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I: Introduction
A Stoic theory of the emotions must solve the problem of excessive impulse.
Chrysippus, the last leader of the early Stoic school, believed that the emotions were
functions of the part of the soul called the “hegemonikon,” or “commanding part.”
Chrysippus adhered to a psychological monism that claimed that this part of the soul had
no sub-parts and had only rational powers. Thus, he maintained that emotions were
functions solely of the soul’s rational faculty. The problem of excessive impulse is the
problem of explaining how emotions can “rush out toward action on their own, beyond
reason’s ability subsequently to control and direct the action once it is underway”.2 It is a
fact of human behavior, which the Stoics recognized, that we sometimes continue to act
out of emotion even after we have perceived that our emotional response is unmerited. I
may, for example, continue to feel and act afraid for some time after realizing that a vase
was knocked over not by some dangerous intruder, but by my cat. J. M. Cooper interprets
the excessive nature of emotion as an indication that “the force of the impulse itself,
through a function of reason, is such that a sudden change of mind [my italics] will leave
it in place and it will continue (briefly) to affect your action”.3 The challenge faced by
Chrysippus, then, was that of explaining how an exercise of the rational faculty can
persist to conflict with an opposing exercise of the very same faculty. For if this faculty is
now acting in a way opposed to the way it acted previously, and there was nothing, no
other faculty of the soul, contributing to the occurrence of the initial emotion other than
1
This paper has benefitted greatly from comments by Steve White and Teun Tieleman.
2
JM Cooper (1998) “Posidonius on Emotions ” in The Emotions is Hellenistic Philosophy (J Sihvola and T
Engberg-Pedersen., eds. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers) 79
3
Ibid. 80
2
the rational faculty, how can the existence of this emotion continue past the point when
adequately account for excessive impulse. Cooper takes this excess to mean that while
one experiences an emotion, if one should abandon the judgment that constitutes the
emotion and make a new, opposing judgment, one would not at first be able to cease
performing the action caused by the initial judgment. But another interpretation is
the judgment that constitutes the emotion even if one is presented with a new, opposing
perception to which one might assent if one were not experiencing the emotion. After
emotion, and laying out the machinery of Chrysippus’ theory of action, I argue that the
latter interpretation of what it means for an impulse to be excessive is the right one. I then
argue that given this interpretation, a Chrysippean monism can solve the problem of
excessive impulse by appealing to the role played by the propatheiai (pre-emotions) that
propatheiai makes him temporarily incapable of abandoning his initial judgment. Finally,
I argue that this “propathetic” solution to the problem of excessive impulse is very similar
to the one given by Posidonius. Posidonius’ theory of the emotions, therefore, was a
natural development of Chrysippus’ monistic theory, and not—as both Galen in ancient
times, and Cooper recently, have presented it—a departure from it.
agent is the necessary and sufficient condition for the performance of an action. This
evaluative thought and what we would call an intention to act accordingly) that we are
actually holding at the time”.5 The impulse is the assent to a proposition with a double
should act thus-and-so. Action must at least involve our rational faculty, since the
proximate cause of an action is a value judgment coupled with the normative claim—
based on that judgment—that acting thus-and-so is the thing to do. Chrysippus will claim
that an impulse is always an exercise of the rational faculty alone, and thus that actions
are purely the product of practical reasoning. He will deny the Platonic-Aristotelian claim
that irrational faculties of the soul can at least play a part in the production of action by
denying that any such faculties are ever involved in the formation of an impulse—indeed,
he will deny that any such faculties exist in adult humans. This claim sets the stage for
the peculiar difficulties his view of the emotions will have to overcome.
Cooper notes one potential problem that Chrysippus’ view does not have much
trouble handling. Children and animals do things, and yet they lack the developed
rational faculty of adult humans, and thus are incapable of the kind of complex judgment
with which Chrysippus identifies impulse. But in their case, a non-rational movement in
their souls is the cause of their actions. This movement produces their bodily movements
4
Ibid. 75
5
Ibid.
4
in the absence of anything like the judgment that causes an adult human to act .6
the rational faculty is actualized and the non-rational faculty ceases to be (or at least
ceases to be non-rational by changing and developing into the rational faculty.) The fact
that children and animals act is no serious problem for the Chrysippean view.
The emotions are a species of impulse. They are vicious or incorrect impulses,
since they produce actions that a soul whose rational faculty was functioning properly
would reject.7 Chrysippus gives three marks of impulses that count as emotions.8 First,
they are irrational, not in being the products of a non-rational faculty, but rather in being
at odds with right-reason. They are opposed to the impulses the soul would produce if its
rational faculty were in the best condition it could be in. Second, they are unnatural, since
we need not experience them and nature did not design our souls for the purpose of
experiencing them. And third, they are excessive. The meaning of this third mark is the
most difficult to determine, and how it is understood has great consequences for the
Cooper claims that emotions are excessive impulses in that they “rush out toward
action on their own, beyond reason’s ability subsequently to control and direct the action
once it is underway”.9 This description of what Chrysippus holds about the excessiveness
of impulses is somewhat imprecise, allowing for at least two interpretations. It may mean
that while experiencing an emotion, if one should abandon the judgment that constitutes
the emotion and make a new, opposing judgment, one would not at first be able to cease
6
Ibid. 77
7
Ibid. 79
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
5
performing the action caused by the initial judgment. Another possible interpretation is
judgment that constitutes the emotion even if one is presented with a new, opposing
proposition to which one might assent if one were not experiencing the emotion. Cooper
opts for the first interpretation, asserting that “the force of the impulse itself, through a
function of reason, is such that a sudden change of mind [my italics] will leave it in place
and it will continue (briefly) to affect your action”.10 This understanding of the excessive
nature of the emotions that he attributes to Chrysippus will prove important to the way he
of reason by reason itself in the light of the way emotions “rush out” toward action .11 He
sees the first challenge facing Chrysippus as that of explaining how an exercise of the
rational faculty can conflict with an opposing exercise of the very same faculty. For if
this faculty is now acting in a way opposed to the one it acted in previously, and there is
nothing, no other faculty of the soul, contributing to the occurrence of the initial emotion
other than the rational faculty, how can the existence of this emotion continue past the
that exceeds reason in some way, we must ask not only how an emotion can continue to
exist after an agent has made a judgment that opposes it, but also how emotions arise in
the first place. How can the rational faculty in isolation from any other power create a
state of itself that it will later have difficulty extinguishing? Cooper believes a good
10
Ibid. 80
11
Ibid. 81
6
answer is available to Chrysippus, but that Chrysippus fails to give it. Cooper claims that
luck, favor or disfavor, in which (as [the agent] thinks) he has received something
importantly good or bad for him”.12 An emotion is excessive because the judgment that
constitutes it places excessive value on the object of the judgment. The origin of the
emotion’s excess is wholly within the rational faculty. This act of reason, moreover,
seems reasonable to the agent at the time it occurs, since the object seems either good or
bad at that time. Only later on, once he has entered the emotional state, does he make the
Cooper claims that instead of explaining the origin of emotions in this way,
Chrysippus does no more than attribute their occurrence to the “freshness” or vividness
of a representation of an indifferent as truly good or bad.13 Cooper argues that while the
varying lengths and intensities of emotions might be explainable in terms of how good or
bad the agent judges the object and what kind of response to the object’s presence seems
appropriate, it is hard to see how one could explain intensity based only on how vivid the
representation is, and even harder to see how freshness could account for the persistence
of the emotion after the agent has made an opposing judgment. Chrysippus seems to face
a dilemma: either he must concede that other powers of the soul partly constitute
emotions, or he must find a way for the emotional man to make simultaneous contrary
judgments. This is one of the main problems Cooper sees Posidonius as responding to.
12
Ibid. 83
13
Ibid. 84
7
faculty—for why some people are more prone than others to seeing certain indifferents as
good or bad. The second problem returns us to the question of what it means to call an
should, why is it that this erroneous judgment about the appropriate response does not
shall now briefly discuss his understanding of Posidonius’ theory, and then proceed to
develop a quite different account of both theories. Cooper claims that Posidonius solves
He understands Posidonius as asserting that “given that reason does turn and transform
for its so transforming itself then?…Something else must be involved in the generation of
reason, but not by reason unaided. Non-rational powers of the soul must be activated in
order for an emotion to occur. Posidonius calls this additional psychic-energy produced
by the non-rational faculties the pathetike kinesis, “affective movements of the soul.”
This type of energy “derive[s] directly from the further psychic powers, the appetitive
and spirited, that Posidonius took over from Plato”.15 Cooper notes that this energy is not
a species of impulse at all; rather, to experience these affective movements is “to feel
14
Ibid. 82
15
Ibid. 85
8
inclined (to decide) to act in some way”.16 With this innovation, Cooper believes
Posidonius has the necessary theoretical tools to solve Chrysippus’ two problems.
Regarding the first problem, “Posidonius’ answer is that because we are all
that he has postulated…we find ourselves already attracted toward or repelled, more or
less strongly, by various experiences and events”.17 Our very physical constitution
endows us from the beginning with this non-rational psychic-energy, which inclines us to
see indifferents as good or bad. This energy remains with us through our maturation.
Once we reach the age at which we can no longer act without judgment, these affective
movements will make it more or less likely that we will judge it good to pursue or avoid a
particular object. Moral education is the process of strengthening the reasoning faculty to
the point at which these affective movements are no longer powerful enough to steer
reason into accepting the erroneous representations that these same movements make us
prone to receive.
claims that “it is the specific condition of a person’s non-rational capacities that
determines when, how intensely, and for how long that person experiences these
[affective] movements”.18 Posidonius can now tell a fully physicalist and determinist
story to explain why different people at different times feel various emotions to various
degrees. One’s physical constitution at birth determines the initial state of one’s non-
rational faculties. From then on, one’s interactions with the external world determine how
the states of these faculties change. The precise condition of these powers at a certain
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid. 87
18
Ibid. 89
9
time determines not only what erroneous representations one will receive, but also how
intense one’s impulses will be after the representations have been accepted by reason.
Since these affective movements are exercises of powers separate from reason, they will
persist past the rejection of the initial erroneous judgment. Reason must be active to
produce an impulse, and thereby an action, but neither the impulse nor the action
produced results from the exercise of reason alone. The action results from an impulse
that is a compound of rational and non-rational activity. The presence of the non-rational
causal interactions that lead from the reception of an impression to the performance of an
action. This material, at least in part, will be familiar to some, but a clear view of the
moreover, has the virtue of presenting a complex theory that has come down to us only in
fragments from a variety of authors in a clearer, more organized, and more concise way
than has generally been done. I will then develop my propathetic solution to the problem
of excessive impulse while adhering to Chrysippus’ extant views on action, emotion and
psychological monism.
The Stoics claimed that the human soul had eight parts: the five senses, the seat of
reproduction, the seat of vocalization, and the commanding faculty (hegemonikon). This
10
last is “the soul’s highest part, which produces impressions, assents, perceptions and
impulses. They also call it the reasoning faculty”.19 Chrysippus held that the hegemonikon
is a single part of the soul with no sub-parts. This part is identical with rationality (in a
sense to be explained below), and thus there are no appetitive or spirited faculties. Rather
than explain vicious behavior by appealing to these other powers, he held that “the
passionate and irrational part is not distinguished from the rational by any distinction
within the soul’s nature, but the same part of the soul…becomes virtue and vice as it
wholly turns around and changes in passions and alterations of tenor…and contains
monist, he must explain the ability of emotions to persist after we have recognized that
they are erroneous without appealing to any non-rational power of the soul. The nature of
did not hold. His monism was not extreme. He did not believe that the hegemonikon did
nothing other than engage in the process of reasoning, of forming judgments about data
that would have to be presented to it by some other part of the soul. While the
hegemonikon has no parts and exercises no non-rational powers, it does do more than
form judgments. The single region of pneuma that constitutes the hegemonikon has four
powers: presentation, assent, impulse, and reason.21 The possession of these distinct
powers is possible because “the mind’s pneuma can retain many distinct modifications of
its structure, that is many distinct tonoi or tensions, for long periods of time…even a
19
Aetius Dox. Graec. 4.21.1; SVF 2.836. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are from AA Long and
DN Sedley (2003) The Hellenistic Philosophers Volume 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, with
Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: CUP).
20
Plutarch Moralia 440E-441D
21
Stobaeus Ecl. 1.369
11
materialistic psychology can accommodate genuine and enduring powers in one and the
same body”.22 Our search for a solution to the problem of excessive impulse begins with
Since the emotions are a species of impulse, our first step is to understand the
process that causes an impulse to occur and the effects an impulse has. The process
begins with two elements, one with an origin internal to the soul and one with an external
origin. The first is the set of tensions (tonoi) mentioned above.23 The hegemonikon’s
The peculiarity of quality is the tension, and the conditions of these tensions determine
“[hexeis] can be intensified and relaxed”, and thus will differ in the quality of their
operation.25 The hegemonikon’s exercise of assent, for example, may be a better or worse
continue to exist when they are not active, and thus may be modified at any time by
changes in their constituting tensions caused by interaction with the external world.26
impression, “an affection occurring in the soul, which reveals itself and its cause…an
conceptualizes representations of external objects from the sensory parts of the soul,
22
B Inwood (1987) Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: OUP) 39
23
I do not wish to become entangled in issues of Stoic ontology. The tensions seem to be peculiarly
qualified bodies of the qualified body that is the hegemonikon.
24
Iamblichus De Anima; SVF 2.826
25
Simplicius In Ar. Categorica 237; SVF 2.393
26
B Inwood (1987) 41
27
Aetius Dox. Graec. 4.12; SVF 2.54
12
which themselves receive these impressions directly from the external world. In an adult
“thought”, i.e. the reasoning power—with the content of the impression.28 The
expressible.
opportunity for exercising the power of assent. To understand assent and the transition
impression and its proposition. According to the On Impulse of Arius Didymus, early
Stoic moral psychology (of which Chrysippus’ theory is the latest form) referred to the
kind of impression that could be the distal cause of an impulse as a phantasia hormetike
(“impulsive impression”), and attributed two special features to it.29 First, impressions of
this kind not only represent objects or states of affairs, as all impressions do, but do so in
an evaluative way, as good, bad, preferred, or dispreferred. Second, the propositions that
correspond to them have a complex structure. They express the obtaining of the state of
affairs as well as its evaluative status, and the expression of the evaluative status itself has
two parts. The first is an evaluative judgment of the object or event perceived, and the
second is a judgment concerning the type of action it is appropriate (kathekon) for one to
take given that one is confronted with that state of affairs with that evaluative status.
Both parts of the evaluative expression are necessary. No impulse can be formed
without a judgment that something is worth pursuing or avoiding, the content of the first
28
Diogenes Laertius 7.49; SVF 2.52
29
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.85; SVF 3.168
13
impelling a proper [my italics] function”, i.e. an act that is judged kathekon. In order to
directly impel an act that is judged kathekon, the content of the impression must also
include a reference to the action that the agent receiving the impression believes is
proposition that expresses the content of the impression will then also be assent to the
performance of an action, and so the impression will lead to an impulse. For example, say
I am standing in front of a hole in the ground, and I receive an impression of it. The
(2) (a) That there is a hole in the ground before me is bad/dispreferred AND
To assent to (1), which is purely descriptive, is to form the belief that the hole is real,
rather than illusory. To assent to (2)(a) is to judge that a hole in one’s path is a
bad/dispreferred thing; and to assent to (2)(b) is to judge it appropriate to take the action
possible by differences in the condition of the presentative power. These differences are
caused by variations in the tensions that constitute this power. We shall see below that
Once the soul generates a proposition of this kind, it may assent to it. Assent to a
proposition like (2)(a) does not guarantee assent to a proposition like (2)(b). One may
judge that something is bad without also judging that some action is therefore
30
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.86; SVF 3.169
14
appropriate. Chrysippus indicates that impulsive impressions have just this sort of
the judgment that something bad is present and the judgment that a contraction of one’s
pneuma is also appropriate. The first of these judgments may persist after the second is
abandoned.31 This could only happen if the evaluative part of the proposition has this
double structure. Assent to a proposition like (2)(b) will only occur if the evaluative
understood assent to a fresh impression as a judgment that something so bad (or good) is
present that a reaction of depression (or elation) is therefore appropriate.32 The content of
this judgment is what is represented by a fresh impulsive impression: that something very
bad indeed is present. As the text indicates, assenting to an impression33 like this causes
assent to an impression that some action is appropriate 34 : given how bad the situation is,
An act of assent generates an impulse, an exercise of the last power. The impulse
is not directed toward the proposition as a whole. Rather, “impulses are directed toward
be the case when I assent to the proposition. The predicate of the first conjunct of the
evaluative part provides a linguistic expression of the motivation for the action caused by
31
Galen De Placitis 4.7.12-17. Teun Tieleman reaches a similar conclusion about the structure of the
evaluative part of impulsive impressions based on this passage. See T Tieleman (2003) Chrysippus’ On
Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretation (Leiden: Brill) 124.
32
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.89; SVF 3.172
33
I will use the phrase “assent to an impression” as shorthand for “assent to a proposition expressing the
content of an impression.”
34
Assent to an erroneous fresh impression only causes one to assent that some action is appropriate if one’s
soul is weak. A “progressor,” one who is in moral training, will assent that some good or evil is present
without assenting that some action is therefore appropriate. A sage will not even assent to the first of these
if the impression is erroneous.
35
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.88; SVF 3.171
15
the impulse. The predicate of the second conjunct expresses the content of the action. In
the above example, these would be “bad/dispreferred; walk around.” By assenting to the
proposition as a whole, I assent to the predicates contained within it. This later assent is
the impulse. Once I have formed it, my limbs are set in motion, I perform the action of
walking around, and that action completes the causal process that began with the
In order to claim that the hegemonikon is a rational, unified part of the soul,
Chrysippus must claim that each of its four powers are rational in at least some minimal
sense (we shall see that there are certain ways in which they can be called irrational as
well). Thus far, there is good reason to think this is true. The presentative power receives
in such a way that that content can be represented linguistically. This conceptualizing
activity distinguishes it from the presentative powers of children and animals, whose
conceptualized impressions. The assenting power judges whether or not to endorse these
propositions, and the impulsive power is directed at their predicates. The exercise of each
power bears what is for the Stoics the mark of rationality—standing in relation to lekta,
linguistic structures.38
36
Diogenes Laertius 7.51; SVF 2.61. Since the impressions received by children and animals are non -
rational, and thus cannot be assented to, their actions are not “full-blooded.” Action, for the Stoics, is
always a product of assent. Children and animals “yield” to their impulses, rather than act on them, strictly
speaking. See Diogenes Laertius 7.51; SVF 2.61; cited in B Inwood (1987) 75.
37
Diogenes Laertius 7.49; SVF 2.52
38
Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math. 8.70; SVF 2.187
16
Now that we have examined the causal process that leads from impression to
action by way of impulse, let us briefly review Chrysippus’ taxonomy of the emotions.
indifferents as truly good or bad. There are four emotions, defined as follows:39
Fear: That (future) thing is bad AND it is appropriate for me to avoid it (initiate
These definitions provide, in a general form, the evaluative parts of the propositions that
one would assent to in order to generate the corresponding emotional impulse. Emotions,
certain propositions. This is the sense in which the Stoics were “cognitivists” about
emotion—they believed that emotions were a species of judgments. We shall see when
we come to the discussion of propatheiai, however, that the Stoic theory of emotion was
We now have all the background we need to discuss the problem of excessive
impulse and propose a Stoic solution to that problem. There are three features of
emotions that distinguish them from non-emotional impulses: they are irrational,
39
Andronicus Peri Pathon 1; SVF 3.391
17
unnatural, and excessive. They are irrational because they are “ ‘disobedient to reason.’
For every passion is overpowering, since people in states of passion frequently see that it
is not suitable to do this but are carried away by the intensity”.40 I mentioned above that
Cooper understands the experience of emotion to be one in which the impulse continues
to exist and cause an action after the agent has rejected the proposition that he earlier
assented to, and has assented to a contrary proposition. The other possibility is that the
agent is presented with a contrary impression, and his reasoning power generates the
corresponding contrary proposition, but he is not able to assent to it. The first stage in
arguing for the second of these possibilities is interpreting the passage just quoted on the
irrationality of emotion. We have seen that reason and assent are listed as distinct powers
of the hegemonikon. Since the presentative power receives and conceptually structures
expressing this impression, the role of the reasoning power must be the generation of the
distinct”—or not, the proposition that expresses it must contain an operator indicating the
Kataleptic impressions reveal their epistemic status by being such that they “could not
arise from that which is not”.42 When reason generates a proposition that includes the
normative category. A sage’s soul is in accord with right-reason because he gives only
strong assent to only kataleptic impressions. These impressions, therefore, are the ones
40
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.88; SVF 3.378
41
Diogenes Laertius 7.46; SVF 2.53
42
Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math. 7.252; SVF 2.65
18
suspend such a proposition, and the non-sage will often do so. When one experiences an
emotion, one is “disobedient to reason” by not being able to reject a prior erroneous
assent and assent to a new kataleptic impression. To call the emotion irrational, the later
contrary impression must be kataleptic. Otherwise, one would not disobey reason by
failing to assent to it, since non-kataleptic impression ought not be assented to. Someone
experiencing an emotion “sees that it is not suitable” when his reasoning power generates
rationality requires, but there is a failure on the part of the separate power of assent. Why
the assenting power fails to do what it should at this point will be discussed below, when
happens contrary to the right and natural reason”.43 I have already employed the notion of
being contrary to right-reason to explain the feature of irrationality. There is, however,
another sense for this notion that is available in the current context. A sage, someone who
has fully developed his soul, has become that which nature intends us all to be. The acts
of his soul fully accord with right-reason. He could never experience an emotion, because
he would never assent to a non-kataleptic impression in the first place. Emotions are
unnatural in that they conflict with right-reason by being caused by assents that one
presentative power. The condition of this power is determined by the particular tensions
43
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.88; SVF 3.389
19
that constitute it. One’s initial tensions are determined by the conditions of one’s birth,
and so different individual’s presentative powers are defective to different degrees. Some
people are thus more prone to receive certain impulsive impressions than others are. Once
receives, but there is no reason to think that it ceases to be prone to receiving the same
erroneous impressions it was previously susceptible to. Even a sage continues to receive
such impressions, though his soul is strong enough never to assent to them. That he
continues to receive them reveals the “scar” on his soul from the time before he became a
to assent to the propositions that express them. The non-sage’s assenting power is
their epistemic status. His assent to an impulsive impression will naturally be even hastier
than to a non-impulsive one, since the former explicitly represent themselves as relevant
to his well-being, which nature has designed him to be concerned with from birth.46 His
rational hegemonikon.
The third mark of the emotional impulse is excess. The excess of an emotion is
the reason why the hegemonikon cannot immediately reject the erroneous proposition
once a contrary kataleptic one has been received. Once we have determined why the non-
sage’s assenting power fails in this way, we shall have a Chrysippean solution to the
44
Epictetus Diss. Fr. 9; in Gellius Noct. Att. 19.1.17-18
45
Stobaeus Ecl. 2.89; SVF 3.172
46
Cicero On Ends 3.17
20
rely to some extent on conjecture, since the extant textual evidence is insufficient to
reconstruct the Chrysippean view without leaving significant gaps. But the view I will
construct is consistent with all the extant evidence; it is a view Chrysippus could have
held, a view that was open to him given all his other known commitments. Moreover, it
introduces no new theoretical terms, but solves the problem using only notions that are
established elements of Chrysippus’ theory. It merely applies these notions in a way that
is not attested. All the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, are there in what we know of
Chrysippus’ view—they are simply waiting to be assembled. Once I have shown how a
Chrysippean would solve this problem, I will argue that the answer I have constructed is
precisely the addition Posidonius makes to Chrysippus’ theory in giving his own account
of excessive impulse.
assent at the first opportunity? We find the beginning of an answer in the Stoic claim that
“the illnesses of the soul are dispositions that correspond to the passions”.47 The excess
that defines an emotion is explained by some defect, or illness, in the assenting power.
Chrysippus explicated the problem of excess with the analogy of the runner:
When someone walks in accordance with his impulse, the movement of his legs is not
excessive but commensurate with the impulse, so that he can stop or change whenever he
wants to. But when people run in accordance with their impulse, this sort of thing no
longer happens. The movement of their legs exceeds their impulse, so that they are
carried away and unable to change obediently, as s oon as they have started to do so.
Something similar, I think, takes place with impulses, owing to their going beyond the
rational proportion. The result is that when someone has the impulse he is not obedient to
reason”.48
47
B Inwood (1987) 128
48
Galen (quoting Chrysippus) De Placitis 4.2
21
We have seen that there is a close connection between the irrationality and the excess of
emotions. Emotions are irrational in that their occurrence prevents something demanded
allows emotions to prevent the assent that would dissolve them. I suggest that the key to
understanding this quality is the notion of the propatheiai, or pre-emotions. These are an
distinguish between cognitive emotions, which are at least partly constituted by (and
some would say, agreeing with the Stoics, identical to) judgments, and non-cognitive
emotions, which are physiological responses that are caused by external stimuli. The
Stoic’s term “pathon” which I have translated simply as “emotion” refers to cognitive
The Stoic theory has room for both varieties of emotion and, as we shall see, for
which, like all impressions, must be received by the hegemonikon.50 So the person who
hears and reacts to the sound of a crash in the next room receives two impressions: the
original impulsive impression produced by the noise itself, and the additional impulsive
impression produced by the experience of the propatheia caused by the first impression.
49
Epictetus Diss. fr. 9; in Gellius Noct. Att. 19.1.17-18
50
B Inwood (1987) 177
22
(1) I am trembling.
(b) It is therefore appropriate for me to perform action A (e.g. tread carefully and be
This is the familiar structure of an impulsive impression. We know from Epictetus that
impressions of propatheiai have this structure, and thus that they are impulsive
impressions, and perform the same function as the impulsive impressions that directly
cause propatheiai to occur in the first place. He tells us that when a sage experiences
them, but he rejects and belittles them and finds nothing in them that should be feared”.51
The sage certainly knows that he is trembling, so the first, purely descriptive part of the
impression cannot be what he rejects. The natural interpretation is that what he does not
assent to is (2)(a), the first component of the evaluative part. The sage does not assent to
the claim that his trembling is a bad thing; instead he “rejects and belittles” the
impression that it is bad. The claim that the sage also fails to “add an opinion” to the
impression should be read as indicating his rejection of (2)(b). Recall that the second
evaluative component refers to the action that the agent judges appropriate in the sort of
circumstance he perceives himself to be in. The sage does not judge any action to be
appropriate on account of his trembling. He knows that it is indifferent and that since it
occurs involuntarily, there is nothing he can do to cease it. A non-sage who judges it a
bad thing will also judge that he should act to distance himself from its cause.
51
Epictetus Diss. fr. 9; in Gellius Noct. Att. 19.1.17-18. Sages experience propatheiai because even they
receive erroneous impulsive impressions.
23
Let us assume that the person having this experience is a non-sage, and so he
assents to the two impressions. He believes, and acts as if, both the sound of the crash and
his trembling are bad things. He takes them both to be indicators of the presence of
danger. He now looks around, and sees nothing worth fearing—sees perhaps that his cat
has knocked over a vase. Yet he is still afraid—his fearful impulse is excessive. If we
merely ask why he cannot now reject the first impressio n and assent to the new one, we
may think we are caught in a real problem. But we now see that there is more to the story
than this. The loud sound has come and gone, but its effects—a body shaking, a heart
pounding, skin gone pale—persist. The specific condition of his pneuma will determine
the intensity and duration of these propatheiai. With each successive moment that the
propatheiai persist, the agent receives a new impulsive impression. There is not just one
but a whole series of them. The assents of the non-sage, moreover, are weak—should he
and tenor and…fixity”.52 My conjecture is that when he receives the contrary kataleptic
impression he does assent to it and reject his prior impression, but he is able to do so only
for an instant, until he receives the next in the series of impressions of his propathetic
reaction. Since this reaction is involuntary, his momentary assent to the kataleptic
impression has no power to stop it. To hold to his assent to the kataleptic impression for
more than a moment in this situation would require just the kind of strength of assent that
the non-sage cannot muster. If he manages to assent to the kataleptic impression again
later on, he will again loose his grip on it provided that the propathetic reaction persists.
52
Stobaeus Ecl. 5.906; SVF 3.510
24
The extremely brief periods in which he assents to the kataleptic impression will
be too brief for him to notice and too brief to cause any noticeable change in the
will sustain the action initiated by the original erroneous impression. This happens
because an assent to the propathetic impression entails a renewed assent to part of the
original impression. The action referred to in the second evaluative part of the propathetic
impression will be the same as the action referred to in the corresponding part of the
action was represented as appropriate in the impression that caused the propatheiai to
arise in the first place. This is because both the loud crash and the racing of his heart
indicate the same thing: danger. He will react to both with actions appropriate to a
dangerous situation. The non-sage’s weak power of assent will be enough to stop his
emotional action only once the propatheiai have faded, once the last one has occurred
and its impression can be rejected. We can thus understand the experience of an emotion
as a series of very short episodes of pseudo-akrasia. The emotion and the emotional
action are not strictly continuous. The experience of the propatheiai, however, is
continuous, and so interruptions to the emotion and the action will be too brief to notice.
That the agent does not notice these interruptions explains why he feels carried away by
the emotion. He feels like he is trying to abandon his assent, but cannot do so. He will
only succeed when his propatheiai finally die down. As they diminish in intensity his
impressions of them will lose their freshness, they will cease to indicate that something
worth reacting to is present, and he will finally be able to abandon his erroneous assent.
25
about his situation once he has ascertained that what he presumed was present or
immanent is actually not. One may see that a vase has been knocked over by a cat and
that there is no intruder and, on the basis of that information, momentarily form the
judgment that there is nothing to fear. But one’s non-cognitive emotional response, the
physiological reaction to the sound of the crash that features much of the same
response leads one back to the judgment that something bad must be immanent. One’s
increased heartbeat and tensed muscles, after all, are generally reliable indications that
something is wrong. It is very difficult indeed not to judge on the basis of one’s
perception of this response that something frightful must be immanent, even after
one’s propatheiai—leads one back to judging that danger looms—the judgment that the
action allows us to make sense of another puzzling feature of emotion: the fact that the
intensity and duration of emotional responses varies across both individuals and
occasions. This is puzzling for the Stoics, at least prima facie, because everyone who
experiences a particular emotion makes a judgment with the same content. Propatheiai,
however, do vary in intensity and duration. These features of them are determined by the
condition of the body’s pneumatic tensions. A weak pneuma will experience fierce and
53
This description is only meant as a reconstruction of the Stoic view on the interaction between pathe and
propatheiai; it is worth noting, however, that neuroscientists are beginning to study the influence of our
non-cognitive physiological responses on the formation of cognitive emotions. Though I cannot address
this research here, it may turn out that much of the Stoic theory will conform fairly well to contemporary
scientific findings about emotion.
26
pneuma will experience short and mild ones. Since the pneumata of different people—or
the pneuma of one person at different times—will differ in their condition, the intensity
of propathetic reactions will also differ. One’s experience of an emotional impulse will
thus feel different to oneself and appear different to others on different occasions. Moral
training (which includes leading a physically healthy lifestyle) affects the conditions of
these tensions—it strengthens the pneuma that constitutes both one’s body and one’s
soul. The closer one is to being a sage, therefore, the less time it will take one to recover
both from one’s propathetic reactions and from the erroneous assents that these reactions
sustain. Training, however, can only affect future reactions; so long as one is
It is important to note that the propatheiai themselves are distinct from emotional
action. Emotional action begins with the soul receiving impressions of propatheiai.
Brennan is right to insist that propatheiai themselves are not part of any intentional
action, since they do not result from assent.54 That impressions of their occurrence play
the crucial role allows the excess of emotion to be explained in terms of propathetic
experience while preserving the Chrysippean claim that an emotion is nothing other than
One might wonder whether the production of the propatheiai by the initial
impulsive impression is possible, given that the impression is at least minimally rational
and the propatheiai themselves are not (though the impressions of them are minimally
rational, like all other impressions). The propatheiai are dispositions of the body, and the
54
T Brennan (2005) “Stoic Moral Psychology” in The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (B Inwood, ed.
Cambridge: CUP) 275
27
perfectly capable of interacting with the other parts of the soul as well as with the body,
which is also pneuma. The propatheiai are the effects manifested in the body of an
interaction between the hegemonikon and the body. The change in the hegemonikon that
powers need be posited to explain the production of the propatheiai. There is nothing
mysterious about this interaction between the hegemonikon and the body, as both soul
and body are constituted by pneuma. The creation of propatheiai is one result of contact
understood, and a full account of the psychological mechanisms that cause emotional
action has been given, the nature of the emotions can be understood without positing the
existence of non-rational hegemonic powers. Inwood notes that some descriptions of the
propatheiai make them sound functionally quite similar to the pathetike holke—
propatheiai implies that they can serve precisely this function by making it impossible
contrary to them. I will now argue against the claim, which traces back to Galen, that
Posidonius broke with Chrysippus by positing irrational powers. Rather, we should read
version of the Chrysippean theory, one with greater causal precision and explanatory
power.
Galen quotes and paraphrases numerous passages from Posidonius that express
(1) “Everyone is agreed that the emotional condition is a form of mental illness; but
that is not the question, but how the soul is moved or moves in emotion; and that
(2) “And time and again in his work On Emotions, [Posidonius] asks Chrysippus and
I will argue, however, that a close examination of the Posidonian texts reveals no deep
faculties.
“refuses the terms ‘forms’ and ‘parts’ of mind, but says they are faculties of a single
powers that would be roughly comparable to Plato’s notions of spirit and appetite, and
that could not be called rational in any sense. I will focus on the two main arguments
Galen makes against Chrysippus by citing Posidonius’ text: the argument from the
behavior and education of children, and the argument from the cause of emotions. In each
56
I. G. Kidd (2004) Posidonius: Vol 3: The Translation of the Fragments (Cambridge: CUP) Fragment
164. My references to texts by or about Posidonius are to Kidd’s fragment numbers unless otherwise
indicated, and translations are from this edition.
57
Fragment 34B
58
Fragment 146
29
case I will develop an interpretation of Posidonius’ text that reveals him to be faithful to
Galen quotes Posidonius’ claim that “this is the best education for children, a
preparation of the emotional faculty of the soul so that it be most conformable to the rule
of the rational faculty”, and then goes on to paraphrase Posidonius as having said that “at
first this rational faculty is small and weak, but achieves strength and fitness about the
age of 14, when now it is appropriate for it to control and rule”.59 We must first ask what
Posidonius meant by the “rational faculty.” Since he spoke of it as that which began to
control at the age of fourteen, he may have been referring to the hegemonikon itself—
“the commander.” This would mean the “emotional faculty” is something outside the
hegemonikon. The fact that Posidonius wrote of rational and emotional faculties rather
than parts, however, counts heavily against this interpretation. So let us assume that the
“rational faculty” refers to one or more of the four Chrysippean powers of the
these, since these do not have non-conceptual counterparts. The “emotional faculty”
would then be either the quasi-presentative power—which is all Chrysippus need invoke
We can make perfect sense of Posidonius’ remark without positing any further
with a “rational faculty.” This latter faculty, the other three powers, is dormant in the
child’s soul—there are no “quasi” versions of these powers operating. This distinguishes
59
Fragment 31C and D
60
Diogenes Laertius 7.51; SVF 2.61
30
them from presentation even after maturity, when all four become (at least minimally)
power. The “rational faculty” guides the “emotional” in maturity because presentation
loses the power its underdeveloped form had to produce action on its own. The impulsive
impressions that previously produced action must now be accepted by the other powers—
they must be prepared for and receive assent, or no impulse will be formed and no action
will result.
Furthermore, the point of early moral education is to affect the tensions that
structured impressions, it will still resemble its developed form in being more or less
prone to receive certain impulsive impressions and not others. Child-rearing shapes this
power so that it receives fewer erroneous impressions than it otherwise would. When the
power matures, it will then conform to the “rational faculty”—the other three powers—in
another sense as well. It will deliver fewer impressions that do not accord with right-
reason to the other three powers, and so support their proper functioning. Once further
education (in what we would call the “young adult” stage) has improved these other three
powers, particularly the power of assent, so that more erroneous impressions are rejected,
Yet another way in which the presentative power may be singled out as in a sense
irrational is based on the fact that even a sage experiences propatheiai.61 The sage’s
reasoning, assenting, and impulsive powers are in perfect order; but his presentative
capable of initiating an emotion, though it never does. This is why the sage, impressive as
he is, is not a god. His soul is in accord with right-reason as far as is humanly possible. A
sense of Posidonius’ comments on the behavior and education of children. We now turn
to Galen’s argument from the cause of emotions. Galen reports that Posidonius “believes
that emotions were neither judgments nor what supervened on judgments, but were
caused by the spirited and desiring powers or faculties, in this following completely the
old account”.63 Whether or not Posidonius was “following the old account” in saying this
is just what is at issue. Galen elsewhere reports that “while a creature’s impulse was
sometimes born in the judgmental decision of the rational faculty, most often it occurs in
the movement of the emotional faculty”.64 Kidd glosses “the judgmental decision of the
rational faculty” as “the impulse toward the morally good”.65 The “movement of the
emotional faculty” is here contrasted with a movement of the soul that accords with right-
reason, rather than with a movement of a rational faculty distinct from an emotional one.
The movement of the emotional faculty that most often leads to impulse is the reception
of an erroneous impulsive impression to which the soul then assents, rather than a
kataleptic impression representing what is actually good. Assent to the latter would form
62
This observation makes sense of one of Posidonius’ criticism of Chrysippus . Posidonius asserted that
“sickness of the mind is not, as Chrysippus had assumed, that sickly bad condition of the body…mental
sickness is rather like either physical health with its proneness to dis ease, or disease itself” See Fragment
163B. The non-sage’s sickness is an actual disease—emotion is for him always either occurring or
inevitably in his future. The sage is healthy as can be, but his soul retains a “scar” from his previous
condition, which results in his propatheiai. Though he will never in fact become sick again (experience an
emotion,) the imperfection of his presentative power makes it a possibility in principle.
63
Fragment 34A
64
Fragment 169E
65
IG Kidd(2004) 234, note 128
32
impression, initiates the production of an action. I have already argued that this power is
the referent of Posidonius’ use of “emotional faculty.” Actions are most often initiated by
erroneous impressions because most people are non-sages, non-sages assent to these
impressions more often than not, and most of the non-sage’s impressions are erroneous.
The tendency toward erroneous assent is a function of the tensions of their imperfect
souls. The term “emotional faculty,” moreover, is equivalent to the terms “spirited and
appetitive faculties.” Both terms refer to the presentative power. Posidonius used the
latter phrase to draw a distinction between the types of objects that can be represented as
being good. Animals are supposed to have both a spirited and an appetitive faculty,
whereas plants only have the latter. We should understand this distinction as identifying
the different kinds of impulsive impressions that animal and plant quasi-presentative
powers receive. Plants only receive representations of their own stimulation as either
good or bad—they are only concerned with pleasure and pain (in the ordinary,
stimulation and the stimulation of other animals as good and bad, since they are
impressions: those that represent pleasure as good/preferred, those that represent victory
as good/preferred, and those that represent virtue as good .67 These three things are the
three natural affinities (oikeoses) of the human soul. The presentative power functions
66
See Fragment 33.
67
See Fragment 160.
33
us that we must be careful not to confuse what is good—which is only virtue—with the
other things to which our souls have a natural affinity. There are two different ways in
which our presentative power can fail us, by misrepresenting the evaluative status of our
two lesser affinities, and we must be aware of and attentive to both of them. Galen’s
repeated insistence that Posidonius believed in two irrational faculties, despite sometimes
(misleading) report of Posidonius’ discussion of the two distinct ways in which the
pleasure and victory as natural human affinities, this criticism does not point to a
disagreement between their theories of emotion. Posidonius pointed out that it was
unrealistic and problematic of Chrysippus to maintain that humans are by nature only
attracted to virtue.69 Chrysippus then had to claim that the experience of pleasure
somehow corrupts the human soul, disposing it to believe falsely that pleasure is good.
He derived the power of pleasure to corrupt from two sources: the fact that others who
have already been corrupted speak highly of pleasure, and that pleasure itself has an
alluring power.70 Posidonius was dissatisfied with both of these explanations. Without a
natural affinity for pleasure, the testimony of others would be insufficient to cause one to
68
See Fragments 142-148.
69
See Fragment 160.
70
See Fragment 169D.
34
believe it good and seek it. If one has no natural affinity for pleasure, moreover, the
prospect of pleasure can hold no allure—the thing itself can have no power of attraction.
By claiming that we have natural affinities to pleasure and victory as well, Posidonius
could explain why the vast majority of people wrongly believe these things are good:
from birth their presentative powers are disposed to represent them as good, and their
that the mature presentative power is for Posidonius a minimally rational faculty, in that
it conceptualizes the impressions it receives. If this is not right, then Posidonius did refer
faculty, precisely because he is referring to the presentative power. For if the erroneous
impressions received by this power are never conceptualized, they may be able to bypass
reason and assent, and directly produce a sort of quasi-action. Long and Sedley claim that
Fragment 162 “shows [Posidonius] interpreted reason more restrictively than Chrysippus,
162, Posidonius asked “how could you move the irrational rationally, unless you thrust
before it a vivid mental picture similar to one you can see?” But this shows the opposite
of what Long and Sedley claim. The “irrational” (i.e. the presentative power out of sync
movement is the initiation of the causal chain that ends in an action, a chain that begins
with a fresh impression—a vivid picture of good or bad circumstances. If the presentative
power were fully irrational, the reception of an impression could not be a rational
71
AA Long and DN Sedley (2003) 423
35
movement of it. And if the impressions were irrational, they could not move the soul
rationally.
and one or two fully irrational ones, as Galen thinks he does, he would certainly not
attribute the rational movement of the irrational power to the reception of an impression.
He would instead make the Platonic point that the irrational is moved rationally when the
rational faculty, having grown sufficiently strong, issues a command to the irrational that
the latter cannot resist. The fact that Posidonius did not do so is another reason for
thinking Galen has misinterpreted the Posidonian texts of Fragment 31, which Galen cites
as evidence that Posidonius has a Platonist view of the development of the rational
faculty.
I will now argue that Posidonius solves the problem of excessive impulse in
connects the movement of the emotional faculty with the occurrence of the emotional
pull. Posidonius was explicitly dissatisfied with an explanation of the cause of emotions
that stopped with the reception of an erroneous impulsive impression by a weak soul. He
claimed that no matter how good or bad the object of the impression was, or how weak
the agent’s soul was, these two factors could not explain the excessiveness of emotion:
“And if in addition to the magnitude of impressions of good and evil, they are going to
put the blame on excessive weakness of soul as well…the question isn’t solved by that
either”.72 Galen reports that Posidonius wanted to fill the gap in the early Stoic account of
emotion by locating a cause that would explain why reason has such difficulty
72
Fragment 164(2)
36
terminating emotional impulses. To this end, Posidonius “tries to show that the cause of
all false suppositions, when they occur…in the emotional sphere they arise because of the
emotional pull; this pull is preceded by false opinions when the ruling faculty has become
weak in regard to judgment”.73 He went on, according to Galen, to explain that these
of the emotional faculty,” therefore, must mean more than I have said thus far. In addition
is the further event of “emotional pulling.” This emotional pulling is the cause of the
hegemonic powers to explain his view of the cause of emotions? I think not. I argued
above that a Chrysippean theory of emotion need not stop at the point that dissatisfied
Posidonius. The emotional man fails to abandon his assent to the initial impression
impressions were not produced, he might be able to reject the initial impression as soon
as he received a contrary one, because the contrary impression would be more recent and
there would be no later impression to tempt him away from it. If the initial impression is
of something really bad—and so the impression is fresh—the agent should be all to ready
to reject it once a new impression comes along and reveals that no real evil is present.
And if the agent’s soul is weak, his assent to the first impression should be unsteady, so
that the new impression would be likely to lead him away from the old one. These
73
Fragment 169E
74
Fragment 169F
37
Incorporating the role of the propatheiai solves this problem. We can understand
Posidonius’ view of emotion by equating his phenomenon of emotional pulling with the
propatheiai. The movement of the emotional faculty, then, would be the reception of an
erroneous impulsive impression by the presentative power and the direct effect of this
Just as Posidonius’ texts provide good reason not to interpret him as attributing
spirited or appetitive powers to the soul, they provide good reason for interpreting the
emotional pull as analogous to the propatheiai. I will now argue that if we disregard
Galen’s improbable claim that the emotional pull is the activity of the spirited and
appetitive faculties, what emerges from this passage is a close variant of the Chrysippean
We are first told that “all false suppositions in the emotional sphere…arise
because of the emotional pull”. Suppositions, or judgments, are false insofar as they are
assents to erroneous impressions. For these judgments to lie in the “emotional sphere,”
cause of erroneous impulses and the actions that follow on those impulses. In other
words, emotional pulls cause emotions and emotional actions. Posidonius makes two
other important claims in this fragment: that all false judgments in the emotional sphere
are caused by—“arise because of”—emotional pulls; and that in a weak soul, emotional
pulls are “preceded by false opinions”. The false opinion Posidonius referred to is an
that represents something as good or bad, but does not refer to any action. Posidonius’
38
point was that while a weak soul would assent to this impression, such impressions alone
are never sufficient to cause assent to the second evaluative component—the one that
One might object to this reading of 169E on the grounds that it takes Posidonius
as accepting that emotions are a type of impulse, where impulses are understood—as
presentation. It might seem that one of Galen’s texts casts doubt on this claim:
And time and again in his work On Emotions [Posidonius] asks Chrysippus and his
followers what is the cause of the excessive impulse. For reason, whatever else, could not
exceed its own business and measures …[I]n Chrysippus’ explanation of the definition of
emotion [as ‘excessive impulse without judgment’], ‘judgment’ was used in the sense of
‘circumspection’, so that the phrase ‘without judgment’ was used as the equivalent of
‘without circumspection’; but where he says that ‘emotions are judgments’, one might
say that he is using ‘judgment’ as a term for impulse and assent. But if one were to
accept that, emotion will be an excessive assent and again Posidon ius will ask what is the
cause of the excess.75
But note that at no point is any indication given that Posidonius does not understand
simply the already familiar one of formulating an adequate causal explanation for the
misleading nature of Galen’s discussion here. Kidd notes that many commentators have
found the text of 169E inconsistent with what they take to be Posidonius’ view—i.e. the
emotional pull causing false judgments.76 For if the emotional pull were the activity of a
distinct, irrational power of the soul, which causes action even in opposition to judgment,
how could it have an effect on judgments themselves? Rather than seeing the way in
overall presentation largely at face value and then attempts to explain away the apparent
Kidd identifies the movements of the emotional power with the emotions
themselves, and then argues that in Posidonius’ view, these movements can not only
affect the body to produce action, but also, in a very weak soul, affect the power of
assent, causing it to judge that the emotional action is appropriate.77 But given what the
text says about the emotional pull being preceded by false opinions, and arising when the
rational faculty is weak, Kidd must go on to argue (1) that the movements of the
irrational power of the soul are caused by assent to false evaluative impressions; and (2)
the weakness of the rational power of the soul.78 These excessive emotional movements
then affect both the body (causing emotional action), and the soul’s power of assent if the
soul is very weak (causing further assent to the appropriateness of the emotional action).
This activity affecting the body, and in some cases the rational soul as well, is what Kidd
Posidonius held that however bad an impression may present some object or event as,
and however weak the rational power of individual’s soul may be, these two facts by
themselves do not suffice to explain the excessiveness of emotion. But on Kidd’s Galenic
77
See IG Kidd (2004) Posidonius Vol. 3: The Translation of the Fragments (Cambridge: CUP) headnote to
Fragment 153; and (2004) Posidonius Vol. II: The Commentary: (ii) Fragments 150-293 (Cambridge:
CUP) Commentary on Fragment 169E.
78
See IG Kidd (2004) Posidonius Vol. II: The Commentary: (ii) Fragments 150-293 (Cambridge: CUP)
Commentary on Fragment 169E.
40
emotion and emotional action amounts to. The term “emotional pull” has become nothing
more than a name for the activity of a movement whose existence, excessiveness, and
effect on judgment are wholly causally explained by precisely those two factors—the
considers insufficient for providing these very causal explanations. Given the choice,
then, between this conclusion and the view that Posidonius understood emotions to be
impulses in the way that Chrysippus did, but was unsatisfied with his causal explanation
for their excessiveness, it is clear that we should prefer the second option.
bad (or good)—that is, if it were fresh—that impression would cause one to assent to the
impression that some act of avoidance (or pursuit) is appropriate. Posidonius rejected this
claim because he observed that people sometimes cease to experience an emotion without
ceasing to judge that what happened was as bad as they first thought.79 This led him to
in its ability to cause some event in the agent’s soul that would be sufficient to cause an
assent to the further impression that some action is appropriate; this event, unlike the
judgment that something very bad (or good) is present, must not persist beyond the
emotion’s termination.
and to take one by surprise: “The reason [why only fresh impressio ns cause emotions] is
that if anything we are unprepared for or strange to us suddenly hits us, it knocks us off
balance and displaces our old judgments”.80 An impression will not have this effect—will
79
See Fragment 164.
80
Fragment 165
41
not be fresh—on account of how bad (or good) it represents a situation as being. If one’s
soul were not weak enough to assent to the initial impression that something bad (or
good) is present without the shock of receiving the impression, that shock would cause
one to make such an assent. This experience would “displace one’s old judgment.” To
experience this shock is to be “knocked off balance,” insofar as one will not be able to
resist assenting to the further impression that some action is appropriate. When a soul that
is weak experiences this shock, the disturbance causes it to go from weak to infirm. The
shock takes a soul that was “prone to disease,” that is, emotion, to the state of “disease
itself”.81 This is why the shock caused by the impression accomplishes what the
impression itself could not: it weakens the soul to the point where it cannot resist not only
the erroneous impression that some good or evil is present, but also that some action is
appropriate.
We need to determine, then, what event in the soul a fresh impression causes,
what happens when an unfamiliar impulsive impression “knocks us off balance.” Once
we remember Posidonius’ other claim about the cause of emotions—that they are all
caused by emotional pulls—the answer is clear. The shock to the soul caused by the
reception of such an impression is the emotional pull. This sets the stage for identifying
emotional pulls with propatheiai. When an impulsive impression suddenly takes one by
surprise, the sort of non-cognitive emotional response I have identified with the
Chrysippean account and the emotional pulls in Posidonius’ account. (1) Fresh, erroneous
impulsive impressions cause both propatheiai and emotional pulls. (2) In both cases,
81
Fragment 163B
42
these impressions cause the phenomena on account of their freshness, though the
definitions of freshness differ. Emotional pulls are caused only by impulsive impressions
that take one by surprise, while propatheiai are caused by impressions that represent a
situation as so good or bad that assent to the impression causes assent to the further
impression that some action is appropriate. (3) When an impression of an emotional pull
evaluative components as well as the descriptive part. One assents to the impression of
the emotional pull because the occurrence of the pull has left one’s soul too weak to resist
any part of the impression—just as it leaves one’s soul too weak to resist any part of the
original impression that caused the pull. One assents to the impression of the propatheiai
because it represents the situation as being as good or bad as the initial impression does,
and so one is compelled to renew one’s assent that some action is appropriate. In both
cases, this whole-scale assent sustains the emotional action. (4) The occurrence of both
emotional pulls and propatheiai are outside one’s immediate control. They are
susceptibility to both emotional pulls and propatheiai, as well as their duration and
intensity, is determined by one’s pneumatic tensions. (6) Finally, both emotional pulls
and propatheiai are offered as explanations of the excessiveness of emotion, and both
explain this phenomenon in the same way. Having rejected Galen’s claim that emotional
pulls are the activity of an irrational power that continues to function after the rational
power has made a new assent, the only way to explain the excessiveness of emotion by
means of emotional pulls is to claim that, like the propatheiai, they make it impossible
for one to permanently abandon one’s emotional impulse until they begin to die down,
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even if one receives new, contrary kataleptic impressions. For as long as they occur, one
continues to receive fresh impulsive impressions that something good or bad is present
and that emotional action is appropriate, and one’s soul is too weak to resist assenting to
these impressions.
excessiveness of emotion cannot stop with the claim that emotional pulls weaken the soul
enough to make assent to emotional action irresistible. Such an explanation would not
make sense of the property of excess. He must also claim, as I have, that assent to the
stream of impressions of these pulls sustains emotional action past the point when the
soul has an opportunity to assent to a new, contrary kataleptic impression. This is even
more important for the Posidonian theory, since it places such emphasis on the infirmity
of the emotional soul. Such a weak soul could not hold to its assent to the original
impulsive impression if faced with a new contrary one, unless something prevented it
from abandoning that original impression. Thus, the emotional pull must play the same
explanation. In my Chrysippean version of the account, a weak soul’s assent to the initial
propatheiai explains why emotions are excessive, but does not necessarily explain why
emotions occur in the first place. The Posidonian version locates a single cause for the
occurrence of emotions that also explains why they are excessive. This single cause is the
can cause the soul to assent that emotional action is appropriate. The fresh initial
impression may cause the pull as it causes propatheiai, but it cannot cause an emotional
impulse on its own. The pull is needed to weaken the soul further so that assent to
emotional action becomes irresistible. We will now see that this emendation makes the
Posidonian account superior to the Chrysippean reconstruction in its ability to account for
to experience an emotion, and tested his theory by determining whether it could explain
all of them. In three of the four, his theory performs better than the Chrysippean theory I
reconstructed in Section III. Posidonius’ two key revisions are his reinterpretation of
freshness and his insistence that assent to a fresh impression cannot initiate an emotional
impulse on its own. In every case, however, we will see Posidonius’ emotional pull
playing practically the same role as the propatheiai do in my Chrysippean account, and
only by playing this role does the emotional pull complete the explanations of the
phenomena.
Posidonius searched for an explanation of the fact that “most people…often weep
when they don’t want to, unable to restrain their tears, and others stop weeping before
they want to.” According to Galen, Posidonius’ answer was “it is obviously because of
the emotional movements, either pressing violently (and so beyond the control of the
will,) or completely at rest (and thus no longer capable of arousal by it)”.82 I will deal
first with the case of those who cease weeping before they want to, since the Chrysippean
82
Fragment 165D
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theory can deal with it adequately. Weeping, which Posidonius identified as an (outward
something bad has happened. Both the propatheiai and Posidonius’ emotional pull occur
independent of any judgment. One may continue to judge that something bad has
happened, and that the voluntary emotional action of mourning is still appropriate, and
yet one’s propatheiai or emotional pull may die down—one may stop weeping before
one wants. The duration and intensity of both the emotional pull and the propatheiai
depend on the state of one’s pneumatic tensions. One cannot control them as they occur.
Even in this case, however, Posidonius’ theory has a little more to offer. It allows for the
additional insight that for the emotional pull to fade is for the soul to become accustomed
to the impression that initially took it by surprise. The Chrysippean must merely posit
that the impact of a fresh impulsive impression is finite and limited by the condition of
The case of one who weeps even though he does not want to is more difficult for
the Chrysippean. One who does not want to weep has judged that what has happened is
not all that bad, is not worth weeping over. That he does weep, however, shows that his
impression of the situation causes a propathetic reaction. For the Chrysippean, this
reaction must be caused by a fresh impression—one that represents the situation as very
bad. The Chrysippean would have to explain why it is so common for people to receive
fresh impressions of bad events and resist the inclination to assent to them. This is no
problem for a sage—in whom weeping, if he were to weep, could not be taken as a sign
of an emotion, but rather merely as a propatheia. But most people are not sages.
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Posidonius has a much easier time explaining the phenomenon, because he understands
fresh impressions as those that take one by surprise. A sudden unexpected impression of
some evil causes an emotional pull that manifests as weeping. Such an impression,
however, need not represent an especially great evil; it need only be unexpected. If the
impression represents some small misfortune, it is not surprising that one would judge
that what has happened is not really bad. The unrelated fact that it was sudden and
unexpected, and that the soul of the average person is too weak to withstand even a small
The third case is one in which “Two persons may have the same weakness and
receive a similar presentation of good or evil, yet one may incur emotion, the other
not”.83 Posidonius sharpened the challenge even further by insisting that one of the two
may actually be weaker than the other, “who supposes that what has befallen him is
greater” and yet he “is not moved.” The Chrysippean can only explain differences in
represented or in the condition of the soul. Posidonius asserted that differences of the
latter kind are not required for differences of the former. Both of Posidonius’ key
revisions are needed to solve this puzzle. An impression may come suddenly and
unexpectedly to the stronger of two individuals and not to the weaker, even though the
weaker perceives what is happening as worse. This will cause an emotional pull in the
stronger but not the weaker. Assuming the stronger one is not a sage or undergoing moral
training, the surprise of the impression will put his soul into a weaker state than his
companion’s. Now he will not be able to resist assenting to the impression that emotional
83
Fragment 164
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action is appropriate, and so he will form an emotional impulse while his companion does
not. The man who is initially weaker in this case must have grown accustomed to the sort
of bad event that has happened, so no emotional pull and thus no emotion is caused in
him.
In the fourth case, Posidonius discussed Agamemnon’s visit to Nestor for counsel
after the Greek army suffered a defeat.84 Agamemnon was first “struck with unspeakable
grief,” but when “the emotion subsided, although his supposition of what had happened
was still there, and so was the weakness of his reasoning powers, inactivity no longer
seemed right,” and he sought Nestor’s counsel. Posidonius complained that in referring to
the weakness of Agamemnon’s soul and the magnitude of the evil he judges has
happened, “Chrysippus has not given the cause of the emotion in its entirety,” since both
of these remain after the emotion has faded. The Chrysippean does have an explanation
for the cessation of mourning: at some point, the propatheiai begin to die down and the
initial impulsive impression loses its freshness. The agent then ceases to judge that what
has happened is as bad as it first seemed. Posidonius’ example rules out this explanation.
Agamemnon’s judgment has not changed; he continues to believe that what happened is
as bad as it first seemed. The Chrysippean has no trouble with the fact that his
propatheiai die down, but so long as he assents to the initial impression that something
very bad has happened, and this impression has not lost its freshness, he should be
happened; he becomes accustomed to the news of the defeat. His emotional pull subsides,
84
See Fragment 164.
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even though his judgment of how bad the situation is has not lessened. When the surprise,
and thus the emotional pull, dissipates, his soul is no longer so weak that it assents to
emotional action. While retaining his initial judgment of the magnitude of the evil, he is
now free to judge that seeking counsel and responding to the situation are appropriate.
I have argued that for Posidonius, “movements of the spirited and appetitive
faculties” meant “movements of the emotional faculty,” which meant the activity of a
propatheiai produced by the activity of that power. These impressions are the emotional
pull, and they explain the excessive nature of emotion. Posidonius has in fact given a
more causally precise version of the explanation of emotion which I developed in Section
why did Posidonius talk in terms of “spirited and appetitive faculties” if he did not mean
by these terms what Plato meant?85 On this I can only speculate, but a good reason is
account of the roles played by the non-rational parts of the soul. Adherence to a monistic
rational psychology might look like an abandoning of any attempt to explain those
phenomena. Posidonius may have been emphasizing the fact that his development of
Chrysippean psychology was perfectly capable of explaining all the phenomena which
Plato explained with these other parts. Though the presentative power is by no means an
85
TeunTieleman argues that Posidonius did not use these terms at all, and that the appearance that he did is
due to Galen’s misrepresentations of his writings and his views . I have taken the traditional view that
Posidonius did use Platonic language, but of course, my argument that he was a faithful Chrysippean, and
that his notion of emotional movements played the same role that propatheiai should have played in
Chrysippus’ theory, is not weakened if Posidonius did not use Plato’s language. See T Tieleman (2003).
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emotional faculty in Plato’s sense, its functional role gives Stoic psychology an