Il saggio di fronte all’afflizione

Abstract

The rather rigid interpretation of Plutarch’s ethics as a palingenesis of Platonism or Aristotelianism that established itself in the last century has not been able to justify certain contradictions within the ethical thinking of the intellectual of Chaeronea. One set concerns the phenomena of passion and of apathy, the former presented as a force that is sometimes positive, sometimes negative; the latter being considered an ideal that is sometimes divine, sometimes beastly. The solution to these contradictions, if not their justification, advanced by Babut - who pointed to anti-Stoicism as the common element that would bring unity to both themes - is not convincing, as it fails to explain the absolute condemnation of passion as an illness of the soul that one encounters in the Moralia and the Vitae, where, however, anti-Stoic polemics are absent. On the basis of these texts I believe it is possible to suggest a solution to these contradictions with a new interpretation that seems to find support in the images that Plutarch uses to explain the complex nature of the fundamental concept of passion.