On Ethics
The ethical system of the stoics contains no great novelty: like every other ancient philosophy, they praised moderation, fortitude, temperance, and fair-mindedness. The stoic asserts that man has natural duties running to parents, to children, to the land where he was born, to the ashes of his fathers and the altars of his gods.
The stoic innovation (adopted later, by the Christians) was to assert that man had a duty to all men in the cosmos, which was conceived as being one city ruled by Zeus, all men being brothers. Slave and Caesar alike were equal in dignity as children of Zeus. This doctrine was called Cosmopolitanism, a word that is still understood in its original meaning by the Catholics, even if misunderstood elsewhere. Cosmopolitanism does not mean dishonoring your homeland, nor does it exclude patriotism: it means cherish your home and hoping that other men will cherish their homes as well. It means regarding all wars with the same grim sorrow with which a patriot regards a civil war.
The other Stoic innovation was their account of why moderation, fortitude, temperance, and fair-mindedness were virtues: all of these, says the Stoic, are the result of properly ordering the passions to the government of the reason. One is courageous when one does what one ought, despite the danger: temperance and moderation are restrictions of the passions to their proper objects, or to a fit and proper time, place, degree, and fashion of enjoyment. Fair-mindedness is dispassionate regard for the facts and evidence of the case, independent of one’s own personal inclinations.
In each case, the Stoic observes that the virtuous man is paying attention to the internal character of his actions: the brave man fights bravely whether he wins or looses. His virtue consists in his bravery, not his victory. His victory is absent in his defeat, but his virtue is not. Likewise, the moderate man’s virtue consists in the decorum of his conduct: he sips his wine and kisses his wife; he does not guzzle wine to drunken oblivion and does not kiss another man’s wife. Proper control of the passions is an internal matter, not an external one. Likewise again, the just man puts aside his own interests and passions of a matter and concerns himself with facts and evidence.
To be moderate, temperate, courageous and just are things that depend only on oneself. To be victorious, handsome, healthy, wealthy, powerful or to enjoy a common reputation for justice or wisdom are things that depend on the whim of fortune or the will of other men. If your happiness consists of possessing these external things, then your happiness is within the power of fate or fame to grant or withhold; but if your happiness consists of self-possession, then your happiness is within your own power to grant or withhold.
The Stoic notes the obvious fact that those folks who place their happiness at the mercy of fate are happy or unhappy as random fate directs: and fate is not kind to men. The Stoic note that folks whose happiness, or, at least, their peace of mind, are outside the jurisdiction of fate, are happy or unhappy, content or discontent, only insofar as their own virtue directs.
Of things, some are within our power, and some are not. Things not in our power include body, property, reputation, office, and, in short, everything that is not our own doing. Things within our power include desire and aversion, assent, impulse, and, in short, everything that is our own doing.
If a man should confuse what is another’s with what is his own, he will be hindered, he will be fettered, he will mourn, he will lament, he will blame both gods and men. But if a man should hold to be his own only what truly is his own, he will be unhindered and untrammeled, he will be tranquil, he will blame none, and hate none, for no enemy will have any power to harm him.
Evil is not an intrinsic property of objects; rather, it is a judgment we bring to objects. Death is not an evil, or otherwise Socrates would not have welcomed it; nor is poverty, or else Diogenes would not have been poor; nor is reputation or worldly power to be praised above all things, for even thought all the world has forgotten Cato of Utica, and everyone praises Caesar, nonetheless Cato was a virtuous man and Caesar was wretched as all tyrants are wretched. If we properly order our judgments to desire only what is truly good, not what is called good, and if we properly order our passions only to fear what is truly evil, not what is called evil, then we will live as rational and virtuous beings ought. Again, since this idea was saved from the shipwreck of the ancient world by its adoption into the Christian Church, no modern reader can be unaware of it: and the long line of Christian monks and martyrs, and men who did good works in obscurity, display a properly stoic contempt for merely worldly things.
Stoicism, at its simplest, consists of two observations: first, the happiness is uncertain or impossible without virtue; and, second, that virtue consists of properly ordering the passions and appetites so that one’s primary concern is to attend to those things which lay within one’s own jurisdiction, and beyond the reach of fate.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
