Speranza
Ancient Roman Philosophy
Hall of Philosophers
Philosophers
Pliny The Elder
Plotinus
Roman Virtues
Education
A final level of
education was
philosophical study.
The study of philosophy is distinctly Greek, but was
undertaken by many Roman students.
To study philosophy, a student would have to
go to a center of philosophy where philosophers taught, usually abroad in
Greece.
An understanding of a philosophical school of thought could have done
much to add to Cicero's vaunted knowledge of 'that which is great', but could
only be pursued by the very wealthiest of Rome's elite.
Romans regarded
philosophical education as distinctly Greek, and instead focused their efforts
on building schools of law and rhetoric.
The single most important philosophy in Rome was Stoicism, which
originated in Hellenistic Greece.
The contents of the philosophy were
particularly amenable to the Roman world view, especially since the Stoic
insistence on acceptance of all situations, including adverse ones, seemed to
reproduce what the Romans considered their crowning achievement:
"virtus" -- or
"manliness," or "toughness."
The centerpiece of Stoic philosophy was the concept
of the logos.
The universe is ordered by God and this order is the logos , which
means "rational order" or "meaning" of the universe.
After the death of Zeno of Citium, the Stoic school was headed by Cleanthes
and Chrysippus, and its teachings were carried to Rome in 155 by Diogenes of
Babylon. There its tenets were made popu lar by Panaetius, friend of the great
general Scipio Aemilianus, and by Posidonius, who was a friend of Pompey. Cicero drew heavily on the
works of both.
Stoic ideas appear in the greatest work of Roman literature, Vergil's
Aeneid , and later the philosophy was adopted by Seneca (c. 1-65 A.D.),
Lucan (39-65; poet and associate of the Emperor Nero), Epictetus (c. 55-135; see
passages from the
Enchiridion ), and the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius (born 121, Emperor 161-180; author of the
Meditations
). Stoicism is perhaps the most significant philosophical school in
the Roman Empire, and much of our contemporary views and popular mythologies
about Romans are derived from Stoic principles.
This is actually not a philosophical school, but one could generally group a
number of Hellenistic schools under this rubric, including the Second Academy
(Hellenistic Platonists), the Second Sophistic, the Cynics, the Skeptics, and so
on, and, for the most part, the Stoics as well. What is important for our
purposes is that all these schools to some degree or another espoused the idea
that human beings cannot arrive at certain truth about anything (not all denied
certainty was impossible, only that
human beings could never be certain).
Basically, life became this great guessing game: the lot of humanity is to be
cast into a twilight world in which all that we know and think is either false
or occupies some middle position between the false and the true (which was
called the "probable," or "readily believable,"). This comes to dominate thought
in late antiquity. The first philosophical attacks Christianity levels against
the thought of antiquity are refutations of skeptical principles. Of all the
philosophies of antiquity, this is perhaps the most familiar to you: the skeptic
principle of doubting everything became, in the modern era, the fundamental
basis of the scientific method.
Logos is a linguistic term; it refers particularly to the meanings of words.
The meaning of an individual word all by itself is semeion ; the meaning of an
individual word in the context of a sentence is logos. For the Stoic, the
meaning (logos ) of each individual life, action, and situation is determined by
its place in a larger whole, which is, of course, the whole course of history.
In this view, history becomes a kind of speech by God.
It is progressive, it is teleological, it is meaningful (but only when it's
all done: a sentence has no meaning until it's completed). Each and every event,
physical and historical, has a place within this larger rational order or
meaning. Since the order is rational and meaningful, that means nothing happens
which is not part of some larger reason or good (Christianity will adopt this
idea wholesale; check out Boethius' Christianization of this concept).
For the Roman, this larger good came to mean the spread of law across the
face of the planet. This law was to be spread through Roman imperial conquest
and was called the Law of Nations. The grand design for history, then, was the
spread of the Roman Empire and her laws.
Therefore, each and every function a Roman undertook for the state, whether
as a farmer or foot-soldier, a philosopher or emperor, partook of this larger
purpose or meaning of world history. The central values of this complex are
officium, or "duty," which is the responsibility to perform the functions into
which you have been born to the best of your abilities, and pietas, or "respect
for authority." Each station in life has its duties; every situation in life has
duties or obligations incumbent on it.
The primary duty one owes is to the state; since God is using the Roman state
to further law and civilization, performing one's duty is a religious act.
The
principal being to which one owes respect is, of course, God; since God is
working out his will in history by using the Roman state and Roman officials
(derived from officium ), the respect one shows for Roman authorities is also a
respect shown for God and the logos.
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