According to Stoic philosophy, “A Stoic is portrayed as a man struggling against or following unwillingly the fate which may involve his own suffering or sorrow, but which will form part of the total good” (Reesor 289). This thought is true of Aeneas, as mentioned in my last post, specific to his actions in Book 4 with Dido. However, at the same time, while in Carthage, we see Aeneas struggles with yearning a life of peace, love and happiness (what most humans hope for). This thought is part of the Epicurean philosophical belief that the highest pleasure is that of peace and tranquility. As a result, Aeneas struggles between conflicting inner desires, representing, like already mentioned, stoic thought, but in this case also Epicurean thought.
My focus at this time is finding how these moral philosophies affect Aeneas' trajectory toward fulfilling his fate.
I am also using the same ancient greek philosophies as mentioned above to look at the Nisus and Euryalis episode. I have come across the Aristotelian term-- "akrasia" as it relates to 'weakness of will' or self-surrender. This expands on the actions these characters take
when faced with a crucial decisions/events--are they acting on emotions/passions--against their better judgement?
2 comments:
This term akrasia is very interesting. I had hoped to find that it was somehow an etymon of English craze, or crazy. Not so, according to the OED. Could it be a cognate? Supposedly it comes either from Fr. acraser, or Norse, krasa. . .
AH...a struggle with doing the right thing. That truly makes a difference. It's a political struggle to do the right thing for your country --even in the face of leaving a place you love and find tranquility and moving to a place of the unknown to live your life with someone you have tepid feelings about. I can understand how that would equal doing a noble thing. But the road he takes to get to the final point sure doesn't show any wisdom.
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