Ethics 235
one of the three. As a result, honourableness is either a matter of doing
everything for the sake of pleasure, even if you do not achieve it; or for
the sake of avoiding pain, even if you cannot manage this; or for the sake
of acquiring primary natural things even if you succeed in getting none
of them. So it is that disagreements about the starting points of nature
exactly correspond to disagreements about the limits of good and bad
things. Others again will start from the same principles and refer every
[question about] appropriate action either to [the actual attainment of]
pleasure or freedom from pain, or to the acquisition of the primary
natural things.
- So six views about the highest good have now been set forth, and
the chief spokesman for the last three are: for pleasure, Aristippus, for
freedom from pain, Hieronymus; and for the enjoyment of those things
which we have termed primary natural things it is Carneades himself-
not indeed that he believes in the view, but he does defend it for the
sake of argument. The other three were views which could be held, though
only one of them has ever been defended, but it has been defended with
great vigour. For no one has said that the plan of acting in such a way
that one does everything for the sake of pleasure, even if we do not achieve
anything, is nevertheless worth choosing for its sake and honourable and
the only good thing. Nor has anyone held that the very act of trying to
avoid pain was something worth choosing, unless one could actually
escape it. But that doing everything in order to acquire the primary
natural things, even if we do not succeed, is honourable and the only
thing worth choosing and the only good thing-that is what the Stoics say. - These are the six simple views about the greatest good and bad
things; two without spokesmen, four which have actually been defended.
There has been a total of three composite or double accounts of the
highest good, and if you consider the nature of things carefully you will
see that there could not have been any more. For either pleasure can be
coupled with the honourable, as Callipho and Dinomachus held; or
freedom from pain, as Diodorus held; and so can the primary natural
things, which is the view of the ancients, as we call the Academics
and Peripatetics.
Galen On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and
Plato 5.6.9-12 (5.470-471 K; SVF 3.12)[11-101]Not satisfied with this, Posidonius made a clearer and stronger criticism
of Chrysippus for not having given a proper explanation of the goal.
This is what he said: "Some ignore this and limit living in agreement to
'doing whatever one can for the sake of the primary natural things' by