Tagged: ethics
Posts filed under ethics.
The Stoic Sage
The Stoic ideal of perfect wisdom and virtue. Almost no one achieves it. Understanding what it is and why the Stoics posited it clarifies what the philosophy is actually aiming at.
The Four Stoic Virtues
Wisdom, justice, courage, temperance. The Stoics considered these four virtues the complete map of good character and the only genuine goods available to a human being.
Preferred Indifferents
The Stoic account of things worth pursuing that are not genuine goods. Health, wealth, reputation — the Stoics had a precise and often misunderstood position on all of them.
On Duties by Cicero
A guide to Cicero's De Officiis — the most widely read work of ancient ethics, and the most complete account of how Stoic philosophy applies to practical life, politics, and the obligations we owe each other.
On Benefits by Seneca
A guide to Seneca's seven-book treatise on gratitude, generosity, and the ethics of giving and receiving. The most complete ancient philosophical treatment of what we owe each other.
Oikeiosis
The Stoic account of natural affiliation — how human beings extend their circle of concern from self to family to community to all of humanity. The philosophical foundation of Stoic social ethics.
Eudaimonia
The Greek concept of human flourishing that the Stoics placed at the center of ethical life. Usually translated as "happiness," but the translation loses everything important about what the Stoics meant.