Duty and Right Action Toward Hierocles' Gods
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Introduction
In this reflective essay, I will examine Hierocles’ theory of duty towards what he considers
the three most important relationships. In his treatise On Appropriate Acts, he labels them as
“kinds of god” and exhorts us to honor them above all other relationships.
Hierocles’ most important god is the Stoic God, who “constitute[s] the primary
paradigm for human ethics.”1 After the Stoic god, Hierocles confides in reason to identify his
second most important relationship. He wrote, “[A]fter the discourse on the gods, it is most
reasonable to take up how one should behave toward one’s country. For it is, as it were, a
kind of second god.”(Hierocles et al. 69) Lastly, he advocates: “[A]fter the discourse
concerning gods and country, what other person could one mention first if not one’s parents?
Hence we must speak about these, whom one would not err in calling as it were second and
terrestrial gods, and indeed because of their nearness, if it is lawful to say so, even more to
be honored than the gods.”(Hierocles et al. 83)
1. Hierocles, Ramelli, I., Konstan, D., Stobaeus., Suidas, 2009. Elements Of Ethics,
Fragments And Excerpts. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, p.(l).
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I. Amor Fati
I was dining with the gods. Once a year, I sipped wine with a wealthy music enthusiast who
paid my grad school tuition and gave me a generous stipend. My god’s assistance allowed me
to focus on my ultimate goal: to become an orchestra musician.
Fortuna didn’t stop there. Another sponsor covered my summer tours with a worldclass symphony orchestra where I traveled playing in the world’s best concert halls. Each
year, we prepared a repertoire with our coaches, concertmasters, and leaders working in the
best symphonies around the globe. Then we would go on tour. And I kept dining with the
gods.
Unfortunately, my sponsors disappeared soon after grad school. Armed with a
master’s degree in violin performance, I moved to Germany to get an orchestra job, but
instead, I got a visit from Hierocles’ first God2. She came dressed as Fate and told me things I
did not want to hear. Having dined with the gods for so long I was ready to pull on
2. Ramelli, I., 2015. Hierocles The Stoic: Elements Of Ethics, Fragments, And
Excerpts. Society of Biblical Literature, p.(l).
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Chrysippus’ cart for as long as I needed to. I didn’t know Fate; I hadn’t begun studying
Stoicism. At the time, I didn’t know that I was dealing with god.
“Stoic traditionalists believe that Fate is God, and that the consciousness of God
orders the universe in the best possible way”3
#
Ever since I played my first note as a student orchestra member, I knew what I wanted to do
for a living. Year after year, I watched that goal getting closer, or so I thought. I’ve had the
best teachers and achieved concrete results that proved my worth. I never stopped moving
upwards - until Fate showed up. “Sign here,” she said.
Money was tight, and I was almost obliged to sign her contract. I accepted a teaching
position at the local school of music with the promise that the fight was not over. My
orchestra obsession had become imprinted in my soul, almost like an identity. I was an
orchestra musician without an orchestra job. Not a teacher. Fate patiently dragged me farther
and farther away from my goal, and slowly, like a video game character, I was losing my
energy.
Fate is God. God is Reason. Fate is Reason. I muscled my way forward and tried
harder, now desperately sending applications and auditions before running out of air. Fate felt
none of my blows. Instead, she gave me superpowers I did not want and made sure I
succeeded as a teacher. My boss assured me she’d only heard good things about me. Then the
email arrived.
3. Wiegardt, E., 2018. Right And Wrong. [online] Collegeofstoicphilosophers.org.
Available at: <http://collegeofstoicphilosophers.org/show_book/PDF/eJournal26> [Accessed
16 July 2020].
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After only two and a half years of teaching at the school, they offered me a permanent
position. These are rare, and most of the teachers still work on a per hour rate. Some have
even been in the faculty for over 20 years and will never see a permanent position. But I, the
guy who doesn’t want it, have one. Effortlessly.
One option was to quit teaching altogether, take a loan to pay for living expenses and
keep auditioning. I had done ten auditions, each one requiring about three months of
preparation. Between my orchestra failures and my struggles with the language and culture, I
just wanted to leave Germany. I could have probably won an orchestra position back home,
but the situation there is not the best, and my gut told me not to do it. With no strength left to
fight Fate, I accepted my new role as a teacher for the first time. I let the cart move in the
direction it wanted.
Was this a fatalistic move? I will answer that question in the conclusion of this essay.
However, today, eight years after my big intervention, I have a waiting list of students, both
in the music school and in my private studio. The teaching business is running great. But still,
I keep mourning not having an orchestra job. The Stoics call these emotions pathe or
passions, which they define as affective responses toward externals generated by false
judgment. To find the root of my pathe, I decided to study emotions from the Stoic
perspective.
#
The Stoics identify two dispositional components to explain how one particular feeling is
triggered rather than another. Cicero wrote,
“What causes a person to be distressed at some event, he says, is not a single belief
but a combination of two beliefs: …when our belief in the seriousness of our misfortune is
combined
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with the further belief that it is right, and an appropriate and proper thing, to be
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upset by what has happened, then, and not before, there comes about that deep emotion
which is distress4.”
By getting rid of one of the following beliefs: (1) that ‘not having an orchestra job is a
misfortune,’ or that (2) ‘it’s appropriate to be sad because I don’t have an orchestra job,’ I
should be able to avoid the strong feeling.
But before acting on Cicero’s proposal, I’d like to discuss the results of a relevant
experiment I conducted a few months ago. For a week, I deliberately tried to teach my
students with energy and enthusiasm. I forced my body to stay alert for hours at a time and
was mentally present at all costs. If teaching could be enjoyable, I needed to know; and so I
tried solving my student’s musical problems with grace, eagerness, and even love. After a
week, I was exhausted and realized students didn’t appreciate what I was doing. But I found
fulfillment. Perhaps because I was doing my job, “completely correct.” By deliberately
wanting to find joy in teaching, I stumbled upon what Viktor Frankl calls ‘the will to
meaning.’
Frankl wrote, “What is meant by fulfillment is the fulfillment of meaning rather than
fulfillment of the self, or self-actualization. Self actualization is not man’s ultimate
destination. It is not even his primary intention. Self-actualization, if made an end in itself,
contradicts the self-transcendent quality of human existence. Like happiness, selfactualization is an effect, the effect of meaning fulfillment. Only to the extent to which man
fulfills a meaning out there in the world, does he fulfill himself. If he sets out to actualize
himself rather than fulfill meaning, self-actualization immediately loses its justification. In my
4. Graver, M., 2009. Stoicism & Emotion. Chicago:
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University of Chicago Press, p.44
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view, excessive concern with self-actualization may be traced to a frustration of the will to
meaning.”5
According to Frankl, I experience frustration because I am not fulfilling a meaning
out there in the world; I am only focused on my own self-actualization, which is to get what I
want, that orchestra job. This is something I have to internalize and keep practicing. Thus,
having understood that it’s entirely in my power to feel fulfilled as a violin teacher (and that
these emotions are unrelated to the orchestra job), I’d like to consider Cicero’s argument
(above) and deal with emotions and their origin.
#
(The citations in this section are from Margaret Graver’s book Stoicism and Emotion6)
For an emotion to form, we have to assent to an initial impression. This initial
impression can be interpreted as a feeling; we can call this feeling a pre-emotion because it’s
not an emotion just yet. This feeling is involuntary (much like an impression), and thus the
sage would feel it as well. The Stoics didn’t count this feeling/impression as an emotion
because assent is not given yet (p.87). Emotions, then, form when we assent to that primary
feeling. Thus strong emotions are improper assent to impressions (p.101). Zeno defined
emotions as excessive impulses disobedient to reason (p.67).
Because I have been assenting to the same initial impression for years, I’ve formed
a habit. Today, the strong emotion is generated effortlessly because the more I assent to an
initial impression/feeling, the easier the emotion is generated (p.166-167). My ritual of
assent, with time, became a belief. And my beliefs, in turn, make up my character, which the
5. Frankl, V., 2014. The Will To Meaning. Plume, pp.22-23.
6. Graver, M., 2009. Stoicism & Emotion.
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Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Stoics assert is the real reason for my assent to an impression (p.63-64). It is then safe to
condone my weak character as the liable promoter of my false belief. My character is
culpable for my strong emotion every time I think about orchestra.
To “cure” my false belief, I must work on my character to “find a new mode of
existence in which emotions, in the ordinary and depraved sense, will not occur (p.70).” My
current beliefs are clashing against one another (p.50), precisely because I have not achieved
a complete and correct understanding of my situation. Thus to exchange a bad emotion for a
good one, I must transform myself (p.53). And this transformation starts with my rational
faculty. The Stoics would say that this approach will ultimately bring me the liberation I seek
(p.63).
As I report on these findings, I have not had the time to practice long enough to have
reached a conclusion. However, I’ve taken extensive notes and plan to implement these in the
upcoming weeks. I shall now turn to recognize an important aspect that influenced my
orchestra obsession. It is what Cicero calls False Glory.
#
I got out of the bus feeling like Paul McCartney. Hundreds of people gathered around the bus
to see us musicians wearing tuxedos and fancy dresses. I was in China with the World
Orchestra, and we were getting to the concert hall. It didn’t seem like we would play a
Shostakovich symphony, but rather like a rock concert. Never have I experienced such
excitement from the public toward classical music. I felt like a rock star, but in reality, I was
a mere violinist, one of eighty musicians whose “band” would have sounded just as great
without him. Nevertheless, I felt important.
“A false glory, also called ‘popular acclaim,’ is to be
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distinguished from true glory,
and the latter must still be kept distinct from moral excellence and the right actions in which
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it is displayed. (p.162)” It is easy to judge my experience in China as a "good." But it was
only a preferred indifferent. When treated without proper caution, popular acclaim can give
rise to bad emotions because the risk of false judgment is too high. On the other hand, real
glory is defined by Cicero as the approval by those who know how to judge excellence of
character, namely the Stoic teacher and sage. But still, he emphasizes that even true glory
should be kept distinct from the "real good," which is continual moral excellence and right
actions.
In sum, I would categorize my experiences as follow: in China, I clearly experienced
false glory, whereas during my teaching experiment (where I felt fulfillment) I had a true or
real glory experience. Fulfillment was reached by right action, cosmopolitanism. However,
my constant attempt to act right trumps both the false and true glory experiences. Constant
right actions are my true goal as a Stoic Prokopton. These actions are analogous to Fate's will
(Hierocles' first god) and will ultimately ensure I live according to Nature.