Prof. Dr. Horst Seidl

How to Face Suffering? On the Virtue of Bravery in Greek Philosophers

The topics of this cycle of lectures concerns the manifold aspects of human suffering: in social politics, psychology and anthropology, in medical therapy and pastoral of the Churches. In addition we find in nowadays discussions the topics of euthanasia, with the question of active help to death.

The origin of suffering is found partly in the environment, partly in the human soul, in the interaction between bodily and psychic pains, partly also in the fragility of human nature. Questions arise on God's providence and pastoral help from the side of the Churches.

My lecture is dedicated to the ethical aspect of the topics of suffering, with the question how man should comport oneself morally in the case of suffering and help oneself. My paper is limited to antiquity (according to my discipline of Ancient Philosophy) where this question has been treated by philosophers under the topics of the virtue of bravery.

The relation between suffering and morals has been envisaged also in non-philosophical texts, like in the Greek tragedy, and further in the historian Thucydides. They show how unmoral comportment of people creates suffering, on the one side, and how extreme suffering can demoralize people, on the other. I shall address myself to some philosophers who show how man can face suffering by the virtue of bravery.

1) Pleasure and pain in Plato's and Aristotle's ethics of virtues

Plato (427-347 b.Chr.) and Aristotle (384-322) underline that ethics is concerned with pleasure and pains, because its object are human actions, as far as the are qualified as morally good or bad, and since all actions are accompanied by passions (emotions, feelings) with pleasure or pain, the virtues consist in tempering the passions so that they sustain reason in its decisions to good actions and do not hinder it, as vices do. Therefore, both philosophers underline that the young man should be accustomed, from childhood, to feel pleasure in what reason commands as good, and feel harm in what reason interdicts as bad, not vice versa. In a certain sense, the whole ethics turns on this point.

We must notice that classical ethics is practical knowledge which has its end in good practice and life, in difference with theoretical knowledge the aim of which is knowledge as such. Nevertheless, also theoretical knowledge, which is understood as contemplation, has its relation to life: its activity is even the highest form of life. Since ancient times, contemplative life is praised as wisdom and felicity. But it presupposes good practice in virtues, because in vicious men reason cannot become contemplative. The virtuous man, instead, fulfilling good actions is disposed to acquire the intellectual virtues, prudence and wisdom.

Practical knowledge can lead to good actions and life only when they are exercised by good custom so that they are, then, accompanied by pleasure and joy. Therefore Plato can say that the good man will not do bad things voluntarily, because his knowledge of the moral good is sustained by the experience of the inner harmony and joy.

Aristotle has worked out the factor of good custom strongly (against any intellectualism), studying the case of the uncontrolled man who has knowledge of the good but does not act accordingly.

Traditional ethics is by no means only an ethics of renouncement which could not be asked from people already proved by pains, bringing them no help. Rather it admonishes only to renounce to unrestrained pleasures of vices, gratifying man by pleasure or joy controlled by reason in virtuous actions, sustained by good custom. Even it brings, then, to men, although proved by pains, efficient help and strength.

As a matter of fact, also in our time, for instance, in the concentration-camps the intellectual prisoners suffered better the painful situation by accomplishing intellectual - scientific and religious - activities in order to keep themselves upright, strengthening their soul.

In similar way men suffer better the last days of their life when fulfilling them with intellectual activities, like spiritual lecture, conversation and prayer. Examples are the saints in Christianity. But already the comportment of Socrates in the hour of his death is exemplary. He lived this hour serenely in philosophical conversation with his friends.

Plato treats, in his dialogue Laches, of bravery, putting it in the larger frame of education of young men. The interlocutors of Socrates are older fathers of families who take care of the best education of their young sons. To this belongs just training of the body and the soul. Fencing serves as an example of bodily training. However in concrete cases it reveals deficient to the virtue of bravery so that the latter becomes the main theme of the dialogue which shows that bravery is promoting not only bodily but also psychic health, requiring practical prudence.

First attempts define bravery as facing dangers in war and as enduring all sorts of pains, bodily and psychic. But a further attempt includes also prudence which concerns knowledge in moral good and bad, because it is for the sake of morally good ends that bravery has to face all dangers, evils and pains.

Aristotle, Ethica Nicom. II 1-6, defines virtue as a deliberated habit of the soul, keeping the middle between extreme passions, as reason determines it, whereas the vices fall into the extremes. In the discussions Aristotle notes:

"The customary virtue regards pleasure and pain; for we fulfil bad things for the sake of pleasure, and omit good things for the sake of pain. Therefore we must be educated just from childhood, as Plato says, so that we feel pleasure and pain, where we should. For in this good education consists" (1104b 11-12).

"People becomes bad by pleasure and pain, by persecuting the one and avoiding the other, with regard to the object or the manner or the time of action, as one should or should not act or in other respects to be considered", b 20-21.

"Hence we presuppose that virtue, determined in this way, is referred to pleasure and pain in the practice of the best and to the badness in the contrary case", b 26-27.

Aristotle's definition of bravery, Ethica Nicom. III 9, starts from the object, the terrible, which the brave man should not fear. Since the terrible is a part of the evils, bravery does not concern all evils; for some of them one should fear, like dishonour. If bravery faces the terrible, then it is required most vis-à-vis the most terrible, namely the death. Hence, bravery is intrepidity before a honest death. In such a situation the reason of the brave man determines "for the sake of the honest" … what one should do and how and when", III 10. As adequate habit bravery keeps the middle between cowardice and audacity. The cowardly man fears what he should not fear, and how and when he should not. He is lacking confidence and hope.

When someone chooses death in order to escape, for instance, poverty or lover's grief or other pains, he is not brave, but rather cowardly, III 11. He accepts death not because it is honest, but to get rid of an evil. In conclusion: he who endures pain for the sake of the honest, is brave.

2) Pleasure and pain in Epicurus

In the Hellenistic period the school of Epicurus (341-270) teaches a hedonism, as we can read in his Letter to Menoeceus, according to which the moral good is pleasure, on the ground of the materialistic doctrine (taken from Democritus) that the soul is only a composition of fine, fire-like atoms which dissolves itself when the body dies. The mechanistic world-view denies every finality with regard to our life. We must not fear the death, because before it arrives we are, and when death arrives we are no longer.

However, in my view, this too simple argument is not valid. Indeed, the fear of death is religious, with the certainty of survival of the soul after death. What we fear before the death is not the disappearance of our life but the possibly lacking achievement of the final end of our life (that we have lived in vain). The hedonistic life-style, enjoying every day some pleasure, without any final end or sense of life, is depressing and ends in a fear of death. There is no bravery fighting against it.

3) Pleasure and pain in Stoics

The other Hellenistic school, founded by the Stoics, is in plain contrast against the Epicurean one. They teach as final end of life and as moral good the virtues, on the ground of a pantheist doctrine, with the Divine reason (logos) at which the human reason participates, governing our life.

The Stoics, from Zeno of Citium (336-263), Chrysippus (277-204) and others onward, confute the Epicurean doctrine that the moral good is pleasure, by the right observation that pleasure is an accessory moment whenever the soul achieves the final end, like in the case of virtue. The Epicureans turn upside down the relation between both, taking the accessory pleasure for the final end, and the final end, the virtues, for accessory. As if we would strive for virtues only for the sake of pleasure!

On behalf of their rationalism the Stoics consider the essential nature of man only as reason, taking the passions, with their pleasures and pains, for defects or illness of the soul which have to be suppressed. Therefore the virtue of bravery has an important function in enduring pains: not only those caused from outside, but also psychic pains, coming from the inner fight against the ill strive for pleasure.

4) Pleasure and pain in the Neoplatonist Plotinus

Plotinus (205-270 a.Chr.), the founder of the Neoplatonic school, assumes doctrines from Platon, Aristotle and the Stoics and brings them in a harmonic system of his own philosophy, in which he develops also psychology and anthropology. According to his mystical tendency, Plotinus disposes upon a rich inner experience so that he makes the soul often as object of detailed analysis and discussion. The main point of his doctrine is that the soul has an intermediate position between the corporeal sensible and the immaterial intelligible world. Hence the soul has a double task: to take care of the body, using the irrational faculties, and to dedicate itself to participate at the divine world. The first task must be subordinated to the second.

To these tasks the virtue of bravery is needed, with the capacity to control bodily pain and pleasure for the sake of obtaining the final moral end. In Plotinus the theological motivation prevails: The final end is, on the one hand, the perfection of the moral goodness in us, exercising virtues, and, on the other, the community of the intellect with the intelligible world and with the Divine Intellect, who embraces it.

5) Evaluation of the ancient ethics, regarding pleasure and pain,

for nowadays discussion

In conclusion, we can see that the ancient thinkers, taken above in consideration, complete each other in their different conceptions of bravery: Plato puts the main accent on the practical knowledge of prudence about the good final end of moral actions. Bravery is the capacity to maintain it, thanks to the insight of its goodness, against all obstacles, dangers and pains, which result from ignorance.

Aristotle for whom this is already evident, points rather to good custom with regard to the passions which must sustain the good insight of prudence. Hence the brave man, enduring dangers and pains, is also gratified by a certain joy which accompanies the inner harmony and the good conscience. He fulfils the good moral end, for which the will is striving under the guide of prudence.

Differently in the Stoa: Due to their pantheist rationalism this school sees the essential nature of man exclusively in reason and considers the irrational part, the passions of the soul, only negatively. The negative view on the passions is strengthened by the confrontation with the Epicurean hedonism. Bravery means mainly the fight against the passions of pains and pleasures which obscure the clear sight on the good final end of actions and life.

The Neoplatonism returns to an equilibrated relation between the rational and the irrational part in the soul, with the subordination of the latter under the former. The main accent is put on the metaphysical direction of human action and life towards the divine good, the divine Logos, to which the human logos should assimilate as far as possible. In this context the task of bravery is to overcome every obstacle on the metaphysical way towards the assimilation with the God.

When the question rises which profit can we take from the ancient concept of bravery for our time, particularly the comportment vis-à-vis human suffering, I would like to limit myself to only one topic, namely that of euthanasia or active help to death, deliberating it under the following aspects:

a) The case of euthanasia in which patients, in the last phase of their life before death, are exposed to pains and to anguish in view of the death, is not only a question of medical help to diminish the pains (by palliative means), but also a question of bravery, needed to suffer them. Euthanasia which recommends to finish the life before its natural end, by medical intervention, is no morally acceptable solution.

b) However, the brave comportment must be accompanied by the clear knowledge of the moral good of the virtuous comportment of honest life. Euthanasia lacks insight in the soul and a virtuous life. Instead it is accompanied by a false argument saying that a man in grave suffering and depending on the help of others looses the dignity of life. From the sight of the ethics of virtues we should argue, on the contrary, that a man in such a situation sustaining it with bravery acquires a special dignity of life.

Hence, bravery should be connected with wisdom, philosophical and religious. We Christians dispose on a high source of wisdom by God's revelation through Jesus Christ which grants a great force to our intellect and encourages bravery as we see, for instance, in the biographies of the saints.

c) The knowledge about the high moral value of life, when suffering with the virtue of bravery, must be acquired on the long run, already in days of healthy life, exercised by good custom, in order to possess it in days of illness. Generally seen, we should accustom in everyday life to suffer a certain measure of pains or physical inconveniences. Instead, our time enjoys the high comforts of civilization and technology, granting all sort of pleasures.

Literature:

Plato, Dialogue Laches (in one of the many text-editions).

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, book III (in one of the many text-editions).

A.A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, London (Duckworth) 1974, Chap. 2: Epicurus, Chap. 4: Stoicism.

J.M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy, London 1969 (Cambrige Univ. Press), Chap. 3: Problems of pleasure and pain.

L.P. Gerson, Plotinus, New York 1996 (Cambridge Press), Chap. 13: An ethics for the late antique sage.