1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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2. Cicero, De Finibus, 3.42, 3.50 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 3.42. "Again, can anything be more certain than that on the theory of the school that counts pain as an evil, the Wise Man cannot be happy when he is being tortured on the rack? Whereas the system that considers pain no evil clearly proves that the Wise Man retains his happiness amidst the worst torments. The mere fact that men endure the same pain more easily when they voluntarily undergo it for the sake of their country than when they suffer it for some lesser cause, shows that the intensity of the pain depends on the state of mind of the sufferer, not on its own intrinsic nature. 3.50. But even if we allowed wealth to be essential to the arts, the same argument nevertheless could not be applied to virtue, because virtue (as Diogenes argues) requires a great amount of thought and practice, which is not the case to the same extent with the arts, and because virtue involves life-long steadfastness, strength and consistency, whereas these qualities are not equally manifested in the arts. "Next follows an exposition of the difference between things; for if we maintained that all things were absolutely indifferent, the whole of life would be thrown into confusion, as it is by Aristo, and no function or task could be found for wisdom, since there would be absolutely no distinction between the things that pertain to the conduct of life, and no choice need be exercised among them. Accordingly after conclusively proving that morality alone is good and baseness alone evil, the Stoics went on to affirm that among those things which were of no importance for happiness or misery, there was nevertheless an element of difference, making some of them of positive and others of negative value, and others neutral. |
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3. Cicero, On The Ends of Good And Evil, 1.63, 3.12, 3.42, 3.50, 4.20 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.63. optime vero Epicurus, quod exiguam dixit fortunam intervenire sapienti maximasque ab eo et ab eo et om. R et ( ante gravissimas) om. V gravissimas res consilio ipsius et ratione administrari neque maiorem voluptatem ex infinito tempore aetatis percipi posse, quam ex hoc percipiatur, quod videamus esse finitum. In dialectica autem vestra nullam existimavit esse nec ad melius vivendum nec ad commodius disserendum viam. viam om. R In physicis plurimum posuit. ea scientia et verborum vis et natura orationis et consequentium repugtiumve ratio potest perspici. percipi R omnium autem rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu, non conturbamur ignoratione rerum, e qua ipsa horribiles existunt saepe formidines. denique etiam morati melius erimus, cum didicerimus quid natura desideret. tum vero, si stabilem scientiam rerum tenebimus, servata illa, quae quasi delapsa de caelo est ad cognitionem omnium, regula, ad quam omnia iudicia rerum omnium rerum regula R 1 dirigentur, numquam ullius oratione victi sententia desistemus. 3.12. Quae adhuc, Cato, a te a te B ate E ante dicta sunt, eadem, inquam, dicere posses, si sequerere Pyrrhonem aut Aristonem. nec enim ignoras his his edd. siis A, si BE; is ( post eras. breviss. vocabul., cuius initium cognoscitur, fort. ) R; his (h ab alt. m. in ras. ) N; si is V istud honestum non summum modo, sed etiam, ut tu vis, solum bonum videri. quod si ita est, sequitur id ipsum, quod te velle video, omnes semper beatos esse sapientes. hosne igitur laudas et hanc eorum, inquam, sententiam sequi nos censes oportere? Minime vero istorum quidem, inquit. cum enim virtutis hoc proprium sit, earum rerum, quae quae qui AR secundum naturam sint, habere delectum, qui qui edd. quae (que) omnia sic exaequaverunt, ut in utramque partem ita paria redderent, uti uti edd. ut in nulla selectione uterentur, hi hi Mdv. hy BE huius ANV h (= huius) R virtutem ipsam sustulerunt. 3.42. An vero certius quicquam potest esse quam illorum ratione, illorum ratione Lamb. illo ratione (rōe R) AR illa ratione BEV illa ratio est N qui dolorem in malis ponunt, non posse sapientem beatum esse, cum eculeo equuleo R torqueatur? eorum autem, qui dolorem in malis non habent, ratio certe cogit ut in omnibus ut in omnibus NV uti n oi ibus R uti nominibus ABE tormentis conservetur beata vita beata vitaz ARN vita beata BEV sapienti. etenim si dolores eosdem tolerabilius patiuntur qui excipiunt eos pro patria quam qui leviore leviori BE de causa, opinio facit, non natura, vim doloris aut maiorem aut minorem. 3.50. quod si de artibus concedamus, virtutis tamen non sit eadem ratio, propterea quod haec plurimae commentationis commendationis (comend., cōmend.) ARNV et exercitationis indigeat, quod idem in artibus non sit, et quod virtus stabilitatem, firmitatem, constantiam totius vitae complectatur, nec haec eadem in artibus esse videamus. Deinceps explicatur differentia rerum, quam si non ullam non ullam AV, N 2 (ul ab alt. m. in ras. ), non nullam R non nulla B nonulla E esse diceremus, confunderetur omnis vita, ut ab Aristone, neque ullum sapientiae munus aut opus inveniretur, cum inter res eas, quae ad vitam degendam pertinerent, nihil omnino interesset, neque ullum dilectum adhiberi oporteret. itaque cum esset satis constitutum id solum esse bonum, quod esset esset om. A honestum, et id malum solum, quod turpe, tum inter illa, quae nihil valerent ad beate misereve vivendum, aliquid tamen, quod differret, esse voluerunt, ut essent eorum alia aestimabilia, alia contra, alia neutrum. alia neutrum RNV aliane verum A alia neutrumque BE 4.20. Alia quaedam dicent, credo, magna antiquorum esse peccata, quae ille veri veri ( corr., ut videtur, ex vere) N vere BEV vero R investigandi cupidus nullo modo ferre potuerit. quid enim perversius, quid intolerabilius, quid stultius quam bonam valitudinem, quam dolorum omnium vacuitatem, quam integritatem oculorum reliquorumque sensuum ponere in bonis potius, quam dicerent nihil omnino inter eas res iisque contrarias interesse? ea enim omnia, quae illi bona dicerent, praeposita esse, non bona, itemque illa, quae in corpore excellerent, stulte antiquos dixisse per se esse expetenda; sumenda potius quam expetenda. ea denique omni vita, quae in una virtute virtute una BE consisteret, illam vitam, quae etiam ceteris rebus, quae essent secundum naturam, abundaret, magis expetendam non esse. sed magis sumendam. cumque ipsa virtus efficiat ita beatam vitam, ut beatior esse non possit, tamen quaedam deesse sapientibus tum, cum sint beatissimi; itaque eos id agere, ut a se dolores, morbos, debilitates repellant. | 3.12. "What you have said so far, Cato," I answered, "might equally well be said by a follower of Pyrrho or of Aristo. They, as you are aware, think as you do, that this Moral Worth you speak of is not merely the chief but the only Good; and from this of necessity follows the proposition that I notice you maintain, namely, that the Wise are always happy. Do you then," I asked, "commend these philosophers, and think that we ought to adopt this view of theirs?" "I certainly would not have you adopt their view," he said; "for it is of the essence of virtue to exercise choice among the things in accordance with nature; so that philosophers who make all things absolutely equal, rendering them indistinguishable either as better or worse, and leaving no room for selection among them, have abolished virtue itself. 3.42. "Again, can anything be more certain than that on the theory of the school that counts pain as an evil, the Wise Man cannot be happy when he is being tortured on the rack? Whereas the system that considers pain no evil clearly proves that the Wise Man retains his happiness amidst the worst torments. The mere fact that men endure the same pain more easily when they voluntarily undergo it for the sake of their country than when they suffer it for some lesser cause, shows that the intensity of the pain depends on the state of mind of the sufferer, not on its own intrinsic nature. 3.50. But even if we allowed wealth to be essential to the arts, the same argument nevertheless could not be applied to virtue, because virtue (as Diogenes argues) requires a great amount of thought and practice, which is not the case to the same extent with the arts, and because virtue involves life-long steadfastness, strength and consistency, whereas these qualities are not equally manifested in the arts. "Next follows an exposition of the difference between things; for if we maintained that all things were absolutely indifferent, the whole of life would be thrown into confusion, as it is by Aristo, and no function or task could be found for wisdom, since there would be absolutely no distinction between the things that pertain to the conduct of life, and no choice need be exercised among them. Accordingly after conclusively proving that morality alone is good and baseness alone evil, the Stoics went on to affirm that among those things which were of no importance for happiness or misery, there was nevertheless an element of difference, making some of them of positive and others of negative value, and others neutral. 4.20. As I understand, they will accuse the ancients of certain grave errors in other matters, which that ardent seeker after truth found himself quite unable to tolerate. What, he asked, could have been more insufferably foolish and perverse than to take good health, freedom from all pain, or soundness of eyesight and of the other senses, and class them as goods, instead of saying that there was nothing whatever to choose between these things and their opposites? According to him, all these things which the ancients called good, were not good, but 'preferred'; and so also with bodily excellences, it was foolish of the ancients to call them 'desirable for their own sakes'; they were not 'desirable' but 'worth taking'; and in short, speaking generally, a life bountifully supplied with all the other things in accordance with nature, in addition to virtue, was not 'more desirable,' but only 'more worth taking' than a life of virtue and virtue alone; and although virtue of itself can render life as happy as it is possible for it to be, yet there are some things that Wise Men lack at the very moment of supreme happiness; and accordingly they do their best to protect themselves from pain, disease and infirmity. |
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4. Lucretius Carus, On The Nature of Things, 4.513-4.521 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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5. Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.14, 1.9.11, 1.9.15, 1.22.10, 1.28.28-1.28.30, 1.29.3, 2.1.6-2.1.7, 2.11.20, 2.11.22-2.11.25, 2.18.12, 2.23.30-2.23.35, 3.3.14, 3.3.16, 3.3.19, 3.22.1-3.22.2, 3.24.84-3.24.88, 4.1.83, 4.1.87-4.1.88, 4.1.111-4.1.112, 4.1.153, 4.4.33, 4.5.28, 4.7.5, 4.12.12 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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6. Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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7. Epictetus, Fragments, 4 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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8. New Testament, 1 Corinthians, 7.19 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 7.19. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision isnothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. |
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9. New Testament, Galatians, 3.28, 5.6, 6.15 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 3.28. There is neither Jewnor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither malenor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 5.6. For in Christ Jesusneither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faithworking through love. 6.15. For in Christ Jesus neitheris circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. |
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10. New Testament, Philippians, 3.13 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 3.13. Brothers, I don't regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do. Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before |
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11. New Testament, Romans, 8.18, 8.27-8.31, 8.35-8.39 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 8.18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. 8.27. He who searches the hearts knows what is on the Spirit's mind, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God. 8.28. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. 8.29. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 8.30. Whom he predestined, those he also called. Whom he called, those he also justified. Whom he justified, those he also glorified. 8.31. What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 8.35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 8.36. Even as it is written, "For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 8.37. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 8.38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers 8.39. nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. |
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12. Seneca The Younger, De Clementia, 2.6 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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13. Seneca The Younger, Letters, 89.11 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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14. Galen, On The Doctrines of Hippocrates And Plato, 4.6.5-4.6.6, 5.2.27 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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15. Sextus, Against The Mathematicians, 7.211-7.216, 7.248, 7.426 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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16. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 7.101-7.102, 7.104-7.105, 7.160-7.164, 10.27, 10.32 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 7.101. And they say that only the morally beautiful is good. So Hecato in his treatise On Goods, book iii., and Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautiful. They hold, that is, that virtue and whatever partakes of virtue consists in this: which is equivalent to saying that all that is good is beautiful, or that the term good has equal force with the term beautiful, which comes to the same thing. Since a thing is good, it is beautiful; now it is beautiful, therefore it is good. They hold that all goods are equal and that all good is desirable in the highest degree and admits of no lowering or heightening of intensity. of things that are, some, they say, are good, some are evil, and some neither good nor evil (that is, morally indifferent). 7.102. Goods comprise the virtues of prudence, justice, courage, temperance, and the rest; while the opposites of these are evils, namely, folly, injustice, and the rest. Neutral (neither good nor evil, that is) are all those things which neither benefit nor harm a man: such as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, fair fame and noble birth, and their opposites, death, disease, pain, ugliness, weakness, poverty, ignominy, low birth, and the like. This Hecato affirms in his De fine, book vii., and also Apollodorus in his Ethics, and Chrysippus. For, say they, such things (as life, health, and pleasure) are not in themselves goods, but are morally indifferent, though falling under the species or subdivision things preferred. 7.104. To benefit is to set in motion or sustain in accordance with virtue; whereas to harm is to set in motion or sustain in accordance with vice.The term indifferent has two meanings: in the first it denotes the things which do not contribute either to happiness or to misery, as wealth, fame, health, strength, and the like; for it is possible to be happy without having these, although, if they are used in a certain way, such use of them tends to happiness or misery. In quite another sense those things are said to be indifferent which are without the power of stirring inclination or aversion; e.g. the fact that the number of hairs on one's head is odd or even or whether you hold out your finger straight or bent. But it was not in this sense that the things mentioned above were termed indifferent 7.105. they being quite capable of exciting inclination or aversion. Hence of these latter some are taken by preference, others are rejected, whereas indifference in the other sense affords no ground for either choosing or avoiding.of things indifferent, as they express it, some are preferred, others rejected. Such as have value, they say, are preferred, while such as have negative, instead of positive, value are rejected. Value they define as, first, any contribution to harmonious living, such as attaches to every good; secondly, some faculty or use which indirectly contributes to the life according to nature: which is as much as to say any assistance brought by wealth or health towards living a natural life; thirdly, value is the full equivalent of an appraiser, as fixed by an expert acquainted with the facts – as when it is said that wheat exchanges for so much barley with a mule thrown in. 7.160. 2. ARISTONAriston the Bald, of Chios, who was also called the Siren, declared the end of action to be a life of perfect indifference to everything which is neither virtue nor vice; recognizing no distinction whatever in things indifferent, but treating them all alike. The wise man he compared to a good actor, who, if called upon to take the part of a Thersites or of an Agamemnon, will impersonate them both becomingly. He wished to discard both Logic and Physics, saying that Physics was beyond our reach and Logic did not concern us: all that did concern us was Ethics. 7.161. Dialectical reasonings, he said, are like spiders' webs, which, though they seem to display some artistic workmanship, are yet of no use. He would not admit a plurality of virtues with Zeno, nor again with the Megarians one single virtue called by many names; but he treated virtue in accordance with the category of relative modes. Teaching this sort of philosophy, and lecturing in the Cynosarges, he acquired such influence as to be called the founder of a sect. At any rate Miltiades and Diphilus were denominated Aristoneans. He was a plausible speaker and suited the taste of the general public. Hence Timon's verse about him:One who from wily Ariston's line boasts his descent. 7.162. After meeting Polemo, says Diocles of Magnesia, while Zeno was suffering from a protracted illness, he recanted his views. The Stoic doctrine to which he attached most importance was the wise man's refusal to hold mere opinions. And against this doctrine Persaeus was contending when he induced one of a pair of twins to deposit a certain sum with Ariston and afterwards got the other to reclaim it. Ariston being thus reduced to perplexity was refuted. He was at variance with Arcesilaus; and one day when he saw an abortion in the shape of a bull with a uterus, he said, Alas, here Arcesilaus has had given into his hand an argument against the evidence of the senses. 7.163. When some Academic alleged that he had no certainty of anything, Ariston said, Do you not even see your neighbour sitting by you? and when the other answered No, he rejoined,Who can have blinded you? who robbed you of luminous eyesight?The books attributed to him are as follows:Exhortations, two books.of Zeno's Doctrines.Dialogues.Lectures, six books.Dissertations on Philosophy, seven books.Dissertations on Love.Commonplaces on Vainglory.Notebooks, twenty-five volumes.Memorabilia, three books.Anecdotes, eleven books.Against the Rhetoricians.An Answer to the Counter-pleas of Alexinus.Against the Dialecticians, three books.Letters to Cleanthes, four books.Panaetius and Sosicrates consider the Letters to be alone genuine; all the other works named they attribute to Ariston the Peripatetic. 7.164. The story goes that being bald he had a sunstroke and so came to his end. I have composed a trifling poem upon him in limping iambics as follows:Wherefore, Ariston, when old and bald did you let the sun roast your forehead? Thus seeking warmth more than was reasonable, you lit unwillingly upon the chill reality of Death.There was also another Ariston, a native of Iulis; a third, a musician of Athens; a fourth, a tragic poet; a fifth, of Halae, author of treatises on rhetoric; a sixth, a Peripatetic philosopher of Alexandria. 10.27. hence he has frequently repeated himself and set down the first thought that occurred to him, and in his haste has left things unrevised, and he has so many citations that they alone fill his books: nor is this unexampled in Zeno and Aristotle. Such, then, in number and character are the writings of Epicurus, the best of which are the following:of Nature, thirty-seven books.of Atoms and Void.of Love.Epitome of Objections to the Physicists.Against the Megarians.Problems.Sovran Maxims.of Choice and Avoidance.of the End.of the Standard, a work entitled Canon.Chaeredemus.of the Gods.of Piety. 10.32. Nor is there anything which can refute sensations or convict them of error: one sensation cannot convict another and kindred sensation, for they are equally valid; nor can one sensation refute another which is not kindred but heterogeneous, for the objects which the two senses judge are not the same; nor again can reason refute them, for reason is wholly dependent on sensation; nor can one sense refute another, since we pay equal heed to all. And the reality of separate perceptions guarantees the truth of our senses. But seeing and hearing are just as real as feeling pain. Hence it is from plain facts that we must start when we draw inferences about the unknown. For all our notions are derived from perceptions, either by actual contact or by analogy, or resemblance, or composition, with some slight aid from reasoning. And the objects presented to mad-men and to people in dreams are true, for they produce effects – i.e. movements in the mind – which that which is unreal never does. |
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17. Stobaeus, Eclogues, None
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