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Seneca Philosophus
Trends in Classics Q
Supplementary Volumes
Edited by
Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos
Scientific Committee
Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck · Claude Calame
Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison · Stephen Hinds
Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus · Giuseppe Mastromarco
Gregory Nagy · Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone
Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann
Volume 27
De Gruyter
Seneca Philosophus
Edited by
Jula Wildberger
Marcia L. Colish
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-034983-2
e-ISBN 978-3-11-034986-3
ISSN 1868-4785
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet
at http://dnb.dnb.de.
2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen
Printing: CPI buch bücher.de GmbH, Birkach
Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................... 1
Ilsetraut Hadot
Getting to Goodness: Reflections on Chapter 10 of Brad
Inwood, Reading Seneca ............................................................... 9
Antonello Orlando
Seneca on Prolēpsis: Greek Sources and Cicero’s Influence ...... 43
Jörn Müller
Did Seneca Understand Medea? A Contribution to the Stoic
Account of Akrasia ...................................................................... 65
Marcia L. Colish
Seneca on Acting against Conscience ......................................... 95
David H. Kaufman
Seneca on the Analysis and Therapy of Occurrent Emotions ... 111
Gareth D. Williams
Double Vision and Cross-Reading in Seneca’s Epistulae
Morales and Naturales Quaestiones.......................................... 135
Rita Degl’Innocenti Pierini
Freedom in Seneca: Some Reflections on the Relationship
between Philosophy and Politics, Public and Private Life ........ 167
Jean-Christophe Courtil
Torture in Seneca’s Philosophical Works: Between
Justification and Condemnation ................................................ 189
VI Table of Contents
Tommaso Gazzarri
Gender-Based Differential Morbidity and Moral Teaching
in Seneca’s Epistulae morales ................................................... 209
Elizabeth Gloyn
My Family Tree Goes Back to the Romans: Seneca’s
Approach to the Family in the Epistulae Morales..................... 229
Margaret R. Graver
Honeybee Reading and Self-Scripting: Epistulae Morales 84 .. 269
Linda Cermatori
The Philosopher as Craftsman: A Topos between Moral
Teaching and Literary Production ............................................. 295
Martin T. Dinter
Sententiae in Seneca .................................................................. 319
Matheus De Pietro
Having the Right to Philosophize: A New Reading of
Seneca, De Vita Beata 1.1–6.2 .................................................. 343
Francesca Romana Berno
In Praise of Tubero’s Pottery: A Note on Seneca,
Ep. 95.72–73 and 98.133 ........................................................... 369
Madeleine Jones
Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius: Hypocrisy as a Way of Life ........ 393
Jula Wildberger
The Epicurus Trope and the Construction of a “Letter Writer”
in Seneca’s Epistulae Morales .................................................. 431
Abbreviations............................................................................. 467
Index of Passages Cited ............................................................. 469
Index of Modern Authors .......................................................... 495
General Index ............................................................................ 505
Introduction
The purpose of this volume, most of whose contents were given as papers
at an international conference “Seneca Philosophus” at the American
University of Paris in May 2011, is to provide Anglophone readers with a
range of current approaches to this important first-century Latin author.
The contributors span scholarly generations and reflect diverse research
cultures and agendas. In some cases this book makes the work of
prominent scholars writing in other languages available in English for the
first time. While these papers treat a variety of themes, often from
contrasting disciplinary and methodological perspectives, they share many
points of agreement about Seneca. Whether they focus on his epistemol-
ogy, his ethics, his natural philosophy, his psychology, his political
thought, or his conception of the body and of gender roles, the contributors
see him as an author who draws with discrimination on other ancient
traditions while developing an authentic, cogent, and original articulation
of Roman Stoicism. Some papers in this collection emphasize Seneca’s
philosophy as such. Others focus on the ways in which his literary artistry
serves to convey his ideas, accenting his strategies as a writer, his use of
rhetorical devices and standard tropes, and the sophisticated techniques
with which he constructs a literary as well as a philosophical persona, both
in his prose and his dramatic works.
The first group of papers in this volume deals with Seneca the philos-
opher in the most immediate sense. Ilsetraut Hadot and Antonello Orlando
engage the debate on how the earlier Stoics, and Seneca, think that we
acquire the moral norms which we use in making moral decisions. Where-
as Jörn Müller and Marcia L. Colish treat the problem of how we make
such decisions when they contravene our accepted moral values, David H.
Kaufman and Gareth D. Williams broaden this ethical topic in contrasting
directions, focusing, respectively, on the allaying of irrational passions and
the rejection of erroneous intellectual judgments in considering how
Seneca presents himself as a moral therapist.
Against a popular empiricist understanding of the Stoic notion of the
highest good and the concomitant view that Seneca might have been influ-
enced by Platonic innatism, Ilsetraut Hadot argues that already the earliest
Stoics assumed the existence of a basic innate pre-notion or “anticipated
grasp” (prolēpsis) of the good, which she distinguishes both from the rudi-
mentary notions acquired by experience or analogy during the develop-
2 Introduction
ment of reason and the fully formed correct notion of the good that can
only be assimilated through philosophical education. Antonello Orlando’s
paper complements Hadot’s approach with a detailed philological study of
the wide range of Latin expressions used for rendering the Greek term
prolēpsis. Orlando makes a case for considering lexical choices not only as
a manner of aligning oneself with a particular school but also, at least for
Seneca, as a necessary engagement with the terminology proposed by
earlier Latin authors such as Cicero and the needs or expectations of a
Roman readership.
Jörn Müller applies insights from his research on ancient and medieval
concepts of akrasia (“weakness of will” or “lack of self-control”) to the
case study of Seneca’s Medea, whose main character highlights the diffi-
culties that arise when one tries to explain weak-willed behavior within the
framework of a monist psychology. Müller distinguishes two basic types of
Stoic explanations, for which he adduces evidence from Stoic sources in
general and from the philosophical writings of Seneca himself. According
to the “persistence model,” an agent continues to maintain a passionate,
uncontrollable state by the assent of his reason, so that it persists even
when rational insight begins to suggest a different behavior. According to
the “oscillation model,” the mind of the akratic person switches rapidly be-
tween different judgments and thus simultaneously maintains conflicting
passions, such as love or anger toward the same individual. According to
Müller, Seneca shaped his Medea on the oscillation model rather. Right
from the beginning, she appears torn between conflicting passions and
solves her akratic conflict by complete abandonment to the full madness of
one passion alone.
Marcia L. Colish examines “conscience” (conscientia) in Seneca phi-
losophus and the other Imperial Stoics. She sees the originality of Seneca’s
approach in his reserving premeditation of future evils for sages, but also
in the facts that self-examination appears as an activity conducted in
various settings, also as a form of social exchange, and that Seneca
presented his fictitious self as deeply unsettled by his public role. The
importance of a good conscience as both the facilitator and the essence of a
good life is showcased by Seneca’s idiosyncratic use of well-known theat-
rical imagery for describing acts against conscience. In Seneca,
responsibility is framed not as acting some stereotypic role but as per-
forming one’s own life on this world stage, which the agent plays well or
badly according to his own volition.
David H. Kaufman studies Seneca’s treatment of occurrent emotions,
i.e. fresh passions that are intractable by reasoned argument according to
Stoic orthodoxy. On the basis of an analysis of De ira 2.1–4, Kaufman
argues that Seneca saw one cause of this problem in the fact that the beliefs
Introduction 3
correlated with the passion in its course are not the same as the beliefs
which originally were the impassioned person’s reasons for conceiving the
passion in the first place. Kaufman further suggests that, as a result of this
new understanding of the emotional pathology, Seneca added an Epicurean
method to the Stoic therapist’s first-aid kit: the treatment by stimulation of
countervailing passions.
Gareth D. Williams argues that Seneca’s Naturales quaestiones and
Epistulae morales “in a sense complete each other as interdependent
conceptual experiments” (137). He discusses the simultaneous composition
and shared thematic concerns of the two works, for example the need to
“do” something right now, which is highlighted in the first of the Epistulae
morales and in the preface to the Naturales quaestions. According to
Williams, the two works offer different but complementary forms of
therapy with parallels in modern cognitive-behavioral therapy. It thus
appears that the works addressed to the same dedicatee Lucilius, perhaps
together with the Libri moralis philosophiae, were supposed to form a
corpus that promotes a comprehensive philosophical as well as therapeutic
agenda and, at the same time, the persona of an author sincerely devoted to
a life in philosophical retreat.
The second group of papers in this collection analyzes a diverse range
of topics, themes, and images related to political and social issues. Rita
Degl’ Innocenti Pierini and Jean-Christophe Courtil treat Seneca’s critique
of despotism, as it impinges on the freedom and physical integrity of
others. Tommaso Gazzarri discusses how self-inflicted harm to the human
body can acquire different moral significance depending on the gender of
the agent, while Elizabeth Gloyn reviews the role of both male and female
family members for the philosopher-in-progress in the Epistulae morales
as a recurrent theme in a structured whole and as a marker of different
stages in the progressor’s development.
Rita Degl’Innocenti Pierini explores the refractions of Seneca’s con-
ception of freedom when applied to the political sphere in contrast to the
ehtical perspective of the individual striving for consistency in his own life.
She juxtaposes the mirror images of Cicero, the half-free ex-consul of De
brevitate vitae 5 who bewails his imposed retreat from public life, and of
Cato at the helm of the sinking state as he establishes freedom through his
personal choice of suicide. On the basis of a careful comparison, she
argues that for Seneca freedom is first of foremost a value of the private
sphere and individual philosophical practice. All the same, exemplary
sublimation of individual freedom can assume political importance and
confirm freedom as a collective value, especially in the absence of political
freedom. This picture is further refined by another comparison: In the
political sphere as it is represented in De clementia, freedom dissolves into
4 Introduction
a paradox. Collective freedom depends on the absolute coercive power of

the emperor, while that power presupposes the emperor’s voluntary
renunciation of his own individual freedom.
In a thorough study of references to torture in Seneca’s prose works,
Jean-Christophe Courtil argues that Seneca’s frequent depiction of this
practice stems not from a taste for the gruesome but from the horror and
outrage at sadistic abuse of power which he seeks to inspire in his readers.
Nevertheless, Courtil also provides evidence that Seneca did not reject all
forms of torture and rather favors political pragmatism. He does not call
into question the laws of the state permitting, or even prescribing, torture
under certain circumstances. The apparent contradiction between these two
attitudes is resolved by asserting the superiority of moral law. Reason must
control all uses of torture, and torture must always serve a rationally justi-
fiable remedial or legal purpose.
Tommaso Gazzarri contrasts gender-specific accounts of self-destruc-
tion and self-healing. As his starting point he takes a passage in the
Epistulae morales in which Seneca explains the spread of male-specific
diseases among the female population with the deviant behavior of the
afflicted women. They suffer because they renounce their female nature by
adopting dietary and sexual practices associated with masculinity. Also
gender-related, and also drawing on medical imagery, is the presentation of
the countervailing virtue which exemplary male heroes display when they
assert their moral freedom by inflicting on themselves the “therapy” of
suicide.
Elizabeth Gloyn takes Seneca’s treatment of the family in the Epistulae
morales as a showcase example of the manner in which this work functions
as a systematically organized whole and integrates more general philo-
sophical issues into a discourse focused on the practices, concerns, and
moral development of its two protagonists, Seneca and Lucilius. Gloyn
observes changes in the treatment of the theme as the reader advances
through the work. After an initial phase in which the family is blanked out,
references both to the theme in general and more specifically to Seneca’s
own family reappear. Warnings, but also acknowledgements of the obliga-
tions toward family members, gradually enable the progressor to take a
rational stance and assign to his family the appropriate place within the
framework of his ethical thought. His relatives sometimes give him support
and good advice, but even their well-meaning interventions can hinder his
progress. Seneca’s treatment of the family thus serves as an extended case
study of the tension between the sage’s acceptance of his social responsi-
bilities and his detachment from externals.
The final group of papers in this collection by Margaret R. Graver,
Linda Cermatori, Martin Dinter, Matheus De Pietro, Francesca Romana
Introduction 5
Berno, Madeleine Jones, and Jula Wildberger all accent ways in which
Seneca uses imagery and literary strategies to fashion, express, and defend
his own self or authorial persona.
In a discussion of Epistula moralis 84 and Michel Foucault’s reading
of that letter, Margaret R. Graver traces a “novel ontology of the self”
(270). Seneca blends identifications of writers with their written work as
we know them from Latin literature with a holistic application of the
Roman concept of ingenium (one’s “mind,” “mindset,” “talent,” and what
one produces with it). Thus he not only represents himself in his writings,
the writings are his externalized “locus of identity” (270) and a means by
which he can transcend himself whenever artistic achievement, understood
as a unified whole created by both literary art and art of life, “surpasses
and ultimately replaces one’s unstable and fleeting sentience within the
body with an externalized self that is more consistent and more admirable
as well as more stable” (270).
The contributions of Linda Cermatori and Martin Dinter establish
connections between Seneca’s dramatic and philosophical works. In the
tradition of studies that explore the interdependence of literary form and
philosophical meaning, Linda Cermatori discusses the imagery of the artist
and craftsman in various interrelated functions, most importantly the meta-
literary construction of an authorial identity both as a philosopher and an
educator. By confronting her findings in Seneca’s philosophical prose with
the use of similar imagery in the tragedies, Cermatori reveals striking
inversions of the philosopher-educator evoked in the prose works: Charac-
ters in the plays are portrayed as ingenious fabricators of destructive
machinations, while their victims become the objects of perverse crafts-
manship, just as the soul of Lucilius in the Epistulae morales is the un-
formed matter out of which the philosopher-educator fashions Lucilius the
Sage as his masterpiece.
Martin Dinter discusses another of Seneca’s frequently noted devices,
his taste for pithy maxims, not in his prose, however, but in his tragedies.
Dinter suggests that Seneca might have written with a view to the contem-
porary practice of excerpting, to which the works of his father, Seneca the
Elder, bear ample testimony, and that he composed his sententious plays in
such a way that his authorial identity would be gleaned from the scattered
sayings of his characters. Imitating the reading strategies of an orator on
the hunt for striking formulations, Dinter identifies recurrent ideas which
Seneca the Younger hammers home repeatedly in the tragedies. Themes
thus articulated by the characters of his dramas turn out to yield positions
consistent with those taken in his prose works.
Another feature of Seneca’s style, repetitive accumulation of synony-
mous phrases expressing the same content, is given a new interpretation in
6 Introduction
Matheus De Pietro’s contribution. Analyzing a passage with descriptions

of happiness and the supreme good in De vita beata, he shows that the
allegedly aimless and rambling exuberance lambasted by ancient as well as
modern critics is a literary device deliberately employed as a means of self-
presentation. De Pietro indicates how this apparent chaos is carefully
structured according to theoretical principles and points out features which
serve an authorial purpose related to the apologetic function of the whole
treatise: to parade Seneca’s credentials as an expert Stoic philosopher.
Using the method of detailed inter- and intratextual comparison, Fran-
cesca Romana Berno throws into relief the nuances of Seneca’s use of the
example of proverbially frugal Q. Aelius Tubero. She is thus able to show
the potential of this otherwise rather marginal figure to illustrate Seneca’s
views concerning his own role as a public figure. In contrast to the parallel
accounts as they are attested in Cicero or Valerius Maximus, Seneca does
not criticize Tubero’s renunciation of public values and even presents such
behavior as worthy of praise. Berno concludes that Seneca may have
intended this assertion of consistency at the cost of a political career as a
model for his own retreat from the political stage.
Madeleine Jones traces the complex antinomies implicit in the charge
of hypocrisy raised, or expressly not raised, both within Seneca’s work and
in his reception. In a close reading of the eighty-seventh Epistula moralis
and the metaphor of shipwreck placed prominently at the beginning of this
letter, she argues that Seneca constructs his persona as a hypocrite both to
forestall criticism and to express the confusion inherent in the Stoic condi-
tion. According to Jones, Stoicism appears as a system of thought which
commits its adherents to hypocrisy: The man in progress espouses Stoic
doctrine but, as someone who is not a sage, cannot live by it. For a Stoic
like Seneca, the genre of the Epistulae morales as a moral discourse and, at
the same time, familiar epistolary exchange between close friends requires
a voice which highlights the distance between the sender’s principles, his
words (verba), and the facts (res) of his actual life (vita). However, since
frank acknowledgement of one’s own faults is also the necessary first step
on the road to sagehood and since any philosopher casting himself in the
Socratic mold must deny that he is wise, failure to meet the high standards
one professes as a member of the Stoic sect, paradoxically, becomes a form
of moral achievement. Hypocrisy, in the sense of preaching one thing and
practicing another, thus is surreptitiously elevated to the closest approxi-
mation to virtue of which a non-wise philosopher-in-progress is capable.
Proposing a literary reading intended to elucidate the philosophical
content of the Epistulae morales, Jula Wildberger argues that the engage-
ment with Epicurus in the Epistulae morales is a multifaceted literary de-
vice essential to the fabric of what she calls an epistolary Bildungsroman.
Introduction 7
According to her, the “Epicurus trope” supports the characterization of a

Letter Writer “Seneca” and helps to endow the work with a dramatic struc-
ture. By presenting a pair of friends, both “Seneca” and “Lucilius,” as
appealing models of an exemplary philosophical lifestyle, the Epistulae
morales serve as an introduction not just to Stoicism, but to philosophy
itself. The Letter Writer progresses in the practices and methodologies any
serious philosopher must master, including a progress from often naïve
endorsement to a more carefully reflected, sophisticated account of Stoic
thought. As part of this development, the Letter Writer draws increasingly
sharper distinctions between his own views and Epicurean tenets,
especially those on pleasure. Wildberger underscores the necessity to
distinguish two layers of Epicurus’ reception in the Epistulae morales:
While the Letter Writer might be blissfully unaware of a theoretical
problem and just read Epicurus in his own way, L. Annaeus, the author of
this work, understood the other philosopher well enough to know exactly
what he was doing when he cunningly and deliberately manipulated,
misrepresented, or reinterpreted Epicurean tenets and expressions as it
suited the Stoic mindset of his creation, the Letter Writer, at each specific
point in the intellectual drama played out by this character in the letters.
Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers
alike, this collection features a vitalizing diversity of contributions that
emphasizes the unity of Seneca’s work and his originality as a translator of
Stoic ideas in the literary forms of imperial Rome. Individually and collec-
tively, the contributions in this volume shed new light on his writings, each
from their own historical, philosophical, literary, and theoretical perspec-
tives. They will stimulate the study and understanding of Seneca with fresh
analyses and solutions to issues that have been debated for some time and
offer entirely new avenues of investigation.
We wish to thank Dr. Benedict Beckeld for his help with proofreading
and both the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The American University
of Paris for their support to the conference from which this volume arose.
Yale and Paris, March 2014 Marcia L. Colish & Jula Wildberger
Getting to Goodness: Reflections on Chapter 10 of
Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca*
Ilsetraut Hadot
While reading the set of interpretations of Seneca offered by Brad Inwood,

Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome,1 I was intrigued by, among
other things, the chapter entitled “Getting to Goodness,” which contains
his interpretation of Seneca’s Letter to Lucilius 120. The subject of this
letter is the question: how have we acquired the knowledge of good and
evil, and of what is morally good (“quomodo ad nos boni honestique
notitia pervenerit”)? We recall that for the Stoics, the only good was what
is morally good, that a happy life was identical to a virtuous life as well as
to a life according to nature, and that this conception of the good was
obviously very far from the opinions of ordinary people. To state matters
very briefly at the outset, Inwood is of the opinion that [a] to explain how
man can be able to conceive the notion of the sovereign good, the Stoic
method, since it is purely “empirical,” is insufficient, and even incoherent,2
––––––––––––
* The French version of this article was completed at the end of 2009 and then trans-
lated into English by Michael Chase to make it accessible to an Anglophone pub-
lic. Only after this English version was submitted for publication in 2011, did the
author become aware of Henry Dyson’s Prolepsis and Ennoia in the Early Stoa,
which had appeared in 2009. This book and the present publication often follow
the same approach, but they disagree on a fundamental point: In contrast to Dyson
the author of this paper argues that prolēpseis, as understood by Chrysippus, were
not formed through perceptual experience. On the other hand, she is delighted to
see that Antonello Orlando’s contribution to this volume arrives at the same
conclusion.
1 Inwood 2005.
2 I cite Inwood 2005, 281: “There was, then, a problem for Stoics in accounting for
the possibility of our acquisition of the concept of good. It is clearly meant to be a
concept open to us through natural, empirical means. Yet at the same time it seems
to transcend the realm of ordinary experience and to embody an ideal of human
perfection which we neither experience in our ordinary lives nor attain with any
significant frequency. The starting points for coming to understand the good, the
experience of what is mundanely useful or advantageous, are accessible enough;
but the required development of such ‘utility’ towards the ideal of perfect moral
utility is virtually impossible to account for within the framework of Stoic episte-
mology. It is one thing to set out a theory which builds on the assumption that we
can learn about the good. But it is quite another to have a defensible account of
10 Ilsetraut Hadot
and [b] that Seneca tried, by means of arguments that are not completely
orthodox, to find the beginnings of a solution to this difficulty, which
would not be solved until Epictetus, who accepts the “reality of innate
ideas.”3
As these few citations show, and contrary to what the rather vast title
of the chapter in question, “Getting to Goodness,” seems to promise,
Inwood’s developments do not deal with all the means by which the Stoics
thought they could become morally good. Instead, they focus on a single
detail: the question of how, according to the Stoics, the notion of the sove-
reign good in particular, and ethical notions in general, are formed. And it
is precisely because he thus reduces a complex theme to a question that
belongs to the theory of knowledge alone, and because, in addition, he
isolates Letter 120 from its context, which is initially the totality of the
Letters to Lucilius and then the whole of Stoic philosophy – in short, it is
because he limits his perspectives too much that, in my opinion, Inwood is
led to reproach Seneca for incoherencies that are not to be found in him.
With regard to his interpretation of the Stoic theory of the formation of
ethical notions, Inwood has obviously been deeply influenced by the thesis
of F. H. Sandbach,4 who, in opposition to Bonhöffer,5 was of the opinion
that the Stoics did not accept, above and beyond the empirical path (repeat-
ed sense perceptions → memory → experience) backed up by the analo-
gical method, any complementary path which would be based on natural
starting points toward virtue and innate pre-notions. Sandbach’s viewpoint
was accepted by most historians of ancient philosophy for about seventy
years, but finally the recent article by M. Jackson-McCabe, entitled “The
Stoic Theory of Implanted Preconceptions,”6 seeks to rehabilitate Bon-
höffer’s thesis, which I have just mentioned.7 Inwood could not have
––––––––––––
how we are supposed to be able to do so within the context of Stoic epistemology.
In our consideration of Seneca’s contribution to this problem, we will need to
focus on how this gap is to be bridged.”
3 Inwood 2005, 301: “Seneca, I think, really did make a genuine advance over his
Stoic predecessors in how he thought this gap might be bridged. But in so doing he
brought Stoic moral epistemology to the threshold of Platonic recollection. Little
wonder that, in the next generation, Epictetus seems to have taken the next step
and accepted the reality of innate ideas.”
4 Sandbach 1930, 44–51.
5 Bonhöffer 1890, 187–222.
6 Jackson-McCabe 2004, 323–347.
7 In fact, Jackson-McCabe has let some of Sandbach’s criticisms of Bonhöffer per-
sist, for instance 326 n. 18, where he joins Sandbach in condemning Bonhöffer,
who supposedly identified “προλήψεις in general with the ἔμφυτοι προλήψεις in
particular.” Yet the following quotation shows, among other things, that Bonhöffer
never committed such an identification. For he says (Bonhöffer 1890, 196): “Man
kann nur soviel sagen, dass bei Epiktet die προλήψεις vorzugsweise [= preferably]
Getting to Goodness 11
known this excellent article, which appeared one year before the publica-
tion of his own book, and I myself did not become aware of it until I had
finished the first draft of the present article, which proposes, among other
things, to rehabilitate the views of Bonhöffer, albeit on a broader basis.
Since Jackson-McCabe’s work refers in detail not only to Sandbach’s
article, which opposes Bonhöffer, but also, for important questions, to the
partisans of both sides, I can refrain from referring to this older literature
myself. However, since I am also attempting, unlike Jackson-McCabe, to
prove that the use of certain technical terms was not constant throughout
the history of Stoicism and that different terms in different authors might
sometimes mean the same thing, and, conversely, that the same terms
might designate different realities, I will take up in more detail, in the
second part of this article, two texts which have already been well inter-
preted, in their broad outlines, by Jackson-McCabe: one by Diogenes
Laertius (7.49–54) and the other by Aëtius (Placita 4.11).
I. Preliminary Research on the Meaning of Such Expressions as

“Starting Points (Aphormai) toward Virtue,” Fundamenta or
Semina Innata Virtutis, Prolēpsis Emphutos, Praesumptio or
Praenotio, etc.
Let us begin by asking ourselves whether the doctrine of the Stoics of the
Hellenistic period concerning the formation of the concept of the sovereign
good is incoherent, as Inwood thinks,8 or not. To elucidate this question, I
believe it is useful to first recall a few important general features of Stoic
philosophy, which will facilitate the understanding of the texts that speci-
fically concern the formation of notions, features that Inwood passes over
in silence and of which Jackson-McCabe tackles only the doctrine of
oikeiōsis, to which I will return in the second part of this article.
We recall that the Stoics’ first principle can be called, indifferently,
artisanal fire, nature, divine reason or divine breath (pneuma), God or
Zeus.9 Of this first principle under the aspect of primordial fire, Zeno, the
founder of the Stoic school, says that it is “like a kind of seed (sperma) that
contains within itself the reasons (logous) and the causes (aitias) of all
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einen natürlichen, eingepflanzten Begriff bedeuten [...].” I lack the space here to
provide an exhaustive list of the other critiques of Bonhöffer’s theses, all of which
are, I believe, based on misunderstandings.
8 Cf. above, p. 9 with note 2.
9 Cf. D.L. 7.147 = SVF 2.1021 and Sen. Ben. 4.7 = SVF 2.1024.
12 Ilsetraut Hadot
things,”10 so that Zeno can speak of this principle as the “seminal reason
(logos spermatikos) of the world.”11 The same thing can be affirmed of the
first principle under the aspect of nature as breath: “Nature is a warm
breath that moves itself, generates the seminal powers, and realizes and
preserves man.”12 The soul is consequently defined as “a body composed
of subtle particles that moves by itself in accordance with the seminal rea-
sons.”13 Pohlenz rightly said that in the Stoic system, the seminal reasons
replace Plato’s ideas, in a sense.14 This first principle, which permeates the
totality of the world, is not, however, present everywhere with the same
strength.
The Stoic system consequently distinguishes four echelons in the
hierarchy of beings: The lowest echelon is that of inorganic beings, such as
stones, in which nature or the pneuma is manifested in its most primitive
form, as hexis, a term which, in this context, designates the “pneuma re-
turning upon itself,”15 and which ensures the internal cohesion of beings.
At the second level, that of plants (phuta), the pneuma is also manifested in
the form of nature (phusis), with the word phusis being taken here in the
very narrow sense of “growth.” At the third level, that of living mortal
beings that lack reason, the pneuma, part of which is increasingly hot and
dry, is also present under the aspect of the soul (psuchē), as the principle of
autonomous motion and the guarantor, in different degrees, of sensory
perceptions (aisthēseis) and their representations (phantasiai). Finally, at
the fourth level, the pneuma manifests itself primarily as reason (logos)16
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10 Eus. P.E. 15.14.1–2 = SVF 1.98. Unless indicated otherwise, translations are the
author’s own (translated from the original French into English by Michael Chase).
See also [Gal.] Definitiones medicae 95, vol. 19, p. 371,4–9 and 12–14 Kühn =
SVF 2.1133; Plu. Comm. not. 1077b = SVF 2.618; Philo, De aeternitate mundi 8 =
SVF 2.619; Stob. 1.17.3, vol. 1, p. 153,7 Wachsmuth = SVF 1.497; Orig. Cels.
4.48, 15–24 = SVF 2.1074.
11 D.L. 7.135–136 (vol. 3, p. 355,5–6 Long) = SVF 1.102 (p. 28,26).
12 Ps.-Gal. Definitiones medicae 95, vol. 19, p. 371,4–9 and 12–14 Kühn = SVF
2.1133; Aëtius 1.7.33 = SVF 2.1027: “The Stoics declare that the god endowed
with intelligence (θεός νοερός), the artisanal fire, which advances methodically
toward the generation of the world, contains within itself all the seminal reasons
(σπερματικοὶ λόγοι) according to which everything happens according to fate
(καθ’ εἱμαρμένην); and [that it is] a breath (πνεῦμα) that permeates the totality of
the world, taking its denominations according to the changes of matter it passes
through.” Cf. D.L. 7.156 = SVF 2.774.
13 [Gal.] Definitiones medicae 29, vol. 19, p. 355,11–13 Kühn = SVF 2.780.
14 Pohlenz 1948, vol. 2, p. 45.
15 Alex. Aphr. Mixt. p. 224,23–25 Bruns = SVF 2.442 (near the end).
16 For instance, Gal. In Hippocratis librum VI epidemiarum, commentarius V, vol.
17b, p. 251,1–9 Kühn (Wenkebach) = SVF 2.715; [Gal.] Introductio seu medicus,
p. 20,21–22 Petit = SVF 2.716.
and belongs to beings endowed with reason, some of whom are immortal,
viz. the gods, and some of whom are mortal, viz. mankind.17 This doctrine
thus founds the Stoic belief in the existence of a certain similarity and kin-
ship between the first principle, the gods, and mankind, a kinship that re-
sults from their common participation in reason,18 albeit at very different
degrees: the reason of the gods is perfect, whereas the reason of mankind is
imperfect but perfectible.19 It is so imperfect, in fact, that it does not mani-
fest itself in early childhood, during which we remain more or less at the
level of the higher animals, obeying our initial impulses toward self-preser-
vation. Since, then, reason is the characteristic feature by which mankind
not only is distinguished from animals and plants, but is also assimilated to
a certain extent to the gods and to the first principle, the supreme good for
mankind, the guarantor of a happy life, consists according to the Stoics in
the perfect state of this reason, a state which is identical with virtue. Yet
this perfect state of our reason – this is once again the common opinion of
all the Stoics – is not a gift of nature in the sense of a natural biological
development (phusei)20 that realizes itself without our cooperation, but it is
in conformity with our nature (kata phusin)21 to be able to achieve it by
dint of relentless intellectual labor.
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17 Cf. Philo, Legum allegoriae 2.22 = SVF 2.458; Quod deus sit immutabilis 35 and
41 = SVF 2.458; De aeternitate mundi 75 = SVF 2.459; [Plu.] Virt. mor. 451b =
SVF 2.460; Dexipp. in Cat. p. 50,31 Busse = SVF 2.461.
18 Although this doctrine, if one neglects its materialist basis, bears some resem-
blance to Platonic doctrines, it does not appear only at a late period of Stoicism,
the Imperial period, but already at its beginnings.
19 Cf. Cic. Leg. 1.22 = SVF 3.339: “This subtle, far-sighted, complex, penetrating
being, endowed with memory, full of reason and reflection whom we call ‘man,’
was created under a brilliant condition. Indeed, he is the only one, among so many
kinds and natures of beings endowed with a soul, to participate in reason and in
thought, whereas all the others are bereft of it [...]. Therefore, since there is nothing
better than reason and since it is found both in man and in the god, there exists a
primary community based on reason between man and the god.” Cf. Sen. Ep.
66.12: “[Human] reason is nothing other than a part of the divine breath (pars
divini spiritus) that has come down into the human body” and 92.27: “Reason is
common to gods and men: It is complete in the former, but in us is apt to become
so (in illis consummata est, in nobis consummabilis).”
20 Cf. Clem. Al. Strom. 7.3.19.3–4 = SVF 3.224; Clem. Al. Strom. 1.6.34.1–35.2 =
SVF 3.225; Sen. Ep. 90.44, etc.
21 Cf. Stob. 2.7.5b8, vol. 2, p. 65, 7–10 Wachsmuth = SVF 1.566 (Cleanthes); D.L.
7.89 (vol. 2, p. 335, 2–5 Long) = SVF 3.228; Musonius in Stob. 2.9.8, vol. 2, p.
183f. and 31.126, vol. 2, p. 244f. Wachsmuth; Sen. Ep. 108.8; Ep. 31.9; Ep. 90.1.
The idea that the virtues are given to us κατὰ φύσιν, and not φύσει, already appears
in Aristotle, E.N. 2, 1103a–b: “Virtue thus has two forms: it is intellectual on the
one hand, and on the other, moral. If it is intellectual, it is to a large extent to
teaching that it owes its birth and growth [...] but if it is moral, it is the fruit of
14 Ilsetraut Hadot
This means that we are not born virtuous nor do we become virtuous
automatically, but, because of the divine roots of our own reason, we
nevertheless all have, unlike the animals, a predisposition to be able to
achieve virtue, and this predisposition can only be innate. Centuries later,
in Seneca, Cleanthes’s famous dictum “All men possess by nature (ek phu-
seōs) starting points (aphormai)22 toward virtue”23 takes on the following
––––––––––––
habit [...]. Whence it also appears that none of the moral virtues arises in us natu-
rally (φύσει). Indeed, nothing natural is modified by habit. Thus, the stone which
naturally tends downwards, cannot acquire the habit of tending upwards, even if
we try to make it contract that habit by throwing it up in the air a thousand times
[...] no natural behavior can be modified by habit. Consequently, it is neither natu-
rally (φύσει) nor against nature (παρὰ φύσιν) that the virtues come to be within us.
However, nature has made us able to receive them (πεφυκόσι […] ἡμῖν δέξασθαι
αὐτάς), but it is as we approach our perfection by means of habit that we acquire
them. What is more, everything nature places at our disposition we first acquire in
the form of abilities (δυνάμει), and then we respond to it by our acts, as we can see
precisely in the case of the senses. Indeed, it is not from the frequent act of seeing
or the frequent act of hearing that we derive our sense faculties, but the converse: it
is because we possess them that we have made use of them, and it is not their use
that has given us possession of them. But we derive the virtues from previous acts,
as is the case with the other techniques” (English translation after the translation
by Bodéüs 2004, 99–100). Unlike Aristotle, however, for the Stoics, who do not
distinguish between intellectual and ethical virtues, the virtues develop equally by
philosophical instruction and by habit acquired through spiritual exercises.
22 In general, aphormai is understood in the sense of hormai (“impulses”), and even
more particularly of “initial impulses,” despite the fact that the latter, as we shall
see, lead only to the conservation of the individual and not to the notions of the
good and of virtue, and that in this context the term aphormē designates “repuls-
ion” among the Stoics, i.e. the contrary of an impulse (hormē). My translation,
which follows the French version of R. Goulet in the first text of n. 23, is based on
the ancient interpretations that I set forth below.
23 Stob. 2.7.5b8, vol. 2, p. 65,7–10 Wachsmuth = SVF 1.566. Cf. D.L. 7.89 = SVF
3.228, based on the translation of R. Goulet in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé 1999, 848: “But
the rational animal is perverted, sometimes by the probabilities of the realities of
the external world [R. Goulet is right to read πραγμάτων instead of πραγματειῶν],
sometimes by the influence of those who share our lives, since nature supplies
starting points (aphormai) that are exempt from all perversion.” Cf. Stob. 2.7.5b3,
vol. 2, p. 62 Wachsmuth = SVF 3.264: “Man possesses from nature starting points
(aphormai) both for the discovery of what is appropriate (to kathēkon) and for the
stability of impulses (hormai), for endurance, and for distributive justice.” Cf.
Orig. Princ. 2.1.3 (2), lines 38–43 Crouzel-Simonetti (SC) = SVF 2.988 (p. 288,
10–12, at the end of an evocation of the four echelons of being): “This is why,
since in the nature of reason [sc. human reason] there are starting points for
assessing (aphormai tou theōrēsai) good and evil, following which, once we have
become able to assess good and evil, we choose good and refuse evil, we are
praised if we practice good, and blamed in the contrary case.” Cf. Cramer 1839,
vol. 1, p. 171 (Quomodo homines boni et mali fiant?) = SVF 3.214; Sen. Ep. 49.11
= SVF 3.219.
turn: “Nature has given to all the foundations (fundamenta) and seeds
(semina) of the virtues.”24 Indeed, when the Stoics think of their first
principle as the seminal reason (spermatikos logos), these starting points
are “seeds” or “germs” (semina), and when they conceive it as an artisanal
fire, the starting points are “sparks.” A text by Cicero combines these two
images:
If nature had created us such that we should be capable of viewing it and examin-
ing it attentively in itself25 and if we could accomplish the course of our life with it
as the best possible guide, in this case it would hardly be necessary to seek for
philosophical instruction (rationem ac doctrinam). In reality, however, it has given
us only tiny sparks (parvulos nobis dedit igniculos), which we, perverted by bad
morals and bad opinions, smother so thoroughly and quickly that the light of na-
ture appears nowhere. Indeed, germs of the virtues are innate in our intelligences
(ingeniis nostris semina innata virtutum); if they were allowed to grow, nature
itself would lead us toward the happy life. (Cic. Tusc. 3.2)26
Of what Greek term might the participle innata be the translation? The
answer is provided by another text by Cicero, which is to be found in the
first book of his De Natura Deorum, in an Epicurean context.27 This text
discusses the “implanted knowledge (cognitiones insitas [where insitas is
the passive past participle of insero, ‘to sow, to implant’]) or rather innate
(innatas) knowledge,” of the gods. Insita is the literal translation of
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24 Sen. Ep. 108.8. This sentence continues as follows: “We are all born for all those
things [sc. for the virtues]: When someone comes to provide a stimulus, at that
moment all these good things, which had as it were dozed off, reawaken.” Cf. Sen.
Ep. 94.29: “Souls bear within them the seeds of all things that are morally good,
and these seeds are made to grow by admonitions (admonitiones), not unlike the
way in which a spark, aided by a light breeze, unfolds its fire. Virtue stands up
when it is touched and set under way.”
25 This is a transposition into the Stoic system of an image utilized by Plato in the
context of the same problem in the framework of his doctrine of reminiscence
(Phdr. 250d): “Vision is the most acute of the senses that come to us by the inter-
mediary of the body. By its means wisdom (phronēsis) cannot be seen. Indeed, it
[wisdom] would provoke violent desires if it gave an image of itself that was as
clear as that of beauty and touched the sense of sight [...].” Right from the outset,
both Stoics and Platonists were of the opinion that the notions of the good, of
virtue, and of justice were not accessible to sense presentations and to experience
that is based on them. Cf. Sen. Ep. 115.3–4.
26 The text is not included in the SVF, but its Stoic origin is indubitable, owing,
among other considerations, to the use of the terms “seeds” and “igniculi,” which
would have no meaning in a Platonic-Aristotelian context, in which one would
speak instead of dunameis (abilities) or epitēdeiotētes (aptitudes). Cf. also Cic.
Leg. 1.33.
27 Cic. N.D. 1.44. Seneca utilizes the same two translations of emphutos in such
passages as Ep. 94.30 (persuasiones innatae) and 117.6 (omnibus insita [= em-
phutos] de diis opinio). Seneca translates prolēpsis by praesumptio in this context.
16 Ilsetraut Hadot
emphutos, while innata is its translation ad sensum. These few texts cited
here and in the notes suffice to show that the belief that all mankind pos-
sesses an innate disposition toward virtue or the supreme good, a disposi-
tion that can be smothered under the influence of the surrounding world,
does not appear in Stoicism only with Epictetus, as Inwood thinks, but was
present from the beginning.
Yet this last text from Cicero is also important from another viewpoint,
because in it the participle “implanted” (emphutos) or “innate” is combined
with the translation of the Greek term prolēpsis. Indeed, in the exposition
by the Epicurean Gaius Velleius28 of the Epicurean doctrine concerning the
gods, it is said that Epicurus had been the only one to prove the existence
of the gods by the fact that nature itself had impressed (impressisset) the
notion of the gods in the souls (animis) of all mankind.
For which is the nation, or which is the kind of men that does not possess, without
having been instructed (sine doctrina), a certain anticipated grasp (anticipationem
quandam) of the gods, which Epicurus called prolēpsis, that is, a kind of idea of
something anticipated by the soul (anteceptam animo rei quandam informatio-
nem), without which nothing can be understood, nor sought, nor discussed. We
learn the strength and the usefulness of this modality (rationis) in the volume by
the divine Epicurus that deals with the rule and judgment [that is, the treatise Peri
kritēriou or Kanōn]. (Cic. N.D. 1.43)29
A bit farther on, in the text cited in note 29, Cicero translates this same
Greek term prolēpsis less literally with “pre-notion” (praenotio). Later,
Seneca was to translate this term by praesumptio.30 Cicero must therefore
––––––––––––
28 On this person see Castner 1988, 75–76.
29 The text continues (1.44) as follows: “That which is the base (fundamentum) of our
enquiry, you thus see that it has been set down in an excellent way. Indeed, since
the opinion has not been established by any institution, or by custom, or by law,
and since unanimous and firm agreement endures, we must necessarily understand
that the gods exist because we have an implanted, or better, innate knowledge of
them (insitas eorum vel potius innatas cognitiones habemus); that about which the
nature of everyone agrees is necessarily true; consequently, we must agree that the
gods exist. And since this is a fact established for everyone, not only for philoso-
phers but also for uneducated people, we must also admit as generally established
the fact that we possess an anticipated grasp (anticipationem) – as I have called it
before – or a pre-notion (praenotionem) of the gods (indeed, we must give new
names to new things, as Epicurus himself called prolēpsis a thing that no one be-
fore him had called by that name) – we thus have a pre-notion according to which
we believe that the gods are happy and immortal.” I leave it up to specialists on
Epicurus to determine the meaning of the term “nature” in this text (43–44) and to
specify whether the term emphutos prolēpsis is compatible with what little we
know from other sources about the Kanōn of Epicurus or whether we have to do
instead with an expression due to Epicureans contemporary with Cicero. Gourinat
2005 gives only the reference to this text from Cicero, but does not interpret it.
30 Cf. supra, n. 27, and infra, p. 29.
have found in the Greek Epicurean texts he had available (but the explicit
reference is to Epicurus’ Kanōn) the term emphutoi prolēpseis in the sense
of “innate anticipated grasps” with regard to the common opinion that the
gods exist.
In the next book, the Stoic Balbus will accept this same common opin-
ion, which he too declares to be innate,31 as a proof of the gods’ existence,
a fact which did not prevent the Stoics from proving the existence of the
gods by additional demonstrations. I mention this detail because some
scholars follow Sandbach and his partisans in ignoring the protests of
Bonhöffer32 and the meaning of emphutoi, which is both evident and
confirmed by ancient Latin translations.33 Instead they persist in rendering
this turn of phrase not by “innate” or “implanted anticipated grasps” (or, at
a pinch, “pre-notions”) but by “natural pre-notions” (that is: naturally
acquired pre-notions), e.g. in the following quotation of Chrysippus by
Plutarch. For example, Babut reads in accordance with an already lengthy
tradition: “With regard to the doctrine of goods and evils of which he
himself [sc. Chrysippus] was the promoter and the champion, he says that
it is the one that is the most coherent with life and has the closest relation
to the natural pre-notions (Τὸν περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν λόγον […]
συμφωνότατον εἶναί φησι τῷ βίῳ καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐμφύτων ἅπτεσθαι
προλήψεων).”34
Because in a text by Aëtius, which we shall interpret later on, prolēp-
seis are said to develop “naturally” (phusikōs) during the first seven years
of our life, i.e. before the intervention of reason, by the accumulation of
experiences based on sense perceptions, one assumes that this term can
only have this one meaning everywhere. In opposition to this belief, I am
of the opinion that in the Stoic system there is both an “innate anticipated
grasp” and an “acquired anticipated grasp based on perception and experi-
ence,”35 as there are common opinions of both these same kinds and
“phantasms” with different meanings.
Furthermore, I understand Chrysippus’s “innate anticipated grasps,”
which, according to the text of the quotation, have a connection with goods
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31 Cic. N.D. 2.12. Cf. Sen. Ep. 117.6, quoted infra, p. 29.
32 Bonhöffer 1890, 187–208.
33 Cicero had available Hellenistic Greek sources that were incomparably richer than
ours, and he also played host to a Greek Stoic philosopher until the latter’s death.
34 Plu. Stoic. rep. 1041e = SVF 3.69, in Babut 2004, 49 (translated from the French).
At page 181, note 218, Babut gives a very brief justification of this translation. Cf.
also Babut 2002, 216–219, notes 332 and 333. Long and Sedley 1987 give this text
as number 60B of their collection and translate (vol. 1, p. 369): “He [Chrysippus]
says that the theory of good and bad things introduced and approved by himself is
most in harmony with life and connects best with the innate preconceptions.”
35 This is also the view of Jackson-McCabe (referred to above, pp. 10f.).
18 Ilsetraut Hadot
and evils, in a sense that is parallel, if not identical, to that of the innate
“starting points” (aphormai), “foundations,” “seeds” and “sparks” of
which we have spoken. This will be confirmed by a text from Epictetus (p.
19).
To answer an objection that has been made to me, that the Latin trans-
lations of emphutos by insitus and innatus might be the result of a poor
understanding of the Greek on part of Latin-speaking authors, I shall add
the testimonies of two Stoic authors who taught and wrote in Greek and
about whom there can be no doubt that they used Greek sources correctly:
Musonius and Epictetus. I first quote a Greek text by Musonius, the dia-
tribe to which Cora Lutz has given the title “That man is born with an
inclination toward virtue.”36 Musonius wants to prove that virtue is not
entirely introduced in us from the outside (as would be the case of the ob-
jects of sense perception and the experience that results from it), but that
there is something of it that is in us by nature.37 With this goal in mind, he
gives as examples, among other things, such arts as medicine or the prac-
tice of the lyre, which no one claims to know without having studied them.
In contrast, no one believes that only the philosopher is expected to be ex-
empt from error in the conduct of life, despite the fact that the philosopher
is the only one who concerns himself with the study of virtue. Rather,
everyone is of the opinion that this is the case for each and every person.
And Musonius concludes:38
Clearly, then, there is no explanation for this other than that the human being is
born with an inclination toward virtue. And this indeed is strong evidence of the
presence of goodness in our nature (καὶ μὴν κἀκεῖνο μέγα τεκμήριον τοῦ μετεῖναι
ἀρετῆς φύσει ἡμῖν), that all speak of themselves as having virtue and being good.
For take the common man: when asked whether he is stupid or intelligent, not one
will confess to being stupid; or again, when asked whether he is just or unjust, not
one will say he is unjust. In the same way, if one asks him whether he is temperate
or intemperate, he replies at once that he is temperate; and finally, if one asks
whether he is good or bad, he would say that he is good, even though he can name
no teacher of virtue or mention any study or practice of virtue he has ever made.
Of what, then, is this evidence if not of the existence of an innate inclination of the
human soul toward goodness and nobleness, and of the presence of the seeds of
virtue in each one of us (τοῦτ’ οὖν τίνος ἄλλου τεκμήριόν ἐστιν ἢ τοῦ φυσικὴν
εἶναι ὑποβολὴν τῇ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ψυχῇ πρὸς καλοκἀγαθίαν καὶ σπέρμα ἀρετῆς
ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν ἐνεῖναι)?
––––––––––––
36 Lutz 1947, 37–39.
37 I quote the translation of Lutz (Muson. Diatr. 2, p. 37, 21–22, trans. p. 38): “And
yet if the whole notion of virtue were something that came to us from without (εἰ
ὅλον ἐπείσακτον τὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἦν), and we shared no part of it by birth (καὶ μηδὲν
αὐτοῦ φύσει ἡμῖν μετῆν), just as in activities pertaining to the other arts no one
who has not learned the art is expected to be free from error [...].”
38 Muson. Diatr. 2, p. 38, 1–14 Lutz, cited in the translation by Lutz, p. 37–39.
In this text, it is clearly said that the “totality of what concerns virtue”
(Lutz translates: “the whole notion of virtue”) does not come to us from
outside, that is, not by the intermediary of the senses, but that a part of that
is in us by nature (Lutz translates “by birth”, cf. n. 37). The correctness of
the Latin translations of emphutos by insitus and innatus is thus confirmed,
and so these translations are valid proof for the occurrence of this Stoic
doctrine in Cicero’s Hellenistic Greek sources.
The Diatribe, or rather Discourse 2.11 of Epictetus reads like an echo
of the diatribe of his teacher Musonius, which I have just quoted, but also
contributes further important details. Epictetus begins by stating that we
have all come into the world without being endowed by nature with the
notion (ennoia), for instance, of a right-angled triangle, a diesis, or a semi-
tone, but that it is thanks to technical instruction that we acquire these
notions and that, for this reason, those who have not learned these arts do
not claim to know them.39 However, he continues:40
Of the good and bad, of the (morally) beautiful and the ugly, of what is and is not
appropriate, of happiness, of what is our duty and what is incumbent upon us, and
of what we must do and not do, who has come into the world without having an
innate notion (emphutos ennoia) of this? This is the reason why we use all these
expressions, and try to adapt the anticipated grasps [prolēpseis, that is, what he has
previously called “innate notions”] to particular substances (epi merous ousiai).
Who among us uses these expressions with reserve? Who among us delays their
use until the moment he is instructed about them, as is done by those who are
ignorant of writing and sounds? The reason is the fact of coming into the world as
if, in this area, we had already learned some things (tina) by nature, from which
we have set ourselves in motion and have added our opinion.
In other words: we come into the world with anticipated grasps (prolēp-
seis) concerning the domain of ethics, which we use as starting points.41
These we do not acquire after birth by means of sense perception. The
prolēpseis, or anticipated grasps, which are here without any doubt innate,
are thus identical to the aphormai, or starting points. The last sentence
quoted thus brings a confirmation to what I said on pages 17f. with regard
to the “anticipated grasps” of Chrysippus.
––––––––––––
39 Arr. Epict. 2.11.2: “Ὀρθογωνίου μὲν γὰρ τριγώνου ἢ διέσεως ἡμιτονίου οὐδεμίαν
φύσει ἔννοιαν ἥκομεν ἔχοντες, ἀλλ’ ἔκ τινος τεχνικῆς παραλήψεως διδασκόμεθα
ἕκαστον αὐτῶν […].”
40 Arr. Epict. 2.11.3–6: “Ἀγαθοῦ δὲ καὶ κακοῦ καὶ καλοῦ καὶ αἰσχροῦ καὶ πρέποντος
καὶ ἀπρεποῦς καὶ εὐδαιμονίας καὶ προσήκοντος καὶ ἐπιβάλλοντος καὶ ὅ τι δεῖ
ποιῆσαι καὶ ὅ τι οὐ δεῖ ποιῆσαι τίς οὐκ ἔχων ἔμφυτον ἔννοιαν ἐλήλυθεν; 4 Διὰ
τοῦτο πάντες χρώμεθα τοῖς ὀνόμασιν καὶ ἐφαρμόζειν πειρώμεθα τὰς προλήψεις
ταῖς ἐπὶ μέρους οὐσίαις. […] 6 Tούτου δ’ αἴτιον τὸ ἥκειν ἤδη τινὰ ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως
κατὰ τὸν τόπον ὥσπερ δεδιδαγμένους, ἀφ’ ὧν ὁρμώμενοι καὶ τὴν οἴησιν
προσειλήφαμεν.”
41 Arr. Epict. 2.11.6: “ἀφ’ ὧν ὁρμώμενοι.”
20 Ilsetraut Hadot
We need not be surprised that an innate disposition to virtue and seeds

or germs of virtue (as in the text by Musonius) can be identical with anti-
cipated grasps or innate ethical pre-notions: we recall that according to the
general opinion of the Stoics, virtue is identical to “fully developed reason,
accommodated to the intention of its nature.”42 The germs of virtue are
thus the germs of reason that correspond to anticipated grasps, according to
the Stoics, since human reason, as a fragment of divine reason, begins to
manifest itself clearly only after the seventh year, remaining more or less
latent until then. In the continuation of his development, except for a very
brief allusion,43 Epictetus gives no details concerning the process of dete-
rioration undergone, right from birth, by these anticipated grasps of ethical
notions under the influence of our surroundings (e.g. nursemaids or poorly
educated parents) – a theme we have encountered above (pp. 14f.) in such
authors as Chrysippus, Cicero, and Seneca – deterioration that is the cause
of the variety in the moral judgments of adolescents and adults. Epictetus
starts out immediately from the established fact of the deterioration of the
anticipated grasps, which must now be remedied by the critical examina-
tion of each of these anticipated grasps deteriorated by the addition of our
opinions from the angle of Stoic philosophy. This is the diarthrōsis prolēp-
seōn, or analysis of innate anticipated grasps.
II. Interpretation of the Τexts Used, among Others, by Inwood

as Testimonies to the Stoic Doctrine Concerning
the Formation of Notions
Against this background, we finally come to the interpretation of the four

main texts that deal with the acquisition of notions, of which Inwood has
given a translation with commentary. Except for a few details, which I
shall indicate, I agree with the interpretation of these same texts by Jack-
son-McCabe.44 However, these short excerpts must be considered in their
wider context. The first text is taken from Diogenes Laertius (7.52–53)45
and has its source in the Cursory Repertoire of Philosophers by Diocles of
––––––––––––
42 Cf., among other texts, Sen. Ep. 76.15–16: “ratio […] recta et ad naturae suae
voluntatem accommodata. Haec vocatur virtus, […];” Cic. Ac. 1.38 = SVF 1.199
(Zeno); [Plu.] Virt. mor. 441c = SVF 1.202 (Zeno, Chrysippus, Aristo).
43 In the last sentence cited on p. 19 (Arr. Epict. 2.11.3), where Epictetus says that we
add our own opinions to the innate anticipated grasps.
44 Jackson-McCabe 2004.
45 Cf. D.L. 7.50–54 (vol. 2, p. 318,16–320,10 Long) = SVF 2.55, 60, 61, 71, 84, 87
and 105.
Magnesia (first century CE). At paragraph 49 it is said that to end up with

the definition of their criterion of truth, the Stoics believe one must begin
by speaking of representation (phantasia) and sense perception (aisthēsis),
insofar as the criterion, by which the truth of things is known, is generically a
representation, and insofar as the theory of assent (sunkatathesis) – and that of the
grasp or comprehension (katalēpsis) and conception (noēsis) – which comes before
the others, cannot exist without representation. Indeed, representation comes first,
followed by thought (dianoia), which is apt to speak (eklalētikē) and which ex-
presses in speech what it experiences from representation.46
Paragraph 50 contains the distinction between representation (phantasia)
and phantasm (phantasma), where the phantasm is a fancy (dokēsis) of
thought (dianoia), as occurs in dreams, whereas the representation was,
according to Chrysippus in the second book of his treatise On the Soul, not
exactly an imprint, like the imprint left by a seal,47 but an alteration of the
soul produced by an existing object:
Indeed, this imprint must not be understood as the mark left by a seal, since it is
impossible for multiple marks to coexist simultaneously in the same place.48 One
conceives (noeitai) the representation as that which is engraved, struck, and im-
printed from an existing object, in conformity with that object (apo huparchontos
kata to huparchon), in such a way that it would not occur if the object did not
exist.49
This last description, we might add, can only concern sense perception, for
as we learn later on (61),50 the phantasm of thought (ennoēma), since it
does not represent a real object, “is neither something existent nor
something qualified but something quasi-existent and quasi-qualified,” and
therefore cannot be a true imprint but only a certain modification of the
guiding part of the soul (hēgemonikon) by itself. 51
Paragraph 51 presents two divisions: [1] The first of these divides into
representations based on sense perception (phantasiai aisthētikai), realized
by one or more sense organs, and representations based on thought (phan-
tasiai dia tēs dianoias), which, to judge by paragraphs 50 and 61, are also
called “phantasms.” We are thus already confronted by a certain incon-
sistency as far as terminology is concerned. The objects of the phantasiai
dia tēs dianoias = phantasmata are the incorporeals, and all the objects
grasped by reasoning, whereas the representations based on sense percep-
––––––––––––
46 Translation based on the version by R. Goulet in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé 1999, 823,
slightly modified.
47 Such was, it seems, the view of Cleanthes.
48 Compare Sext. Emp. Math. 7.228–229.
49 Translation based on the version by R. Goulet in M.-O Goulet-Cazé 1999, 823. Cf.
below, note 53, the citation of Sextus Empiricus.
50 This time, the source of Diogenes Laertius is Diogenes of Babylon.
51 Cf. the quotation from Sextus Empiricus in note 53.
22 Ilsetraut Hadot
tion come from existent objects and are accompanied by a consent (eixis)
and an assent (sunkatathesis).
[2] There follows a division into rational representations (phantasiai
logikai), called conceptions (noēseis), and into irrational representations
(phantasiai alogoi), which have not received a name. The former belong to
living beings endowed with reason, the latter to living beings bereft of
reason; some occur through learning (phantasiai technikai), and the others
without learning (phantasiai atechnoi).
Paragraph 52, with which Inwood’s quotation begins, starts off with an
enumeration of the multiple meanings of the term “sense perception:”
One calls sense perception (aisthēsis), according to the Stoics, the breath (pneuma)
that extends from the guiding part [of the soul] to the senses (aisthēseis) as well as
the grasp or comprehension (katalēpsis) that these senses ensure, and the
equipment in sense organs, with regard to which some are crippled. But the action
[of the senses] is also called sense perception.
The grasp or comprehension (katalēpsis) is then divided into comprehen-
sion realized by sense perception (the latter, as has been said, may be
called “sense perception” simpliciter) and a comprehension realized by
reason:
As far as comprehension is concerned, that of things that are white, black, rough,
or soft derives from sense perception, but that of the conclusions provided by
demonstration, for instance that the gods exist and that they exercise providence,
derives from reason (logos).52
The paragraph concludes with a division of the products of these compre-
hensions, the concepts:
For among the concepts (nooumena), some are conceived by contact (kata peripto-
sin),53 others by similarity (kat’ homoiotēta), others by analogy (kat’ analogian),
––––––––––––
52 That the gods exercise providence is no longer a common notion like that of their
pure existence, so that it must be supported by demonstrations.
53 Κατὰ περίπτωσιν: “by the fact of falling upon,” hence, probably, R. Goulet’s
translation “par contact,” which I adopt. For according to the Stoics, sense
perception always takes place by a corporeal contact with the object, even for
vision and sight, and the following sentence of our text affirms that it is precisely
sense objects (τὰ αἰσθητά) that are conceived by περίπτωσις. Cf. Sext. Emp. Math.
8.409: “[...] in this way some of the objects represented, such as white and black
and the body in general, produce an imprint in the guiding part of the soul as if by
touching and contact (οἱονεὶ ψαύοντα καὶ θιγγάνοντα τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ), while
others are not of this nature since the guiding part gives rise to a representation
resulting from them and not through their agency (τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς
φαντασιουμένου καὶ οὐχ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν), as in the case of incorporeal expressions.”
However, Inwood translates κατὰ περίπτωσιν by “on the basis of direct experi-
ence;” Bury, in his translation of Sext. Emp. Math. 8.56–57 for the Loeb Classical
Library (1935), by “owing to experience;” and Jackson-McCabe by “by direct
experience” (Jackson-McCabe 2004, 329). Κατὰ περίπτωσιν could also be
<others by transfer> (kata metathesin), others by synthesis (kata sunthesin), others

by opposition (kat’ enantiōsin).54
Paragraph 53 is entirely devoted to the explanation of the division of con-
cepts:
Sensible things are thus conceived by contact. By similarity, the things conceived
on the basis of a neighboring object, as Socrates from his image. By analogy, in
the sense of an increase in size, <for instance> Tityos or a Cyclops, or a diminu-
tion, for instance a pygmy. Likewise, the center of the earth is conceived by ana-
logy with smaller spheres. [Other things are conceived] by transfer, like eyes on
the chest. The Centaur is conceived by composition. Death, by opposition. Some-
thing is also conceived by deduction, like the expressibles (lekta) and place. Some-
thing just (dikaion ti) and good is conceived (noeitai) in a natural way (phusi-
kōs).55 And (other concepts are obtained) by privation, like a one-armed man. This
is a sample of their doctrines concerning representation, sense perception, and
conception (noēsis).56
Thus, after having discussed (in 51) representations based on sense percep-
tion (phantasiai aisthētikai) and representations based on thought (phanta-
siai dia tēs dianoias) – also called “phantasms” (phantasmata) in 50 as
well as phantasmata dianoias and “intellections” (ennoēmata) in 61 – and
then introduced (in 52) grasps or comprehensions (katalēpseis) resulting
either from sense perception (aisthēsis) or reason (logos), Diocles deals at
––––––––––––
translated by “through encounter,” but “experience” would rather be the translation
of the Greek word ἐμπειρία, used in the text of Aëtius, which we will discuss be-
low (pp. 26f., section [b]). There is a tendency to see a parallel to the sentence I
have just cited in the text from Cic. Fin. 3.33 translated infra, p. 32: “Cumque
rerum notiones in animis fiant, si aut usu aliquid cognitum sit aut coniunctione aut
similitudine aut conlatione rationis [...].” According to this view, “usu” would be
the translation of κατὰ περίπτωσιν, and “coniunctione,” “similitudine,” and “conla-
tione rationis” the translation of σύνθεσις, ὁμοιότης, and ἀναλογία (Pohlenz 1948,
vol. 2, p. 34), which is correct for the last three notions. Yet there is no guarantee
that “usu,” which would be a very curious way to translate κατὰ περίπτωσιν, does
not translate ἐμπειρία instead. In any case, modern translations should mark the
etymological difference that exists between ἐμπειρία and περίπτωσις, but this is
not the case either in Inwood’s translation, or in that of Jackson-McCabe, which
render both ἐμπειρία and περίπτωσις by “experience.”
54 After the translation (modified) by R. Goulet in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé 1999, 824.
55 Inwood 2005, 272 translates the phrase “φυσικῶς δὲ νοεῖται δίκαιόν τι καὶ ἀγαθόν”
thus: “And there is a natural origin too for the conception of something just and
good,” but there is no equivalent for “too” in the Greek text. The addition of this
“too” places, without justification, the mode of conception of the just and the good
on the same level as all the other conceptions named previously in [a] and [b], on
p. 24, all of which would thus take place in a natural way instead of being distinct
from one another. As I shall explain below (p. 29), this is a viewpoint I do not
share.
56 After the translation of R. Goulet (824–825), slightly modified.
24 Ilsetraut Hadot
the end of 52 as well as in 53 with the different modes of generation of

concepts (ta nooumena). These take place
[a] either by contact, that is, by sense perception of sensible things,
[b] or by operations of thought (but, as emerges from the context, on the
basis of sensible things), such as assimilation, analogy, transfer,
composition, opposition, privation (added at the end after c) and
deduction,57
[c] or in a natural way (phusikōs).
Since, according to Cicero (Fin. 3.33, cited on p. 32), who depends on
Hellenistic Greek sources, and later according to Seneca (Ep. 120), the
concept of good is formed by analogy and is therefore classified in the
category of concepts listed under [b], the “natural way” of conceiving, not
the just and the good themselves, but “something just and good,” must be
different from the preceding modes of conception.58 We note that Inwood
speaks with regard to this sentence of the “mystery of this inference”
(278). For my part, I would, with Jackson-McCabe,59 tend to compare this
mode of conceiving to the “innate anticipated grasps or comprehensions”
(prolēpseis emphutoi) of Chrysippus.60 I interpret it against the background
of such texts as the diatribes of Musonius and Epictetus cited above (pp.
18–20), texts which show the indispensable role of anticipated grasps or
pre-notions, implanted or innate, in the subsequent acquisition of true
notions in the field of ethics. In Diocles, too, we therefore have an allusion
to prolēpseis emphutoi, or pre-notions furnished by nature, in other words,
innate.
Finally, paragraph 54, which, according to David E. Hahm, comes
from another of Diogenes Laertius’s sources, in particular from a Stoic
“Introductory Handbook,”61 returns to the criterion of truth:
They say that it is the comprehensive representation (katalēptikē phantasia), that
is, the one that comes from an existing object,62 as is stated by Chrysippus in the
––––––––––––
57 Among the operations of thought mentioned, deduction, like the demonstration
mentioned in 52, is logically the one at the greatest remove from sensible objects.
58 Cf. the τι (“something”) in the text by Diocles with the τινα (“some things”) of the
text by Arr. Epict. 2.11.6, cited p. 19.
59 Jackson-McCabe 2004, 329.
60 Cf. pp. 17f. above and pp. 24–26 below.
61 On this, cf. R. Goulet in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé 1999, 822 n. 1. This “Handbook”
would be the source of D.L. 7.54–82. But the question of the extent of the quota-
tion from Diocles cannot be solved with certainty (R. Goulet 1994, 757–777).
62 Cf. D.L. 7.46 (after the translation, slightly modified, by R. Goulet in M.-O.
Goulet-Cazé 1999, 821): “The representation can be comprehensive or not com-
prehensive. The comprehensive representation, of which they [the Stoics] say that
it is the criterion of realities (τῶν πραγμάτων), is the one that comes from an
second book of his Physics, Antipater and Apollodorus [...]. But Chrysippus [...] in
the first book of his treatise On Reason says that the criteria are sense perception
and anticipated grasp (prolēpsis). The anticipated grasp is a natural notion of what
is general (ennoia phusikē tōn katholou).
It is highly likely that the quotation from Chrysippus ends after “anticipat-
ed grasp” (prolēpsis), for the following phrase has very much the character
of a gloss, and was therefore not reproduced by H. von Arnim in SVF 2.94.
Indeed, the possibility is by no means to be excluded that it is due to the
author of the “Introductory Handbook” I have just mentioned, which, as D.
E. Hahm suggests, is the source of this and the following paragraphs. The
possible inauthenticity of this phrase, although mentioned briefly at his
note 24, was not taken into account by Jackson-McCabe, for he subse-
quently treats this definition like an authentic statement by Chrysippus.63
The explanation which the gloss tries to provide is not transparent. What
precise meaning must we give here to the term katholou? Above all, a pro-
lēpsis is stricto sensu not a notion (ennoia), but an anticipated grasp, or
pre-notion. It is possible that here, as sometimes in Epictetus,64 the term
ennoia may be used in an imprecise way, but it is by no means certain that
this imprecision is due to Chrysippus.
If we limit ourselves to the authentic text of Chrysippus, the criteria of
truth mentioned are the following: in the second book of his Physics “the
comprehensive representation (katalēptikē phantasia), that is, the one that
comes from an existing object,” and in the treatise On Reason sense per-
ception (aisthēsis) and anticipated grasp (prolēpsis). That the latter corres-
ponds to Chrysippus’s “innate” or “implanted” anticipated grasp that I
mentioned above (pp. 17f.), seems to me be proved by a text from Seneca
(Ep. 117.6, cited below at p. 29), where the existence of the gods as an
innate belief (opinio insita) or anticipated grasp (praesumptio) is men-
––––––––––––
existing object and is imprinted and engraved in conformity with that existent
object. Non-comprehensive are those which either do not come from an existent
object or those which come from an existent object, but are not in conformity with
the object (ἀπὸ ὑπάρχοντος μέν, μὴ κατ’ αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ ὑπάρχον [as for instance the
representations taken from memory]): those which are not clear or distinct.” Com-
prehensive representations therefore belong to the category of representations
based on immediate sense perception.
63 Jackson-McCabe 2004, 328.
64 Cf. Bonhöffer 1890, 197: “Wo es Epiktet darauf ankommt, das Apriorische des
Begriffes hervorzuheben, bezeichnet er nicht bloss die ἔννοια, sondern auch die
πρόληψις bestimmter als φυσική oder ἔμφυτος (II,11,2 etc.; II,17,7; I,22,9; vergl.
22,39 […]). [...] Nichtsdestoweniger bedeutet in vielen Fällen die blosse ἔννοια
(ohne den Zusatz φυσική) thatsächlich eine eingepflanzte Vorstellung, also eine
πρόληψις im eigentlichen Sinne, während andererseits mit πρόληψις zuweilen
auch ein empirisch (sei es durch Sinneswahrnehmung oder durch das Denken)
gewonnener Begriff bezeichnet wird.”
26 Ilsetraut Hadot
tioned as a criterion of truth.65 Under no circumstances, it seems to me, can

the prolēpsis of Chrysippus, in this specific text, have the same meaning as
the prolēpsis (also called ennoia) of Aëtius, which we will discuss next.
The latter is not innate, but occurs in a natural way (phusikōs), that is, by
means of sense perception coming from outside and without a learning
process. Otherwise, Chrysippus would have mentioned, in the authentic
part of the quotation, the same thing – sense perception – twice as the
criteria of truth.
The second text translated by Inwood is Aëtius 4.11= SVF 2.83,
written about the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first
century CE (the disposition into paragraphs is my own):
How sense perception (aisthēsis), notion (ennoia), and inner language (ho kata
endiathesin logos) take place.
[a] The Stoics say: when a human being is born, the guiding part (hēgemonikon) of
his soul resembles a papyrus leaf that has been well prepared in order to be written
on. It inscribes each of the notions on it.66
––––––––––––
65 Unlike Jackson-McCabe 2004, 341–346, I see no difficulty in conceiving that the
communis opinio according to which the gods exist could have been considered as
innate as early as Old Stoicism, at least since Chrysippus. As we have seen (above,
n. 19), Cicero bears witness to the fact that this viewpoint had already been adopt-
ed by Stoics belonging to the first half of the last century of the Hellenistic period,
and not merely in the Imperial period. In any case, the indisputably ancient Stoic
tenet mentioned above (p. 13), according to which a certain kinship exists between
gods and men, a kinship based on their common participation (albeit to very diffe-
rent degrees) in divine reason, could have provided a sufficient explanation, both
with a view to the presence of the “starting points,” “seeds”, and “germs” of virtue,
innate within human souls, and of the innate traces of the memory of their origin.
There is no need to seek any Platonic influence, other than that which is inherent in
Stoic philosophy from the beginning.
66 It is astonishing that Aëtius did not take into account the correction made to Clean-
thes’ views by Chrysippus, even though it is useful. Chrysippus thought one
should speak of an alteration of the hēgemonikon instead of an imprint (cf. above,
p. 21 paragraph 50 and SVF 2.56). Indeed, to writing on a papyrus leaf, one could
make the same objection as to the imprint of a seal in wax, for it is impossible for
an unlimited quantity of writing signs to fit on the same leaf without the first ones
having been gradually destroyed by erasure or superposition. In both cases, the
possibility of storing representations and memorizing them would be excluded for
the same reason. Although, from this viewpoint, the comparison of the guiding
part of the soul, the hēgemonikon, with a papyrus leaf is unsatisfactory, the other
element of the comparison – the fact of being well-prepared (euergon), one to be
inscribed, the other to receive representations – is apt and deserves to be empha-
sized. If we move from metaphor to the psychic reality envisaged by the Stoics,
this means that the human soul, like that of the animals, is by nature made capable
of receiving modifications from sense perceptions, and is therefore not an empty
leaf in the sense that it does not possess any qualification. This aptitude for having
sensations (sense perceptions) is innate, that is, not acquired after birth. As we
[b] The first mode of inscription is that which takes place by the senses (dia tōn
aisthēseōn). For when they perceive something, for instance white, they retain a
memory (mnēmē) of it after it disappears. When there are many memories of the
same kind, we call that “experience” (empeiria), for experience consists in a large
number of representations (phantasiai) of the same kind.
[c] Of notions (ennoiai) some are produced naturally (phusikōs) in the way that
has been mentioned and without technical elaboration (anepitechnētōs), while
others are already produced by means of our teaching and solicitude. The latter are
merely called “notions” (ennoiai), whereas the former are also called “anticipated
grasps” (prolēpseis).
[d] Yet reason (logos), with regard to which we are called “rational,” is said to be
filled with anticipated grasps around the first hebdomad [= toward the age of
seven].
[e] The “intellection” (ennoēma) is a phantasma67 (representation) of the thought
of the rational living being: when the phantasma comes into being in a rational
soul, in this case it is called “intellection” (ennoēma), taking this name from the
intellect (nous).
[f] This is why what comes into existence in living beings bereft of reason is a
mere phantasma, but what comes into existence in us and in the gods, are generi-
cally (kata genos) phantasmata and specifically (kat’ eidos) intellections, as
denarii and staters, taken in themselves, are denarii and staters, but when they are
given to hire a ship, at that moment, besides being denarii, they are also called
“passage fare.”
Already in Diocles, as transmitted by Diogenes Laertius (50 and 51) and
another source of Diogenes Laertius (61), we noted a certain inconsistency
in the use of terminology: the representation (phantasia) resulting from
thought (dianoia) in dreams was designated by the term phantasma, but in
the texts I have discussed subsequently the representations produced as
well by sense perception as by thought are always called phantasiai. Simi-
larly, Aëtius once (at the end of [b]) uses the word phantasiai for sensory
representations and in the paragraphs [e] and [f] always the term phantas-
mata. When one compares Diocles’s text with that of Aëtius, one notes
that Aëtius generally employs the term phantasma where Diocles uses the
term phantasia. For instance, compare the passage from Aëtius 4.11.4–5 =
––––––––––––
have seen, however, the human soul is, in addition, naturally capable of acquiring
virtue. It possesses starting points, germs, or sparks of virtue, which it may or may
not develop, for, since human reason has a certain kinship with divine reason, it
naturally possesses a basis of goodness, as well as certain innate anticipated
grasps. Thus, the human soul possesses multiple predispositions at birth.
67 I maintain the transliteration of the Greek term phantasma, instead of translating it
by “representation,” which was the translation of phantasia in the text from Dio-
cles, since I would like to emphasize the differences in terminology in Diocles and
in Aëtius.
28 Ilsetraut Hadot
SVF 2.83, lines 24–28 and D.L. 7.51, p. 319, 5–7 Long.68 Despite the
difference in vocabulary, the two passages describe the same psychic
realities, but Aëtius speaks of phantasmata and ennoēma where Diocles
uses the terms phantasiai and noēseis. In the text from Aëtius, the notion
of phantasma can therefore be both a generic term and a specific term,
with the same functions being occupied by the term phantasma in Diocles.
These different uses of the terms phantasia and phantasma also appear in
other Stoic texts.
Another difference in meaning can be observed in the significations of
the adverb phusikōs (“in a natural way”) in Diocles’s account at D.L. 7.53
and my paragraph [c] in the text of Aëtius. In Aëtius the “natural way” in
which these kinds of notions, which can also be called “anticipated grasps”
(prolepseis), occur is the one “that has just been mentioned” and thus the
one that involves sense perception coming from outside. These prolēpseis
that occur phusikōs are therefore not innate, and phusikōs means here “by
means of sense perception.” On the contrary, in paragraph 53 of Diogenes
Laertius, a paragraph devoted entirely to the various modes of the genesis
of concepts, the adverb phusikōs in the phrase “In a natural way (phusikōs)
is conceived something just and good”, can in no way be referred to
genesis through sense perception, which was mentioned first. As I said
above (p. 24), this mode of conception must rather be compared with the
“innate anticipated grasps” of Chrysippus.
I believe these observations are important, for they warn us against the
preconception that the same terms must always have exactly the same
meaning within a single philosophy, in this case Stoicism.
From the two quoted texts placed side by side I draw the following
information concerning the development of human reason: The first stage,
shared by mankind with the animals, is that of sense perception, which,
according to the opinion of Chrysippus and in opposition to Cleanthes, is
not an imprint, but an alteration in the still-empty guiding part of the
human soul. Sense perception takes place by physical contact (periptōsis)
between a truly existent object and the guiding part, through the intermedi-
ary of the sense organs. The repetition of these sense perceptions (Diocles:
phantasiai aisthētikai; Aëtius [b]: phantasiai) constitutes a memory, while
––––––––––––
68 Aëtius: […] τὸ γὰρ φάντασμα ἐπειδὰν λογικῇ προσπίπτῃ ψυχῇ, τότε ἐννόημα
καλεῖται εἰληφὸς τοὔνομα παρὰ τοῦ νοῦ. Διόπερ τοῖς ἀλόγοις ζῴοις ὅσα προσ-
πίπτει, φαντάσματα μόνον ἐστίν· ὅσα δὲ ἡμῖν καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς, ταῦτα καὶ φαντάσ-
ματα κατὰ γένος καὶ ἐννοήματα κατ’ εἶδος.
Diocles: Ἔτι τῶν φαντασιῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι λογικαί, αἱ δὲ ἄλογοι· λογικαὶ μὲν αἱ τῶν
λογικῶν ζῴων, ἄλογοι δὲ αἱ τῶν ἀλόγων. αἱ μὲν οὖν λογικαὶ νοήσεις εἰσίν, αἱ δ’
ἄλογοι οὐ τετυχήκασιν ὀνόματος. Compare also D.L. 7.61: Ἐννόημα δέ ἐστι
φάντασμα διανοίας, […].
several memories of the same kind produce experience (empeiria). Ac-

cording to Aëtius, from the accumulation of these experiences, initially
based on sense perception, there results in a natural way (phusikōs), with-
out the intervention of thought, a first category of notions or concepts, that
of “anticipated grasps” (prolēpseis), which are therefore not strictly speak-
ing concepts, but a kind of pre-concepts or pre-notions.
On the basis of this text from Aëtius, and before the appearance of the
article by Jackson-McCabe, the virtually universal opinion had been
formed that the term “phusikōs” as well in D.L. 7.53 as in the turn of
phrase ennoia phusikē of the gloss to paragraph 54 designates the process
of the formation of pre-notions issuing from memorized sense perceptions,
the accumulation of which constitutes experience. Yet as I have already
said (p. 24), it is obvious that the phusikōs mode of conceiving “something
just and good” in Diocles’s account (D.L. 7.53) is not based on sense per-
ception, for – and this is just one of many reasons – the concepts that take
place by sense perception (by contact) were listed first in this text. As far
as paragraph 54 is concerned, I refer to what has been said above at p. 25.
I therefore think that the meaning of the term prolēpsis is not the same
in Chrysippus and in Aëtius. To judge by the following text, the prolēpsis
or anticipated grasp of Chrysippus, which works like a criterion of truth,
must be an innate common notion like the one mentioned above (pp. 17f.).
It is Seneca who at Ep. 117.6 translates the Greek term prolēpsis literally
by praesumptio:
We [sc. the Stoics] are accustomed to accord a great deal of importance to the anti-
cipated grasp (praesumptio = Greek prolēpsis) which is shared by all men, and for
us something which seems true to all is a proof of truth (argumentum veritatis):
Thus, we deduce the existence of the gods, among other things, from the fact that
the conviction (opinio) [of the existence] of the gods is implanted (insita = Greek
emphutos = “implanted, innate”) in all men, and that nowhere does any race exist
that has launched itself to such an extent outside the laws and morals that it no
longer believes in some gods.
The innate character of this common opinion was already affirmed by the
Stoic Balbus in Cicero, N.D. 2.12 (cf. above, p. 17).
I can leave aside the third text translated by Inwood (Sext. Emp. Math.
8.56 = SVF 2.88), for it contributes nothing new with regard to the first two
texts.
Outside of the furtive mention of a natural possibility of knowing
something just and good,69 the texts by Diocles and Aëtius speak neither of
the way the notions of good and the supreme good are formed, nor of the
preparatory role played in this regard by Stoic oikeiōsis, a term which we
translate by “appropriation.” This is why Inwood has translated several
––––––––––––
69 See above, p. 24.
30 Ilsetraut Hadot
texts by Cicero that pertain to this problem, some of which I will also take
up. Cicero’s demonstrations on the subject of oikeiōsis begin at Fin. 3.16–
17, which I replace by the more concise parallel text of Diogenes Laertius,
7.85f. = SVF 3.178.70 This text shows, moreover, that the parallel version
in Cicero has the same source as Diogenes: Chrysippus’s treatise On
Goals, book 1.
The primary impulse (prōtē hormē) possessed by the animate being (zōon) has as
its goal, they say, self-preservation, owing to the fact that nature, right from the
outset, appropriates it [to itself], as Chrysippus says in the first book of his treatise
On Goals, when he says that for every animate being the first object proper to it is
its own constitution and the consciousness it has of this constitution. Indeed, it
would not be likely that [nature] had rendered the animate being alien [to itself],
nor that, once it had made the animal, it did not render it either alien or appropriate
[to itself]. It remains to say, therefore, that in constituting it, it has appropriated it
to itself; indeed, in this way it rejects what is damaging to it and pursues what is
proper to it. What some say: that the primary impulse in animate beings tends
toward pleasure, they [sc. the Stoics] show that this is false. Indeed, they say that
pleasure, if it really exists, is an accessory result, when nature itself and in itself,
having sought what is in harmony with its constitution, seizes it: In this way
animate beings give off a joy in living and plants prosper. And nature, they say,
makes no distinction between plants and animate beings, since it governs the
former as well, without impulse or sensation, and the vegetative character also
occurs within us. Yet since impulse is added in animate beings, which they use to
move toward what is proper to them, for these animate beings the [behavior] in
conformity with nature consists in being governed in conformity with impulse. Yet
when reason is granted to rational beings with a view to more perfect regulation, it
is just that living in conformity to nature becomes for them living in conformity to
reason.71 Indeed, the latter comes as fulfillment as an artisan working on impulse.
In this text, which basically takes up the Stoic doctrine of the ranks in the
hierarchy of beings mentioned above (pp. 12f.), it is the last two sentences
that are the most interesting: For mankind, “living according to nature”
means “living according to reason,” and still more precisely according to
right reason, which is his greatest good. It is reason that, as we recall, is not
yet manifest in early childhood, which must so to speak work on or mold
the primary impulses in order to arrive at this ultimate goal. What we must
also retain from this text is the fact that these primary post-natal impulses,
the prōtai hormai, which characterize the first stage of oikeiōsis and func-
tion only with a view to self-preservation and the proper use of the body,
are common to human beings and to animals, and cannot be identified with
Cleanthes’s aphormai pros aretēn which we have discovered above
(p. 14).
––––––––––––
70 Translation after R. Goulet in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé 1999, 845–846, slightly modi-
fied.
71 Cf. Sen. Ep. 124.9–12.
We find some information on the second as well as the last stage of

oikeiōsis in Cicero, Fin. 3.21 = SVF 3.188. Cicero begins by repeating that
in the first stage, the small child is concerned with the preservation of his
natural state, instinctively choosing the things that contribute to it and
rejecting those that are contrary to it. Then, in the second stage, he must
maintain himself in this state by continuing to make the right choice be-
tween what is and is not in conformity with nature. And, he says, once the
child has discovered how to choose what is in conformity with nature and
to reject what is not (inventa selectione et item reiectione), there follows
choice according to what is appropriate (cum officio selectio: these are the
imperfect duties). In the third stage, this choice becomes stable, and finally
extremely constant, while remaining in accord with nature. It is in this
choice, says Cicero, that “what can genuinely be called ‘good’ begins to be
present and perceived.”
Here, then, it is not in relation to a cognitive act, a conceptual grasp,
that the good is mentioned, but with regard to an action and a habitus: It is
in appropriate choice that has become a firm disposition, and which is the
expression of virtue itself, and thus in the final stage of human perfection
that is almost never achieved, that the genuine good is said to reveal itself
for the first time. Yet this firm disposition is itself the result of a long
apprenticeship, to which Cicero makes only a brief allusion in the words
inventa selectione et reiectione and which is nothing other than the result
of philosophical teaching, which he himself has mentioned in the text
quoted above (p. 15) as necessary72 for achieving virtue.
The formation of the notion of the good is dealt with in the continua-
tion of this text, still at Cic. Fin. 3.21:
First comes man’s appropriation with the things that are in conformity with nature.
Yet as soon as he has grasped a comprehension, or better a concept, which the
Stoics call ennoia, and he sees the order of actions and, so to speak, their harmony
(concordia), he appreciates this harmony much more than the things he loved
previously, and this is how he arrives, with the help of analogy, at the conclusion
(observatione et ratione collegit)73 that this is the dwelling place of that famous
supreme good of mankind, which is to be esteemed and sought for itself.
Taken in isolation, this text could lead us to believe that the concept of the
sovereign good is formed, beginning with the age of reason, in a way that
is exclusively empirical, with the help of observations and comparisons,
for nothing is said about what, in the Stoics’ view, makes us capable of
––––––––––––
72 Cf. Sen. Ep. 90.46: “Virtue is accessible only to a soul trained and entirely
instructed and brought to its culminating point by incessant exercises.”
73 Cf. the following quote and Sen. Ep. 120.4: “[…] nobis videtur observatio colleg-
isse [sc. the notion of virtue] et rerum saepe factarum inter se conlatio,” a complex
circumlocution which he translates in the following sentence by analogia.
32 Ilsetraut Hadot
distinguishing what is morally good, for instance, from what is useful but
morally bad in our observations and comparisons. This problem is alluded
to in another text by Cicero, which is also cited by Inwood:
The good, which has so often come up in these discussions, may also be clarified
by a definition. But their [sc. the Stoics’] definitions, although they differ very
little among themselves, all end up at the same point. For my part, I approve of
Diogenes, who defined the good as that which is complete according to nature. As
a consequence, he has also declared that what is useful (as we would like to call
the Greek ōphelēma) is the movement or state that results from this completed
nature. Since the notions of things (rerum notiones) are formed in intellects (in
animis) when something is conceived either by usage (usu),74 synthesis (coniunc-
tone), similarity (similitudine), or analogy (collatione rationis),75 the notion of
good was formed by this fourth operation, which I have listed last. Indeed, when
our intellect (animus) rises with the help of analogy from the things that are in
conformity with nature, at that moment it reaches the notion of the good. However,
we do not feel (sentimus) this good itself and call it “good” either by adjunction or
by increase76 or by comparison with other things, but by its own force. Indeed,
although honey is extremely sweet, it is not sensed as sweet in comparison with
other things but by its own kind of taste, just so this good we are discussing is the
one that is to be most esteemed, but this esteem is not based on its dimensions but
on its [particular] kind. (Cic. Fin. 3.33–34 = SVF 3.72)
Inwood has cited but not commented on this passage, which, toward its
end, opposes the notion of the good, which is formed by analogy, to the
good itself, which is known not by analogy but makes itself known by its
own force. And yet, this passage could have put him on the right track, for
here, it is said, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way, that if we can
elaborate the notion of the good with the help of the method of analogy,
that is, by a cognitive procedure, it is because we already have previously a
natural capacity, not to know it, but to “feel” it: that is, to have an
existential experience of its value when we encounter it. In other words,
the starting points, or seeds, or sparks of virtue that are innate within us,
which we have discussed above in section I, enable us to have an
instantaneous apprehension of the good when we encounter it in one form
or another, as long as we do not allow our vices to annihilate or smother
these seeds or sparks.
It is enough to read Seneca’s Letter 94 to clarify the background of
Cicero’s text. This letter evokes the heresy of Aristo of Chios, a student of
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, who objected to the Stoic division of
––––––––––––
74 Cf. above, note 53 (toward the end, p. 23).
75 Cf. Sen. Ep. 120.4.
76 These are the modes of analogy: cf. above, p. 23 (D.L. 7.53) the enumeration of
the various modes of analogy by enlargement or by diminution.
philosophy into two parts: a dogmatic part and a paraenetic part,77 wishing
to retain only the dogmatic part. Seneca, following Cleanthes, defends the
general viewpoint of the Stoics by pleading in favor of the paraenetic part.
I will limit myself here to citing only a few extracts from his plea:
Souls bear within them the seeds of all things morally good (omnium honestarum
rerum semina), which are made to emerge by admonition, not otherwise than a
spark, aided by a light breeze, unfolds its fire. Virtue stands up straight when it is
touched and set in motion. (Sen. Ep. 94.29)
To Aristo’s objection that admonitions are not useful for anyone who does
not possess correct tenets and is a slave of his vices, Seneca replies that
they are useful precisely in helping him get rid of his vices:
Indeed, in him the natural disposition (indoles naturalis) is not extinguished, but
obscured and oppressed. Even in this state, it tries to get back up and strive against
what is bad, and if it obtains assistance and is aided by precepts, it regains strength,
unless, of course, a lengthy disease has not finally infected it and killed it, for
when this happens, teaching in philosophy will no longer put it back in shape, even
if this teaching has striven with all its might. (Sen. Ep. 94.31)
A bit farther on (Ep. 94.42), Seneca observes that examples have the same
effects as precepts, that is, they awaken and reinforce our innate disposi-
tions toward virtue, a remark that is very important for understanding the
value of examples alongside paraenesis in Stoic philosophy. We shall
return to this point with regard to Letter 120. Let us cite one more remark:
But who will deny, indeed, that some precepts strike even the most ignorant? For
instance these words, although they are so brief, nevertheless possess a great deal
of weight: “Nothing in excess,” “No gain satisfies a greedy mind,” “Do not expect
from others anything else than that what you would have done to another.” We do
not hear such things without receiving a certain shock (cum ictu quodam), and no
one has the right to start to doubt and to say “Why is that?” For the truth itself
drags us along even without giving reasons. (Sen. Ep. 94.43)78
From the beginning to the end of their history, the Stoics believed that the
path toward virtue or the highest good is accomplished in the following
way. At the beginning is the conditio sine qua non, that is, the innate
starting points (aphormai) and anticipated grasps (emphutoi prolēpseis),
seeds (semina, logoi spermatikoi), or sparks (igniculi) of virtue, which are,
moreover, nothing other than the germs of right reason. They remain more
––––––––––––
77 I have discussed this bipartition and the conclusions to be drawn from it at length
in Hadot 1969, which will appear in an updated French version in 2014.
78 Cf. such passages as, once again, Sen. Ep. 108.8: “Nature has given the founda-
tions and the seeds of virtue to all. We were all born for all those things [sc. for the
virtues]: When a stimulus arrives, then all those good things which had dozed off,
so to speak, are reawakened. Don’t you see how the theaters resound with applause
whenever something is said that we openly appreciate and whose truth we attest by
our unanimity?”
34 Ilsetraut Hadot
or less latent during the first seven years of life, during which the young
child is busy following his first impressions and appropriating what the
Stoics call “the first gifts of nature (prima naturae).”79 Even at this stage,
however, during which the other, empirically acquired anticipated grasps
are formed naturally (phusikōs) and without the intervention of thought,
the negative influence of the environment can already have bad effects,80
and this is why Chrysippus accorded the greatest importance even to the
choice of nursemaids.81 Beginning with the age of reason, the notions
develop with the help of thought and instruction, and the predispositions to
virtue can either be smothered by a hostile milieu or developed by means
of a rational environment, and by the teaching of Stoic philosophy, the
various forms of paraenesis, and good examples.82 According to the Stoics,
the life of a person lacking instruction can certainly give rise to phenomena
that bear some resemblance to true virtue. These are, so to speak, the
“matters” of true virtue (materia virtutis), but true virtue “is only
accessible to a soul that has been trained, thoroughly instructed, and
brought to its culminating point by incessant exercises” (Sen. Ep. 90.46).
These exercises are spiritual exercises.
In view of the complexity of the conditions and formation of what, in
the Stoics’ view, is indispensable for achieving their highest good, and also
in view of the fact that the Stoics’ notion of the good is not constructed by
the mere mechanism of purely cognitive acts, the rare texts collected in the
SVF under the heading “On Notions,”83 almost all of which we have inter-
preted, cannot inform us about the means foreseen by the Stoics for achiev-
ing the supreme good represented by virtue. Inwood is well aware of this,
but he should have sought the answer to his question in the whole of Stoic
literature instead of suspecting a gap in the Stoic doctrinal system.
III. Succinct Interpretation of Seneca’s Letter 120
We now come to the interpretation of Seneca’s Letter 120. After observing

(120.3) that nothing is good that is not morally good (honestum), he pre-
––––––––––––
79 Cf. Aulus Gellius 12.7, where the Platonist Taurus discusses the Stoic doctrine of
good and evil.
80 Cf. SVF 3.228–236.
81 Cf. Quint. Inst. 1.4–5.
82 Cf. Sen. Ep. 94.45: “Virtue is divided into two parts: the contemplation of the true
and action. Doctrinal teaching transmits contemplation, while admonition trans-
mits action.”
83 These are the texts of Aëtius and Diocles of Magnesia, interpreted above, and Sext.
Emp. Math. 8.56 and 8.409.
pares to respond to Lucilius, who asks him how the first notion (prima
notitia) of the good has reached us: “That, he says, Nature has not been
able to teach us: she has given us the seeds (semina) of the knowledge [of
the good], but not knowledge [itself].” Inwood comments: “Natural ac-
quisition is ruled out (since nature only gives us the semina scientiae).”
That is all.84 He does not see that this sentence already contains the key to
his problem: As we have seen, the seeds given by nature are nothing other
than the innate starting points for a possible knowledge of the good. Sene-
ca has no need to be explicit, for he has abundantly developed this subject
in his previous letters.85 Then (120.4), Seneca indicates (like Cicero)86 the
method of analogy as a formative element of the primary notion of the
good, that is, that which is not yet the result of philosophical instruction,
and he explains its mechanism as follows:
We came to know the health of the body: On this basis, we thought there was also
some health of the soul. We came to know the forces of the body: From this, we
concluded to the existence of a vigor of the soul. Benevolent actions, full of hu-
manity and courageous, had struck us with stupor (obstupefecerant): we began to
admire them as if they had been perfect acts. Beneath were multiple vices hidden
by external appearance (species) and the splendor of some remarkable act, and we
concealed them. Nature orders us to magnify what is praiseworthy, and no one has
evoked glory without going beyond the truth: From all this, then, we derived the
appearance (speciem) of an immense good (ingens bonum). (Sen. Ep. 120.5)
According to Seneca, everything thus began with two notions obtained by
the method of analogy: the health and vigor of the soul. But what follows
is no longer a purely cognitive act: It is the instantaneous recognition of
what is good in others by what is good in us, that is, by the “seeds,” and
the key words are “admiration” and “stupefaction.” Like the ictus in the
quotation from Seneca given above, p. 33, the verb obstupefecerant de-
signates the salutary shock that awakens or reinforces our innate predis-
positions and which could only have been a shock because there was
something within the soul that was apt to receive it and respond to it.
––––––––––––
84 In a later publication, Inwood comments on Letter 120 as follows (2007, 324):
“120.4 ‘nature could not have taught us’. Compare 90.44–6, 108.8. D.L. 7.89 notes
that nature gives humans uncorrupted inclinations (aphormai) to virtue; these
inclinations and the preconceptions which we develop naturally are among the
‘seeds’ referred to here. […]” All the same, he still seems to believe that funda-
menta semenque virtutum are the same as the innate anticipated grasps (emphutoi
prolēpseis) since otherwise one would have expected him to clarify to his readers
that his more recent understanding in the commentary of 2007 is contradictory to
the opinions he had expressed in his paper “Getting to Goodness” quoted above in
notes 2 and 3. For there, he regarded “innate ideas” as a later discovery by Epicte-
tus.
85 Cf. the selection of examples contained in my quotations.
86 Cf. supra, pp. 31f.
36 Ilsetraut Hadot
Although Inwood nowhere refers to the existence in the Stoic system of

those innate starting points, he nevertheless observes in his commentary
(286) that Seneca claims “that this universal tendency to accentuate the
praiseworthy is rooted in human nature by Nature and that this cognitive
bias toward goodness is vital for our ability to derive, from the defective
examples of good behavior which we actually observe in our experience, a
sound notion of virtue, the ingens bonum. It is not at all clear that anyone
who does not share a Stoic confidence in the providential care of Nature
for our species should be reassured about the reliability of this process.” As
is shown by the continuation of his chapter, Inwood’s last sentence is
rather a critique of an argument he thinks is incomplete – indeed, taken in
itself, the “command of nature” is bereft of doctrinal foundation – than a
refusal to take the Stoic principles into consideration.
Paragraphs 6 and 7 of Seneca’s Letter 120 mention two famous exam-
ples from Roman history, those of Fabricius and Horatius Cocles, which,
as he says in paragraph 8, show us the image of virtue. The continuation
(8–11) develops the warning against hidden vices, reminding Lucilius that
one must know how to distinguish between evil under the appearance of
virtue and true virtue. For instance, one must know how to tell the differ-
ence between the vice of prodigality and the virtue of generosity, between
the vice of temerity and the virtue of courage. Here, in my opinion, and
although Seneca does not point it out, we leave the stage of the formation
of the first notion of the good, accessible to everyone, and move on to the
higher stage of the differentiation between appearance and essence on the
basis of Stoic teaching.
This similarity [sc. between temerity and courage, etc.] obliges us, when we
observe those whom a remarkable work has made famous, to be wary and to
distinguish the things that are contiguous in their appearance, but are in reality
diametrically opposed to one another. We began to observe that so-and-so had
carried out an act in a generous spirit and with great zeal, but only once. We saw
another being courageous at war, but timid in political life (in foro); a man who
bore poverty undaunted, but dishonor in a base way: We praised the act, but we
despised the man. 10 We saw another pleasant toward his friends, moderate toward
his enemies, loyally and religiously administering both public and private affairs,
lacking neither endurance in the things that must be undergone nor practical
wisdom in what had to be done. We saw him give generously when it was time to
distribute and when it was time to labor, be perseverant and obstinate, soothing
bodily fatigue by strength of mind (animo). Apart from that, he was always the
same and equal to himself in all his acts, being henceforth morally good not only
by design but being led by habit to the point where not only could he act rightly,
but he could not act in any other way than rightly (iam non consilio bonus, sed
more eo perductus ut non tantum recte facere posset, sed nisi recte facere non
posset). We realized that in him, virtue was perfect. 11 [...] By what, then, had we
discerned virtue? It was the orderly sequence (ordo) 87 that showed it to us, beauty
and constancy (constantia), the harmony among all his acts, and his greatness,
raising him above all things. (Sen. Ep. 120.9–11)
This text leads us, from two historical examples of acts that are heroic but
not virtuous in the Stoic sense – one or even several correct or even out-
standing acts are not yet virtues; they become so only if they are accom-
panied by an ethical conscience which is itself based on knowledge88 – this
text, then, leads us to a portrait of the Stoic sage, in whom occasional ima-
ges of virtue have become a stable, constant way of being, and hence a
habitus.89 With regard to this portrait of the Stoic sage, Inwood says “[...]
this sort of person is dispositionally good,” but it is not clear if he under-
stands by this a natural disposition or the habitus acquired by a long
apprenticeship of Stoic doctrines combined with continuous exercises,90
the habitus which is intended here by our text.
––––––––––––
87 On the Stoic term “ordo,” cf. Cic. Off. 1.142: “They [sc. the Stoics] define order as
follows: an arrangement of things in their proper and appropriate places.”
88 Cf. Sen. Ep. 95.57 = SVF 3.517: “An act will not be morally right (actio recta non
erit [‘actio recta’ is the Latin translation of the Greek Stoic term κατόρθωμα]) un-
less intention (voluntas [a translation of προαίρεσις or βουλήσις]) is so also: For
action proceeds from intention. Conversely, the intention will not be morally right
unless the habitus [a translation of the Greek Stoic terms διάθεσις or ἕξις] of the
soul is morally right. Next, the soul’s habitus will not [even] exist in the best [of
men] (in optimo [cf. Ep. 90.46, quoted at n. 90, where in the same context in
optimis has the meaning “in the best [by nature] of men”]), unless he has perceived
the laws of all of life, measured which judgment must be brought to bear on each
thing, and brought things back to truth (nisi res ad verum redegerit).” The Stoics
knew the terminological distinction between ἕξις (“habit”) and διάθεσις (habitus).
Are called διαθέσεις the virtues and vices which, like the notion of the straight
line, do not admit the more and the less (cf. Simp. in Cat. p. 237f. Kalbfleisch;
Sen. Ep. 71.19); the ἕξεις, in contrast, are subject to intensification and relaxation
(SVF 3.525). Yet this distinction is not always rigorously maintained, and the
individual virtues are sometimes qualified as ἕξεις (SVF 3.265–270).
89 Cf. the previous note and Stob. 4.39.22, vol. 5, p. 906 Wachsmuth and Hense =
SVF 3.510 (in this text, the term “happy life” can be replaced by “virtue,” since the
two terms were almost interchangeable among the Stoics): “From Chrysippus: He
who is in the process of progressing toward the summit accomplishes what is
appropriate (τὰ καθήκοντα = media officia) and omits nothing. However, his life is
not yet happy, but the happy life will devolve upon him when these same middle
acts (μέσαι πράξεις) acquire constancy (τὸ βέβαιον), habit (τὸ ἑκτικόν), and a kind
of particular solidity (ἰδίαν πῆξίν τινα).”
90 Cf. Sen. Ep. 90.46: “They [sc. the men of ancient times] were innocent only by
ignorance; there is a great difference between not wanting to sin and not knowing
how. They lacked justice, they lacked prudence, they lacked temperance and cou-
rage. Their uncultivated life possessed some aspects similar to all these virtues, but
virtue is accessible only to a soul that has been trained and thoroughly instructed
and brought to its culminating point by incessant exercises. We are born for this,
38 Ilsetraut Hadot
From the notion of virtue as a habitus, illustrated by the portrait of the

Stoic sage, Seneca can pass immediately to that of the happy life (Ep.
120.11–14), which is none other than the supreme good. Seneca emphasi-
zes the content of this happy life by continuing the description of the Stoic
sage, which culminates in the following observation:
He had a perfect soul that had been brought to its summit, above which all that
exists is the divine intellect, part of which has flowed into this mortal heart: This
heart is never more divine than when it reflects on its mortality and when it knows
that man was born to accomplish his life and that this body is not a home but a
sojourn, and even a brief sojourn, with a host who must be left when you see you
are a burden to him. (Sen. Ep. 120.14)
The last words provide a transition to a long paraenetic part in the form of
the spiritual exercise of the preparation for death, the praemeditatio mor-
tis.91
We should add, moreover, that Seneca’s Letter 124 is a continuation of
Letter 120. It deals with the question “whether it is by the senses or by the
intellect (intellectu) that the good is grasped” (124.1) and contains an im-
plicit critique of the Epicurean doctrine.92 This text shows that the Stoic
notion of the supreme good has little to do with sense perception. The
doctrine that human reason is an emanation of the divine pneuma and that
its perfect state makes man the equal of the gods goes back, as I have men-
tioned above (p. 13), to the beginning of Stoicism, and it is not useful to
seek a Platonic influence on Seneca behind this text. Likewise, an exercise
of preparation for death, in use both among the Stoics and the Platonists,
cannot, in the mouth of a Stoic, have any other goal than perfect indiffer-
ence with regard to one’s body and the other indifferentia of this world.
––––––––––––
but without it, and even in the best men (in optimis), before you instruct them,
there is the matter of virtue (virtutis materia) but not virtue.”
91 Yet the portrait of the Stoic sage himself is already, in a sense, a part of the
paraenesis. As I mention in Hadot 1969 and 2014, a long tradition in antiquity had
promoted the conviction that it was enough to set something praiseworthy before
one’s eyes in order to inspire imitation (cf. Sen. Ep. 115.6: “Let us propose
something praiseworthy: an imitator will be found”) and that the greatness of a
splendid example combined with the very high artistic level of its description have
an irresistible effect. At many places in his writings, Seneca evokes the figure of
the Stoic sage with the force of a visionary apparition, with the goal of replacing
by the plasticity of language the stronger and more persuasive impression that can
only be provided by vision. Cf. above, p. 15 with n. 25.
92 Cf., for instance, 124.2: “All those who place pleasure at the summit judge that the
good is accessible to the senses (sensibile); we, in contrast, who give the good to
the soul, we judge that the good is accessible to our intelligence (intellegibile). If
the senses were judges of what is good, we would not reject any pleasure [...] and
in the contrary case we would not voluntarily undergo any pain, for every pain
wounds the senses;” Cic. Off. 3.17.
Let us recall that for the Stoics, the things concerning the human body are
indifferentia and that they identify man with his reason, which for them is
also corporeal. Unlike Inwood,93 I see no traces of Platonism other than
those present in the early Stoa in all of Letter 120, nor, moreover, in the
whole of Seneca’s work.
IV. Conclusion
To return to Inwood’s title, “Getting to Goodness,” and to summarize

briefly the various stages we have gone through in this article, I would
insist on the distinction the Stoics made between the formation of the
notion of the highest good, or of virtue, and the practice of this good or this
virtue. The knowledge of the notion of the highest good does not imply its
realization, and there is an abyss separating the two. According to them,
the process of formation of the notion of the highest good is conditioned
[a] on the one hand, by the existence of innate starting points (aphormai),
anticipated grasps (prolēpseis, praesumptiones), seeds (semina), or
sparks (igniculi) of this good, which enable us, unless they have been
hidden away or smothered, to recognize it as it were instinctively when
we encounter it, and
[b] on the other hand, at the age of reason, by the application of the
cognitive procedure of analogy to the representations (Diocles: phanta-
siai) based on sense perception, or to the anticipated grasps (Aëtius:
prolēpseis) based on sense perception, and to the empirical notions that
result from them; these “acquired” anticipated grasps are obviously
different from the innate anticipated grasps I have just mentioned.
[c] However, to reach the notion of the Stoic highest good, so different
from the highest good of most people, experience and analogy no
longer suffice, and doctrinal teaching becomes necessary.
Point [b] is approximately documented by the few texts collected in the
SVF under the heading “Περὶ ἐννοημάτων” (2.82–89), yet without
expressly discussing the formation of the notion of the highest Stoic good,
whereas point [a] is mentioned there only allusively, but is, like point [c],
––––––––––––
93 Inwood writes on page 294: “But the most original contribution to this Stoic re-
flection on the epistemology of goodness comes from the ‘platonic’ excursus on
the nature of the sage, which suggests that a ruthlessly clear recognition of the
distinction between body and mind is the price one must pay for sustaining the
consistency that is the mark of virtue. The platonism of the letter, if that is what it
is, appears in the guise of what one must embrace in order really to understand the
good.”
40 Ilsetraut Hadot
amply dealt with in other texts belonging to all periods of the history of
Stoicism. The road leading to the realization of the supreme good – the
happy life or virtue – is long and complex. The teaching of Stoic
philosophy will be necessary, which according to Seneca (Ep. 94 and 95)
is divided since the beginning of Stoicism (cf. the controversy between
Cleanthes and Aristo, mentioned p. 32f.) into two parts: the doctrinal part
and the paraenetic part with, among other things, its spiritual exercises. For
it is not enough to know the doctrines: One must digest them, assimilate
them, let oneself be transformed by them with the help of incessant
spiritual exercises. In short, as Seneca says (Ep. 124.12) about this
supreme good constituted by perfect reason: “The youngest age (infantia)
does not receive it in any way, so that childhood (pueritia) cannot expect it
either, and adolescence (adulescentia) is imprudent to expect it: It goes
well with old age (senectus), if it should reach it, by means of a long,
tireless application.”
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Seneca on Prolēpsis: Greek Sources
and Cicero’s Influence
Antonello Orlando
Università di Torino
EAMES: We tried it, we got the idea in
place, but it didn't take.
DOM COBB: You didn’t plant it deep
enough?
EAMES: Well, it’s not about depth. You
need the simplest version of the idea in
order for it to grow naturally in the sub-
ject’s mind. It’s a very subtle art.
(C. Nolan, Inception)
The meaning and use of the term prolēpsis seems not only confused but
also stratified in the history of ancient philosophy. It is shared by Epicure-
ans and Stoics, although with different features, and it plays a role even in
Platonic epistemology. Far from claiming to resolve this difficult contro-
versy, this short study will examine the only two references to prolēpsis by
Seneca and compare them with those in Cicero. A discussion of Senecan
prolēpsis would be incomplete if the comparison were limited to Stoic and
Middle-Platonist antecedents or parallels; it must also consider the assimi-
lation process carried out already by Cicero, especially with regard to the
lexical field. In this way, it will be possible to uncover the peculiarities of
the appropriation of the term in Seneca’s Roman philosophy.
To begin with, it is necessary to outline the various meanings attributed
to prolēpsis and its connections with the term ennoia. A suitable starting
point for this is De natura deorum 1.44, where Cicero gives us the name of
the “father” of prolēpsis: “For we are bound to employ novel terms to
denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolēpsis
in a sense in which no one had ever used it before.”1 According to Cicero,
Epicurus introduced this word to the philosophical vocabulary of
Hellenism. For the Epicurean prolēpsis we have Diogenes Laërtius’
account, who describes prolēpsis as a concept made up of repeated experi-
––––––––––––
1 Cic. N.D. 1.44: “Sunt enim rebus novis nova ponenda nomina, ut Epicurus ipse
πρόληψιν appellavit, quam antea nemo eo verbo nominarat” (trans. Rackham).
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a paradox. Collective freedom depends on the absolute coercive power of

Matheus De Pietro’s contribution. Analyzing a passage with descriptions

According to her, the “Epicurus trope” supports the characterization of a

While reading the set of interpretations of Seneca offered by Brad Inwood,

I. Preliminary Research on the Meaning of Such Expressions as

We need not be surprised that an innate disposition to virtue and seeds

II. Interpretation of the Τexts Used, among Others, by Inwood

Against this background, we finally come to the interpretation of the four

Magnesia (first century CE). At paragraph 49 it is said that to end up with

<others by transfer> (kata metathesin), others by synthesis (kata sunthesin), others

the end of 52 as well as in 53 with the different modes of generation of

tioned as a criterion of truth.65 Under no circumstances, it seems to me, can

several memories of the same kind produce experience (empeiria). Ac-

We find some information on the second as well as the last stage of

III. Succinct Interpretation of Seneca’s Letter 120

We now come to the interpretation of Seneca’s Letter 120. After observing

Although Inwood nowhere refers to the existence in the Stoic system of

From the notion of virtue as a habitus, illustrated by the portrait of the

To return to Inwood’s title, “Getting to Goodness,” and to summarize

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