Seneca: “To Novatus on Anger.” In Moral and Political Essays. John M. Cooper and J.F. Procopé, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Seneca’s older brother has asked “how anger can be alleviated,” and Seneca agrees that it should be, as anger is “the most hideous and frenzied of all emotions,” indeed “utterly inhuman” (I.i.1). Anger “most resembles those ruins which crash into pieces over what they have crushed” (I.i.2). “No plague has cost the human race more,” having emptied cities of human life.” (I.ii.1). “Look upon gathered throngs put to the sword, on the military sent in to butcher the populace en masse, on whole peoples condemned to death in an indiscriminate devastation” (I.ii.1). Thus, Seneca’s first way of alleviating anger is to remind his brother how ugly and destructive its results can be.

Anger is a distinctively human passion. Human beings become angry because, as Aristotle observes, want to “pay back pain” (I.ii.3). “Wild animals,” Seneca observes, “are angered without being provoked by wrong and without aiming to inflict punishment or pain on others”; they may be frenzied, ferocious, and aggressive, but never angry, strictly speaking (I.iii.3). Only human beings become morally enraged because only human beings reason. “Anger may be the enemy of reason. It cannot, at the same time, come into being except where there is a place for reason.” (I.iii.3). Reason discovers ‘should’ and ‘should not,’ and indeed makes them thinkable. Animals never get that far.

Does anger accord with nature? No: “What is milder than man, when he is in his right mind? But what is crueler than anger?” (I.v.2). “Human life rests upon kindnesses and concord; bound together, not by terror but by love reciprocated, it becomes a bond of mutual assistance”; anger, however, is “greedy for punishment” (I.v.3). True, punishment is “sometimes necessary,” but it should be inflicted “without anger” and aided by reason (I.vi.1). (Centuries later, John Locke would advise fathers to spank their sons, but calmly. In this, Locke followed Seneca.) Even capital punishment need not be done in anger, as “no one should be put to death save he whose death will benefit even himself” (I.vi.3). Punish not because you enjoy punishing; punish to make the miscreant “an example to all” (I.vi.4). “At least by their death they can serve the public good!” (I.vi.4).

Seneca criticizes Aristotle’s treatment of anger in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle would “moderate anger, not remove it,” on the grounds that moderate anger “rouses and spurs the mind,” inspiring the soul with courage (I.vii.1). Seneca will have none of that. Anger isn’t natural at all, he argues; it is a deformation of reason. Aristotle proposes something that’s dangerously difficult: “It is easier to admit the forces of ruin than to govern them” (I.vii.2). Further, reason rules only “so long as it remains isolated from the affections,” not “mixed and contaminated with them” (I.vii.3). The passions or affections may be controlled when they first arise, but soon “they sweep us on with a force of their own and allow no turning back,” turning reason into their servant—the guide and scout of the passions, as Hobbes puts it (I.vii.4). Better to practice ‘forward defense,’ stopping the enemy at the frontier. If anger grows strong, reason cannot limit it; if, on the contrary, anger is weaker than reason, then “reason can do without it,” being “sufficient by itself for getting things done,” with “no need for a weaker ally” to screw its courage to the sticking post (I.viii.5). “Virtue needs no vice to assist it; it suffices for itself” (I.ix.1). Aristotle is wrong, by definition: If anger “listens to reason and follows where led, it is no longer anger, the hallmark of which is willful disobedience” to reason, a going-beyond of what reason justly prescribes (I.ix.2). Anger is “as useless a subordinate in the soul as a soldier who ignores the signal for retreat” (I.ix.2). Moderate passion “means simply moderate evil” (I.x.4).

What, then, does courage consist of, if not of moderated anger? “The surest courage is to look around long and hard, to govern oneself, to move slowly and deliberately forward” (I.xi.8). Courage is a form of self-rule; in a human being, self-rule is the rule of reason, pure and simple. “The good man will do his duty, undismayed and undaunted, and he will do what is worthy of a good man without doing anything unworthy of a man” (I.xii.2). Anything less signifies “a weak mind, not a devoted one,” and indeed to be too eager to punish means you are unfit to punish—little better, maybe worse, than the one you want to punish (I.xii.5). “Reason itself is enough not merely for foresight but for action” (I.xvii.2).

Why would a good man become angry with wrongdoers? They did wrong out of error, and don’t we all? “How much more humane to show a mild, paternal spirit, not harrying those who do wrong, but calling them back” (I.xiv.3). Chastisement, yes; anger, no. It should be remarked that Seneca mixes no tenderness with his justice, given that tenderness, too, is a passion. One may well need to amputate a limb; what one doesn’t need, what would be irrational to feel, is hating the limb as you amputate it. “We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their inflecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason—to separate the sound from the worthless” (I.xv.2). And in fact we should amputate or kill anger in our souls, as it is “a misdemeanor of the soul” (I.xvi.1). “Killing is sometimes the best form of compassion,” if compassion is understood less as a passion, more as rational mercy (I.xvi.4).

Passions waver, waxing and waning. Reason hold steady, so long as it makes no concession to passion. “Having judged that something should be done, it sticks to its judgment” because “it will find nothing better than itself into which it might change” (I.xvii.3). Like all the passions, anger is strong while it lasts, but it lacks “staying-power” (I.xvii.4). Because it can’t hold steady, anger rushes to judgment; because it does hold steady, reason takes its time. Like a wise judge, it takes the time to hear both sides of the case, “then demands a further adjournment to give itself room to tease out the truth” (I.xviii.1). While anger flames up at “irrelevant trifles,” reason “considers nothing save the matter at issue” (I.xviii.2). “Even if the truth is put before its eyes,” anger “fondly defends its error” (I.xviii.2); “it rages at truth itself, if truth appears to conflict with its wishes” (Ixix.1). 

“Reason does none of this. Silently and serenely, if the need arises, it obliterates entire households; families that are a plague to the commonwealth it destroys, wives, children, and all; it tears down their roofs and levels them to the ground; the very names of foes to liberty it extirpates”—all “without gnashing its teeth or shaking its head or acting in any way improperly for a judge whose countenance should be at its calmest and most composed as he pronounces on matters of importance” (I.xix.2). Since Rousseau, such calmness in severity has been judged inhuman; since Christianity, it has been judged to be reserved only for God, since Christianity holds the passions always too powerful for reason to master. None of ‘the ancients’ better shows the distance between himself and ‘the moderns’ as Seneca.

Nonetheless, Senecan justice never precludes mercy. The man of reason “often releases a miscreant of proven guilt, if the man’s repentance gives good grounds for hope” (I.xix.5). After all, criminal action stems from error; correct the error and you are no longer criminal. For this reason, the man of reason might punish “a major crime less severely than a minor one, if the one is merely a lapse and not an expression of ingrained cruelty, while the other conceals a secret, hidden and hardened craftiness” (I.xix.6). In this, as Seneca himself remarks, Seneca follows Plato.

Angry persons intend to terrorize. Don’t be impressed. “Their noise is great and threatening, the mind within terror-struck” (I.xx.5). That is, the angry are the ones gripped by fear, which their anger serves to conceal. They use their anger when they should be using their reason to rule their fear. If you respond as they expect, you will only initiate the same cycle of weakness in your own soul. Anger thus does not enhance but prevents magnanimity or greatness of soul.

In sum, “there is nothing about anger, not even in the apparent extravagance of its disdain for gods and men, that is great or noble” (I.xxi.1). Achilles is weak, not strong; Homer is right to compare him to raging rivers and wild boars. One might as well call self-indulgent extravagance ‘magnificence’; avarice the token of “a great mind”; lust wide-ranging as it “castrates whole flocks of boys and braves the husband’s sword in contempt of death”; ambition grand when it demands the highest offices for itself alone (I.xxi.1-3). “Virtue alone is exalted and lofty. Nor is anything great which is not at the same time calm.” (I.xxi.4).

Is Seneca’s critique of Aristotle fair? He overlooks or excludes some features of Aristotle’s treatment of anger. Famously, Aristotle defines each virtue as a mean between two extremes. He, too, considers gentleness a virtue, “a mean with respect to anger” (Nicomachean Ethics 1125b26)—specifically, the mean between irascibility and inirascibility or poor-spiritedness. Mindful of the kind of critique Seneca will advance, centuries later, he also considers the mean difficult to ‘hit,’ to achieve. And of course he lauds the rule of reason in the human soul. “The gentle person wishes to be calm and not led by his passion, but rather as reason may command, and to be harsh regarding the things he ought and for the requisite time” (1126a). He remarks a phenomenon Seneca overlooks, except perhaps when he mentions the calculating criminal: anger doesn’t always flare up and out. There are “bitter” people who sustain their anger for a long time “because they restrain their spirit [thumos],” in effect using reason to maintain a standing reserve of animosity against some real or imagined offense. This abuse of man’s rational capacity accounts for the irascible character.

That is, to some extent the dispute between Aristotle and Seneca is merely verbal. Aristotle maintains that anger should be governed by reason; Seneca maintains that anger governed by reason is no longer anger. More than that, however, Seneca wants reason to purge the soul of anger altogether, a task Aristotle would likely consider impossible. For his part, Seneca replies that what Aristotle proposes is also impossible or at least extraordinarily difficult because anger so readily overpowers reason. “The downward path to vice is easy” (II.i.1). 

What makes Seneca’s rationalist absolutism possible, livable? Given his distinction between anger and bestial ferocity, he (like Aristotle) observes that anger starts with a decision, not an impulse. True, “anger is undoubtedly set in motion by an impression received of a wrong” (II.i.3). But that impression as it were filters through the mind of the one who receives the impression. Anger “undertakes nothing on its own, but only with the mind’s approval” (II.4); “it is a voluntary fault of the mind” (II.ii.2). Our indignation may result immediately from some injury, such as physical pain or the experience of of injustice. But anger “is an emotion, which outleaps reason and drags it along” (II.iii.4). He identifies three movements of the soul, respecting anger. “The first is “involuntary, a preparation…for emotion, a kind of threat”; the second movement is “voluntary but not insistent,” a judgment that the injury inflicted upon me is morally unjustified; anger is the final stage, when the emotion ranges “out of control, wanting retribution not just ‘if it is right’ but at all costs” (II.iv.1). The first movement “is a mental jolt which we cannot escape through reason,” an ‘autonomic’ response, as modern psychologists would say. The second movement requires reasoning, a comparison of the injurious act with a standard of justice. It is the third movement that subordinates reasoning to passion, producing the emotion of anger. Emotions jumble themselves with reason, malignantly. Concurring now with Aristotle, Seneca adds that some men become “habitually ferocious,” “rejoic[ing] in human blood” (II.v.1)—irascible.

By this definition, anger is never righteous but “sordid and narrow-minded” (II.vi.1); “at every moment” the irascible man “will see something to disapprove of” (II.vii.2). This is especially true of the wise man who succumbs to anger; his superior perception will find injustice everywhere, leaving in a perpetual condition of indignation. This is the wrong way to live. “Rejoicing and joy are the natural property of virtue” (II.vi.2) or, as Aristotle maintains, happiness is the telos of human life. “You will do better to hold, instead, that no one should be angry with error” (II.x.1).

After all, “no one is angry with children who are too young to know the difference between things” (II.x.2). Simply “being human is more of an excuse, and a juster excuse, than being a child” since we humans are “animals prone to ailments of the mind no less than of the body, not exactly stupid or slow, but given to misusing our shrewdness, each an example of vice to the others” (II.x.3). One sees this when people gather in crowds, at the forum or the marketplace: “A gathering of wild animals is what you have here, were it not that animals are calm among themselves and refrain from biting their own kind” (III.viii.3). The wise man rids himself of anger by considering “the sheer multitude of wrongdoers” (II.x.4). Whereas the wise Heraclitus wept over humanity, failing to see that “he himself was among those to be lamented,” wise but more virtuous Democritus “was never seen in public without a smile on his face, so utterly unserious did anything that was taken seriously seem to him” (II.x.5). A wise man should recognize the rarity of men who are wise. Otherwise, melancholy and even misanthropy will be his lot. He should rather view mankind “with the kindly gaze of a doctor viewing the sick” (II.x.7).

To those who claim that anger is useful because it “enables you to escape contempt and it frightens the wicked,” Seneca replies that a man who can back up his anger with credible threats will inspire “not only fear but hatred” (II.xi.1). That makes it “more dangerous to be feared than [to be] despised” (II.xi.1). And, of course, if you can’t back up your threats you will be despised even more. What is more, to inspire fear has no moral benefit in itself, since physical disease is also feared and has nothing good about it. Fear “impresses little minds,” men of micropsychia (II.xi.5). 

Because there is always a point when reason can either take or lose control of the passions, it must be that none of them “are so fierce and self-willed that they cannot be tamed by training,” by habituation (II.xii.3). “Anything that the mind commands it can do,” especially if the reward is great (II.xii.3). And it is: “the unshaken calm of a happy mind” (II.xii.6).

And such self-habituation isn’t even as difficult as it seems. “The way to blessedness is easy,” he tells his brother; “just embark on it with good auspices and with the good offices of the gods themselves” (II.xiii.2). It is instead “doing what you do,” seething with anger, that “is much more difficult”; “nothing is more toilsome than anger” and “nothing more occupied than cruelty” (II.xiii.2). “Every virtue…is easy to guard, whereas vice costs a lot to cultivate”—specifically, an endless cycle of turmoil and crime whereby the wicked are never reformed (II.xiv.3). Admittedly, “sometimes it is necessary to strike into those on whom reason has no effect,” but to do so angrily only repeats the fear-anger-fear-anger dynamic (II.xiv.1). We see this in “all those nations that are free because ferocious,” like “lions and wolves”; “they cannot obey, but neither can they command,” as “no one can govern if he cannot be governed (II.xv.4). Our exemplars shouldn’t be the supposedly ‘noble’ animal species, but the “divine cosmos, which man alone of all animals”—because he “has reason in place of impulse”—can “understand in order alone to imitate it” (II.xvi.1-2).

And here Seneca himself imitates not only the cosmos, in good Stoic fashion, but Aristotle. “The wise an ought to strike a mean, approaching whatever calls for firm action, not with anger, but strength” (II.xviii.2).

The remedies for anger fall into two categories. One should avoid falling into it in the first place or, failing that, refraining from doing wrong when in a state of anger. The first defense against anger is education, “to give children from the start a sound upbringing” (II.xxi.1). In early childhood, illness, physical injury, or fatigue can initiate an angry disposition, but “the most powerful factor is habit,” which “feeds the failing” (II.xx.2). Seneca recognizes that “it is hard to change a person’s nature,” since “once the elements have been mixed at birth, to alter them is out of the question” (II.xx.2). Nonetheless, a naturally hot-tempered, choleric child can be given exercise to burn off the steam (“without actually tiring themselves,” which would make them cranky); “games, too, will help,” as “pleasure in moderation relaxes and balances the mind” (II.xx.3). A phlegmatic child, who will tend not to anger but to fear (“nervousness, intractability, hopelessness, suspicion”) doesn’t need anger to rouse him but joyous activities that lift his spirits (II.xx.4). In each case, parents should take care not to tyrannize their children: “The spirit grows through freedom to act, subjection crushes it” (II.xxi.3). And they should avoid too much praise, which “generate[s] arrogance and irascibility” of spirit (II.xxi.3). “Our pupil has to be guided between the two extremes, sometimes reined in, sometimes spurred on,” never made to “undergo anything demeaning or servile” (II.xxi.4). Humility doesn’t develop through humiliation. Reward him, but only “for merit, for past achievement or future promise” (II.xxi.4). And in those games he plays, encourage him to make friends with the opponents he usually faces, “so as to give him the habit, in a contest, of wanting not to hurt, but to win” (II.xxi.5).

Another means of preventing the development of habitual anger in your son is to “keep him far from any contact with luxury” (II.xxi.6). “Nothing does more to make people bad-tempered than a soft, comfortable education,” which disarms the soul when confronted with “the shocks of life” (II.xxi.6). “They should have their parents’ wealth before their eyes, but not at their disposal” (II.xxi.8). This goes for psychic as well as physical luxury. “If he has never been denied anything, if he always had an anxious other to wipe his tears away, if he has always been backed up against his tutor,” he will expect more from life than he deserves and, upon failing to get what he expects, will rage at the violation of his mistaken opinion of justice (II.xxi.6). He is on the way to tyranny or servility. A genuinely civil social education is indispensable. “Above all, the boy’s diet should be simple, his clothing inexpensive, his style of life like that of his peers. He will not be angry to have someone compared with him, if from the start you have put him on the same level as a lot of people.” (II.xxi.10). Such a child will be on his way to citizenship, to ruling and being ruled in turn rather than to play the master to a world of slaves.

After childhood, habituation against anger is more difficult. Seneca recurs to his fundamental point: “The cause of bad temper is the opinion that we have been wronged”; that being so, this opinion “should not readily be trusted” by an adult (II.xxii.2). “The greatest harm comes from readiness to believe things” (II.xxiv.1)—malicious gossip or the latest conspiracy theory. Train your soul not to be “irritated by vulgar trivialities”; re-mind yourself by holding your soul above them (II.xxv.1). Since “nothing fosters bad temper more than immoderate, impatient self-indulgence,” avoid the luxury your parents should have shielded you against (II.xxv.4). Don’t become angry at inanimate things, animals, or the gods; things and animals are amoral and, as to the gods, they “neither wish to cause trouble, nor can they,” as “their nature is gentle and kindly, as averse to wronging others as to wronging themselves” (II.xxvii.1). Don’t be foolish: “We are not the world’s reason for bringing back winter and summer” (II.xxvii.2). Natural events “follow laws of their own” and they “govern things divine” (II.xxvii.2). 

As for our fellow humans, “good magistrates, parents, teachers and judges” have “no wish to harm us” (II.xxvii.3). If they punish us, or even if we encounter bad persons who exercise authority over us, “we should think not only of what we are suffering, but of what we have done, taking our whole life into consideration” (II.xxviii.4). If we do so, we will soon understand “that no one of us is faultless” (II.xxviii.1), a thought that “should make us more reasonable towards wrongdoers, ready to accept reproach, free of anger, at any rate, towards good men” and “above all towards the gods” (II.xxviii.4). The cosmos is not against you. You are the real problem, not it.

To avoid anger, “the greatest enemy is delay” (II.xxix.29), the proverbial counting to ten. If someone tells you an injury has been done to you by a good man, don’t believe it; if by a bad man, don’t be surprised. “Reckon on everything, expect every thing!” (II.xxxi.4). Even good natures have their rough edges, and “there will always be something to annoy you” (II.xxxi.5). “Each of us has within himself the mentality of a monarch; he would like carte blanche for himself, but not for any opposition” (II.xxxi.3). Work on turning the monarch within into a person truly royal. “The mark of a great mind is to look down on injuries received,” exhibiting megalopsychia not micropsychia. “A great and noble person, like a great beast of the wild, calmly hears out the yapping of tiny dogs” (II.xxxii.3). And if the powerful abuse you, those you cannot dismiss, “it is better to dissimulate than to seek retribution,” putting on “a cheerful look,” not expecting them to reform themselves and knowing you are powerless to do so (II.xxxiii.1). Such men “hate those whom they have harmed”; provoke them no further (II.xxxiii.1). A man who had “achieved that rarest of distinctions at [the royal] court, old age,” explained this anomaly by saying he had adopted a policy of saying ‘Thank you’ to those who wronged him (II.xxxiii.2).

If, despite your best efforts, you succumb to anger, what can a man do to alleviate it? First, recognize its power. Anger doesn’t creep up on you; “it begins at full strength” (III.i.3). Other passions draw you away from reason but anger rips you away from sanity itself. “Not even failure can weary it,” and “if the adversary has the luck to escape, it turns its teeth on itself” (III.i.5). As suggested earlier, other passions confine themselves to individuals but “anger is the one emotion that is sometimes caught by a whole community” (III.ii.2), which is why “barbarians rush haphazardly into war” (III.ii.6). Seneca repeats his criticism of Aristotle for giving anger a degree of ethical ‘standing,’ again because Aristotle underestimates its power, perhaps especially in politics.

This is why Seneca recurs to urging Novatus to avoid anger in the first place. Consider its consequences, all of them bad, and bad because unnatural. “Nature exhorts us to love, anger to hatred; nature tells us to help anger to harm” (III.v.7). “While its indignation comes from undue self-regard, which gives it a look of spiritedness, anger is petty and mean, since no one can help being inferior to the man who he feels has despised him.,” whereas the magnanimous soul, “with its true self-awareness will not avenge, since it has not noticed the wrong done to it” (III.v.7). “There is no surer proof of greatness than to be unprovoked by anything that can possibly happen,” as tranquil as “the higher and better ordered part of the world, the part nearer the stars” (III.vi.1). 

Still, what should you do if angered? Stop it when it first appears; make a joke of the situation; postpone any action while in its grip; exert your mind to suppress it. “If you wish to avoid bad temper, mind your own business” (III.xi.1). Tell yourself, truly, that “reason forbids it, and I have entrusted my life to reason’s governance” (III.xxv.4). It is “more satisfactory to heal a wrong than to exact retribution for it” (III.xxvii.1), as “gentleness is the only treatment for the ungentle” (III.xxvii.3). 

The recognition of anger’s malignancy should prompt our reason to oppose rational habit to irrational habit. “All our senses in fact, must be trained to endure” frustration; “they are naturally capable of endurance, once the mind stops corrupting them” (III.xxxvi.1). The mind ceases to corrupt the senses when the rational part of the mind summons the mind “each day to give account of itself” (III.xxxvi.1); “your anger will cease or moderate itself, if it knows that each day it must come before a judge” in a case at your “own court” (III.xxxvi.2). In the end, however, “nothing will help more than a meditation on our mortality” (III.xl.2). Life is too short for bringing “turbulent confusion” upon ourselves (III.xl.4). “Fate looms above our heads, chalking up the days as they go to waste, approaching nearer and nearer” (III.xl.4). “Death is on its way, to make you all equal” (III.xliii.1).

It’s worth knowing that Seneca’s advice may have had a salutary effect. Later on, as a provincial governor, Novatus successfully negotiated a dispute between the rabbis of Corinth and the Apostle Paul.

Giambattista Vico: Principles of the New Science of Giambattista Vico Concerning the Common Nature of Nations. Books III, IV, V. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch translation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Vico titles the third, central, book of The New Science “The Discovery of the True Homer.” Why is the true Homer so important?

He has already demonstrated to his satisfaction that “poetic wisdom was the vulgar wisdom of the peoples of Greece, who were first theological and later heroic poets” (III.780). But Plato “left firmly fixed the opinion that Homer was endowed with sublime esoteric wisdom,” and “all the other philosophers have followed in his train” (III.780). But was “Homer ever a philosopher?” (III.780). If not, Vico’s central book consists of a refutation of all previous philosophers on the status of philosophy itself, which, Vico has already asserted, developed much later than the savagery of the early centuries of human history. “Such crude, course, wild, savage, volatile, unreasonable or unreasonably obstinate, frivolous, and foolish customs” as then prevailed “can pertain only to men who are like children in the weakness of their minds, like women in the vigor of their imaginations, and like violent youths in the turbulence of the passions; whence we must deny to Homer any kind of esoteric wisdom” (III.787). For example, King Agamemnon sacrifices two lambs to consecrate the Greeks’ declaration of war against Priam and Troy, “an idea we would now associate with a butcher!” (III.801). This leaves readers to wonder what Vico thinks of similar acts of the Jewish Patriarchs, whose laws Vico has associated with the true God.

Homer’s poetic characters are conceived not in terms of rational ideas, as Plato would do, but in terms of “imaginative universals” (III.809). So, for example, the character of Achilles embodies “all the properties of heroic valor, and all the feelings and customs arising from these natural properties, such as those of quick temper, punctiliousness, wrathfulness, implacability, violence, the arrogation of all right to might” (III.809). For his part, Ulysses embodies “all the feelings and customs of heroic wisdom; that is, those of wariness, patience, dissimulation, duplicity, deceit, always preserving propriety of speech and indifference of action, so that others may of themselves fall into error and may be the causes of their own deception” (III.808). That is, these characters didn’t spring full-blown out of the mind of Homer, who was only “a binder or compiler of fables” (III.852). They were “created by an entire nation” in accordance with their “common sense” and “powerful imaginations” (III.809). Vico observes that “poetic sublimity is inseparable from popularity,” and that nations who imagine such characters then take judge their customs by the example of the heroes they themselves have drawn out of their “common sense”—that is, the sense of reality they hold in common (III.809). No esoteric, philosophic wisdom inheres in these poems. In imagining that it does, the philosophers have been as fanciful, indeed more fanciful, than the old poets. 

Homer himself probably didn’t exist but was rather another imagined universal or “idea,” rather like ‘his’ characters (III.873). If Vico’s critique or ‘deconstruction’ of Homer resembles later Higher Criticism of the Bible, this may be, as Strauss remarks in his 1953 class, owing to the fact that both Vico and the Higher Critics took their cue from Spinoza. [1] However that may be, “the philosophers did not discover their philosophies in the Homeric fables but rather inserted them therein” (III.901).  This does not mean, however, that Homer has no value for philosophers. On the contrary, “it was poetic wisdom itself whose fables provided occasions for the philosophers to meditate their lofty truths, and supplied them also with means for expounding them” (III.901). Theological and heroic poetry keeps philosophers, beginning with Plato’s Socrates, grounded in political reality. It suggests to them the central importance of political philosophy to all philosophizing.

Vico additionally redirects political philosophy. Rather than attempting the Socratic ascent from the cave of opinion and convention, Vico uses the poets as guides to seeing the nature philosophers seek in the opinions and conventions recorded in poetry, poetry understood as a window into not only ancient beliefs and practices but into the nature those beliefs and practices reflect and refract. This means that he integrates both the poets and the historians into philosophy much more tightly than philosophers had done hitherto. The results may be seen in Book IV, “The Course the Nations Run”—that is, the pattern of events poets and historians record.

The course nations run consists of three stages: human beings who conceive themselves as gods, or as consorting with gods; human beings conceiving themselves (or some among themselves) as heroes or demigods; human beings who understand themselves as men, simply. There are eleven triadic unities that track these stages, three kinds of natures, customs, natural laws, civil states, languages, (centrally) characters—i.e., symbols or letters—jurisprudences, authorities, reasons, judgments, and sects. All of these were “embraced by one general unity,” namely, “the religion of a providential divinity” (IV.915). Whether the religion of a providential unity rightly understands the nature of providential divinity as divine has already been cast into doubt earlier in The New Science, but readers should follow this theme here, as well.

The three kinds of natures—all of them natures of human beings or proto-humans—are poetic/creative, heroic, and human. Poetic humanity or pre-humanity sees beings ruled by a powerful imagination; reason is weak. “Creative” means “divine”; these proto-men are fierce and cruel but also fearful (if indeed fearful of only animistic ‘gods’ formed by their own imagination), and hence susceptible to a higher order of religion, which teaches that the fear of the divine is the beginning of wisdom. Heroic semi-humans have emerged from this nature; they are no longer bestial, having gradually been tamed by their fear of the gods (IV.916). Finally, human nature is intelligent, modest, benign, and reasonable—genuinely human. Similarly, the three kinds of customs seen in these eras are religious and pious, choleric and punctilious (cf. Achilles), dutiful and civil. Fully human beings have become the political animals described by Aristotle.

The first of the three kinds of natural law is the divine law, law supposed to have been given by the gods or by a god. The fact that Vico classifies “divine” law under natural law indicates his judgment regarding that supposition. Heroic law is the law of force. “This law of force is the law of Achilles”; one sees here the likely source of Simone Weil’s famous essay (IV.923). Human law embodies “fully developed human reason,” now possible in the era in which reason has established some control over imagination and passion (IV.924).

As to civil states or government, “divine” government is theocratic. “Men believed that everything was commanded by the gods,” ordained by oracles (IV.925). Heroic government was aristocratic, rule by “armed priests in public assembly,” that is, by a regularized rule of persons claiming authority derived from the gods, backing their claims with force (IV.926). In these regimes, civil rights were “confined to the ruling orders of the heroes themselves” (IV.926). Plebeians, typically enslaved under the protectorate of an aristocratic master, had no rights not revocable by the master. Human governments, by contrast, derive authority and rights “in virtue of the intelligent nature which is the proper nature of man,” and “all are accounted equal under the laws” (IV.927). This form of rule may be popular or monarchic, inasmuch as both republics and monarchies aim at such civic equality, albeit quite differently.

Each stage has its own form of language. The poetic/creative beings express a “divine mental language” in the form of mute religious acts, ceremonies (IV.938). This language “concerns [religions] more to be reverenced than to be reasoned” (IV.929). Heroic language consists of blazonings, coats of arms “in which arms are made to speak,” consistent with the rule of authoritative force (IV.930). Finally, articulate speech betokens fully-formed or true humanity, consistent with political life, ruling and being ruled primarily by speech, only secondarily by force.

Characters comprise the central triad—central because characters are as it were the elements of the languages philologists study. The first kind of characters, characteristic of the poetic/creative era, are hieroglyphs, symbols that register the “imaginative universals” discernible in the documents that have come down to us from that time (IV.933). Hieroglyphics are “dictated naturally by the human mind’s innate property of delighting in the uniform,” but since the proto-humans’ power of reasoning was weak, they “could not achieve this by logical abstraction” but instead had recourse to the “imaginative representation” seen in pictographic writing (IV.933). The “heroic” characters “were also imaginative universals,” but now in speech, not in pictures (IV.934). The epic poets sang the fables they had heard and assembled. The singers sang of the heroic demigods who embodied the most admired qualities of the several nations, as mentioned before. The last historical era has seen “vulgar” characters, words written down by the commoners in the form of letters (IV.935). And indeed the materials thereby conveyed are themselves ‘literal’; instead of saying “the blood boils in my heart,” a man in the “human” era will say, simply, “I am angry” (IV.935). “Such languages and letter were under the sovereignty of the vulgar of the various peoples, whence both are called vulgar. In virtue of this sovereignty over languages and letters, the free peoples must also be masters of their laws, for they impose on the laws the senses in which they constrain the powerful to observe them, even against their will…. This sovereignty over vulgar letters and languages implies that, in the order of civil nature, the free popular commonwealths preceded the monarchies” (IV.936).

Mystic theology heroic wisdom, and human practical wisdom comprise the three kinds of jurisprudence. Mystic theology is “the science of divine speech” or ‘divining’; it aims at interpreting the gods immanent in nature, gods who command the proto-human giants (IV.938). Heroic jurisprudence may be seen in “the wisdom of Ulysses,” who “obtains the advantages he seeks while always observing the propriety of his words” (IV.939). Ulysses negotiates with gods and his fellow heroes. Human jurisprudence “looks to the truth of the facts themselves and benignly bends the rule of law to all the requirements of the equity of the causes”; this form of jurisprudence is possible only in “enlightened” nations” (IV.941).

The three kinds of authority correspondent to the three stages of human development are divine, heroic, and human. In the first stage, “everything belonged to the gods” (IV.944). In the second stage, authority rested in the senate and the laws enacted by the senators. In the third stage, authority depends upon trust in persons of experience, persons who exhibit in practical matters and “sublime wisdom” in intellectual matters (IV.942). This is true whether the regime is a republic or a monarchy; in the latter, the wise are the monarch’s counselors.

Reason appears in three kinds. Lacking any strong form of reason in the proto-human stage, the giants “know of it only what has been revealed to them” (IV.948). “In God who is all reason, reason and authority are the same thing; whence in good theology divine authority holds the same place as reason” (IV.948). Unlike Augustine, who regards messages taken from auspices as likely demonic, the proto-humans listened to the auspices believing them to be from god. Heroic reason no longer depended upon the gods. It consisted of raison d’état and was known only to “the few experts in government,” the aristocrats. In aristocratic states, “the heroes each possessed privately a large share of the public utility in the form of the family monarchies preserved for them by the fatherland; and in view of this great particular interest preserved for them by the commonwealth, thy naturally subordinated their minor private interests,” magnanimously defending “the public good, which was that of the state” (IV.950). Vico here shows why the giants, “the cyclopean fathers,” were “induced to abandon their savage life” in the wilderness “and cultivate civility”: as aristocratic landowners and patriarchs, they maintained the authority they had enjoyed in the wilderness, but as beings honored by all, their “great private interest identified with the public interest” (IV.950). It was a rational choice.

Reason in “human times,” when “citizens have command of public wealth,” inclines to the detailed and utilitarian, aiming at equality of these “private utilities” (IV.951). This “natural reason,” the “only reason of which the multitude are capable,” attends not to large ‘reasons of state’ but to calculations about whether you are getting more than I am (IV.951). When such polities have monarchic regimes, the counselors who do think of the public good are few, leaving the many to their petty devices. Monarchy alone, however, can “make the powerful and the weak equal before the law,” inasmuch as both aristocracy and democracy are factional, securing the good of the few or of the many, but never of both (IV.953). 

With respect to judgments, in the proto-human era the patriarchs could only complain to the gods, there being no civil authorities to appeal to. “The rights secured by these divine judgments were themselves gods, for in those times the gentiles imagined that all institutions were gods” (IV.955). In practical terms, such judgments came about by dueling or by revenge for an alleged wrong effected by the injured party. In the heroic stage, judgments were for aristocrats only and consisted of conforming to rigorous legalist punctilio, as seen in the saying, “He who drops a comma loses his case” (IV.965). That is, the formula was sacred, as it is in a religious rite, where every detail must be performed if the sacrifice is to be acknowledged. This was a way of moderating men such as Achilles, who inclined to “measure all right by force” (IV.966). Finally, in the third stage, “human” judgments prevail, meaning “the governing consideration is the truth of the facts” (IV.974). 

The eleventh and final triad consists of “sects” or ways of life of three “times”: first, the religious times, then the punctilious times, and finally “the civil or modest times”—the habits and practices that prevail at a given stage of human development (IV.9976-978). “The customs of the age are the school of princes.” (IV. 979). Radicalized, such periodicity would yield historical relativism, and although Vico stays within the framework of nature, the later historicist philosophers would claim him as an ancestor, even as the heroes and humans must own the giants as proto-men. He identifies three sets of customs: those of “religious times” (the superstitious giants), those of “punctilious times” (the rule of the heroic aristocrats), and those of “civil or modest times” (which see both regimes of “popular liberty” and monarchic regimes) (IV.976-977). One reason for the transition from aristocrats to the popularly-based regimes, whether democratic or monarchic, was that the many plebeians destabilized the regimes of the few but strengthened the regimes of the many and of the one. The people often have found an ally against the aristocrats in the monarch “because monarchs desire all their subjects to be made equal by their laws,” lest the grandees wax too grand (IV.1023). There was no lack of what we now call propaganda along these lines, as well; Vico cites the example of Augustus, who artfully declared himself “the protector of the Roman people” (IV.996). (In this sense, one may contend that monarchies are “popularly governed,” dependent upon the opinions and sentiments of the many) (IV.1008). In terms of legitimacy, “the natural law which had previously been called that of the gentes or noble houses…was now called the natural law of nations after the rise of the popular commonwealths (in which the entire nations are masters of the imperium) and later of the monarchies (in which the monarchs represent the entire nations subject to them)” (IV.998). More specifically, “the natural royal law” consists of “eternal utility,” that is, the need for a strong and decisive leader in times of crisis (IV.1008). In fine, “the brooding suspicions of aristocracies,” with the plots and counterplots amongst the ruling class families, “through the turbulence of popular commonwealths, nations come at last to rest under monarchies” (IV.1025). What began with patriarchal monarchies within the families of the giants ends with civil monarchies in fatherlands.

The Romans governed these regime changes with considerable skill, Vico maintains. “The praetors and jurisconsults put forth every effort to ensure that the words of the Law of the Twelve Tables should be shifted from their original and proper meanings as little and as slowly as possible”—a practice that may explain why “the Roman Empire grew so great and endured so long” (IV.1003). Although Polybius attributes Roman greatness to the religion of the nobles, Machiavelli to “the magnanimity of the plebs,” envious Plutarch to mere “good fortune,” Vico credits prudence among those who tended to the fundamental laws of the regime (IV.1003). 

Like all ancient law, Roman law was “poetic,” by which Vico means that legal rights were “invented by imagination” (IV.1036). “It rested its entire reputation on inventing such fables as might preserve the gravity of the laws and do justice to the facts,” putting “truths under masks” (IV.1036); “thus all ancient Roman law was a serious poem, represented by the Romans in the forum, and ancient jurisprudence was severe poetry” (IV.1037). Philology as it were unmasks the fables, enabling scholars to understand the truth beneath the surface.

After they came to rule, after the “human times” began, the plebeians brought “common rational utility” to lawmaking, de-fabulizing it, making it more prosaic (IV.1038). “The ratio, or reason, of the law is a conformity of the law to the fact”; the plebs made the law more ‘down to earth’ (IV.1039).

Despite the substantial changes wrought by the Gentiles in the various stages of human development, Vico insists that time itself neither creates nor destroys a right. Rights are eternal; ergo, they must come from God. All the various rights honored among peoples are “diverse modifications of the power of the first man,” who owned all the earth (IV.1039). By Socrates’ time, popular rule had established “an idea of an equal utility common to all [Athenians] severally” (IV.1040). In undertaking the task of political philosophy, Socrates “began to adumbrate intelligible genera or abstract universals by induction” (IV.1040). Such genera or universals are suggested by the legal criterion of equal utility, inasmuch as they result from abstraction of commonalities from particulars. The “human” or “common” way of life makes philosophic abstraction possible. “We conclude that [the] principles of metaphysics, logic, and morals issued from the marketplace of Athens,” as philosophy emerged from the laws governing that marketplace and the laws emerged from the “popular commonwealths” which put a premium on the prosaic task of buying and selling (IV.1043). “This may serve as a specimen of the history of philosophy told philosophically” (IV.1043).

In the fifth, final, and shortest Book, Vico turns to the question of nations “when they rise again.” His example, remarkably, is Christendom—not the first collectivity that comes to mind when thinking of nations in the ordinary sense of the word. In this case, by the Christian nation he evidently means the Christian regime, the Christian ecclesia. “When working in superhuman ways, God has revealed and confirmed the truth of the Christian religion by opposing the virtue of the martyrs to the power of Rome, and the teaching of the [Church] Fathers, together with miracles, to the vain wisdom of Greece, and when armed nations were about to arise on every hand destined to combat the true divinity of its Founder, he permitted a new order of humanity to be born among the nations in order that [the true religion] might be firmly established according to the natural course of human institutions themselves” (V.1047). That is, Vico considers the rise of Christianity a return to heroic times, the return of a severe, forceful aristocracy which, among other things, imposed slavery on Muslims captured in war. These, then, were “the new divine times,” when the barbarian who had sacked Rome and brought on the Dark Ages, were, like the cyclopean giants of the wilderness, driven to the “comparatively humane” Christian priests—that is, the new aristocracy (V.1056). Thus, Christian history recapitulates the Gentiles’ history everywhere else, in a prior time.

Eventually, in feudal times, many members of this Christian aristocracy served not only in the monasteries and churches but in ‘the world,’ ruling fiefdoms. This branch of the aristocracy had recourse to many aspects of the Roman law, emphasizing the right of rule by arms, not by utility. But as before, this too has changed, as the commoners rose up and shouldered the aristocrats aside, only to find that they need to call for a king to guard them against the vengeful, still-ambitious, aristocrats. “In proportion as the optimates lose their grip the strength of the people increases until they become free; and in proportion as the free people relax their hold the kings gain in strength until they become monarchs” (V.1084). Now, “just as the natural law of the philosophers (or moral theologians) is that of reason, so this natural law of the gentes is that of utility and of force” (V.1084).

Today’s Europe sees “only five aristocracies,” namely, Venice, Genoa, Lucca in Italy, Ragusa in Dalmatia, and Nuremberg in Germany—and mostly small places, at that (V.1094). “But Christian Europe is everywhere radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all the good things that make for the happiness of human life, ministering to the comforts of the body as well as to the pleasures of mind and spirit” (V.1094). “Even for human ends, the Christian religion is the best in the world,” uniting “a wisdom of [revealed] authority with that of reason, basing the latter on the choicest doctrine of the philosophers and the most cultivated erudition of”—yes, indeed—the “philologists” (V.1094).

But philosophers and philologists alike should take care. “Without order (which is to say without God) human society cannot stand for a moment” (Conclusion, 1100). Epicurus, Machiavelli, and Hobbes believe that chance rules the world; Zeno and Spinoza say it’s fate that does. But the true “political philosophers,” “whose prince is the divine Plato,” maintain that “providence directs human institutions” (C.1109). What providence provides is religion, the only thing that can draw proto-humans and barbarians out of savagery and keep them out of it. The Roman jurisconsults and Cicero followed in the Platonic line, knowing that “if religion is lost among the peoples, they have nothing left to enable them to live in society: no shield of defense, nor means of counsel, nor basis of support, nor even a form by which they may exist in the world at all” (C.1109).

Enlightenment philosophes like Bayle do not recognize the feebleness of their “reasoned maxims” (C.1110). Many religions have served the salutary purpose of maintaining political communities, but only Christianity is true, the others false. The divine grace enjoyed by Christians “causes virtuous action for the sake of an eternal and infinite good” by “moving the senses to virtuous actions” (C.1110). One may say that Vico ends his symphony on the “new science” with a note of piety.

Note

1. In his class on Vico, Leo Strauss makes the important suggestion that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are stand-ins for the Old and New Testaments, respectively. For example, Vico calls Homer the “father” of a nation, but no one before him had done so, whereas many commentators had referred to Moses as the father of is nation. It is easy to see parallels between the warlike characters of the Iliad and those of the Old Testament, but what parallel can be drawn between the wily Odysseus and Jesus and His apostles? If one prefers to avoid blasphemous comparisons, one might point to Jesus’ admonition to the disciples: Be you harmless as doves, prudent as serpents.