Stoicism casts a long shadow over early modern moral philosophy. In the late sixteenth century, the efforts of Justus Lipsius and Guillaume Du Vair to formulate a coherent Christian Neostoicism sparked a succession of works aimed at assimilating, or rebutting, central claims of Stoic ethical theory. The impact of Stoicism on the major figures of seventeenth-century philosophy, particularly those of the second half of the century, takes a more subtle form. Among these thinkers, there is little interest in confronting Stoic views directly, either to refute them or defend them. Yet Stoicism makes a vital contribution to the ethical theories of a number of later early modern philosophers, including, most prominently, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The theories of these three philosophers differ significantly in their details and in their proximity to Stoic orthodoxy, yet each involves a creative appropriation of Stoic ideas.

A growing body of literature relates the ethical views of Descartes and Spinoza to those of the Stoics. Much less has been written about the Stoic background to Leibniz's ethics. In one sense, this is unsurprising, since it is difficult to extract a systematic ethical theory from Leibniz's fragmentary writings. At the same time, the case demands attention, for Leibniz confronts more directly, and more critically, than Descartes or Spinoza the ramifications of Stoicism for morality, and does so in part by identifying his rationalist predecessors as the modern inheritors of the mantle of Stoicism.