I'm still digging through a pile of material and thought I'd share some of today's finds since this appears to be a mother-lode of truly valuable ideas and perspectives. What is below is from I.G. Kidd's book "Posidonius - The Translation of the Fragments" which is volume III of a set. You see, nearly everything Posidonius wrote is "lost" and the only thing we have are fragments quoted by other authors and, in a couple cases, actually found on 4th century papyri in the near east. So this work to collect all the bits together in one place is like a treasure, even if its only the tip of the iceberg of what the guy wrote. So, I'll post a bit of it now and then.
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In the first place, we know enough about Posidonius’ life to realise that its international range and experience set a stamp on his thought, writing and society. He was born at Apamea on the river Orontes in Syria around 135 BC. But Apamea had a strong Hellenic element of population, and there is no doubt that Posidonius was a Greek.
As a young man he went to Athens for his higher education where, under the tutelage of Panaetius, the Head of the Stoic School of philosophy, he became himself a convinced adherent of that system. This was before 110 BC., when Panaetius died. Posidonius never returned to Syria, although he retained a sharp interest in Middle Eastern affairs. He settled in Rhodes, where he was granted citizenship and taught philosophy. The choice of Rhodes was interesting. Although Athens was still the major university centre, the Headship of the Stoic School there had passed to Mnesarchus, and Posidonius looked elsewhere. Rhodes was attractive, not only as an independent city, commercially prosperous, go-ahead and with easy links of movement in all directions, but because it was welcoming to intellectuals, for it already had a strong reputation particularly for scientific research from men like Hipparchus; and Posidonius from an early period had displayed strong interest in the sciences.
For once settled in Rhodes, he embarked, probably in the nineties, on a prolonged grand tour or tours of the Mediterranean world, in which through observation of people, customs, environment and phenomena he collected by autopsy and first-hand enquiry much material for his later works. He was certainly in southern Spain, where he probed tidal phenomena, natural resources and environmental ethnology. In southern Gaul he found out what he could of the Celts and northern peoples. Italy and Rome, of course, Sicily, Dalmatia and Greece, North Africa and the East all came under his searching eye in their physical, human and historical backgrounds.
After this he appears to have settled down in Rhodes to writing and teaching. But in accord with Stoic principles, he was no recluse or armchair philosopher. In spite of being a newcomer, he was even elected to high magisterial office, the Prytany, which combined presidential and executive functions; and he was chosen for at least one Rhodian embassy to Rome, in the dangerous year (87/86 B.C.) of Marius’ last consulship and terminal illness. In addition, he had become by his writing an international figure, visited not only by pupils and intellectuals, but by the powerful bully-boys of Rome, such as members of great families like the Metelli. General Pompey found time in 66 BC., in his command against the pirates, to sit in on a lecture, and did so again in 62 B.C., when returning from his campaign in the East, dipping in respect his symbol of power before Posidonius’ door, but in return severely treated to a lecture on the subject ‘There is no good but moral good’, which itself gave rise to a famous anecdote in Roman circles. For the old man was suffering severely from gout, and illustrated his theme by apostrophising his offending leg: ‘It’s no good, pain; bothersome you may be, but you will never persuade me that you are an evil.’ Cicero in his late twenties attended a course of lectures, and later when embarking on his own philosophical works, sent for books of ‘the Maestro’, his Professor. He even paid him the supreme compliment of inviting him to write a monograph on his own much-cherished consulate, which Posidonius diplomatically refused. But this is sure evidence for the literary impact of Posidonius’ style, which was vivid, forceful and ornate, and still shines fitfully but pungently through our surviving fragments. He died in his eighties, somewhere around 51 B.C., when Rhodes was reaffirming her treaty with Rome.
This sketched outline of his life shows not only his great reputation and influence during his life, but also that he was concerned with and very much a part of all aspects of his contemporary world. A main characteristic of that world was the attempted reduction of scattered turbulent elements to a whole, integrated Mediterranean world society through the domination of Rome. It may be fortuitous, but it is not unremarkable that the outstanding feature of Posidonius’ philosophy is the attempt to integrate the complete field of the human intellect and the universe in which it finds itself into a rational system for the explanation of and canon for human behaviour.
RANGE OF INTEREST
Indeed, what strikes us immediately from the evidence that survives and is attested for us is the extraordinary range covered by his work. For not only did he write on all aspects of philosophy, but also on astronomy, meteorology, mathematics, mathematical geography, hydrology, seismology, zoology, botany, anthropology and history. These were not incidental observations, but major investigations in their subject. To take two examples from the thirty or so titles of his books to survive (presumably the most popular): On Ocean and the History were major works in geography and historiography. It is crucial for our understanding of Posidonius to decide whether these were simply part of an all-embracing curiosity and gargantuan encyclopedic interest, or in some way an integral part of his philosophical enquiry.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND THE ARTS
The first thing that is clear from Posidonius’ classification of the arts and sciences preserved in Seneca is that philosophy was without question for him the dominant controlling master art. In philosophy itself he followed the tripartition which had been generally adopted from the fourth century B.c. throughout the Hellenistic period into natural philosophy (including metaphysics and theology), logic and moral philosophy. But Posidonius wished to stress that although the parts were distinguishable enquiries, they were inseparable and organically interdependent. To this end he went out of his way to abandon the common Stoic simile for philosophy, where logic was said to be the wall around the orchard protecting the trees of natural philosophy which produced the fruit of ethics. He substituted the image of philosophy as a living creature where natural philosophy was the blood and flesh, logic the bones and sinews, and ethics the soul.
Now this view was particularly relevant to Stoic philosophy, for the Stoic cosmos which it studies was itself regarded as an organic unified being, a material continuum of which human beings are one of the organic parts. Therefore, the human philosophical end of moral behaviour is itself dependent on the enquiry into the whole, and so moral philosophy is organically related to natural philosophy. Furthermore, since this cosmic whole was nothing more than the material universe to whose operation we have access, the physical and behavioural sciences and arts would seem to be in some way relevant.
This relationship of what we would call the arts and sciences to philosophy was in fact debated ground in earlier philosophy. Plato had regarded the sciences, or rather theoretical ones like pure mathematics, merely as a propaedeutic to philosophy. Epicurus, the Cynics and the Sceptics had dismissed them as useless. Aristotle, it is true, had engaged seriously in scientific research, and indeed some subsequent Peripatetics became more involved in separate scientifically-based pursuits than philosophical. And there was a continuing exchange of interest between philosophy and medicine, but often displayed more in paradigm, analogy and simile. The earlier Stoics were curiously ambivalent. Zeno had first rejected the sciences in his early Cynic days when writing his Republic, but later admitted some light to be gained from them. One of his pupils, Ariston of Chios, sneered at those studying them, while Chrysippus, the most famous and influential Stoic, granted that they rendered a service, but seems to have spent no time on them in his voluminous writing, and it is not clear what service he thought they rendered.
To Posidonius the relationship between science and philosophy was a major issue. He was quite clear that the sciences and arts were not a part of philosophy, even although their investigations might cover the same or similar ground. Thus both astronomy and natural philosophy studied celestial phenomena, historiography and moral philosophy studied human behaviour. The crucial difference, as he saw it, lay in that only philosophy could give first and final causes and explanation, which he considered its key function.
Indeed Posidonius pursued aetiology so relentlessly that he became known in antiquity as the Aetiologue. Not, of course, that science did not illustrate causes and offer explanations from observed factual evidence — indeed they could sometimes offer alternative possible explanations — but it was beyond their technological capacity to find ultimate causes or explanation. This was because their prime function was descriptive rather than explanatory, although such description and analysis could clarify immediate cause and effect. As such they are, in fact, for Posidonius the tools of philosophy (thus supplanting the earlier-held function of logic), and indeed necessary tools in working out the natural behaviour of phenomena. So the relationship between philosophy and science is complementary, and the attempt to work this out on such a cosmic scale is the most remarkable contribution of Posidonius. It is infuriating that because of our fractured evidence, and more particularly because of the limited interest and understanding of men like Strabo, who used his more scientific works, but disapproved of his deeper aetiological interests, that we are now lacking demonstration of how Posidonius actually operated on the borderline where for him philosophy and science met, in the limbo-land of hypotheses and the differentiation between different kinds of causes and explanations.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY; THE SCIENCES
Although Posidonius regarded the parts of philosophy as interlocked and interdependent, he recommended for teaching or exposition purposes to begin with natural philosophy. Stoics had different preferences here, Zeno and Chrysippus beginning with logic. But Posidonius’ decision was particularly reasonable for Stoic materialism.
THE BASIC AXIOMS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
The Stoic philosophical system was one of great economy, since everything flows from the initial assumption of the operation of two principles, one active and one passive, throughout a material, defined, cosmic continuum. The active principle is the rational, divine, providential, enforming, individualising, governing cause; the passive is unqualified substance. They are diffused inseparably throughout the whole universe, but at different tensions or levels of power. There is no part without them. Some positions immediately follow:
(a) The world is rationally organised, and so explicable and understandable. The pattern is complete throughout.
(b) Within the organisation different elements and parts are dynamic and governing, others are passive in function.
(c) The world is purposefully providential; so there is also a design as well as a pattern, and the good end is discoverable by the rational understanding of this.
(d) The divine element is completely and only immanent.
(e) As the system is an organic whole, the understanding of any part contributes to the understanding of the whole, and vice versa. Even the operation of any part is relevant to the operation of the whole.
(f) The operational law of cause and effect runs right through the behaviour of phenomena and of living creatures.
(g) The understanding and explanation of its operation lies within, and only within, itself.
Posidonius was completely orthodox in accepting the above fundamental scheme for Stoicism. It did, however, raise problems and criticism with which he became engaged. For example:
THE PRINCIPLES
What was their status in a wholly material world? Since they were defining and enforming forces and the causal operation of the world, in Stoic theory they had to be material, since only matter could act or be acted upon. On the other hand, they were distinguished from elements — fire, air, etc. — which were themselves formed and subject to change, destruction and regeneration. Therefore, the principles were said to be material but themselves without form or quality. But what could unformed matter be, a question already critically raised by Plato, and by Aristotle.
Hitherto, Stoic answers confined their search within a physical category, defined by limit, or affectability, or as a space filler characterised by resistance. Posidonius abandoned such physical explanations and defended on logical grounds: that the principles never ‘exist’ separately, but always co-exist in a particular form and matter. So they can only be distinguished as principles conceptually, although their function is material So again, substance (matter without quality or shape) differs from matter in thought only, being the same in reality. In these new approaches Posidonius was not a heretical Stoic (as he is often taken to be), but a reinterpreter of the fundamental doctrines with new arguments caused by subsequent criticism. Also in this area, he showed an interest in the problem of change within and change to identity, through substantial and qualitative change.
PROBLEMS OF FINITE/INFINITE IN A CONTINUUM
Other problems which exercised Posidonius related to finite/infinite, for example the Stoic view of a finite continuum of a universe surrounded by an infinite void, which was much attacked. Or again, the problem of ‘now’ and ‘time’, much debated by the ancients; that is, the problem of the imposition of a finite limit (‘now’) on an infinite continuum of time. Since limit is a timeless concept and the continuum is continuous and infinitely divisible, he appreciated that there can be no atomic instant or unit of time. So, in the analysis of ‘now’ he distinguished a conceptual limit of before and after which is itself timeless, from ‘now’ in a temporal sense as ‘the least perceptible time’. This is a remarkable anticipation of William ]ames’s ‘specious present’ (Principles of Psychology).
GOD
Another aspect of the active principle important for Posidonius was the rational, governing, providential characteristic nominated divine or god; so theology was truly a form of natural philosophy. Thus, god is not only immanent, but the prime constituent of the material universe. There is nothing without the divine, although it varies in tension from the lowest function of cohesion to the highest of pure rationality. Posidonius defined this all-pervading divine active principle as a triad: god, nature, fate. But this was obviously to clarify the three major aspects of the same thing. ‘God’ described the nature of the governing principle; ‘nature’ defined its field, i.e. the physical continuum of which it is the dominant constituent; and ‘fate’ referred to its law of operation.
DIVINATION
Since there was complete interrelation of all parts in the purposeful operation of the universe through the orderly unfolding of everything that happens, and since the pattern of this was rational, as the active principle is reason, and so in theory comprehensible, Posidonius believed in forms of divination as a species of scientific prediction even, he thought, verifiable by results. As it was possible to predict the future behaviour of phenomena such as tides, or the position of the heavenly bodies from the observation and analysis of the pattern of celestial terrestrial infiuences, so it should be possible to predict future human events from similar patterns and signs. Later writers such as Augustine even attributed a hard form of divination to Posidonius, namely that the stars influence as well as are signs of human events; the evidence for that is negligible.
DETERMINISM AND CAUSATION
As the rational law permeated the whole universe, Posidonius, as other Stoics, was a determinist in the sense of thinking that all events followed an unbroken chain of cause and effect. But since the law was rationally determined, it was (at least theoretically) rationally comprehensible. In other words, we can understand the function of our world and our own part in it by observing the pattern of interrelation through cause and effect.
But since this pattern follows through to immediate phenomena, at this lower end it can be revealed by scientific observation, techniques and analysis. So the pattern of the movement of the heavens could be probed by astronomy, that of the lower atmosphere by meteorology; the pattern of terrestrial phenomena by earth and sea sciences, biology, geography, etc. Hence these subjects engaged Posidonius’ serious attention with some remarkable results. For example, he successfully illuminated the natural pattern of celestial influence on terrestrial phenomena by an astonishingly complete theory of lunar periodicity of tides, which rightly held sway until Newton. The diurnal and monthly cycles were confirmed through his own observations at Gades; his initial mistake of putting annual maxima at the solstices instead of equinoxes was through being misled by Seleucus’ observations in the Indian Ocean.
Or again, his remarkable work On Ocean began with the tracing of our terrestrial geographical zones from the celestial zones fashioned from the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies, and from the diurnal and annual paths of the sun. His famous attempt at measuring the circumference of the earth was based on the difference of elevation of the star Canopus (or Carinae) at two separate places on a north/south meridian of the earth (Rhodes and Alexandria). The proportion of the difference of elevation to the full celestial circle of the ecliptic (1/48 according to the Posidonian figures) is then the same as the measurable distance between the two locations to the complete terrestrial circle of the earth’s meridian. But these calculations (admittedly inaccurate, or at least approximate) offered a method of deriving a scheme of bands of latitude. For from one approximation, 1° of latitude equals 500 stades, an equation in fact later adopted by Ptolemy. These bands of latitude, klimata in Greek, in turn accounted for climatic patterns affecting physical and geographical topography and biological phenomena. And from this, the pattern finally proceeded naturally to human geography and explanatory ethnography. That this book has not survived in its entirety is a major loss. For although it was famous and geographers like Strabo quoted extensively from it, Strabo, for one, did not understand either the full scope or the design of the work.
This may illustrate the importance and seriousness of Posidonius’ numerous scientific works for his philosophical investigations. But in their revelatory descriptions and analyses in plotting the factual map of phenomena, and even in their alternative hypothetical explanations, the sciences were no more than necessary tools. One aspect of this is shown by their method, an inductive inference working back from particular observation. Posidonius certainly did not devalue that, but in his view, cosmic design was imposed rationally from the top down, and so final explanation must follow similar procedure, to give meaning to the pattern partially unveiled or checked from ‘the facts’, from the bottom up. This is illustrated from another part of his philosophy, logic.
LOGIC; MATHEMATICS
The most interesting thing that we know of Posidonius’ logic is that he appears deliberately to have rejected the most commonly held view, at any rate since Aristotle, who was followed by the Epicureans, of its philosophical function as the Organon or tool of philosophy, its defence through the examination of the cogency of arguments. For as we have seen, he abandoned the usual Stoic simile where logic was the defensive wall protecting the orchard of philosophy, and substituted the image of an organic living creature, where logic was the bones and sinews of its movement.
This central and dynamic role shows its importance for Posidonius,‘ but unfortunately the ancients regarded Chrysippus as the Stoic logician, and so few details of Posidonius’ logic have come down to us. But there is enough to show that he placed major emphasis on apodeictic logic, that is, deductive procedure from assured premisses or axioms to valid and true conclusions. So, in his analysis of the logical base of relational syllogisms, which as far as we know he may have been the first to undertake, he argued that their validity depends on the implied force of an axiom, much in the same way as mathematical proof depends on a prior set of self-evident axioms. Thus, syllogisms on equality or mathematical equations depend for their validity on the implied force of ‘things equal to the same thing are equal to each other’ accepted as a self-evident axiom.
This comparison of logic and mathematics gives force and meaning to Posidonius’ great interest in and engagement with mathematics; it was recognised by Galen, who called Posidonius the most scientific of the Stoics because he was trained in mathematics, and because of his stress on apodeictic proof. The methodological link betrays that Posidonius was thinking of mathematics as the sub-science for logic, and the closeness of the link is revealed by the passion of his attack on Zeno of Sidon’s Epicurean mathematics. For what he was attacking there was an empirical methodology of mathematics, whereas he not only supported Euclidean axiomatic geometry, but regarded that as the key pattern for the methodology of his whole philosophy.
This is so because the axiomatic methodology of topdown apodeictic proof is precisely the method of Posidonius’ aetiology or philosophy of explanation, whereby he established conclusions from first causes. In terms of natural philosophy, it is thus the pattern whereby it is possible to unravel the deterministic relationship of cause and effect operative throughout the world. The first premisses or first causes are supplied by natural philosophy, and deductively from these ‘axioms’ are derived the explanation of necessarily true conclusions.
The entanglement of mathematics and natural philosophy went still further with traces of mathematical realism. For he regarded some mathematical limits, such as plane surface, not merely as conceptual but as existing in reality, probably since he saw shape or form as a corporeal containing limit which is the cause of definiteness, limitation and inclusion of that which is contained or limited. Such apodeictic proof also governed the movement of his ethical argument, so it was no exaggeration for Posidonius, the Aetiologue, to claim that logic was indeed the bones and sinews of his whole philosophy. It does turn out that it was for him not only the dynamics of philosophy, but the reflection, embodiment and thus explanation of the top-down operation of the whole material Stoic universe.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY; HISTORIOGRAPHY PSYCHOLOGY
Moral philosophy too is grounded for Posidonius in natural philosophy. This is because it depends on his psychology, and as with other Stoics, philosophy of mind was even classified as a section of natural philosophy. As indeed today in universities, psychology as a discipline is based in Science Faculties, but also of course with important consequent involvement in Faculties of Arts. Also, Stoics stressed that psyche, mind or soul, was itself material. But, in addition, Posidonius stressed that in the Stoic cosmic view the rational mind of human beings was akin to the active principle of the cosmos; not, obviously, at its most pure or strongest tension, but still strong enough to govern the human being on the analogy that his rational mind is the counterpart of, indeed part of the same stuff as the divine active designer of the cosmos. This is what Marcus Aurelius meant by saying (5.27) that it was a fragment of god. Two major consequences follow from this axiomatic premiss:
(a) Determinism and Free Will
The Stoics believed in a rigidly determinist scheme of physical events as cause and effect imposed throughout the cosmos by the design of the active principle. So it follows that human freedom of will depended on the actual conscious participation and share in the determining factor by individuals through their own rationality, and displayed through understanding and self-control.
(b) Moral End and Happiness
Since the cosmic rational principle by Stoic definition is by its very nature providential towards good, human rationality, its counterpart naturally sets the goal and is the criterion for right conduct and moral good. Thus, the end and happiness for humans lie in moral goodness and in that alone, thus fulfilling their part in the cosmic scheme. This is the purest form of the very Greek equation — so marked through the whole history of Greek philosophy — of rationality and goodness.
But all men are not good, despite the possibility offered by the rational principle. Some are actually vicious, but practically everyone is neither good nor bad, but inbetween or a mixture, sometimes good and sometimes bad. How can that be? Clearly because of distorting factors and influences, whether internal, such as emotional disturbance, or external. For internal, Posidonius naturally returned to psychology, and here he differed fundamentally from Chrysippus in what had become orthodox Stoicism. Posidonius, however, claimed that he was returning to explain the earlier crucial doctrines of the founders which Chrysippus had distorted. Chrysippus had argued for a monolithic structure of mind, as a single substance (i.e. not divisible into parts) with a single capacity or faculty, the rational. Therefore, emotions for Chrysippus were a kind of rational judgement, or misjudgement. Posidonius believed that in that case Chrysippus could not explain the occurrence of emotion or passion, how it arose, or how it affected judgement; nor how there could be mental conflict, nor indeed what could be meant by a governing factor or control in mind. And so, while he agreed that the human mind was a single substance, not a combination of parts (as Plato had it), he argued that it had a distinguishable plurality of capacities or faculties depending on how it was qualified or disposed, namely the rational capacity and two irrational capacities of emotion and desire.
He even made use of the famous Platonic metaphor for the soul, of the charioteer of reason driving two horses, but strictly within his own Stoic psychology. This was harking back against Chrysippus to a more Platonic/Aristotelian psychology; and for all we know, and Posidonius certainly implied this, the founders of Stoicism may not have disagreed. But our reporters make clear that Posidonius’ psychology was distinctively Stoic in his view of the interplay and interrelationship of status and function of these rational and irrational affinities (oikeiosis, a Stoic technical term).
From this psychology, Posidonius recognised in human beings three natural affinities related to each of the aspects of mind: pleasure through the desiring factor, power from the passionate factor, and the morally good as the natural goal of the rational factor. And he criticised Epicurus for recognising only the first, and Chrysippus for recognising only the last. To do so, he said, was to be blind to facts from the observation of human behaviour from children onwards.
But the three affinities, although all natural, were by no means in the same ethical value category. Indeed, only one, the end of the rational value, had absolute value; as he put it: ‘Some people are deceived into thinking that what belong to the irrational powers of the soul as natural goals, are natural goals without qualification; what they don’t know is that pleasure and power over one’s neighbour are goals of the animal aspect of our soul, while wisdom and all that is good and moral together are the goals of the rational and divine aspect’ .
It has been widely believed that Posidonius, unorthodoxly for a Stoic, elevated so-called external and physical goods, such as wealth and health, to a status of moral value. But this is disproved both by Seneca and by his own psychology. He denied them the category of ‘good’, although natural, and they remained firmly in the Stoic class of intermediate relative preference in choice, but of moral indifference.’ So Posidonius’ psychology is distinguished by the combination of and yet complete distinction between absolute and relative in value, that is, reserving ‘good’ only for what was choiceworthy without qualification, and yet not rejecting relative ‘natural’ worth; and also by control through the function of governing and governed in moral behaviour. So the end for human behaviour is not to achieve or amass physical or external advantages, but the mental control of moral action as defined by the rational understanding of the human constitution and of the cosmic design as related to humans. Only moral good — the object of rationality — was good (i.e. without qualification); the goals of the irrational factors, although natural, were only to be ‘preferred’ in a qualified way and when directed by the rational moral judgement. Also, since ‘good’ was absolute, the criterion of goodness did not lie in results which could be deflected beyond the agent’s control, but only in the correct moral choice of action, or intention, which was in the control and power of his governing moral faculty — reason — and that alone.
By this new psychology Posidonius could both distinguish and yet integrate the Stoic rational moral philosophy of absolute value and their ‘intermediate’ or preparatory philosophy of ‘appropriate acts’ based on ‘what is according to nature’. Earlier critics of the Stoics had objected that there was a misfit between the two, and that the intermediate criteria of these initial natural affinities of childhood and immaturity seemed to be abandoned across the chasm of rational absolutism; some Stoics like Antipater were starting to introduce them into definitions of the end. Posidonius cut through that dilemma by confining the end uncompromisingly to the understanding and aetiology of the rational. But through his enlarged scheme of natural affinities he claimed that he could now explain moral mistakes and deviations.
PHILOSOPHY OF EMOTION
The key to this, he claimed, lay in the philosophy of emotions, which was at the centre of his moral philosophy and which he expounded in an important work, On Emotions, of which a good deal has come down to us through Galen. At the beginning of Bk 1 he wrote, ‘I believe that the examination of things good and evil, and that of ends, and that of virtues, all depends on the correct examination of emotions’. Elsewhere he elaborated: ‘All the doctrines of ethical philosophy are bound as if by a single cord to the knowledge of the powers of the soul . . . Once the cause of the emotions was seen, it broke the absurdity (of the Chrysippean explanation of the End), showed the sources of distortion in choice and avoidance (of good and evil), distinguished the methods of training, and made clear the problems concerning the impulse that rises from emotions’.
Basically, he explained a moral ‘mistake’ thus: in cases where a person was inadequately educated either in rational understanding or in his life habits, giving more rein to his irrational natural aspects of mind to overrate the objects of emotions and desires, then such false beliefs that these objects are proper without qualification trigger an impulse to become overbearing (the Stoic definition of passion), which in turn through its ‘emotional pull’ (a phrase coined by Posidonius) could demand assent to it and so distort his rational decision to a particular act by overriding his moral reason.
This led to a fundamental difference from Chrysippean Stoicism in the cause of evil or immorality. For as Chrysippus’ psychology was solely rational, regarding passion and desire as mistaken judgement, it was difficult to see where the corruption of reason could come from, since reason in itself could not corrupt itself, nor, as Posidonius put it, overstep its own limits to create an ‘overbearing’ or ‘excessive impulse’ or emotion. So Chrysippus had argued that sources of corruption could only be external through the magnitude of external impressions or forces. On the contrary, Posidonius insisted that the ‘root’ of evil or vicious action is internal, the ‘seed’ lying in the natural pathology of our own minds. He does not, of course, deny that the seed can be activated by external forces, but these are subordinate causes; the principal cause of right and wrong lies within our own minds and is our own responsibility. Each person alone is responsible for his or her own moraljudgements and decisions.
PRACTICAL ETHICS, MORAL EDUCATION AND THERAPEUTICS
Posidonius’ views on these now follow from this psychology. Traditionally, Stoicism seemed to offer two philosophies:
(a) the ideal, purely rational logos training of metaphysical and natural philosophy analysing the necessary conditions and functions of the perfect wise man, infallible in judgement and of unassailable happiness;
(b) an intermediate preparatory training by moral rules prescribing ‘appropriate acts’ (kathekonta) based on ‘what is natural’ (kata physin), directed to the ordinary man (phaulos) or ‘progressor’ (pro/topton) in philosophy.
As has been said, critics tended to stress the gap between them and to question their relationship. Posidonius did not, of course, relinquish the ideal goal or portrait of the wise man, which after all was the explanation of all else, but he certainly concentrated for practical purposes on the ordinary man, for whom he insisted both philosophies had to be practised. For he objected to Chrysippus’ medical analogy of health for the wise man, and sickness for the ordinary man.‘ He pointed out that there could be no physical condition of unassailable and timeless health for any human, wise or not; so that part of the analogy confused the facts. Rather, the ordinary man was both healthy and sick; healthy, although certainly ‘prone to sickness’ (another mot coined by Posidonius), when making right decisions, sick when making wrong ones. So, both philosophies and trainings were necessary for him (F163EK), the one directed to his rational mind, the other to his mental pathology of irrational emotive aspects.
(a) The rational aspect could be trained when he was sane, to understand that he should ‘follow in everything the daimon in oneself (i.e. reason) which is akin and has a similar nature to the one which governs the whole universe, and not deviate and be swept along with what is worse and beast-like’ (i.e. our irrational aspects). This is the task of natural philosophy and logic, because the end is ‘to live contemplating the truth and order of all things together and helping in promoting it as far as possible, in no way being led by the irrational part of the soul’. The aim is the understanding of the structure and operation of the cosmos and our positive function in it, and from this to recognise our rationality, not our ‘emotional pulls’, as our directing force. The understanding, with the help of logic’s bones and sinews, leads to explanation, or aetiology in action, through the pattern of cause and effect from the design in moral action. So Posidonius on the moral ‘indifference’ of health and wealth, did not rely solely on orthodox arguments on ‘natural’ values or ‘preferences’; he concentrated on their effect and function in moral psychology, and argued that such physical and external advantages were revealed as merely antecedent causes in the moral pattern, never as principal cause, which was our moral rationality only.'
(b) However, when the ordinary man is morally sick through overbearing ‘emotional pulls’, different methods must be adopted, because Posidonius argued pertinently that irrational states did not respond easily to rational argument; non-rational methods must be used. Typically, he argued this from observation of factual behaviour in children and adults. He noted, for example, the irrational power of vivid mental pictures or imagination. Thus, a person under the influence of heroin will not be persuaded to quit by rational arguments that he is likely to die, but will be emotionally motivated to stop by a vivid mental picture of someone, or himself, dying.
Also he observed that emotions, unlike logical and mathematical axioms, rise and abate in time; therefore, the irrational training of habituation is most appropriate, so that once the excessive passion is tired out or sated, one can gain control of the runaway horse.
So too he thought that there were observed links of emotional movements following physical states of physiognomy, or environment, which merit their own treatment. What is in question here is the therapeutics of mental pathology, and it is notable that the Greek for disease and excessive emotion or passion is the same (pathos): excessive emotion, because it deserves noting against the modern vulgate, that no Stoic, and certainly not Posidonius, sought to eradicate emotions entirely, which the ideal man experienced, and were indeed stressed by Posidonius as an observable and necessary part of our natural mental constitution. Of course, in addition to such training, external moral rules must be imposed, since the patient is unable to apply his own rules of principle or categorical imperatives. Seneca made clear that Posidonius elaborated a whole category of admonitory ethics including different methods of persuasion, exhortation and descriptive exempla.
THE HISTORY
In a sense, Posidonius’ great History may have been intended partly to supply such an exemplary function, as Plutarch’s Lives more obviously and directly were intended as moral patterns. But the History is much more complex, and serves as the sub-science or tool for Posidonius’ moral philosophy. In On Emotions, Posidonius criticised Chrysippus on three grounds: respect for the facts, understanding sprung from explanation of the causes of phenomena, and consistency derived from deductive proof. All three were prime rules for Posidonius’ own philosophy, and the History helped to supply evidence for the first two as a descriptive collection of the actual behaviour of persons, societies and nations to each other and in reaction to their environment, with an attempt at an analysis of historical cause in the resulting pattern.
The History itself was a major work in its own field, much used and quoted by subsequent writers, consisting of 52 books covering the period from 146 B.C. (and so deliberately following Polybius’ History) to probably the mid-eighties, and was possibly unfinished. Its range and scope was formidable, covering the whole of the Mediterranean-centred world from Asia Minor to Spain, Egypt and Africa to Gaul and the northern peoples to Jutland, and of course, at the centre, the Roman and Greek worlds.
The first obvious characteristic from the fragments is the richness of detail covering the whole canvas of historical description, of facts and events, major and minor, local and global, and of social and environmental phenomena. It can range from wild turnips and carrots in Dalmatia to the martial disarray of Apameans, or details of luxurious formal banquet, and to the characteristics and habits of individuals and nations in the account of their social and political behaviour.
Deliberately collected from his extensive travels and subsequent enquiries, this is the vast factual description which forms the canvas for his analysis of human behaviour. But the most interesting thing about the History is its aetiology or historical explanation. It is that of a moral philosopher. Indeed Athenaeus, the indefatigable magpie of the end of the second century A.D., in his Learned Table Talk, characterised Posidonius’ History as being in tune with his philosophy; this may well have come from Posidonius himself. The work itself bears this out in its descriptive aetiology:
(a) Its account consistently displays that although external circumstances, both human and environmental, may be contributory factors to action, real motive is not imposed from without, but from internal character, an analysis in direct, and surely deliberate, opposition to other historians like Polybius. This view is illustrated not only in individuals of power, but in national character. The migratory invasions of the Cimbri, a major and disruptive historical event of the period, was not to be explained merely by the natural phenomena of floods pushing them back from their native Jutland, but by their own inherent piratical and nomadic character. This explains Posidonius’ preoccupation with ethnology (Italian, Roman, Celtic (Gallic), German) as historical explanation; it is used as historical ethology.
(b) To drive this point home, Posidonius was willing to expand an incident beyond its mere historical importance. His brilliant, vividly detailed and lengthy account of the brief career of Athenion, the Athenian tyrant of 88 B.C., far outruns what was a comparatively insignificant event in the Mithridatic Wars. But Posidonius was intent on unmasking in detail the disastrous effect, and how it came about, of an immoral so-called philosopher tyrant on the silly Athenian mob, however briefly.
(c) This indicates another notable moral preoccupation of the History: its reiterated interest in the relationship between ruler and ruled, in all permutations, whether in a voluntary subordination, or as ruler and slaves; it involves the character of both ruler and ruled, and their relationship. And of course, this reflects in the historical medium the working out of the moral axiom of the element of rational rule controlling the subordinate, or its failure to do so. There is much else, of course, including a sustained attack on popular legend and superstition in favour of rational explanation through cause and effect. So the History, like the sciences and mathematics, is a necessary investigation for his philosophy. But again, it can offer no more than historical explanation; final explanation must come from the axioms established by moral philosophy.
INFLUENCE AND IMPORTANCE
Posidonius continued to be read and regarded as an important authority at least until the sixth century A.D. His influence has in the past been overestimated, but he was certainly widely consulted for three centuries after his death; our surviving evidence suggests that his later influence was greater outside his own School. For the later history of Stoicism shows that Chrysippus was still regarded as the principal authority. Thus, our main evidence for Posidonius’ important philosophy of emotion comes from Galen, the great doctor of the second century A.D., who was an adherent of the Academy, and who used Posidonius to attack Chrysippus. It was Posidonius’ scientific works, and On Ocean, and the History which continued to be plundered for information and detail, with the result that the grand design of his encyclopedic research was forgotten. And this is a pity, for Posidonius’ place in intellectual history does not derive from the scattered riches of a polymath, but from an audacious panoptic attempt to understand, and hence explain in its complete context, our material world by the rationality of its operation, checked where we can by observation of the facts, and so define our own behaviour in it.
Posidonius was not an eclectic thinker, as has been claimed, but he strongly believed in the continued development of philosophy from positions of the old and, to him, established authorities. In fact, his synoptic determination to see things as part of wholes, where the perfection of the whole gives meaning to the parts, his willingness to explore to the limits the thesis that the common rationality of the cosmic order and the function of our own comprehension is the only possible means of explanation and understanding, and hence that our behaviour, morality and happiness in the end should depend on that alone, is the drawing together under the formal cloak of Stoicism, some of the most important and stimulating threads running through the whole of Greek philosophy. But his most important contribution was to enlist and integrate with philosophy the whole range of intellectual disciplines open to human investigation.
