Draft: comments welcome
© Susan Sauvé Meyer
June 2011
Affect and Impulse in the Stoic doctrine of the Passions
One of the most famous doctrines of the Ancient Stoics is that virtue
requires the extirpation of the “passions” (pathe).1 By pathe they have in
mind such things as anger, fear, love, pity, spite, and hate, which they
classify into four genera:2
•
Appetite (epithumia) whose species include anger, yearning, love,
hatred, etc.;
•
Fear (phobos) whose species include anxiety, dread;
•
Delight (hedone) whose species include spite and satisfaction;
•
Distress (lupe) whose species include pity and envy.
It is now widely recognized that the doctrine of apatheia (freedom from
passion) does not advocate a life without emotion or affect, for the Stoics
allow that the wise person will experience certain preliminaries to passions
(instinctive affective responses which, in their view, fall below the cognitive
threshold to be classified as genuine passions),3 as well as three kinds of
1 Cicero, On Moral Ends 3.35; DL 7.117
2 Andronicus, On the Passions; Stobaeus, Eclogae 2.7.10-10d (Wachsmuth (=W)
2.88-92; Pomeroy 1999); Cicero TD 3.22-5, 4.11-22; DL 7.111-116. My citations of
the epitome of stoic ethic in Stobaeus will be by chapter in Wachsmuth (W), and by
page and line number in the 1999 edition of the Epitome by Pomeroy (P).
3 Seneca 2.1.4; Gellius Noctes Atticae 19.1; Cic TD 3.83. While it has been argued
that this doctrine is a development by later Stoic writers (Sorabji 2000, pp. 70-75,
cf. Inwood 1985, pp. 175-81), Graver 2007, pp. 85-108 makes an effective case for
its origins in early Stoicism.
2
“good feelings” (eupatheiai) which are corrected versions of the passions:
instead of appetite (epithumia) the sage will experience “wish” (boulesis),
instead of fear, caution (eulabeia), and instead of delight (hedone), joy
(chara). Thus the category of emotion as we tend to understand it today
includes a wide range of affective phenomena that the Stoics find
unobjectionable (the propatheiai) or even normative (the eupatheiai).
The question this paper addresses is whether all the phenomena
encompassed by these three categories are affective. Setting aside the
propatheiai (where I think the answer is obviously yes), my focus will be on
the psychological category that comprises the pathe and the eupatheiai. My
concern will be to resist a tendency in the scholarly literature to suppose that
only some of the impulses in this category are affective responses, while
others are non-affective behavioral impulses.4
The Stoics define the pathe and eupatheiai as respectively, irrational
(alogon) and reasonable (eulogon) instances of the following four kinds of
psychic motion (kineseis):5
•
•
•
•
Reaching (orexis) in response a prospective apparent good;
Shrinking away (ekklisis) in response to a prospective apparent evil;
Swelling (eparsis)6 in response to a present apparent good;
Contraction (sustole) in response to a present apparent evil.
4 my concern especially is to resist the claim that the latter are necessarily
behavioral impulses, since even those who recognize their affective status (e.g.
Cooper 2005) agree with Inwood 1985 in taking these impulses to be essentially
directed at producing behavior (not just affective response).
5 Arius, ch 10b/ W 2.90/ P 58.17-31; Cicero,Tusc. 4.12-14; DL 7.113; Andronicus,
Peri Path 6 /SVF 3.432; Galen provides evidence that the terminology goes back to
Chrysippus: SVF 3.463
6 alt: diachusis (Plutarch, de Virt. Mor. 449d/ SVF 3.468)
3
It will be convenient in what follows to refer to this quartet of motions as the
four pathetic motions of the soul (‘pathetic’ for the common root of pathe
and eupatheiai). I follow Graver (2007) in taking all four pathetic motions to
be kinds of affective response.7 It is tempting, however, to suppose that it is
only the psychic swellings and contractions that are affective responses,
arising as a result of the success or failure of orexis and ekklisis, which are
more purely behavioral impulses of pursuit and avoidance.8 I myself have
been so tempted, but I think the preponderance of the evidence weighs
against this interpretation.
If one considers the specific types of passions and good feelings that
the Stoics list, it might seem obvious that we are dealing with affective
phenomena that need not be impulses to further action.9 Setting aside the
species in the genera of delight, distress, and joy – whose affective status, as
instances of psychic “contraction” (sustole) and “elation” (eparsis) is not here
in dispute—we may note the species of orexis include the pathe anger,
7 My account here complements Graver’s by identifying the roots of the alternative
interpretation, and displaying its problematic implications in the context of the stoic
theory of impulse.
8 Such a view might appear to be expressed by the Roman Stoic Epictetus (Diss.
3.2.14, which uses the term “pathos” for the contractions and expansions that result
from achieving or frustrating the goals of orexis and ekklisis; but the older Stoics
clearly considered orexeis and ekkliseis to be among the pathe). That only the latter
are affective is articulated explicitly by Inwood 1985: 144-7; criticized by Graver
2007231n38. Others implicitly: e.g. Brennan 1998 who when mentioning the
“affective” side of emotions, invokes only “elations” and “depressions” or “shocks,
bites, frissons, … internal thrilling and chilling….” (p. 30); similarly Lloyd (1978)
writes as if sustole and eparsis alone are affective implicitly, Cooper 2005 by
contrast, emphasizes the affective nature of all four pathetic movements, although
he too adheres to the view, which I shall argue underlies Inwood’s, that orexis and
ekklisis are impulses to bodily behavior, while sustole and eparsis are affective
responses to the success or failure of those endeavors (e.g. 178, 16-7).
9 Brennan 2004: 92 notes the affective connotation of these the species pathos
terms.
4
yearning, love, hatred and the eupathaiai of friendliness or good will
(eumenai); and that the species of psychic ekklisis (“shrinking away”) include
anxiety and dread (both pathe) as well as shame and reverence
(eupatheiai).10
Hate, defined as wishing harm to another (DL 7.113) is not
(or not necessarily) an impulse to bring about such harm. Anger, defined as
an appetite (epithumia) for revenge (ibid), experienced as the seething
(zesis) of “cardiac heat” (SVF 2.878), is clearly affective, but presumably
does not always eventuate in vengeful action. Nor is it unheard of for dread
to paralyze a person, rather than move him to take evasive action, or for
friendly feelings to be unacted upon.
So if the specific kinds of orexis and ekklisis are what we might prephilosophically understand to be essentially affective rather than behavioral,
what might appear to recommend the view (my target in this paper) that
they are primarily behavioral impulses?
Inwood’s case is not explicitly stated, but seems to proceed from the
assumption that (1) psychic “contraction” (sustole) and “elation”
(eparsis/diachusis) capture what we understand as affective responses
(explicitly stated p. 145); and that (2) these motions are not attributed to
cases of the genus pathe “appetite” (epithumia) and fear (pathetic orexis and
ekklisis)11
But this leaves unaddressed the possibility that orexis and
ekklisis themselves are kinds of affect.
10 Andronicus, Peri Path / SVF 3.41, DL 7.115.
11 Inwood 1985: 297 n 85 (cf. 146-155) – although he concedes that Arius’ report
at Stob. Ecl. 2.90 that fear involves the “freshness” (to prosphaton) that we are told,
a page earlier in the same account by Arius, means “stimulative of an irrational
5
It may seem, simply from the names for the four pathetic motions,
that only “contraction” and “expansion” of the soul are affective.12 Indeed,
the other two terms are typically translated ‘desire’ or ‘pursuit’ (for orexis)
and ‘avoidance’ (for ekklisis).13 However, quite literally, orexis means
‘reaching’ (from orego, to reach or stretch out, which has a metaphorical
meaning of “yearning”)14 and ekklisis means ‘leaning away’ (from ek-klino).
Thus there is no linguistic reason against construing as an orexis, or
“reaching” of the soul, my yearning for a walk on the beach, which is not
simply (or even necessarily) an impulse that brings about my perambulation
on the sand. And similarly, linguistic considerations allow me to construe the
soul’s ekklisis (shrinking away from) the expected agony of a scheduled root
canal not as an impulse that keeps me away from the dentist’s office, but
rather a psychological agitation or felt aversion at that prospect.
To be sure, Aristotle uses the term orexis for the genus of which
epithumia and boulesis are species, and, following the Platonic tripartition of
the soul, he construes these orexeis as impulses that (unless impeded) issue
in action or purposive bodily movememt. It is thus not unreasonable to
translate orexis as ‘desire’ in these contexts. But we should be wary of
supposing that this is what the Stoics mean by an orexis of the soul,15 for
contraction or expansion” 2.89.2-3 – does attribute an affective aspect to fear. This
is likely reflecting the influence of a later Stoic, he proposes (n. 85).
12 As noted by Lloyd 1978, eparsis and diachusis/ eparsis are ordinary words for
emotional arousal.
13 e.g. Pomeroy 59. Inwood , Brennan.
14 LSJ sv. II 2 b.
15 As Inwood notes (1985: 113), the Stoics, in their doctrine of impulse, deliberately
redefine familiar Aristotelian terms. Orexis, I would submit is one such term,
6
they are emphatic that orexis is not the genus of the psychic impulses of a
rational agent; rather, they say, it is one species of such impulse.16
Just what species of practical impulse is it? Given the classification of
the pathetic impulses in terms of their objects (apparent good or evil) and by
time (present or future), it is tempting to suppose that the quartet of
pathetic motions constitutes an exhaustive classification of practical impulse
quite generally.17 On principles of theoretical parsimony one might conclude
that the future-directed impulses are behavioral impulses of pursuit and
avoidance (aimed at securing apparent goods and avoiding apparent evils),
and that the present-directed impulses are responsive to the success or
failure of the goal-directed behavior brought about by orexis and ekklisis.
Such an interpretation, however, flies in the face of a proper
understanding of the eupatheiai and the ways in which they differ from the
pathe.18 The pathe (inappropriate reachings, shrinkings, etc.) are directed at
and what the Stoics call “indifferents” (roughly, what we might call worldly
objectives: such things as health, wealth, social standing, preservation of
life, etc. and their opposites). We fear death, rejoice upon recovery from
danger, and are distressed upon falling into poverty. The error inherent in
the pathe, the Stoics teach, is to mistake these natural objects of pursuit and
avoidance for genuine goods and evils. The only genuinely good is virtue19
although Inwood’s analysis (as far as I can tell) takes it to be continuous with
Aristotle’s usage.
16 Arius apud Stob ch 9, Pomeroy 52.32-53.10.
17 Thus Lactantius SVF 3.437; Nussbaum 1994: 399-401; Meyer 2008: 162-5. For
criticism see Brennan 1998; sympathetic view: Cooper 2005.
18 This interpretation is argued forcefully by Graver 2007, also Brennan 1998/2004;.
19 and “not other than virtue” (Sextus) — e.g. virtuous actions).
7
and the only genuinely bad thing is vice.20 These constitute the objects at
which the eupatheiai are directed.21 For example, the sage experiences joy
(chara) at the activities of temperance (a virtue), and is repelled by the
thought of committing injustice.22
On this understanding, an orexis is “irrational, excessive, and contrary
to nature” (i.e. it is a pathos) when it is directed at things other than virtue
(health, wealth, and other worldly objectives). By contrast, it is reasonable
(eulogos) and appropriate (and hence an eupatheia) when it is directed at
virtue (& kindred objects). There is no appropriate version of an orexis that
is directed at health and bodily integrity (for the same reason that no
eupatheia can take health as its object). The sage will pursue health
appropriately, selecting it as the target to aim at, and will pursue it with a
reserved impulse. But this impulse cannot, for the reasons just given, be an
orexis.
Mutatis mutandis, the same argument shows that the appropriate
aversive impulse with which the sage will, for example, take steps to avoid
bodily injury or disease, is not an ekklisis. An appropriate ekklisis has only
vice, not disease or any other worldly objective as its target.23
20 and “not other than vice” (Sextus– e.g. vicious activities).
21 As established decisively by Graver and Brennan (some resistance by Cooper).
Inwood 1985 largely agrees, but slips in construing the eupatheiai as the “simply
the impulse[s] of the fully rational man” (173).
22 Andronicus, Peri Pathon.
23 Cooper 2005, by contrast, argues that the sage’s orexis is directed both at virtue
and (in an appropriately restrained way) at the targeted indifferent. He rightly
points out that a general impulse towards virtue will not suffice to move the body to
action; some specific impulse particular to the circumstances, and hence directed
“toward” the preferred indifferent. I agree with the latter, but take it to point to the
non-orextic selection proposed by Inwood and Brennan. The price, as Cooper points
out (and his interpretation is largely motivated to avoid paying it) is that the sage is
8
Thus it is a mistake, as Inwood himself points out, to suppose that
orexis, ekklisis, eparsis and sustole exhaust the impulses that move us to
action. The reserved impulses with which the sage pursues the preferred
indifferents are not among these motions.24 If then, the latter impulses (AKA
“selections”) are what move us to pursue the preferred indifferents, they
would suffice to account for the external behavior of the sage. Why then
suppose that orexis and ekklisis are also intended to play this behavioral
role?
I suspect the impetus comes from the assumption that the Stoics, in
characterizing orexis as directed at (pros) an apparent good (Arius, ch 10/
Ecl. 2.88), must mean that it is an impulse to secure an apparent good or to
bring about an (apparently good) state of affairs (and, similarly, that ekklisis
is an impulse directed at escaping or avoiding an apparently bad thing).25 So
conceived, orexis and ekklisis would indeed be behavioral impulses. Such a
construal, I will argue, conflates two very different things that may be
construed as the “objects” of impulse, on the Stoic analysis. Once we have
clarified these two senses, by returning to look in more detail at the doctrine
of impulse, it will be overwhelming plausible that orexis and ekklisis are
affective movements of the psyche, rather than impulses to purposive
behaviour.
w/o affect for many of the ordinary objects of human affective response. I think the
Stoics do pay that price. On this, see Kamtekar 2005.
24 Thus Inwood 1985; and more emphatically Brennan 1998 and 2004.
25 Thus Inwood 1985: orexis is a “vehement but natural urge to obtain the good”
(p. 119); and: epithumia and fear “are the pursuit and avoidance respectively of
what is mistakenly thought to be good and bad” (p. 154). Brennan and Cooper also
share this very common undertanding of the relation between orexis and the
apparent good.
9
In the general account of impulse in Arius Didymus’ epitome of Stoic
ethics, we are given the generic account of impulse as “a motion (phora) of
the soul towards something” or (in the case of rational animals) a “motion
(phora) of the mind (dianoia) toward something in the field of action (en to(i)
prattein)”. 26 Thus the passions, introduced as kinds of impulse in chapter 10,
must also be psychic motions “towards something” (epi ti).27 The distinction
between the four generic passions in terms of their orientation to (pros) good
and evil, present and prospective (chapter 10) might seem to indicate what
that something is. We are told (P 56.8-18):
appetite: directed at (pros) an apparent good when it is in prospect.
fear: directed at (pros) an apparent evil when it is in prospect.
delight: results when we get the object of appetite or avoid the object
of fear.
distress: results when we fail to get the object of appetite or fail to
avoid the object of fear.
It is, however, a mistake to conclude that the “objects” that orexis and
ekklisis, for example, are here described (in chapter 10) as “directed at”
(pros + accusative) are the things “towards” which (epi + accusative) they
the general account of impulse (in chapter 9) says they must be.
26 Chapter 9/ Pomeroy 52.31, 54.4-5. The qualification of the domain in the latter
case as “the field of action” (en to(i) prattein) is not as restrictive as it might appear,
since a few lines later (9a/ P 54.20-21) the kind of impulse called “preparation”
(paraskeue) is defined as an action before an action (praxin pro praxeos)
27 That they are motions is also made explicit in Ecl. ch 10: P 56.2 although here
kinesis (a more general term for change) is used instead of the phora (movement) in
the generic defintion of impulse.
10
First of all, the general account of impulse makes it clear that what an
impulse is “towards” (epi + acc) is what seems appropriate (kathekon) to
the agent (ch 9, P 52.31 / W2.86) – and this will be an action or activity, like
walking or burying a treasure.28 These activities are specified by predicates
contained in the propositions to which one assents in generating the impulse:
e.g. the impulse to take a walk, which generates the activity of walking,
consists in assent to a proposition such as “it is appropriate that I take a
walk now” where “walking” is the predicate (ch 9b/ P54.26-32). By contrast,
what seems good to the agent (in the case of a wrongly pathetic impulse) are
the so-called “natural objects of pursuit” or preferred indifferents (e.g.,
health and wealth).29 I may walk in order to maintain my health, in which
case my impulse to walk may be directed at (pros) health (as the apparent
good to be achieved), but what my impulse is towards (epi + acc) in the
generic definition of impulse, is walking.
Indeed every impulse, even ones that move us to “aversive” activity,
is towards (epi + acc) its object in this sense: The “repulsive impulse”
(aphorme) that moves me to run away from a dangerous animal is all the
same, for something, that is, running.30 In such cases we might therefore
say that what impulse is towards in this sense is action or activity (such
28 walking as standard Stoic example of an action: DL 7.98, 109; Stob. Ecl 2.69, 72,
96-7; Seneca Ep. 113.18-19, 23 (citations from Inwood 1985 284n221).
29 for a careful and precise account of the role prpopsitions about the good, and
about the kathekon play in pathetic impulses, see Graver 2007 chapter 2: “The
Pathetic Syllogism”. On the significance of the distinction between the kathekon and
the good, see Vogt 2008.
30 The preferred indifferents stimulate horme (impulse) and the dispreffered
indifferents (e.g. death, disease, poverty) stimulate aphorms (“repulsion”): Arius ch
7c, W 2.82/ P 46.19-25; also:__________.
11
things as talking, running, fighting, chopping, stirring…), whereas what it is
“directed at” is an apparent good. Thus the impulse that is towards (epi)
running (in the former sense) may be “directed at” (pros) self-preservation
as a further “object”.
So far we have a distinction between what an impulse is “towards”
(epi: an action or activity) and what it is “directed at” (pros: an apparent
good or evil).
The latter, in the example we have been considering is a
further goal or telos of intentional activity. Thus we have not ruled out the
possibility that orexis, being pros the apparent good, may be “towards
activity” whose point is to secure an apparent good.
But this cannot be how
we understand the way in which of orexis and ekklisis are pros apparent
goods and evils, respectively (as are told in chapter 10).
Attention to the case of the ekklisis (fear) will make this evident.
What fear is explicitly said to be “directed at” (pros) is an apparent evil.
Thus, if pros introduces the further goal of the action that the impulse is
“towards” (epi), then fear would be an impulse to (epi) behavior that secures
an apparent evil (rather than, as would be the case if fear were an instance
of aphorme, an impulse to behavior that escapes the apparent evil). So the
object toward which (pros) fear is directed, in this case, is not the ultimate
objective of its impulse.
In what sense, then, is fear directed at (pros) an apparent evil? It
seems obvious that the apparent evil is its intentional object, just as the
apparent good is the intentional object of appetite. Thus fear and appetite,
would be structurally analogous to the other two generic passions: distress
12
and delight, which take the presence of those apparent evils and goods as
their intentional objects. E.g. one is distress at losing one’s livelihood, or
delighted at escaping from danger.
(These intentional objects are
introduced with the locution epi + dative in chapter 10b -- P 58.28).
Having secured the result that the apparent goods and evils at which
these pathetic impulses are directed (pros + acc) are their intentional
objects, we may now ask a further question. What are the objects that these
impulses are “towards” (epi) – in the sense in which the impulse to walk is
“towards walking”? Here we may work backward from the clarification in
Chapter 9b that the impulse is “for” (epi + accusative) the predicate in the
proposition assented to, and that the proposition assented to presents an
action as kathekon (ch 9). Add to this the Stoic claim, specifically about the
passionate movements of the soul, that it is the reachings, withdrawings,
expansions, and contractions themselves that we assent to as kathêkon.31
The conclusion this urges upon us is clear: that the impulses in question are
impulses for the psychic motion of stretching, withdrawing, expanding or
contracting, as the case may be.
There is a slight awkwardness here, in that the pathetic impulse,
strictly speaking, must be distinguished from the pathetic motion of orexis,
ekklisis, sustole, etc. that it is “towards” (epi) and thus brings about. Thus
the passions would be characterized by the Stoics both as impulses and as
31 Arius apud Stob. Ecl. ch 10b; P 58.17-31; it might be argued that it is only re
distress and delight that the claim about kathekein is explicitly made (58.28) (thus
Inwood). But it clearly has to be for all four movements, since the argument that all
the passions are in our power and hence that apatheia is possible, depends on the
claim that we assent to them: and assent is to a proposition about the kathekon.
13
motions caused by impulse. But it appears to be a general feature of the
Stoic doctrine of impulse that the distinction between the impulse and the
action it brings about is hard in practice to maintain: for example, walking –
a paradigm Stoic example of activity due to impulse32 — is described as a
movement of the soul (rather than as the movement of the limbs that,
strictly speaking, the psychic impulse sets in motion).33 In any case, as
Inwood notes, Chrysippus himself explicitly makes such a distinction in the
case of one of these motions (distress): distinguishing between the psychic
contraction and the impulse to that contraction.34 In these cases, Inwood
recognizes, the psychic impulse is towards (epi) an “internal” psychic activity
(p. 100).
But in the case of orexis and ekklisis, he (like most other
interpreters), he takes the psychic motion of reaching (orexis) or shrinking
away (ekklisis) to be the impulse, with something else (a bodily movement
directed at obtaining the apparent good) as the activity that it is (epi). That
is, when deciding whether the four pathetic motions of the soul are impulses
(strictly conceived) or activities that arising from impulse, he gives classifies
two of them (orexis and ekklisis) as impulses, and the other two (sustole and
eparsis) as activities arising from impulse. But surely, absent compelling
reason to the contrary, we should give the same answer for all four pathetic
motions. Chrysippus’ evident willingness to allow that some of them are the
32 As in Galen, where walking is distinguished from the impulse that causes it (SVF
3.462).
33 Seneca Epist. 113.23/ LS 53L. The alternative view, that walking is simply the
soul does not make any more room for a distinction between the impulse and the
action it causes that the rival view that it is the motion of the soul. See Inwood
1985: 52-3 on the intimate relation between the action and the impulse that causes
it.
34 SVF 3.466 = Galen PHP 4.7.14; Cited by Inwood 1985 p. 100; translated p. 149
14
results of impulses gives us to suppose that this is how he construes all of
them.
So construed, the four pathetic motions are internal psychic motions
with intentional objects:
•
reaching out of the soul at the prospect of an apparent good
•
shrinking away of the soul at the prospect of an apparent evil
•
expansion of the soul at the presence of an apparent good
•
contraction of the soul at the presence of an apparent evil.
That is, we have here a four-fold classification of affective response.
15
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