6

Stoicism
brad inwood

Stoicism as a philosophical movement had a long and distinguished history,

from its foundation in the late fourth century BCE until it yielded to Platonism
in late antiquity. For over 500 years its well-coordinated theories in physics and
cosmology, in ethics and in logic (including dialectic and rhetoric) exercised
great influence on the development of other philosophical schools and on
broader intellectual culture in the Greco-Roman world. In turn, Stoicism was
consistently being shaped by debate with other schools. The Stoic school,
especially in the area of ethics, was unambiguously in the Socratic tradition,
like Peripatetic and Platonic philosophy. By contrast, though Epicurean ethics
was influenced to some extent by the Socratic tradition, its basic approach was
fundamentally different; for much of the Hellenistic period Epicureanism and
Stoicism represented opposing but mutually influential approaches to the issue
of how to live a good human life, which tended to be the central focus of
ethical thinking in the ancient world.
An anecdote about the origins of Stoicism, preserved by Diogenes
Laertius, sheds helpful light on its ethics. Zeno, the school’s founder (died
c. 262 BCE), came to Athens from Citium on the island of Cyprus. One day
he went into Athens (he was thirty years old at the time) and sat down by a
certain bookseller. The bookseller was reading the second book of
Xenophon’s Memorabilia [of Socrates]; he enjoyed it and asked where men
like that spent their time. Fortuitously, Crates [the Cynic] came by and the
bookseller pointed to him and said, ‘Follow this man.’ From then on Zeno
studied with Crates, being in other respects fit for and intent on philosophy,
but too modest for Cynic shamelessness . . .1

There can be little doubt that the excerpt which Zeno heard came from
Chapter 1 of Memorabilia Book 2, a dialogue between Socrates and the
1
Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers (hereafter D.L.) 7.2–3. Here and wherever
possible translations are taken from Inwood and Gerson 2008.

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hedonist Aristippus, in the course of which Socrates relates a parable first

developed by Prodicus (a ‘sophist’ who was widely regarded to have been an
influence on Socrates), about the Choice of Heracles (2.1.21–34). The upshot
of this story was that Heracles, a human hero who ascended to join the gods
because of his outstanding virtue and achievements, chose the hard life of
virtue over the soft life of pleasure. Inspired by this, Zeno, the future head of
the Stoic school, dedicated himself to the Cynic way of life under the tutelage
of Crates (himself a student of Diogenes of Sinope, who had been taught by
Socrates’ follower Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynic movement).
Cynicism was a curiously anti-theoretical philosophical movement in the
fourth century BCE. Opposed on principle to what they saw as the false
values of ordinary society, Cynics pursued the best human life by following
nature, stripping away superfluities and pretence. Like Socrates, the Cynics
were willing to challenge and defy conventional values; they were if anything
even more thorough-going in their anti-conventionalism. Eschewing wealth,
marriage, householding, not to mention the risks and vanities of political life,
they pursued virtue on its own, stripped down to what they regarded as the
bare, natural essentials. Diogenes lived in a storage amphora and defied
political convention, going so far as to be rude to Alexander the Great himself
when the spirit so moved him. The Cynic lifestyle involved being satisfied
with the plainest of food and the most direct satisfaction of physical desires.
Sexual intercourse in a public place was nothing to be ashamed of, any more
than the performance of other basic bodily functions. The nickname ‘dog’
(hence the label ‘Cynic’ from the Greek word kuôn) was inevitable, given
such behaviour. This, of course, was the shamelessness which Zeno could
not accept, even as he learned so much else from his master Crates.
The Cynics inherited the contrast between nature and convention, phusis
and nomos, influential since the sophistic movement in the fifth century BCE.
While not taking nature in quite the extreme way that Cynics did, Zeno made
‘accordance with nature’ the central tenet of his ethical theory. In one form or
another, all Stoics from Zeno until the end of antiquity embraced the idea
that one must live in full accord with nature if one is to live a successful
human life. On this foundation (or, one might say, revolving around this
fixed point) one can find all of the essential features of Stoic ethics. In this
Stoic ethics was not unique. When faced with the choice between nature and
contingent conventions as the determinant of ethical theory few philoso-
phers have embraced mere convention. Pyrrhonist sceptics denied the exis-
tence of natural values and so recommended life in accordance with the
customs and habits of one’s society; and some of the sophists who had

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 Stoicism

articulated the contrast of nature and convention held that there was nothing
but convention to live by. It could be argued that some details of Aristotelian
virtues should be thought of as depending on the conventions of the polis, but
Aristotle himself regarded the polis as the natural way for human beings to
live. If there is anything distinctive about the Stoic commitment to life
according to nature it must lie in their conception of the nature in accordance
with which people are supposed to live.

LIFE ACCORDING TO NATURE

Stoicism focussed on two senses of nature, the nature of the cosmos as a

whole and the nature of humans. This, at least, is the mature form of the
theory as expounded by Chrysippus, the third head of the school (c. 280–205
BCE): ‘by nature, in consistency with which we must live, Chrysippus under-
stands both the common and, specifically, the human nature. Cleanthes [the
second head, c. 330–230 BCE] includes only the common nature, with which
one must be consistent, and not the individual’ (D.L. 7.89). It is not com-
pletely clear how Zeno, the founder, put the point, but it is safe to assume
that his understanding of nature was not the stripped-down, antinomian
version he learned from Crates. At the very least Zeno held that human
nature was more robustly social than Cynics held, and in this respect Stoics
aligned with mainstream values, as did Aristotle. Commitment to the intrin-
sic value of social bonds of various sorts was a defining feature of Stoicism, in
contrast to Epicureanism, which regarded such relations, even friendship and
family ties, as merely instrumental. Zeno advanced some form of ‘cosmopo-
litanism’ (treating all rational beings, gods and men, as parts of one ‘civic’
structure),2 thus integrating human nature (with both its social and individual
focusses) and cosmic nature (including the gods). Chrysippus seems to have
reinstated this position in opposition to Cleanthes, whose focus on the nature
of the whole cosmos gave his version of Stoicism a more theological aspect.3
It is clear that there were differences of emphasis among Stoics about
how best to conceive of the nature in harmony with which one should
live, but the essential Stoic view is clear: living in accordance with one’s
rational nature as a human, one’s social nature, and in conformity with

2
Schofield 1991.
3
Though theology was of critical importance to all Stoics, Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus
testifies to a particularly strong emphasis on the divine character of the cosmos
whose nature humans are to harmonize with.

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 brad inwood

the cosmos (which was consistently understood as a teleologically organized,

providential whole governed by a rational, divine plan) is the key to a good
life. A life of that sort is the telos, or goal, for humans, and the best way to
survey the range of views Stoics took on this issue is to consider their various
definitions or characterizations of the telos.

THE AIM OF LIFE

In the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle crystallized the notion of a

highest good, a goal (telos) for the sake of which all rational action is
ultimately done and is itself pursued for the sake of nothing else. Such an
architectonic organizing principle provides a focus for thinking about values
and right action, and the Stoics worked out their own version of this concept.
There was considerable variety in the formulations of the telos during the
school’s history, but the underlying concept was quite stable. In one source
(D.L. 7.87) we read that Zeno ‘said that the goal was to live in agreement with
nature, which is to live according to virtue; for nature leads us to virtue’. The
built-in bias towards aretê (virtue, excellence) is a feature of Aristotelian and
other mainstream teleological thinking about ethics in the ancient world; the
Stoics were strongly committed to this approach, understanding virtue as a
kind of ‘completion’ or perfection of human nature (see D.L. 7.90).4 It is
worth quoting one ancient survey of various Stoic formulations of the telos to
illustrate this variety.
Zeno defined the telos thus: ‘living in agreement’. This means living accord-
ing to a single and consonant rational principle [logos], since those who live in
conflict are unhappy. Those who came after him made further distinctions
and expressed it thus: ‘living in agreement with nature’, supposing that
Zeno’s formulation was an incomplete predication. For Cleanthes, who
first inherited his school, added ‘with nature’ and defined the telos thus:
‘the goal is living in agreement with nature’. Chrysippus wanted to make this
clearer and expressed it in this way: ‘to live according to experience of the
things which happen by nature’. And Diogenes: ‘to be reasonable in the

4
The natural bias towards the development of virtue made it necessary for the Stoics
to develop a robust theory of how human development goes wrong so system-
atically that virtually no one actually achieves virtue even though it is the goal of
human life, just as excellence in its kind is the natural telos for anything in the natural
world. See D.L. 7.89. Many ancient critics thought that the Stoic account of failure
to develop virtue was unsuccessful.

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 Stoicism

selection and rejection of natural things’.5 And Archedemus: ‘to live com-
pleting all the appropriate acts’ [kathêkonta]6. And Antipater: ‘to live invari-
ably selecting natural things and rejecting unnatural things’. He often defined
it thus as well: ‘invariably and unswervingly to do everything in one’s power
for the attainment of the principal natural things’.7

Other characterizations of the telos are similar. Panaetius, we are told, said the
goal was ‘to live in accordance with the inclinations given to us by nature’;
Posidonius said it was ‘to live in contemplation of the truth and orderliness of
the universe, helping to establish that order as much as one can, being in no
respect led astray by the irrational part of the soul’.8 This more cosmological
formulation has unique features (the reference to an irrational component
within us which must be resisted, the focus on contemplation), but even this
way of expressing the telos coheres well enough with a fuller formulation
which seems to stem from Chrysippus: to live ‘according to one’s own nature
and that of the universe, doing nothing which is forbidden by the common
law [nomos], which is right reason, penetrating all things, being the same as
Zeus, who is the leader of the administration of things. And this itself is the
virtue of the happy man and a smooth flow of life, whenever all things are
done according to the harmony of the divinity [daimôn] in each of us with the
will of the administrator of the universe.’9
Stoic ethics, then, was in outline similar to Aristotelian eudaimonism: the
natural completion or perfection of human nature is the goal of life; distinc-
tive views about human nature, then, determine what counts as human
excellence, or virtue. Practical reason (expressed in terms of selection and
rejection of ‘natural things’) is the realization of this virtue; and since human
nature is integrated with the nature of the cosmos, itself rational, providential
and divine, human excellence cannot, for the Stoics, be understood without
taking full account of how we fit into the cosmic scheme of things.

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE GOOD

The relationship of ethics to cosmology and theology is one of the features of

Stoic ethics that distinguishes it sharply from other movements in ancient ethics.
Another such feature is the Stoic emphasis on the uniqueness of the good. In
5
‘Natural things’ (ta kata phusin) are favourable or positive factors in the life of a given
kind of animal, things like health, prosperity, good social relations, etc. See below on
‘preferred indifferents’.
6
See below, n. 17. 7 These three Stoics were prominent in the second century BCE.
8
Clement Stromates 2.21.129. 9 D.L. 7.88.

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 brad inwood

most ancient ethical systems there is a close connection between the conception
of the good and happiness (eudaimonia), which is often described in terms of
possessing or doing what is good. And on this the Stoics took a very strong
position, claiming that the only properly good thing is virtue itself and what
participates in virtue. Epicureans, of course, disagreed; for them as for Eudoxus10
pleasure is the only truly good thing. Aristotelians held that there are three kinds
of good (bodily, mental, external), whereas the Stoic position comes down to
holding that only mental goods (goods of the soul) are genuine. Antipater, head
of the school in the second century BCE, argued that even Plato held this view,
writing a book entitled ‘that according to Plato only the kalon is good’.11
But how did the Stoics defend their rather austere and restricted conception
of the good? The answer lies, as is well known, in their interpretation of their
Socratic heritage. It is of course important that Xenophon gives his readers a
portrait of Socrates focussed relentlessly on moral virtue, and this no doubt
encouraged the Stoics in their high-mindedness. More important, though, is an
argument found more than once in Plato’s dialogues12 and also reflected in
Xenophon:13 the good is what is beneficial or useful, so anything that can harm
as well as help cannot be genuinely good. This point was heartily embraced by
the Stoics14 and was the foundation of the doctrine that only virtue (which is
unambiguously noble or fine, kalon) is good – anything else, even physical
health and positive mental attributes such as good memory and quick wits, can
in principle be harmful to the agent. So however much those positive features
of life may accord with nature in one sense, they cannot be good and thereby
make a decisive contribution to the happy life. Only virtue can be counted on
to have that impact; hence it alone is good.15 And conversely only vice is bad.
Other defects and disappointing features of life (such as disease, pain and
premature death) are not really bad. The way an agent reacts to or ‘uses’
such favourable or unfavourable circumstances is the only thing that is good or
bad, and that use is exactly what depends on (that is, participates in) virtue.
But things like health, strength, a good memory and a supportive com-
munity are obviously positive features in a human life – they are ‘according to
nature’ just as disease, premature death, mental weakness and social isolation
are ‘contrary to nature’. Although everything except virtue is indifferent to
10
See Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10.2.
11
In fact, the situation in Plato’s dialogues is quite complex and could be interpreted
along broadly Aristotelian or Stoic lines.
12
Gorgias 467–8, Euthydemus 278–82, Meno 87–9. 13 Memorabilia 4.6.8. 14 D.L. 7.103.
15
Along with things which are causally or conceptually dependent on it, i.e., what
participates in virtue. This includes virtuous people and actions.

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 Stoicism

the happy life (in the sense that it does not guarantee it or even form an
indispensable part of it) the positive features in life are naturally ‘preferred’
and the negative ones are naturally ‘dispreferred’. These terms (proêgmenon,
preferred; apoproêgmenon, dispreferred) are Stoic coinages and play a key role
in Stoic value theory. Where Aristotelians recognized three kinds of goods
(bodily, mental and external) the Stoics classified every positive value except
virtue as a preferred indifferent and everything negative in life, except vice, as
a dispreferred indifferent.16
Since the practice of virtue involves analysing, selecting and rejecting such
natural values and disvalues, these ‘indifferent’ features of our lives clearly
matter to the happy life; as Chrysippus put it, they are the principle under-
lying ‘appropriate action’17 and the ‘raw material’ of virtue.18 Hence it is
deeply misleading to say that in Stoicism nothing matters except virtue and
vice; Antipater coined the term ‘selective value’ for the feature of preferred
indifferents which makes them worth pursuing in an intelligent way.19 In fact,
the proper ‘use’ of preferred and dispreferred things is indispensable to the
virtuous and happy life. What Stoics emphasized, then, much more than
other ancient moral theorists, is that simply coming to possess preferred
things (and to avoid coming up against dispreferred things) cannot deter-
mine whether one is successful in living a life in accordance with human
nature, i.e., whether one is happy. For the value of our rational navigation
through the contingencies of life is absolute and depends on how well, how
rationally, it is done, even though such navigation would be meaningless if
there were not a natural basis for preferring and avoiding the positive and
negative ‘indifferents’ in life. It is reasonable, then, to describe the Stoics as
dualists in their axiology, while recognizing that the one scale of value (virtue
and vice) has an absolute priority over the quite distinct and incommensurable
scale of value determined by things that are in accordance with or in conflict
with our nature.

16
They also recognized that some things are absolutely indifferent in that they aren’t
aligned with or against a natural human life. Such things (such as ‘having an odd or
even number of hairs on one’s head’) do not attract or repel us (stimulate an
impulse towards or away from themselves); see D.L. 7.104–5.
17
Appropriate action (to kathêkon) is action or behaviour which makes sense (that is,
‘admits of a reasonable justification’) for human beings (D.L. 7.107–9), though each
natural kind has its own set of kathêkonta which accord with its specific nature. For
rational animals, ‘right actions’ (katorthômata) are a special subset of appropriate
actions.
18
Plutarch On Common Conceptions 1069e, quoting Chrysippus. 19 Stobaeus 2.83–5.

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 brad inwood

VIRTUE AND VICE

Following the example of Plato, Aristotle and their schools, the Stoics devel-
oped rich and complex descriptive taxonomies of the virtues and vices.
Though some Stoics, such as Aristo of Chios, argued for a radically unitary
conception of virtue, the mainstream view was that there are four cardinal or
top-level virtues (wisdom, justice, self-control and courage) and a complex
array of species and sub-species. The vices mirrored this classification. Since
virtue is understood as a perfection and completion of human nature, the
various virtues were generally held to be mutually entailing; if you had one
you had them all, though each had its own distinct sphere of operation and
characteristics. Similarly, as a perfection virtue did not, on the strict Stoic
view of things, admit of degrees. There was no question of being more or less
virtuous; either one had achieved perfection or not. This claim was not,
obviously, in accord with common sense which, then as now, recognized
degrees of goodness. Stoics certainly allowed for degrees of progress towards
the goal of complete virtue, and that allowed them to account for the looser
way of speaking (just as they could grant that preferred indifferents could be
non-technically referred to as goods, provided one recognized this as a loose
usage). But in the final analysis, virtue is a perfection (like straightness) which
is either present or not. This had the effect of making virtue an effectively
unachievable, aspirational goal. As a result, the Stoics claimed that virtuous
people had been unbelievably rare in the history of the world – something
which in no way detracted from the power of the ideal as a target for human
improvement.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GOOD CHARACTER

All ancient moral theories had something to say about how to make progress
towards virtue and happiness. The extreme idealism of Stoic ethics was one
factor that made this a greater challenge, but so too was their commitment to
providential determinism. Everything in the world is causally determined
and the active principle, the cause of it all, was a god who, like Plato’s
demiurge, aimed at producing the best possible outcome. So the fact that
people born with natural inclinations to virtue all go astray needed an
explanation. It was found readily enough in environmental and social influ-
ences (especially the corrupting influence of social conventions which the
Cynics had rejected). These forces inevitably undermine our natural inclina-
tions from very early childhood and the trajectory of moral education which

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 Stoicism

follows is difficult and demanding. The rational capacities of children develop

slowly as their concepts, including the concept of the good, are shaped by
experience and instruction. Until their rationality is completed, at what may
seem like an arbitrarily exact age of fourteen, children are not genuinely
accountable for their choices; but once reason is in charge people become
responsible for their own moral improvement.
Unlike Plato and Aristotle, Stoics tended not to believe that the passions
and desires are distinct, potentially recalcitrant forces in the human soul;
rather, once reason is in charge our desires and the behaviour based on them
are determined by the opinions we hold, whether consciously or not. Self-
knowledge is vital to moral progress, as one must learn to clarify one’s values
and to challenge the erroneous views inculcated by society. The later Stoic
Epictetus puts particular emphasis on this path to moral improvement, but
few if any of the Stoics would disagree with him. Moral progress was not a
matter of taming and habituating a set of ineradicably irrational desires, but
depended instead on the rational education of the unified soul of a mature
agent; a deep and critical understanding of the virtues and the place of human
beings in a cosmic community of reason was the goal. When and if this
process was completed our life is perfected. There is no weakness of will in
Aristotle’s sense. Full rationality guarantees ‘a smooth flow of life’ and
harmony both within oneself and with the larger rational world.

RELATIONS WITH OTHERS

Becoming virtuous is a personal achievement, but the nature which is

perfected by this process is intrinsically social. Our first and deepest affiliation
is to our own well-being (this is the oikeiôsis, or basic attachment to self-
preservation and personal development), but that well-being cannot be
realized without acknowledging and acting on our equally important com-
mitment to the well-being of our fellow human beings. The most obvious
‘proof’ of this natural sociability lies in the universal commitment to family
members; but the bonds which people feel to others in their community,
nation, and indeed to all other humans as such are equally natural. Although
eudaimonism, which rests on the cultivation of one’s own character and
personal fulfillment, can sometimes be interpreted as centred on oneself, the
Stoic version of it makes personal perfection radically dependent on a deep
commitment to other-regarding virtues. Stoics often think of the world as a
cosmopolis, a universal community of gods and humans in which shared
rationality is the foundation of a genuinely egalitarian communal life. Such an

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 brad inwood

ideal community is the model we are to have in mind and to emulate in our
more mundane lives as we pursue care for own moral well-being in the
context of whatever social environment we find ourselves in.

ACTIONS AND PASSIONS

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Stoic ethics is their analysis of

practical reason, actions, and passion. The adult rational soul is a unity, at
least in the sense that the desires and passions we are subject to are reflections
of, indeed are products of, our intellectual commitments and capacities.
There are no ‘brute’ desires; if we have an unmanageable appetite for food
or drink or an uncontrollable urge to lament the death of a loved one, that is
not because something in us does not listen to reason. It is because (whether
we realize it or not) we have overvalued those objects of concern. A critical
reassessment of carnal pleasures or a more thoughtful approach to human
mortality will not only change our beliefs but in addition it will thereby
reshape our desires and emotions. This version of moral psychology makes
practical reason sovereign over our affective lives as well as over our actions.
This control is manifested most clearly in mental ‘assent’ – that is, the
acceptance of the impressions on which an action or emotional reaction is
based. In the rather schematic analysis that turns up most frequently in our
sources, in adult humans actions and passions are proximately caused by such
acts of assent, each of which reflects the agent’s judgements about the value
of things. If I have a raging thirst for fine wine and act on it, that is a result of
my assent (on the relevant occasion) to the notion that fine wine is of
paramount value in my life. If I have an overwhelming fear of death in battle,
that is the result of my assent (perhaps unconscious, but in principle amen-
able to being brought to awareness) to the notion that death is an evil, more
to be avoided than the shame of betraying my country by running away.
In a rather Socratic mode the Stoics assumed that once we understand our
values and commitments and make conscious judgements about them we are in
a position to revise those views and improve our lives accordingly. If we have a
weak or uncertain attitude to such things the best plan is to withhold our assent,
to reserve judgement and refrain from actions and feelings that are reckless and
uncontrollable. Hence the Stoic advocacy of ‘freedom from passions’ (apatheia).
Whereas Peripatetics urged that we should use our practical reason to moderate
and regulate pleasure, pain and the passions generally, the life of the perfect wise
person on Stoic principles involved complete freedom from all the passions
(including pleasure and pain of the mental variety – there was no expectation

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 Stoicism

that physical pleasure and pain could be eliminated; our job there was to
recognize that such phenomena are indifferent rather than genuinely bad). In
keeping with their classification of the virtues, Stoics provided a similar taxon-
omy of the passions: fear, appetite, mental pleasure, and mental pain (grief). The
affective life of a virtuous person was not, however, barren. There is a rational
counterpart of fear (cautious avoidance of what is actually bad), of appetite (the
desire for genuinely good things) and of pleasure (joy at good things). The
absence of a virtuous counterpart to grief is puzzling at first sight, but less
surprising when one reflects that in the providential world as they saw it a truly
wise person would find nothing to regret or grieve for since even the saddest
outcomes are part of a benevolent divine plan.

RESPONSIBILITY AND DETERMINISM

In their physics, Stoics were committed to determinism (indeed to providen-

tial determinism). Since they were also committed to a form of physicalism
which included the human soul, they were pressed by critics to justify
holding people accountable for their actions. Critics claimed that if one’s
choices and decisions are part of a deterministic causal chain they won’t be
truly one’s own. Since self-determination is presupposed by Stoic ethics,
failure to respond to such criticisms would undermine their theory. A full
discussion of Stoic compatibilism would be out of place here, but Chrysippus
countered criticism from Academics in particular by emphasizing the role
played by assent in the Stoic analysis of action and character. Responsible
action is the result of assent to appropriate stimuli from the environment in
the form of phantasiai, representations of states of affairs to which human
response is appropriate. For example, a representation of a charging lion
impinges on me, to which the appropriate practical response would be flight.
Do I run? That depends on whether I give my assent to the notion that a
danger is present for which flight is an appropriate response. I could in
principle decline to assent, stand my ground and wrestle with the lion, or I
could run away and survive. Clearly the approach of the lion is determined by
causes beyond my control. But what determines my response? Certainly it
will be causally determined, since my reactions and behaviours are as much a
part of the web of causation as anything else that happens in the world of
corporeal objects. My ‘choice’ of how to respond, then, is not a free and
uncaused choice; there is no liberty of indeterminism. My response is caused
by the state of my character and personality; if my soul is cautious in a certain
way, then I assent to the idea of running away, and if it is reckless and bold I

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 brad inwood

will not assent to running away but stand my ground and suffer the con-
sequences. The determining causal factor is clearly the state of my character
and the action is very much my own as a result – it is ‘up to me’. The fact that
I do not have absolute liberty to respond in any way at all does not make the
action any less attributable to me; and the fact that I have not been the only
cause of the development of my own character likewise does not make the
action any less my own. The fact that the decisive cause is something internal
to my own mind is enough, in Stoic eyes, to justify attributions of
responsibility.
If the challenge is merely to show how agents can be causally responsible
for their actions, including their character-shaping decisions, then this strat-
egy ought to suffice and there is every reason to think that Stoics remained
intellectually comfortable with this theory. The Aristotelian commentator
Alexander of Aphrodisias (who advocated a radical liberty of indifference in
his De fato) and later Platonists were not convinced and aimed to force Stoics
either to reject full causal determinism for the material world or to admit that
human agency involved an immaterial psychic starting point that was free of
the nexus of causation.

PUZZLES AND PARADOXES

The compatibility of responsibility with determinism might seem paradoxical,

but it was far from the most challenging Stoic doctrine. Throughout antiquity
the Stoics were emphatic in their embrace of other ethical theses which their
opponents and common sense recognized as deeply implausible – at least if one
accepts the ordinary senses of the terms involved. No doubt they advocated
paradox as an intellectual challenge and to underscore the distinctiveness of the
conceptual foundations of their moral theory. Thus, since virtue is a perfect
condition all states of vice are ‘equal’ and there are no degrees of virtue any
more than there are degrees of straightness in geometry – a line is either
straight or not and all deviations are equally deviations (even if they are not
equal deviations). Similarly all right actions (katorthômata) and all moral mis-
takes (hamartêmata) are equal, at least in so far as they are all products of virtue
and vice respectively. And the wise person is free of emotions – not in the sense
that he or she has no feelings at all, but rather because the pathê are by
definition vicious states of character. And only the wise are free, since everyone
else is enslaved to passions and errors. And the wise man is a true king while all
fools (everyone else) are slaves.

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 Stoicism

As a pedagogical tool these paradoxes no doubt did their intended job quite
well, but they left the school chronically exposed to criticisms with which it is
only natural to sympathize. And yet, as Seneca says, the underlying doctrines
are not quite so crazy as they might sometimes appear. As he put the point in
his On Benefits (2.35.2): ‘some of the things we say seem rebarbative to our
normal way of speaking, but then they come back around to it by an indirect
path’. This is a point that one might make about Stoic ethics as a whole.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

An asterisk denotes secondary literature especially suitable for further reading.

Inwood, B. ed. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge University Press).*
Inwood, B. and Donini, P.L. 1999. ‘Stoic Ethics’, in K. Algra et al. (eds.), Cambridge History of
Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), ch. 21.
Inwood, B. and Gerson, L.P. 2008. The Stoics Reader (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett).
Long, A.A. 1974. Hellenistic Philosophy (London: Duckworth).
Long, A.A. 1996. Stoic Studies (Cambridge University Press).
Long, A.A. 2002. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford University Press).*
Long, A.A. and Sedley, D.N. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge University
Press).
Schofield, M. 1991. The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge University Press).
Schofield, M. and Striker, G. eds. 1986. The Norms of Nature (Cambridge University Press).

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