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CHAPTER 19
PLUTARCH PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND ETHICS
FREDERICK E. BRENK
INTRODUCTION
PLUTARCH (ca. 40 to ca. 120 CE), born in Chaeronea, in Boeotia, significantly received later in life the full Roman name, L. Mestrius Plutarchus. He possibly traveled to Smyrna when young and also to Alexandria, perhaps taking part in an embassy. With his teacher, Ammonius, he evidently attended the Pythian Games on the occasion of Nero’s visit to Delphi in 67. Possibly he also witnessed Nero’s proclamation of freedom to Greece at the Isthmian Games in 68 (Stadter 2015, 70–97). He visited Rome and Italy on several occasions, probably for relatively brief stays. At first, he may have arrived as a philosopher but later most likely represented Chaeronea on official business or simply traveled with his Roman friends. Under Domitian, some of these were accused of conspiracy, executed, or sent into exile. Plutarch would have attempted to “keep a low profile” in Chaeronea during this period. With the accession of Trajan, the winds of fortune changed, and his writing flourished. Trajan even granted Plutarch the ornamenta consularia (the equivalent of a distinguished service award), and toward the end of his life, he became under Hadrian “procurator of Greece” (supervisor of the imperial properties), a distinguished even if only honorary title. His writings are voluminous. Besides the Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans, which occupy ten Loeb volumes, there are sixteen volumes of Moralia (Moral Essays), comprising a wide variety of subjects and genres. Yet, his extant writings may be only half his original oeuvre.
What is more amazing is his broad cultural sweep, including familiarity with other traditions, in particular, Roman and Egyptian. His interests were stimulated by an international network of friends, not only Greek and Roman but also from nations once called barbarian. What generally distinguishes them is their prominent role in the Greco-Roman imperial cosmopolis. In so many ways, Plutarch thoroughly belongs to the Second Sophistic. He memorializes not only the Athenian past and its language but also his local Boeotian heritage within the “inhabited world.” He writes in the elevated literary koinê or “the classical language, without the pedantic concern for exactness of linguistic imitation, that is, a reformed Hellenistic Greek with very few non-classical features of syntax or morphology, enormously enriched by his vast reading” (Russell 1973, 21–22; see Kim on Atticism and Asianism, chapter 4 in this volume).
PHILOSOPHY
Plutarch is arguably “by far the most interesting and rewarding philosopher, not only of Middle Platonism but of his entire age” (Donini 2011c, 390). He arrived on the philosophical scene just as Middle Platonism was rising, a phenomenon of the first century BCE to the third century CE. After the death of Plato, the Academy continued, but toward the end of its existence became the “New Academy,” which turned sharply toward skepticism. Long before Plutarch’s birth, the Academy had ceased as an institution. There was, however, a rebirth of Platonism, with a reaction against skepticism and a return to the teaching of Plato’s major dialogues. A turning point came with Antiochus of Ascalon (ca. 130–69/68). He reacted against New Academy skepticism, returning to the teachings of the Old Academy, and apparently attempted to subordinate Stoicism to Platonism (Bonazzi 2009, 34; 2012, 314, 331–332). Plutarch thus represents the new intellectual currents of the early Imperial period. His teacher, Ammonius, came from Alexandria, though he became a major figure at Athens. A long speech of his appears at the end of The E at Delphi (see Opsomer 2009, esp., 147–79). The exalted and unusually dogmatic speech suggests that Ammonius was influenced by Alexandrian Platonism in its exaltation of God as One or the One. Possibly he was influenced by the somewhat mysterious Eudorus of Alexandria (fl. ca. 50 BCE), generally considered the founder of Middle Platonism. Thus, Plutarch’s philosophical training, though Platonic and in Athens, was cosmopolitan. As typical of the time, philosophy included many genres, such as natural science, which we today might not consider philosophical.
His mainly nonethical philosophical works consist of combative attacks on the Stoics and Epicureans, and commentaries on Plato. The first group of writings is very technical and biased, assailing long-dead adversaries, such as the major Stoics and Epicureans. Representative are On the Contradictions of the Stoics and Reply to Colotes (for the last, see Kechagia 2011b). That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible and Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept are similar but more popular and rhetorical in tone. He particularly disliked the Epicureans. The strategy is often to reveal how the adversary gets trapped in contradictions, or to demonstrate how a doctrine defies common sense and ordinary experience. The works are, however, filled with rhetorical flourishes, citations from poetry, and probably deliberate misrepresentations of the adversary’s positions. In Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions, a Platonist tries to dissuade an enthralled convert to Stoicism. Stoics and Epicureans, however, were real and formidable adversaries. Only much later did Platonism triumph over the others. A third group of philosophical essays is hard to categorize since they merge, as in Plato, philosophical speculation, ethics, and myth. A splendid and successful example of this group is Concerning the Face which Appears on the Moo
n.
One could set out on different philosophical paths in Plutarch’s day. Primarily, in the past the choice had been between Epicureanism and Stoicism, but now Platonism’s star was rising. Plutarch stood firmly against the first schools, perhaps in part for religious reasons. Both the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies were centered on this world. Epicureans held, moreover, an anti-Platonic, atomistic, physiological view of the universe and human beings. The universe and its creatures evolved without a guiding intellect, and there were an infinite number of bodies and worlds (Mor. 1012c, 1114a–b, 1087b). If Epicureans believed at all in the real existence of God or the gods, they still denied providence or any divine influence on human beings. On atomistic grounds, they also denied the survival of the soul. Plutarch opposed both schools on technical grounds, such as their epistemology. For instance, the Epicureans claimed that “all perceptions are true” (e.g., 1109b–c, 1121c–d; 1092c–d, 1119a–b; 1102a–b, 1034b). The Stoic God was materialistic and immanent in the world, an intellect or spirit always attached to pneuma (a gas-like type of matter). The universe continually dissolved itself in fire, and then recommenced again, destroying not only human souls but even the gods themselves.
Only two Platonic works have survived, of which The Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus was very important. Both are in the tractate style, but Platonic Questions was written in the “question” (zetemata) genre. These begin with puzzling quotations or propositions from Plato and attempt to offer a convincing answer. The “Lamprias Catalogue,” a late list of Plutarch’s works, suggests that besides these two Platonic treatises, he composed at least nine or ten others on Plato or on the Academy which are no longer extant. Both extant ones exhibit the sober, philosophical style of a commentary. On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus was very timely in the Platonic revival of the first and second centuries. Reaffirming Plato, it implicitly rejects the Epicurean conception of the creation of the world and its future disintegration, as well as the Stoic view of an impersonal, immanent intellect or God as the binding force of the universe, along with its eternal, cyclic dissolutions in a great conflagration. Here and elsewhere, Plutarch reasserts the authority of Plato, while “interpreting Plato through Plato,” that is, using one Platonic dialogue to interpret another, an approach that would make a modern scholar’s hair stand on end. Plutarch’s optimistic, wholesome cosmology and eschatology, based on Plato, evidently had a strong appeal for the changing intellectual world of his time.