The rather rigid interpretation of Plutarch’s ethics as a palingenesis of
Platonism or Aristotelianism that established itself in the last century has not been
able to justify certain contradictions within the ethical thinking of the intellectual
of Chaeronea. One set concerns the phenomena of passion and of apathy, the former
presented as a force that is sometimes positive, sometimes negative; the latter being
considered an ideal that is sometimes divine, sometimes beastly. The solution to
these contradictions, if not their justification, advanced by Babut - who pointed to
anti-Stoicism as the common element that would bring unity to both themes - is not
convincing, as it fails to explain the absolute condemnation of passion as an illness of
the soul that one encounters in the Moralia and the Vitae, where, however, anti-Stoic
polemics are absent. On the basis of these texts I believe it is possible to suggest a
solution to these contradictions with a new interpretation that seems to find support
in the images that Plutarch uses to explain the complex nature of the fundamental
concept of passion.