Tad Brennan

Stoic Moral Psychology

Moral psychology addresses itself to the interface between ethics and psychology. One of the basic principles of moral psychology is the apparently trivial one, that all ethically correct actions are, to begin with, actions: inasmuch as they are the deliberate or at least intentional actions of human beings, ethical actions will share features with the class to which they belong, and fall under whatever constraints belong to the larger kind. This of course raises an immediate question about the coherence of the topic so described. Psychology is clearly a descriptive field, and ethics is the normative field par excellence; the one tells us how the human mind does function, the other tells us how human agents ought to act. Given this fundamental difference, we may not assume, without further argument, that the first discussion can place any constraints whatsoever on the second. The mere fact that psychology places limits on what is humanly possible does not show, without further argument, that ethics must keep its demands within those limits.

Epicurus on Sex, Marriage, and Children

So understood, commentators have taken Epicurus to be sounding a cautious note about sex. The desire for sex is natural, of course: its universality through all nations, tribes, and species attests to this. But it is not necessary; no pain ensues on its nonsatisfaction. And sexual activity frequently has harmful consequences-indeed, it is a surprising thing, you are very lucky, if it does not have such consequences. The satisfaction of sexual desire so frequently leads to pains of familiar and wellcatalogued kinds that the Epicurean calculator will seldom, perhaps never, judge it prudent to pursue sexual pleasures. Purinton agrees in placing sexual desire among the natural non-necessaries. But he thinks that the last phrase has been misunderstood, in a way that makes Epicurus more hostile toward sex than he was. The proper translation on his view is as follows :2

Speaking with the same voice as reason

 readers of Greek ethics tend to favour those accounts of the virtuous ideal according to which virtue involves the development of our non-rational—appetitive and emotional— motivations aswell as of our rationalmotivations. So our contemporaries find much of interest and sympathy in Aristotle’s conception of virtue as a condition inwhich reasondoes not simply override our appetites and emotions, but these non-rational motivations themselves ‘speak with the same voice as reason’.2 By contrast, the Stoic readers of Greek ethics tend to favour those accounts of the virtuous ideal according to which virtue involves the development of our non-rational—appetitive and emotional— motivations aswell as of our rationalmotivations. So our contemporaries find much of interest and sympathy in Aristotle’s conception of virtue as a condition inwhich reasondoes not simply override our appetites and emotions, but these non-rational motivations themselves ‘speak with the same voice as reason’.2 By contrast, the Stoic