Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

380
Keimpe Algra
The translation and interpretation of this fragment, especially of the penultimate
sentence, present us with some problems. 63 On any reading of
the text, Chrysippus must be taken to imply that in the first case mentioned
(the husk example in the good household) there is only what we
might call ‘negligeable negligence’ – a negligence for which no one is to
blame – whereas only in the second case there is reprehensible negligence.
But it is less clear what role is being reserved for demons, and
who exactly is supposed to be ‘reprehensible’. Is it the actor at issue –
and, by implication, in a cosmic context: god? 64 Or is it perhaps the
63 For the sake of the argument I here go along with Plutarch’s apparent view that
the issue Chrysippus is talking about is why bad things happen to good people –
admittedly, something of a ‘stock problem’: see e. g. the extensive discussion in
Seneca’s De providentia. It allows him to pour scorn on Chrysippus’ use of the
husk-example: should we “liken to husks that get lost the accidents to upright
and virtuous men such as were the sentence past upon Socrates and the burning
alive of Pythagoras by the Cyloneans and the torturing to death of Zeno by the
tyrant Demylus and of Antiphon by Dionysius”? However, it is not entirely
clear whether this is what Chrysippus had in mind. Plutarch takes the words
fti sulba_mei tim± to?r jako?r ja·!caho?r toiaOta as implying that good people
may suffer bad things on account of the negligeable negligence of god. But they
could also be taken to mean that it happens to otherwise good people as well to
be negligent in smaller affairs. On this interpretation the question at issue is not
why god has good people suffer bad things, but whether and to what extent god
as well as good people can make small ‘slips’ or be careless in minor details, and
whether they should be blamed for the results. In that case there is no reason to
assume that the kind of minor neglect Chrysippus had in mind did in fact involve
the suffering of good people like Socrates or Antiphon. Note that from
a Stoic perspective such sufferings are in a sense indeed indifferentia, providing
the material for what really counts: a virtous attitude. It is in this sense that
the common Stoic account in Cicero N.D. II, 167 can claim that magna di curant,
parva neglegunt, a claim which in principle might seem to support Plutarch’s
interpretation. Yet, in the same context Cicero’s Stoic spokesman Balbus also
makes it quite clear that this general ‘neglect’ does not imply that the gods either
hate or neglect the individuals concerned. So one wonders whether this
point about indifferentia is not too general to be what Chrysippus had in mind
when talking of the occasional ‘neglect’ illustrated by the husk-example.
64 This is implied by Babut 1969, 291, who translates: “Ou bien est-ce qu’ à ce
genre de tâches sont préposés de mauvais démons, qui seraient à l’origine de
négligences réelles et fâcheuses”, thus suggesting that the intervention of the
demon so to speak triggers the negligence on the part of the good actor. Presumably,
the negligence at issue consists in letting the demons do their work,
and it becomes ‘reprehensibe’ by the very fact that an evil factor is involved
without being countered. Hence the one to blame would seem to be the
actor – and by implication, god. In that case Plutarch would have his contra-