SVF III.175

Original — Ancient Greek

Καὶ μὴν ἡ ὁρμή, κατά γ᾽ αὐτὸν (sc. Χρύσιππον), τοῦ ἀνθρώπου λόγος ἐστὶ προστακτικὸς αὐτῷ τοῦ ποιεῖν, ὡς ἐν τῷ περὶ Νόμου γέγραφεν. Οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡ ἀφορμὴ λόγος ἀπαγορευτικὸς καὶ ἡ ἔκκλισις· ⟨ἡ δὲ εὐλάβεια⟩ εὔλογος ἔκκλισις· καὶ ἡ εὐλάβεια τοίνυν λόγος ἐστὶν ἀπαγορευτικὸς τῷ σοφῷ· τὸ γὰρ εὐλαβεῖσθαι σοφῶν ἴδιον, οὐ φαύλων ἐστίν.

StoicOs Translation

And indeed impulse (hormē), according to him (Chrysippus), is a person's reason commanding him to act, as he has written in On Law. So repulsion too is reason forbidding, and so is avoidance; ⟨and caution⟩ is reasonable avoidance: caution, then, is reason forbidding — in the wise man; for being cautious is proper to the wise, not to the base.

Context

Plutarch's treatise catalogues alleged Stoic self-contradictions; to build his case he quotes and paraphrases Chrysippus' books precisely — here the psychology of action from On Law.

Source notes:Text visually verified against the page scan of von Arnim, SVF III (1903), no. 175, p. 42 (Vol. III OCR unreliable for Greek). Plutarch reports from Chrysippus' On Law; the clause ⟨ἡ δὲ εὐλάβεια⟩ is von Arnim's supplement, so marked.

What the source actually tells us

A hostile witness, but one who names the book and whose reports elsewhere check out against independent sources; the definition of hormē as 'commanding reason' is thus well anchored, though the wording passes through Plutarch's paraphrase and one clause is a modern supplement.

Philosophical meaning

In a rational being, impulse is not a push beneath reason but reason itself in the imperative mood: 'do this'. Aversion is its 'do not'. Action theory becomes normative through and through — which is why, when reason commands in excess, passion results, and why law and psychology share one vocabulary.

Scholarly uncertainty

Plutarch selects to convict; the definition's original argumentative context in On Law is lost. The inference chain after the first sentence may be Plutarch's own construction upon Chrysippean materials.

Go deeper

• Read SVF III.178 — the first impulse: self-preservation and oikeiōsis →
• Read SVF III.456 — passions are judgments →
• Read SVF III.314 — law, commanding and forbidding, king of all →