(PHILOSOPHY) Chapter 7: The Hellenistic Era

Ethical Doctrines

(How to act in a fated cosmos) Choice is limited to internal attitudes and how we choose to respond or react to the world around us. Zeno: you are like a dog tied to a moving cart. Follow willingly or be dragged. A person's acceptance of a fated universe is part of the comfort of Stoicism. You are not responsible for the station of life you are in, only how you respond to it

Detachment and naturally preferred things

(The key to happiness is readjusting our desires to seek things within our control.) The only thing in our control is our attitude towards things. Attachment to things leads to anxiety when such goods are possessed and anger, jealously, and hostility when such things are not obtained/lost. Strong, passionate emotions should be eliminated as they lead to excessive desires.

eudaimonia

(also known as Eudaemonism) is a Greek word, which refers to a state of having a good indwelling spirit or being in a contented state of being healthy, happy and prosperous. In moral philosophy, eudaimonia is used to refer to the right actions as those that result in the well-being of an individual.

ataraxia

(tranquility) is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state of robust tranquility, characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.

Death is not frightening

All that is good and bad consist of sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience. "When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist."

Happiness/Eudaimonia

Aristotle held that both virtue and certain external goods were necessary for happiness. The Stoics drop the external goods, since such things are not within our control. Hence virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness.

The good is pleasure, but there are two kinds of pleasures

Bodily pleasures andPsychic pleasure

Skepticism as a way of life

By suspending judgment, one can achieve tranquility. Beliefs involve an affirmation to or a denial of something. Such an assent involves a commitment. Commitment involves caring about the thing, e.g., caring about the outcome of a football game. Commitment brings the strong possibility of mental perturbedness. Hence, withholding assent secures unperturbedness.

The three systems that gained the most traction during this time and flourished throughout the Hellenistic Era

Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism.

Stoicism/Epictetus

Ethical Doctrines, Happiness/Eudaimonia, Detachment and naturally preferred things

The evil is easily endured

Evil is pain. "A long-lasting pain is light, a heavy pain brief." When in pain, focus on pleasures, like a friendship.

Naturally preferences

It is all right to welcome those things that our nature naturally seeks, but do not become attached to them.

Bodily state(psychic pleasure)

Painlessness/freedom from pain.

Psychic state(psychic pleasure)

Peace of Mind/freedom from fear.

Epicurus, 341-271

Philosophy is not an end in itself, but a means/instrument to peace of mind/tranquility/ataraxia, not eudaimonia.

Pyrrhonian Skepticism

Pyrrho of Elis, 360-270, founded the school of skepticism. Most of our knowledge of its doctrines derives from Sextus Empiricus, fl. 200ad, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. The Outlines is meant to be a user-friendly handbook of skeptical principles and arguments. (Skepticism as a way of life)(Appearance vs. Reality)

Hedonism

The goal of action is pleasure/hedone but there are important qualifications to this position indicated below.

The gods are not threatening

The gods live in a state of blessedness. Interfering/intervening would be incompatible with blessedness. The gods do not affect one's life one way or the other.

Four-Fold Cure

The good is easily acquired, The evil is easily endured, The gods are not threatening and Death is not frightening

Appearance vs. Reality

The skeptic does not deny the data of sense experience/phenomena. The skeptic withholds assent regarding what might lie behind those appearances. The skeptic does not even assent to the proposition "Skepticism is true," but rather "It seems or appears that skepticism is true."

Hellenistic era

a period in history defined as the time between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of Roman domination. During this time, Greek culture was dominant throughout the Mediterranean, thus the name Hellenistic, which is derived from the Greek "Hellas" which means Greece.

atomism

a theoretical approach that regards something as interpretable through analysis into distinct, separable, and independent elementary components.

stoicism

an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.

Epicureanism

an ancient school of philosophy founded in Athens by Epicurus. The school rejected determinism and advocated hedonism (pleasure as the highest good), but of a restrained kind: mental pleasure was regarded more highly than physical, and the ultimate pleasure was held to be freedom from anxiety and mental pain, especially that arising from needless fear of death and of the gods.

Necessary desires

e.g., food and water, should be satisfied.

Vain (non-natural and non-necessary) desires

e.g., power, fame, wealth, should not be pursued.

Natural but not necessary desires

e.g., sex, should be satisfied, but not at the expense of psychic pleasures.

Appearances

in philosophy, what seems to be (i.e., things as they are for human experience). The concept usually implies an opposition between the perception of a thing and its objective reality

Bodily pleasures

smooth motion of the flesh/sensual pleasures and memories of such pleasures.

hedonism

the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.

Psychic pleasure

the pleasurable states or conditions of a person. These are to be sought more than the kinetic.

Skepticism

the theory that certain knowledge is impossible.