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IV. The Complicated Path to Virtue: Plutarch's Ethical Thinking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2021
Extract
Moralists are boring. Plutarch is a moralist. Thus Plutarch is boring. The following chapter will only be successful when it has shown that this syllogism, though logically valid, is wrong. Plutarch has much to say about virtue and wickedness, about moral progress and human shortcomings, but he always avoids dull moralizing and oversimplified general rules. In short, there are no wagging fingers in Plutarch's works! Moreover, in the previous chapters, we have seen that Plutarch was an open-minded thinker, carefully looking for the truth but refraining from apodictic truth claims and always open to different alternatives. We may wonder then how he was able to maintain this attitude in the domain of ethics, where norms often have an absolute character. How could he avoid replacing the vital dynamics of his zetetic thinking by a much more rigid discourse consisting of strict universal rules? How did he conceive moral virtue – the beating heart of his thinking – and what did it mean for him to make moral progress?
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References
1 Cf. Gréard 1885: xix: ‘Plutarque a touché à tous les sujets; la morale n'est pas seulement une des applications de son génie: c'est son génie même’ (‘Plutarch touched on all subjects; moral virtue is not simply one of the applications of his genius: it is his genius’).
2 All studies of On moral virtue should start with the seminal commentary of Babut 1969a. Much useful material is also to be found in Becchi 1990.
3 See De virt. mor. 448F (συνῃσθημένος ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ‘having perceived in himself’); see further Ingenkamp 1999.
4 On the wide applications of the concept of reason in Plutarch's thinking, see Horky 2017: 109–12.
5 Cf. Quaest. Plat. 1009A–B, with Bellanti 2007.
6 The Peripatetic character of On moral virtue is especially discussed by Becchi (e.g. 1975, 1978, 1981, and 1990); see also Gréard 1885: 58; R. Jones 1916: 12–13 and 20; Russell 1972: 84; Dumortier 1975: 18–19; Dillon 1977: 195.
7 Babut 1969a. Donini 1974: 81–8 correctly places On moral virtue in its Middle Platonic background. See also Roskam 2011b: 49–56.
8 The idea is alluded to at the very outset of the work (440D) and returns at the end, in the comparison with Lycurgus’ excessive destruction of the vine (451C). See on this Castelnérac 2007.
9 See esp. An virt. doc. 439B; Cim. 2.4; Babut 1969b: 301–4.
10 Barigazzi 1993 regards this work, together with On fortune, Are the affections of the soul worse, or those of the body?, Is vice a sufficient cause for unhappiness?, and On virtue and vice, as fragments from a lengthy work on the teachability of virtue, but his hypothesis has found little support; cf. Melandri 2003 for a critical discussion.
11 See Roskam 2005b: 220–363 for a detailed interpretation of this work.
12 Mildness occurs very often in Plutarch's works, as has long been observed; see esp. H. Martin 1960 and de Romilly 1979: 275–307; also Panagopoulos 1977: 216–18 and Roskam 2005b: 256–8.
13 See esp. Fuhrmann 1964: 41–3 and passim; Hirsch-Luipold 2002: 225–81. The medical metaphor is central to Are the affections of the soul worse, or those of the body?.
14 See Roskam 2005b: 350–1; see also Wardman 1974: 107–15 and Pérez Jiménez 1995 on the Parallel Lives.
15 Important studies of De tranq. an. are Gill 1994: 4624–31; Van Hoof 2010: 83–115; Demulder 2018: 33–127. Broecker 1954 is still worth consulting.
16 Basically the same view is developed in On fortune, Is vice a sufficient cause for unhappiness?, and On virtue and vice.
17 The classic study of Plutarch's psychotherapeutic method is Ingenkamp 1971.
18 On habituation, see, e.g., De coh. ira 459B; De gar. 511E; De cur. 520D and 522E; De soll. an. 959F–960A. See also Ingenkamp 1971: 105–11.
19 See Ingenkamp 2000; Van Hoof 2010: 50 and passim.
20 De virt. mor. 449E; De coh. ira 463D; De tranq. an. 474E–475A.
21 See Van Hoof 2010: 31.
22 Cf. De tranq. an. 467E–F, where Plutarch lists several concrete examples of good conduct and connects them with all kind of difficult situations, while, however, refraining from deriving clear-cut prescriptions from them. Here as well, the decision about what is relevant and how it can be used is left to the reader.
23 As has often been observed; see, e.g., Ingenkamp 1984; Teodorsson 2005–6: 139; Van Hoof 2010.
24 Van Hoof 2010 and 2014.
25 Opsomer 2002; see also Vamvouri Ruffy 2017.
26 Van Hoof 2010: 116–50 and 2014: 141.
27 Baltussen 2009.
28 On Plutarch's dealing with such a ‘limit situation’, see Roskam 2012.
29 Roskam 1999b.
30 See esp. Xenophontos 2016 for a full discussion of this topic. Roskam 2004a focuses on Plutarch's views on education as a communicative process; Herchenroeder 2008 on Plutarch's subtle criticism of the extravagant claims of paideia in the Gryllus.
31 Pelling 1989 and 2002: 339–47; Swain 1990 and 1996: 139–45; Duff 1999b: 73–8 and 2008a.
32 Plutarch's method of reading has often been discussed; apart from the commentaries of Valgiglio 1973 and Hunter and Russell 2011, see, e.g., Saïd 2005b; Konstan 2004 (Plutarch as a precursor of postmodern literary theory), and the studies mentioned above, p. 56, n. 46.
33 See esp. Xenophontos 2016: 79–91 on How the young man should listen to poetry and On listening as companion pieces. On On listening, see esp. Hillyard 1988; see also Schmitz 2012, on Plutarch's attitude towards sophistic ambition (φιλοτιμία), with particular attention to On listening.
34 Cf. Van der Stockt 2011.
35 See esp. Cicero, Orat. 3.117; see further Philodemus’ On flattery and Maximus of Tyre, Orat. 14. The topic of flattery is also important in Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades.
36 See Whitmarsh 2006.
37 As is often pointed out; see, e.g., Babbitt 1927: 263; Sirinelli in Klaerr et al. 1989: 73; Van Hoof 2010: 25; Sirinelli 2000: 146, 193, 197.
38 De ad. et am. 48F, with reference to Plato, Leg. 731e5–753a1, also quoted in De cap. ex inim. 90A and 92F; Quaest. Plat. 1000A. See also Opsomer 1998: 150–5 and 2009b: 101–8.
39 Cf. Opsomer 2009b: 115–16.
40 The idea was first put forward by Brokate 1913: 7 and later revived by Sirinelli in Klaerr et al. 1989: 68–71 and Sirinelli 2000: 146, 193, 197; see also Russell 1972: 95.
41 Cf. Opsomer 2009b: 108–14.
42 A detailed analysis of On affection for offspring can be found in Roskam 2011c; see also Postiglione 1991. For On brotherly love, see Postiglione 1991.
43 Plutarch's view of love and marriage has received ample attention in scholarly research: see, e.g., Goessler 1962; Nikolaidis 1997a; Pomeroy 1999; Nieto Ibáñez and López López 2007; Boulogne 2009–10; Beneker 2012; Tsouvala 2014.
44 Con. praec. 142F; Amatorius 769F; Boulogne 2009–10: 27–30.
45 See further Auberger 1993; Roskam 2004b: 265–9.
46 Thus Patterson 1999.
47 See, e.g., Brenk 1988 and Rist 2001.
48 Brenk 2000.
49 Thus correctly Nikolaidis 1997a: 76 and 80.
50 Cf. Goldhill 1995: 150.
51 Thus I side with Goldhill 1995 against Rist 2001: 575 n. 48 and Effe 2002.
52 See Roskam 2009b for an interpretation of the work.
53 On this work, see esp. the commentary of Tirelli 2005; also Harrison 1995.
54 On Plutarch's notion of φιλοκαλία, which is central to his political thinking, see Roskam 2009b: 73–4.
55 On Plutarch's political thinking, see, e.g., Weber 1959; Carrière 1977; Aalders 1982; Desideri 1986; Aalders and de Blois 1992; Gallo and Scardigli 1995; Swain 1996: 135–86; Stadter and Van der Stockt 2002; de Blois et al. 2004 and 2005; Roskam 2009b; Pelling 2014; Liebert 2016. See also the seminal studies of the Political precepts by Renoirte 1951 and Carrière and Cuvigny 1984.
56 Unless democracy is understood as the rule of the elite in the service of the people: see Plácido 1995; Teixeira 1995; Roskam 2005a: 408.
57 Although Trapp 2004 argues that Plutarch's political ideals (esp. his thinking about euergetism) were unrealistic and at odds with mainstream civic ideas.
58 On Plutarch's very negative view of the people, see esp. Saïd 2005a.
59 On the politician as aristotechnas (a quotation from Pindar, fr. 57 Maehler), see Van der Stockt 2002 and Lather 2017: 334–44.
60 Such an ambition is one of the main motivations of many heroes in the Parallel Lives and is often discussed in the Moralia too. See esp. Frazier 1988; Duff 1999b: 83–7; Roskam et al. 2012; Liebert 2016, passim; Aloumpi 2017 (including a comparison with Demosthenes and Thucydides). On Plutarch's view of the politician's correct motivations, see also Roskam 2004–5.
61 See, e.g., Sheppard 1984–6 (on homonoia) and the more general survey of the sources of Plutarch's political thinking in Aalders 1982: 61–5 and Aalders and de Blois 1992.
62 See Roskam 2005a.
63 The idea also occurs in On monarchy, democracy, and oligarchy (at 827B). The authenticity of this work, of which only a few passages survive, is controversial; see esp. Caiazza 1995; further literature in Roskam 2009b: 25 n. 52.
64 Cf. Carrière 1977.
65 See C. Jones 1971: 133; Carrière and Cuvigny 1984: 186.