Chapter 5: The shape of the passions in Philo

Having discussed passion as a type of impulse in the previous chapter, we now turn to how he modified this impulse. For the sake of convenience, let us recall again Philo’s formal definition of a passion:

Every passion (πάθος) is blameworthy (ἐπίληπτον). This follows from the censure due to every ‘inordinate and excessive impulse’ (ἄμετρος καὶ πλεονάζουσα ὁρμὴ) and to ‘irrational and unnatural movements’ (ἡ ἄλογος καὶ παρὰ φύσιν κίνησις) of the soul, for both these are nothing else than the opening out of a long-standing passion.^[1]

In this definition, as we briefly noted at the beginning of the previous chapter, Philo named four key descriptors to characterize passion. This impulse is inordinate and excessive, irrational, contrary to nature, and blameworthy. We will now explore each of these modifiers in detail in this chapter.

When we compare these four elements of Philo’s characterization of the passions above to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, we find that though he did draw on Plato and Aristotle, he remained fundamentally Stoic. While Plato and Aristotle had discussed the passions in terms of these four descriptors, this particular make up was Stoic. Moreover, as we will see in this chapter, when we investigate further what he means by each of these terms, we find his understanding remains broadly Stoic. We do, however, have to view the irrationality and excessiveness of the passionate impulse in the light of the latter two elements, namely, its unnatural and blameworthy character, because one their own merits, it is difficult to make a conclusive judgment. This ambiguity arises from the fact that all parties described passion as irrational and excessive. The difference in their understanding of each of these terms depended firstly, on their portrayal of the soul as either complex, as was the case for Platonic and Peripatetic traditions, or simple, as was the case for the Stoa. Secondly, it depended on how they handled the question of the whether or not a passion is natural and, to a lesser degree, blameworthy.

In this chapter, we will begin by outlining how each philosophical school understood the irrationality and excessiveness of passion and briefly show how Philo compares with each. Since these first two descriptors are inconclusive on their own inasmuch as all parties described passion as irrational and excessive, we will explore them together. We will then look at the naturalness and blameworthiness of passion separately. These two latter descriptions will help us evaluate Philo’s own understanding of passion since in both cases the Stoics diverged widely from the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions. Again, we will first review the how each of the three philosophical traditions handled these two descriptions and then conclude each section by situating Philo among them before concluding the chapter with a summary evaluation of Philo’s conception of the passions.

Irrational and excessive

Philo, the Stoics, Plato and Aristotle all characterized the passions as ‘irrational’ and ‘excessive’. All parties ascribed a similar meaning to the notion of irrationality, namely that passions are impulses that move against right reason. The differences among the parties came rather as a result of how they treated passion’s irrationality in relation to the other elements and to the composition of the soul itself. Here the Stoics diverged significantly from Plato and Aristotle given their distinct psychic monism. On the one side, the Stoics conceived of the irrationality of the passions paradoxically as a perversity in reason itself whereby it fails to act in agreement with nature, while on the other side, both the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions understood the irrationality of the passions as the variable and disorderly working of a separate part of the soul that is inherently irrational. Since this other part of the soul cannot be expunged, instead it needs reason to direct, check, and guide it.^[2]

Similarly, all parties could describe the passions as excessive with more or less the same sense, namely, that an impulse is too strong. Again, each tradition’s treatment of passion’s excessiveness depended on other principles. For Plato, the passions are inherently irrational and chaotic. Like irrational animals, their irrationality will often result in wild and excessive movements, unless trained and tamed by reason. Aristotle accepted Plato’s basic characterization, but modified it with his doctrine of the mean. Passions can be excessive, but not necessarily so. They can also be too weak. Neither type of impulse is ideal. Instead, the virtuous soul must aim for the mean in her expression of the passions. While Plato’s doctrine was subject to such an interpretation, this was nevertheless an innovation unique to Aristotle. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics considered all passions to be excessive. Moreover, they rejected the notion of taming the passions or seeking moderation in their expression. Its impulse should be neither excessive, nor deficient, nor moderate. Instead passion should not exist in the soul at all! The question before us is where should we situate Philo among these traditions, even as we recognize that he did not see himself as an adherent to any of these schools, but rather to Moses. Let us first look more closely at how school handled the irrationality and excessiveness of the passions, before attempting to situate Philo among them.

With regard to the irrationality of the passions, it is important to remember that both Plato and Aristotle treated the soul as fundamentally complex, though in the details they did divide the irrational parts or functions of the soul differently. For Plato, as we have discussed in greater detail in the previous chapter, the soul into three parts—the mind or reason, the spirited part and the appetitive part.^[3] For Plato, the mind is by nature rational, divine, immortal and orderly, housed in the head as in a citadel, while the spirited and appetitive parts are of a different quality—mortal, irrational, and disorderly. Both are housed in the trunk of the body, separated from the mind by the neck as a sort of the isthmus, with the spirited part lodged in the heart and the appetitive in the liver.^[4]

Additionally, Plato closely linked the two lower parts to sense perception (αἴσθησις). Plato did not treat sense perception as a part of the soul, but rather as an affection of the soul alongside and coextensive with the two irrational parts and closely linked to the body. For him, both sense perception and the irrational parts of the soul were added ‘later’ as a consequence of the pre-existence mind or soul’s embodiment.^[5] As such, he described sense perception as ‘fused’ or ‘mixed’ (συγκεράννυμι) with the lower parts of the soul.^[6] By sense perception then, the disorderly, random and irrational external commotions of the six motions^[7] are conducted through the body to the soul and strike against (προσπίπτω) it producing disorder or disturbances (παθήματα), pleasures or pains within the soul itself.^[8]

Plato associated the spirited part especially with anger and courage, making it out to be a natural ally to reason, though it is susceptible to corruption by bad education and outside influences so that it can become a collaborator with the appetitive part.^[9] Lastly, he linked the appetitive part especially to the desire for the manifold kinds of bodily pleasures. As such, he characterized it as the most unruly part of the soul, the least receptive to reason, multiform due to the wide variety of pleasures that it seeks and the largest portion of the soul.^[10] Consequently, we see that Plato made a close correlation between the structure of the tripartite soul, the location of the psychic parts in the body, and the passions. Indeed, he essentially identified the two lower parts, the spirited and appetitive, with the passions of anger and desire. One is hardly able to logically distinguish the two.

Aristotle, in contrast, distinguished among several elements or powers in the soul, including the nutritive, perception, the appetitive, imagination and the mind, which he divided into a contemplative and a deliberative part.^[11] Aristotle formally assigned Plato’s spirited part to the appetitive on the ground that anger is a sort of desire to return pain for pain,^[12] though in practice he often continued to utilize Plato’s distinction between the two.^[13] Additionally, Aristotle’s psychology was further colored by his entelechism. In this view all of the parts or powers of the soul are to be conceived of as an actuality or form of the body and thus inseparable from the body and its organs,^[14] except reason or the mind. For Aristotle, like Plato, reason appeared to be qualitatively different from the other elements. As such, it alone is eternal and separable from the body.^[15] Unlike Plato, however, Aristotle further divided reason into two parts—the scientific (τό ἐπιστημονικόν) part of the mind, which he also called the contemplative (τό θεωρητικόν) on the one hand and the deliberative (τὸ βουλευτικόν) part of the mind on the other. He also referred to this part as the calculative (τό λογιστικόν) or practical (πρακτικός) part of the mind. For Aristotle, the scientific part of the mind contemplates unchanging principles (αἱ ἀρχαὶ μὴ ἐνδέχονται ἄλλως ἔχειν) or objects of thought (τὸ νοητόν) and is thus oriented exclusively toward what is true or false, while the calculative deliberates about those things that can be otherwise (τὰ ἐνδεχόμενα), that is, objects of perception (τὸ αἰσθητόν), forms opinions and is oriented toward truth that is in agreement with right desire.^[16]

Nevertheless, in broad outline both Plato and Aristotle made the same dualistic division between rational and irrational elements in the soul, which further underscored its basic complexity.^[17] For both Plato and Aristotle, the mind served as the rational part of the soul, whereas Plato identified the spirited and the appetitive parts as irrational, but Aristotle only appetitive and perceptive powers of the soul. In a manner reminiscent of Plato, Aristotle viewed perception and desire as intimately and necessarily (ἐξ ἀνάγκης) connected with one another, though distinct.^[18] He argued that all animals must at least have the sense of touch, which includes at the minimum the capacity for pleasure and pain. And whatever has these capacities will in turn have objects that are pleasant or painful to it. And wherever these capacities are present, there will be desire. For, Aristotle concluded, desire (ἐπιθυμία) is the appetition (ὄρεξις) for what is pleasant.”^[19]

Aristotle, moreover, made the additional distinction between irrational and non-rational elements in the soul. In his scheme, while appetition and perception are irrational, the nutritive element of the soul is non-rational. The difference is that while the irrational element in a sense participates in reason inasmuch as it can obey or disobey reason, even if it is by nature unruly, the nutritive element does not participate in either reason or moral virtue at all.^[20] The non-rational, nutritive portion instead functions in an automatic, unthinking manner as the principle of growth and reproduction in both animals and plants. For this reason, Aristotle identified the nutritive part as the sole kind of soul found in plants.^[21] 

For both Plato and Aristotle, the parts of the soul are hierarchically organized with the rational elements at the top and the irrational at the bottom. For Plato, this is reflected in the dwelling place of each of the parts of the soul in upright body. Situated at the apex of the body, the mind is thus its most sovereign part, overseeing and directing the rest of the soul.^[22] The two lower parts of the soul—the spirited and appetitive—are housed below the head and mind in the trunk in the body. But, between the two, the spirited part is superior to the appetitive since it is housed in the chest rather than in the abdominal region.^[23]

Aristotle conceived of the hierarchy more in terms of biological complexity, though, given his entelechism, he too connected the parts of the soul to those parts of the body, which they served as the form (εἶδος) and actuality (ἐντελέχεια) of body.^[24] Like Plato, Aristotle argued that the reason and mind is a different kind of soul from the lower parts. As such, only the most complex, rational creatures such as humans fully share in reason and thought.^[25] Irrational animals and beasts (θηρίον) share together with humans in the irrational parts of the soul. This applies especially to sensation and its necessary derivative, appetition.^[26] Lastly, at the bottom of the biological chain as the most primitive and widely distributed power of soul, humans, irrational animals and plants share in the non-rational nutritive part.^[27] Hence, we see Aristotle continue to follow Plato in identifying the passions of desire and anger with the appetitive (and sometimes spirited) part of the soul, though he added significantly more complexity and detail to the soul by dividing reason into several elements, formalizing perception as a distinct element alongside the others, structuring the entire discussion around the entelechistic orientation of his psychology, and adding a non-rational nutritive part to the soul.

For both Plato and Aristotle, the irrationality of the lower parts of the soul was further reflected in their intimate connection with and orientation toward that which is bodily and earthly. The rational part of the soul—the mind—is directed toward heaven and the divine, while the lower parts of the soul are directed toward the earth and what is mortal. For Plato, as the divine root in us that is born of heaven (οὐράνιος), the mind actually raises us up (αἴρειν) toward it origin and suspends (ἀνακρεμάννυμι) our heads above the earth. By so doing, the mind keeps our entire body erect.^[28] While both of the mortal parts of the soul—the spirited and appetitive—are irrational, the appetitive is more so, since in Plato’s scheme, as each part comes nearer the ground, its orientation is increasingly earthly and bodily and simultaneously less rational. Indeed, since the appetitive part is so near to the ground, Plato theorized that it is devoid of understanding and thus barely able to comprehend the directives of reason.^[29] As a consequence, the gods placed the appetitive part in the liver, constructing it in such a manner that the mind can control the appetitive part by using the liver’s natural capacities for bitterness and sweetness to threaten and sooth the appetitive part into compliance.^[30] 

Aristotle likewise made the same distinction between the divine and theoretical orientation of the mind and the earthly and practical orientation of the appetitive part of the soul as Plato. Indeed, Aristotle stressed the close nexus between the irrational, appetitive part of the soul and bodily pleasure. In a manner that recalls Plato,^[31] Aristotle argued that the appetitive part is especially directed toward the primary brute, bodily pleasures associated with touch, which he identified as food, drink and sexual intercourse. This is why Aristotle identified self-indulgence or intemperance (ἀκολασία) as the slavish exercise of the appetitive part of the soul with reference to these pleasures.^[32]

Conversely, both Plato and Aristotle characterized the irrational parts of the soul as participating in reason to the extent that they are able to heed and obey reason. Aristotle argued that the irrational, appetitive and desiring part of the soul in a sense shares (μετέχει πως) in reason insofar as it is able to listen to and obey reason. He likened the possession of reason (ἔχειν λόγον) by the irrational parts of the soul to the manner in which we speak of someone when he listens to (ἔχειν λόγον) a father or friend, but not after the manner in which we speak of ‘the rational’ in mathematics. As a consequence, the irrational parts, while unruly, are capable of being persuaded as is indicated by the power of admonition, censure, and exhortation to check the desires of the appetitive element.^[33]

Both Plato and Aristotle thus portrayed the irrationality of the passions as a natural aspect of the separate, irrational element in the soul. As such, the irrationality of the passions was conceived as the none other than the functioning of the irrational element of the soul that is disorderly by nature. Additionally, their irrationality was characterized as unruly inasmuch as the irrational part of the soul is able to obey reason, but instead follows its disorderly nature. This, in turn, gives rise to an internal conflict between the rational and irrational parts, with the irrational part disobedient to and fighting against the part that possesses reason. Consequently, Plato and Aristotle characterized the irrationality of the passions as the disorderly, unruly and disobedient working of the irrational parts of the soul.

The Stoics, in contrast, treated the soul as fundamentally simple, though they did recognize several distinct, but indivisible elements of the soul. As we may recall from our discussion of the nature of the soul in the previous chapters, the Stoics divided the soul into eight parts. The hegemon or mind served as the rational center of the soul and is located in the heart. The other seven, lower parts, including the five senses and the powers of utterance and reproduction, were all considered ‘irrational’. Additionally, like Aristotle, the Stoics recognized a power of growth and nutrition shared by plants and animals alike. But in contrast to Aristotle, the Stoics did not count this as a part or power of the soul.

Though one might be tempted to say that the Stoic likewise divided the soul into rational and irrational elements, this would be incorrect. Given the Stoic commitment to a monistic conception of the soul, they rejected that Platonic and Peripatetic notion of opposing centers of impulse, one rational and the other irrational. Rather, the Stoics construed the irrationality of the lower parts of the soul as non-rational in a manner that was more akin to Aristotle’s nutritive element inasmuch as the seven, lower parts of the soul possess no share in reason at all. Additionally, the seven, lower parts of the soul do not contain any irrational element within themselves that is disorderly and unruly by nature as separate spheres of appetition (ὄρεξις).^[34] Instead, they functioned in an instrumentally as extensions of the mind itself like the legs of the octopus. As such, in the Stoic system the mind had complete control over every part of the soul. The seven lower parts of the soul were viewed as morally neutral in themselves since they were not responsible for the soul’s movements. Instead, moral accountability accrued to the mind alone as the sole governing part of the soul and source of impulse. 

The Stoics thus paradoxically understood the irrationality of the passions to be a function of a perverted and intemperate reason that that is disobedient to nature. This logically followed from the Stoic insistence upon the unitary constitution of the soul. Impulse originates, not in a separate, unruly, and disobedient part of the soul as is the case with Plato and Aristotle, but in the assent of the mind to an incognitive impression, which results in a perverse judgment of an opinion.^[35] Even more paradoxically, the Stoics could describe the irrationality of the passions as the equivalent of ‘disobedient to reason’ (ἀπειθής τῷ λόγῳ).^[36] How can reason by ‘disobedient’ to itself?! The phrase had two implied connotations for the Stoics. More narrowly, it meant that the mind is acting in a way that is inconsistent with correct and natural reasoning (παρά τὸν ὀρθὸν καὶ κατὰ φύσιν λόγον), as one would expect for instance in a Sage.^[37] It is not that the mind did not evaluate an impression and assent accordingly, but that it did so in a manner that a truly knowledgeable mind would not do. In a wider sense, it also implied that the hegemon of an individual fool is making choices that are not in keeping with the Reason that guides the universe. This could thus be construed as another way of saying that the fool is making choices that are ‘contrary to nature’ (παρὰ φύσιν). Arius Didymus suggested as much when he equated the soul’s irrationality, disobedience to reason, and disagreement with nature. [38]

Like both the Plato and Aristotle, Stoic authors sometimes illustrated passion’s irrational impulse using the familiar Platonic metaphor of disobedient horse(s). While Plato and Aristotle used the metaphor of irrationality as ‘disobedience’ to illustrate a conflict between the mind and the lower parts of the soul, which pose as alternative centers or sources of impulse to the mind,^[39] the Stoics used the image to describe how the mind itself has strayed in its own beliefs, judgments, and impulses. Arius Didymus described the Stoic experience of passion in relation to the disobedient horse simile as follows:

…every passion is overpowering (βιαστικόν), just as when those in the grips of passion often see that it would be useful not to do this, but carried away by its violence, as if by some disobedient horse, are led to doing this. As a result, often people even confess to this, uttering this commonly repeated line: “Although I have (better) judgment, nature (φύσις) forces me to do this”.^[40]

One might assume that the disobedient horse simile of passion would necessarily imply some sort of psychological dualism similar to the Platonic conception of the soul, where the rational part of the soul is unable to control the appetitive part of the soul with its own, separate impulses.^[41] As we can see in the quotation from Stobaeus above, this is not necessarily so. The Stoics also invoked the simile, though they interpreted it in very differently. Whereas Plato and Aristotle treated the horse as an alternate source of impulse that has overpowered the rational part of the soul, the Stoics rather considered passion to be an opinion or mistaken judgment about an impression that goes against what the mind already knows. Arius Didymus was quick to point out that this conflict was between two competing judgments in the mind. He added that it is different than simple deception. When someone is simply mistaken, once they have been shown the truth, they will often immediately abandon the erroneous judgment. In the case of the passions, by contrast, the mind switches back and forth between two opposing judgments, each of which will result in an impulse once settled upon. If the mind assents to a judgment that something is good or evil, that is not, it makes an error. Yet, the mind may even know that it should not count it as a good or evil, yet it assents anyway because its grasp of right reason is still weak. Unlike the Stoic Sage, whose convictions are settled and firm, the fool may know the good, but be unable to hold on to these principles. He is still grasping false convictions as well.

This discussion of the Stoic conception of the irrationality of passions leads next to the excessive character of the passions. For the Stoics, once the mind assents to the passionate judgment, the violence of the impulse is such that it becomes very difficult to halt. According to Galen, Chrysippus thus defined ‘excessive impulse’ as a run away movement (ἐκφόρου κινήσεως)^[42] of the mind or movement that ‘exceeds the measure that accords with [itself] and with nature’.^[43] Chrysippus illustrated the idea using the metaphor of a person who is running hard and is unable to stop. When the movement of the legs is in accord with reason, the runner can stop or change his pace whenever he wishes. On the other hand, when the movement of the legs exceeds the impulse, they are carried away and do not obediently change their pace.^[44]

Platonists like Galen, on the other hand, similarly described the passions as ‘runaway movements’ (κίνησις ἔκφορος) or ‘violent motions’ (κίνησις σφοδρά), but of the irrational parts of the soul, not of the mind.^[45] Galen argued in defense of his Platonic account of the soul that the appetitive and spirited parts of the soul should be likened to the weight of the runner as she runs down a hill, and the movement of the legs to the impulses of the mind. Hence, there are two sources for the movement forward, namely, the impulse of the mind to set the legs into motion and the gravitational pull on the runner’s body. On this account, the ‘excess’ in runner’s movement comes from weight of the runner, which in turn renders the runner unable to stop, not the impulse that causes the legs to move.^[46] As was the case with the passion’s irrationality, in his rebuttal to Chrysippus’ running metaphor, Galen sought to underscore that the excess comes from a source other than the mind.

We should mention that the Stoics also characterized the excessive or inordinate movements of the soul as a loss of proper tension in the soul. This related too their conception of the soul as corporeal, in contrast to Plato and Aristotle, for whom it is incorporeal. For the Stoics, the psychic pneuma, which is centered in the region around the heart that constitutes the mind or commanding faculty, could literally be viewed as ‘shrinking, rising up’, or experiencing ‘contractions or expansions’ (αἱ μειώσεις καὶ αἱ ἐπάρσεις καὶ αἱ συστολαὶ καὶ αἱ διαχύσεις)^[47] as it pursues an object that it desires or moves away from something unwanted or rejected. These movements in the soul were understood to be either equivalent with or supervening upon the mind’s judgment.^[48] In itself, this could be all quite orderly and appropriate. However, in the case of a passion, the tension of the soul’s pneuma slips into a state of disequilibrium as it pursues or avoids something that it ought not pursue or avoid.

Aristotle, in contrast to both the Stoic and Platonic accounts above, approached the excessiveness of the passions from a completely different perspective. For Aristotle, the passions are natural to the soul. However, they can be experience with too much strength, too feebly, or somewhere between the two. Aristotle then argued that the passions could be exercised virtuously, so long as a person aims at the mean (μεσότης) in their expression. Hence, the virtuous exercise of the passions would be to feel the passions at the right or necessary times (τὸ...ὅτε δεῖ), with reference to the right objects (ἐφ’ οἷς) or towards the right things (πρὸς οὓς), to the right extent (τό...ὅσον), with the right aim (οὗ ἕνεκα) and in the right or appropriate way (ὡς δεῖ).”^[49] For this reason, Aristotle acknowledged that it is quite difficult to attain to excellence in one’s actions and passions, since hitting the mean in each of these ways leaves little room for error.^[50]

Conversely, the vicious exercise of the passions can come about in a myriad of ways. One can feel the passions at the wrong time, with reference to the wrong object or for the wrong purposes. Alternatively, one might feel a passion with reference to the right objects, toward the right things, or with the right aim, but still fail in that one may feel them too violently and swiftly or too weakly and slothfully than the case demands.^[51] Thus for instance, in the case of the appetite for pleasure, when a person moderately desires those things that makes for health and wellbeing or moderately desires pleasant things that are in no way contrary to what is noble and good (τὸ καλόν) and does not feel pain or craving when those pleasant things are absent, he hits the mark with regard to desire and possesses the virtue of temperance (σωφροσύνη).^[52] The temperate person (ὁ σώφρων) thus “craves (ἐπιθυμεῖ) for the things that he ought, as he ought and when he ought” (ὧν δεῖ καὶ ὡς δεῖ καὶ ὅτε)—something that is hard to do well.^[53] When a person, on the one hand, engages in excessive indulgence in pleasure, takes pleasure in the wrong things or is pained when he fails to obtain the pleasurable objects of his craving, he suffers the vice of intemperance (ἀκολασία). On the other hand, the person who shuns every pleasure and admits of no desire for even the things that are meet, which one would naturally crave—such as food or drink—suffers from the vice of insensibility (ἀναισθησία). [54]

When we turn to Philo, we find that he likewise repeatedly described passion as irrational.^[55] This in itself tells us little since we have already shown above that Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics had each done this as well in their respective manners. When we look more closely at how Philo described the irrationality of the passions, the evidence is still inconclusive. Like the Stoics, Philo recognized the distinction between irrational and non-rational elements in the soul,^[56] like both Plato and the Stoics, he identified the disobedience of the passions with the simile of the horse or beast. He even argued in Platonic manner that the passions must be guided by reason in the manner that a charioteer might direct stiff-necked and restive horses,^[57] a helmsman a ship, or a governor a city.^[58] We discussed this previously in relation to his use of Plato’s charioteer metaphor. He could characterize the relation of the passions to reason as a sort of internecine war between the lower parts after the manner of Plato as well.^[59] Yet, when he formally defined passion, he clearly opted for orthodox Stoic definitions.^[60] Likewise, he generally preferred terminology redolent of Stoicism with reference to passion’s irrationality. He commonly described passion as ‘irrational impulse’ (ἄλογος ὁρμή).^[61] Sometimes, he sought to underscore passion’s irrationality by calling it ‘irrational passion’ (ἄλογος πάθος),^[62] another Stoic phrase.^[63] Lastly, Philo also found biblical witness to the irrational character of passion by allegorically interpreting Nod as ‘tossing’ (σάλος).^[64] For Philo, this referred to the ‘wavering and unsettled’ (ἄστατοι καὶ ἀνίδρυτοι ὁρμαί) impulses that characterize the soul of the fool. This tossing of the soul no doubt accounted for that random (ἄκριτος) and disordered (ἀκοσμέω) character of the irrational impulses of a passion,^[65] rather than move in a smooth and straight moral direction as would be the case for the Stoic Sage. This, in turn, also accounts to the undisciplined and chaotic life of the fool as a whole. Of course, this also calls to mind Plato’s depiction of the unstable and chaotic movements associated with the lower, mortal parts of the soul, who were imperfectly constructed by the subordinate gods in the Timaeus.

Similarly, Philo everywhere and consistently portrayed passion as an excessive movement of the soul.^[66] As evidenced in his definition at the outset of the chapter, Philo often portrayed passion as ‘an inordinate and excessive impulse’ (ἄμετρος καὶ πλεονάζουσα ὁρμή),^[67] or more simply, as ‘unmeasured impulses’ (αἱ ἄμετροι ὁρμαί).^[68] Philo illustrated this excessiveness on two occasions by likening it to a fire raging out of control and consuming everything in its wake, an apt way of portraying the ‘run away’ character of a passionate impulse. [69] Philo’s definition and phraseology is Stoic and so are both terms, though the Stoics seemed to have preferred to modify impulse with the term ‘excessive’ (πλεονάζουσα) rather than ‘inordinate’ (ἄμετρος), judging from their much greater use of the former to the latter. The Peripatetic tradition could also use almost the exact same language, we might add, but with one crucial difference. Unlike the Stoics, the Peripatetics argued that the passionate impulse could also be deficient (ἐλλείπω).^[70] On this score, Philo clearly sided with the Stoics, if we wish to use an argument from silence, inasmuch as he never once described a passion as wanting. We might add, lastly, that Philo could speak of the passionate impulse ‘shaking’ (σείω) the soul.^[71] This metaphor was a particularly apt way of describing the impact passion’s irrationality and excessiveness. The chaos and ‘tossing’ introduced by the irrationality of the impulse, coupled with the violence and force of the passion once unleashed would thus shake the soul.

None of these facts in themselves tell us definitively whether or not he conceived of the irrationality of the passions in a Platonic or Stoic manner. As we have shown above, the idea of passion as an irrational, unbridled impulse could fit into any of the Platonic, Peripatetic or Stoic schemes, depending on how he used the metaphor. The question must be settled by whether or not he viewed excessive, irrational passion as natural or unnatural or as fundamentally blameworthy or not. To this, we next turn.

Unnatural

Plato and Aristotle considered the passions to be natural, but Philo sided with the Stoics in treating them as contrary to nature. This serves as a second, key line of demarcation between the Stoic and Platonic-Peripatetic conception of the passions. For both Plato and Aristotle, the passions were closely connected with the lower, irrational parts of the soul as natural expressions of their normal function. This is yet again another consequence of their conception of the soul as a fundamentally complex entity. The Stoics, in contrast, treated all passions as unnatural perversions or deviations of the impulses that originate in the hegemon. This followed as a consequence of their monistic psychology with its rejection of the notion of an alternative and irrational source of impulse in the soul. When we examine Philo, we will find that he consistently adhered to the Stoic conception of the passions as unnatural.

We have already discussed in detail Plato’s depiction of the soul and need not repeat that material here except to briefly summarize his understanding of the passions as innate to the soul. For Plato, the passions are essentially natural, even if they can often run riot. Plato even so far as to more or less identify the two lower parts of the soul with two passions, namely the appetitive part with desire and the spirited with anger. We should add, however, that Plato also stressed the close connection between pleasure and the appetitive part. The appetitve part’s basic orientation is the satisfaction of its lust for the more bodily and base pleasures associated with food, drink, and sex. He also stressed the division among the parts of the soul by locating each in different parts of the body; namely, the reason inhabits the head, anger the breast, and desire the abdominal region. While he assigned construction of the different parts of the soul to different architects, all three are fundamental elements of the human soul. In the Timeaus, he argued that the Demiurge directly created the mind, stamping it with a divine and immortal character. The Demiurge, on the other hand, handed over the job of constructing the mortal elements of the cosmos to the subordinate gods, who were responsible not only for the creation of the body, but also the lower parts of the soul. Since the lower parts were created by the subordinate gods, who had been instructed to copy the Demiurge’s own work, they were imperfectly created and consequently mortal, irrational, and prone to chaotic movements. For this reason, Plato believed that the mind must govern the other parts of the soul if it is to experience harmony and live virtuously. His moral psychology was predicated on the innate and continued existence of the spirited and appetitive parts in the soul at least until the death of the body.

Aristotle similarly argued that there exists in the soul ‘another natural element beside reason’ (ἄλλο τι παρὰ τὸν λόγον πεφυκός) that fights against reason and resists it so that its impulses move in a contrary direction (ἐπὶ τἀναντία) to reason.^[72] Aristotle went on to first identify this other constituent element with the appetitive part of the soul in general and with desire or appetite (ἐπιθυμία) in particular. Though he treated both anger and desire as passions of the appetitive part of the soul, in contrast to Plato who treated them separately, he did continue to utilize Plato’s distinctions between the two. Thus while both passions are irrational, appetite is the more irrational of the two since anger obeys reason in a sense (πως) as a sort of ally, while desire does not.^[73]

According to Aristotle, humans possess both reason and desire by nature (φύσει ἀμφότερα ἔχομεν), but these elements are also subject to growth and maturation. In the case of animals, all of their constituent psychic powers exist by nature from birth.^[74] Rational creatures share with the irrational psychic elements, but develop additional elements later as a part of the natural growth process.^[75] Hence, while for Aristotle appetite is present from birth in the human soul just as in irrational animals, reason develops later. For this reason, Aristotle argued that we see appetite present in children, but only full rationality later when they have reached adulthood. ^[76]

Aristotle, moreover, distinguished between passions, capacities, and states. He understood the passions (πάθη) to be those feelings in the soul, which are accompanied by pleasure and pain such as desire, anger, fear and so forth. In themselves, the passions are without any sort of quality (ποιότης) per se, but are merely experienced.^[77] Capacities (δυνάμεις), one the one hand, refer to that in the soul by virtue of which we are capable of experiencing the passions in the first place. This ‘capacity for passion’ (τὴν τοῦ παθητικοῦ δύναμιν) in the soul serves as the starting point or basis for the passions.^[78]  States (ἕξεις), on the other hand, refer to the settled tendency of the soul to exercise the passions too violently, too weakly or moderately.^[79] They result from the habitual exercise of the passions over time.

A sort of circularity holds among the relations of the soul’s passions, capacities and states. While the capacity for passion is natural,^[80] it can be shaped by the manner one exercises the passions. If habitually exercised in a certain manner, the capacities will come to have a certain quality (ποιότης). The soul might become for instance irascible, amorous, bashful, etc.^[81] These capacities, when hardened, thus become states, that is to say, states are capacities for passion that have come to take on a certain settled character in a specific direction, whether of excess, deficiency or moderation with regard to a given passion. ^[82] Aristotle identified these settled capacities or states with virtue and vice.^[83] These states then in turn affect how the soul normally exercises its passions, which further shapes its capacities. As such, capacities and states mutually affect and mold one another.

For Aristotle, the difference between the capacity for passion and the passions themselves refers to the distinction between their inactivity in the case of the capacities verses their activation or exercise in the case of the passions themselves. Aristotle argued that we must first acquire the potentiality for something before we can ever exhibit the activity that follows. For instance, in the case of the senses it is not by often seeing or by often hearing that we come to possess sight or hearing, but rather we see and hear because we first possessed the abilities to do so. ^[84] Similarly, the capacities for the passions might be described as an ability of the soul to become angry, feel desire or be afraid in the first place, while the passions are the stirring of these capacities in the form of anger, desire, fear and so forth.^[85] Consequently, in Aristotle’s view, the soul must first possess a capacity for the passions before they can possibly be exercised.

The soul thus possesses capacities and passions by nature, while states come about only by choice (προαίρεσις)^[86] and by habit (ἐξ ἔθους).^[87] For Aristotle it was axiomatic that we possess anything natural first as a potentiality and only later do we exhibit it as an activity.^[88] In the case of the passions, the soul initially possesses the capacity for passion from birth and then later exercises that capacity as some form of a passion in response to various circumstances.^[89] Since capacities and passions are natural, their existence is not a matter of choice. Rather, the soul is constructed in such a manner that it will automatically be moved toward a passion when it encounters a circumstance that calls for such movement. The mind in adults only has control of the manner in which the passions are exercised, but not that they are exercised. Hence, the soul is neither called good nor evil on account of its simply feeling anger, desire, fear, or for its capacity for passion.^[90] Lastly, for Aristotle, since both the capacity for passion and the consequent passions are innate, they cannot be removed from the soul. In his view, the irrational passions of anger and appetite are no less human (οὐχ ἧττον ἀνθρωπικά) than reason. Consequently, for Aristotle, humans cannot live an apathetic life as the Stoics later proposed in their ideal of the sage.

States, by contrast, are a matter of choice. As such they are concerned with virtue since it is concerned with the proper exercise of both actions and passions. For Aristotle, virtue comes about by the observance of what he called the mean (μεσότης), that is, what is proportionate, fitting or exactly suitable (σύμμετρος) for a passion or for an action in a given situation. As the mean, virtue is thus situated between a vice of excess (ὑπερβολή), on the one hand, and a vice of deficiency (ἔλλειψις) on the other.^[91] And since the passions are natural to the soul, they too can be exercised either virtuously or viciously.

Aristotle’s more positive assessment of the passions is especially made clear by his doctrine of virtue as the mean in which he not only characterizes the passions as natural, but also as necessary and useful. Rather than advocate the removal of passions from the soul, as did the Stoics, he argued instead for the elimination of defects and excess in the passions.^[92] By thus moderating and limiting the movements of the passions, reason trains and educates them by practice until a firm disposition or state is established in the irrational part of the soul, which is precisely what he understood moral virtue to be.

For Aristotle, then, the right exercise of the passions and irrational part of the soul is necessary for virtue.^[93] There can be no virtue of temperance without the passion of desire for pleasure. For, he defined temperance precisely as the moderation of the appetites for food, drink and sex found in the irrational parts of the soul.^[94] Similarly, gentleness (πραότης) is a virtuous state relative to the passion of anger. Aristotle could define gentleness (πράυνσις) as the opposite of anger inasmuch as he could view it as the calming or cessation of anger in those cases when we believe someone has slighted us involuntarily, when the offender is apologetic, when time has passed, or when we have taken vengeance on the person. In these instances, calm and gentle people no longer feel anger, but ‘freedom from pain’ (ἀλυπία) and ‘inoffensive pleasure’ (ἡδονή ὑβριστική).^[95] However, a gentle person is precisely also one who is angry at the right things or right people “as he ought, when he ought and as long as he ought” (ὡς δεῖ καὶ ὅτε καὶ ὅσον χρόνον).^[96] Similarly, he argued that there could be no virtue of courage (ἀνδρεία) without fear (φόβος) and confidence (θάρσος) since it is the virtue relative to each.^[97] So, for Aristotle, humans not only cannot live the out the Stoic ideal of the apathetic sage, they ought not even try either since the virtues themselves depended on the moderate exercise of the passions of anger, desire, fear and so forth.

Aristotle also argued that moderated passions are morally useful in that they often aid reason in acting virtuously. In a manner redolent of Plato’s description of the spirited part of the soul as an ally (σύμμαχος or ἐπίκουρος) to reason,^[98] Aristotle similarly described anger (θυμός) as assisting (συνεργεῖ) reason in acting courageously.^[99] In this same vein, Peripatetics like Plutarch later conceived righteous indignation (νέμεσις) as helping the soul rise up and oppose those who have gained prosperity through illegitimate means or pity as aiding a person in treating others with humanity.^[100] Thus, while it is true that excessive or defective passions lead the soul into moral destruction, Aristotle argued conversely that the moderate passions are not only a necessary ingredient to many of the virtues, but that they also can help the mind act virtuously.

For the Stoics, in contrast to the Peripatetics, all passions, without exception, are unnatural.^[101] As discussed earlier, the Stoics understood ‘first impulse’ to be in itself a natural and appropriate expression of the soul.^[102] It is, in part, what distinguishes ‘soul’ (ψυχή) from ‘cohesion’ (ἕξιν) or ‘growth’ (φύσις) and animals, whether rational or irrational from plants. Moreover, the Stoics considered psychic movement or impulse to be a constitutive power of the mind along with impression (φαντασία), assent (συγκατάθεσις), and reason (λόγος).^[103] When the soul moves in a manner that is ‘contrary to nature’ (παρὰ φύσιν), that movement or impulse is by definition a passion rather than a eupatheia. For, when the soul’s impulse is contrary to nature, the movement itself becomes perverted and the object of the movement not longer accords with the soul’s proper ‘end’ (τέλος).^[104] Hence, passionate psychic movements come to be characterized by irrationality, chaos, excessiveness and violence, on the one hand, and directed toward or away from something it mistakenly counts as a good or evil or worthy of selection, on the other. As perversions of the mind, these movements arise contrary to correct and natural reasoning (παρὰ τὸν ὀρθὸν καὶ κατὰ φύσιν λόγον).^[105] The inappropriateness of their object and the excessive and irrational character of their motion also meant that for the Stoics the passions were never useful or expedient under any circumstance. Since the goal of the philosophical life is to live according to nature, which necessarily leads to a ‘smooth flow of life’ (εὔροια βίου),^[106] the passions, as irrational and excessive movements of the soul that are contrary to nature, necessarily harmful to the soul.

Zeno insisted that these excessive impulses of the soul are best characterized as activities (ἐνέργεια) of the soul rather than a natural faculty (δύναμις).^[107] The passions are activities inasmuch as they reflect movements (κίνησις) of the soul, which have gone awry, but they are not capacities since such movements represent a perversion of the otherwise natural and appropriate impulses of the mind. This ran counter to Aristotle’s contention that a ‘capacity for passion’ resides in the lower parts of the soul as a basic element of its constitution as outlined above.

Later Platonic and Peripatic writers recognized this fundamental difference between their respective traditions and that of the Stoics by treating the passions as capacities that can be useful when under the control of reason. Plutarch, for instance, argued for Aristotle’s notion of an innate capacity for the passions in the soul against the Stoics, describing it as the ‘starting point’ (ἀρχή) and ‘raw material’ (ὕλη) of passion.^[108] He punctuated his insistence on the innate character of this capacity for passion in the irrational parts of the soul by referring to them as ‘emotional faculties’ (παθητικαί δυνάμεις).^[109] He argued that Aristotle first introduced the notion of an ‘emotional faculty’ as a single, distinct power of the soul when he subordinated redefined anger as a type of desire, an ordering that the Old Stoa later incorporated into their system. By treating anger as a type of desire, according to Plutarch, Aristotle effectively identified a single faculty of the soul responsible for all of the passions that was simultaneously distinct from the rational, perceptive, nutritive, and vegetative parts of the soul.^[110] None of these other parts in Aristotle’s purported revised taxonomy of the soul served as a cause of any of the passions. Whether or not Aristotle is in fact responsible for this revision as outlined by Plutarch, this approach became common property of both the Peripatetic and Platonic traditions. While the Peripatetics might speak simply of the emotional faculty, the Academy could as well, even as they continued to recognize the further division of the emotional part into Plato’s appetitive and spirited parts. Hence, we find Middle-Platonists such as Plutarch, Galen, and Albinos all referring to Plato’s spirited and appetitive parts of the soul in common as ‘the emotional part’ (τὸ παθητικόν) of the soul.^[111] Indeed, according to Galen, even the unorthodox Stoic Posidonius, in recognition of his rejection of Chryssipus’ psychic monism for Plato’s tripartite division of the soul, customarily called the anger and desire the ‘passionate part’ (τὸ παθητικόν) of the soul.^[112] By identifying ‘an emotional faculty’ in the soul, all of these authors sought to underscore the innate character of the passions and their source in a part of the soul alternative to the mind.

Moreover, since the passions are fundamental capacities of the soul and not merely perverted psychic activities, Plutarch argued that it is ‘neither possible nor expedient’ (οὔτε γὰρ δυνατὸν οὔτ’ ἄμεινον) for reason to ‘completely eradicate passion’ (τὸ πάθος ἐξαιρεῖν παντάπασιν).^[113] He noted, in defense of his contention, the usefulness of anger for combat.^[114] This line of argumentation was a commonplace in the Peripatetic and Platonist traditions. Anger was frequently cited as an aide to soldiers to fight bravely in battle.^[115] The Stoics, by contrast, never envisioned a circumstance where fear or anger or any other passion served to help the soul in some manner as the Peripatetics and Platonists characteristically argued.^[116]

Like the Stoics, Philo treated the passions as unnatural, both in the narrow sense of the quality of the psychic movement itself and in the general sense that it opposes the life that accords with nature.^[117] In his formal definition of passion quoted at the beginning of the chapter, Philo followed the Stoic formal definitions by defining passion as ‘an unnatural movement of the soul’ (παρὰ φύσιν κίνησις). In this passage, Philo’s emphasized the character of the psychic movement itself. He situated the phrase among several descriptors in this passage that underscored his contention that all passions are blameworthy in general and that desire in particular threatens the soul. He described the passionate impulse as ‘inordinate’ (ἄμετρος) and ‘excessive’ (πλεονάζουσα). Additionally, he invoked Plato’s chariot-team metaphor and likened their motion to that of ‘rebellious horses’ (ἀφηνιασταἰ ἵπποι) careening out of control with the result that they carry the entire chariot team to its destruction.^[118] Elsewhere, Philo similarly described the psychic movement associated with pleasure as uplifting the soul in a manner that is ‘contrary to nature’. In this context, he argued that pleasure’s uplifting motion distorts the soul in such a way that it becomes ‘ugly’ (αἶσχος).  By connecting unnatural psychic motion to the notion of ‘beauty’ (κάλλος)/ugliness, he underscore its character as exceeding the bounds of propriety and proportion.^[119] Philo did not reject the idea that the mind ought to be uplifted per se, since he likewise conceived of the eupatheia or good emotion of joy as the rational uplifting of the soul experienced by the sage. Its ugliness resides in the soul expanding overmuch or too quickly, rather than in a smooth and controlled manner. In both of these passages, Philo underscored the bad character of the passionate movement inself.

Against Plato and Aristotle, consequently, Philo never treated the passions as natural to the soul. He acknowledged that the soul does indeed have a ‘capacity’ for passion inasmuch as a fundamental characteristic of soul is its capacity for impulse, of which passion is a species.^[120] A rock, by contrast, has no capacity for passion, since it possesses no soul (ψυχή) or physic (φύσις). Hence, it never evinces growth, impulse, or impression.^[121] Unlike other Middle Platonists and Peripatetics of his era, however, Philo never described the lower parts of the soul together as ‘the emotional part’ (τὸ παθητικόν), whether the Stoic five senses and faculties of speech and generation or Plato’s appetitive and spirited parts. Instead, Philo described the passions as ‘bastards’ (νόθα) and ‘foreigners’ (ξένα) to the mind.^[122] Both metaphors underscored their unnatural status in the soul.

Philo also correlated the unnatural character of passionate psychic motions with an unnatural orientation of the soul in general that runs counter the ‘smooth movement of life’ associated with the Stoic sage. Philo pointed out that the sage Abraham’s routing the nine kings in De ebrietate not only highlighted the unnatural character of passion’s motion, but also showed that the cause of such passions is found in an improper and impure orientation of the mind.^[123] Philo allegorically identified the nine kings in the Genesis 14 account with the four cardinal passions of desire, pleasure, fear, and grief and the five senses. By extending unnatural movement to the senses, Philo connected the prompting of the passions with the kind of mind lives for the body and things external to the body. He argued that bodily existence is full all sorts of mortal and created voices that summon and arouse passions in the foolish soul by means of the passions.^[124] The mind of a fool impiously deifies mortal existence and exchanges honoring the Existent God for idols, polytheism, and ultimately, atheism.^[125] This fundamental religious and philosophical failure accounts for the rise of the passions of the soul, because it mistakenly looks to created order for its good rather than to the Cause of all things. The mind of the sage, by contrast, leaves behind the camp of the body in order to embark on the contemplation of the incorporeal ideas in the presence of the Existent himself.^[126] The sage understands and acknowledges that God alone is the true source of all things, while the senses are mere instruments.^[127] By ignoring the cries associated with the mortal life of the body and fixing its hopes on God alone, the sage Abraham came to experience quietness and peace of soul, untroubled by the confusions of mortal existence that introduce chaotic motions in senses and mind when accepted.^[128] As a consequence, Philo characterized the Abraham as ‘a reasonable and happy soul’ (λογική καὶ εὐδαίμων ψυχή) with a ‘pure’ (καθαρώτατος), ‘unalloyed’ (εἱλικρινέστατος), and pious mind.^[129] By representing the sage as the model soul that lives according to nature, but the fool as fundamentally misdirected, Philo thus anchored the unnatural psychic motions of the passions within the general orientation of the fool, whose life does not accord with nature.

Philo argued that the unnatural motions of the passions also result in both a distorted character and vicious deeds. In De decalogo, after noting again that all passions shake and stir the soul in a manner that is contrary to nature, he added that they also do not permit the soul to continue in health (ὑγιαίνειν οὐκ ἐῶντα).^[130] Here, Philo correlated the passions to the moral maladies of soul-sickness (νόσημα) or soul-infirmity (ἀρρώστημα). Although Philo never explicitly acknowledged the Stoic distinction between psychic sickness, on the one hand, and psychic infirmity as an extra-weak form of soul-sickness on the other, he nevertheless did commonly use both terms throughout his corpus in conjunction with the passions.^[131] Like the Stoics, he treated both psychic sickness and infirmity, which he likened to ‘harsh mistresses’ (δέσποινα),^[132] as a settled or ingrained weakness of soul that result from long-term participation in particular passions.^[133] As a result, such persons become defined by that particular psychic and moral weakness. Many of the names for the various kinds of soul-sickness or infirmity derive from object of desire, though one could also cast them in terms of an adjective to describe the person stricken by the malady rather than as a noun to name each disease state. For instance, he argued elsewhere that the passions of desire ‘produces a change for the worse’ (μεταβολὴν ἀπεργάζεται τὴν πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον) in the soul such that, if it is directed toward money, a it makes a person a thief or fraud, if toward reputation, proud or inconsistent, if toward office, factious or tyrannical, if toward bodily beauty, an adulterer or pederast, or if toward the belly, insatiable and gluttonous.^[134] ‘Avarice’ or ‘the love of money’ (φιλαργυρία) could be construed either as a passion or as a sickness, depending on the context, but if a person becomes defined by the passion over time, he or she becomes a ‘lover of money’ (φιλάργυρος) and, as such, sick and infirm. Consequently, Philo argued that the various sicknesses or infirmity of the soul are produced from the passions.^[135] Such sicknesses, if untreated by philosophical reason, spell the soul’s death.^[136]

Later in his discussion of desire in De decalogo, Philo argued that the passions not only generate sickness of soul, but also result in evil actions. Since one would expect that the unnatural character of the soul’s motions should culminate in vicious actions that likewise defy nature, it comes as no surprise that Philo would make this claim. Indeed, Philo elsewhere explicitly asserted that vicious actions are inherently chaotic and contrary to nature.^[137] In De decalogo, he argued that philosophical reasoning must check the passion of desire; otherwise it will, of necessity, distort all of life’s affairs (πάντ’ ἐξ ἀνάγκης τὰ τοῦ βίου πράγματα κινηθήσεται παρὰ φύσιν). [138] In other words, the unnatural movements of the soul, if not controlled and made natural, will ultimately result in unnatural movements of the body, namely, deeds and vicious actions. To support his contention, he cited how the love of women, glory, and pleasure, all of which he counted as forms of desire, have caused estrangement between kinsmen, war among Greeks and Barbarians alike, and ultimately disaster to the human race.^[139] As discussed above, this connection between the unnatural character of passionate impulses and the unnatural life overall was a common Stoic theme.

Finally, in light of the unnatural character of all of the passions, Philo likewise joined the Stoics in describing the passions as necessarily harmful at all times. As noted above, the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions had affirmed that the passions, when under the control of reason, could actually help the soul. Anger, for instance, might goad a soldier to meet the danger of battle with boldness. Against this, Philo affirmed their essential harmfulness. In Legum Allegoriarum, he noted that Moses described the beasts of the field, which Philo allegorically identified with the passions, as ‘helpers’ (βοηθοί) of the mind.^[140] He initially acknowledged that the passions can help the soul in a certain sense:

…pleasure and desire contribute to the permanence of our kind: pain and fear are like bites or stings warning the soul to treat nothing careless: anger is a weapon of defence, which has conferred great boons on many: and so with the other passions.^[141]

Philo listed a number of ‘boons’ that arise from the soul. They connection of pleasusre and desire to the ‘permanence’ of the human species relates especially to the desires or food, drink and procreation. Fear and pain protect the species as well from death and destruction and anger evokes the audacity to fight in combat. Philo’s connection between anger and battle, recalled both the standard Peripatetic argument the anger serves as a ‘goad’ to battle and Plato’s connection of anger to the ally to the mind, namely, the spirited part of the soul. In all of these instances, Philo suggested that the passions contribute to the permanence of the species, but not toward virtue as the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions had argued.   

Philo observed that Moses next corrected any real positive assessment of the passion by adding that these ‘helpers’ were not suitable to the soul. For this reason, Moses stated that God created a second ‘helper’ (βοηθός) and ‘ally’ (σύμμαχος) to the mind that is ‘suitable’ (βοηθός κατ’ αὐτόν),^[142] namely, woman or sense perception.^[143] On this basis, Philo argued that while one could describe the passions as ‘helpers’ in a sense, one could only do so ‘by a straining of language’ (καταχρηστικῶς). In fact, the passions are ‘actual foes’ (πρὸς ἀλήθειαν πολέμιοι) to the soul in the manner that allies of the state sometimes turn out to be traitors or deserters or in friendships flatterers prove enemies rather than comrades.^[144] Thus, though Philo initially conceded that the passions could be construed to be useful, he was only willing to say as much by way of a ‘straining of language’. Like the Stoics, he viewed the passions to be ‘in reality’ harmful and destructive to the soul.

Philo’s preference for the Stoic treatment of the passions as fundamentally harmful was further underscored by regular treatment of the passions as such elsewhere in his corpus. To begin with, he never once qualified the passions as ‘useful’ (χρήσιμος) or ‘serviceable’ (εὔχρηστος) in his writings. Rather, he consistently depicted the passions as ‘harmful’ (βλάβος), a favorite Stoic term to describe what is evil.^[145] Moreover, he argued that it is ‘always’ (ἀεί) profitable to be ‘behindhand’ in vice and passion,^[146] that is to say, Philo did not admit of any circumstance in which the passions would be good, useful, or profitable to the soul. Lastly, he described the sage’s removal or cutting off of the passions as ‘expedient’ (συμφέρον) and ‘profitable’ (λυσιτελής) to the soul.^[147] Taken altogether, Philo clearly and consistently insisted on the harmful character of the passions, even in those instances where their presence might be construed as somehow helping the human species. This in turn further underscored in Stoic manner of his treatment of the passions as unnatural to the soul.

Blameworthy

When we come to the last element in Philo’s description of the passions—its culpability—we find that Philo again followed the trajectory of the Stoic account against both Plato and Aristotle.

For Aristotle, the passions can be blameworthy (ψεκτός), but not in the Stoic sense. While for the Stoics the passions are always blameworthy in all circumstances, for Aristotle the passions can be blameworthy, though not necessarily so.^[148]

The fact that the passions of the irrational parts of the soul are natural for both Plato and Aristotle as discussed above doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that they are inherently blameworthy. Like Plato, who characterized of the appetitive faculty as naturally disobedient and unruly certainly, Aristotle also portrayed the appetitive part of the soul as oriented toward the irrational and bodily, especially towards food, drink and sexual activity. This portrayal, in Plato’s case, corresponded well with his broader conception of the formation of the world-soul out of primordial chaotic material—all of which is ‘natural’ per se. Aristotle likewise saw the passions as unruly and erratic by nature. Nonetheless, both Plato and Aristotle also characterized the appetitive part as naturally capable of obedience to reason.^[149] This dual characterization of the appetitive part of the soul as both unruly and obedient thus meant that its passions are not inherently blameworthy since they can be obedient to reason, though they can be since they are also capable of unruly, disobedient, chaotic movements.

For Aristotle, moreover, the culpability of the passions turned on the questions of whether or not they are voluntary (ἑκούσιος), whether or not they are accompanied by choice and the manner in which they are exercised. In Aristotle’s view, only that which is voluntary is either blameworthy or praiseworthy, since all such actions find their cause (αἴτιος) and source (ἀρχή) in the soul itself. That which is involuntary (ἀκούσιος), on the other hand, is not cause for blame since the soul cannot be held responsible for actions and movements over which it has not control.^[150] Depending on circumstances, we find that Aristotle considered the passions to be involuntary, voluntary, or premeditated (τὰ ἐκ προνοίας).^[151]

Aristotle identified two key factors to determine whether or not a movement is involuntary. Firstly, a movement is voluntary if it comes about by compulsion (βίᾳ).^[152] For Aristotle, compulsion (βία) or necessity (ἀνάγκη) occurs in those instances when something external moves the soul contrary to its own internal impulse, whether that of reason or of desire. Such forced movements, given their violence and unnatural character, are moreover always accompanied with pain.^[153] Consequently, if the movement originates from the outside, the act is involuntary,^[154] whereas if from the soul itself and is thus within one’s own power (ἐφ’ αὑτῷ), then it is voluntary.^[155]

Secondly, a movement is involuntary if it occurs as a result of ignorance (δι’ ἄγνοιαν). For Aristotle, a person thus acts involuntarily when she is ignorant either of the person acted on (ὃν), of the instrument used (ᾧ) or of the aim (οὗ ἕνεκα).^[156] One is ignorant with regard to person for instance when a man slays his father thinking that he is killing an enemy,^[157] with regard to means if someone were to mistake a stone for a piece of pumice,^[158] and with regard to aim if a woman were to give a love-potion to a man not realizing that it would kill him.^[159]

This second element of involuntary action is related to thought (κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν) and reason.^[160] As such, it would appear to relate only to the mature human soul that possesses reason, but not to children, irrational animals or even some unpremeditated or impetuous actions or passions. In this second type of involuntary act, the impulse to move itself may in fact originate from within so that it is not forced or compelled. But, the person acts without proper knowledge with regard to the particular circumstances of the action as outlined above. Aristotle argued that the tell-tale proof that the movement is involuntary in such instances is that when informed of the truth after the fact, a person feels pain in the form of regret (ἐν μεταμελείᾳ). If he doesn’t feel any pain or regret after that fact, Aristotle then classified such actions as non-voluntary (οὐχ ἑκούσιον).^[161]

Aristotle acknowledged that one might draw the conclusion from this second principle that the passions are then involuntary, since many movements from anger or desire occur without accompanying reason or thought. This would especially appear to be the case for irrational animals and children, who possess the appetitive part of the soul, but not reason.^[162] The passions could be classified as voluntary on the basis of the first principle since they originate from within the appetitive part of the soul. Yet, since they can occur apart from or without reason or thought, they would appear to fall under the second principle of ignorance and thus be classed as involuntary.

As expected, Aristotle indeed conceded that in some instances the passions are in fact involuntary. He could certainly envision some instances when love (ἔρως), anger or various natural conditions (τὰ φυσικά) might be regarded as involuntary. These are actions resulting from a passion for which a person does not wish and yet is too strong for a person to bear. For, Aristotle could conceive of passions that go beyond the control of the soul’s natural desire (ὄρεξις) or reason, which in a sense results from an internal force. ^[163]

Aristotle, however, would not countenance the conclusion that all passions are involuntary, describing such notions as ‘odd’ (ἄτοπος) and ‘absurd’ (γέλοιος), though he did allow this in some instances. Aristotle pointed out that the passion of desire is pleasant rather than painful. Yet, what is involuntary is always painful, whether the action is due either to force or to ignorance. The difference is that in the case of force or necessity, the pain is immediate whereas in the case of ignorance it is delayed. So, at least in the case of pleasant passions such as desire, they do not neatly fit under either of the categories of the categories necessary to describe an action as involuntary. Aristotle further observed that if the passions were involuntary, it would imply that we are not responsible for any of our acts that are due to anger or appetite. This, however, would imply that all of the virtues and vices that are related to the passions are involuntary. But it was axiomatic for Aristotle that all virtuous and vicious actions voluntary.^[164]

Aristotle instead insisted that the passionate impulses such as anger and desire that originate within the appetitive part of the soul are in fact voluntary. Indeed, he even insisted that irrational creatures and children likewise act voluntarily.^[165] There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Aristotle recognized varying degrees of voluntary action. Thus he could describe action that is in accordance with thought, whether that of choice or of wish, as more voluntary (μᾶλλον ἑκούσιον) than action that is solely in accordance with desire or anger. ^[166] This made sense inasmuch as it more aptly fit his second criteria of knowledge for voluntary action. Conversely, this meant that the passions of the appetitive part of the soul could be accorded some sort of voluntary status, just less so than actions accompanied by thought or reason.

This gradation fits secondly with Aristotle’s distinctions between the mind, the irrational, and the non-rational parts of the soul discussed earlier. While the mind alone fully possesses reason, the irrational, appetitive part of the soul participates in reason to an extant. For Aristotle, it shares in reason enough to at least be able to listen and obey the mind.^[167] This implies that it participates in reason enough to have the knowledge of person, means or aim required for the passions to be voluntary since the sort of knowledge required to obey or disobey reason would include at least some knowledge of the particulars of the action in view. This is especially made clear in Aristotle’s description of the contrary impulses of the incontinent. In the incontinent, desire or anger stand opposed to reason such that they fight and resist reason with a sort of mind of their own. In the incontinent then, the appetitive part of the soul knows enough with regard to the person, means and end to resist the injunctions of reason on one or all of these points and instead lead the soul in the opposite direction. Consequently, since the passionate impulse is not forced inasmuch as it is internal and since the appetitive part knows enough to meet Aristotle’s second criteria, Aristotle condemned the action of the incontinent as unjust.

The second key element for Aristotle in determining the culpability of the passions turned on whether or not the passions are accompanied by choice (ἐκ προαιρέσεως). While all actions according to choice are voluntary, not all voluntary actions are by choice.^[168] The distinction has to do with whether or not the reasoning part of the soul supervenes upon the passions such that the passions now take on a deliberate character.^[169]

For Aristotle, voluntary actions that are done by choice are those that follow upon a process of deliberation (βούλευσις), while those that are not are unpremeditated (ἀπροβούλευτος).^[170] Both choice and deliberation are conducted by the ruling part of the soul and involve reason and thought. For Aristotle, we deliberate about things that are in our power (τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν) and that contribute to an end (πρὸς τὰ τέλη). Consequently, we do not deliberate about things caused by nature, necessity or chance since they are not in our power to change, nor do we deliberate about the end itself; we wish (βούλησις) for that instead. For instance, a doctor does not deliberate about whether she should heal (the end). Rather, she deliberates about how and by what means healing may be attained.^[171]

Once a person has thought things over and has come to a conclusion regarding what appears to be the best course of action to attain a particular end, there then follows an impulse to act. This is the choice.^[172] Consequently, Aristotle understood choice to be a deliberate desire (ὄρεξίς βουλευτικὴ) for those things that are in our power to perform and which contribute to an end. As such, it is a combination of both appetency and reasoning toward an end. It is a form of appetency since it gives rise to an impulse to act. At the same time it is rational since it is deliberate and is always attended with thought (μετὰ διανοίας).^[173]

Aristotle’s distinction between voluntary actions done by choice and deliberation and those that arise without choice parallels his division between the reasoning and ruling part of the soul on the one hand and the irrational and passionate part of the soul on the other. For Aristotle then, we feel the passions such as anger or fear voluntarily inasmuch as the movement originates from within the appetitive part of the soul.^[174] If the passions are accompanied with thought and deliberation such that they are governed and directed by the mind, they not only are voluntary, but also partially the result of choice. As a consequence, while the passions arising from the appetitive part of the soul may be blameworthy, at least to an extent, it is the addition of choice that makes them fully and completely virtuous or vicious, since they then come under the control of the mind.

The final key element for Aristotle in determining the culpability of the passions related to the manner in which they are exercised. As we had discussed earlier, Aristotle defined virtue as an excellence in connection with either actions or passions. In the case of a passion, the impulse is virtuous if moderate, but vicious if either excessive or deficient. This applies both to those passions that are accompanied with choice and those that are not.

In the case of irrational impulses that occur apart from choice, Aristotle could envision such passions being exercised rightly (ὀρθῶς), and in accord with what right reason would have commanded, yet he argued that this sort of action would hardly merit praise since it excludes choice.^[175] This especially applies to irrational animals, which lack reason. All of their actions, while voluntary, are due entirely to the irrational, appetitive part of the soul. Consequently, though some of the impulses of their appetites might be moderate for instance, they can never be described as temperate since irrational animals do not have reason to govern the appetites and choose the right or noble.^[176] Nevertheless, the passion, considered in itself, could be moderate and thus not in any way culpable either.

Those passions that are accompanied with choice fall under the direction and supervision of reason. Aristotle argued that such passions are no longer mere desires, but deliberate desires (βουλευτικὴ ὄρεξις)^[177] because reason now guides and manages the passions, relaxing and heightening their impulses accordingly.^[178] If the mind observes the mean in the exercise each of the passions, the passion is considered virtuous and held to be praiseworthy.^[179] Conversely, if the mind is rather led by passions to choose what is excessive or deficient, it chooses what is wrong.^[180] In these cases, the passions themselves are considered vicious, since they are no longer properly guided by right reason and are held to be blameworthy.

So in summary, for Aristotle the passions may or may not be blameworthy. In those cases when they are involuntary, they are not culpable since the soul cannot be held responsible for those movements that are not under its control. In the case of the voluntary passions, whether by choice or not, they could be either blameworthy or praiseworthy depending on the character of the impulse; moderate passions are praised, while excessive or deficient passions are blamed. However, there is a difference in the degree of praise or blame accorded to voluntary passions accompanied by choice and those that are not. While the voluntary passions might be culpable to a degree, on those governed by reason as a result of choice are fully accounted virtuous or vicious.

The Stoics accepted Aristotle’s assertion that only voluntary movements are worthy of blame or praise, but differed from him on how they determined what is voluntary. Firstly, the Stoics agreed with Aristotle that any movement compelled by an external source is involuntary. Since all passions are impulses that originate in the mind, they would not be categorized as involuntary on these grounds. As discussed earlier, Stoic monistic psychology, with its assertion of a hegemon or mind as the single center of the soul, precluded Aristotle’s concession that some passions are involuntary when they arise from the internal force of the lower parts of the soul apart from reason. For the Stoics, this is impossible since no second center of psychic movement exists in the soul.

Secondly, the Stoics diverged from Aristotle’s insistence that involuntary actions result from ignorance. For the Stoics, it was axiomatic that every action of the fool was in fact an act of ignorance, owing to their alternative theory of knowledge and their notion of the cognitive impression as its cornerstone and criterion. Since the Stoics insisted that every passion is an opinion or judgment, in the case of Chryssipus, or its result, in the case of Zeno, in their view every passion arises from an incomplete or faulty knowledge. Their polarization of all human knowing and action into knowledge/foolishness and virtue/vice without any sort of intermediate state consequently excluded Aristotle’s discussion of varying degrees of voluntary action. Moreover, since the Stoics argued that there is no appetitive part of the soul that participates in reason to some lesser extent, Aristotle’s equation of ignorance and involuntary action was untenable. For this reason, the Stoics rejected Aristotle’s description of incontinence as the experience of the internal conflict between the appetitive part of the soul and reason, both of which have enough knowledge to meet his criterion of voluntary movement. Instead, the Stoics insisted that the experience that Aristotle described as a conflict between two parts of the soul was in fact a ‘fluttering’ of the mind as it rapidly switches back and forth between two alternating opinions or judgments.^[181] In other words, what feels like internal conflict of psychic parts is in fact indecision on the part of the hegemon.

Thirdly, the Stoics likewise argued that voluntary movements are accompanied with choice. Cicero, for instance, described the Stoic conception of the passion of grief as a judgment (iudicium) and belief (opinio) that does not originate in nature, but is rather ‘wholly an act of will’ (totum voluntarium).^[182] In so doing, he sought to show that the passion does not find its origin in a nature as proponents from the old Academy such as Crantor had argued, when they put forward a complex psychology in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle.^[183] Rather, he sought to show with the Stoics that this passion is the product of the mind alone and underscored this by connecting judgment, belief, and will. In the wider context of book three of Disputationes Tusculanae, moreover, Cicero was exploring the various remedies proposed to address grief by the philosophical schools. While he acknowledged that one must employ a number of remedies to deal with the passion, he believed that Chryssipus’ remedy of removing the passion altogether from the mind is the most reliable, even if rather difficult to accomplish in the moment of distress.^[184] Chryssipus’ treatment, however, is only intelligible on the assumption that it is an act of will and voluntary. Cicero made this assumption explicit in the following book of Disputationes Tusculanae when he stated flatly that ‘the whole train of reasoning which is concerned with disorder of the soul turns upon the one fact that all passions are within our control (in nostra potestate), are all acts of judgment, are all voluntary’.^[185] Against the Peripatetic and Platonic assertion that the passions are natural and consequently involuntary on occasion, the Stoics argued that the passions are rather entirely within our control and voluntary. Seneca summarized the Stoics position nicely when he quipped, ‘Anything that the mind commands itself, it can do.’^[186] This paved the way for their ideal of the Stoic sage living free from all passions or apatheia.

The Stoics differed from Aristotle, however, by rejecting the idea that the soul can act voluntarily without choice. Since they asserted that all human moral action originates in the ruling part of the soul, they did not envision any moral action existing apart from the mind’s rational activity. As discussed earlier, their ethics turned on the question of properly distinguishing what is good, evil, or indifferent. The good is always ‘worth choosing’ (αἱρετός), the bad ‘worth avoiding’ (φευκτός),^[187] and the indifferent is neither worthy of choice or avoidance in itself, but may have ‘selective value’ (ἀξία ἐκλεκτική) or ‘rejective disvalue’ (ἀπαξία ἀπεκλεκτική) and accordingly is ‘worth acquiring’ (ληπτός) or ‘worth shunning’ (ἄληπτος),^[188] depending on whether or not the soul judges the object in question to be ‘preferred’ (προηγμένα), or ‘dispreferred’ (ἀποπροηγμένα) or utterly indifferent.^[189] Both what is worth choosing or what is worthy of selection stimulate impulse and their opposites repulsion (ἀφορμή).^[190] Accordingly, what is part distinguishes the sage from the fool is his knowledge and ability to distinguish what is worth choosing, what is worth avoiding, and what are neither so that he is able to conduct himself unerringly in his impulses.^[191] The fool, by contrast, likewise makes judgments and choices, but does so erringly. The fool’s mind still functions, even though it operates from ignorance, but it has been perverted by its own turning with the result that its choices and selections with regard to what it regards to be good, evil, or indifferent, and the impulses that follow, likewise fall into error.^[192] The Stoics, consequently, regarded the passions to be voluntary movements of the mind that result from mistaken choices. For this reason, the Stoics regarded passion to be an error (ἁμαρτία).^[193] Since these deliberations are always movements the mind that follow upon some sort of deliberation and since, moreover, the Stoics envisioned the passions as always moving in an unnatural or excessive manner unlike the Peripatetic and Platonic ideal of the moderation of passion’s movements, the Stoics consequently considered the passions to be always culpable in all circumstances.

Lastly, the Stoics underscored the voluntary character of the passions by describing them as morally vile and abominable in themselves. Such a designation only applied to those motions that are within the mind’s control and thus susceptible of blame or praise. The Stoic practice of condemning the passions as fundamentally vile not only to underscored the moral degradation of the passions, but also served as a remedy for the passions. If the Stoic preacher could convince the hearer that the good or evil object in view is not as supposed, but also that they are vile movements of the soul in themselves, then a person is more likely to set itself on the Stoic path toward rooting out the passions in their entirety. While Cicero explicitly approved of this approach in Disputationes Tusculanae,^[194] Seneca best illustrated this in his Ad Novitus De Ira, one of the few Stoic pamphlets on an individual passion that we possess. Throughout the book Seneca made every effort to depict the passion of anger in the absolute worst light as something fundamentally ugly and abhorrent with the aim of engendering in the reader such distaste for the passion that the reader would flee even its very germ. Seneca described anger as a savage, ruinous fault, vile, inhuman, mad, and deserving of chastisement.^[195] Seneca likened its hideousness to the manner in which gout or malignant sores are abject, foul, and low conditions.^[196] He depicted its foulness as similar to wild animals dripping with slaughter, the monsters of hell wreathed in serpents and breathing fire, or the ghastliest goddesses of the underworld riding out to raise war.^[197] He even noted that its essential ugliness expresses itself physically—the loveliest face becomes grim, hairs stands on end, veins swell, breathing becomes rapid, limbs tremble, eyes become aflame, and the voice hisses, bellows or groans.^[198] Against the Peripatetics, he sarcastically conceded that the passion of anger may prove beneficial in some circumstances, in the same manner that poison, a fall, or a shipwreck might.^[199] Hence, though Seneca offered a number of bits of advice to remedy the passion of anger, the overall impression of the book as a whole was that anger is in itself something to be avoided at all costs. His advice offered guidance on how to expunge the soul of the passion.

Stoic ethics emphasized the responsibility of the soul for its passions, since in their system all impulses, including passionate impulses, derive from the mind and are under its control. Their notion of apatheia or freedom from all passions depended on ability of the agent to control their emotions in their entirety. The Peripatetic and Platonic traditions similarly made the soul responsible for its passion, but not entirety so, in as much as they posited an alternative source of impulse that often moves contrary to the judgments of the mind. Indeed, it was precisely this assumption of conflict among reason, anger, and appetite that served as the basis for Plato’s tripartation of the soul in the Republic and the Phadrean myth. This conflict likewise served as the assumption for Aristotle’s notion of akrasia or weakness of will where a soul fails to do what it believes is best. Rather than focus primarily on an individual moment when the soul experiences the conflict, he expanded the notion into a habitual category akin to virtue and vice where a soul comes to be characterized as consistently wishing to do one thing, but end up doing another. Again, as in the case of Plato, the source of the conflict arises from psychic elements outside of the mind. The mind, as the agent’s center, is responsible to assert control over these chaotic elements, but is not ultimately responsible for their existence in the first place.

As was the case with the other characteristics of passion, Philo’s conception of the passion’s blameworthiness aligned most closely to that of the Stoics. Philo too underscored the voluntary character of the passions together with the soul’s responsibility for their impulse by describing ‘every passion’ as ‘blameworthy’, a claim that fit well with the Stoic conviction concerning the voluntary character of all of the passions as judgments.^[200] On this score, Philo was even more Stoic than the Stoics! While the blameworthy character of the passions was implicit in the Stoic assertion of the soul’s complete accountability for its passionate impulses, the Stoics in fact seldom made explicit mention of it. We find very few occurrences of any description of the passions as blameworthy, vile, cursed and so forth among our extant sources for ancient Stoicism. Ironically, the primary source for such descriptors is none other than Philo!

Philo was unique among Stoic theorists in the degree to which he stressed their blameworthiness and guilt. He was the only author to describe passion as ‘blameworthy’ (ἐπίληπτος) in his formal definition of the term.^[201] Nor was that an isolated occurrence. Philo elsewhere found fault with the passions on several occasions in his writings, describing the passions as ‘blameworthy’ (ἐπίληπτος),^[202] ‘guilty’ (ὑπαίτιος),^[203] ‘base’ (αἰσχρός),^[204] and ‘vile’ (μοχθηρός).^[205] In the case of the later to terms, like the Roman Stoics Seneca and Cicero discussed above, Philo described the passions as vile and base to underscore their immoral character as well as to prod the soul to seek to eradicate them just as it ought do with in the case of the vices. Nevertheless, favorite among these characterizations was his characterization of passion as ‘blameworthy’ and ‘guilty’. He commonly used both terms in connection with one another and always in relation to the fool or vicious soul.^[206] Indeed, he appears to have used these two terms in preference to other options in relation to the passions. Though he used both terms in relation to accursed (κατάρατος or ἐπάρατος)^[207] and blameworthy (ψεκτός)^[208] in other contexts, he never described the passions using these alternatives. Nor did he ever describe the passions as worthy of censure (ἐπίμομφος or κατάμομφος) or reprehensible (ἐπιλήψιμος) either.

Curiously, Philo appears to have been the first to describe the passions as blameworthy (ἐπίληπτος) and guilty (ὑπαίτιος) in the history of Greek thought. I found no evidence that the Old Stoa, Plato, or Aristotle used either term in connection to the passions. Musonius Rufus used it once in relation to passion among the later Roman Stoics, but he post-dates Philo. I found no evidence that the later Stoics used the term ‘guilty’ in connection with the passions at all. Frankly, it is unclear what sources Philo may have drawn this description from or if he had made the connection himself for the first time. It does not appear to derive from Moses, since the Septuagint never uses either term. Nor is there any evidence of its use in the various philosophical traditions that precede Philo as we have noted. Whatever his source of inspiration, Philo’s purpose in describing the passions as worthy of blame and censure is clear enough, namely, to underscore their voluntary character and the soul’s responsibility for their expression.

This connection between the blameworthiness of the passions and the moral responsibility of the soul is best illustrated in his reflections in Quod deus sit immutabilis upon the Law-giver’s attribution of wrath (θυμόω) to God in Genesis 6.6-7.^[209] In his exposition, Philo distanced God from any ‘real’ attribution of anger, arguing that scripture attributed this emotion to God metaphorically as a way of speaking of God’s judgment of sin and evil deeds. Instead, he sought to show that humans alone experience anger in reality. Moreover, wrath, as well as all of the other passions, is actually a source of sin and vice. As such, it is liable to God’s judgment since it is a voluntary expression of their freedom as creatures made in the likeness of God. Let us explore his argument in greater detail.

Philo supported this linking of anger and judgment by first establishing the human moral freedom on the basis of their possession of mind and reason. He observed that unlike the irrational animals and plants, God had supplied humans with mind (νοῦς or διάνοια), which endowed them with liberty (ἐλευθερία). For mind ‘alone’ (μόνος), he observed, possesses freedom and is able to ‘range as it lists’ (ἄφετος), having been liberated from the fetters of necessity. He argued that this moral liberty of mind is ultimately rooted in its possession of ‘freedom of will’ (ὁ ἑκούσιος), by which humans are able to act ‘willingly’ (ἑκών) and with ‘deliberate choice’ (προαιρετικός). Unlike plants and other animals, whose movements and psychic changes arise ‘without deliberate choice’ (ἀπροαίρετος) of their own and from ‘involuntary’ (ἀεκούσιος) movements, humans have a great degree of moral freedom that subjects them to blame (ψόγος) or praise (ἔπαινος) for the choices they make.^[210]

After arguing that the gift of mind and reason sets humans apart from other plants and animals by making them morally free, Philo next asserted that Moses only metaphorically (τροπικώτερον) ascribed anger to God in this passage. His argument essentially amounted to this: just as Moses had attributed to God hands, feet, eyes, the use of weapons such as the sword, and passions such as jealousy or anger elsewhere in the scriptures, so he was doing the same with regard to wrath in this passage.^[211] Philo sought to ground his rejection of any attribution of anthropomorphic images to God on the basis of God’s simple, incorporeal existence outside of and above creation. Since he is not composed of parts, he does not need any bodily organs to serve as instruments to engage the cosmos. Further, as the Creator, he stands outside of and above creation. As a consequence, he is everywhere and nowhere at once, whereas corporeal existence supposes some sort of special limit. Further, he is likewise unencumbered by time. What is future and past to us is always present to God. This freedom with respect to body, space, and time renders any attribution of anthropomorphisms such as eyes or weapons of war or passions metaphorical by definition.

Philo next argued that Moses purpose for describing God using anthropomorphisms was to train ‘the fool’ (ὁ ἄφρων) to pursue virtue and avoid vice by means of fear.^[212] The use of metaphor is a necessary first step in reforming fools since they are lovers of the body and otherwise unable to draw a right conception of God, though the Lawgiver’s ultimate pedagogical goal was nothing less than to entirely ‘cut off’ (ἐκτέμνω) the ‘diseases of the mind’ (αἱ τῆς διανοίας νοῦσοι) from the soul. Thus, we find Philo paradoxically arguing that the Lawgiver advocated the use of fear as a remedy for eradicating vice and passion in the soul of the fool, which presumably included the passion of fear! While on the surface this may appear to be incoherent, it corresponds to Philo’s concession in Legum allegoriarum that Moses had described the passions as ‘helpers’ (βοηθοί) of the soul by way of a ‘straining of language’ (καταχρηστικῶς) inasmuch as they sometimes do contribute to the permanence of the race or as a weapon of defense in the case of anger.^[213] Thus, the physician of the soul utilizes fear as a means of excising other vices and passions from the soul in the fool. So long as the soul is burdened with a anthropomorphic conception of the Existent, the doctor is forced to resort to placing before the fool representations of God as dealing in threats and showing indignation and implacable anger. ‘For,’ Philo concluded, ‘this is the only way in which the fool can be admonished’ (μόνως γὰρ οὕτως ὁ ἄφρων νουθετεῖται). In this way, the passion of fear can serve a role in the spiritual progress of the fool, at least for a time. Ultimately, however, in order for the fool to pass over into sagacity and arrive at the complete excision of the all ‘diseases of the mind,’ including fear, the fool must come to conceive God without any human attributes at all and be motivated only by ‘love’ (ἀγάπη), which Philo elsewhere identified as a species of the good emotion ‘wish (βούλησις).^[214]

Having established the pedagogical use of the passions for fools, Philo next asserted rather incoherently that the text ‘I was wroth in that I made them’ should not only be understood metaphorically of God, but also as an injunction against the passions themselves in humans. He summarized his interpretation of this text succinctly in the following doctrine:

Wrath (θυμός) is the source of misdeeds (ἁμάρτημα), but the reasoning faculty (λογισμός) of right actions (κατόρθωμα).

To this summary he added that ‘by general consent’ (ὁμολογουμένως) every action (πρᾶγμα) done on account of fear, anger, grief, pleasure or any other passion is ‘worthy of blame and censure’ (ὑπαίτια καὶ ἐπίληπτα), but ‘worthy of praise’ (ἐπαινετός) if done through ‘rectitude of reason and knowledge’ (μετ’ ὀρθότητος λόγου καὶ ἐπιστήμης).^[215]

In this passage Philo offered several contrasts, including ‘blameworthy’ or ‘censurable’ verses ‘praiseworthy’, the passions of fear, anger, grief, or pleasure verses ‘rectitude of reason’ or ‘knowledge’, ‘wrath’ verses ‘the reasoning faculty’, and ‘misdeeds’ verses ‘right actions’.  If one were to draw up a moral ledger, each set of contrasts would be placed in one of two opposing columns. On the one side, morally positive attributes such as praiseworthiness, right reason, knowledge, the reasoning faculty and right actions, while on the other side, morally negative attributes such as, blameworthiness, censure, the passions, wrath, and misdeeds. Each set of terms represented an entire constellation of interrelated elements that turned on the manner with which the mind uses its innate gifts of freedom, voluntary movement, and deliberate choice. Significantly, Philo included wrath, anger, fear, grief, pleasure, and the other passions unequivocally within the column of morally bad attributes.

This series of contrasts also suggested a process of moral progress or regress for the soul. One the one hand, the reasoning faculty functions in accordance with right reason and knowledge to execute to right actions that are worthy of praise. On the other hand, passions such as wrath serve as a font of misdeeds in accordance with the soul’s implied ignorance, which in turn leads to blame and censure. In this schema, one can draw a direct line from passions to vicious deeds to censure. Thus, while he faulted the passions on the basis of their origin as free and voluntary movements of the mind, he also made pains to condemn them for the vicious deeds that often result as their fruit.

Though one might be tempted to understand Philo’s contrast between ‘wrath’ (θυμός) and ‘the reasoning faculty’ (λογισμός) in a Platonic manner, such an interpretation would be misguided. In a Platonic reading, the two terms are understood as opposed to one another as separate sources for virtue or vice in the soul, which from different places in the soul. This is precisely the line of argument that Plato had used to argue for anger as a distinct part of the soul apart from reason, though he had treated anger and wrath as normally allies to the mind against the appetitive part of the soul. Philo’s description of the reasoning faculty ‘as an incorruptible judge’ (ὥσπερ τις δικαστής ἀδωροδόκητος) that will accept whatever ‘right reason’ suggests might appear to further support this, since the Stoic understanding of anger is precisely the corruption or perversion of the reasoning faculty or process.^[216]

The context, however, does not support this reading for several reasons. Firstly, all of the terms mentioned above from in this passage were Stoic. Secondly, there is no mention of the appetitive part of the soul anywhere. The disparaging treatment that Philo accorded to anger and wrath in this passage would rather have been reserved for desire in a Platonic framework; anger was normally reason’s ally. Against a three-fold treatment of the passions, the entire tone of this passage was instead dualistic, as witnessed to by the series of contrasts noted above, which better fits a Stoic moral sensibility. Fourthly, Philo observed that these passions are judged blameworthy by ‘common consent’ (ὁμολογουμένως).^[217] Such a doctrine was only ‘common’ to the Stoics, while both the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions explicitly rejected a universal condemnation of the passions. Aristotle’s doctrine of the means made room for an appropriate use of most of the passions and Plato’s treatment of anger as an auxiliary to reason certainly placed it in a more positive light. Fifthly, Philo had already indicated that his goal was the eradication of the passions altogether, since all were nothing less than ‘diseases of the mind,’ which was another way of speaking of the Stoic ideal of apatheia. Hence, Philo’s closely remarks that the emotional goal of the wise soul was to love God, not to fear Him or be angry. Lastly, this particular use of the term ‘reasoning faculty’ (λογισμός) in the doctrine quoted above, should be understood to mean not the faculty itself, but rather the process of reasoning. Philo had already indicated that this was in fact his intention a few lines previously, when he described actions as praiseworthy when done with ‘rectitude of reason and knowledge’, but blameworthy when done from wrath.^[218] As such, Philo’s emphasized the kind of reasoning employed, not the fact of its employment. A simple employment of the faculty does not ensure praiseworthy actions unless done ‘with correctness’ (μετ’ ὀρθότητος) of reason and knowledge. Its perversion through fear, anger, grief, or pleasure, the actions will result in vicious deeds worthy of blame or censure.

In summary, Philo described passions, as well as the vicious or wrong deeds that arise from them, as ‘blameworthy’ and ‘censurable’ on the basis of their voluntary character of free movements of the mind. This, as we have argued, corresponded to the Stoic conception of the passions as perverse movements of the mind. Nevertheless, Philo differed from the Stoics in that he place more stress on their blameworthiness. While this emphasis certainly served to further underscore their voluntary character against involuntary theories of emotion found in the other philosophical traditions, most notably the Platonic and Peripatetic. Though we do not have space to develop it here, we should note that his emphasis on the voluntary and culpable character of the passions also fit his Jewish and religious legal instinct, which insisted on God’s praise of those creatures who obey his command (πειθαρχία), but punishment through his Powers of those who do not.^[219]