 We're wrapping up Cicero today. Book five of On Moral Ends. First question is, who are the characters and what is the setting of the dialogue? Yeah? Cicero, Marcus, Piso, and then Quinta Cicero and Lucas Cicero and they're talking at the Academy in office. Very good. And for extra credit, you know what the date? The dramatic date of it is supposed to be? 79 B.C. 79 B.C. And where does that stand relative to the dramatic date of the other books? It's a couple decades earlier. Earlier, exactly. Very good. Very excellent reading that you could count those answers easily as positive contribution to the discussion. I'm a little bit worried about all these other people that don't seem to be able to figure out who the basic characters are in dialogues they're reading. I'm wondering when they're reading Shakespeare, do they know when Hamlet's talking? Who's Romeo? Who's Juliet? Because it matters to the interpretation of the play. Let me illustrate that fact with respect to this set of characters and this dramatic setting. So it's a bit jarring, I think, when you think that book five of this work is we're going back in time. Two or three decades earlier than the setting of books one and two and books three and four, which are both around 50 B.C. as opposed to 79 B.C. And what's happening is it's like Cicero's a sort of college student. They're really interested in the Greek system and so forth, as it were. And he's walking around with some of his friends and they're seeing the sites in Athens just like we do today. They're walking by where the Academy used to be, where the Peripatos used to be, where the Garden of Epicurus used to be, where the Stoics used to teach their philosophy and everything. And at this point, it's all in ruins. And that's because of Roman imperialism and warfare has reduced the city to rubble, basically. And so what's happening with this dramatic setup? It seems that Cicero is making a point that now there is not a bunch of Greeks sitting around in these places doing all the philosophy, but it's these international students from Rome that come there and that now it's about Rome. And Roman philosophers are taking the mantle of the Greek philosophers and actually still advancing it and so on in the context of ruins, whereas back in their city in Rome, everything's glorious and so on. So I think that setting is very interesting from the standpoint of specifically Hellenistic philosophy and specifically Roman philosophy. Cicero, as we've seen, is trying to create an identity for Roman philosophy, and that's why he's composed his work in Latin. He's gone to all this trouble to try to translate these difficult Greek scientific and philosophical terms into Latin. And he's got an imperialist attitude about what's happened and the history of it. And what they decide to have a debate about is about the various systems, and they return to the overall theme of the work, which is, what is the highest good and what is the ultimate aim of all of our actions? And they say that people that don't think about this are like people that never bother to plan their lives, or even worse, they in vain plan small parts of their lives, like how to get through this term or this academic year or tell you to get this degree or something, and then you plan a bunch of series of small events in your life and without ever having given thought to what would give any of those meaning, which is what the overall purpose of life is, something still being debated. Now, what shows the synthetic nature of this dramatic setting and these characters and so forth is that the way that they discuss the older philosophical schools exactly conforms to the breakdown and analysis of it that was given in books two and books four. And that's where we basically said there's three kinds of natural attachment to pleasure, freedom from pain, or the primary things in accordance with nature defined as things like health, modicum of wealth, family, living in a good country, things like that. And we saw that there are certain philosophers who say that the end is actual attainment of the natural attachment. So attainment of pleasure is the goal of Aristipus, attainment of freedom of pain is the goal of Heronimus and carnities in academic skeptic is said to defend for the purposes of argument that the goal of life is the actual attainment of primary things in accordance with nature. Now, there are theoretically other views that say that the goal is not actually the attainment of these things, but merely aiming at them. So the Stoics are said to represent a view according to which the goal is to aim at the primary things in accordance with nature in their view virtue, but that the attainment of it, while that is to be selected, if it's available, is not to be sought because we don't care about the results and consequences, what we care about is the intentional state of mind of the person that's making the choices. Why? Because we have an entirely cognitive theory of virtues and vices, emotions and so forth. So all we care about is the kind of cognition that somebody engages in. Now, that is a controversial view of the Stoics, but there doesn't seem to be any analogy to that view in the case of those who make the natural attachment pleasure or freedom from pain. So nobody seems to defend the apparently incoherent position that the goal of life is to aim at getting as much pleasure as you can and it'll be fine even if you fail to get any. Or the goal is freedom from pain and you should intend to attain freedom from pain, but if you don't, if you end up in great pain your whole life, you're still fine because the goal of it is just to aim at it. Those are clearly incoherent views and so nobody actually occupies those positions. Then there are what Cicero calls complex views that combine morality or an interest in virtue with one of the other natural attachments. So Califo is said to combine pleasure and morality or virtue. Deodorus is said to combine morality and freedom from pain. And now we have a position identified with what Cicero calls the old academy and it seems to be the view of one of his teachers, Antiochus, that the goal in life is morality combined with actually attaining the primary things according to nature. Now after Cicero reviews this schematic account the first thing he does is says these views about pleasure and freedom from pain we can basically eliminate because that's not morality and so that can't possibly be the final end and so we can just eliminate those views. There are no holders of these views so we can ignore those. Carnades doesn't actually hold this position and there doesn't really seem to be an advocate of that view. And furthermore in Cicero's language to combine morality with either pleasure or freedom from pain is to defile morality and it's a very sort of unmanly thing to do to have any concern about whether you're in pain or whether you have pleasure when there's these important things about morality. And so with that extremely dismissive comment he eliminates these views and so he has set up a situation where the debate about what the overall highest good and final end and ultimate moral end is comes down to a debate between the Stoics and the so-called old academy and the difference between their views is essentially that the old academy allows the things that like health, wealth, a good political situation, a good family and so forth that those are important to happiness and they are in fact goods and that we need to attain them to realistically say that we're happy whereas the Stoics deny that any of those things are actually good and they deny that we need to actually attain any good thing as opposed to our highest good simply being aiming at it. Now I'll get into further details about it in due course and see what and really try to build up and represent this position of the old academy but he also reiterates his exclusion of several other views including those of Democritus, Pirro, Aristo, Arilis and so forth that he thinks don't really count as candidates for having a strong defensible view here. Okay so let me try to illustrate this position of the old academy and first of all why is it called the old academy? Well because after the Plato founded the academy among the pupils, his pupils in the academy were Aristotle and his cousin Spusippus and Xenocrates and some other people and Aristotle founded his own school called the Peripatetics after Plato died. Spusippus was put in charge of the old academy but started doing philosophy in a very different way than Plato did instead of writing dialogues where there were characters debating about things often ending in aporia or perplexity about the matter such as what is knowledge? What is virtue? What is piety? We started getting elaborate mathematical theories about the good, about ontology, metaphysics these kinds of things and in a way these developments then gave way to a skeptical reaction against them. Why are we building up these big systems instead of maintaining the philosophy of Socrates that merely inquired into these things without taking a position themselves? And so we had the development of a kind of new academy a new skeptical academy associated with carnades where we reject the very possibility of knowledge and we instead rely on probabilistic reasonings to get by but we deny that any knowledge is actually possible. Here taking a position that even other skeptics rejected like Peronian skeptics who say we can't even know whether knowledge is possible or not. So then there was eventually a backlash in this age of Antiochus and so forth against this skeptical orientation of the new academy towards pure skepticism and a backlash that said let's get back to what they thought was an actual old academic system. Now this old academic system included elements of the early successors of play out but also Aristotle's views. And so Aristotle's school, the peripatose gets amalgamated in with this doctrinal or dogmatic account of Platonism and called the old academy. So it essentially represents the essential advancements in the basis of the ethical theorizing have to do with Aristotle's views. Now we have been introduced to Aristotle's views because you read the first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics where he lays out his methodology of ethics and what he takes to be the highest end and the role that he gives to external goods. And I'm gonna review an argument that's contained in there and maybe expand on it a little bit because it'll allow me to show what the essential differences between this so-called old academic position and the stoic one that Cicero is trying to undermine. Now what we do is we start with an analysis of natural things. So of course in this age, everybody's concerned about living in accordance with nature then as of now, the question is, what the hell do you mean by nature? And the answer that Aristotle gives is he starts by saying, okay, well there are certain natural things out there. Plants are natural things, animals are natural things, humans are natural things, gods are also natural things, but we can set those aside for now and ignore them. They are not essential to the moral theory here really. Now when we look at plants, what do we find? Well, how do we define something as being a plant? Well, the first issue is that there seems to be a difference between certain kinds of bodies that are alive and certain kinds of bodies that aren't alive. So it looks like minerals, crystals, elements like earth, air, water, and fire and so forth are not themselves alive but then we see other bodies that we do think are alive, that we call plants. And why do we call them alive? Well, because they have certain capabilities that these lifeless bodies don't have and those capabilities essentially come down to they can use nutrition, that is they can sustain themselves in their parts by taking in energy and nutrients from the environment light, water, minerals from soil, and so forth. And another thing they can do that these lifeless bodies can't is reproduce themselves. So by means of seed or budding or whatever it is, they can create other things of their kind through a process of reproduction. And so those are the most basic, vital capabilities. And we can talk about plants actually having a psyche or a soul that is capable of nutrition or reproduction. And this is why we say they're animate. The term animate just means has literally means has a soul inanimate objects that aren't capable of nutrition and reproduction are inanimate or lifeless, that is without a soul. Yeah. Would something like microbial life would that be on your animals or plants? Well, does microbial life use nutrition? They do. Okay, do they reproduce? They do. Okay, so they're at least plants now are they capable of sensation? Like, do they like feel pain or something? Well, do they have any form of sensation? Can they see, hear, smell, touch, et cetera? No, I don't think so. Okay, well then they would be plants. Would they have self-motion? Well, then they would be animals and they would be able to sense if that's true. And I think the answer, the true answer as somebody in the back is helping about is yes, they can sense. They react to their environment. They go towards temperature gradients and things like that. So they must be able to sense things. But there are plants that will like grow towards the sunlight or something like that. Does that count as sensation? No, that counts as growth, which is a kind of nutrition. That's not self-motion, it's growth. They grow exactly as you just said, they grow in that direction. It's not that they moved themselves like an animal does. Like my cat moves over into the sun. My plant doesn't move over into the sun. It tends to have growth in the direction where there's sunlight because there's more nutrition coming in from that direction. But these are interesting cases and it's part of Aristotle's doctrine that this is actually continuous. That this is a continuous scale and that there are things in between. So there actually are animals, which he insists are animals that are capable of sensation but not self-motion. Like barnacles and things that are rooted to rocks and don't move themselves around in space but nevertheless seem to be able to sense things in their environment. And then there are transitional things between animals and humans. But let me go back to the scale as I was elaborating it because all I've talked about so far is plants. So now, when I talk about animals, I'm giving you other kinds of capabilities that animals have that plants generally, that plants do not have. So any being that is capable of sensation, according to Aristotle, is an animal. And with one or two exceptions, he thinks that a being capable of sensation is also capable of self-motion. He thinks nature would be doing something in vain if it was capable of self-motion but not sensation because then you'd just be running into walls and so forth all the time. You can move yourself around but you can't perceive where you're moving. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But also, if you can sense things and so you can have pleasure and pain or a desire or aversion from something but couldn't move yourself, that would also be problematic. But again, the doctrine of the continuity of natural kinds holds that there are intermediary species that have different capabilities. So I could tell you a good example that'd be like a Venus flytrap. Well, seems like they respond to a sensation of a cloud. Yes, but there isn't really much doubt that there are plants but you might think that because they're not actually self-moving, there is some sort of chemical reaction happening when a fly lands on them or whatever then that causes some change and some series of events that are essentially automatic. It's not like a plant. Every time a fly lands on a Venus flytrap that has sufficient energy, things will close. It doesn't, the Venus flytraps don't decide, do I think I want to do this or something like that. But that is a case, I think that is actually a good example of the transition between them. So we could have a debate about whether those are plants or animals. If we really could find creatures that we thought were turning towards the light, even though they don't move, not merely growing towards them, then again, that would be some sort of transition between plants and animals. And Aristotle, more than anyone else, is interested in those transitional species and goes into enormous detail in his several biological works about them. They are more or less irrelevant to his moral theory, however. So I won't myself go into detail about spontaneously generated organisms and things like that. But the key thing about animals, fairly uncontroversial point is that they're capable of moving themselves around in space and sensing things. And with this ability to sense comes an ability to feel pleasure and pain and hence pursuit and avoidance behavior, avoiding things that cause pain, pursuing things that cause pleasure. Now, animals, these are capabilities definitive of animals, but animals also have these plant-like capabilities. So animals, of course, can also use nutrition and animals, of course, can also reproduce themselves. And in a way, the basic form of all life is plant-like things and then we add various other capabilities on to get the other kinds. So we add to the animal capabilities of sensation and self-motion in the case of humans have this ability to use language, reason, and to attain virtue, but humans are also, of course, capable of both sensation and self-motion because I hate to break it to you, but we're all animals as well. And in fact, according to the theory, we're all actually plants as well because, again, of course, we have the ability to use nutrition and reproduction. Question? Is this, is there a cell referring to, like, I guess in a normal, healthy state or, like, if an animal, or he's referring to a normal, healthy state? So, like, if a human goes to a coma, they still be a human. Right, well, what do we call it when a human is incapable of reasoning using language, sensation, or self-motion? Vegetable? Yeah, well, yes, and less derogatorily, we say a persistent vegetative state or something like that, okay? But why do we do that? Are we just making fun of these people? No, it's because those are the exact capabilities that they still have. Humans in a persistent vegetative state have exactly and only the capabilities that plants have. That is, they can still use nutrition if they're fed, and in theory, they're capable of reproduction, but the main thing is nutrition. Now, and similarly, we could talk about humans becoming like animals if they give up their reason, and they're totally incapable of reasoning. Then they could be living on a level like an animal. Maybe the example somebody else raised before about raised by wolves or whatever could be an example of that. Humans raised by wolves would essentially be animals if they weren't capable of any use of language, any reasoning, any virtue, and so on, yeah. So is that why, I can't remember exactly where, but some of the philosophers were saying that Aristipus and the Serenics lived kind of like animals because they were animals. Yes, exactly, because they focus everything they don't care about reason or virtue, all they care about is animal-like capabilities of sensation and experiencing pleasure and pain. So this is what Aristotle does. When Aristotle's trying to figure out, well, what is the unique function of a human? What is the human end? He says, well, it's not just nutrition and reproduction. So by the way, if you think that the whole point of your life is having children or eating or body-building or something like that, then you're even worse than these Serenics who live like animals. Your sort of highest ideals are plant-like ideals, right? That's really a bad thing, but you could also have merely animal-like ideals of, and this is, what do we call people who are devoted to that kind of life? Party animals, why do we call them animals? Because they're living lives like animals, right? They're interested in food, drink, sex, and the kind of things readily available at parties. And so Aristotle says, I can eliminate those capabilities. Ways of life focused on these capabilities do not give me the way of life appropriate to and specific to being a human. That must be something that uses reason because that's the capability that we uniquely have, okay? But just as, well, okay, was there another question? It was just like likewise, if someone's local is just a traveler on the world and they only have animal animals. Well, yes, but if all they cared about was the traveling, I think when we travel around the world, what we wanna do is actually see spectacles and learn about other cultures and admire their architecture and things like that. But if we're merely traveling around the world to go to parties, then yes, we're back talking about animals. If it's merely the motion and all they're doing is wanting to move, that's kind of like an animal. But I think that travelers have a use of reason, some of them do. Travelers to San Diego, not so much. Travelers who go to Mecca, maybe. Okay, now, here's another thing I wanna point out about this, is that this gives us a completely objective scale of value, okay? So we can go ask a scientist, like a botanist or a biologist, or even a gardener, what is good for a plant, okay? You wouldn't ask me this, like when I try to do gardening, things just wither and die on the vine, okay? But my girlfriend is very good at it and she'll say things like, it needs more light, it needs less water, it needs to be planted in different soil and so forth. And we have scientific explanations and accounts of how all that works. Notice that it's not just, hey, whatever plants think is good for them is what's good for them. No, there's an objective fact of the matter about what's good for them. And it's also not just what I think is good for plants, it's there's a fact related to the structure of nature about what's good for plants. And so when plants are flourishing, throwing out shoots and flowers, fruit to vine and so forth, and we say they're in a good condition, whereas when they're withering and dying on the vine, we say that that's bad for them. Similarly, with respect to animals, animals capable of using their appropriate modes of sensation, capable of moving themselves around in space, we say you're doing well and that those are good things for animals. And then experiencing on balance more pleasure than pain, that's good for the animals. And we can ask people like biologists, zoologists, veterinarians and so on about what's good for the cat or the dog. It's not whatever anybody happens to think it is. Up to some subjective notion of what's good for them, there is an objective fact, according to nature, about what is good for animals. Now by an exactly parallel line of reasoning, we can determine what is objectively good for human beings. And that is a use of reason since that is our unique capability. And it's no different in any of these cases. So it's not just whatever people happen to think is good is what's good or whatever some specific culture thinks is good is good. No, there's a fact about nature that tells us what's good for human beings. Be exactly in parallel with animals and plants since we are again animals and plants. And we have no doubt about the ability to objectively assess it in this case. And we have doubts about it in the human case because of confusion and lack of study of nature. Now, these doing well with respect to your unique capabilities is really a crucial important thing for overall success. And in the case of humans, it's everybody agrees using reason and so forth is crucial for their eudaimonia and happiness. Everyone except Aristophanes and other people that think we can live like animals and plants. But in the Aristotelian view, take a case of animals for example, it's not just if they're capable of sensation and self-motion, they need their plant-like capabilities to function well. So if there's a problem with the animal's ability to use nutrition, like it's not able, if pancreas isn't able to produce enough insulin or something, then that could be a big problem for that animal. And we would say it's not doing well. Or in some cases if it's not capable of reproduction, it's not doing well. And so we need, this is a nested hierarchy of capabilities. Everything higher on the hierarchy has all of the lower capabilities. And the lower capabilities are still important for its flourishing. Similarly, reasons Aristotle, for a human being to be flourishing and successful, it needs also its animal and plant capabilities in a good condition. So if a human has damaged sense organs or is unable to move itself around in space because of paralysis, much less if it's in a persistent vegetative state, I don't think anybody says of somebody in a persistent vegetative state, yes, he's in a persistent vegetative state, but he's still happy. He's still successful as a human being. No, we think that's a big, bad problem, right? And so also if a human has a problem with their ability to use nutrition, again, they can't produce insulin or something like that. And even in cases where there's difficulty with their reproduction, we could say that that detracts from their happiness and overall success. And we do actually think these plant-like and animal-like capabilities are important to our overall estimation of whether they are happy and successful. Yeah. So plants use all of these animal sensations of a human being from what we've had and they can imagine that they use the eggs in themselves of these various species? Yes, yes. So they're tebillating, I guess. What's that? They're tebillating, like they are the... Yeah, they're ends. So these capabilities determine what the ends for each of these are. So plants don't have sensations as an end or use of reasons as an end because they're not capable of that. The ends, what is it with respect to a plant that we say it's a successful thing that's doing well isn't in a good condition? Well, if it's throwing out shoots and flowers fructifying and growing nutrition and reproducing in the way a plant does, then we say that that plant has got its goods and is successful as a member of its kind. And with respect to animals, if they have those plant-like capabilities in good shape and they exercise these specifically animal capabilities, so if my cat is happy and it's running around and it's pursuing imaginary mice and it's enjoying pleasure and so forth, then it's good. If it's not able to do that and so forth and there's a problem that we need to take it to the veterinarian, then we say it's not really reaching its ends. It's not living a good life. There's something wrong. And exactly the same for humans. The beautiful ends. So these are unique ends. And if we're not achieving things related to these, then we're not achieving our highest ends. But these other things are ends for us. So remember, we can have subordinate ends. We can have instrumental ends. And in a way, Aristotle would describe nutrition, reproduction, sensation, and self-motion as instrumental ends towards our overall ultimate end of reason and intellectual activity. So go ahead. The reason and activity are then ends in themselves. Yeah, well, they're final ends. They don't need to be justified by the end. Yeah, we call them final ends. So are these Cicero's more end students? Well, it's not clear what Cicero's position is. And this is the point I need to end on, because I have to do something else. But essentially, the way Cicero characterizes the debate is it comes down to this issue of whether this view is correct that we need these lower level capabilities to be good in order to say that we're successful and happy. Or whether we can say with the Stoics that those lower level things aren't even goods and they aren't crucial to our happiness. All that matters is exercising our reason, so is to live in accordance with nature as we see it and so be successful. And this is why Cicero frequently complains, well, what happened to the rest of nature? And why are you reducing nature just to reason and not and just to what's specific about humans when we clearly do have these other capabilities? And so for him, the debate comes down to the reasonableness of that position. The Stoics have lots of arguments, for example. If you start bringing these things in as goods, then we would be able to say that people are happy that are. Party animals just aren't happy. People in persistent vegetative states, if they have enough of those goods, then they're happy even if they aren't exercising these other ones, or they're exercising them a little. Because once you admit these other things as goods and they can count towards our happiness and something other than virtue can count towards happiness. And then somebody who is perfectly virtuous but lacks these other kinds of goods will be said to be less happy than somebody who's just really successful with respect to these but not the other kinds of ends. Now, that's how Cicero sets up the debate. How does he resolve it? Well, that's a bit of a trick question because it's not clear that he resolves it. As an academic skeptic, essentially what he is aiming to show is that neither of these views are definitive. We don't actually have a resolution of whether we need to count these other objects that the Stoics call indifference, preferred or promoted indifference, whether we should call them goods or not. And so one way to think about the end of the book is that it ends in suspension of judgment and essentially in a skeptical result. Another way to look at it is that academic skepticism, while admitting that we can't know about this, says that we still need to be able to act on the basis of what seems to us to be most true, even if we don't have knowledge about it. And it seems that Cicero thinks that the arguments of the Old Academy and these arguments have been laying out and attributing to Aristotle are actually more persuasive than the Stoic doctrine. He thinks that the Stoics essentially have the same system as Aristotle and the Old Academy, but they've just made some terminological changes about what we can call goods or what we call indifference that nobody believes, nobody agrees with, and don't add anything to the system. And if that's true, then the result is basically that though we can't say we have absolute knowledge about this, we have got probabilistic reasons to think that this is the most likely true story and so we can orient and live our lives according to this Old Academic Aristotelian paratheic conception.