Stoicism: Philosophy of Empire

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Stoicism Philosophy of Empire
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Polis law and Cosmopolitan Law

• Alexander Pharaoh in Egypt, King in Persia
• No Greek system of law
• only Athenian, Corinthian, etc.
• Polis law
• Legacy of Greek empire cultural (phil, art )
• Roman empire is based on Roman law
• Cosmopolitan law

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Irony of History

• Only some are free (Hegel)
• Greece
• Accept Principle of enslaving others
• Romans enslave them
• Rome
• Cheap slave-produced grain ruins small farmer
• Destruction of free Roman army, fall of Rome

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Compare with US system

• House elected based on population
• Democratic
• Black slaves count 3/5s whites
• Senate appointed based on equality of states
• Elite
• U.S. Constitution as legacy of Roman Law
• Rationally organized code (Justinian)
• V. England no written constitution

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Some are free

• Representatives and direct taxes shall be
  apportioned among the several States which may be
  included within this Union, according to their
  respective numbers, which shall be determined by
  adding to the whole number of free persons,
  including those bound to service for a term of
  years, and excluding Indians not taxed,
  three-fifths of all other persons.

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Lessons of History 1

• U.S. imitates Roman system
• Political
• checks and balances
• Excludes women, slaves, and native Americans
• Legal written system of law
• Some are free.
• gt Civil War
• Shows need to go beyond political limitation of
  freedom All are free.

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Main Roman periods (compare with Greek periods)

• 1) 494-440 struggle of the orders gt republic
  Twelve Tablets (or Tables) of the Law, 451
• 2) 405-264 Internal, Italian wars
• 3) 264-146 Struggle with dominant external power
  of Carthage (3 Punic Wars)
• 4) 134 -71 BCE --Renewed class warfare 3 Slave
  wars
• 5) Fall of Republic (Emperor Augustus Caesar, 27
  BCE - 14 CE)

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Second wave of class struggles

• Tiberius Gracchus, about 133 BC "Wild animals
  stalking their prey throughout Italy have dens
  and lairs to spend the night in, but people who
  fight and die for Italy have nothing but the air
  and the light. They wander with their children
  and wives like homeless vagabonds. The warriors
  fight and die for others' luxury and wealth they
  are called the masters of the universe, yet they
  don't have a single plot of land."

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Self-Defeat of Roman peasant

• New kind of threat not enslavement but economic
  ruin
• Invisible enemy who to blame?
• Cycle of cause and effect (karma)
• Roman peasants conquer slaves in Greece
• Greek slaves in Syracuse produce cheap grain for
  Roman aristocrats
• Roman peasants are ruined become urban
  proletariat

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Lessons of History 2

• US trade unions (modern proletariat) strike
• Veto power of Roman plebeians
• What about foreign workers?
• Only some workers are free
• Corporations employ cheap foreign labor, move
  elsewhere
• US workers compete with cheaper foreign labor
• Wages drop unemployment rises
• Social security declines

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Causes of downfall

• 1) Democratic institutions cease to operate
  effectively
• 2) Fear threats to physical security of ordinary
  people gt
• People give to new power to authoritarian leaders
  to exercise military power
• 3) Corruption money undermines over the
  political system

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1) Destroy democracy by brute force

• Later Roman farmers face already existing state
  made up of their own sons
• Goal of Tribunes, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
  land to the Roman farmers
• Both are assassinated
• Compare assassination of the Kennedy brothers

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2) Fear Slave Wars

• Three Servile Wars
• Gladiator Spartacus and 70 others escape
• Army of 120,000 threaten Rome
• Crassus manipulates Spartacus and Rome
• Crucifixion of 6000 on Apian Way
• Why is Crucifixion especially horrible?

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3) Corruption Client system of Politics

• Wealthy Romans have clients
• Huge wealth from victorious wars
• Individuals raise their own armies
• Clients vote as they are told
• gt Corruption of electoral system
• gt Fall of Republic

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Lessons of History 3

• Huge cost of running for elections
• gt Power of private wealth over politicians
• See film, Bulworth (Warren Beatty)
• gt Apathy of voters
• Effect on US democracy?

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Why not fight back?

• Strong Roman army (and no where to go)
• State is now in existence
• Recall Rousseaus analysis of early state

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Rousseau on the victory of the rich over the poor

• The outcome was . . . the most thought-out
  project that ever entered the human mind. It was
  to use in his favor the very strength of those
  who attacked him, to turn his adversaries into
  his defenders to give them other institutions
  which were as favorable to him as natural right
  was unfavorable to him.

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Turn to Authoritarian Rule

• Plebs support popular Roman generals
• Gaius Marius, Julius Caesar
• gt Generals take more and more power
• Octavian Augustus Caesar (adopted son of Julius
  Caesar) made Imperator for life (27 BCE -14 CE)

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How Did Augustus Seize Power?

• A grateful Senate, weary of seemingly endless
  civil wars, heaped him with honors, including, in
  27 BCE, the title Augustus, meaning sacred or
  venerable. (180)
• Augustus rejected the title of monarch,
  preferring to be called princeps, or first
  citizen. This gesture of humility fooled no one.
  With Augustus reign, the imperial form of
  government begins even though the Senate and the
  consuls and other magistrates survived. Spodek,
  181

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Fall of the Republic, Rise of the Empire

• Chancellor Palpatine In order to ensure our
  security and continuing stability, the Republic
  will be reorganized into the first Galactic
  Empire, for a safe and secure society which I
  assure you will last for ten thousand years. An
  empire that will continue to be ruled by this
  august body, and a sovereign ruler chosen for
  life.

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How does liberty die?

• PADME So this is how liberty dies, with
  thunderous applause . . .
• (Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith)

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How democratic was it?

• In 14 C.E. Augustus Caesar announced that there
  were 4,937,000 citizens, about 2 million of them
  in the provinces. At that time, the total
  population of the empire was between 70 and 100
  million. Spodek, 181. 5 to 7 are free
  citizens
• (Athens 16)

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Abstractness of Cosmopolitan Citizenship

• Legal citizenship is abstract, formal, almost
  powerless
• gt Citizens have formal legal rights but not real
  power to control their society

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Greek philosophy of free polis

• Recall Socrates
• Re wealth and virtue
• Re soul and body
• Re choice and destiny we choose our own fate
• Socrates does not flee
• His life is tied to the Athenian polis
• He is a true citizen
• He has real citizen power

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Stoic philosophy of empire

• Stoic position virtue is unrelated to wealth
• Virtue (mind) is in our power not wealth (body)

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Slave and Emperor

• Two great Stoics
• Epictetus the slave (50-138 AD)
• Marcus Aurelius, the emperor (121-180 AD)
• See film, Gladiator
• Philosophy that equates free and slave

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What we can and cant control

• Under our control are conception, choice,
  desire, aversion . . .
• not under our control are our body, our
  property, reputation, office . . .
• if you think only what is your own to be your
  own, and what is not your own to be, as it really
  is, not your own, then no one will ever be able
  to exert compulsion upon you . . . 1

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Body and Soul

• All can be free internally (in mind)
• None can be free without (in body)
• Compare Socrates Virtue (the rightly ordered
  soul) brings Wealth and all good things (of the
  body)

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Be realistic

• Do not seek to have everything that happens
  happen as you wish, but wish for everything to
  happen as it actually does happen, and your life
  will be serene. 8

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How to be free

• Whoever, therefore, wants to be free, let him
  neither wish for anything, nor avoid anything,
  that is under the control of others or else he
  is necessarily a slave. 14
• Story of Epictetus and his master
• Freedom of the mind

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Accept your role in life

• Remember that you are an actor in a play, the
  character of which is determined by the
  Playwright if He wishes the play to be short, it
  is short if long, it is long if He wishes you
  to play the part of a beggar, remember to act
  even this role adroitly and so if your role be
  that of a cripple, an official, or a layman. For
  this is your business, to play admirably the role
  assigned you but the selection of that role is
  Anothers. 17

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The world is in good order

• In piety towards the gods, I would have you
  know, the chief element is this, to have right
  opinions about them, as existing and as
  administering the universe well and justlyand to
  have set yourself to obey them and to submit to
  everything that happens, and to follow it
  voluntarily, in the belief that it is being
  fulfilled by the highest intelligence. 31

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Is Socrates a Model Stoic?

• See Epictetus 53 Well, O Crito, if so it is
  pleasing to the gods, so let it be. Anytus and
  Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me.
• Does Socrates neglect the body? Wealth? Is he a
  fatalist?
• Plato on nature of our fate we freely choose our
  lot in life! (NDE of Er)