Reply to Commentators

Abstract

Professor Sherman raises issues which emerge from, and are situated within, ongoing philosophical debate, -in this case between the Stoics and other schools. This is the perspective that I have emphasized in my book, and both of her points form interesting extensions to the debates that I trace therephilosophical conversations, as she calls them, of some liveliness and interest to us as well as indications of distance or convergence between different ancient schools of thought. Aristotle's moral theory has often, and rightly, been commended for its attention to character and moral development, and he gives prominence to the development of the agent's emotions and feelings, as well as more purely intellectual development. The virtuous agent not only discerns what is the right thing to do, and does so as a matter of settled disposition, she has the appropriate emotional reaction to this. Aristotle's theory of virtue as being 'in a mean' covers emotions as well as actions: the virtuous person's feelings have been modified and transformed by the gradual transformation of her ethical intelligence. The result is that within the theory there is an important distinction between the fully virtuous person, who does the virtuous thing not only for the right reason but gladly, with no sense of struggle or loss, and the merely self-controlled person, who has to fight down contrary inclinations. In the book I claim that, although we associate this view of the place of the emotions in virtue especially with Aristotle, the kind of distinction that results between the fully virtuous and the merely self-controlled is widely accepted as something that a theory of virtue ought to be able to account for. Authors like Plutarch describe the difference between the conflicted, self-controlled person and the innerly harmonious, virtuous person in ways that show that the contrast is taken to be common ground. When the Stoics, then, say that the emotions are all bad and should be removed, they seem to be flouting the opinions both of the wise and of the many. I think that their position is, as often, less disagreeable to common sense when spelled out fully than it appears to be in isolation. Accordingly, I lay out some points in which it can be claimed that the more familiar Aris-