Epicureans on Anger

Abstract

Like other Hellenistic philosophers, Epicurus and his followers had views about anger, though these do not seem to have attracted much attention outside their circle. The topic was one which any philosopher of the age could be expected to discuss, and he would do so in the context of a broader debate on the passions in general. Here the two main protagonists were the Stoics and the Peripatetics. The Stoa maintained that human passions are intrinsically wrong, a malfunction of human reason, from which the wise man will be free. Against that, the Peripatos claimed that they are natural and beneficial so long as they remain “moderate” — so long, that is, as reason imposes a certain “measure” on them: “they may need to be cut back; they cannot and need not be eradicated; in all things moderation is best,” as Cicero puts it in his Tusculan Disputations.2 The debate and the form that it took is familiar enough from Book 4 (38–57) of that work or from Book 1 of Seneca’s De ira. Quaeramus an ira secundum natura sit et an utilis atque ex aliqua parte retinenda [“let us inquire whether anger is in accordance with nature and whether it is beneficial and ought in some measure to be kept”] (1.5.1), writes Seneca, going on to argue that anger is unnatural (5–6), that it cannot be moderated (7–8), and that, in warfare and punishment, it is not merely useless but positively counterproductive (9–19).