Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation considers the problem of moral responsibility as treated by Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. For them, in contrast to the early Stoics, it has become a question of practical ethics focused on one person’s response to the wrongdoing of another. These later Stoics take issue with the Aristotelian and Peripatetic claim that voluntary injustice requires an angry response, which helps to structure Aristotle’s theory of rectificatory justice. By distinguishing between the determination of guilt and the determination of the response to the wrongdoer, Seneca shows, against the Peripatetic view, that it is possible to respond adequately to the wrongdoing of others without becoming angry or condoning their misdeeds. Seneca’s rejection of the Aristotelian model of retribution leads him to endorse an alternative model of the response to wrongdoing, Socratic in its inspiration, which is based on the correction of the offender. Epictetus, for whom the Stoics’ use of the Socratic model is particularly prominent, extends the Stoic framework of interpersonal response by describing external events, including the actions of others, as the materials of the art of living, giving his ethics a participatory, reactive character. He attributes Socrates’ patience with others to his insistence on the independence of each person’s own mind and the consequent impossibility of interpersonal harm. His analysis of wrongdoing in terms of the Socratic Paradox offers reasons for suspending anger against wrongdoers, without thereby diminishing their culpability. Marcus Aurelius uses the Stoic concepts of reservation (ὑπεξαίρεσις) and reversal (περιτροπή) to construct a framework of interpersonal action and reaction. Emphasizing the importance of affection toward human beings, even when they go astray, Marcus calls on himself to correct the wrongdoer’s mistakes; in acknowledging the possibility of correction, he acknowledges the wrongdoer’s agency, while insisting that a dispassionate reaction to wrongdoing is compatible with meaningful human relationships and with due regard for the rationality and responsibility of the erring agent. It is argued that an interpersonal perspective on responsibility such as these authors adopt is effective in understanding and refining our reactions to the wrongdoing of others as well as the structure of moral responsibility itself.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: John Anderson Murray MacCormick
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Toronto
OpenAlex ID: W2897091809