5 - Stoic ethics
Summary
Self-preservation and the origin of values
Material about Stoic ethics is reported in a wide range of ancient sources, not to mention in the surviving works of the late Stoics Seneca and Epictetus. But perhaps the most important accounts of Stoic ethics that survive are those in Diogenes Laertius (esp. 7.84–131), Arius Didymus and Cicero's On Ends (esp. 3.16–76).
The foundation for Stoic ethics is a doctrine that has its own basis in physics, that is, in the nature of living beings. This is the doctrine of oikeiōsis (but for some doubts about this as the beginning of Stoic ethics see Schofield 2003: 237–8). This term is especially difficult to translate with a single English equivalent. It has generally been rendered as “orientation” and “appropriation”. This doctrine opens Diogenes Laertius' account of Stoic ethics (DL 7.85), and it appears at the beginning of the account of Stoic ethics in Cicero's On Ends as well (Fin. 3.16). Here is part of Diogenes' version, in which he quotes from Chrysippus:
An animal's first impulse, say the Stoics, is to self-preservation, because Nature from the outset endears it (oikeiousēs) to itself, as Chrysippus affirms in the first book of his work On Ends; his own words are, “The dearest thing (prōton oikeion) to every animal is its own constitution and its consciousness thereof “.
(DL 7.85)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Stoicism , pp. 107 - 134Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2006