 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at HistoryofPhilosophy.net. Today's episode, Difficult to be Good – Humanist Ethics. If you think philosophers should devote themselves to discovering how to live the good life, you'll probably be disappointed by any encounter with today's professional philosophers. Actually, you might well be disappointed in any case, but especially if you have such high expectations. Many philosophers specialize in topics like epistemology or metaphysics, and would be more likely to associate the phrase meaning of life with a Monty Python film than with their day job. True, most philosophy departments do have at least one expert on moral philosophy, but I once knew a philosopher who said he offered courses on ethics because those who can't do, teach. And I'm skeptical as to whether the study of moral philosophy will turn you into a moral person. It might just make you realize how challenging the demands of morality really are. As Poggio Bracciolini remarked in a letter he wrote in 1425, According to the Ancient Greeks, it is difficult to be good. Yet he and his fellow humanists held out hope that those same Ancient Greeks could help them do just that. On these grounds, the humanists often saw ethics as superior to other philosophical disciplines. Leonardo Bruni said that those who ignore it in favor of natural philosophy are Bruni made this remark in an introduction he wrote to moral philosophy. It takes the form of a dialogue Bruni supposedly had with a friend. The work is meant to encourage its reader to take up philosophy as a means of self-improvement, a way of dispelling the fog that conceals from us the true good we all naturally desire. But what is this true good? The options laid out by Bruni are those already considered by his role model Cicero, and there aren't many of them. Either you follow the advice of the Stoics and Aristotelians by pursuing virtue, or you throw in your lot with Epicureans and other hedonists by taking pleasure to be the good. This is painting with a pretty broad brush, which befits the introductory nature of the work and also Bruni's admitted aim of showing the fundamental agreement between the Greek ethical schools. For him, the Epicureans are not that different from the champions of virtue, since they wind up saying that a life marked by temperance and other virtues is the most pleasant. So they too endorse a moral way of life, they simply give a different hedonist rationale for it. As for Aristotelianism and Stoicism, Bruni sees the main difference between them as being that for the Stoics, virtue alone is enough, so that good people remain happy no matter what misfortunes, poverty, or tortures befall them. This, says Bruni, is a stout and manly creed, but hard to believe. Basically Aristotle is right that the best life requires so-called external goods like health, wealth, friends, and family. Aristotle is also right to say that virtue always lies in the mean between two extremes, like courage which is the middle course between cowardice and rashness. When it comes to the emotions, Aristotle is again vindicated by Bruni. The Stoics taught that we should work to restrain our emotional reactions, even, or perhaps especially, when we are severely provoked. But Bruni thinks the Aristotelians are right that it would be inhuman, and even irrational, not to feel anger when, say, a slave beats your father or rapes your daughter. Our goal should be to let reason rule over the emotions, which means the higher part of the soul ruling over the lower. That, along with a sufficient supply of those external goods, constitutes happiness. Bruni's synthetic approach may remind us of the way that late ancient authors, or more recently Bessarion, in his debate with George of Trebizond, tried to establish harmony between ancient authorities. But where Bessarion tended to read Platonism into Aristotle, Bruni achieves his synthesis by making all the other schools agree with Aristotle, and framing their disagreements with his teachings as relatively trivial. His partiality is no doubt connected to the fact that he translated Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Bruni's version had to compete with the old medieval translation and the new one of John Argyropoulos, but it is extant in nearly 250 manuscripts, and some 15th century commentators on the ethics, like Nicolo Tignosi, preferred Bruni's rendering to its rivals. This despite the fact that Bruni and the other humanists were really just offering what one scholar has called a mere revision of the medieval translation by Robert Croesetest, dressed in elegant Latin. As this already begins to suggest, rumors of the death of Aristotelian ethics during the Renaissance are greatly exaggerated. The revival of Platonist and Hellenistic ideas is more eye-catching because it is such a contrast to the medieval scholastic tradition, but the scholastics continued to thrive during the Renaissance both in Italy and elsewhere. They match the humanist stress on moral philosophy by adding this subject to the curriculum of studies at several Italian universities during the period. For them, Aristotle was, of course, the primary authority for ethics just as for other branches of philosophy. The teaching of the Nicomachean Ethics called for new commentaries. A significant one appeared in 1478, authored by Donato Acciagoli, who should be congratulated for having no fewer than five consecutive vowels in his last name. He was apparently following closely the lectures given by his teacher Argyropoulos, the aforementioned translator of the ethics. A later commentator named Bernardo Sengi in fact gave them joint credit for the commentary and lavished praise on them for their distillation of earlier scholastic commentaries like those by Thomas Aquinas and the Byzantine philosopher Eustatius. Sengi himself is also an interesting figure for the reception of Aristotle since he chose to do a translation and commentary for the Nicomachean Ethics in Italian rather than Latin and he published it in 1550. And there were other 16th century scholars who worked to usher Aristotle's ethics into the vernacular. 1583 saw the appearance of Francesco Piccolomini's massive treatise based on Aristotle's writing about ethics and politics, The Universal Philosophy of Morals. It was in Latin, but Piccolomini also produced a compendium of ethics in Italian, written for Christina, Duchess of Tuscany. By sheer coincidence, it has lots of nice things to say about the Medici clan. But a bit of judicious sycophancy was not the only way that philosophers calibrated their approach for their intended audience. Both Acciaoli and Sengi carefully rationed the dosage of technical scholastic methodology so as not to overwhelm a vernacular readership. Thus, Sengi's commentary occasionally shows how you can set out Aristotle's ethical teaching in syllogistic form, but only by way of example to show it as possible. Likewise Piccolomini structured his Latin treatise as a series of scholastic questions, but dropped this style of organization for the compendium in Italian. Of course, not all humanists were so keen on Aristotle. I'm not sure what the opposite of keen is in English, never mind Ciceronian Latin, but one man who could have told me was Lorenzo Valla. I trust you'll remember his relentless work of anti-Aristotelian and anti-scholastic critique, the Dialectical Disputations. We saw how it took issue with the notion that virtue is a settled habit as opposed to something that can be displayed or lost on a single occasion. That's only one of the irreverent points Valla makes about ethics. Against Aristotle, he argues that virtue is not really a mean between two extremes. Rather, there is one virtue per extreme. Thus, courage is opposed to cowardice, but not to rashness whose opposite is merely caution. And against just about everyone, Valla argues that there are not four central or cardinal virtues, namely prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Just as he reduced Aristotle's ten categories to a tidy list of three, he thinks that all virtues can be reduced to the single virtue of fortitude. This is the will's determination to pursue what is good, instead of being swayed by counterproductive emotions. Prudence is actually not a virtue at all, but simply the knowledge of good and evil. One becomes morally praiseworthy or blameworthy only once the will is involved, once we choose whether to pursue the ends that prudence has identified as good. Thus far, it may seem that Valla's objections to traditional ethics are rather superficial, as a humanist would say that he's disputing about names rather than the things themselves. But the originality of his moral theory emerges more fully when we turn to another work of Valla's which, like the disputations, went through several revisions and bore different titles, including On Pleasure and On the Good. Valla imitates Cicero by writing it in the form of a dialogue in which two spokesmen argue in favor of Stoicism and Epicureanism. Then in a final section, a third Christian spokesman offers what is presumably Valla's own considered view. Valla is far from endorsing Bruni's thesis that the various ethical teachings of the Greeks boil down to the same thing. He draws a sharp contrast between Epicurean hedonism and the Stoics' valorization of virtue. And surprisingly, Valla prefers the Epicurean view. He allows the Stoic spokesman to cut a rather unappealing figure whose signature attitude is pessimism. Valla's Stoic sees human nature as all but inevitably prone to sin and evil indulgence in pleasures. This might be thought to point to a Christian truth, it would be the doctrine of original sin that explains why people are so bad. But it rather seems that the far more optimistic Epicurean theory is meant to emerge as the more attractive option. The spokesman for this view rejects as implausible the Stoic claim that human nature is intrinsically bad. To the contrary, it is nature that provides us with both our desire for pleasure and with pleasure itself, which is the true good. So far, so appealing. But as the Epicurean goes on, the typical Renaissance reader would probably start to frown with disagreement. Such paradigm cases of good action as sacrificing oneself for one's city are condemned as foolish, since death cuts off access to pleasure. On the other hand, such actions do not constitute an exception to the Epicurean claim that people are always motivated by pleasure and pain. Patriotic self-sacrifice or suicide committed for other reasons can be explained on hedonistic grounds. Someone who kills themselves to avoid shame, for instance, may just be seeking to escape from the suffering brought on by social disapproval. When we reach the speech of the third spokesman, we learn that the Stoic and the Epicurean are both mistaken because they have failed to grasp the Christian truth that we will live on after death. Still, the Epicureans are closer to being right than the Stoics. A Christian hedonist can look ahead to an everlasting and exceedingly pleasant reward in heaven. Virtue is not, as the Stoic has claimed, valuable in itself. It is only a means towards attaining this blessed state. Yet, for the same reasons, the traditional Epicurean is wrong when he advises us to pursue the pleasures of this world, especially bodily pleasures. Even in this life, these are as nothing compared to the pleasures of the soul. And the highest pleasures of all await us, once we are freed from our earthly existence, when we will receive perfect bodies and all the higher pleasures the soul could possibly desire. This fusion of Christianity and Epicureanism is not unique to Valla. A short letter written in 1428 by his fellow humanist Francesco Filelfo expresses similar sentiments. If you're in the business of pursuing pleasure, it makes all the difference what kind of pleasure you seek, and the pleasures of the mind are those that are true and Christian. So Filelfo dismisses those who accuse Epicurus of lascivious devotion to the delights of the body. Putting this letter together with Valla's rehabilitation of pleasure, and Bruni's claim that Epicureans pursue virtue too, we can see that this hedonistic Hellenistic school had a surprisingly positive reception among the humanists. So the Lorenzo Valla who wrote On the Good can be seen to agree with contemporaries like Filelfo. Does he also agree with himself, that is with the Lorenzo Valla who wrote the dialectical disputations? Not entirely. Consider again the virtue of fortitude. We saw that it was central in the disputations, but it appears in the Epicurean speech in On the Good only to be criticized on hedonist grounds. When you measure everything in terms of pleasure, it's a losing game to endure great suffering for the sake of honor and glory, especially if you might get killed in the process. But the Valla of the disputations, the Valla who puts fortitude at the center of a life that is happy insofar as it is virtuous, also finds allies among his humanist contemporaries. One of them was Poggio Braccionini. He wrote a moral dialogue of his own called On Nobility, which argues along Stoic lines that true nobility consists in virtue rather than an aristocratic lineage. In a related work, On the Unhappiness of the Prince, Poggio complains that most political leaders are vicious people. He encourages his readers to avoid political life and goes so far as to suggest that a noble family background may even be ethically counterproductive, since the high-born are typically enmeshed in political intrigues and the upheavals of court life. This brings us back to the question of external goods, with Poggio firmly adopting the Stoic view that they are a matter of indifference, so that we should focus on struggling against our own vices rather than on acquiring wealth or political influence. The same note is struck in the work of another humanist, Ennio Silvio Piccolomini, not to be confused with the aforementioned Francesco Piccolomini. Ennio Silvio was Bishop of Trieste and of Siena, and culminated his career by reigning as Pope Pius II from 1458 to 1464. So he knew something about political life and put this knowledge to good use in his On the Misery of Courtiers. It begins by stating bluntly that, Even if the hedonist doctrines of the Epicureans were true, political engagement would still be a bad idea, because life at court is far from pleasant. Piccolomini is obviously drawing on a wealth of personal experience here, as when he points out that being a courtier turns out to be surprisingly boring because you have to spend so much time waiting around for the ruler. The fact that Poggio and Piccolomini both devoted works to critiquing the political or courtly life should remind us that this was the context inhabited by many humanists. They often wrote their works while in the service of princes or popes. So for them, the ancient ethical school to follow was going to be the one that gave the best advice for surviving life at court with one's dignity, and ideally one's happiness, intact. For those who committed themselves to such a life, Aristotle seemed to be the best guide. He gave them good reason to be proud of their intellectual attainments at the end of the Ethics when he stated that philosophical contemplation is the best life of all, and in the rest of the work he showed that one could manifest virtue by pursuing a life of civic engagement, seeking to amass enough wealth to display munificent generosity, and forging alliances through family and friends. Let's finish this episode by considering two authors who adopted this ideal of a virtuous politically engaged life. Our first example is Giovanni Pontano, a student of George of Trebizond who died in 1503 after an eventful career as a diplomat at the royal court in Naples. Pontano shows stoic leanings in a work entitled On Fortitude, which praises those who bear up under the suffering inflicted on them by fortune. Rebuking the sentiments expressed by Valla's Epicurean spokesmen, who disdained political heroism as more painful than pleasant, Pontano thinks it makes good sense to seek out difficulties in life. Only those who face tribulations can conquer them, thus displaying fortitude and valor. This sounds closer to Valla's stoic spokesmen, but Pontano fails Bruni's test for true stoicism in that he embraces the importance of external goods. The best and most happy man is one who has physical strength, good looks, and at least a degree of wealth. As this suggests, Pontano's primary allegiance in moral philosophy is to Aristotle, who offered a theoretical basis for Pontano's own idealized self-conception as a virtuous man of political action. Speaking of idealizations, let's turn finally to an extraordinary literary work which has as its main topic the question of the ideal courtier. This is the Book of the Courtier, written by Baldessar Castiglioni in 1528 and my personal choice as the most entertaining ethical treatise produced by an Italian humanist. Lorenzo Valla, please forgive me. It is a dialogue set at the court of Urbino, featuring a number of real historical figures from among the nobility, both male and female. They want to find a diversion to pass the time, and in the process impress one another and the papal envoys who are watching. After considering several games they might play, they hit upon the idea of attempting to describe the perfect courtier. He will need skills ranging from the art of warfare to music and mastery of the literary arts. He should also be witty, which gives Castiglioni the chance to record a number of jokes and humorous anecdotes to illustrate how good wit functions. Some of these have not dated well, but others are legitimately funny. Have you heard the one about the prince who needs to find something to do with a huge pile of excavated earth after a building project? His advisor suggests, just dig a hole and bury it. When the prince asks, but what about the dirt from the new hole, the advisor replies, just make the hole twice as big. For Castiglioni, wit is serious business, because it is one of the attributes the courtier will need in order to guide his prince. If he is lucky enough to have a virtuous master, things will be easy. He need only tell the truth. More likely, the prince will fall short of moral perfection, which puts the courtier in a more difficult position. He should avoid being a flatterer, but will need to be able to soften hard truths with wit and charm. More ambitiously still, the courtier should seek to instill virtue in the prince, being a moral educator as well as a practical advisor. In this, he is a mirror of his prince, because the virtuous prince too should make those around him good. The best prince is like a straight edge that rectifies other things when placed against them, so he is a ruler in every sense of the term, as Castiglioni's witty courtier might observe if he spoke English. If all goes well then, there should be plenty of virtue to go around. But as one character cynically remarks, if the prince is to have only good people as his subjects, the population will be pretty small. And sadly, as Poggio had noted, good princes are the exception and not the rule. We cannot rule out that the good courtier may have to abandon or even overthrow a sufficiently wicked prince. In setting forth this account of the best courtier, Castiglioni's characters make the most tasteful possible display of their learning. One passage alludes to Aristotle's point that virtue is not instilled by nature, even giving his example that stones cannot be habituated to go upwards when dropped. Another refers obliquely to the Stoic idea that virtue alone is valuable, with other apparent goods, like health or wealth, having true value only when they are used virtuously. There are even debates about fine points of philosophy, such as whether our reason is overwhelmed by our passions when we make bad choices, or whether this just shows that our rational beliefs about the good are not secure enough. Great philosophers of antiquity appear by name too, notably when it is pointed out that there is no conflict between being a philosopher and being a courtier. Plato, after all, served the rulers of Syracuse, and Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great. One philosopher Castiglioni could not have mentioned in this context is Epicurus. He and his followers were famous for their political disengagement, for choosing to enjoy a quiet life in their communal garden, rather than pursuing the false pleasures of power, honor, and glory. We've just seen that for some Renaissance thinkers, like Pontano, this was a flaw in the Epicurean ethical program. In fact, the only humanist we've found endorsing Epicurus' hedonism was the idiosyncratic Lorenzo Valla, and even he needed to bring in Christian ideas of the afterlife and resurrection in order to identify pleasure with the highest good. Given its hedonistic ethics and also its physical theory of chance and atomism, it may seem unlikely that Epicureanism would find further admirers or interpreters in the Italian Renaissance. Yet the rediscovery of this school did manage to cause something of a swerve in the intellectual current of the period, as we'll see next time on the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.