I'm thinking about the idea of living according to reason at the moment.
In Plato's Republic two lives are compared. On the one hand is the life of Trasymachos. This is a “reason as a slave of impulse"-life. Trasymachos sees desires as given, unchangeable phenomena. The only way to deal with them is to satisfy them - and happiness consists in having them all satisfied.
On the other hand is Socrates’ life of reason. This life is often described as a life where reason first somehow “observes” external facts that are somehow normative and, then, suppresses given preferences and desires that go against that normativity (anger, grief or lust, for example) and endorses virtous motivation - where “virtous” tend to mean simply: “obedient to the external standards announced by reason”.
Obviously, this understanding of the life of reason does not rhyme well with classic, Socratic thinking - according to which there can be no normative standard external to reason itself and, according to which, all motivation of every single human being is based on the individuals quest for eudaimonia.
A much more plausible - much more Socratic - understanding of the life of reason is that the job of reason is to help us understand what it is we are striving for. Because we are the creatures we are and reality is as it is we are born with only a very rudimentary ability to understand who we are and what we are striving for - which means that we makes tons of mistakes and even, potentially, grow even worse at understanding this as we go through life. With reason, however, we have a very good potential of getting better at understanding these things - but it requires determination (and probably also luck in terms of reasonably favorable external conditions).
I’m increasingly convinced that is the latter understanding of the life of reason that Plato wanted to unfold when he wrote Republic - and I’m increasingly convinced that the theory of the tripartite soulis crucial to what Plato is trying to say. So - diving into these questions is what I’m spending my philosophy time on at the moment :-) Stay tuned for more about this here on this blog!
If you feel like diving into these topics I highly recommend Ratchana Kamtekar’s book “Plato’s Moral Psychology” and Anne-Marie Schultz’s book “Plato’s Socrates as Narrator” - in particular chapter 6: “Self-Mastery and Harmony in Plato’s Republic”.
It’s hard to illustrate the life of reason - so here is an Mycenaean amphoroid krater from 1375BC-1300 B.C.E., 32 centimetres in diameter and residing at The British Museum.
Wanted to ask - do we have any historical sources stating that the concept of the four cardinal virtues - Wisdom, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude was important for Stoics? I have read the Meditations and am going through Seneca's letters at the moment. While virtue as such is mentioned a lot, as are the individual cardinal virtues, I have yet to come across all four being mentioned together? Did Stoics think about Virtue in this (Platonic) way?
Hi Jannik,
Wanted to ask - do we have any historical sources stating that the concept of the four cardinal virtues - Wisdom, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude was important for Stoics? I have read the Meditations and am going through Seneca's letters at the moment. While virtue as such is mentioned a lot, as are the individual cardinal virtues, I have yet to come across all four being mentioned together? Did Stoics think about Virtue in this (Platonic) way?
Thank you,
Edgars