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The Lucan trilogy: 2 — Julius Caesar as Stoic fool and the Stoic theory of justice
I write this on my way back from a lovely visit at Marshall University, in West Virginia. I have been there for a couple of days, talking about Stoicism to veterans from multiple American wars (Vietnam, Iraq-1, Iraq-2, and Afghanistan), to explore together what not just Stoicism, but the classics more broadly, have to say about war. The goal is to heal and also reflect on what we do in the 21st century on the basis of analogous things people were doing over two millennia ago.
[I wish to thank the organizers of a year-long course entitled “The Wars Within, The Wars Without,” Christina Franzen, an associate professor of classics, and Robin Riner, a professor of anthropology, for inviting me to Marshall to kick off their initiative.]
The core text of the course is Lucan’s De Bello Civili (Civil War), which has strong Stoic themes, as we’ve seen in the first installment of this trilogy. In this essay I’ll focus on a fascinating paper about Lucan’s poem written by David B. George and entitled “Lucan’s Caesar and Stoic oikeiosis theory: the Stoic fool.” The paper contrasts Caesar, the Stoic fool, with Cato, the Stoic sage, and interprets much of what is going on in the poem in terms of the Stoic theory of oikeiosis, or appropriation of other’s concerns.
George begins by reminding us that the Stoics use the theory of oikeiosis in two crucial ways. On the one hand, it is an account of how human beings develop from naturally self-centered infants to pro-social adults. On the other hand, oikeiosis is the foundation of the Stoic theory of justice. George says:
“The first impulse of all living beings is toward self-preservation, and from this impulse all actions ultimately derive. As a living creature develops, that which is fitting and natural for it changes. So long as the being is not rational (i.e., lacking logos, e.g., animals and children), all that it does according to impulse is natural, and the being is in harmony its nature. However, with the introduction of Reason into a man at about age seven, there is a possibility of error. A man can make a false judgment about what is in his interest and thus generate impulses which are not in accord with nature. These impulses the Stoics call the emotions — pathe or, in…
