The Unity of the Ethics of Ancient Greece

Author(s): Leopold Schmidt

Source: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Oct., 1891), pp. 1-10
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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INTERNATIONAL

JOURNAL
OF ETHICS.
OCTOBER,
THE

UNITY

1891.

OF THE ETHICS
GREECE.

OF ANCIENT

NINE years ago, when I published my work," The Ethics

of the Ancient Greeks" (" Die Ethik der alten Griechen"),I
introducedit withthe followingwords:
of the ethics of the ancient Greeks,thatis attemptedin
"The presentation
the sequel, presupposes,of course,that throughoutthe centuriesof theirexistence the Greeks were governedby a numberof similarmoral ideas; for,withit would be unjustifiableto speak eitherof a Greek
out such a presupposition,
nationor of a Greek civilization. Undoubtedly,theirviews on particularmatterswere subject to manya variationin the courseof time; undoubtedly,
the
changeswhichtheirreligiousconceptionswere undergoing,the progressivedevelopmentof the functionsof the state,the gradual humanizingof customs,the
increasingpointsof contactbetweenthe thoughtof the people and the problems
had also had a mightyinfluenceon the ideas relatingto
opened by philosophy,
whata man oughtto do; but he would no longer have been a Greek,who, in
the midstof his ponderingand striving(the momentit rose above the commonplace), had notfelthimselfstandingunderthe spell of the Homeric songs,who
had not looked at a maximof Theogenes as addressed to him. It is just this
powerfulinfluenceof the poets,and the worldof mythof whichtheytreated,on
the moralideals of the people,that gave these ideals a stabilitywhich,in concreteinstances,would otherwisebe surprising
and inexplicable. Indeed, on this
influencerests,in no smalldegree,thetruthof thesayingof Aristotle,
so strikingly
characteristic
of the Greeks,that ' poetryis morephilosophicaland moreserious
thanhistory.'"

In the reviewof my book, in vol. i. pp. 256, 257 of thisjournal (January,i89i), Mr. Davidson has combated the fundamentalthoughtexpressed in the foregoingparagraph. AcVOL. II.-NO.

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International-ournal of Ethics.

cordingto him,it is as impossibleto set up a unifiedethics of

Greece as it would be to delineate one of England or of
of time and the great differFrance. The great differences
ence betweenindividualprovinces,he thinks,preventthis.
But this objection leaves out of sight the immenseimporof nationalitieshad for the lifeof
tance which the difference
antiquity,whose developmentfollowed in this respect quite
otherlaws than those of modern times. Not only religions,
customs,and tastes,but also moral ideas, divided individual
nations; while, within the nations themselves,they were a
common bond, uniting together their comrades who lived
away fromthem,and also theirancestorsand posterity. And
forthis reason I like to look upon my work as an introduction to comparativeethics,as definedby Professor H6ffding
in his " Ethik." * To carry on this preliminarytask, it
would be necessaryto do forthe Egyptians,the Persians,the
Jews,and the Romans, what I have attemptedto do for the
Greeks; forthough Ihering's " Geist des r6mischenRechtes"
offersmuch that is valuable with regardto the Romans, there
is yet need of a comprehensive summary of their ethical
ideal.
In a study of the ethics of the Greeks only those conceptions,of course, can be taken account of which have been
formedwithinthe great currentof their national civilization,
and have governed the minds of the people. The imperfection of our knowledge of factshas, along with its disadvantages, certainadvantages,enabling us betterto fixour attentionon the importantand characteristicfeaturesof thenational
spirit. In the fifthand fourthcenturies beforeChristthere
were some provinces,perhaps,in the highly divided Greece,
where homage was still paid to a crude religious fetichism,
where men were not averse to human sacrifices,and where
wholesale robberyand theftwere regarded as harmless; but
* ProfessorHi5ffding
writes(page 7 of the Germantranslation): " Historicor
comparativeethicsseeksto presentpositivemoralityas it appearsin a giventime
and amonga given people; it seeks to provewhat developmentpositivemoralunderdiffering
conditions,and to comparethe severalformsit may
ity-undergoes
timesamongdifferent
peoples."
assumeat different

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The Unityof theEthicsof AncientGreece.

the thoughtof such a possible state of thingsmust not divert

our attentionfromthe ideals of lifeprevalentin those regions
withinwhich the historicmissionof Greece fulfilled
itself. In
giving an account of the moral ideas of Christian Europe in
the nineteenthcentury,it would not be necessaryto modify
essentially the ideas held in respect to propertyand state
supremacy,merelybecause the population of Calabria, for a
long period,saw nothingwrong in the encouragementof robbery,or because a great part of Sicily allowed itselfto be influencedby the Mafiaratherthanby the lawfulauthorityof the
state. Moreover,it mustnotbe forgottenthat moralityhas to
do, notwiththeactual conductofmen,butwiththestandardsaccording to whichone estimatesthe desires and deeds of others
and of one's self,ifthe latteris made the subject Qf conscious
reflection. And in most parts of Greece the moral standards
were undoubtedlymore uniformthan the habits of life. Mr.
Davidson maintains,though hardly with justice, that the
moralityof Corinthand that of Sybaris was altogetherdifferent fromthat of Athens or Sparta. In all probabilityan intelligentSybariteestimatedvirtues,which he did not practise
and rarelysaw, as well as faults he himselfcommittedand
frequently met with, not otherwise than the Athenian,
fromhis own; for
whose surroundingswere quite different
nothing is truer than the saying of Plato (Laws, 12, 950b.):
oo
Roi`3voV

Oefrdmap
Jaoy obfaea; dperijz, aereoa4~lgoc

o!
tv~rxdovYofa ooC

rofsAorocsxal

robq dfarl'youqriov c9,poWcrwYxale

xal a`Zp-ftroc. IeiowSi Te xal e?voroxal rob xp'ety -zobs 6%A'ov;of 7roryipoc
xal riovyapo6pa xaxcy eo
Zov iYecr xal rooc xaxoiq. cWTre cA47roA)oc
raZs

l0$aef

lcatpobyrae

ToO, Zeepoyax.*

Differencesof time are undeniably of far greater importance in moral considerationsthan those of locality. It is
quite in place here to ask whethera treatment,
comprisingthe
moral ideas of all periods,ought not to be replaced by one ar* " For the manyare not so farwrongin theirjudgmentof who are bad and
who are good, as they are removedfromthe nature of virtuein themselves.
Even bad men have a divine instinctwhich guesses rightly,and very many
who are utterlydepraved formcorrectnotionsand judgmentsabout the difference of good and bad."-Yowett's translation.

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International_7ournalof Ethics.

rangedaccordingto periodswhichwould separatethe Homeric

age fromthe centuriesthat elapsed between Solon and Aristotle,and that,again, fromthe post-Aristotelianperiod. But,
in attemptingto carry out such a task, greater difficulties
would arise than one at the firstglance would expect; for,in
spite of the differencesin their conditionsof lifeand in their
ideals, thereis yet much upon which their minds are united,
fromthe time of Homer down to the rise of the Roman emperors. Homer stands on the thresholdof a social developtill the time of Plutarch,
mentwhich goes on uninterruptedly
who was the last person of whom we have any knowledge,
who felt like a genuine Greek. The expressionsof this developmentare by no means confinedto practicalviews of life
and to literarytaste. For the firsttrace of thatsense of symmetricalarrangementand plastic art,which culminatedin the
master-workof the Acropolis of Athens, may already be recognized in the descriptionofthe shield ofAchilles in the Iliad.*
The peculiar nationaltypeof Greece is stampedon everything,
and in the realm of moral ideas it is more importantto keep
in view this type than to lay stresson the changes of different
periods. Even thephilosophers,at least untilAristotle'stime,
were subject to this common type,although they opposed in
many details the popular ideas. Plato especially offers,in
thisrespect,a distinctproofof the Germanproverb," Niemand
kann aus seiner Haut springen."
First of all, we must take into considerationthe fact that
the moral ideas are indissolubly bound up with the most
primitiveand most strikingproductionof the national spirit,
viz.,with language. The meaningand motivesof moraljudgmentscan oftenbe recognized only by referenceto the words
chosen to express them. No language, perhaps,is so rich as
the Greek in finelyshaded means of expressing praise and
blame, and, although in the course of time these words have
not remainedunchangedin theirmeaningor in the frequency
* This has been justlypointed out by ProfessorBrunn in his treatise," Die
Kunst bei Homer und ihrVerhqltnisszu den Anflngender griechischenKunstgeschichte."

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The Unityof theEthicsof AncientGreece.

of theiruse,-indeed, though they partlyowe their finerand

more perfectsignificationto the people of Attica,-they are
yet,as a whole, common national propertyof the firstrank,
and all judgmentsof the Greeks are influencedby the world
of thoughtexpressedby them. The varietyofprincipleswhich
are authoritativeforapproval or disapprovalare unmistakably
reflectedin them. At one time the attentionis directedmore
towards man as a whole, at another more towards individual
action. Right conduct appears now as thatwhich conformsto
the will of the gods, and now as that which is obedientto the
civil order,and now again as that which rejoices and inspires
the human heart. It is also frequentlytreated as being the
outcome of a normal mentalconstitution,
of moral delicacy,of
inheriteddisposition,or of thorough education. The blame
forwrong conduct,on the other hand, is generallybased on
opposite suppositions,and not seldom implies pitifulconditions or expresses various degrees of condemnation. Yet
language by no means establishes fixed limits between the
differentpoints of view referredto above. It rather favors
their flowinginto each other. Thus, the facts show clearly
that the popular mindof Greece held up, as the basis of valuation,a moral ideal which was approved by the gods, corresponded withthe social order,made a deep impressionupon
the people, and recognizedpersonal worth; although contemplation dwelt now more on one aspect and now more on
another. Few things mark more clearly the dependence of
posterityon the heritage of their ancestors than the way in
which the philosophersuse a word to designatevirtuewhich
the older poets use to embrace everythingthat gives a person
or a thing special value (&per?). Consequently the idea of
moral worthimpliedthat of value. It is perhaps the greatest
defectof my book that I did not considerthe technical language of good and evil at the beginningof the whole work,
instead of in the concluding chapterof the firstvolume, in
orderto make clear fromthe beginning the meaning of the
Greek expressions of valuation, and their connection with
the nationalcast of mind.
If we turn away from this importantand essential aspect

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International-7ournalof Ethics.

of ethical development,to the psychological,social, and religious conditionsof life,and to the details of moral demands,
it will be readilynoticedthat thereis more resemblancethan
difference
betweenthe poetryof Homer and the Attic period.
No doubt a man of the Homeric age is not conditionedin all
his relations,like the man of the Atticperiod,by the civil communityto which he belongs,but he is always conscious that
civilization and the legal order of the state are inseparable
and almost synonymousterms. No doubt the Greek of the'
Homeric age does not share the convictionsof the contemporaries of Solon and Plato about combining into a unit all
the generationsof a familyby connectingthe living descendants and the ancestors who abide in Hades; but he, too,
thinks it necessary to pay special honor to the dead. The
views prevailing in Homer's time are almost wholly identical in numerous other points with those of the historic
period. In both periods the belief in a recompensingand
avenging justice of the gods forms the basis of religion.
One of the main-springsof moral action at both times,was the
judgment of their fellow-men,connectedwiththe memoryof
those who had filledprominentpositions in the past. Indeed,
even that finedistinctionwhich Attic authors make between
the two relatedbut not identicalemotionsof aciac6s and active
is not foreignto the Homeric poems.
The tendencyto choose a term to express conscience that
implied a judging self accompanying the acting self as spectator,and to regard its verdict with similar respect as the
opinionsof others,is common both to the language of Homer
and of Attica. According to the Homeric usage, consciousness (ealyac) is identicalwith conscience,and to say that one
knows whatis equitable or unjustexpressesa nationalmode of
thoughtwhich appears in various forms,and in its last theoreticalconclusion in the ethical rationalismof Sokrates. It is
a truthrecognizedin the Odyssey as well as in the philosophy
of Attica that the abilityto distinguishgood fromevil is the
characteristicof manlymaturity. The conception of evil in
the Atticperiodwas largelyunderthe influenceofthe Homeric
conceptionof Ate and is broughtout most fullyin /Eschylus.

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The Unityof thzeEthicsof AncientGreece.

One of the peculiaritiesof the intellectuallifeof the Greeks is

the high value which theyattachedto emulationas an important stimulusto activityin all spheres of life. That this view
was alreadypeculiar to the Homeric world,is not only shown
by the races held at Scheria and Ithaca, and in the camp of the
Achaians beforeTroy, but also by the advice withwhich,in
the Iliad, Hippolochos parts fromhis son, namely, that he
should always tryto be the firstand to surpass his rival. In
Homer, as later, the monogamic marriagedistinguishesthe
customs of the Greeks from those of the barbarians. In
both periods the defenceof the nativecountry(recommended
in a typical way by a saying of Hector in the Iliad), the
sacredness of the oath, the considerate protectionof guests,
were regardedto be primaryduties. In both periods it was
held obligatorythat the suppliantwho uttered his petitions
in the solemn formof Exedta should not be injured without
penalty,and that the common meal was a sacred religious
bond. Similarlythe trulyGreek conceptionthat the veritable
ideal of friendshipcan only be realized by two friendsis at
the basis of Homer's descriptionof the relation between
Achilles and Patroklus, as well as of the utterancesof the
philosophersrelatingto this subject.
But perhaps it may be objected, that although the centuries fromHomer to Aristotle are connected by an abundance of similarviews,the victoryof the Macedonian military
monarchymarksthe beginningof a new epoch. It weakened
the feelingof membershipin the civil community,which was
organized on a religious basis and bound together like a
family,and which had hithertooccupied the centralplace in
the moral consciousness. This objection would be perfectly
valid, if,soon afterAlexander the Great,all Greeks had become Stoic or Epicurean philosophers. But however much,
in course of time, the influenceof the schools had grown,
theyby no means exclusively or even predominantlydetermined the total characterof the age. Generally,it is in the
natureof ethical developmentthat an epoch is never exclusively under the dominion of a single moral tendency; its
main currentis opposed in some way by a counter-current;

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InternationalYournal of Ethics.

or it may be that views destined to prevail later on are now

in their initiatorystages, or that the currentswhich have
been wholly checked have left their after-effects.It will be
readily noticed that in this ideal of life, after which the
Homeric Greek fashioned the image of his gods, the slow
beginnings of the later Epicurean conception are portrayed,
as well as a certain undervaluationof the power of impulse,
which is apparent in the judgments of the Attic writersand
containsa germ of the Stoic mode of thought; also, that the
individual-eudemonistic
philosophyof lifeis alreadyforeshadowed in the systemsof much older philosophers. But more
importantis the factthat the ideas prevalent in the prime of
Greece continuedto exist and to have an influencethrougha
series of centuries. They were no longer so closely and intimatelyconnected as in the classical period, and their efficiency was thereforeweakened and unequal in intensity,but
they were by no means immediatelydisplaced by a different view of the universe. The polls, it is true,ceased to be
the centreof all human existence; but its formscontinuedto
live,and it still remainedan object of attachment,and, in some
cases, of devotion. Religious worshipwas no longer so much
as beforefeltto be interwovenwithpoliticallife; the numberof
those increasedwho turnedaside fromit, but forthe majority
it still remainedthe mediumof a blissfulintercoursewiththe
gods, and the repugnantinstances of the deificationof men
-the worst effectsof vanishing republicanism-remained
isolated. The duties and cares of familylifecommanded the
same respectas formerly. They received growing attention
with the decrease of public interest.
Although the numberof non-philosophicworks,preserved
fromthose centuries,which might supply us with the necessary information,is not considerable, they still suffice to
confirmthe above statementand enable us to see that the
destructivefeatureof their average mode of thought lies in
the way in which the moral ideas prevalentin the preceding
period still continueto have influencein a weakened form.
It is not the positive predominanceof a new kind of sentiment or judgment,but the absence of a specificallynational

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The Unityof theEthicsof AncientGreece.

shade of thought, that distinguishes the numerous moral

reflectionsof Polybius fromthose of Thukydides,Xenophon,
and Isokrates. Even the way in which this historian makes
Tyche interfere
with human destinyis mostlydue to a weakened adherence to the ancient Greek conceptionof retribution. For only very rarelydoes he make her the guardian
of an historical teleology by tracing the growth of the
Roman power, considered as benefitingmankind, to her
special contrivance. The epigramsof Greek anthologylead
us among menwhose love of family,whose reverencefortheir
dead, whose gratitude towards the gods, are of the same
nature as those of the Attic citizensof the fifthand fourth
centuries; yet with the latterit is not so perceptibleas with
the former,that their familylife and theirworshipwas based
on a political community. Many peculiaritiesin the fablesof
Babrius indicatethe continuingeffectsin the late centuriesof
the ethical ideals of Greece duringher prime.
Even the different
formsof philosophic thought of the period of whichwe speak stood in nowise in so sharp a contrast
with the prevailing modes of thoughtof the preceding centuries as did the philosophy of the Stoics and Epicureans.
That of the Peripateticsapproaches it much closer.' For not
only does the founderof this school in his ethical considerationsstartfromthe question as to what is actuallyapprovedof
by men,recognizingthus the voice of the people as the natural
and properjudge, and sees in the welfareof the state the end
of life,but also in the successive developmentof the doctrines
of his school one notices a remarkable divergence fromthe
Stoic teachingat a pointon which both seeminglyagree. The
love of the human race is laid down as a law by both schools,
but the Stoics demand it with absolute indifferenceto the
smaller communitiesto which a man belongs; the Peripatetics, on the contrary,demand it on the basis that as the
household of the familyis to expand into that of the state,
so the latter is to expand into that of mankind. The Peripatetics consequentlyadhere to and build upon the view of
the older Greece, according to which the familyand the state
formthe true values of life.

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IO

InternationalYournal of Ethics.

The individualistichedonism of the Stoic and Epicurean

systems is evidentlythe natural theoreticaloutcome of the
intellectualconditionof an age in which the moral fellowship
of the civil communityhad ceased to supplythe fullmeaning
to human life,while as yet no othercentregave a new aim to
the age. He, therefore,
who investigatesin everyage those
elementsof mental developmentwhich contain the germs of
futurepromise and in which an historical progress is going
on, will be obliged, in considering the Hellenic age, to place
those two schools into the foreground. But he who attempts
to unite into one comprehensive picture the moral ideas
that formthe characterof a people, must also, in this period,
seek to findwhat it has in common with early Greece. Just
as the expounder of ancient art is oftenenabled to recognize
the characterof a statue of the prime of Greek art by following its copies into the period of the Roman empire,so the
historianof ethics must also followethical ideas on beyond
the timewhen they acted with undiminishedvigor and completeness. And if,as a result,a strictboundaryline to them
in time becomes impossible,thiswould agree withthe general
natureof intellectualdevelopment. The peculiar stabilityof
the Southernpeoples, in connectionwiththe traditionalcharacter of Greek literature,enabled the older mode of thought
and sentimentto extend over a long period.
LEOPOLD
UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG.

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SCHMIDT.