at the traditional modern theory of pain and how this theory came to be modified.
The traditional modern theory of pain is that a specific pain system carries messages from pain receptors in the skin directly to a pain center in the brain.[7] Descartes gave the classical description of this theory and suggested our pain system is much like the bell-ringing mechanism in a church. Just as a man pulls a rope and the bell in the belfry rings, so too our body feels fire near our foot, which stimulates our skin and then a delicate thread in our body is activated which causes us to feel pain in our brain.[8] The traditional modern model of pain keeps Descartes’ basic model while modernizing the sensory apparatus through which the system works.[9] This model means that “the stimulation of the receptor must always elicit pain.”[10] Furthermore, in this model, pain is purely a sensory phenomenon and this means that any motivational and cognitive processes are relegated to being mere reactions to pain.[11] Lastly, as pain is purely a bodily phenomenon, we would expect pain to be basically the same for everyone.
On this model, the claim that the sage overcomes pain by blocking it out seems quite implausible. In order to see how the Hellenistic philosophers’ claims are a real possibility, we need to look at recent pain research. For current research into pain has a much more complicated idea of human pain and this view emphasizes a person’s cognitive evaluation of the situation and their emotional reaction to the pain. One expert in pain research says that “the experience of pain is in the domain of the mind …[this] is validated daily by modern pain-control experts across the United States and around the world.”[12] This current view is much different from the traditional view and it demonstrates that the Hellenistic philosophers are right about one point: someone could be happy while being tortured.
The key finding in current pain research is that there is no direct linkage between pain and injury. For example, 65% of the soldiers severely wounded in battle and 20% of civilians who undergo major surgery report little or no feeling of pain for hours or days after the injury or operation.[13] On the other hand, no apparent injury can be detected in 70% of the people who suffer from chronic low back pain.[14] For this reason pain cannot be defined in terms of particular stimuli.[15] Thus “the link between pain and injury is a variable one. Injury may occur without pain as well as pain without injury….Generally speaking, while philosophers are tightening the link between pain and injury, scientists working in the field of pain research are – on the contrary- loosening it.”[16]
This current view that there is no necessary connection between pain and injury started with the surprising research of a U.S. Army surgeon. This doctor, Lt.-Col. Henry Beecher, attended soldiers in World War II during the battle of Anzio. Beecher saw many wounded soldiers, some with hideous gaping wounds or limbs blown away, lying contentedly on the sand. Beecher was astonished to find that only one in three wounded men complained of enough pain to want morphine. Most of these badly wounded soldiers either said they were not in pain or said they had so little pain that they did not want medication to relieve it. The men were not in a state of shock, nor were they unable to feel pain because they complained quite vociferously if the medics performed inept vein punctures.[17]
When Beecher returned to civilian life, he encountered a remarkably different situation. For he found that most civilians with similar injuries complained they had severe pain and wanted morphine. Trying to account for this difference in pain levels between civilians and soldiers, Beecher hypothesized that the soldiers had a significantly different cognitive evaluation of their situation and so they were not in pain:
The common belief that wounds are inevitably associated with pain, and that the more extensive the wound the worse the pain, was not supported by observations made as carefully as possible in the combat zone….The data state in numerical terms what is known to all thoughtful clinical observers: there is not a simple direct relationship between the wound per se and the pain experienced. The pain is in very large part determined by other factors, and of great importance here is the significance of the wound….In the wounded soldier the response to injury was relief, thankfulness at his escape alive from the battlefield, even euphoria; to the civilian, his major surgery was a depressing calamitous event. [18]
It should be pointed out that Beecher is not the only one to have verified this phenomenon. Research done on Israeli soldiers after the Yom Kippur War yielded comparable results.[19] It is generally conceded by current pain researchers that this shows that people perceive pain differently depending on what the painful situation means to them. While the civilians’ injuries meant disruption of their life and they felt more pain, the soldiers’ injuries were often seen by the soldiers as a positive event and they felt significantly less pain. So pain is not something that just happens to our bodies; it is something that our minds and feelings help to make and shape. In another summary of his experience, Beecher reports: “Pain is an experience subject to modification by many factors: wounds received during strenuous physical exercise, during the excitement of games, often go unnoticed. The same is true of wounds received during fighting, during anger. Strong emotion can block pain. That is common experience.”[20]
It is a common phenomenon that football players will not even notice a severe injury they have received while they are playing. Furthermore, the fact that a hypnotized person does not feel any pain at all while undergoing an operation shows that a person’s mind can strongly influence the amount of pain she feels. There are even more extreme cases than this which are not so common. In many religious ceremonies, the participants endure what we would think to be excruciatingly painful experiences and experience them as blissful events. So in India there is one religious ceremony in which a man hangs from a metal hook which is imbedded in muscles in his back. This man blesses the fields while hanging from this hook and from all accounts, the man not only is not in pain, but he appears to be in a state of exultation![21] Nor is this the only account of such an event; for the same people who have this hook ritual also have a fertility dance where the climax is the dancer plunging his hand into a cauldron of boiling oil. Here again the dancer apparently feels nothing.[22] Tibetan mystics also can enter a trance state and pass needles through their cheeks and fleshy parts of their body without any pain.[23] Nor is this phenomena confined to Asia; reports of men and women burnt at the stake for their religious views maintain that these people were sometimes observed to be ecstatically happy while the flames crackled around their bodies and consumed their flesh.[24] Moreover, similar phenomena involving the complete absence of pain have also been verified by doctors in the United States.[25]
Because of the phenomena cited above, current pain researchers are adopting the view “that pain is made up of two components: a sensory component and an emotion, reaction component.”[26] This emotional component involves a person’s evaluation of the situation, cultural conditioning and prior experience. So according to modern research into pain, Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers are not making an impossible claim when they maintain that the sage will be happy while being tortured. Moreover, current pain research has also discovered a physical mechanism through which this is possible.
The most successful contemporary theory of pain is the gate control model developed by Melzack and Wall. This theory is relevant to our purposes because it undercuts the idea of pain as simply a sensory experience and it also integrates the affective and cognitive dimensions of pain with the sensory dimension.[27] The gate control theory is based on the fact that one of the neural systems in the spinal cord is a system of cells called the substantia gelatinosa. The most important point is that there is much evidence that this group of cells acts like a valve regulating the flow of pain signals from the different parts of the body to the central nervous system. Melzack and Wall call this valve a gate control system and the most important thing for our purposes is that it is affected by signals from the brain.[28] It is now firmly established that stimulation of the brain activates descending efferent fibers which can influence afferent conduction at the earliest synaptic levels of the somesthic system. Thus it is possible for central nervous system activities subserving attention, emotion, and memories of prior experience to exert control over the sensory input. There is evidence to suggest that these central influences are mediated through the gate control system.[29]
Since Melzack and Wall first proposed the gate control theory of pain in 1965, much research has supported the theory that the brain’s activities have a significant impact on a person’s perception of pain. Most interestingly, many studies have shown that the body sometimes releases endorphins (endogenous morphines) and enkephalins (opoid substances in the brain) and that these internally produced substances shut off the pain in exactly the same way that morphine does.[30] So the body has a natural process of reducing pain through producing these internal, morphine-like substances.
There is also evidence that acupuncture works through releasing endorphins.[31] Moreover, one study also shows that the well-known placebo effect is brought about through releasing endorphins in a person’s brain.[32] As the placebo effect occurs only because of a person’s emotional state and his confidence in his doctor, it is thought that the will to live, emotional states and other psychological factors may turn out to be as important as drugs in relieving pain as they promote the synthesis and release of endorphins.[33] Finally, there is an evolutionary reason why our bodies produce these substances. For our body often manufactures these endorphins in very stressful, dangerous situations because the organism has a better chance of survival if it is temporarily relieved of pain and anxiety.[34]
On either the subjective or objective conception of happiness, we have modern evidence that a person can be severely injured or tortured and still be happy. On the subjective conception, the injured person can still have the internal psychological feeling state that we associate with happiness. Thus an injured football player could be very happy because his team just won the Super Bowl; this person could be severely injured but this may not affect his happiness at all because it is overridden by his cognitive and emotional state. On the objective conception of happiness, a person could be injured but fulfilling the proper human function in life and still have a very positive attitude towards their life. She could have a positive attitude because either the pain does not effect the performance of her function or because the pain does not effect her subjective feeling of happiness which accompanies the performance of her human function. The Hellenistic philosophers generally maintain that the sage will be happy even if tortured because she has found a cognitive strategy of dealing with the pain so that it does not affect her subjective feelings of happiness.
Thus modern evidence supports the claims of the Hellenistic philosophers that someone could be tortured and still be happy. Furthermore, if the tortured sage could somehow cause their brain to release endorphins or enkephalins to block the pain, we have a physiological mechanism which would explain how a sage could be tortured and still be happy. This research shows that we should take the Hellenistic philosophers’ positions much more seriously than has been done so far.
The point of this pain research is that pain is not a simple sensory process as Descartes and the traditional modern view conceives of it. It is a very complex phenomenon involving our cognitive and affective processes. While the sensory apparatus is the same in every person, that is not true of the cognitive and emotional aspects. The important thing for the Hellenistic philosophers is that they are claiming that the sage has a different cognitive and emotional take on their life situation and this makes their view of pain much different than normal peoples. They say that the sage experiences pain in a much different way because of her cognitive and emotional aspects. In the traditional modern theory there is no space for this as purely a senosroy phenoemona. The current research into pain supports this view.
Even more important for the position of Hellenistic philosophers is why the sage has a different response to the pian: because of her sagacity. The sage is able to deal with pain in a different way because of the cognitive and emotional take on what is important in the universe. Different responses Hellenistic sages take to this, Modern pain research is important to this topic because supports the way the Stoic sage deals is supported.
With this preliminary material out of the way I will analyze the various claims the Hellenistic philosophers make that about the tortured sage. In this chapter I will use modern research into pain to show the positions of Aristotle, Epicurus, the Cynics, Platonists and Skeptics are inadequate. In the next chapter I will show that the modern research supports the Stoics’ position.
Aristotle on pain
Aristotle was not very sympathetic to the Hellenistic position that a sage could happy if he was being tortured. He ridiculed such a position saying, “those who say that, if a man be good, he will be happy even when on the rack, or when fallen into the direst misfortune, are intentionally or unintentionally talking nonsense.”[35] Aristotle took a more conventional view in this matter: he said that only the life which had bodily health, external goods and the gifts of fortune could be a perfectly happy life.[36] The Peripatetics followed Aristotle in maintaining that the external goods such as health and wealth are important ingredients in human happiness. So Cicero reports that Theophrastus “was forced to conclude that floggings, tortures, the rack, banishment, childlessness, contribute a great deal to making life miserable and unhappy.”[37] So the Peripatetics denied that the sage will be happy if he is tortured.
While one may think that Aristotle and his followers have a common sense view, they were teased for being “wimps” by many Hellenistic philosophers. Antiochus says that Theophrastus made a happy life dependent on fortune and pain and bodily torture and “this seems to me rather too tender …and delicate a doctrine, more so than the power and importance of virtue can sanction.”[38] Cicero says that Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus “stripped virtue of its beauty, and made it powerless, by denying that to live happily depended solely on it.”[39] Some Hellenistic philosophers went much farther in their criticism and said: “It is high time, I submit, for the Peripatetics and the Old Academy to put a stop to all their hesitant stammerings, and summon up the courage to admit openly and loudly that it is still possible to be happy even when you are being roasted alive inside Phalaris’s bull!”[40] We may find this kind of goading strange, but by the first century B.C.E., the Stoics dominated ethical discussion and the Aristotelians had to respond on their terms. The Aristotelians still maintained their traditional positions, but they were forced to do it using the terms and arguments of the Stoics.[41]
The Aristotelian position is shown to be wrong by modern research into pain. Someone can be completely happy even if tortured as we have many reports of people in such situations who are completely happy. Furthermore we are starting to understand the physiological process through which this works.
Even though Aristotle and his followers were one of the few schools which did not agree with the common position that the sage is always happy, nevertheless Aristotle contributed an important philosophical underpinning for this position: the purely formal characteristics of happiness. Aristotle defined happiness as perfect or complete in itself.[42] He also said that happiness lacks nothing and is self-sufficient.[43] Finally, he maintained that happiness is something that is not left to fortune.[44]
These purely formal characteristics of happiness are extremely important for the Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics as these three Hellenistic systems agree that happiness has these formal characteristics. Based on these formal characteristics of happiness, these three schools maintain that external goods, such as health and material possessions, are not part of happiness because they are susceptible to chance. These schools claim the candidate for happiness must be above moral luck and not be prey to chance at all. While we may question their desire to maintain this position, they do not actually succeed in eliminating moral luck. I will demonstrate this point in the next chapter when I examine the Stoics’ position.
Epicurus on pain
The Hellenistic philosopher who makes the most surprising claim that the sage is always happy is Epicurus. The basis of Epicurus’ philosophy is the idea that “pleasure is our first and native good …all pain is an evil.”[45] Epicurus, however, had an unusual conception of what pleasure was. Instead of wild partying, tasty food or tempestuous sex, he thought that pleasure was “the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”[46] Epicurus’ conception of pleasure was so far from our common notion of pleasure that he thought the greatest pleasure was the absence of all pain.[47] For Epicurus, the absence of pain is such a great pleasure that if someone has the basic necessities of life “and is confident of having them in the future, he might contend even with <Zeus> for happiness.”[48]
Considering he maintains that not having pain is the greatest pleasure, one might think that Epicurus could not possibly think that the sage is happy while he is being tortured. That is far from the truth, however. For Epicurus claims that the sage is always happy and maintains that “even on the rack the wise man is happy.”[49] This is true even though Epicurus also maintains that the sage, when tortured, will moan and groan from the pain.[50] Epicurus said “that this wise man, when he is being torn to pieces with the most exquisite pains, will say, ‘How pleasant it is! How I disregard it!’”[51] Indeed the wise man “even when he is being burnt and racked and cut to pieces, will never cease to assure us: ‘It means nothing to me at all.’”[52]
One may try to discount this remark as just empty bravado on Epicurus’ part and disregard his claims; but these are not just empty words divorced from his daily life. For Epicurus was often very ill and he considered the days when he was afflicted by a diseased bladder and by the incurable pain of an ulcerated stomach as “the happiest of all” his days.[53] Epicurus even says that the sage can survive quite well being roasted alive in the bull of Phalaris. Indeed it is commonly cited in antiquity that Epicurus believes that while the sage is roasting inside the bull, he will cry out: “Tis pleasant, and concerns me not at all.”[54]
How can Epicurus make what seems to be such an outlandish claim? What strength does the Epicurean sage have that allows him to be unconcerned about such horrible pain? Before I examine current research about pain which supports the possibility of Epicurus’ claims, I will first explain how Epicurus’ philosophy, while emphasizing that the highest pleasure is the absence of pain, nevertheless led him to maintain that the tortured sage is happy.
The key to understanding his position is that while Epicurus maintained that pleasure was the only good, he also thought mental pleasures are greater than bodily pleasures and pains of the mind are worse than pains of the body.[55] Epicurus holds this position because “the flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present.”[56] So the pleasures of the mind are three times as good as the pleasures of the flesh because the mind enjoys them while they are actually happening, anticipates them before they happen and can enjoy them again by remembering them after they have happened. Furthermore as the sage is never unjust and is content with himself, he never has any mental pain. For this reason “the just man enjoys the greatest peace of mind”[57] and is the happiest person.
These two positions give us an insight into how Epicurus thinks the sage could be tortured and still be happy. For when Epicurus himself was dying from a painful disease, he dealt with this pain by remembering former pleasures and by thinking about his previous philosophical discoveries. Because of these mental pleasures, he claimed he was still happy.[58] So through his powers of concentration, Epicurus claimed the sage could overcome any bodily trials and tribulations and still be happy even though he would feel the pain.
Epicurus seems to be making a highly implausible claim. Plutarch voiced this opinion in antiquity: “Not one of us would believe Epicurus….A person could sooner notice a reflection of a face in the troubled deep and waves than a smiling memory of pleasure in so great a convulsion and spasm of the body.”[59] Annas agrees with Plutarch and says that memories of pleasures do not seem robust enough to enable the sage to be happy while he is being tortured. Annas also says that the presumed Epicurean response is that the sage is different from ordinary people and thus he experiences the world in a different way from ordinary people.[60] This is a very typical response of Hellenistic philosophers in general: they continually say that the powers of the sage are much different from those of ordinary people and so the sage is happy in situations that ordinary people could never be happy in.
Remembering that current pain research shows the possibility of being totally happy while being tortured, we can now better evaluate Epicurus’ claim. Unfortunately for Epicurus, the evidence does not support the position that his brain could block his pain through releasing endorphins. For he says that the man on the rack will moan and groan in pain[61] and that he personally experienced severe pain from his illnesses. As Epicurus maintains that the sage still experiences pain, it is not the case that the sage’s brain released endorphins which blocked his pain.
As the sage still feels pain, Epicurus’ claim rests on the contention that the sage is happy because he concentrates on other things and these mental pleasures were more important than the bodily pains. This contention does not seem very convincing; it seems highly unlikely that any mental pleasure will override the pain of being tortured. Thus it does not seem that the Epicurean sage is really happy on his own definition of what happiness is: having more pleasure than pain. Here, I agree with Annas: the memory of past pleasures is not enough to offset the physical pain that the sage will feel if he is roasted alive in the bull of Phalaris. Therefore Epicurus’ position is not ultimately plausible on his own terms.
Cynics on pain
While we may think that Epicurus’ statements are pretty extreme, amongst Hellenistic philosophers Epicurus did not even have the honor of making the most outrageous claims. This honor went to the Cynics, who while often ignored in studies of Greek philosophy, are now receiving much scholarly attention because research shows that they influenced Jesus and the early Christians.
The Cynics descend from Socrates through his disciple Antisthenes. Antisthenes was an extremely frugal person and he emphasized the side of Socrates that was primarily concerned about people’s souls. Antisthenes followed in the tradition of Socrates’ intellectualism by maintaining that “virtue is sufficient in itself to ensure happiness.”[62] To understand why the Cynics maintained this position, one needs to realize that they separated happiness from any connection with pleasure or external goods such as wealth, health or good reputation.[63] The Cynic Crates maintained that if we judge a happy life by a favorable balance of pleasures, then no man is happy as there is an overwhelming preponderance of pain in life.[64] Instead the Cynics said that achieving total freedom was the way of gaining happiness.[65] Antisthenes and the Cynics emphasized the sense of liberation that resulted from recognizing that everything we formerly cared about was not really important for our happiness.[66] Antisthenes maintained that only our soul is important and we can be self-sufficient once we recognize this fact.[67]
While many of these ideas originated in Socrates’ ethics, there is one important Cynic idea that cannot be found in Socrates: their attitude towards pleasure. Socrates indulged in pleasure if it was available and could be gotten without compromising his virtue. The Cynics, however, had a much different attitude towards pleasure. For Antisthenes’ major idea was that concern with either pleasure and pain made us slaves to the things that gave us pleasure or pain. Because of this view, he thought we should strive to be liberated from concern for either pleasure or pain. For him, pleasure is to be shunned as it causes us to lose our autonomy.[68] Antisthenes even went so far as to condemn every pleasure as an intrinsic evil because it made us slaves as we become dependent on the objects from which we derive pleasure. This view is most memorably reflected in a striking saying of Antisthenes: “I would rather be insane than to have pleasures.”[69] This view is also reflected in the Cynic self-image that they were fighters against pleasure in order to make their life pure and allow themselves to be liberated from social conventions and the ills which result from these conventions.[70] This may seem strange to us, but it may help in understanding the Cynics to realize that they were taking seriously the attitude Plato expressed in the Phaedo that pain and pleasure nail the soul to the body and so are the chief enemies of a man trying to tend his soul.[71]
Diogenes and other Cynics were able to claim that they could endure the worst tortures and be freed from them by the power of reason.[72] The Cynics say that if someone follows their teachings then “if anyone flogs you or twists you on the rack, you will think that there is nothing painful in it.”[73] It was not just physical pain that the Cynics thought we needed to be free from. For life is filled with so many troubles such as deaths of relatives, loss of money and reputation, that it is too difficult to be consoled for each separate trauma. Instead we should stop caring about anything besides virtue. Thus one should “get a firm hold on the truth that the intelligent man ought not to feel pain about anything whatever and be a free man henceforth. Then there will be a release from dread of all that causes distress. For there is nothing that in itself should cause fear; it is only our false opinion and weakness on our part that makes it so.”[74]
For the Cynics, not only was pain something that should not be feared, it was often something that should be welcomed. Pain should be welcomed so that we could test ourselves against it. Demetrius said, “No one is more unhappy, in my judgement, than a man who has never met with adversity. He has never had the privilege of testing himself.”[75] The most important Cynic, Diogenes, went so far as to say that he deserved people’s praises for being greater than the Olympic athletes. For Diogenes said he was a greater competitor than the Olympic athletes as he was competing against the toughest hardships in order to win happiness and virtue. He spent his time grappling with hunger, cold, thirst “and disclosing no weakness even though he must endure the lash or give his body to be cut or burned …nay he holds them as mere trifles, and while in their very grip the perfect man is often as sportive as boys with their dice and their coloured balls.”[76]
While the Cynics deny that pain is evil at all,[77] many contemporary philosophers would heartily disagree with them. Irwin Goldstein argues: “That in itself every pleasure is good and every pain, broadly conceived, bad, that there are unconditional values and so substantial exceptionless ethical principles, should appear obvious. All moral agents – female and male – implicitly accept this.”[78] Elsewhere the same author says: “That we are justified in calling pain ‘bad’ could not seriously be denied….That pain provides reason or justification for dislike is a factual claim.”[79] Obviously the Cynics do not agree that it is a factual claim that pain has its own intrinsic quality of unpleasantness. What is interesting is that neither do all modern philosophers. Goldstein himself argues that there is no logical necessity that one has to wish to be rid of pain, for there is no self-contradiction in saying that one might want to be in pain.[80] Richard J. Hall goes further and maintains that pain is not necessarily unpleasant.[81] Hall maintains this position because of the extensive research on people with lobotomies who still experience pain, but say that the pain no longer bothers them.[82] Furthermore, there is interesting research on hypnotized patients which seems to show that the informational content of pain is separate from the distress or suffering component of pain. Hypnotized patients commonly report that what we would consider pain does not bother them. Nevertheless, if these same hypnotized people are trained to report on their experience by non-verbal means such as tapping out how much pain they experience, their non-verbal responses show that they indeed do feel pain. Leventhal and Everhart conclude that this shows that for the hypnotized person, the pain is a preconscious experience and the experiment suggested “that the preattentive experience included the sensory component of pain but did not include distress or suffering.”[83]
Hall supports his position that pain is not inherently unpleasant by maintaining that we dislike pain because of the company that it keeps- bodily harm. He says that pain sensations do not have an intrinsic quality of unpleasantness; the dislike is a separate sensation of the pain sensation and the reason for this dislike is that pain sensations quite often accompany reports of bodily damage.[84] So following Hall’s lead, one could say that the Cynics are trying to link pain to a different value: freedom. They think that in conquering pain they are achieving freedom and thus pain comes to be seen as something positive. George Pitcher agrees that the Cynics’ position is possible. For he maintains that Pavlov’s studies show that this phenomenon does happen in animals as animals can be trained to not experience an electric shock as painful.[85] So dogs, who normally react violently when given a strong electric shock, if they are given food immediately after a shock, will eventually not show any signs of pain when they are shocked; instead the dogs will salivate and eagerly await food. This lack of a painful reaction to a formerly painful stimulus continued even after Pavlov increased the intensity of the shock and supplemented the shocks by burning and wounding the dog’s skin. The reason for this response is that the electric shock became a signal that food was on the way.[86] Similarly, for the Cynics pain could be valued as a positive phenomenon because it was a signal that freedom was being achieved.
So there are reasons to think that the Cynics are right and it might be possible to recondition ourselves to not care about pain or to not experience it at all. One of the Cynics’ key claims is that this disregard for pain and pleasure leads to increased freedom and virtue. The Cynics would also seem to be right about this point as we can be more free and virtuous if we are concerned about neither pain nor pleasure. The troublesome point for the Cynics’ position is whether this freedom makes a person happy as the Cynics claim it does. This would seem unlikely from the perspective of those who care about pain and pleasure. Nevertheless, we cannot judge solely from this perspective as that begs the question against the Cynic. For from their perspective, the perspective of the soul, it could be true that a free person is the happiest one. Here it should be pointed out that modern scholarship concerning Jesus and the early Christians maintain that the Cynics were very influential on Jesus and his early followers.[87] The early Christians cared about their soul and not pleasures and pains and they claimed they were very happy or in a state of blessedness that is better than happiness. The Cynics could be right and they might be happier than people who care about pleasure and pain. Nevertheless, the Cynics have nothing they can contribute to current ethical concerns as they scorned and mocked social conventions and ethics and maintained that people could be free only as long as they no longer cared about social values. The Stoic position is much more interesting as they incorporate the spiritual concerns of the Cynics into a highly developed social ethics. So whatever merit the Cynics’ position has, the Stoics have even a better position.
Plato and the Platonists on pain
While the Epicureans and Cynics maintained that the tortured sage will be completely happy and the Aristotelians ridiculed this view, the Platonists were caught in the middle. They were not consistent about their position on this issue and thus vacillated on the importance of external goods for the sage’s happiness. Plato often says that health is a good and that we cannot be happy without it.[88] On the other hand, Plato also maintains that the moral good is the only good.[89] Thus, in one passage Socrates says he cannot tell how happy the king of Persia is because he does not know how good the king is and good men are happy while bad men are miserable.[90] Furthermore in another passage Plato maintains that the wise person’s happiness does not in any way depend on things of chance or fortune.[91]
Plato’s later followers also vacillated between these two positions. Sometimes Plato’s earliest successors in the Academy, Xenocrates and Speusippus, maintained that virtue alone makes a person happy.[92] Other times, however, Xenocrates and Speusippus also said that while the supreme good was virtue, no one could have complete happiness without other goods such as health.[93]
Furthermore, later Platonists often attacked the Epicurean, Cynic and Stoic position by saying that such indifference to pain brought brutishness of the soul and callousness of the body. Crantor says this indifference to pain “‘neither can exist, nor ought to exist; I would choose,’ says he, ‘never to be ill; but should I be so, still I should choose to retain my sensation, whether there was to be an amputation, or any other separation of anything from my body. For that insensibility cannot be but at the expense of some unnatural ferocity of mind, or stupor of body.’”[94] Plutarch continues this attack by saying that this insensibility to pain is attained only at the great price of the soul being brutalized into indifference.[95]
The Platonists make what is a common charge against the Hellenistic philosophers who maintain that the sage will be indifferent to pain. This charge is basically true as it applies to the Cynics. For the Cynics gloried in their attempts to become totally insensible to pain or pleasure and this often was accompanied by insensitivity and brutishness. However, the Stoic sage is not insensible to pain, nor is he brutish, and I will demonstrate this in the next chapter.
Later Platonists revised their view on the happiness of the tortured sage and took a position similar to the Stoics’ position. Antiochus maintains that the sage will still want to be free from pain and in good health as nature made us in such a way as to be concerned about these things.[96] While this position seems like common sense, Antiochus does not mean it that way. For he also says that while the health of the body is something that contributes to our happiness, it contributes so little that this contribution is “so trivial as to be little better than nothing.”[97] Antiochus does not think the external goods like health contribute much to the happy life when compared to the importance of virtue. He expresses this point in an interesting analogy. He says that all the non-virtuous goods like health and freedom from torture “are lost among the rays of virtue like stars in the sunbeams …virtue is so much the most important thing in all human affairs that it throws all the rest into shade.”[98]
Virtue is all that is really important for Antiochus; indeed he maintains that his position is the same as the Stoics’ position except that they use different words to express the same idea.[99] Nevertheless his position is not quite the same as the Stoics’ position. For while the Stoics think all sages are completely and equally happy, Antiochus maintain that the man who is tortured will be happy, but will not be completely or fully happy.[100] His position is that “all wise men are always happy, but still, that it is possible that one man may be more happy than another.”[101] While this means that the tortured sage is not fully happy, Antiochus’ position is still very close to the position of the Stoics, Cynics and Epicurus and one final quote shows this. For Antiochus and his Platonist followers maintain that even if the sage “is tortured and roasted in the bull of Phalaris, happiness will still remain his companion all the same, and no threats or cajoleries will succeed in keeping it away.”[102]
The later Neoplatonist Plotinus deals with this issue quite extensively in the Enneads. He takes a position similar to Antiochus’ while also continuing Plato’s vacillation on this theme. On one hand, Plotinus says that the sage, because he is centered in his soul, is always “cheerful, the order of his life ever untroubled: his state is fixedly happy and nothing whatever of all this known as evil can set it awry.”[103] He supports this point by saying that two sages will be equally happy and it makes no difference at all if one sage has all the commonly welcomed external advantages and the other meets with reverses in the world. They have an equal happiness if they are equally wise.[104] For these “more pleasant conditions cannot, it is true, add any particle towards the sage’s felicity.”[105]
On the other hand, Plotinus also does not maintain the sage is totally happy no matter what the external circumstances may be. So even though Plotinus thinks happiness is centered in the soul, and he also maintains that the presence of health or pleasure adds nothing to our happiness,[106] he does not maintain that having awareness of one’s soul is enough to guarantee total happiness. For he thinks that if the sage is tortured in the bull of Phalaris, it is folly to pretend he will not feel it; instead the sage will cry out in pain.[107]
Plotinus further continues the Platonist vacillation on this issue. For even when the sage is roasting in the bull of Phalaris, Plotinus says that the sage “can never be robbed of the vision of the all-good,” and he will be happy because he is centered in the life of the soul.[108] Even in his pain, “there is always the radiance in the inner soul of the man, untroubled like the light in a lantern when fierce gusts beat about it in a wild turmoil of wind and tempest.”[109] Here Plotinus reminds us that the sage sees things very differently from the average person and so these pains and sorrows do not pierce to the inner hold. Indeed the sage sees things so differently from the average person that the torturing and other blows of misfortune are “little to him, nothing dreadful, nursery terrors.”[110]
The later Platonists have an inadequate position because modern research into pain shows that a person can be completely happy even if he is tortured. Furthermore their position is inadequate for a social ethic because it is based on a dualistic philosophy that often leads to denying the value of this world for the spiritual world. To the extent that later Platonists’ position on the power of virtue to deal with pain is supported by modern research, it is very similar to the Stoics’ position and seems to be derived from their position. As the Stoics more fully elaborate on the way the sage will endure pain and still be happy because of the power of virtue, I will discuss this position more fully in the next chapter when I examine the Stoics’ position.
The Skeptics on pain
Like the Platonists, the Skeptics did not have one clear position on the happiness of the tortured sage; they had two positions on this issue. The first position was that the sage would be totally indifferent to all that happened to him including torture. The second position was that the sage would feel the pain, but it would affect him less than normal people.
The first position is that the founder of Skepticism, Pyrrho, practiced total indifference to all things.[111] Cicero says that Pyrrho maintains “there was literally no difference whatever between being in a most perfect state of health, and in a most terrible condition of disease” as he “insisted upon it that everything was comprised in virtue alone.”[112] Cicero also maintains that Pyrrho believed that only virtue was the chief good and Pyrrho “refuses to allow that there is anything else in the world deserving of being desired.”[113] Diogenes Laertius says that Pyrrho’s total indifference to external things meant that he would not even get out of the way of carts, or help his teacher when his teacher fell into a ditch. Most importantly for our theme, there is a tradition that Pyrrho did not even frown when surgery was performed on him.[114] Furthermore, once when Pyrrho was attacked by a dog and he panicked, and someone chided him for this reaction, Pyrrho replied that while it was difficult to shed one’s humanity, one should strive as much as possible to do that.[115]
While we have no passages that deal directly with Pyrrho’s position on the tortured sage, his general position on this point is clear: as long as one was virtuous, it would make no difference if one was tortured. For according to Pyrrho virtue alone was important and the other things such as bodily health were insignificant. So Pyrrho would have maintained that whether or not the sage was tortured was meaningless in considering his happiness. This view is supported by the story of how his travelling companion, Anaxarchus, supposedly died. Anaxarchus was captured by the tyrant Nicocreon whom he had earlier insulted. After the tyrant captured him, the tyrant placed Anaxarchus in a mortar and ordered him to be pounded to death with iron pestles. Anaxarchus is reported to have made “light of the punishment [and] made that well-known speech, ‘Pound, pound the pouch containing Anaxarchus; ye pound not Anaxarchus.’ And when Nicocreon commanded his tongue to be cut out, they say he bit it off and spat it at him.”[116] The stories of Pyrrho’s and Anaxarchus’ indifference and Cicero’s reporting of Pyrrho’s beliefs lead to the conclusion that one strand of Skepticism would have maintained that whether or not the sage was tortured was irrelevant to her happiness. This conclusion becomes even more plausible after I have discussed Pyrrho’s trip to India. For there he met Indian philosophers who practiced total indifference to pain.
The current pain research cited above shows that it is possible to react indifferently to pain the way that Pyrrho supposedly did. However, there is not enough evidence to know whether Pyrrho really was able to do this and thus we cannot properly evaluate how Pyrrho claims the sage responds to pain. Furthermore, Pyrrho’s total indifference to external things is very similar to the Cynic position and like the Cynic position it is inadequate for a social ethic.
Nevertheless, the idea that the Skeptic was totally indifferent to pain is only one strand of the Skeptic tradition; another strand of Skepticism believes Pyrrho did not practice complete indifference[117] and the later Skeptics do not develop Skepticism along this path. These Skeptics derive their view from the primary Skeptical position that there is no rational basis for choosing between any position because there is as much to be said for one position as for another.[118] For this reason we should suspend judgment on all positions and just follow the appearances that present themselves to us.[119] The later Skeptics think that this suspension of judgment leads to happiness in the same way as the shadow follows the body.[120]
This basic Skeptical position leads them to adopt a much less extreme position than the Cynics or Epicurus concerning how the Skeptic would respond to torture. For the later Skeptics maintain that a person is troubled by things that are a matter of compulsion such as thirst and cold.[121] So a tortured Skeptic would be unhappy while being tortured. Nevertheless, he would not experience the situation in the same way as normal people would experience it. The Skeptics claim that the Skeptic who has to suffer bodily troubles has less pain and aggravation than does the normal person. For while the ordinary person is distressed by two circumstances, the state itself and also the belief that the state he is experiencing is bad, the Skeptic is only troubled by one thing- the experience itself. The Skeptic rejects the additional belief that the painful state itself is bad by nature and thus will have much less anxiety and aggravation.[122] So because the Skeptic is aware that nothing is good or bad by nature, he will not be as unhappy as normal people if he is tortured. Behind the Skeptics’ position is the idea that if you no longer have the belief that something is good or bad, then you care less intensely about things and so are happier.[123]
The trouble with this view is that it seems to entail that the Skeptic is no different than an average person because the appearances he bases his life on function the same way as beliefs do for the dogmatist. For if the Skeptic is no longer living by beliefs, but by appearances, and living according to these appearances is enough to motivate the Skeptic to live a normal life, the question becomes whether it actually makes any practical difference if Skeptic says it only appears to him that something is painful or if he believes it really is painful?[124] At first glance, it would seem to make no real difference and the Skeptics’ appearances are for all intents and purposes normal people’s beliefs. The Skeptic can reply that because he knows that something such as a painful experience is only an appearance and not in reality painful, and he realizes that all appearances are brought about by past training and social conditioning, then he becomes more distant from the appearances and more detached from them.[125] Thus the Skeptic will say that he does not experience as much pain as the average person who also believes pain is really a negative experience.
Annas maintains that the Skeptics’ position leads to a splitting of the self and a detachable commitment that is unlikely to produce happiness when it is directed to serious concerns.[126] For she maintains that we cannot be detached from serious and central commitments in our life such as a job or a marriage without a division between the part of the self committed to the situation and the part that is hanging back regarding the goodness of the situation as only an appearance.[127] McPherran defends the Skeptic by responding that the Skeptics are like the Buddhists in having no doctrine of an underlying permanent self and so each moment is experienced as a tranquil flow of consciousness with no unifying self.[128] Annas responds to McPherran by saying that this is a strange conception of happiness.[129] That is no doubt true, but the tremendous interest in Buddhism shows that this conception is a popular conception throughout the world as well as a growing one in the United States. Annas concludes by saying that the Skeptic and his critics are at a standoff without any way to resolve the matter because the Skeptic cannot give us any real arguments for why he is tranquil and happy beyond saying that is just how the Skeptic experiences the situation.[130] Annas is right in this matter and there seems no way we can continue the debate about the Skeptic and her happiness.
While the Skeptic may be happy in the subjectivist sense of the word, there are problems with their position. First they are not consistent and secondly modern pain research shows there is a better way to deal with pain than they advocate.
The Skeptics’ basic claim is that there is no rational basis for choosing between any position because there is as much to be said for one position as for another.[131] This does not seem to be very convincing as some points of view have a lot more to be said for them than other points of view. In fact, the later Skeptics themselves agree with my criticism. For the later Skeptics maintain that a person is indeed troubled by things that are a matter of compulsion such as thirst and cold.[132] The fact that the Skeptics make the statement that thirst and cold are a matter of compulsion and so the Skeptic is troubled by them must mean that the Skeptics think there is more to be said for this statement than the opposite statement that someone need not be bothered by thirst or cold. So the Skeptics’ position on pain is inconsistent with their own fundamental belief that there is as much to be said for one position as any other. More importantly, modern research maintains that cold, injury or gruesome torture are not necessarily painful and so the Skeptic position that they merely lessen the pain by not saying it is bad by its nature is not the best way of being happy while being tortured.
While the Skeptics claim to be much happier than others because they do not think anything is naturally good or bad and this leads to a tranquil detachment from life, this ability to be detached is also central to the Stoics’ position. For they too maintain that the sage is happy because he is detached from average concerns and is instead only centered on virtue and doing God’s will. In the next chapter I will examine the Stoics’ position in detail.
[1]. Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 119-120.
[2]. Richard Kraut, “Two Conceptions of Happiness,” The Philosophical Review 88 (April 1979): 168-9.
[7]. Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall, The Challenge Of Pain (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 196.
[12]. Ken Dachman and John Lyons, You Can Relieve Pain (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 25.
[16]. Nikola Grahek, “Objective and subjective aspects of pain,” Philosophical Psychology 4 (Spring 1991): 252.
[20]. Peter Fairley, The Conquest of Pain (London: Michael Joseph, 1978), 52. Quoting from Henry Beecher, Annals of Surgery, n.s. 123 (1946): 76.
[21]. Melzack and Wall, 28-29.
[25]. Dachman and Lyons, 27-28.
[26]. Howard Leventhal and Deborah Everhart, “Emotion, Pain, and Physical Illness,” in Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology, ed. Carol Izard (New York: Academic Press, 1970), 269.
[27]. Melzack and Wall, 240-1.
[28]. George Pitcher, “The Awfulness of Pain,” Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 488.
[29]. R. Melzack and P.D. Wall, “Pain Mechanism: A New Theory,” in Brain and Behavior 2: Perception and Action, ed. K. H. Pribram (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969), 149. Quoted in Pitcher, 488.
[31]. Robert Ornstein and David Sobel, The Healing Brain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 95.
[32]. Ornstein and Sobel, 95-7.
[34]. Michael J. Bannon, “Neural Adaption to Unnecessary Pain,” Philosophy 55 (1980): 409.
[35]. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics l153b19-22.
[36]. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1153b17-19.
[37]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.24. Cf. Cicero De Finibus 5.77.
[39]. Cicero Academica 1.33-4.
[40]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.75.
[41]. Julia Annas, “The Hellenistic Version of Aristotle’s Ethics,” Monist 73 (January 1990): 85.
[42]. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1097b20-1 & 1097a31-5.
[43]. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1097b8 & 1097b20-1.
[44]. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1099b24.
[45]. Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers 10.129-130.
[46]. Diogenes Laertius 10.131.
[47]. Cicero De Finibus 1.37-8.
[48]. Epicurus, Vatican Collection of Sayings, 33, in Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), 30.
[49]. Diogenes Laertius 10.118.
[50]. Diogenes Laertius 10.118.
[51]. Cicero De Finibus 5.80. Cf. Plutarch A pleasant life impossible 1088 & 1090.
[52]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.73.
[53]. Seneca Epistles 66.47 & 92.26.
[54]. As quoted in Seneca Epistles 66.18. Cf. Cicero De Finibus 5.80. The Loeb Classic version of Seneca’s Epistles, Vol. 2, p. 19, has a footnote explaining that this is similar to what is maintained in Epicurus, Frag. 601 Usener, and in Cicero, Tuscalan Disputations, ii, 7.17.
[55]. Diogenes Laertius 10.137.
[56]. Diogenes Laertius 10.137.
[57]. Diogenes Laertius 10.144.
[58]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.88.
[59]. Plutarch A Pleasant Life is Impossible 1099d-e.
[60]. Julia Annas, Morality, 350.
[61]. Diogenes Laertius 10.118.
[63]. The Cynic Epistles, edited by Abraham Malherbe, (Missoula: Scholar’s Press, 1977), 55.
[64]. Crates, as quoted in Donald R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (London: Methuen and Co., 1937), 45. According to Dudley the quote is from Hense p. 38, 3.
[65]. Farrand Sayre, “Greek Cynicism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 6 (Ja. 1945): 114.
[66]. Giovanni Reale, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 264.
[70]. Lucian, Philosophies for Sale, in Lucian, The Works of Lucian, Vol. 2, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 465.
[71]. Dudley, 12. Dudley says the passage is at Phaedo 83b.
[72]. Dio Chrysostom, “The Sixteenth Discourse: On Pain and Distress of the Spirit,” in Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, Vol. 2, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978): p. 177. Cf. Lucian, Philosophies for Sale.
[73]. Lucian, Philosophies for Sale, p. 467.
[74]. Dio Chrysostom, “The Sixteenth Discourse: On Pain and Distress of Spirit,” in Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, Vol. 2, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 179.
[75]. Seneca De Providentia 3.3.
[76]. Dio Chrysostom, “Eighth Discourse: Diogenes or on Virtue,” 15-16, in Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, Vol. 2, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 383-5.
[78]. Irwin Goldstein, “Pleasure and Pain: Unconditional, Intrinsic Values,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (Dec. 1989): 257. Italics in the original.
[79]. Irwin Goldstein, “Why People Prefer Pleasure to Pain,” Philosophy 55 (1980): 360-1.
[80]. Irwin Goldstein, “Pain and Masochism,” Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983): 220.
[81]. Richard J. Hall, “Are Pains Necessarily Unpleasant?” Philosophy and Phenomemological Research 49 (June 1989): 643.
[83]. Leventhal & Everhart, 285. Italics in the original.
[87]. See Burton Mack, The Lost Gospel, (San Francisco: Harper, 1993) and F. Gerald Downing, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992).
[88]. Lysis 218e, Gorgias 452a-b & 504c, Republic 357c & Laws 631c. Cf. Plutarch De Stoicorum Repugnantiis 1040d.
[91]. Menexus, 247E as cited in Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.36.
[93]. As cited in Giovanni Reale, History of Ancient Philosophy, Vol.3 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), 77 & 71.
[94]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.12-13.
[95]. Plutarch A Letter to Apollonius 102C-E.
[98]. Cicero De Finibus 5.71-2.
[99]. Cicero De Finibus 5.88-9.
[101]. Cicero De Finibus 5.95.
[102]. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.87.
[103]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.12.
[104]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.15.
[105]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.7.
[106]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.14.
[107]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.13.
[108]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.13-14.
[109]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.8.
[110]. Plotinus Enneads 1.4.8.
[111]. Diogenes Laertius 9.62-63.
[112]. Cicero De Finibus 2.43.
[113]. Cicero De Finibus 4.43.
[114]. Diogenes Laertius 9.67.
[115]. Diogenes Laertius 9.66.
[116]. Diogenes Laertius 9.59.
[117]. Diogenes Laertius 9.62.
[118]. Diogenes Laertius 9.74-75.
[119]. Diogenes Laertius 9.104-5.
[120]. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 12.29.
[121]. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 12.29.
[122]. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 12.30.
[124]. Annas, Morality, 358-9.
[126]. Annas, Morality, 358-9.
[128]. Mark McPherran, “Atarxia and Eudaimonia in Ancient Pyrrhonism: Is the Skeptic Really Happy?” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 5, ed. John Cleary and Daniel Shartin (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), 168-170.
[130]. Annas, Morality, 362-3.
[131]. Diogenes Laertius 9.74-75.
[132]. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 12.29.