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 Stoicism originated as a Hellenistic philosophy,
founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium (modern day Cyprus), c. 300 B.C.E. It was
influenced by Socrates and the Cynics, and it engaged in vigorous debates with the
Skeptics, the Academics, and the Epicureans. The name comes from the Stoa Poikile,
or painted porch, an open market in Athens where the original Stoics used to meet and
teach philosophy. Stoicism moved to Rome where it flourished during the period of
the Empire, alternatively being persecuted by Emperors who disliked it (for example,
Vespasian and Domitian) and openly embraced by Emperors who attempted to live by
it (most prominently Marcus Aurelius). It influenced Christianity, as well as a number
of major philosophical figures throughout the ages (for example, Thomas More,
Descartes, Spinoza), and in the early 21st century saw a revival as a practical
philosophy associated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and similar approaches.
Stoicism is a type of eudaimonic virtue ethics, asserting that the practice of virtue is
both necessary and sufficient to achieve happiness (in the eudaimonic sense).
However, the Stoics also recognized the existence of “indifferents” (to eudaimonia)
that could nevertheless be preferred (for example, health, wealth, education) or
dispreferred (for example, sickness, poverty, ignorance), because they had
(respectively, positive or negative) planning value with respect to the ability to
practice virtue. Stoicism was very much a philosophy meant to be applied to everyday
living, focused on ethics (understood as the study of how to live one’s life), which
was in turn informed by what the Stoics called “physics” (nowadays, a combination of
natural science and metaphysics) and what they called “logic” (a combination of
modern logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, and cognitive science).

Table of Contents

1. Historical Background
1. Philosophical Antecedents
2. Greek Stoicism
3. Roman Stoicism
4. Debates with Other Hellenistic Schools
2. The First Two Topoi
1. “Logic”
2. “Physics”
3. The Third Topos: Ethics
4. Apatheia and the Stoic Treatment of Emotions
5. Stoicism after the Hellenistic Era
6. Contemporary Stoicism
7. Glossary
8. References and Further Readings
1. Historical Background
Classically, scholars recognize three major phases of ancient Stoicism (Sedley 2003):
the early Stoa, from Zeno of Citium (the founder of the school, c. 300 B.C.E.) to the
third head of the school, Chrysippus; the middle Stoa, including Panaetius and
Posidonius (late II and I century B.C.E.); and the Roman Imperial period, or late Stoa,
with Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (I through II century
C.E.). Of course, Stoicism itself originated as a modification from previous schools of
thought (Schofield 2003), and its influence extended well beyond the formal closing
of the ancient philosophical schools by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in 529 C.E.
(Verbeke 1983; Colish 1985; Osler 1991).

a. Philosophical Antecedents

Stoicism is a Hellenistic eudaimonic philosophy, which means that we can expect it to

be influenced by its immediate predecessors and contemporaries, as well as to be in
open critical dialogue with them. These includes Socratic thinking, as it has arrived to
us mainly through the early Platonic dialogues; the Platonism of the Academic school,
particularly in its Skeptical phase; Aristotelianism of the Peripatetic school; Cynicism;
Skepticism; and Epicureanism. It is worth noting, in order to put things into context,
that a quantitative study of extant records concerning known philosophers of the
ancient Greco-Roman world (Goulet 2013) estimates that the leading schools of the
time were, in descending order: Academics-Platonists (19%), Stoics (12%),
Epicureans (8%), and Peripatetics-Aristotelians (6%).

Eudaimonia was the term that meant a life worth living, often translated nowadays as
“happiness” in the broad sense, or more appropriately, flourishing. For the Greco-
Romans this often involved—but was not necessarily entirely defined by—excellence
at moral virtues. The idea is therefore closely related to that of virtue ethics, an
approach most famously associated with Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics
(Broadie & Rowe 2002), and revived in modern times by a number of philosophers,
including Philippa Foot (2001) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1981/2013).

Stoicism is best understood in the context of the differences among some of the
similar schools of the time. Socrates had argued—in the Euthydemus, for instance
(McBrayer et al. 2010)—that virtue, and in particular the four cardinal virtues of
wisdom, courage, justice and temperance, are the only good. Everything else is
neither good nor bad in and of itself. By contrast, for Aristotle the virtues (of which he
listed a whopping twelve) were necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia. One also
needed a certain degree of positive goods, such as health, wealth, education, and even
a bit of good looks. In other words, Aristotle expounded the rather commonsensical
notion that a flourishing life is part effort, because one can and ought to cultivate
one’s character, and part luck, in the form of the physical and cultural conditions that
affect and shape one’s life.

Contrast this to the rather extreme (even for the time) take of the Cynics, who not
only thought that virtue was the only good, like Socrates, but that the additional goods
that Aristotle was worried about were actually distractions and needed to be positively
avoided. Cynics like Diogenes of Sinope were famous for their ascetic and shall we
say rather eclectic life style, as is epitomized by a story about him told by Diogenes
Laertius (VI.37): “One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away
the cup from his wallet with the words, ‘A child has beaten me in plainness of
living.’”

Diogenes and the boy without the cup

One way to think of this is that the Aristotelian approach comes across as a bit too
aristocratic: if one does not have certain privileges in life, one cannot achieve
eudaimonia. By contrast, the Cynics were preaching a rather extremely minimalist life
style, which is hard to practice for most human beings. What the Stoics tried to do,
then, was to strike a balance in the middle, by endorsing the twin crucial ideas, on
which I will elaborate later, that virtue is the only true good, in itself sufficient for
eudaimonia regardless of one’s circumstances, but also that other things—like health,
education, wealth—may be rationally preferred (Proēgmena) or “dispreferred”
(Apoproēgmena), as in the case of sickness, ignorance, and poverty, as long as one did
not confuse them for things with inherent value.

b. Greek Stoicism

The “Greek” phase of the Stoa covers the first and second periods, from the founding
of the school by Zeno to the shifting of the center of gravity from Athens to Rome in
the time of Posidonius in the I Century B.C.E., who became a friend of Cicero—not a
Stoic himself, but one of our best indirect sources on early Stoicism. Stoicism was not
just born, but flourished in Athens, even though most of its exponents originated from
the Eastern Mediterranean: Zeno from Citium (modern Cyprus), Cleanthes from
Assos (modern Western Turkey), and Chrysippus from Soli (modern Southern
Turkey), among others. According to Medley (2003), this pattern is simply a
reflection of the dominant cultural dynamics of the time, affected as they were by the
conquests of Alexander.

From the beginning Stoicism was squarely a “Socratic” philosophy, and the Stoics
themselves did not mind such a label. Zeno began his studies under the Cynic Crates,
and Cynicism always had a strong influence on Stoicism, all the way to the later
writings of Epictetus. But Zeno also counted among his teachers Polemo, the head of
the Academy, and Stilpo, of the Megarian school founded by Euclid of Megaria, a
pupil of Socrates. This is relevant because Zeno came to elaborate a philosophy that
was both of clear Socratic inspiration (virtue is the Chief Good) and a compromise
between Polemo’s and Stilpo’s positions, as the first one endorsed the idea that there
are external goods—though they are of secondary importance—while the second one
claimed that nothing external can be good or bad. That compromise consisted in the
uniquely Stoic notion that external goods are of ethically neutral value, but are
nonetheless the object of natural pursuit.

Zeno established the tripartite study of Stoic philosophy (see the three
topoi[[hyperlink]]) comprising ethics, physics and logic. The ethics was basically a
moderate version of Cynicism; the physics was influenced by Plato’s Timaeus (Taran
1971) and encompassed a universe permeated by an active (that is, rational) and a
passive principle, as well as a cosmic web of cause and effect; the logic included both
what we today refer to as formal logic and epistemology, that is, a theory of
knowledge, which for the Stoics was decidedly empiricist-naturalistic.

The Stoics after Zeno disagreed on a number of issues, often interpreting Zeno’s
teachings differently. Perhaps the most important example is provided by the dispute
between Cleanthes and Chrysippus about the unity of the virtues: Zeno had talked
about each virtue in turn being a kind of wisdom, which Cleanthes interpreted in a
strict unitary sense (that is, all virtues are one: wisdom), while Chrysippus understood
in a more pluralistic fashion (that is, each virtue is a “branch” of wisdom).

The early Stoics could also be stubbornly anti-empirical in their apologetics of Zeno’s
writings, as when Chrysippus insisted in defending the idea that the heart, not the
brain, is the seat of intelligence. This went against pretty conclusive anatomical
evidence that was already available in the Hellenistic period, and earned the Stoics the
scorn of Galen (for example, Tieleman 2002), though later Stoics did update their
beliefs on the matter.

Despite this faux pas, Chrysippus was arguably the most influential Stoic thinker,
responsible for an overhaul of the school, which had declined under the guidance of
Cleanthes, a broad systematization of its teachings, and the introduction of a number
of novel notions in logic—the aspect of Stoicism that has had the most technical
philosophical impact in the long run. Famously, Diogenes Laertius (2015, VII.183)
wrote that “But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch.”

In the six decades following Chrysippus there were just two heads of the Stoa, Zeno
of Tarsus (south-central Turkey) and Diogenes of Babylon, whose contributions were
rather less significant than those of Chrysippus himself. We have to wait until 155
B.C.E. for the next impactful event, when the heads of the three major schools in
Athens—the Stoics, the Academics and the Peripatetics—were sent by the city to
Rome in order to help with diplomatic efforts. (It is interesting to note, as does Sedley
(2003) that the fourth large school, the Epicurean one, was missing, following their
stance of political non-involvement.) The philosophers in question, including the
Stoic Diogenes of Babylon, made a huge impression on the Roman public with their
public performances (and, apparently, an equally worrisome one on the Roman elite,
thus beginning a long tradition of tension between philosophers and high-level
politicians that characterized especially the post-Republican empire), paving the road
for the later shift of philosophy from Athens to Rome, as well as other centers of
learning, like Alexandria.

Beginning with Antipater of Tarsus, and then more obviously Panaetius (late II
Century B.C.E.) and Posidonius (early I Century B.C.E.), the Stoics revisited their
relationship with the Academy, especially in light of the above mentioned importance
of the Timaeus for Stoic cosmology. Apparently, what particularly interested
Posidonius was the fact that Plato’s main character in the dialogue is a Pythagorean, a
school that Posidonius somewhat anachronistically managed to link to Stoicism.

It appears that the broader project pursued by both Panaetius and Posidonius was one
of seeking common ground (Sedley 2003 uses the term “syncretism”) among
Academicism, Aristotelianism and Stoicism itself, that is, the three branches of
Socratic philosophy. This process seems to have been in part responsible for the
further success of Stoicism once the major philosophers of the various schools moved
from Athens to Rome, after the diaspora of 88-86 B.C.E.

c. Roman Stoicism

If the visit to Rome by the head of various philosophical schools in 155 B.C.E. was
crucial for bringing philosophy to the attention of the Romans, the political events of
88-86 B.C.E. changed the course of Western philosophy in general, and Stoicism in
particular, for the remainder of antiquity.

At that time philosophers, particularly the Peripatetic Athenion and—surprisingly—

the Epicurean Aristion, were politically in charge at Athens, and made the crucial
mistake of siding with Mithridates against Rome (Bugh 1992). The defeat of the King
of Pontus, and consequently of Athens, spelled disaster for the latter and led to a
diaspora of philosophers throughout the Mediterranean.

To be fair, we have no evidence of the continuation of the Stoa as an actual school in

Athens after Panaetius (who often absented himself to Rome anyway), and we know
that Posidonius taught in Rhodes, not Athens. However, according to Sedley (2003), it
was the events of 88-86 B.C.E. that finally and permanently moved the center of
gravity of Stoicism away from its Greek cradle to Rome, Rhodes (where an Epicurean
school also flourished), and Tarsus, where a Stoic was at one point chosen by
Augustus to govern the city.

Most crucially, however, Stoicism became important in Rome during the fraught time
of the transition between the late Republic and the Empire, with Cato the Younger
eventually becoming a role model for later Stoics because of his political opposition
to the “tyrant” Julius Caesar. Sedley highlights two Stoic philosophers of the late First
Century B.C.E., Athenodorus of Tarsus and Arius Didymus, as precursors of one of
the greatest and most controversial Stoic figures, Seneca. Both Athenodorus and
Arius were personal counselors to the first emperor, Augustus, and Arius even wrote a
letter of consolation to Livia, Augustus’ wife, addressing the death of her son, which
Seneca later hailed as a reference work of emotional therapy, the sort of work he
himself engaged in and became famous for.

Once we get to the Imperial period (Gill 2003), we see a decided shift away from the
more theoretical aspects of Stoicism (the “physics” and “logic,” see below) and
toward more practical treatments of the ethics. However, as Gill points out, this
should not lead us to think that the vitality of Stoicism had taken a nose dive by then:
we know of a number of new treatises produced by Stoic writers of that period, on
everything ranging from ethics (Hierocles’ Elements of Ethics) to physics (Seneca’s
Natural Questions), and the Summary of the Traditions of Greek Theology by
Cornutus is one of a handful of complete Stoic treatises to survive from any period of
the history of the school. Still, it is certainly the case that the best known Stoics of the
time were either teachers like Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, or politically active, like
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, thus shaping our understanding of the period as a
contrast to the foundational and more theoretical one of Zeno and Chrysippus.

Importantly, it is from the late Republic and Empire that we also get some of the best
indirect sources on Stoicism, particularly several books by Cicero (2014; for
example., Paradox Stoicorum, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, Tusculanae
Quaestiones, De Fato, Cato Maior de Senectute, Laelius de Amicitia, and De Officiis)
and Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (Book VII, 2015). And this
literature went on to influence later writers well after the decline of Stoicism,
particularly Plotinus (205-270 C.E.) and even the 6th Century C.E. Neoplatonist
Simplicius.
All of the above notwithstanding, what is most vital about Stoicism during the Roman
Imperial period, however, is also what arguably made the philosophy’s impact
reverberate throughout the centuries, eventually leading to two revivals, the so-called
Neostoicism of the Renaissance, and the current “modern Stoicism” movement to
which I will turn at the end of this essay. The sources of such vitality were
fundamentally two: on the one hand charismatic teachers like Musonius and
Epictetus, and on the other hand influential political figures like Seneca and Marcus.
Indeed, Musonius was, in a sense, both: not only he was a member of the Roman
“knight” class, and the teacher of Epictetus, he was also politically active, openly
criticizing the policies of both Nero and Vespasian, and getting exiled twice as a
result. Others were not so lucky: Stoic philosophers suffered a series of persecutions
from displeased emperors, which resulted in murders or exile for a number of them,
especially during the reigns of Nero, Vespasian and Domitian. Seneca famously had
to commit suicide on Nero’s orders, and Epictetus was exiled to Greece (where he
established his school at Nicopolis) by Domitian.

It is also important to appreciate different “styles” of being Stoic among the major
Roman figures. As Gill (2003) points out, Epictetus was rather strict, arching back to
the Cynic model of quasi-asceticism (see, for instance, his “On Cynicism” in
Discourses III.22). Musonius was a sometimes odd combination of “conservative”
and “progressive” Stoic, advocating the importance of marriage and family, but also
stating very clearly that women are just as capable of practicing virtue and
philosophizing as men are, and moreover that it is hypocritical of men to consider
their extramarital sexual activities differently from those of women! Seneca was not
only more open to the pursuit of “preferred indifferents” (he was a wealthy Senator,
but it seems unfair to accuse him of endorsing a simplistic self-serving philosophy:
see the nuanced biographies by Romm 2014 and Wilson 2014), but explicitly stated
that he was critical of some of the doctrines of the early Stoics, and that he was open
to learn from other schools, including the Epicureans. Famously, Marcus Aurelius
was open—one would almost want to say agnostic—about theology, at several points
in the Meditations (1997) explicitly stating the two alternatives of “Providence” (Stoic
doctrine) or “Atoms” (the Epicurean take), for instance: “Either there is a fatal
necessity and invincible order, or a kind Providence, or a confusion without a purpose
and without a director. If then there is an invincible necessity, why do you resist? But
if there is a Providence that allows itself to be propitiated, make yourself worthy of
the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that
in such a tempest you have yourself a certain ruling intelligence” (XII.14); or: “With
respect to what may happen to you from without, consider that it happens either by
chance or according to Providence, and you must neither blame chance nor accuse
Providence” (XII.24). More is said about this specific topic in the section on Stoic
metaphysics and teleology.

There is ample evidence, then, that Stoicism was alive and well during the Roman
period, although the emphasis did shift—somewhat naturally, one might add—from
laying down the fundamental ideas to refining them and putting them into practice,
both in personal and social life.

d. Debates with Other Hellenistic Schools

One should understand the evolution of all Hellenistic schools of philosophy as being
the result of continuous dialogue amongst themselves, a dialogue that often led to
partial revisions of positions within any given school, or to the adoption of a modified
notion borrowed from another school (Gill 2003). To have an idea of how this played
out for Stoicism, let us briefly consider a few examples, related to the interactions
between Stoicism and Epicureanism, Aristotelianism, and Platonism—without
forgetting the direct influence that Cynicism had on the very birth of Stoicism and all
the way to Epictetus.

Epictetus is pretty explicit about his—negative—opinions of the Epicureans, drawing

as sharp a contrast as possible between the latter's concern with pleasure and pain and
the Stoic focus on virtue and integrity of character. For example, Discourses I.23 is
entitled “Against Epicurus,” and begins: “[1] Even Epicurus realizes that we are
social creatures by nature, but once he has identified our good with the shell, he
cannot say anything inconsistent with that. [2] For he further insists—rightly—that we
must not respect or approve anything that does not share in the nature of what is
good.” “The shell” here is the body, a reference to the Epicureans’ insistence on
pleasure and the absence of pain as what leads to ataraxia, or tranquillity of mind—a
term interestingly different from the one preferred by the Stoics, apatheia, or lack of
disturbing emotions, as shall be seen below.

A longer section, II.20, is entitled “Against the Epicureans and the Academics,” at the
beginning of which Epictetus calls the bluff, in his mind, on the rivals’ theories,
which he understands as clearly impractical and contrary to common sense: “[1] Even
people who deny that statements can be valid or impressions clear [that is, the
Skeptics] are obliged to make use of both. You might almost say that nothing proves
the validity of a statement more than finding someone forced to use it while at the
same time denying that it is sound.” Epictetus even goes so far as suggesting that
Epicurus is incoherent, as he advises a life of retired tranquility away from society,
and yet bothers to write books about it, thus showing himself to be concern about the
welfare of society after all: “[15] What urged him to get out of bed and write the
things he wrote was, of course, the strongest element in a human being—nature—
which subjected him to her will despite his loud resistance.”

Attacking the Skeptics among the Academics, Epictetus turns up the rhetoric
significantly: “What a travesty! [28] What are you doing? You prove yourself wrong
on a daily basis and still you won’t give up these idle efforts. When you eat, where do
you bring your hand—to your mouth, or to your eye? What do you step into when you
bathe? When did you ever mistake your saucepan for a dish, or your serving spoon for
a skewer?” And he sees his invective as justified—in sure Stoic fashion—not on
theoretical grounds, but on practical ones: “[35] We could give adulterers grounds for
rationalizing their behavior; such arguments could provide pretexts to misappropriate
state funds; a rebellious young man could be emboldened further to rebel against his
parents. So what, according to you, is good or bad, virtuous or vicious—this or that?”

Even so, not all Stoics rejected either Academic or Epicurean ideas altogether. I have
mentioned Marcus Aurelius’ relative “agnosticism” about Providence vs. Atoms
(though he clearly preferred the first option, in line with standard Stoic teaching), and
Seneca is often sympathetic to Epicurean views, though, as Gill (2003, note 58)
comments, this is in the spirit of showing that even some of the rival school’s ideas
are congruent with Stoic ones. He very clearly states, however, in Natural Questions:
“I do not agree with [all] the views of our school” (2014, VII.22.1).

Cicero, in Book III of De Finibus, provides us with some glimpses of the

disagreement between Stoics and Aristotelians, by way of his imaginary dialogue with
Cato the Younger. At [41] he writes: “Carneades never ceased to contend that on the
whole so-called ‘problem of good and evil,’ there was no disagreement as to facts
between the Stoics and the Peripatetics, but only as to terms. For my part, however,
nothing seems to me more manifest than that there is more of a real than a verbal
difference of opinion between those philosophers on these points.” He continues:
“The Peripatetics say that all the things which under their system are called goods
contribute to happiness; whereas our school does not believe that total happiness
comprises everything that deserves to have a certain amount of value attached to it,”
referring to the different treatment of “external goods” between Aristotelians and
Stoics.

There are well documented examples of Stoic opinions changing in direct response to
challenges from other schools, for instance the modified position on determinism that
was adopted by Philopator (80-140 C.E.), a result of criticism from both the
Peripatetic and the Middle Platonist philosophers. We also have clear instances of
Stoic ideas being incorporated by other schools, as in the case of Antiochus of
Ascalon (130-69 B.C.E.), who introduced Stoic notions in his revision of Platonism,
justifying the move by claiming that Zeno (and Aristotle, for that matter) developed
ideas that were implicit in Plato (Gill 2003). Finally, Stoicism found its way into
Christianity via Middle Platonism, at the least since Clement of Alexandria (150-215
C.E.).

2. The First Two Topoi

A fundamental aspect of Stoic philosophy is the twofold idea that ethics is central to
the effort, and that the study of ethics is to be supported by two other fields of inquiry,
what the Stoics called “logic” and “physics.” Together, these form the three topoi of
Stoicism.

We will take a closer look to each topos in turn, but it is first important to see why and
how they are connected. Stoicism was a practical philosophy, the chief goal of which
was to help people live a eudaimonic life, which the Stoics identified with a life spent
practicing the cardinal virtues (next section). Later in the Roman period the emphasis
shifted somewhat to the achievement of apatheia, but this too was possible because of
the practice of the topos of ethics.

This, in turn, was to be supported by the study of the other two topoi, “logic,” which
was more expansive than the modern technical meaning of the term, including logic
sensu stricto, but also a theory of knowledge (that is, epistemology), as well as
cognitive science, and “physics,” by which the Stoics meant roughly what we would
today identify as a combination of natural science and metaphysics (the latter
including theology). Roughly, then, “logic” means the study of how to reason about
the world, while “physics” means the study of that world.
Logic and Physics are related to Ethics because Stoicism is a thoroughly naturalistic
philosophy. Even when the Stoics are talking about “God” or “soul,” they are
referring to physical entities, respectively identified with the rational principle
embedded in the universe itself and with whatever makes human rationality possible.
Stoics often invoked creative imagery to explain the relationship among Physics,
Logic and Ethics, as found in Diogenes Laertius (VII.39), for instance. Perhaps the
most famous of such analogies is the one using an egg, where the shell is the Logic,
the white the Ethics, and red part the Physics. However, given how the three topoi
were meant to relate to each other, this is probably misleading, possibly due to a
misunderstanding of the biology of eggs (the Physics is supposed to be nurturing the
Ethics, which means that the former should be the white and the latter the red part of
the egg). The best simile in my mind is that of a garden: the fence is the Logic—
defending the precious inside and defining its boundaries; the fertile soil is the
Physics—providing the nutritive power by way of knowledge of the world; and the
resulting fruits are the Ethics—the actual focal objective of Stoic teachings.

While the Stoics disagreed on the sequence in which the three topoi should be
presented to students (that is, just like faculty in a modern university, they had
contrasting opinions about the merits of different curricula!), the crucial point is that
of a naturalistic philosophy where there is no sharp distinction between “is” and
“ought,” as assumed in much modern moral philosophy, because what an agent ought
to do (Ethics) is in fact closely informed by that agent’s knowledge of the workings of
the world (Physics) as well as her capacity to reason correctly (Logic). This section
describes the first two topoi and the next describe Ethics.

a. “Logic”

Stoics made important early contributions to both epistemology (Hankinson 2003)

and logic proper (Bobzien 2003), and much has, deservedly, been written about it.
While Stoics held that the Sage, who was something of an ideal figure, could achieve
perfect knowledge of things, in practice they relied on a concept of cognitive
progress, as well as moral progress, since both logic and physics are related to, and
indeed function in the service of, ethics. They referred to this idea as prokopê (making
progress), and they engaged in a long running dispute with Academic Skeptics about
just how defensible this notion actually is.

Unlike the Epicureans, Stoics did not maintain that all impressions are true, but rather
that some of them were “cataleptic” (that is, leading to comprehension) and others
were not. Diogenes Laertius explains the difference (VII.46): “the cataleptic, which
[the Stoics] hold to be the criterion of matters, is that which comes from something
existent and is in accordance with the existent thing itself, and has been stamped and
imprinted; the non-cataleptic either comes from something non-existent, or if from
something existent then not in accordance with the existent thing; and it is neither
clear, nor distinct.”

So the Stoics did admit that one’s perception can be wrong, as in cases of
hallucinations, or dreams, or other sources of phantasma (that is, impressions on the
mind, the result of automatic—we would say unconscious—judgment), but also that
proper training allows one to make progress in distinguishing cataleptic from non-
cataleptic impressions (that is, impressions to which we may reasonably give or
withhold assent). Chrysippus even suggested that it is important to absorb a number of
impressions, since it is the accumulation of impressions that leads to concept-
formation and to making progress. In this sense, the Stoic account of knowledge was
eminently empiricist in nature, and—especially after relentless Skeptical critiques—
relied on something akin to what moderns call inference to the best explanation
(Lipton 2003), as in their conclusion that our skin must have holes based on the
observation that we sweat.

It is important to realize that a cataleptic impression is not quite knowledge. The

Stoics distinguished among opinion (weak, or false), apprehension (characterized by
an intermediate epistemic value), and knowledge (which is based on firm impressions
unalterable by reason). Giving assent to a cataleptic impression is a step on the way to
actual knowledge, but the latter is more structured and stable than any single
impression could be. In a sense, then, the Stoics held to a coherentist view of
justification (for example, Angere 2007), and ultimately, like all ancients, to a
correspondence theory of truth (for example, O’Connor 1975).

Hankinson (2003) comments on an interesting aspect of the dispute between Stoics

and Academic Skeptics, concerning the epistemic warrant to be granted to cataleptic
impressions. What, precisely, makes them “clear and distinct,” a Stoic terminology
that clearly anticipates Descartes (who, obviously, was not an empiricist)? If clarity
and distinctiveness are internal features of cataleptic impressions, then these are
phenomenal features, and it is easy to come up with counterexamples where they do
not seem to work (for instance, the common occurrence of mistaking one member of a
pair of twins for the other one).

This is where we encounter one of the many episodes of growth of Stoic thought in
response to external pressure. Cicero tells us (2014, in Academica II.77) that Zeno
was aware that the same impression could derive from something that did or did not
exist, so he modified his stance (as Diogenes Laertius reports: VII.50), adding the
following clause: “of such a type as could not come from something non-existent.” Of
course this does not solve the issue, but it builds on the Stoic metaphysical
assumption that there cannot be two things that are exactly alike, as much as at times
it may appear so to us. Frede (1983) advanced the further view that what makes a
cataleptic impression clear and distinct is not any internal feature of that impression,
but rather an external causal feature related to its origin. According to this account,
then, Stoic epistemology is externalist (for example, Almeder 1995), rather than
internalist (for example, Goldman 1980). Indeed, there is evidence that they
became—again as a result of criticism from the Skeptics—reliabilists about
knowledge (Goldman 1994). Athenaeus tells of the story of Sphaerus, a student of
Cleanthes and colleague of Chrysippus, who was shown at a banquet what turned out
to be birds made of wax. After he reached to pick one up he was accused of having
given assent to a false impression. To which he—rather cleverly, but indicatively—
replied that he had merely assented to the proposition that it was reasonable to think
of the objects as actual birds, not to the stronger claim that they actually were birds.

When it comes to the area of Stoic “logic” that is closest to our, much narrower,
conception of the field, the school made major contributions. Their system of
syllogistics recognized that not all valid arguments are syllogisms and significantly
differs from Aristotle’s, having more in common with modern-day relevance logic
(Bobzien 2006). To simplify quite a bit (but see Bobzien 2003 for a somewhat in-
depth treatment), Stoic syllogistics was built on five basic types of syllogisms, and
complemented by four rules for arguments that could be deployed to reduce all other
types of syllogisms to one of the basic five.

The broader Stoic approach to logic has been characterized as a type of propositional
logic, anticipating aspects of Frege’s work (Beaney 1997). Stoic logic made a
fundamental distinction between “sayables” and “assertibles.” The former are a
broader category that includes assertibles as well as questions, imperatives, oaths,
invocations and even curses. The assertibles then are self-complete sayables that we
use to make statements. For instance, “If Zeno is in Athens than Zeno is in Greece” is
a conditional composite assertible, constructed out of the individual simple assertibles
“Zeno is in Athens” and “Zeno is in Greece.” A major difference between Stoic
assertibles and Fregean propositions is that the truth or falsehood of assertibles can
change with time: “Zeno is in Athens” may be true now but not tomorrow, and it may
become true again next month. It is also important to note that truth or falsehood are
properties of assertibles, and indeed that being either true or false is a necessary and
sufficient condition for being an assertible (that is, one cannot assert, or make
statements about, things that are neither true nor false).

The Stoics were concerned with the validity of arguments, not with logical theorems
or truths per se, which again is understandable in light of their interest to use logic to
guard the fruits of their garden, the ethics. They also introduced modality into their
logic, most importantly the modal properties of necessity, possibility, non-possibility,
impossibility, plausibility and probability. This was a very modern and practically
useful approach, as it directed attention to the fact that some assertibles induce assent
even though they may be false, as well as to the observation that some assertibles
have a higher likelihood of being true than not. Finally, the Stoics, and Chrysippus in
particular, were sensitive to and attempted to provide an account of logical paradoxes
such as the Liar and Sorites cases along lines that we today recognize as related to a
semantic of vagueness (Tye 1994).

b. “Physics”

The Stoic topos of Physics includes what we today would classify as natural science
(White 2003), metaphysics (Brunschwig 2003), and theology (Algra 2003). Let us
briefly look at each in turn.

When it comes to natural science and cosmology, recall that the Stoics sought to “live
according to nature,” which requires us to make our best efforts to understand nature.
This also implies a very different view of natural science from the modern one: its
study is not an end in itself, but rather subordinate to help us live a eudaimonic life.

Stoics thought that everything real, that is, everything that exists, is corporeal—
including God and soul. They also recognized a category of incorporeals, which
included things like the void, time, and the “sayables” (meanings, which played an
important role in Stoic Logic). This may appear as a contradiction, given the
staunchly materialist nature of Stoics philosophy, but is really no different from a
modern philosophical naturalist who nonetheless grants that one can meaningfully
talk about abstract concepts ("university," "the number four") which are grounded in
materialism because they can only be thought of by corporeal beings such as
ourselves.

They embraced what we might call a “vitalist” understanding of nature, which is

permeated by two principles: an active one (identified with reason and God, referred
to as the Logos) and a passive one (substance, matter). The active principle is un-
generated and indestructible, while the passive one—which is identified with the four
classical elements of water, fire, earth and air—is destroyed and recreated at every,
eternally recurring, cosmic conflagration, a staple of Stoic cosmology. The cosmos
itself is a living being, and its rational principle (Logos) is identified with aether, or
the Stoic Fire (not to be confused with the elemental fire that is part of the passive
principle). Consequently, God is immanent in the universe, and it is in fact identified
with the creative cosmic Fire. This also means that the Stoics, unlike the Aristotelians,
did not recognize the concept of a prime mover, nor of a Christian-type God outside
of time and space, on the ground that something incorporeal cannot act on things,
because it has no causal powers. From all of this, as White (2003) puts it, emerges a
biological, rather than a mechanical picture of causation, which is significantly
different from post-Cartesian and Newtonian mechanical philosophy.

Cosmic conflagrations, for the Stoics, repeat themselves in exact manner, apparently
because God/Nature laid out things in the best possible way the previous time around,
and there is therefore no reason to change (though one would get the same outcome
from an entirely deterministic causal model of the universe). It is interesting to muse
about the fact that some modern cosmological models also predict either identical or
varied recurring universes (Ungerer and Smolin 2014), but of course do away with the
concept of Providence altogether. According to Eusebius (quoted by White), during
the phase of cosmic conflagration, the creative Fire is “a sort of seed, which possesses
the principles of all things and the causes of all things that have occurred, are
occurring, and will occur—the interweaving and ordering of which is fate,
knowledge, truth, and a certain inevitable and inescapable law of the things that
exist.”

Cicero, in De Fato, lays out the Stoic theory of causality and actually equates fate
with antecedent causes. Chrysippus had argued that there is no possibility of motion
without causes, deducing that therefore everything has a cause. This concept of
universal causality led the Stoics to accept divination as a branch of physics, not a
superstition, as explained again by Cicero in De Divinatione, and this makes sense
once one understands the Stoic view of the cosmos: predicting the future is not
something that one does by going outside the laws of physics, but by intelligently
exploiting such laws.

Metaphysically the Stoics were determinists (Frede 2003). Here is Cicero: “[the
Stoics] say, that it is impossible, when all the circumstances surrounding both the
cause and that of which it is a cause are the same, that things should not turn out a
certain way on one occasion but that they should turn out that way on some other
occasion” (De Fato, 199.22-25). The Stoics did have a concept of chance, but they
thought of it (much like modern scientists) as a measure of human ignorance: random
events are simply events whose causes are not understood by humans.
The consequences of Stoic physics for their ethics are clear, and are summarized
again by Cicero, when he says that Chrysippus aimed at a middle position between
what we today would call strict incompatibilism and libertarianism (Griffith 2013).
White (2003) interestingly notes in this respect that—just like Spinoza—the Stoics
shifted the emphasis from moral responsibility to moral worth and dignity.

In terms of fundamental ontology, the Stoics were anti-corpuscularian (unlike the pre-
Socratic Atomists, and Stoics’ chief rivals, the Epicureans), on the grounds that the
idea of atoms violated their concept of a seamless unity of the cosmos. It is tempting
to see this as in the same ballpark of modern quantum mechanical theories that see the
entire universe as constituted of a single “wave function” (Ladyman and Ross 2009),
but of course this would be an anachronistic interpretation.

3. The Third Topos: Ethics

Stoic Ethics was not just another theoretical subject, but an eminently practical one.
Indeed, especially for the later Stoics, ethics—understood as the study of how to live
one’s life—was the point of doing philosophy. It was no easy task: Epictetus
famously said (in Discourses III.24.30): “The philosopher’s lecture room is a hospital:
you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain—for you are not in
good condition when you arrive!” The starting point for Epictetus was the famous
dichotomy of control, as expressed at the very beginning of the Enchiridion: “We are
responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held
responsible” (also translated as “Some things are up to us, other things are not up to
us”).

The early Stoics were somewhat more theoretical in their approach, with Zeno,
Cleanthes and Chrysippus attempting to both systematize their doctrines and defend
them from critiques from both Epicurean and especially Academic-Skeptic quarters.
The early Stoa’s famous motto in ethics was “follow nature” (or “live according to
nature”), by which they meant both the rational-providential aspect of the cosmos (see
Physics above) and more specifically human nature, which they conceived as that of a
social animal capable of bringing rational judgment to bear on problems posed by
how to live one’s life. (It appears that Zeno’s original articulation of the principle was
“live consistently” to which Cleanthes added the clarifying clause “with nature”:
Schofield 2003.) Tightly related to this idea of following (human) nature was the
Stoic concept of oikeiôsis, often translated as affinity, or appropriation. For the Stoics
human beings have natural propensities to develop morally, propensities that begin as
what we today would call instincts and can then be greatly refined with the onset of
the age of reason at the childhood stage and beyond. It is interesting to note that this
naturalistic account of the roots of virtuous/moral behavior is highly compatible with
modern findings in both evolutionary and cognitive science (for example, Putnam and
others 2014).

Specifically, we naturally: (i) behave in a fashion as to advance our interests and goals
(health, wealth, and so forth); (ii) identify with other people’s interests (initially our
parents, then friends, then countrymen); (iii) figure out ways to practically navigate
the vicissitudes of life. The Stoics related these propensities directly to the four
cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, justice and practical wisdom. Temperance
and courage are required to pursue our goals, justice is a natural extension of our
concern for an ever-increasing circle of people, and practical wisdom (phronêsis) is
what best allows us to deal with whatever happens.

Which brings us to the matter of how the virtues are related to each other. To begin
with, the Stoics recognized the above mentioned four cardinal virtues, but also a
number of more specific ones within each major category (complete list in Sharpe
2014, derived from Stobaeus): for instance, practical wisdom included good
judgment, discretion, resourcefulness; temperance could be broken down into
propriety, sense of honor, self-control; courage was divided into perseverance,
confidence, magnanimity; and justice comprised piety, kindness, sociability. Even so,
they held to a view of virtue that is much more unitary than it may come across from
this kind of list (Schoefield 2003). The cardinal virtues are derived from Socrates,
especially in Plato’s Republic, and so is a certain unifying way of considering the
virtues. Justice can be conceptualized as practical wisdom applied to social living;
courage as wisdom concerning endurance; and temperance as wisdom with regard to
matters of choice. Chrysippus further elaborated this idea of pluralism within an
underlying unity, making the virtues essentially inseparable, so that, say, one cannot
be courageous and yet intemperate—in the Stoic sense of those words.

Hadot (1998) draws a series of parallels between the four virtues, the three topoi and
what are referred to as the three Stoic disciplines: desire, action, and assent. The
discipline of desire, sometimes referred to as Stoic acceptance, is derived from the
study of physics, and in particular from the idea of universal cause and effect. It
consists in training oneself to desire what the universe allows and not to pursue what
it does not allow. A famous metaphor here, used by Epictetus, is that of a dog leashed
to a cart: the dog can either fight the cart’s movement at every inch, thus hurting
himself and ending up miserable; or he can decide to gingerly go along with the ride
and enjoy the panorama. This is a version of what Nietzsche eventually called amor
fati (love your fate), and that is encapsulated in Epictetus’ phrase “endure [what the
universe throws your way] and renounce [what the universe does not allow]”
(Fragments 10). Consequently, according to Hadot, the discipline of desire is linked to
the virtues of courage (to follow the order of the cosmos) and temperance (to be able
to control one’s desires).

The second discipline, of action, is also called Stoic “philanthropy” and is the most
prosocial of the cardinal virtues. The basic idea is that human beings ought to develop
their natural concern for others in a way that is congruent with the exercise of the
virtue of justice. Here the area of study most directly connected to the discipline is
that of ethics itself. A representative quote is perhaps the one found in Marcus
Aurelius’ Meditations (VIII.59): “Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them
then or bear with them.” The first sentence is a statement of philanthropy (in the
Stoic, not modern, sense), while the second one makes it clear that for the emperor
this was a duty to be performed either by engaging other people positively or at the
very least by suffering their non virtuous behavior, if that is the case.

The last discipline is that of assent, referred to as Stoic “mindfulness” (not to be

confused with the variety of Buddhist concepts by the same name, especially the Zen
one). I will get back to the concept of assent in the next section, as it is related to the
Stoic treatment of the (moral) psychology of emotions, but for now suffice to say that
the discipline regards the necessity to make decisions about what to accept or reject of
our experience of the world, that is, how to make proper judgments. It is therefore
linked to the virtue of practical wisdom, as well as to the area of study of logic. If we
had to summarize it in a single sentence, Seneca’s “bring the mind to bear upon your
problems” (On Tranquility of Mind, X.4) may be appropriate.

As we have seen so far, Stoic ethics is concerned exclusively with the concept of
virtue (and associated disciplines)—whether understood as a unitary thing with a
number of facets or otherwise. In this the Stoics were akin to the Cynics and unlike
the Peripatetics, who instead allowed that a number of other things are necessary for a
eudaimonic life, including (some) wealth, health, education, and so forth. The
Peripatetics would not have assented to the idea of a eudaimonic Sage on the rack, a
classic Stoic concept.

However, Stoic ethics actually attempts to strike a balance between the asceticism of
the Cynics and the somewhat elitist views of the Peripatetics. It does so through the
introduction of the wholly (controversial) Stoic concept of preferred and dispreferred
“indifferents” briefly mentioned at the beginning. This is found already in Zeno’s
book on Ethics, which is now lost, but about which we know from Diogenes Laertius
(VII.4). Zeno distinguished between indifferents that have value (axia) and those that
have disvalue (apaxia). The first group included things like health, wealth and
education, while the second group was comprised of things like sickness, poverty and
ignorance. The move was a brilliant one: as I argued above, it allowed the Stoics to
get the best of both the Cynic and the Peripatetic worlds: yes, it is true that—if they
don’t get in the way of practicing virtue—some indifferents are preferred; but they are
called indifferents for a reason: they do not truly matter for the pursuit of the (moral)
eudaimonic life. In other words, while it is undeniable that people naturally and
rationally seek the preferred indifferents, it is also the case that one can be a person of
moral integrity, achieving eudaimonia, regardless of one’s material circumstances.

There is much more to be said about Stoic ethics, of course, but before closing this
introductory sketch let me comment on an issue that does not fail to come up, and
which I have already briefly mentioned above: the connection between the undeniably
teleological-providential views of the cosmos advanced by Stoic physics and the
actual practice of Stoic ethics. The issue is this: given that the Stoic themselves
insisted that the study of physics (and of logic) influences how we understand ethics,
and given that they believed in the providential nature of the cosmos, does that mean
that only people who accept the latter view can pursuit eudaimonia? The generally
accepted answer is no.

Gregory Vlastos (referred to in Schofield 2003) convincingly argued that what he

called the “theocratic” principle does affect one’s conception of the relation between
virtue and the order of the cosmos, specifically because it tells us that being virtuous
is in agreement with such order. Crucially, however, Vlastos maintains that this does
not change the content of virtue, nor does it affect one’s conception of eudaimonia.
This is so because although the “physics” (which, remember, is a combination of
natural sciences and metaphysics, and hence theology) does inform the ethics, it does
so in what modern philosophers would call an underdetermined fashion: while ethics
is not independent of physics (or logic), in the Stoic system, it also cannot be read
directly off it. Stoic ethics is naturalistic, and thus very modern in nature, but it—to
put it in rather anachronistic terms—does not simplistically erase Hume’s is/ought
divide.

Vlastos’ position finds plenty of textual support from a number of Stoic sources,
perhaps no more obviously so than in Marcus, as already reported. There are,
however, other passages in the classical Stoic literature that do not lend themselves to
a clear cut position on the matter, such as this one from Epictetus: “What does it
matter to me [...] whether the universe is composed of atoms or uncompounded
substances, or of fire and earth? Is it not sufficient to know the true nature of good and
evil, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and also of our impulses to
act and not to act; and by making use of these as rules to order the affairs of our life,
to bid those things that are beyond us farewell? It may very well be that these latter
things are not to be comprehended by the human mind, and even if one assumes that
they are perfectly comprehensible, well what profit comes from comprehending
them? And ought we not to say that those men trouble in vain who assign all this as
necessary to the philosopher’s system of thought? [...] What Nature is, and how she
administers the universe, and whether she really exists or not, these are questions
about which there is no need to go on to bother ourselves” (Fragments 1). Please
remember that for the Stoics “nature” was synonymous with “god.”

Indeed, it is because of this and other passages that Ferraiolo (2015), for instance,
concludes that: "metaphysical doctrines about the nature and existence of God, and a
rationally governed cosmos, are rather cleanly separable from Stoic practical counsel,
and its conductivity to a well-lived, eudaimonistic life. Stoicism may have developed
within a worldview infused with presuppositions of a divinely-ordered universe ... but
the efficacy of Stoic counsel is not dependent upon creation, design, or any form of
intelligent cosmological guidance."

On balance, it seems fair to say that the ancient Stoics did believe in a (physical) god
that they equated with the rational principle organizing the cosmos, and which was
distributed throughout the universe in a way that can be construed as pantheistic.
While it is the case that they maintained that an understanding of the cosmos informs
the understanding of ethics, construed as the study of how to live one’s life, it can also
be reasonably argued that Stoic metaphysics underdetermined—on the Stoics’ own
conception—their ethics, thus leaving room for a “God or Atoms” position that may
have developed as a concession to the criticisms of the Epicureans, who were
atomists.

4. Apatheia and the Stoic Treatment of Emotions

The naturalistic system of ethics developed by the Stoics bridges what would later be
referred to as the is/ought gap by way of a sophisticated account of human
developmental moral psychology (Brennan 2003). This section focuses on a related,
major difference between Stoics and Epicureans, which begins with the respective use
of two key terms indicating a desirable state of mind according to the two schools,
and continuing with a broader discussion of the Stoic classification of emotions (or
“passions”).
As we have seen, Epictetus explains in a number of places where the Stoa differs from
the Garden (for example, “Against Epicurus,” Discourses I.23), while Seneca tells his
friend Lucilius that he happily borrows from Epicurus when it makes sense, as it is his
“custom to cross even into the other camp, not as a deserter but as a spy” (Letter II, A
beneficial reading program, in the new translation by Graver and Long 2015).

Recall that the Stoics thought the pivotal thing in life is virtue and its cultivation,
while the Epicureans thought that the point was to seek moderate pleasure and
especially avoid pain. Nonetheless, both schools thought that a crucial component of
eudaimonia (the flourishing life) was something very similar, to which the Stoics
referred to as apatheia and the Epicureans as ataraxia. There are, however, some
differences between the two concepts, especially in the way the two schools taught
how one could achieve, or at the least approximate, the respective states of mind.

The IEP article on Epictetus defines the two terms in the following fashion:

apatheia: freedom from passion, a constituent of the eudaimôn life

ataraxia: imperturbability, literally “without trouble,” sometimes translated as

“tranquillity”; a state of mind that is a constituent of the eudaimôn life

So, both apatheia and ataraxia are components of the eudaimonic life, and indeed,
while the second term is usually associated with the Epicureans, both schools used it.

As far as the Stoics are concerned, however, it is good to remember that “passion” did
not mean what we now mean by that term, and indeed it did not even exactly overlap
with the term “emotion” in the modern sense of the word. That is why it is grossly
incorrect to say that the Stoics aimed at a passionless life, or at the suppression of
emotions. Rather, the Stoics divided the “passions” into unhealthy and healthy ones.
The first group included pain, fear, craving, and pleasure. The second one
“discretion,” “willing,” and “delight.” The latter were the opposite of the first group,
except for pain, which does not have a positive counterpart. Here is a summary
diagram:
 A diagram of the Stoic passions

For the Stoics, then, the “passions” are not automatic, instinctive reactions that we
cannot avoid experiencing. Instead, they are the result of a judgment, giving “assent”
to an “impression.” So even when you read a familiar word like “fear,” don’t think of
the fight-or-flight response that is indeed unavoidable when we are suddenly
presented with a possible danger. What the Stoics meant by “fear” was what comes
after that: your considered opinion about what caused said instinctive reaction. The
Stoics realized that we have automatic responses that are not under our control, and
that is why they focused on what is under our control: the judgment rendered on the
likely causes of our instinctive reactions, a judgment rendered by what Marcus
Aurelius called the ruling faculty (in modern cognitive science terminology: the
executive function of the brain).

The Stoic view of emotions finds very nice parallels in modern neuroscience. For
instance, Joseph LeDoux (2015) makes the important, if often neglected, point that
there is a difference between what neuroscientists mean by “emotion” and what
psychologists mean. Neuroscientifically, fear, for example, is the result of a defense
and reaction mechanism that is involuntary and nonconscious, and whose major
neural correlate is the amygdala. But what psychologists refer to when they talk of
“fear” is a more complex emotion, constructed in part of the basic defense and
reaction mechanism, to which the conscious mind adds cognitive interpretation,
something very similar to the Stoic concept. The two meanings are not in
contradiction, but are rather complementary. The cognitive interpretation of the raw
emotion of fear, then, is brought about by a combination of one’s memories, cultural
upbringing, deliberative thinking, and so forth. The Stoics clearly referred to the
psychological, not the neuroscientific meaning of emotion as “passions,” and
LeDoux’s own research seems to support the Stoic account and the practicability of
their discipline of assent, seen in the previous section.

Going back to the above diagram: pain is not the simple sensation of pain, but the
failure to avoid something that we mistakenly judge bad. Similarly for the other
pathê: fear is the irrational expectation of something bad or harmful; craving is the
irrational striving for something mistakenly judged as good; and pleasure is the
irrational elation over something that is actually not worth choosing. Contrariwise, the
eupatheiai are the result of a rational aversion of vice and harmful things (discretion),
a rational desire for virtue (willing), and a rational elation over virtue (delight). (It
should be clear now why there is no such thing as a rational emotional pain.)

All of the above is why apatheia is best construed as equanimity in the face of what
the world throws at us: if we apply reason to our experience, we will not be concerned
with the things that do not matter, and we will correspondingly rejoice in the things
that do matter.

There is another crucial difference between the two schools to be highlighted here:
they get to apatheia/ataraxia by very different routes. The Epicureans sought ataraxia
as a goal, achieved most of all through the avoidance of pain, which meant especially
to withdraw from social and political life. It was good, for Epicurus, to cultivate your
close friendships, but attempting to play a full role in the polis was a sure way to
experience pain (physical or mental), and therefore it was to be avoided. For the
Stoics, on the contrary, the goal was the exercise of virtue, which led them to embrace
their social role. Marcus Aurelius, for instance, constantly writes in the Meditations
that we need to get up in the morning and do the job of a human being, which he
interprets to mean to be useful to society. Hierocles elaborated on the Cynic/Stoic
concept of cosmopolitanism. The motto of the school was “follow nature,” by which
it was meant, as we have seen, the human nature of a social animal capable of rational
judgment. And of course one of the four virtues examined in the previous section is
justice, and one of the three disciplines is that of action—both explicitly prosocial.
Apatheia, then, was not a goal for Stoics, but an advantageous byproduct (a preferred
indifferent, so to speak) of living the virtuous life.

5. Stoicism after the Hellenistic Era

As Long (2003) has remarked, Stoicism has had a pervasive, yet largely
unacknowledged influence on Western philosophical thought throughout the Middle
Ages, Renaissance, and into modern times. Among the philosophers that he lists as
being directly or indirectly affected by Stoicism are Augustine, Thomas More,
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Kant, to which we can
easily add David Hume. During the Renaissance both Stoic books, particularly
Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Seneca’s Letters, and books favorable to Stoicism, like
Cicero’s De Officiis, were widely read.

Christianity was far more sympathetic to Stoicism than to its main rival, Epicureanism
(and it also absorbed elements of Platonism in its “neo” form). The Epicurean
emphasis on pleasure, as well as their metaphysics of cosmic chaos, where prima
facie incompatible with Christian theology. The case of Stoicism was more complex.
On the one hand, the Stoic insistence on materialism and pantheism was criticized and
rejected; on the other hand, the idea of the Logos could easily be adapted—if in a
fashion that the Stoics themselves would not have recognized—and the emphasis on
virtue was often seen as pretty much the best that people could manage before the
coming of Christ.

This is why we find an interestingly mixed record of Christian attitudes toward

Stoicism. Augustine initially wrote favorably about it, while later on he was more
critical. Tertullian was positively inclined toward Stoicism, and versions of the
Enchiridion were commonly used (with Paul replacing Socrates) in monasteries. Peter
Abelard and John of Salisbury were influenced by Stoic ethics too, while Thomas
Aquinas was critical, especially of an early attempt at reviving Stoicism made by
David of Dinant at the beginning of the 13th century.

A major revival of Stoicism did eventually take place, during the Renaissance, largely
because of the work of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). He was a humanist and classic
philologist who published critical editions of Seneca and Tacitus. His major opus was
De Constantia (1584), where he argued that Christians can draw on the resources of
Stoicism during troubled times, while at the same time carefully pointing out aspects
of Stoicism that are unacceptable for a Christian. Lipsius also drew on Epictetus,
whose Enchiridion had first been translated in English a few years earlier. Other
Neostoics included the French statesman Guillaume Du Vair, the churchman Pierre
Charron, the Spanish author Francisco de Quevedo, and most importantly Michel de
Montaigne, who wrote one of his essays in defense of Seneca.

The reception of Neostoicism was mixed. Even before Lipsius, Calvin had strongly
criticized the “novi Stoici” for their revival of the idea of apatheia, and later critics
included Pascal. In part in order to preempt such reactions, according to Sellars, one
of the Neostoic texts began with the following cautious endorsement: “philosophie in
generall is profitable unto a Christian man, if it be well and rightly used: but no kinde
of philosophie is more profitable and neerer approaching unto Christianitie than the
philosophie of the Stoicks.” Despite the interest in Stoicism displayed by other
Renaissance figures, even outside of philosophy (for example, the poet Petrarch),
Neostoicism never really became a movement, and its import largely rests on the
impact of Lipsius’ writings, and perhaps on the influence of Montaigne.

Arguably the most important modern philosopher to be influenced by Stoicism is

Spinoza, who was in fact accused by Leibniz to be a leader of the “sect” of the new
Stoics, together with Descartes (Long 2003). There are indeed a number of striking
similarities between the Stoic conception of the world and Spinoza’s. In both cases we
have an all-pervasive God that is identified with Nature and with universal cause and
effect. While it is true that the Stoic understanding of the cosmos was essentially
dualistic—in contrast with Spinoza’s monism—the Stoic “active” and “passive”
principles were nonetheless completely entwined, ultimately yielding an essentially
unitary reality. Long points out, however, that a major difference was Spinoza’s
concept of God’s infinite attributes and extension, in marked contrast to the finite (if
eternal) God of the Stoics: “the upshot of both systems is a broadly similar conception
of reality—monistic in its treatment of God as the ultimate cause of everything,
dualistic in its two aspects of thought and extension, hierarchical in the different
levels or modes of God’s attributes in particular beings, strictly determinist and
physically active through and through.” He goes on to remark that the similarities are
even more marked in terms of ethics, and “Spinoza’s ethics becomes transparently
and profoundly Stoic.” That said, another major difference is that Spinoza did not
believe in an underlying teleology to the world. For him Nature has no aim and God
does not direct the cosmic drama. Indeed, as Long puts it: “If the Stoics had taken
Spinoza’s route of denying divine providence, they would have avoided a battery of
objections brought against them from antiquity onward.” In an important sense,
perhaps, one can think of Spinoza as updating the Stoic system to modern times, a
project that is currently seeing a number of concerted efforts.

Finally, there is also a connection between the Stoics and Kant, particularly in their
shared concept of duty which transcends the specific consequences of one’s action.
But as Long again points out, the differences are also quite striking: while Kant
arrived at his system by a priori reasoning, the Stoics were eminently naturalistic and
empiricist at heart. This is a major distinction between a deontological system like
Kant’s and a eudaemonistic one like the Stoic, and it is only with the recent
resurgence of virtue ethics in contemporary philosophy (Foot 1978, 2001; MacIntyre
1981/2013; Nussbaum 1994) that the ground was laid out for yet another revival of
Stoicism as a practical moral philosophy.

6. Contemporary Stoicism
The 21st century is seeing yet another revival of virtue ethics in general and of
Stoicism in particular. The already mentioned work by philosophers like Philippa
Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum, among others, has brought back
virtue ethics as a viable alternative to the dominant Kantian-deontological and
utilitarian-consequentialist approaches, so much so that a survey of professional
philosophers by David Bourget and David Chalmers (2013) shows that deontology is
(barely) the leading endorsed framework (26% of respondents), followed by
consequentialism (24%) and not too far behind by virtue ethics (18%), with a scatter
of other positions gathering less support. Of course ethics is not a popularity contest,
but these numbers indicate the resurgence of virtue ethics in contemporary
professional moral philosophy.

When it comes more specifically to Stoicism, new scholarly works and translations of
classics, as well as biographies of prominent Stoics, keep appearing at a sustained
rate. Examples include the superb Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Inwood
2003), individual chapters of which have been cited throughout this entry; an essay on
the concept of Stoic sagehood (Brouwer 2014); a volume on Epictetus (Long 2002); a
contribution on Stoicism and emotion (Graver 2007); the first new translation of
Seneca’s letters to Lucilius in a century (Graver and Long 2015); a new translation of
Musonius Rufus (King 2011); a biography of Cato the Younger (Goodman 2012); one
of Marcus Aurelius (McLynn 2009); and two of Seneca (Romm 2014 and Wilson
2014); and the list could continue.

In parallel with the above, Stoicism is, in some sense, returning to its roots as practical
philosophy, as the ancient Stoics very clearly meant their system to be primarily of
guidance for everyday life, not a theoretical exercise. Indeed, especially Epictetus is
very clear in his disdain for purely theoretical philosophy: “We know how to analyze
arguments, and have the skill a person needs to evaluate competent logicians. But in
life what do I do? What today I say is good tomorrow I will swear is bad. And the
reason is that, compared to what I know about syllogisms, my knowledge and
experience of life fall far behind” (Discourses, II.3.4-5). Or consider Marcus’ famous
injunction: “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be,
but be such” (Meditations, X.16).

The Modern Stoicism movement traces its roots to Victor Frankl’s (Sahakian 1979)
logotherapy, as well as to early versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for
instance in the work of Albert Ellis (Robertson 2010). But Stoicism is a philosophy,
not a therapy, and it is in the works of philosophers such as William Irvine (2008),
John Sellars (2003), and Lawrence Becker (1997) that we find articulations of 21st
century Stoicism, though the more self-help oriented contribution by CBT therapist
Donald Robertson (2013) is also worthy of note. All of these authors attempt to
distance the philosophical meaning of "Stoic"—even in a modern setting—from the
common English word "stoic," indicating someone who goes through life with a stiff
upper lip, so to speak. While there are commonalities between "Stoic" and "stoic," for
instance the emphasis on endurance, the latter is a diminutive version of the former,
and the two should accordingly be kept distinct.

Perhaps the most comprehensive and scholarly attempt to update (as opposed to
simply explain) Stoicism for modern audiences comes from Becker (1997), though a
more accessible treatment is offered by Irvine (2008). One of Irvine’s major
contributions is shifting from Epictetus’ famous dichotomy of control to a more
reasonable trichotomy: some things are up to us (chiefly, our judgments and actions),
some things are not up to us (major historical events, natural phenomena), but on a
number of other things we have partial control. Irvine recasts the third category in
terms of internalized goals, which makes more sense of the original dichotomy.
Consider his example of playing a tennis match. The outcome of the game is under
your partial control, in the sense that you can influence it; but it is also the result of
variables that you cannot control, such as the skill of your opponent, the fairness of
the referee, or even random gusts of wind interfering with the trajectory of the ball.
Your goal, then, suggests Irvine, should not be to win the game—because that is not
entirely within your control. Rather, it should be to play the best game you can, since
that is within your control. By internalizing your goals you can therefore make good
sense of even the original Epictetean dichotomy. As for the outcome, it should be
accepted with equanimity.

Becker (1997) is more comprehensive and even includes a lengthy appendix in which
he demonstrates that the formal calculus he deploys for his normative Stoic logic is
consistent, suggesting also that it is complete. There are three important differences
between his New Stoicism and the ancient variety: (i) Becker defends an
interpretation of the inherent primacy of virtue in terms of maximization of one’s
agency, and builds an argument to show that this is, indeed, the preferred goal of
agents that are relevantly constituted like a normal human being; (ii) he interprets the
Stoic dictum, “follow nature” as “follow the facts” (that is., abide by whatever picture
of the universe our best science allows), consistently with Stoic sources attesting to
their respect for what we would today call scientific inquiry, as well as with an
updated Stoic approach to epistemology; and (iii) Becker does away with the ancient
Stoic teleonomic view of the cosmos, precisely because it is no longer supported by
our best scientific understanding of things. This is also what leads him to make his
argument for virtue-as-maximization-of-agency referred to in (i) above. Whether
Becker’s (or Irvine’s, or anyone else’s) attempt will succeed or not remains to be seen
in terms of further scholarship and the evolution of the popular movement.

That movement has grown significantly in the early 21st century, manifesting itself in
a number of forms. There is a good number of high quality blogs devoted to practical
modern Stoicism, such as the Stoicism Today, maintained at the University of Exeter.
There is also a significant presence on social networks, for instance the Stoicism
Group on Facebook.

7. Glossary
The Stoics were well known (some would say infamous) for having developed a rich
technical vocabulary. Cicero, in book III of De Finibus, explicitly says that Zeno
invented a number of new terms, and he feels that Latin is not a sufficiently
sophisticated tongue to render all the subtleties of Greek thought. Below are some of
the major Stoic terms and their meanings.

Andreia = courage, fortitude, one of the four Stoic cardinal virtues.

Apatheia = tranquility, overcoming disturbing desires and emotions.

Apoproēgmena = dispreferred indifferents, externals, outside of virtue that—other

things being equal—should be avoided.

Aretê = virtue, excellence at one’s function. For Becker this is equivalent to the
perfection of agency.
Ataraxia = absence of fear, largely an Epicurean concept, but also adopted by the
Stoics.

Dikaiosynê = justice, integrity, one of the Stoic cardinal virtues.

Eu̯dai̯ monía = flourishing, by means of living an ethical life.

Eupatheiai = the healthy passions cultivated by the Sage.

Hormê = the discipline of action.

Kathē kon = appropriate, rational, action, the thing one ought to do.

Logos = rational principle governing the universe.

Oikeiôsis = something properly yours, leading to Hierocles’ circle of expanding

affection, Stoic cosmopolitanism.

Orexis = the discipline of desire.

Philanthrôpia = love of mankind, related to the concept of Oikeiôsis.

Phronȇsis = practical wisdom, one of the Stoic cardinal virtues.

Proē gmena = preferred indifferents, externals, outside of virtue that—other things

being equal—can be pursued unless they compromise one’s virtue.

Propatheiai = involuntary emotional reactions, to which one has not yet given or
withdrawn assent.

Prosochê = applying key ethical precepts to the present moment, mindfulness.

Sôphrosynê = self-discipline, temperance, one of the Stoic cardinal virtues.

Sunkatathesis = the discipline of assent.

8. References and Further Readings

 Algra, K. (2003) Stoic theology. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Almeder, R. (1995) Externalism and justification. Philosophia 24:465-469.
 Angere, S. (2007) The defeasible nature of coherentist justification. Synthese
157:321-335.
 Beaney, M. (1997) The Frege Reader. Blackwell.
 Becker, L.C. (1997) A New Stoicism. Princeton University Press.
 Bobzien, S. (2003) Logic. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to
the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Bobzien, S. (2006) Ancient logic. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ancient/ (accessed on 22 December
2015)
 Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D.J. (2013) What do philosophers believe?
Philosophical Studies 3:1-36.
 Brennan, T. (2003) Stoic moral psychology. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Broadie, S. & Rowe, C. (eds.) (2002) Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics.
Oxford University Press.
 Brouwer, R. (2014) The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood
and Socrates. Cambridge University Press.
 Brunschwig, J. (2003) Stoic metaphysics. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Bugh, G.R. (1992) Athenion and Aristion of Athens. Phoenix 46:108-123.
 Cicero, C.T. (2014) Complete Works. Delphi Classics.
 Colish, M. (1985) The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle
Ages. E.J. Brill.
 Diogenes Laertius (trans. by R.D. Hicks) (2015) Lives of the Eminent
Philosophers. Delphi Classics.
 Epictetus (trans. by R. Dobbin) (2008) Discourses and Selected Writings.
Penguin
 Ferraiolo, W. (2015) God or Atoms: Stoic Counsel With or Without Zeus.
International Journal of Applied Philosophy 29:199-205.
 Foot, P. (1978) Virtues and Vices. Blackwell.
 Foot, P. (2001) Natural Goodness. Clarendon Press.
 Frede, M. (1983). Stoics and skeptics on clear and distinct impressions. In:
M.F. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition. University of California Press,
pp.65–93.
 Frede, D. (2003) Stoic determinism. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Gill, C. (2003) The School in the Roman Imperial period. In: B. Inwood (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Goldman, A. (1980) The internalist conception of justification. Midwest
Studies in Philosophy 5:27-52.
 Goldman, A. (1994) Naturalistic epistemology and reliabilism. Midwest
Studies in Philosophy 19:301-320.
 Goodman, R. (2012) Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato,
Mortal Enemy of Caesar. Thomas Dunne.
 Goulet, R. (2013) Ancient philosophers: a first statistical survey. In: M. Chase,
R.L. Clark, and M. McGhee (eds.) Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and
Moderns — Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot. John Wiley & Sons.
 Graver, M. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion. University Of Chicago Press.
 Graver, M. and Long, A.A. (translators) (2015) Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius.
University of Chicago Press.
 Griffith M. (2013) Free Will: The Basics. Routledge.
 Hadot, P. (1998) The Inner Citadel: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Trans. by M. Chase, Cambridge University Press.
 Hankinson, R.J. (2003) Stoic epistemology. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Inwood, B. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge
University Press.
 Irvine, W.B. (2008) A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.
Oxford University Press.
 King, C. (2011) Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings. CreateSpace.
 Ladyman, J. and Ross, D. (2009) Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics
Naturalized. Oxford University Press.
 LeDoux, J. (2015) Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear
and Anxiety. Viking.
 Lipton, P. (2003) Inference to the Best Explanation. Routledge.
 Long, A.A. (2002) Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford
University Press.
 Long, A.A. (2003) Stoicism in the philosophical tradition: Spinoza, Lipsius,
Butler. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics.
Cambridge University Press.
 MacIntyre, A. (1981/2013) After Virtue. A&C Black.
 Marcus Aurelius (trans. by G. Long) (1997) Meditations. Dover.
 McBrayer, G.A., Nichols, M.P., and Schaeffer, D. (2010) Euthydemus. Focus.
 McLynn, F. (2009) Marcus Aurelius: A Life. Da Capo Press.
 Nussbaum, M. (1994) The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in
Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton University Press.
 O’Connor, D.J. (1975) The Correspondence Theory of Truth. Hutchinson.
 Osler, M.J. (1991) Atoms, pneuma and tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic
Themes in European Thought. Cambridge University Press.
 Putnam, H., Neiman, S., and Schloss, J.P. (eds.) (2014) Understanding Moral
Sentiments: Darwinian Perspectives? Transaction Publishers.
 Robertson, D. (2010) The Philosophy of Cognitive-behavioural Therapy
(CBT): Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy. Karnac
Books.
 Robertson, D. (2013) Stoicism and the Art of Happiness - Ancient Tips For
Modern Challenges: Teach Yourself. Teach Yourself.
 Romm, J. (2014) Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero. Knopf.
 Sahakian, W.S. (1979) Logotherapy’s Place in Philosophy. In: Logotherapy in
Action. J. Fabry, R. Bulka, and W.S. Sahakian (eds.), foreword by Viktor
Frankl. Jason Aronson.
 Schofield, M. (2003) Stoic ethics. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Sedley, D. (2003) The School, from Zeno to Arius Didymus. In: B. Inwood
(ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Sellars, J. (2003) The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of
Philosophy. Ashgate.
 Seneca, L.A. (2014) Complete Works of Seneca the Younger. Delphi Classics.
 Sharpe, M. (2014) Stoic virtue ethics. In: S. van Hooft and N. Athanassoulis
(eds.), The Handbook of Virtue Ethics. Acumen Publishing.
 Taran, L. (1971) The creation myth in Plato’s Timaeus. In: J.P. Anton, G.L.
Kustas and A. Preus (eds.) Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. State
University of New York Press, 372-407.
 Tieleman, T. (2002) Galen on the seat of the intellect: anatomical experiment
and philosophical tradition. In: C. Tuplin (ed.) Science and Mathematics in
Ancient Greek Culture. Oxford University Press, pp. 256-273.
  Tye, M. (1994) Sorites paradoxes and the semantics of
vagueness. Philosophical Perspectives 8:189-206.
 Ungerer, R.M. and Smolin, L. (2014) The Singular Universe and the Reality of
Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
 Verbeke, G. (1983) The Presence of Stoicism in Medieval Thought. Catholic
University of America Press.
 White, M.J. (2003) Stoic natural philosophy. In: B. Inwood (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge University Press.
 Wilson, E. (2014) The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca. Oxford University
Press.

Author Information

Massimo Pigliucci
Email: mpigliucci@ccny.cuny.edu
City University of New York
U. S. A.

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The tremendous influence Stoicism has exerted on ethical thought from early
Christianity through Immanuel Kant and into the twentieth century is rarely
understood and even more rarely appreciated. Throughout history, Stoic ethical
doctrines have both provoked harsh criticisms and inspired enthusiastic defenders.
The Stoics defined the goal in life as living in agreement with nature. Humans, unlike
all other animals, are constituted by nature to develop reason as adults, which
transforms their understanding of themselves and their own true good. The Stoics held
that virtue is the only real good and so is both necessary and, contrary to Aristotle,
sufficient for happiness; it in no way depends on luck. The virtuous life is free of all
passions, which are intrinsically disturbing and harmful to the soul, but includes
appropriate emotive responses conditioned by rational understanding and the
fulfillment of all one's personal, social, professional, and civic responsibilities. The
Stoics believed that the person who has achieved perfect consistency in the operation
of his rational faculties, the "wise man," is extremely rare, yet serves as a prescriptive
ideal for all. The Stoics believed that progress toward this noble goal is both possible
and vitally urgent.

Table of Contents

1. Definition of the End

2. Theory of Appropriation
3. Good, Evil, and Indifferents
4. Appropriate Acts and Perfect Acts
5. Passions
6. Moral Progress
7. References and Further Reading

1. Definition of the End

Stoicism is known as a eudaimonistic theory, which means that the culmination of
human endeavor or ‘end' (telos) is eudaimonia, meaning very roughly "happiness" or
“flourishing.” The Stoics defined this end as “living in agreement with nature.”
“Nature” is a complex and multivalent concept for the Stoics, and so their definition
of the goal or final end of human striving is very rich.

The first sense of the definition is living in accordance with nature as a whole, i.e. the
entire cosmos. Cosmic nature (the universe), the Stoics firmly believed, is a rationally
organized and well-ordered system, and indeed coextensive with the will of Zeus, the
impersonal god. Consequently, all events that occur within the universe fit within a
coherent, well-structured scheme that is providential. Since there is no room for
chance within this rationally ordered system, the Stoics' metaphysical determinism
further dictated that this cosmic Nature is identical to fate. Thus at this level, "living
in agreement with nature" means conforming one’s will with the sequence of events
that are fated to occur in the rationally constituted universe, as providentially willed
by Zeus.

Each type of thing within the universe has its own specific constitution and character.
This second sense of ‘nature' is what we use when we say it is the nature of fire to
move upward. The manner in which living things come to be, change, and perish
distinguishes them from the manner in which non-living things come to be, change,
and cease to be. Thus the nature of plants is quite distinct from the nature of rocks and
sand. To "live in agreement with nature" in this second sense would thus include, for
example, metabolic functions: taking in nutrition, growth, reproduction, and expelling
waste. A plant that is successful at performing these functions is a healthy, flourishing
specimen.

In addition to basic metabolism, animals have the capacities of sense-perception,

desire, and locomotion. Moreover, animals have an innate impulse to care for their
offspring. Thus living in agreement with a creature's animality involves more
complex behaviors than those of a plant living in agreement with its nature. For an
animal parent to neglect its own offspring would therefore be for it to behave contrary
to its nature. The Stoics believed that compared to other animals, human beings are
neither the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the best swimmers, nor able to fly. Instead,
the distinct and uniquely human capacity is reason. Thus for human beings, "living in
agreement with nature" means living in agreement with our special, innate
endowment—the ability to reason.

2. Theory of Appropriation
The Stoics developed a sophisticated psychological theory to explain how the advent
of reason fundamentally transforms the world view of human beings as they mature.
This is the theory of ‘appropriation,' or oikeiôsis, a technical term which scholars have
also translated variously as "orientation," “familiarization,” “affinity,” or “affiliation.”
The word means the recognition of something as one’s own, as belonging to oneself.
The opposite of oikeiôsis is allotriôsis, which neatly translates as “alienation.”
According to the Stoic theory of appropriation, there are two different developmental
stages. In the first stage, the innate, initial impulse of a living organism, plant, or
animal is self-love and not pleasure, as the rival Epicureans contend. The organism is
aware of its own constitution, though for plants this awareness is more primitive than
it is for animals. This awareness involves the immediate recognition of its own body
as “belonging to” itself. The creature is thus directed toward maintaining its
constitution in its proper, i.e. its natural, condition. As a consequence, the organism is
impelled to preserve itself by pursuing things that promote its own well-being and by
avoiding things harmful to it. Pleasure is only a by-product of success in this activity.
In the case of a human infant, for example, appropriation explains why the baby seeks
his mother’s milk. But as the child matures, his constitution evolves. The child
continues to love himself, but as he matures into adolescence his capacity for reason
emerges and what he recognizes as his constitution, or self, is crucially transformed.
Where he previously identified his constitution as his body, he begins to identify his
constitution instead with his mental faculty (reason) in a certain relation to his body.
In short, the self that he now loves is his rationality. Our human reason gives us an
affinity with the cosmic reason, Nature, that guides the universe. The fully matured
adult thus comes to identify his real self, his true good, with his completely
developed, perfected rational soul. This best possible state of the rational soul is
exactly what virtue is.

Whereas the first stage of the theory of appropriation gives an account of our
relationship toward ourselves, the second stage explains our social relationship toward
others. The Stoics observed that a parent is naturally impelled to love her own
children and have concern for their welfare. Parental love is motivated by the child's
intimate affinity and likeness to her. But since we possess reason in common with all
(or nearly all) human beings, we identify ourselves not only with our own immediate
family, but with all members of the human race—they are all fellow members of our
broader rational community. In this way the Stoics meant social appropriation to
constitute an explanation of the natural genesis of altruism.

3. Good, Evil, and Indifferents

The Stoics defined the good as "what is complete according to nature for a rational
being qua rational being" (Cicero Fin. III.33). As explained above, the perfected
nature of a rational being is precisely the perfection of reason, and the perfection of
reason is virtue. The Stoics maintained, quite controversially among ancient ethical
thought, that the only thing that always contributes to happiness, as its necessary and
sufficient condition, is virtue. Conversely, the only thing that necessitates misery and
is “bad” or “evil” is the corruption of reason, namely vice. All other things were
judged neither good nor evil, but instead fell into the class of “indifferents.” They
were called “indifferents” because the Stoics held that these things in themselves
neither contribute to nor detract from a happy life. Indifferents neither benefit nor
harm since they can be used well and badly.

However, within the class of indifferents the Stoics distinguished the "preferred" from
the “dispreferred.” (A third subclass contains the ‘absolute' indifferents, e.g. whether
the number of hairs on one’s head is odd or even, whether to bend or extend one’s
finger.) Preferred indifferents are “according to nature.” Dispreferred indifferents are
“contrary to nature.” This is because possession or use of the preferred indifferents
usually promotes the natural condition of a person, and so selecting them is usually
commended by reason. The preferred indifferents include life, health, pleasure,
beauty, strength, wealth, good reputation, and noble birth. The dispreferred
indifferents include death, disease, pain, ugliness, weakness, poverty, low repute, and
ignoble birth. While it is usually appropriate to avoid the dispreferred indifferents, in
unusual circumstances it may be virtuous to select them rather than avoid them. The
virtue or vice of the agent is thus determined not by the possession of an indifferent,
but rather by how it is used or selected. It is the virtuous use of indifferents that makes
a life happy, the vicious use that makes it unhappy.

The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main
types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Wisdom is subdivided into good
sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness. Justice is
subdivided into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing. Courage is subdivided into
endurance, confidence, high-mindedness, cheerfulness, and industriousness.
Moderation is subdivided into good discipline, seemliness, modesty, and self-control.
Similarly, the Stoics divide vice into foolishness, injustice, cowardice, intemperance,
and the rest. The Stoics further maintained that the virtues are inter-entailing and
constitute a unity: to have one is to have them all. They held that the same virtuous
mind is wise, just, courageous, and moderate. Thus, the virtuous person is disposed in
a certain way with respect to each of the individual virtues. To support their doctrine
of the unity of virtue, the Stoics offered an analogy: just as someone is both a poet and
an orator and a general but is still one individual, so too the virtues are unified but
apply to different spheres of action.

4. Appropriate Acts and Perfect Acts

Once a human being has developed reason, his function is to perform "appropriate
acts" or “proper functions.” The Stoics defined an appropriate act as “that which
reason persuades one to do” or “that which when done admits of reasonable
justification.” Maintaining one's health is given as an example. Since health is neither
good nor bad in itself, but rather is capable of being used well or badly, opting to
maintain one’s health by, say, walking, must harmonize with all other actions the
agent performs. Similarly, sacrificing one’s property is an example of an act that is
only appropriate under certain circumstances. The performance of appropriate acts is
only a necessary and not a sufficient condition of virtuous action. This is because the
agent must have the correct understanding of the actions he performs. Specifically, his
selections and rejections must form a continuous series of actions that is consistent
with all of the virtues simultaneously. Each and every deed represents the totality and
harmony of his moral integrity. The vast majority of people are non-virtuous because
though they may follow reason correctly in honoring their parents, for example, they
fail to conform to ‘the laws of life as a whole’ by acting appropriately with respect to
all of the other virtues.

The scale of actions from vicious to virtuous can be laid out as follows: (1) Actions
done "against the appropriate act," which include neglecting one's parents, not treating
friends kindly, not behaving patriotically, and squandering one’s wealth in the wrong
circumstances; (2) Intermediate appropriate actions in which the agent’s disposition is
not suitably consistent, and so would not count as virtuous, although the action itself
approximates proper conduct. Examples include honoring one’s parents, siblings, and
country, socializing with friends, and sacrificing one’s wealth in the right
circumstances; (3) “Perfect acts” performed in the right way by the agent with an
absolutely rational, consistent, and formally perfect disposition. This perfect
disposition is virtue.

5. Passions
As we have seen, only virtue is good and choiceworthy, and only its opposite, vice, is
bad and to be avoided according to Stoic ethics. The vast majority of people fail to
understand this. Ordinary people habitually and wrongly judge various objects and
events to be good and bad that are in fact indifferent. The disposition to make a
judgment disobedient to reason is the psychic disturbance the Stoics called passion
(pathos). Since passion is an impulse (a movement of the soul) which is excessive and
contrary to reason, it is irrational and contrary to nature. The four general types of
passion are distress, fear, appetite, and pleasure. Distress and pleasure pertain to
present objects, fear and appetite to future objects. The following table illustrates their
relations.

Table of Four Passions (pathê)

Present Object Future Object
Irrationally judged to be
Pleasure Appetite
good

Irrationally judged to be bad Distress Fear

Distress is an irrational contraction of the soul variously described as malice, envy,

jealousy, pity, grief, worry, sorrow, annoyance, vexation, or anguish. Fear, an
irrational shrinking of the soul, is expectation of something bad; hesitation, agony,
shock, shame, panic, superstition, dread, and terror are classified under it. Appetite is
an irrational stretching or swelling of the soul reaching for an expected good; it is also
called want, yearning, hatred, quarrelsomeness, anger, wrath, intense sexual craving,
or spiritedness. Pleasure is an irrational elation over what seems to be worth choosing;
it includes rejoicing at another's misfortunes, enchantment, self-gratification, and
rapture.
The soul of the virtuous person, in contrast, is possessed of three good states or
affective responses (eupatheiai). The three ‘good states' of the soul are joy (chara),
caution (eulabeia), and wish (boulêsis). Joy, the opposite of pleasure, is a reasonable
elation; enjoyment, good spirits, and tranquility are classed under it. Caution, the
opposite of fear, is a reasonable avoidance. Respect and sanctity are subtypes of
caution. Wish, the opposite of appetite, is a reasonable striving also described as good
will, kindliness, acceptance, or contentment. There is no "good feeling" counterpart to
the passion of distress.

Table of Three Good States

Present Object Future Object

Rationally judged to be good Joy Wish

Rationally judged to be bad --- Caution

For example, the virtuous person experiences joy in the company of a friend, but
recognizes that the presence of the friend is not itself a real good as virtue is, but only
preferred. That is to say the company of the friend is to be sought so long as doing so
in no way involves any vicious acts like a dereliction of his responsibilities to others.
The friend's absence does not hurt the soul of the virtuous person, only vice does. The
vicious person’s soul, in contrast, is gripped by the passion of pleasure in the presence
of, say, riches. When the wealth is lost, this irrational judgment will be replaced by
the corresponding irrational judgment that poverty is really bad, thus making the
vicious person miserable. Consequently, the virtuous person wishes to see his friend
only if in the course of events it is good to happen. His wish is thus made with
reservation (hupexhairesis): "I wish to see my friend if it is fated, if Zeus wills it." If
the event does not occur, then the virtuous person is not thwarted, and as a result he is
not disappointed or unhappy. His wish is rational and in agreement with nature, both
in the sense of being obedient to reason (which is distinctive of our human
constitution) and in the sense of harmonizing with the series of events in the world.

The virtuous person is not passionless in the sense of being unfeeling like a statue.
Rather, he mindfully distinguishes what makes a difference to his happiness—virtue
and vice—from what does not. This firm and consistent understanding keeps the ups
and downs of his life from spinning into the psychic disturbances or "pathologies" the
Stoics understood passions to be.

6. Moral Progress
The early Stoics were fond of uncompromising dichotomies—all who are not wise are
fools, all who are not free are slaves, all who are not virtuous are vicious, etc. The
later Stoics distinguished within the class of fools between those making progress and
those who are not. Although the wise man or sage was said to be rarer than the
phoenix, it is useful to see the concept of the wise man functioning as a prescriptive
ideal at which all can aim. This ideal is thus not an impossibly high target, its pursuit
sheer futility. Rather, all who are not wise have the rational resources to persevere in
their journey toward this ideal. Stoic teachers could employ this exalted image as a
pedagogical device to exhort their students to exert constant effort to improve
themselves and not lapse into complacency. The Stoics were convinced that as one
approached this goal, one came closer to real and certain happiness.

7. References and Further Reading

 Becker, Lawrence C. 1998. A New Stoicism. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
o A daring exposition of what Stoic philosophy would look like today if
it had enjoyed a continuous development through the Renaissance, the
Enlightenment, modern science, and the fads of twentieth century
moral philosophy.
 Brennan, Tad. 2003. "Stoic Moral Psychology," in Brad Inwood, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, 257-294.
 Cooper, John. 1989. "Greek Philosophers on Euthanasia and Suicide," in
Brody, B.A. ed., Suicide and Euthanasia. Dordrecht, 9-38.
 Inwood, Brad and Donini, Pierluigi. 1999. "Stoic ethics," in Algra, Keimpe, et
al. eds. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 675-738.
o A detailed treatment of the subject.
 Long, A. A. 1986. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. 2nd
ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
o A very readable introduction to the three Hellenistic schools.
 Long, A. A. and D. N. Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
o Readings from the main schools: Epicureanism, Stoicism, Scepticism,
and the Academics. Includes commentaries on the readings. This is the
standard primary source text.
 Schofield, Malcolm. "Stoic Ethics," in Brad Inwood, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to the Stoics, 233-256.
o A fine overview that argues that Zeno (founder of the Stoa)
systematized the Socratic and Cynic philosophies. Two different types
of projects in Stoic ethics are identified: (1) laying out the definitions
and divisions of the key concepts in discursive ethical discourse, and
(2) trying to explain and establish by argument the Stoic view on key
ethical subjects.
 Sorabji, Richard. 2000. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to
Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
o A meticulous study of Stoic moral psychology and much more.

Author Information

William O. Stephens
Email: stphns@creighton.edu
Creighton University
U. S. A.
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