Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Stoic souls in Stoic corpses 393
Antiochus maintained the view that the schools of Plato and Aristotle
– his so-called ‘Old Academy’ 6 – had been in near-total agreement
on ethics, and that Stoic philosophy was either stolen from them, where
it was correct, or wrong when it was original. Or sometimes stolen, but
given a specious appearance of originality by pointless neologisms. The
view that Antiochus attributed to the Academics and Peripatetics is that
the good for human beings is a combination of virtue along with moderate
physical advantages, i.e. some minimum of health, wealth, and the
other things the Stoics classify as ‘promoted’ but not good. Virtue is by
far the most important of the goods in the view of Antiochus’ ‘Old
Academy’, and it is necessary for happiness – no one can lead a good
and satisfying life who is not virtuous. This fact alone, Antiochus thinks,
will ensure that a rational agent will always have reason to do what is
virtuous, instead of pursuing some physical advantage in a way contrary
to virtue. But he denied that virtue is sufficient for happiness; crushing
pain or grinding poverty really are bad things that prevent their victims
from being happy, no matter how virtuous they may be. And accordingly,
the goods of the body – food and health, and the wealth that is
instrumental to their provision – really are goods, goods for us.
The Stoic claim that such things make no difference to the agent’s
happiness is not at first sight very plausible, but it is at least bracing
and impressive. It degenerates into a laughable evasion when the Stoics
proceed to say that agents should ‘select’ (eklegesthai) health because it is
‘promoted’ (proÞgmenon) and avoid poverty because it is ‘demoted’ (apoproÞgmenon).
7 Antiochus complains that this relabeling will not change
the agent’s outlook. “Let Zeno show me how I will be better prepared
to despise money if I classify it among the ‘promoteds’ than if I call it a
good, or more courageous in enduring pain if I label it ‘contrary to nature’
than if I call it ‘bad’”. 8
Before introducing his criticisms of the Stoics, Cicero’s Antiochean
spokesman starts by listing some points on which he thinks the Stoics
will agree with him:
6 Cicero uses this term at Fin. 5.7 – 8; Antiochus included in it Plato’s disciples
Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemo and Crantor, as well as Aristotle and his successor
Theophrastus (see 4.3, 5.7).
7 As at e.g. Stobaeus 2.84 – 85 = SVF 3.128 = LS 58E. Long & Sedley translate
these terms as “preferred” and “dispreferred”. Promoted things were thought to
be in agreement with nature, and demoted things contrary to nature.
8 Cic. Fin. 4.72.