Desire's Fault Is Graver Than Anger's
Read the full text in our reader
Φιλοσόφως ὁ Θεόφραστος ἐν τῇ συγκρίσει τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων, ὡς ἄν τις κοινότερον τὰ τοιαῦτα συγκρίνειε, φησὶ βαρύτερα εἶναι τὰ κατ’ ἐπιθυμίαν πλημμελούμενα τῶν κατὰ θυμόν. ὁ γὰρ θυμούμενος μετά τινος λύπης καὶ λεληθυίας συστολῆς φαίνεται τὸν λόγον ἀποστρεφόμενος· ὁ δὲ κατ’ ἐπιθυμίαν ἁμαρτάνων, ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἡττώμενος ἀκολαστότερός πως φαίνεται καὶ θηλύτερος ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις. ὀρθῶς οὖν καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἀξίως ἔφη μείζονος ἐγκλήματος ἔχεσθαι τὸ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἁμαρτανόμενον ἤπερ τὸ μετὰ λύπης· ὅλως τε ὁ μὲν προηδικημένῳ μᾶλλον ἔοικε καὶ διὰ λύπης ἠναγκασμένῳ θυμωθῆναι· ὁ δὲ αὐτόθεν πρὸς τὸ ἀδικεῖν ὥρμηται, φερόμενος ἐπὶ τὸ πρᾶξαί τι κατ’ ἐπιθυμίαν.
Theophrastus, in his comparison of wrongdoings — speaking as a philosopher, as one might weigh such matters broadly — says that faults committed out of desire are graver than those committed out of anger. For the angry man seems, with a kind of pain and an unnoticed inward shrinking, to turn away from reason; but the one who errs out of desire, overcome by pleasure, appears somehow more unrestrained and more unmanly in his faults. Rightly, then, and in a way worthy of philosophy, he said that the fault done with pleasure deserves greater blame than the one done in pain; for, in short, the one is more like a man wronged first and driven by pain to grow angry, while the other sets out to do wrong of his own accord, carried along to do something out of desire.
Marcus copies out, at unusual length, an argument from the Peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus weighing which fault is worse — wrongdoing driven by anger or by desire.
Marcus breaks from his usual clipped self-address to reproduce, almost word for word, an argument from Theophrastus — Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum — over which fault is graver: wrongdoing driven by anger (thumos) or by desire (epithumia). Theophrastus decides for desire, and the reason is telling. The angry man is at least dragged toward his fault by a prior pain, some sting of injury already felt, so his lapse has the shape of a reaction; the man who errs out of pleasure moves toward wrongdoing under no such pressure, drawn there simply because desire promised him something sweet. That unforced, self-started quality is why Theophrastus judges it the more culpable of the two, deserving harsher blame — and why Marcus calls the whole comparison worthy of philosophy.
That Marcus copies the argument out at such length, instead of compressing it into a maxim as he does nearly everywhere else in Book 2, suggests he found it useful raw material for his own discipline of desire, a theme he returns to constantly — as at 2.16, where the soul wrongs itself by yielding to pleasure or pain. The distinction also sits easily beside Stoic psychology, though Theophrastus was no Stoic: an impulse (hormē) born of desire arises from the ruling faculty unprompted, which is exactly why it is more damning than a lapse provoked by an injury already suffered. Anger has an excuse of sorts; appetite, chasing what merely looks sweet, has none.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Meditations 2.10 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Meditations — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Meditations 2.10 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/2.10/