"Instruments and impediments: a Senecan-Aristoteleian debate on the activation of the virtues"

Margaret Graver
Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics
Dartmouth College

Several of Seneca’s letters supply pointers to a much older debate on the sufficiency of virtue for happiness. Picking up on cues from Aristotle, some Peripatetics had argued that external goods are instrumentally necessary for virtuous activities, and/or that external evils impede those activities. Not enough is said, however, about what sense of instrumentality is involved, and Stoics exploit that lack of clarity to refute the argument. The discussion that ensues is of interest in that it brings out certain tensions within the Stoic theory of action.

Friday, February 13, 2015
5:30 p.m.
208B Cathedral of Learning

Reception following lecture in in the Crogan-Schenley Room, 156 Cathedral of Learning