Democritus and Eudaimonism
Julia Annas

            Democritus’ ethical theory, although it has attracted some notable scholarly attention, [i] has not been as central to discussions of ancient ethics as one might expect, especially given the centrality to history of philosophy of his metaphysics and epistemology. This is in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the extant fragments are ethical in content, and despite the fact that Democritus, being contemporary with Socrates, is among the first ancient thinkers from whom we have ethical material.

            It is a pleasure to present this paper as part of an occasion honouring Alexander Mourelatos. His work on the earliest Greek philosophers has raised the level of debate and set high standards of scholarship. It is with some apprehension that I make a foray in this area, although I remain confident that he will, whatever the paper’s merits, receive it with the courtesy and goodwill that have always accompanied his rigorous and careful philosophical investigations.

            The reasons for the comparative neglect of Democritus’ ethics are familiar. The ethical fragments themselves are highly various, and the authenticity of many of them has been suspected. [ii] It is not until the Hellenistic period that we find Democritus referred to, by Cicero, Arius Didymus, Diogenes Laertius and Clement,  as a systematic ethical thinker who offers an answer to what were by then familiar questions of ethics, such as, What is our final goal? What is the criterion for choice? [iii] Some scholars have found recognition of a conceptual continuity between Hellenistic thinkers and the earlier author. [iv] Others, however, have seen merely a stereotyped assimilation to later ideas. [v] The problem is underlined by the unfortunate fact that our fragments, copious though they are, do not unambiguously indicate an explicit ethical framework. Many of them are gnomai or sayings, and may have been extracted from originally longer and more continuous contexts. The few longer passages that we have, such as fragment 191, leave us regretting that so many of our fragments are snippets and aphorisms.

            Faced by this rather discouraging situation, many scholars have fallen back on the view that our sources, both fragments and reports, underdetermine the content of Democritus’ ethics to such an extent that it is uselessly speculative to discern theory or structure in the material we have. As a result, accounts of the ethics often limit themselves to treating the fragments as pieces of advice about how to live, as though they were a collection of wise saws. The result is predictably not very inspiring, and moreover looks more like advice as to how to get on in life than any kind of moral theory. [vi]

            However, this response, theoretically minimalist though it is, is not satisfactory even as an unambitious account of Democritus’ ethics. The fragments themselves display differences that compel us to put them in some kind of theoretical framework just to make sense of all of them in a consistent way. The most notable such difference, which has of course been noticed, is that, while some of the sayings are banal and everyday, others stand out for their unconventionality. Some of these are strikingly like sentiments we find in Plato, particularly in Plato’s ‘Socratic’ dialogues.

            Thus on the one hand we find banalities such as: ‘One should emulate the deeds and actions of virtue, not the words’ (fr. 55); ‘Continual companionship with the base increases a disposition to vice’ (fr. 184); ‘It is characteristic of intelligence to guard against future injustice, and of insensibility not to avenge injustice in the past’ (fr. 193); ‘It is important to think as you ought in misfortune’ (fr. 42).

            On the other, however, we find: ‘The wrongdoer is unhappier than the person wronged’ (fr. 45); ‘People are happy not because of their bodies or possessions, but because of rightness (orthosune) and breadth of understanding (poluphrosune); ‘Happiness does not dwell in flocks or in gold; it is the soul which is the home of a person’s daimon’ (fr. 171); ‘Things turn from good to bad for people, if one does not know how to guide and keep them resourcefully. It is not right to judge these things to be bad; they are goods. But it is possible to make use of good things, if one wishes, to ward off bad’ (fr. 173). These claims, that happiness depends on what you make of yourself rather than on what you have, and that the value to you of things depends on the use you make of them, are familiar as ‘Socratic’ thoughts from Plato’s Socratic dialogues. (There are also fragments suggestive of themes in other Platonic dialogues: correct, as opposed to wrong, erotic love (fr. 73); courage shown in resisting desires as well as on the battlefield (fr. 214) [vii] ; strikingly, justice conceived of as the source of an individual’s right action in general, not merely in social contexts (fr. 256)). [viii]

            It is hard to see how these thoughts, especially the ones which to us sound ‘Socratic’ , can reasonably be treated as just more wise saws for the person wanting to get on in life. There is a noticeable tension between the worldly-wise tenor of the ‘banal’ fragments and the strongly revisionary sentiments of the ‘Socratic’ ones.

            This problem can be resolved, of course, by declaring the more ‘Socratic’ fragments inauthentic or suspicious, as does Guthrie, for example. [ix] But to expel or ignore them in this way is not reasonable. According to Guthrie, to suppose that Democritus had these ideas before Plato, or at any rate independently of him, runs up against the fact that Aristotle admires Democritus but always ‘gives Socrates the credit for originality in this respect [i.e. ethics]’. [x] Aristotle’s claim about Socratic originality is, however, limited to general and methodological points, not to more detailed points like the above. [xi] His silence as to whether Socrates or Democritus first ventured the thought that the wrongdoer is unhappier than the person wronged proves nothing. In general, no scholar has produced remotely convincing arguments for excluding the original, ‘Socratic’ fragments.

            This means, however, that if we treat all the fragments we have in an undifferentiated way we are ignoring important evidence that Democritus did have an ethical theory, rather than homely practical advice; this is so because we are ignoring a source of conflict among the fragments. Thus, only an attempt to find some theoretical structure in the ethical material will actually do justice to the material that we have.

            Further, we have two strong reasons to look, not merely for some structure, but for a eudaimonistic structure in particular. One is that eudaimonism is the structure to be found in all Greek theories that make their structure explicit, [xii] and is also the structure to be found in the ethics of Plato and the Platonic Socrates, [xiii] where it is not made the subject of discussion but is nonetheless explicit. [xiv]   The other is that we have ancient sources which tell us about Democritus’ ethics in a way that makes it clear that they read him as a eudaimonist. As already mentioned, the fact that these sources are themselves in a consciously eudaimonist tradition is often held against them, as though it automatically invalidated their claims. It is unclear why being in the same intellectual tradition as someone is held to be a source of bias; it could equally well be argued that the testimony of the Hellenistic authors is especially reliable on this point, since they are in a better position than we are to recognize that a philosopher belongs to their own (eudaimonistic) tradition. At any rate no good grounds have been brought forward for disqualifying the opinion of the Hellenistic authors who see Democritus unproblematically as a eudaimonist. [xv]

            We should therefore start with Clement’s statement: ‘The Abderites also teach that there is an end (telos). Democritus in his book On the End says that it is euthumia,which he also calls euesto. He often adds, ‘For enjoyment and lack of enjoyment is the boundary’ (fr. 4; the final sentence will concern us later). We find other words for the end: harmonia,summetria,ataraxia (Stobaeus, A 167), athaumastia (Strabo, A 168), most notably eudaimonia,the word destined to become the philosophers’ norm as an agreed specification of our final end. Aristotle famously tells us in the Nicomachean Ethics that everyone agrees that our final end is eudaimonia,but differs as to how to specify it. It is not clear from the fragments of Democritus whether he thought this also, or whether in Ionic Greek none of his variety of terms was regarded as uncontentiously the most general way of referring to the telos. Despite the shared upbeat nature of all the alternatives, Democritus’ final end is not to be identified with pleasure, as we learn from a valuable passage of Diogenes Laertius: ‘He says that the end is euthumia,which is not the same as pleasure, as some people mistakenly interpret it, but a state in which the soul lives calmly and stably, disturbed by no fear or superstition or any other passion’ (A 1, 45).  

            Eudaimonia occurs in a key passage from Arius Didymus in which Plato is compared with Democritus in a way which we find unusual and which (perhaps for that reason) has not been influential in interpreting either. ‘Democritus and Plato unite in placing happiness (eudaimonia) in the soul. Democritus writes like this: ‘Happiness does not dwell in flocks or gold; it is the soul which is the home of a person’s daimon’. He also calls it euthumia, euesto, harmonia,summetria and ataraxia. He says that it consists in distinguishing and discriminating pleasures, and that this is the finest (kalliston) and most advantageous thing for humans. Plato is in harmony with Democritus on this. He writes about the most crucial thing in us [reason], saying that we should suppose that ‘God has given it to us as a daimon’ and that happiness lies in it. [Timaeus 90 a]  He says that it is a kind of state and disposition of the governing part of the soul. Of this good [happiness] the origin is the emotions (pathe), while the boundary (horos) and limit are reasoning. At any rate we can read,”[Pleasure and pain] are the two fountains let loose by nature to flow; the person who drinks from them <whence he should, and where and how> is happy, while the person who does not, is the reverse.” [Laws  636 d-e] So, in naming pleasure and pain he establishes the origin of happiness from the emotions; and in saying, “the person who drinks from them whence he should, and where and how, is happy” he ascribes to reasoning the distinguishing element in happiness. On this point, therefore, Plato and Democritus agree, inasmuch as Plato places in excellence of reasoning the good which is primary and sought for its own sake, and in pleasure that which supervenes, which he also supposes as a consequence to be called by the same words as joy (chara) and tranquillity (ataraxia).‘ [xvi]

            This passage is from Arius’ general introduction to ethics. The whole introduction has been drastically summarized, and its sources are notoriously difficult to sort out, but this specific point has been preserved as a coherent and argued presentation, which is worth taking seriously.

            We can see in general that for Democritus our final end starts in some way from pleasure, but is to be identified not with pleasure but with our reason’s discrimination of pleasures. This fits with the point from Diogenes Laertius that some people misinterpret Democritus’ end as being pleasure itself. In what follows I shall first follow up, with reference to the fragments, Arius’ initial point that our final end is internalized, and some consequences of this. Next I shall look at the relevant passages of the Laws to see what Arius has in mind in Plato, and ask whether we can find comparable thoughts in Democritus’ fragments, especially as regards the role of pleasure in the happy life. Finally, I shall look at the consequences in Plato, and then in Democritus, for the role in the happy life of reason and wisdom.

            What does it mean to say that happiness is located in the soul? In the Laws  Plato is clear that happiness is to be found in the life of virtue, not in the life aimed at acquisition of external goods. There are two kinds of goods, the Athenian says, divine and human; the divine goods are the virtues, and an individual’s life should be devoted to virtue rather than wealth and power (and consequently the life of the state should be suitably formed to produce people of this type). This is because the value to the person of external goods depends on the possession of virtue; someone with riches, power and every possible external good will be unhappy if he is not virtuous, while virtue ensures happiness even in the absence of external goods. [xvii] This bold position is set out in uncompromising language.

            We would not expect to find an exactly comparable position in Democritus for a number of reasons, the main one being that our fragments represent the situation Cicero describes by saying that Democritus’ position on virtue was scanty and not very well worked out. [xviii] Even Plato arguably has not worked out precisely what the consequences are for the role of external goods if happiness is ‘placed in the soul’; the options here were elaborated later, in the dialectic between Stoic and Aristotelian conceptions of happiness.

            However, even though the role of virtue is not prominent, we can see ideas in Democritus which provide a substantial parallel to Plato. The soul is consistently said to be more important than the body, and to be directive and to have influence on the body in a way that the body does not direct it. ‘It is fitting for people to make more account of (logon poieisthai) the soul than the body; for perfection of the soul rights badness of the body, but strength of the body without reasoning makes the soul not a bit better’ (fr. 187 = fr. 36); ‘What the body requires can easily be got by everybody without effort and misery; the things that require effort and misery and make one’s life painful are desired not by the body but by the understanding’s mistaking’ (fr. 223); ‘If the body were to sue the soul for its pains and sufferings all life long, then if he were on the jury he would gladly convict the soul of having ruined some parts of the body by carelessness or dissipated them by drunkenness, and of having destroyed and rendered others by its susceptibility to pleasures. It is just like one’s ready blame of the user of a tool or utensil in bad condition’ (fr. 159).  The goods of the soul are even distinguished as divine, as opposed to merely human, in a way that provides a rather startling parallel to Plato: ‘The person who chooses the goods of the soul chooses what is more divine; one who chooses those of the body, chooses what is human’ (fr. 37). ‘It is best for people to live their life with as much cheer and as little pain as possible. This would happen if they would not get their pleasures from mortal things’ (fr. 189).

            We thus find that happiness depends on what you are, in the sense of what you make of yourself. The distinction of soul and body here is not dualistic in a psychological sense; rather it distinguishes the soul as the aspect of you that is active and can change and direct the other aspect, here called the body. [xix] Happiness is to be found ‘in the soul’ - that is, in what you do with yourself and your life. ‘What is called happiness’ is the everyday conception of a successful life, such as the riches that people can amass under tyrannical rule (as opposed to poverty under a democracy) (fr. 251). But real happiness is not made up of things you have, but of what you yourself do with what you have; and this again depends on the kind of person you are.

            We also find a thought which follows fairly naturally from this, namely that the value to you of other things depends on the use you (ie your soul, the active aspect of you) make of them. ‘Things turn from good to bad for people, if one does not know how to guide and keep them resourcefully. It is not right to judge these things to be bad; they are goods. But it is possible to make use of good things, if one wishes, to ward off bad.’ (fr. 173); ‘Reputation and wealth without understanding are not safe possessions’ (fr. 77); ‘Making money is not unuseful, but if as a result of wrongdoing it is worse than anything’ (fr. 78). [xx] The thought that external goods have value for you in a way that depends on the use you make of them is apparently a commonplace in Plato’s time; he pushes it further, to the thought that it is virtue that determines the value for you of external goods. [xxi] Democritus stays closer to common sense here.

            What matters to a person seeking her final good, then, is not what she has, by way of bodily and external goods, but what she does with what she has. Democritus puts this as the thesis that one’s soul should direct one’s body and goods. Even lacking clear pronouncements on virtue, this is a striking internalization of one’s final end; what matters is within you, not without, Perhaps the most memorable expression of this is the thought that your daimon or guardian spirit is in your soul; the factor that accounts for your succeeding in living a good life or not is not an arbitrary allocation of fortune, but your own intelligence and the way you use it.

            It is a great pity that Democritus was not more explicit about the role of virtue, especially in the light of the interesting fragments about shame. ‘Feel no more shame before other people than before yourself. Don’t do a wrong thing any more if nobody will know than if every single person will know. Most of all feel shame before yourself, and set this up as a law for your soul, so as to do nothing inappropriate’ (fr. 264);’Neither say nor do anything base, even if you are alone. Learn to feel shame before yourself far more than before others’ ( fr. 244).  Shame, a reaction that you think of as a response to the views of others, is here treated as a reaction that you should have yourself to reflections about yourself. Bernard Williams has influentially called the ancient idea of shame that of the ‘internalized other’ , and in these fragments we can, it seems, see the other in the process of becoming internalized. [xxii] Again, it is what goes on within you that matters, rather than what happens outside you, including the reactions of others.

            This is the context in which we should probably consider fragments which stress the inner side of right- and wrong-doing. ‘It is good not merely not to do wrong, but not even to want to do it’ (fr. 62); ‘A man is reputable (dokimos) not merely from what he does, but also from what he intends (bouletai)’ (fr. 68). 

            By this point most of us are feeling Cicero’s frustration: surely what matters is not just to use your intelligence, but to use it virtuously, so why isn’t there more about virtue? We cannot, of course, satisfactorily answer this question. But we have already seen that some of Democritus’ fragments align themselves with Socratic ideas in that they make virtue far more important to the person than external goods are. It can only be the case that wrongdoing makes you unhappier than being wronged if virtue matters more than external goods such as security. It is pretty clear, in fact, that the ‘more divine’ goods of the soul must be the virtues, as they are divine goods for Plato in the Laws, but this cannot be demonstrated.

            I shall now turn to Arius’ interesting comment that for Democritus as for Plato happiness lies not in our pathe of pleasure and pain but in our reasoned distinction and discrimination of them. Elucidating the way Plato is being understood here is clearly the key to seeing what it is in Democritus that is being said to be in harmony with it.

               Arius picks out two points: that for Plato our guiding spirit, which leads us to happiness, is just our own reason, [xxiii] and that happiness begins from our pathe (feelings, emotions) of pleasure and pain, but resides not in them but in reasoning which distinguishes among pleasures and pains. He illustrates this with a quotation from the Laws (636 d-e) in which pleasure and pain are two fountains which provide happiness to the person who not merely takes from them but does so ‘whence, and and how’ he ought.

            Arius has here lighted on an immensely interesting point in the Laws, one which has had surprisingly little modern discussion. There are many passages which express a view which at first looks like hedonism: that everyone wants pleasure and cannot be motivated to do anything except by way of seeking pleasure.  Thus we find that we must show that the just life is the pleasantest, ‘for nobody could willingly be persuaded to do something, unless more pleasure than pain followed it.’ [xxiv] We look for a life in which pleasure predominates over pain, because ‘we choose less pain with more pleasure, do not choose less pleasure with more pain and when they are equal find it hard to be clear about what it is we want.’ [xxv] Pleasure and pain are two original fountains from which we drink, as in the passage quoted by Arius. Most strikingly, pleasure and pain are the strings which direct our movements, when we are conceived of as puppets of the gods. [xxvi] Pleasure and pain, then, are basic motivations for us; indeed Plato in the Laws seems to ignore the triparttivation to be reduced to an instrumental ability to produce pleasure and avoid pain. [xxvii] For it turns out that the human puppet is moved not just by the hard and inflexible strings of pleasure and pain, but by the soft, pliable string of reason. If we yield to our impulses to pleasure and pain in an unreasoned way, we are being jerked about like puppets. But if we follow reasoning, then we follow a source of motivation which makes us ‘masters of ourselves’; reason can direct and manipulate pleasure and pain in ways which they, being inflexible and irrational, cannot direct and manipulate it. (Further, reason, being embodied in the law of the state, connects us to other rational beings.) It is by using our reasons that we make ourselves able to shape our lives and to seek pleasure and pain only in the right way - which in the Laws is uncompromisingly the way directed by virtue.

            In fact, in the Laws Plato is optimistic to the point of naiveté about the power of reason to transform our lives and to direct us to take pleasure in what is underwritten by morality. As in the Republic, there is an extensive educational system. Children’s first perceptions, the Athenian says, are of pleasure and pain, and it is ‘in these’ that virtue and vice first come to the soul. Hence children are brought up in ways that ensure that they take pleasure in what is morally sanctioned and find what is immoral painful and repulsive. [xxviii] Plato even thinks that our pleasure in sex, one of the most basic drives, is so socially conditioned that a change in social conditioning can utterly transform it. In a passage in Book 8 which strikingly suggests the modern view of sexuality as a social construct, Plato thinks that people can be brought, if not quite to desire none but married, reproductive sex, at any rate to find homosexual sex as repulsive as they now find incestuous sex. If homosexual sex is always presented in negative and repellent ways, he thinks, then people will not desire it, or find it pleasant. [xxix]

            In the Laws, then we can see ideas which justify Arius’ claim that Plato holds that the origins of happiness lie in pleasure and pain as pathe, that is, as unreflective feelings or reactions, while the distinguishing element in it is reason. It is because we can reason that we can educate and transform our basic drives for pleasure and pain so that we take pleasure and pain in what reason approves. The person who does this is happy, while the person who merely goes along unreflectively with their feelings will not thereby achieve happiness.

            Can we find anything in Democritus which would explain for us why Arius takes him to be in harmony with Plato on this point? [xxx] We know from Diogenes Laertius 45 that our final end is euthumia and not pleasure, and that the latter would be a mistaken interpretation.  Perhaps it is in this context that we should read fr. 69, ‘For all people the good and the true are the same; but the pleasant (hedu) is different for different people’. What people find pleasant depends on a number of factors which vary between people; but the good, our final end which we seek, can’t depend on personal attitude in this way. Pleasure can’t be our final end, we might say, because it is subjective, whereas our final end must be objective, something that everyone would agree they had reason to seek. Eudaimonia,as we know from Aristotle, fills this bill, and so presumably do the other specifications that Democritus uses. It would be interesting to know, as we cannot, whether the term euesto that Democritus employs was chosen because it suggests objective well-being, or whether its presence is merely an accident of Ionic dialect. [xxxi]

            Arius himself connects Plato and Democritus in saying that Democritus held that our final end lies in distinguishing and discriminating (diorismos kai diakrisis) pleasures, something said to be both most fine (kalliston) and most advantageous (sumphorotaton).   The fragment most obviously relevant to this is fr. 74: ‘Accept no pleasure, unless it is advantageous (sumpherei)’. This, however, brings with it a well-known complication in the apparent tension with fr. 188 (cf. fr. 4): ‘The boundary (horos) of what is advantageous and disadvantageous is enjoyment and lack of enjoyment (terpsis kai aterpie).’ Fr. 74 makes good sense in relation to the Arius passage, and it is quite easy to find interpretative contexts for fr. 188 which do not have it coming out in conflict with 74.  It is likely that it refers to the final end, rather than to particular occasions of choice, as does 74, and it is also likely that horos here means a boundary in the sense of a sign that the state obtains, rather than something definitive of what the state is. [xxxii] It is a sign of having achieved one’s final end, a rational discrimination of pleasures according to Arius, that one enjoys one’s life. This is what we would expect from a philosopher who characterizes our final end in terms of enjoyment, cheerfulness and lack of trouble. However, far from its following from this that every pleasure is to be taken, we should in fact choose only pleasures whose enjoyment will conduce to the attainment of a rational discrimination of pleasures.

            This sentiment fits with several fragments on pleasure. Some fragments give a positive role to pleasure. ‘A life without feasts is a long road with no inns’ (fr. 230); ‘Of pleasant things those that are rarest give most enjoyment when they happen’ (fr.232). However, we find that not everybody has a pleasant life, and the reason for this is their lack of intelligence. ‘Fools live without enjoying life’ (fr. 200); ‘Fools desire length of life while not enjoying length of life’ (fr. 201); ‘Fools desire what is absent, but neglect what is present and past, though they are more fruitful’ (fr. 202); ‘Fools please[?] nobody their whole life long’ (fr. 204); ‘Fools desire life because they are afraid of death’ (fr. 205); ‘Fools wish to grow old because they are afraid of death’ (fr. 206). The fools who are lambasted are people who do not use their reason and intelligence, and as a result they do not enjoy life. They cling to life, for example, merely because they are afraid of something worse; and if you don’t even enjoy being alive, how can your overall state be a positive, enjoyable one? Intelligence is required, it seems, for the living of an enjoyable life, and we can plausibly connect this to the idea that particular occasions of choosing pleasure should be guided by what is overall to one’s advantage, rather than by unreflectively pursuing the immediately pleasant.

            We can see this idea in other fragments, for example fr. 146 with its context in Plutarch’ s On Progress in Virtue 81 a, which tells us that a person who stands well in his own estimation, and is pleased and satisfied with, rather than disdainful of himself as a competent witness and spectator of fine things, shows that reason is nourished and rooted within himself and that, as Democritus says, ‘it is accustomed to find pleasures from itself’.

            Most noticeable here are fragments which link our final end not merely to what is overall advantageous but to what is fine (kalon), which Aristotle characterizes as the aim of the virtuous person. ‘One should choose not every pleasure, but pleasure at what is fine’ (fr. 207). ‘Temperance (sophrosune) increased what is enjoyable (ta terpna) and makes pleasure greater’ (fr. 211). ‘ A cheerful person who is led to deeds that are just and lawful rejoices day and night, and is strengthened and without care. But whoever disregards justice and does not do what he ought finds all such things unenjoyable when he remembers any of them, and is afraid and reproaches himself’ (fr. 174). Here greater overall pleasure is linked not just to rational choice of what is advantageous but to virtue and the fine. Once again we can only lament the absence of texts that would clarify for us the link that Democritus makes between virtue and advantage. Cicero’s complaint certainly seems to be supported by the fact that Arius tells us that for Democritus our final end lies in the discrimination of pleasures, and that this is both ‘finest and most advantageous’ for people. We would expect something more theoretically sophisticated as to why these should go together, but we do not find it.

However, theoretically unsupported or not, we do find the claim that virtue, far from being opposed to pleasure, actually increases it. We can see from the fragments and from Arius’ comparison with the Laws, the general lines of the idea here. We naturally go for pleasure and pain, but, being humans, we are also motivated by reason, which enables us to reflect on and hence to modify our life, in such a way as to take pleasure in what is moral and advantageous; and this results in a more pleasurable life overall than does the mindless pursuit of particular pleasures.

            This brings us to the third point, the prominence in the fragments we have of reason and wisdom as a key to living well. Even in fragments which do not directly link the exercise of intelligence to living more enjoyably or tranquilly, we find a constant harping on the importance of using one’s own reason in one’s life. Many of these fragments look at first glance like banal advice, but even if this is the impression they produce as individuals, the cumulative impression they produce is that of an ethical philosophy that has grounds for thinking that happiness is the product of one’s own reasoning rather than external factors. [xxxiii] Using one’s own reason is opposed to chance, [xxxiv] and also to one’s given endowments. In Democritus’ view we can be educated to organize our lives in a reflective way which will lead us to happiness.    

            Thus we find that, ’People fashioned an image of chance as an excuse for their own lack of counsel (aboulie). For chance seldom fights with practical wisdom, and intelligent sharp-sightedness sets straight most things in life’ (fr. 119). This intelligence is something that has to be learned: ‘Neither skill nor wisdom is attainable, unless you learn’ (fr. 59). [xxxv]   Learning is a matter of acquiring rational understanding, not facts: ‘Many are polymaths but lack sense (nous)’ (fr. 64). [xxxvi] Those who do not learn are ignorant in a profounder way than those who are ignorant of facts: ‘The cause of going wrong (hamartie) is ignorance of the better’ (fr.83). Learning is important because, ‘Nature (phusis) and teaching are close, for teaching reshapes (metarusmoi) the person, and in reshaping makes their nature (phusiopoiei)’ (fr. 33). Teaching, that is, alters us. [xxxvii] It enables us to detach ourselves from the mindless pursuit of present pleasures, and to discriminate and choose between pleasures with a view to obtaining our final end. That is one reason why Democritus is so sure that learning the content of his sayings will improve the reader (fr. 35). The person who has developed his reason through teaching has a surer basis for right conduct than the unreflective person who acts because of motives like fear, or avoidance of law-breaking (fr. 181); the person convinced by ‘the persuasion of reasoning’ will not do wrong even where he might get away with it. ‘Reason is far more powerful for persuasion than gold’ (fr. 52). [xxxviii]

            It is probably in this context that we should understand the repeated claim that wisdom leads us to do the right thing, where this is seen as the mean between two opposed ways of going wrong. ‘If you were to overshoot the mean (to metrion), the most enjoyable things would become most unpleasant’ (fr. 233). Many fragments develop the related idea that there is an appropriate amount (presumably the mean between excess and defect) of what one seeks, and that hitting this is what correctness of action is.  ‘For people who get their pleasures from the belly, overshooting the appropriate point in eating or drinking or sex, the pleasures are brief and short-lasting, just for the time they are eating or drinking, while the pains are many. For they always have the desire for the same things; whenever they get what they desire, the pleasure quickly goes and there is nothing good in them but a brief joy. And then they need the same things again’ (fr. 235). [xxxix]   

            Many theoretical questions remain unanswered here. The two most prominent are, firstly, What is the place of virtue in the happy life? On the one hand it is clearly seen as important for the person seeking happiness, yet obvious problems arise if virtue requires self-denial, for example, while the end we seek is a positive, cheerful one. The person wronged is happier than the wrongdoer, according to both Democritus and Plato; but while this thought is set in context in Plato’s Gorgias, it is hard to see how it can be effectively defended as a way of being cheerful or tranquil. Democritus would probably reply that virtue, as a good of the soul, is more divine than the merely human goods that you get by flouting virtue and doing wrong. But perhaps it is not surprising that he said little about virtue, given the difficulty of sustaining such thoughts when happiness is thought of as consisting not in virtue but in a life which is cheerful, balanced, tranquil and so on. Here we can only say that Democritus is a pioneer, but that his work shows up the need for a fuller treatment of virtue as a good of the soul, and the corresponding moral psychology that will go with such a claim.

            Secondly, Democritus locates happiness ‘in the soul’, but can the happy life really be internalized in this way? [xl] Here we find that even Plato is not as clear as his successors, and arguably clarity on the issue is not achieved until the Stoics, who see that if you claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness, then you have to distinguish sharply between the value of virtue (and the kind of role it has in your life) and the value (and role) of everything else. If virtue is sufficient for happiness, then external goods can be no more than what the Stoics calls ‘preferred indifferents’. If external goods can add to the happy life, either by helping to make it happy or by making it happier than it would otherwise be, then virtue is important for happiness, but not sufficient, and we need to know what its role is, and how important for happiness it is.

            This is not merely a problem for the thought that virtue is what matters for happiness; it arises for any theory which puts happiness ‘in the soul’, whether as virtue or as the rational pursuit of advantage. The tone of many of the fragments, as well as the idea that the soul is the user of the body, suggests that Democritus thinks that external goods make a life happy for the rational reflector in a way that they do not for the ignorant. This is compatible with external goods forming a part of the happiness of the rational and wise, so that their happiness would not be completely ‘in the soul’. Yet some of the characterizations of happiness, especially as tranquillity (ataraxia) look suitable for a theory which does locate happiness completely in what is up to us.  This wavering is culpable by the standards of later eudaimonist theory, when there had been much debate over the different options open once something internal to the person is held to be the most important element of happiness. But we can easily understand that at the beginning of eudaimonist theory the most important point would seem to be that of insisting that it is your own rational reflection that matters for happiness, rather than external goods. The different options open after wisdom and reflection are recognized to be more important than external goods cannot be expected to emerge clearly until there has been debate on the topic. 

            Whether we call Democritus a eudaimonist will depend on how much explicit theory we demand before we are prepared to use the word. He does not clearly stress the formal aspects of our final end (completeness, self-sufficiency), so important from Aristotle onwards, and adumbrated in Plato. [xli] Nor does he emphasise the intuitive point that we seek happiness in everything we do, while it cannot be sensibly thought of as a step towards a further end. [xlii] However, we can see that the fact that some of the fragments have struck people as ‘Socratic’ is not a matter of copying a few sentiments (whichever be the copier, Democritus or Plato). Rather, Democritus puts forward positions which, like Plato’s, require interpretation in terms of a eudaimonist theory to make sense of them.

            Democritus, assuming that we seek happiness, has a broadly specified account of what this is, namely cheerfulness, tranquillity, a generally positive view of one’s life, one in which virtue is important in an unargued way. In this he differs from Plato, who gives a more emphatic and dominant role to virtue, and he is best seen, as we would expect, as a forerunner of Epicurus, who likewise specifies happiness as a tranquil and positive condition (though unlike Democritus he calls this pleasure). Democritus is, however, similar to Plato in his insistence on the dependence of happiness on your own intelligent organization of your life; the only guardian spirit you have or need is in your own mind. [xliii] He does not say that the unexamined life is not worth living, but he is sufficiently scathing about fools and the mess they make of their lives for it to be plausible that he would have approved of the idea. Only the reasoned and rationally ordered life has a hope of being happy. Like Plato, moreover, he is clear that the rationally ordered life will be one with different priorities from the lives of ordinary unreflective people. Like Plato’s Socrates, he startles us with the claim that the wrongdoer is unhappier than the person wronged, that what matters for happiness is within you, that the commonly agreed criteria for happiness, such as beauty or wealth, are quite mistaken. These striking departures from common-sense rest on a confidence in the results of rational reflection on one’s life shared by later, more detailed and explicit eudaimonists.

            The view of Democritus as a prosy dispenser of common-sense advice is thus quite mistaken. He thinks that we should live rationally ordered lives focussed on a single end, happiness, and follow through the results of thinking this way rigorously even when it conflicts with common-sense. For my money this makes him a eudaimonist. It is not, I think,useful to reopen the question of whether he influenced Socrates or vice versa; we shall never be able to determine the answer, and in any case the question of who first expressed a new way of thinking of things is unimportant. But in histories of ethics it would do more justice to Democritus to mention him, at least, as one of the pioneers of the dominant form of ethical theory in the ancient world.