“The Victorians and Ancient Greece” by Richard Jenkyns

Jenkyns is an Oxford fellow, well versed in his ancient Greek and Latin originals, but also British literature and history. The book begins with the initiation of Greek revival architecture in the England of the 18th century following the “rediscovery” of Athens from within the Ottoman domain. Ionic, doric, and corinthian columns soon became the vogue. Many Victorians saw clear lines of descent from Greek democracy and liberty to their pinnacle in Albion. John Stuart Mill even suggested, “that battle of Marathon even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings.” Oscar Wilde recommended skipping from ancient Athens past the next couple thousand years to Victorian England, “whatever…. is modern…. we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is anachronism is due to medievalism.” And it was primarily Greek tragedy and poetry that captivated the hearts of so many Victorian writers. In fact, poets from Byron to Tennyson to Arnold to Shelley despaired in writing their own epics for perfection had already been reached, to be unmatched, by Homer. Roman history, poetry, and literature were viewed as poor copies of the Greek originals (as Virgil and Cicero would have readily acknowledged). Even the Aeneid was poor copy of the Greek master. Gladstone remarked, “Homer walks in the open day, Virgil by lamplight… from Virgil back to Homer is a greater distance, than from Homer back to life.”

The Victorians were also fond of their dichotomies- the rugged, industrious North contrasting with the languid, pleasant South and the aesthetics of Athens contrasting with the spirituality of Jerusalem. However, Victorians also strained to place the Greek tragic dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides into their world as pre-Christians, who either espoused proto-Christian morals or at least presaged the way for the Christian epoch. There was many a Victorian vicar who knew his Prometheus Bound, his Oedipus and his Medea, as well as his New Testament. Cardinal Newman went so far as to suggest, “pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology…. were but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were in a certain sense prophets.” Even in myth, Victorian believers strained for connections. Alford, when thinking of Prometheus, claimed, “this benefactor of human kind…. thus crucified on high- bears he not a dim resemblance to the One other whom we know?” Gladstone compared Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades to the Holy Trinity.

Novels of the period were often interspersed with ancient Greek in their original alphabet. It was a mark of sophistication, but also a common way to denote good breeding in a character. One of George Eliot’s characters declares, “No man is held worthy of the name of scholar who has merely the …. derivative literature of the Latins;…. the Romans themselves…. frankly replenished their urns at the fountainhead.” Victorians were also fond of Greek sculpture, in no small part because of their nakedness. They found in them something safely erotic, but also simple and childlike. S. C. Hall suggested that “French nudes looked as if they had taken their clothes off, Greek ones as if they had never thought of clothes.” But it was Homer and Plato who towered above the rest in the Victorian imagination. On the Albert Memorial it is Homer, not Shakespeare, who is given pride of place. Mathew Arnold claimed, “Homer has not Shakespeare’s variations: Homer always composes as Shakespeare composes at his best.” From radicals like Shaw to Whigs like Macauley to arch-Tories like Carlyle the verdict was the same.

Until the Victorians, Aristotle had commanded the high ground in Oxbridge philosophy. He was clearheaded and rational. However, the Romantics did much to tilt the scales towards Plato and along with him Socrates. When an Italian peasant asked Symonds, “who was Socrates?” He replied, “he was the Jesus Christ of Greece.” Arch-Anglican Thomas Arnold did his best to place Plato in the pantheon of the prophets, “not the wildest extravagance of atheistic wickedness in modern times can go further than the sophists of Greece went…. whatever audacity can dare…. to make the words “good” and “evil” change their meaning, has already been tried in the days of Plato, and by his eloquence…. and faith unshaken, has been put to shame.” Even the agnostic John Stuart Mill suggested, “Christ did not argue about virtue, but commanded it; Plato, when he argues about it, argues for the most part inconclusively, but he resembles Christ in the love which he inspires for it, and in the stern resolution never to swerve from it.” It is not so much Plato’s conclusions, but his method that appealed to questioning Victorians such as Mill. “I have ever felt that the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in, and have endeavored to practice Plato’s mode of investigation, than to those distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions.” Victorians, even as their empire grew abroad to resemble Rome, sought at home to emulate the liberty, democracy, and love of literature and learning they so admired in ancient Greece. 

“The Therapy of Desire” by Martha Nussbaum

Nussbaum compares and contrasts the three schools of Hellenistic philosophy, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and Stoicism, with each other and also with Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies. The “therapy” referred to in the book title is an acknowledgement that all three schools viewed the role of philosophy as helping in the everyday life of the person/patient. As the doctor helps to heal the body, so would philosophy help to heal the mind. “They saw the philosopher as a compassionate physician whose arts could heal many pervasive types of human suffering. They practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual technique dedicated to the display of cleverness but as an immersed and worldly art of grappling with human misery… For all three, philosophy is above all the art of human life… Philosophy is an activity that secures the flourishing [eudaimon] life by arguments and reasonings.” Therefore, philosophy must be achievable and practical for every man, unlike for Aristotle and Plato who viewed it as only the purview of an elite. 

Epicurus believed that “the central cause of human misery is the disturbance produced by the seemingly “boundless” demands of desire, which will not let us have any rest or stable satisfaction.” Life is insatiable. But the one true end for life is pleasure. As Diogenes Laertius recounts Epicurus saying, “as proof for the fact that pleasure is the end, he points to the fact that animals, as soon as they are born, are well contented with pleasure and fight against pain, naturally and apart from discourse. For we flee pain by our very own natural feelings.” Epicurus makes the point that feelings precede any kind of logical reasoning. Cicero reports, “so [Epicurus] denies that there is need for argument [ratione] or dialectical reasoning [disputatione] to show that pleasure is to be pursued and pain avoided. He thinks these things are perceived by the senses [sentire], the way we perceive that fire is hot, that snow is white, that honey is sweet. None of these things needs to be supported by fancy arguments.” The senses are the only things reliable and all error comes from (false) beliefs. As such, Epicurus denies the reliability in the mores and institutions of culture and society. The only truth is in one’s own body. Reason is not an end, but it can be a means. “A tutored use of reason can help the adult to avoid these pains.” The societal ends that he most stresses to avoid are a hope for immortality, money, fame, and luxuries, because these are truly insatiable desires. “Frugal meals deliver a pleasure that is equal to that of an expensive diet, when once all the pain of need is removed; and bread and water give the very summit of pleasure, when a needy person takes them in.” On death he states, “the correct recognition that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding on an infinite time, but by removing the longing for immortality.” Elsewhere he flirts with reincarnation describing the cycle of life, “there is need of matter, so that future generations may grow. They too, having lived out their lives, will follow you. Generations before this perished just like you, and will perish again. Thus one thing will never stop arising from another. Life is nobody’s private property, but is everyone’s to use.” The Epicureans were atomists, they believed every bit of matter could be reduced to atoms at heart and therefore nothing was created or destroyed, but just transformed. Epicurus was also the first western philosopher to deal with the unconscious- that the real desires and problems in life often reside below the surface and deep within the mind. The Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius also suggested being leery of love. ““They believe that a wise man will not fall in love,” Diogenes tells us, “Nor do they believe that love is something sent by the gods.” Epicurus’ definition of eros was, apparently, “An intense desire for intercourse, accompanied by agony and distraction.”” However, later Lucretius tempers this view. He states that, despite the risks of passion, a life worth living is a life shared by another. “Attachment to marriage and the family leads Lucretius to defend as valuable a way of life that does not seem to be the one best suited for individual ataraxia [freedom from distress and worry], since it includes many risks and possibilities for loss and grief.” The Epicurean belief in the gods is complicated. They were certainly opposed to organized religion. “Religious belief is bad, Lucretius persistently argues, because it is superstitious and irrational, built upon false and groundless beliefs about the gods and the soul. It is also bad because it makes people dependent on priests, rather than on their own judgement.” Epicureans looked upon both anger and gratitude as equally bad flipsides to the same coin. They believed in self-sufficiency and both were expressions of outward emotion. “The wise man, the Letter to Herodotus informs us, will avoid being in any condition of weakness or need toward his fellow humans.”

The Skeptics felt that “the disease is not one of false belief; belief itself is the illness- belief as a commitment, a source of concern, care, and vulnerability.” Sextus Empericus defines his own Skepticism as “an ability to set up an opposition of appearances and thoughts, in any way at all, an ability from which we come, through the equal force of the opposing statements and states of affairs, first into suspension, and after that into freedom from disturbance.” The goal is to, no matter the belief, set up oppositions among impressions and beliefs. “The Skeptic does not express objections to natural and necessary bodily pain. What, after all, is the point of having objections to something that we cannot help?… Pain is part of nature; the real disease is the setting oneself up against nature, the theorizing about pain that sooner or later compounds pain.” The Skeptic does not try to change his life, but come to terms with it. “The Skeptic gives up all commitments that take him beyond the way life actually goes; he has no theory that makes him fight the ordinary.” It is better to act without any fixed beliefs. Humans should “go on using their faculties. The world strikes them now this way, now that; they are influenced by their desires, their cognitive activities, even their memories. But they do not bother inquiring into truth or sorting things out.” Skeptics criticized the other philosophies, “to say that one should avoid this as base, but incline to this as nobler, is the way of men who are not undoing disturbance, but are simply changing its position… so that the philosopher’s discourse creates a new disease in place of the old one… not freeing the pupil from pursuit, but only shifting her over to a different pursuit.” It is change without a cure. Life, for Skeptics, is all subjective. “For, strictly speaking, he can have neither a committed view as to what eudaimonia [human flourishing] is, nor a committed causal belief as to what does or does not secure it… Skeptical argument opposes only that which has been asserted and believed- and the Skeptic tells us that he asserts nothing.” The Skeptic’s life is unnatural and he knows it. “Pyrrho talks of “altogether divesting ourselves of the human being”; Sextus describes the Skeptic as a eunuch with respect to rational desires. This is revealing talk: for it concedes, perhaps, that even if what we have left is a part of our natural constitution, what we have cut off or purged away is also a part of what it is to be naturally human.” The traits Skeptics admire are calmness, gentleness, tolerance, and non-conformity.

Stoics believe in individual reason above all else. Reason has not only instrumental, but intrinsic worth. For Seneca the whole point of philosophy is “that you should make yourself better every day.” This is not easy because, as Epictetus relates, the starting point of philosophy is “our awareness of weakness and incapacity in respect of the most important things.” It is, nonetheless, a worthwhile endeavor because, Seneca again, “no one can live happily, or even tolerably, without the study of wisdom.” As such, philosophy is the domain of every man and woman, no matter their birth. “The guiding principle of Stoicism is respect for humanity wherever it is found.” All the evil in the world is due to false beliefs and mistaken impressions, not original sin. Therefore, it is the intent not the action that truly matters. “To become a fully virtuous act, an action must be done as the wise person would do it, with the thoughts and feelings appropriate to virtue… For, like Epicureanism, Stoicism views the soul as a spacious and deep place, a place with many lofty aspirations but also many secrets, a place of both effort and evasion. Much that goes on in it escapes the notice not only of the world at large, not only, even, of the teacher, but also of the person himself… The self must acknowledge itself; only this brings peace and freedom. But this requires assiduous daily litigation, in a darkened room, as the soul, in the absence of external light, turns its vision on itself.” The Stoics consider philosophy by thinking and then by doing it. It is fine to read books and quote others, but unless you are actually practicing philosophy in your daily life you are not making it your own. Seneca declaimed, “I have not sold myself as a slave to anybody; I bear no master’s name. I have much confidence in the judgement of great men, but I claim something for my own judgement also.” Stoicism is fundamentally inward looking. Stoics, too, feel that the wise man must be completely self-sufficient. The only thing important in life is virtue and that is completely unaffected by external contingencies. Wealth and honor, but also courage, justice, and equanimity are worthless in and of themselves. But virtue is not static: it is an internal striving and straining. Where Stoics really differ from the Epicureans is the passions. Stoics wish to remove all passion from life completely. Seneca writes, “it is often asked whether it is better to have moderate passions or none. Our people drive out the passions altogether; the Peripatetics [Aristotelians] moderate them.” Stoics seek to maintain a passive stance towards the outside world to remain unaffected by any external whims. Again, Seneca affirms, “he retreats into himself and lives with himself. [His highest good] seeks no equipment from outside. It is cultivated at home, and is entirely developed from within him. He begins to be the subject of fortune, the minute he looks for some part of himself outdoors.” Life is a continual struggle for this mastery of internal virtue. Seneca explains, “evils that are continuous and prolific require slow patient resistance- not in order that they should cease, but in order that they should fail to conquer.” But there is no excuse for not living a life of virtue. A life which is not lived everyday for the philosophical ideal is not a life worth living. Controversially, Seneca extolls the benefits of suicide as opposed to a compromised life, “do you see that precipice? That way you can descend to liberty. Do you see that sea, that river, that well? Liberty sits there in the depths. Do you see that tree, stunted, blighted, barren? Liberty hangs from its branches. Do you see your throat, your gullet, your heart? They are escape routes from slavery. Are the exits I show you too difficult, requiring too much courage and strength? Do you ask what is the straight road to liberty? Any vein in your body.” Seneca practiced what he preached. After he was implicated in a plot to assassinate his pupil Nero, he slit his own wrists rather than beg for forgiveness.

Epicureanism and Stoicism, particularly, share some features not present in Aristotelian philosophy- preeminent among them that existing desires, intuitions, and preferences are socially formed, but they might not be ideal or reliable to the good life. The Skeptics “see a remarkable fact: that the philosophical pursuit of truth, praised by the Platonist tradition as the most stable and risk-free life of all, is actually not so free from danger- for it makes our good depend on the way reality is outside ourselves, and on the ability of a finite mind to grasp that reality.” All three Hellenistic schools held in common, however, that the student of philosophy was like a medical patient- in need of a cure. Their philosophies were therapeutic and practical- intended to teach a man how to live a better life.