The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Martha C. Nussbaum
Language: English
Pages: 558
ISBN: 0691033420
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.
and doxa seems to be introduced in one passage in Book I (1370a28), but is altogether absent from Book II. In general, the account shows no awareness of the more technical psychological distinctions of the De Anima. 19 The words in question are oiesthai, nomizein, logizesthai, and phainesthai plus infini tive; also verbs of remembering and expecting. See 1385bl7, 21, 22, 24, 32, 35; 1 3 8 6 a l-2 , 2 6 ,3 0 -3 1 , etc. The word phantasia occurs only twice more in Book II: once in the analysis of
will not be at a loss” (DL 10. 120). 49 Sen. Ep. 52.3. On this passage, see Clay (1983a) 265. 50 See Dover (1978), Halperin (1990). 5* On the stubborn pupil, see also O XIX, X X X I-X X X 1I; P 6 ,7 ,1 0 ,3 0 ,5 9 ,6 1 ,6 3 ,6 7 ,7 1 , col. II, col. XIV. Stubbornness is connected with reliance on things external (P 30), with youth (P 71), with paideia (O X X X I-X X X II). 126 EPI CUREAN SURGERY We seem to be in danger of losing touch with argument. For our account has led us into areas of
they can easily seem perverse and embarrassingly weak, creations of an embittered and despairing mind, rather than rational proposals that we should seriously consider. And in fact most serious philosophical accounts of Lucretius’ materialism spend little or no time on them. Two major booklength studies, those of Clay and M. Bollack, give them hardly a mention; and E. J. Kenney’s effective summary of recent scholarship, sympathetic to Lucretius’ atheism, conspicuously avoids commitment on the
the sentence clearly requires is a contrast between a general prohibition of marriage and an exception or exceptions made owing to occasional special circumstances. Second, the sentence as in the MSS contradicts all our other evidence about Epicurus’ views on marriage and children. Epictetus repeatedly asserts, as if referring to a famous (or, from a Stoic point of view, infamous) position, that the Epicurean will neither marry nor have children {Disc. 3.7.19, 20; 1.23.3; 1.23.7); he condemns
stronger sense of transgenerational obligation27 or a greater interest in the family as a central political institution might easily reverse Epicurus’ instrumental conclusion, arguing that intercourse, properly managed, has a usefulness that outweighs its risks. This is what happens, I believe, in Lucretius. What turns this desire for intercourse, harmless in itself, into dangerous, agonizing erös ? The answer seems to be, the influence of false belief. There is a difficult Principal Opinion that