Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Letters to William Molyneux' and 'Letter to Menoeceus'

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4 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
20850 Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / a. Practical reason
1836 Prudence is more valuable than philosophy, because it avoids confusions of the soul [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: The greatest good in avoiding confusion of the soul is prudence [phronesis], on which account prudence is something more valuable than even philosophy.
     From: Epicurus (Letter to Menoeceus [c.291 BCE], 132), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 10.27
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 4. Responsibility for Actions
14061 Our own choices are autonomous, and the basis for praise and blame [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: What occurs by our own agency is autonomous, and it is to this that praise and blame are attached.
     From: Epicurus (Letter to Menoeceus [c.291 BCE], 133)
     A reaction: I don't think this should be understand as an assertion of free will in the modern sense. The 'swerve' of the atoms just means that decisions can arise out of us - not that they are somehow outside of nature.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 5. Action Dilemmas / c. Omissions
20869 The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22
     A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example.