Goal and Target in Stoicism

Goal and Target in Stoicism
Author(s): Brad Inwood

Source: The Journal of Philosophy , Oct., 1986, Vol. 83, No. 10, Eighty-Third Annual
Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1986), pp. 547-556
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
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HELLENISTIC ETHICS 547
GOAL AND TARGET IN STOICISM*
W A T E are all familiar with the fact that wisdom was regarded
as the ars vivendi by the Stoics.' By describing it as a
T XVP roV faiov they were putting themselves in a tradition
of ethical theorizing which self-consciously took Socrates as its start-
ing point. But simply to note that they identified philosophy or
wisdom as an art-or craft, to use more familiar terminology-does
not tell us very much. For crafts may have different logical struc-
tures, and as soon as we accept that philosophy is a craft we want to
know what sort of craft. The distinction among kinds of craft is a
point which (one might argue) Socrates did not explore thoroughly
enough, or at all.
Crafts, we can agree with Aristotle, can be practiced properly even
when in some fairly obvious sense we fail at them. Two Aristotelian
examples of such crafts are rhetoric and medicine, and Aristotle uses
the latter to illuminate the situation with rhetoric at Rhetoric
1355blO-13: "Its job is not to persuade, but to see for each point the
persuasive elements in the situation, just as is also the case in all other
crafts (for the job of medicine is not to produce healthy things, but to
advance as far as is possible in that direction)." At Topics 101 b5-1 0
dialectic too is grouped with rhetoric, medicine, and "abilities of this
sort"; Aristotle speaks here not about the function of the craft, but
of determining when someone possesses the AuOobos or techniqu
reXEws, completely or perfectly. When we possess the technique com-
pletely, we can "do, within the limits of the available possibilities,
what we choose to do." He explains: "For it is not unconditionally
that the orator will persuade or the doctor cure, but if none of the
available possibilities is left out, then we will say that he has the
knowledge satisfactorily. "2
So even if the doctor's patient dies, he may have practiced his craft
reXiws; even if the court case is lost, the orator may have done all that
the craft of rhetoric could ask of him. Failure at the obvious aim of
the craft seems, in such cases, not to damage one's claim to be a
perfect practitioner of the art. The question, then, for the Stoics is
* To be presented in an APA symposium on Hellenistic Ethics, December 29,

1986. Phillip Mitsis will comment; see this JOURNAL, this issue, 556/7.
' SVF 2.117 = Academica 2.23 (Antiochus); SVF 3.516 (Sextus, Adversus Math-
ematicos 11.200-, 207-), Ecl. 2.58 (SVF 3.95). I use these abbreviations: SVF for
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, H. von Arnim, ed.; Ecl. for Stobaeus Eclogae.
2 These two passages are effectively juxtaposed by Roswitha Alpers-G6lz in Der
Begriff Skopos in der Stoa und seine Vorgeschichte [Hildesheim: Olms, 1976
(Spudasmata viii), p. 67].
0022-362X/86/8310/0547$01.00 ? 1986 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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548 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
straightforward: Is the art of living, the craft of philosophy or wis-

dom, like this? That is, does it have a goal, analogous to curing the
patient or convincing the jury, which can be missed without damag-
ing the philosopher's claim to be a perfect practitioner of the art of
life? Put in Stoic terms: can the Stoic sage fail at the objective of his
craft, as the perfect doctor can? Or would such failure simply indi-
cate that the alleged sage was not really a sage at all, that the craft was
not being practiced flawlessly?
Hence, in part, the importance in Stoic ethics of understanding
what kind of craft wisdom or prudence is. There is a difficulty in the
Stoic account of crafts which needs to be aired first. For we find it
stated both that crafts are Etls (settled states of the soul that admit
of variation in degree) and not &alfSaas (settled states that are abso-
lute and cannot vary in degree); and that the wise man's craft is a
aO uTo.4 T construe a craft as a Stoic '4ls is reasonable, for
certainly want to say that one craftsman may be better at his craft
than another. But the other claim is also reasonable, in a Stoic con-
text, since the sage is defined by his possession of virtue, a state
which does not vary in degree; and the craft we are looking at now is
a virtue-wisdom or prudence.
The apparent conflict in our evidence has, fortunately, already
been resolved by 0. Rieth.5 btalaasc are also (flt a more narrowly
specified sort of Ets. They have all the attributes of a OEls and some-
thing more.6 So when it is said that a craft is a 'ElS, not a &GNalons, what
is meant is that ordinary crafts, the typical cases, are only 4aqts. When
a sage's craft is said to be a a&ffOecs, this does not mean that it is not
also a Etl; it is just that this special sort of craft has an additional
feature, characteristic of virtue, which makes it worthy of a special
name. That Rieth is right about this solution is shown (1) by the use
of the phrase .Etcat -rsEXvat in one contrast with bat&Gcs (SVF 2.393
sub fin.) and (2) by a passage of Stobaeus (Ecl. 2.71.1-3): "All virtues
are taOoaas, but 'practices' like prophecy and so forth are only (Ets
and not bLxacaets." The wording clearly suggests that it is also true to
say that a virtue (like the craft of prudence) is also a ts. (3) The same
is also suggested by a phrase used by Philo, who is not, unfortunately,
3 SVF 2.393; Francis Sparshott, "Zeno on Art: Anatomy of a Definition," p. 283,

in J. M. Rist, ed., The Stoics (Berkeley: California UP, 1978).
4 SVF 3.95 distinguishes the cardinal virtues from others by deeming them crafts
and forms of knowledge; and at SVF 3.516 Sextus reports the important Stoic
distinction between merely appropriate actions and virtuous ones as lying in the
mental disposition of the agent: if the action is done from a craftsmanlike LaOEats, it
will count as a morally perfect act; if from a noncraftsmanlike btc&6Eats, it will not.
5 Grundbegriffe der stoischen Ethik (Berlin: Weidmann, 1933), ch. 5.
6 This relationship is parallelled by that between appropriate acts and virtuous
acts, a point we shall return to.

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always to be trusted to preserve

however, he speaks of virtuous ac
soned Ots and 6auiOets, and this
accurately.
As we have seen, crafts have goals. The goal of prudence and all
the virtues is stated, again by Stobaeus, to be "living in agreement
with nature" (Ecl. 2.62.7-8). This, it should be stressed, follows di-
rectly on his discussion of the virtues as riXvat Kat Eruto-sTat (2.60-
62). So the goal of prudence, which it shares with the other virtues,
will be a craft goal, comparable in some respects, for example, to the
goal of shoemaking or of medicine.
What sort of relationship does prudence stand in to its goal? There
are at least two possibilities, since ordinary crafts stand in at least two
relationships to their goals. For present purposes the relevant dis-
tinction among crafts is simple: some are "stochastic" and some are
not. The term 'stochastic' can have a variety of senses, but the one
relevant to the Stoics is found in a chapter of the Puzzles and
Solutions, which are attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias (2.16,
p. 61 in the Supplementum Aristotelicum, vol. 2 pt. 2 = SVF 3.19).
Stochastic crafts are those, like rhetoric and medicine, in which the
achievement of the stated aim of the craft can and must be distin-
guished from the question whether the craft is being practiced per-
fectly (,reXEs). The author of this passage is very much concerned to
maintain-possibly against attempts to conflate the two kinds of
craft-that stochastic crafts are different from others in just this
way, no matter what terminology one uses and despite the way one
might choose to define the goal (rEXos) of each kind of craft. Thus,
even if it is conceded that nonstochastic crafts have a goal that is
formulated identically to that of the stochastic crafts (doing every-
thing possible to achieve their object), they are still different, since in
their case the nature of the craft is such that if they do in fact do
everything possible to achieve their object, then they will in fact
achieve it. Similarly, for stochastic crafts our author would make a
concession: let them have as goal the achievement of their object
(thus sharing the goal with nonstochastic crafts); still there will be a
crucial difference between the two kinds of craft. The function
(Epyov) of stochastic crafts will be that difference.
Thus our author is determined to maintain that the concrete facts
about some crafts make them different from others. Stochastic crafts
are characterized first by the fact that they depend on factors beyond
their-own control for their success. But there is another and more
interesting factor which makes stochastic crafts special, according to
the author of the passage we are considering. This is the fact that
their craftsmanlike action is not "definite" (WcpioOat), which seems to

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mean that such crafts do not operate exclusively by regular rules.

The reason for this is that the same set of craftsmanlike actions does
not "produce the same results [consistently] since they are not ap-
plied to situations which are in every respect alike but all or at least
some [of these things done] in them [the stochastic crafts] will for
other reasons too be otherwise than as was expected."
The notion of a stochastic craft as outlined here is important for
our understanding of Stoic ethics, although it is clear that different
Stoics expressed the ethically important distinctions in different
ways. In Chrysippus' doctrine the distinction between the level or
aspect of a wise man's action on which he can fail and that on which
he infallibly achieves his goal is not clearly marked by terminological
distinctions; nevertheless, Chrysippus distinguishes, as Zeno and
Cleanthes did before him, between these two aspects of a sage's
action. At the core of Chrysippus' conception of happiness is the
doctrine that what the sage consciously and carefully tries to do is to
achieve the sort of things which later Stoics call the "primary natural
things," but that he cannot be assured of success, since the acquisi-
tion of such things depends on factors outside the sage's control.7
The goal, however, is still happiness, and that is something he can
infallibly achieve, since it depends on nothing outside the moral
agent for its successful attainment. That the goal of the virtuous
craft, prudence, is infallibly achieved by the sage is stated in a quo-
tation from Stobaeus: "each [virtue], by its own -means, makes man
achieve it [the goal]" (Ecl. 2.62.8-9). One aspect of the goal of the
craft of prudence also confirms this: it is "for the sake of doing
without failure ('6tairrWTrws) what is to be done" (Ecl. 2.63.15).
What we see in Chrysippus, then, is the doctrine that the sage's
actions have two distinct aspects, under one of which they may fail
and under the other of which they cannot; almost certainly an ac-
count was offered of how a virtuous action could be regarded under
both aspects. But although these two aspects of a sage's actions
correspond to other key ethical terminological distinctions, there is
no clear set of terminology for the two different kinds of goal for
such actions.
But a later Stoic, Antipater, does provide this sort of terminologi-
cal precision. He offered two different formulations of the goal
(rEXos) of life, formulations which differ in important ways from each
other and from those of his predecessors.8 The second of these
7See my Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (New York: Oxford,
1985), ch. 6.
8 See the extensive discussion in A. A. Long, "Carneades and the Stoic Telos,"
Phronesis, XII (1967): 59-89, and Alpers-Golz, op. cit.

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formulations, "doing everything in one's power, constantly and un-

swervingly, to achieve the 'preferred natural things'," is important
for us here, since by this very formulation Antipater has apparently
made wisdom, which has happiness as its goal, a stochastic craft. The
stochastic character of the craft is underlined by the comparison of
the perfect moral practitioner to an archer, who is expected to do all
he can to hit the target, and is considered to have practiced his craft
successfully even if he misses it because of some factors external to
his craft. It is widely agreed that Antipater's formulation is a re-
sponse to a criticism of earlier Stoic definitions of the goal made by
Carneades.
The stochastic element in Antipater's definition should not be
overstated: as far as the achievement of happiness itself is concerned
the craft is nonstochastic-that is, if the sage is to count as having
practiced the craft properly, he must have achieved happiness. But
there is a target (UKorbs) which he aims at and which he can fail to
achieve without jeopardizing his claim to be a sage. What the sage is
consciously and deliberately trying to get are contingent matters, like
health, wealth, etc. But his goal, which he cannot fail to achieve, is
something quite different.
As Roswitha Alpers-G6lz shows, the OKo7rOs-TrXos distinction has
been reshaped by Antipater; in earlier Stoic philosophy the distinc-
tion had quite a different force.' So, in altering it to express his new
conception of the stochastic character of the -rExv7n TOV LOV,
Antipater has deliberately revised the formulation of the Stoic con-
ception of the goal of life.
The contrast of spheres of activity of the sage which is reflected in
Antipater's terminological innovations corresponds to another,
more familiar contrast, which goes back to the earliest period of the
Stoic school, that between KaO?'KOVTa and KaropOwtara, appropriate
actions and morally perfect actions. When doing an appropriate
action, the sage can fail-appropriate actions, it should be said,
include actions like courageous behavior, generous behavior, etc., as
well as actions like keeping healthy and taking care of one's family. In
all these things one may fail and still be a sage. But a morally right
action is one that cannot fail; such actions are not, of course, a wholly
distinct set of things; rather, a morally right action is an appropriate
action done in such a manner that, under the description that counts
most of all, it cannot fail. The exact way in which a morally right
9 Before Antipater the aKoxOis-riXos distinction was in use, but not to express this
contrast between the level on which the sage could fail of his aim and the level on
which he could not. Rather, it expressed the difference between the happy life,
understood as a physical object, i.e., the living, breathing sage himself, and the
attainment and living of that life (Ed. 2.77.21-7).

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action differs from the appropriate action that, so to speak, underlies

it, is a matter of conjecture (see fn 7). But it is clear that the distin-
guishing feature must lie in the state of mind of the perfectly wise
moral agent compared with that of the man who merely acts appro-
priately.
The crucial thing for present purposes is simply that in performing
an act qua KaTopOwLa the sage will not fail; in performing it qua
Ka0_hKOV he might. Here, then, is one way in which the earlier Stoics
expressed the moral insights that turn up in Antipater under the
rather different guise of the stochastic character of the craft of living
well. The question I want now to ask is this: Is there any other trace
of the earlier Stoics' concern with this distinction which, like Antipa-
ter's cYKo7rOs-TEXos terminology, reflects their concern with the doc-
trine that the virtue or the sage is a craft? I think there is.
Let us return to the two different kinds of craft, Ets-craft and
b6ctaNas-craft. I would like to suggest that what lies behind this oth-
erwise somewhat puzzling distinction is the following: the sage's
perfect act is craftsmanlike because it is the result of applying a moral
rule' properly, that is, because his action is an appropriate action.
As such the action is the product of a Ots in the agent's soul. And
since a OEls can vary in degree, we expect that a person who possesses
the Ets-craft alone might vary in the degree to which he is said to
possess the craft, that he can be more or less good at following the
rules of the craft; this variability of degree is indeed something we
see in the IrPOK0IrTWV, or man making moral progress. But this does
not, of course, guarantee that such an action will be virtuous; for that
it must also be done from a 6ta'Occs of the soul. For once the fully
virtuous state of the soul has been achieved, it will no longer make
sense to talk of being more or less good at following the rules of the
craft. But it is still correct to say that the cardinal virtues are crafts, in
contrast to other virtues that are not. For these moral virtues require
the craft in order to prepare the ground for the characteristically
moral and virtuous aspect of the sage's action.
To say, then, as Stobaeus does (and as Socrates did), that the
virtues are crafts, is, for Chrysippus and the earlier Stoics, to tell but
half the story. For mere accurate and unfailing application of the
rules about appropriate actions (as in a Ets-craft) will not by itself
guarantee virtue: for that we have the evidence of Stobaeus, again,
this time quoting Chrysippus.11
10 On moral rules, see recently I. G. Kidd, "Moral Actions and Rules in Stoic
Ethics," pp. 247-258 in Rist, op. cit.
" SVF 3.510. Note the reference in this text to jufcaat 7rpc4Ets, and compare it t
the jfYaat -rvxvat quoted above, which I associate with the KaO6~KOvra of the non-sage

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The man who has made the greatest moral progress fulfills all appro-
priate actions in all respects and omits none; but his life is not yet happy.
This supervenes when these intermediate actions acquire the additional
properties of firmness and consistency and they take on a certain solidity
of their own.
The reason the Stoics need to postulate two levels of craftsmanlike

virtue is related to the distinction drawn in this text between the life
of the best 7rpOKo'rTwv and that of the sage. Crafts are, among other
things, sets of formulated rules'2; that is in part why Socrates held
that a XAOyoS could be given of them. If the rules of a craft are fixed
enough that a Xb'yos can be given, it is difficult to see how moral
behavior, which for the Stoics requires adaptation to particular,
unique circumstances, can be totally dictated by the rules of a craft.
And the rules of Stoic ethics are in fact firm generalizations, based
on objective and fixed standards, human nature, and the nature of
the cosmos. Hence it is not enough for Chrysippus to say that virtue
is a craft-ftts. Virtuous action must also be accounted for in terms
that allow for some escape from the rules dictated by a craft. As we
know from Plutarch, Chrysippus seems to have emphasized the claim
that the sage's reason, at least insofar as it actively determined his
behavior in particular actions, was substantially identical with natural
law, i.e., the rational plan of Zeus."3 But, as we learn elsewhere, what
the law commands is a KaroXpwAa, something which varies in its
actual content according to circumstances. How, then, are we to
understand a law, objectively grounded, which varies in its dictates
according to circumstances? In connection with this, I would argue,
we should consider a doxographical text at Diogenes Laertius 7.125,
which clearly represents early Stoic views: all things belong to the
sages, since the law has given them complete authority (Etovaa).
I suggest the following as a probable reconstruction of Chrysip-
pus' theory. The natural law is the rational plan of Zeus for men, and
by virtue of our rationality we come under that law and are able to
obey it. But, just as the events of the deterministic world are in fact
inscrutable to men, even to the sage,'4 so the virtuous actions that
are the commands of that law are impossible to formulate in the form
of universal craft rules. It is not possible to achieve morality just by
following a set of rules; virtue is not "definite," as we saw above: the
same craftsmanlike actions do not produce consistent results be-
2 A craft is defined as a aviarrla (K KaraX7pJ2fWv.

'3 This was in his treatise On Law, as we can infer from Plutarch (SVF 3.175,
520-521 = De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, ch. 11, esp. at 1037e).
14 See G. B. Kerferd, "What Does the Wise Man Know?" in Rist, op. cit., pp.
125-136.

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cause the situations they are performed in are too various to be

represented by any fixed formulation. The situation is comparable to
that described in Plutarch's text, where the master craftsman tells the
apprentice what to do in the form of a general rule and does not feel
it necessary or indeed helpful to add: "but do it at the right time and
in the right way." It is taken for granted that the moral practitioner,
like the master craftsman, can see, as the apprentice cannot, just
what that right time and way will be. But it cannot be completely
summed up in a rule or definition, because the individual circum-
stances vary. So, just as the doctor, the shoemaker, the musician, and
so forth, use their peculiar and incommunicable insight to carry out
the general rules of their craft properly-and even to see that there
are sometimes reasons for breaking the general rules-the sage uses
his own special insight to do the same with the universal rules of the
craft of living well which dictate the a0 77oVTra.
The duality of the sage's action, as an appropriate act and as a
moral act, is reflected in the duality of the Stoic conception of "natu-
ral law." Their grounding of ethics on nature, human and cosmic,
provides them with objective laws of behavior which determine vir-
tue, and these laws can be summed up in the injunction to perform
appropriate actions. But the ultimate basis of such laws is the rational
plan of Zeus, or nature, and this plan cannot be predicted with
certainty by man in advance of its revelation in concrete events and
individual circumstances. In such circumstances the sage may see
that what is rationally required in a particular case is in violation of
those general rules. This is why the sage has complete authority-
which includes the authority to break general provisions of the law of
nature (e.g., the ban on incest or cannibalism). The paradox ofjusti-
fied law-breaking suggested by this "authority" is interesting: for
surely in breaking the universal but rigid rules of his craft the sage
(like Aristotle's oirov6aios) is following nature in a higher, but more
flexible, sense.
In this way the craft analogy lives a new life in Stoic ethics,
enriched by the explicit realization that the truly expert craftsman is
not bound exclusively by the rigid rules that guide the apprentice
and that the "account" that Socrates demands of anyone who claims
to understand the craft cannot always be given in neat and articu-
late form.
The craft of life deals primarily with objectively grounded general
rules, and the moral expert must surely be master of this craft-and
have the OEls which constitutes that craft; but he must also have
something more, something which transcends the merely craftsman-
like ability to apply rules and formulate XAyot: he must be able to do

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so from the proper state (btcffcns) of mind; for only this can guaran-
tee that the agent will deal properly with the particularities of unique
situations, something no rule of craft can teach. The craft of life is a
necessary but not sufficient part of the sage's life. It after all can fail,
while happiness cannot.
The Stoic sage practices a craft and, like all craftsmen, has a goal;
but his craft has two distinct levels or aspects corresponding to the
elts and to the &&aOffcns which constitute his moral perfection. At the
level of '4ls the sage has purposes or targets for his action (called
cYKOrOl by Antipater) and follows rules which cannot guarantee the
success of even the wisest action; while on the level of his 6alwt&Os the
sage pursues a goal (rEXos) which he never misses. This goal is happi-
ness. The terminology of '4ls and &a&ffOcs, like the more explicit and
informative terminology of Antipater, is intimately tied to the Stoics'
Socratic conviction that the virtues are crafts.
We have one last question to consider: what is the relationship of
the sage to his rEXos? Is it the intentional content of his actions; i.e.,
does he say to himself that his aim in acting on each occasion is to
further his happiness? Or is the self-conscious awareness of an aim in
each action distinct from the happiness that is his goal? Surely the
latter. The sage acts, like the Aristotelian wise man, for the sake of
the noble, and in so doing he infallibly achieves his goal and so
becomes happy; but he does not consciously set happiness as the
target of his actions. It is difficult to find evidence that can prove this
beyond doubt, but one consideration can be mentioned in its favor.
The sage is unaware of becoming so, according to early Stoic doc-
trine (SVF 3.539). Since being a sage is in part a matter of doing
things with the infallibly proper motivations, if the conscious pur-
pose of a sage's every action were something distinct from the con-
scious purpose of the IrpOK06rTwV at his very best, then he could hardly
be unaware of the change that propelled him at last to the state of
perfect wisdom. The sage, must, from the point of view of his con-
scious motivations and goals, be indistinguishable from the nearly
perfect lrpoKlrTrwV.
The raXos of life, happiness, then, is not what we consciously aim
at, but something built into our nature as human beings. Our nature
defines what it means for us to be happy and perfect in our kind, and
in this respect Stoic ethics is as "naturalistic" as Aristotle's-or in-
deed any ethics that employs a version of the function argument to
ground human happiness in human nature.
One final observation about this deserves to be made: happiness is
the goal of life, but also, as we have seen, the goal of the crafts that
constitute virtue. For the Stoics, who revived the Socratic notion of

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virtue as a craft, an Aristotelian relationship of nature to craft is

apparently still in force.'5 Crafts and nature share their goal; the job
of a craft is to perfect nature, to come to its assistance in doing what
would come to pass naturally if it were not for the inevitable failings
of human society.'6 The role of crafts in Stoic ethics: to perfect
nature and supplement her in her weaknesses, is like the role of
medicine. Crafts and nature are not opposed, but complementary.
But this surely is just what we would expect from the Stoics, who
from the very beginning insisted that the goal was "a life according to
nature."
BRAD INWOOD
University of Toronto
MORAL RULES AND THE AIMS OF STOIC ETHICS*
My discussion focuses on Inwood's account of the logic of the craft

analogy and the status of moral rules in Stoic ethics. Along the way I
offer comments on the over-all appropriateness of the craft analogy
for the Stoics' conception of morality.
Inwood finds in Aristotle's discussion of crafts parallels for the
Stoic claim that someone can be said to have properly practiced a
craft even while failing to achieve the objective of that craft. Thus, if
on a particular occasion an archer fails to hit his target because of
external factors beyond his control, he still can be said to possess a
satisfactory knowledge of his craft. This much is reasonable and
usefully picks out important features about moral motivation and
action. The Stoic claim, however, is considerably stronger, and we
must be careful to distinguish: (a) competent craftsmen who, during
particular token performances of their craft, fail to achieve the ob-
jective of their craft; (b) competent craftsmen whose goal in per-
forming their craft is different from the objective of their craft.
15 Compare the opening sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics.

16 See Diogenes Laertius 7.89: our souls are made for virtue, but we are cor-
rupted by the "persuasiveness of externals" and by the influence of our compan-
ions.
* Abstract of a paper to be presented in an APA symposium on Hellenistic Ethics,

December 29, 1986, commenting on Brad Inwood, "Goal and Target in Stoicism,"
this JOURNAL, this issue, 547-556.
0022-362X/86/8310/0556$00.50 ? 1986 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

200.24.17.12 on Fri, 12 Jun 2020 20:56:30 UTC

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