4. The Stoic Concept of Value and Moral Action.
The universality of Stoic ethics is attained by making
goodness and happiness (the terms are interchangeable)
an internal state, a disposition of the logos. The four
cardinal virtues—practical wisdom, justice, courage,
and self-control—are all aspects of the one rational
disposition and none of them is possible without the
other. The sage or ideal good man is one whose actions
are consistently determined by a reasoning faculty
which accords with the will of Nature or God. This
makes him the only free man. Reason does not give
the sage free will, in the sense that his actions are
undetermined by character and environment. But it
enables him to make what will happen part of his own
will and plan. He is completely unaffected by external
circumstances, since the understanding of nature has
taught him that the only good is virtue, and vice is
the only evil; all else is morally indifferent. Pain and
misfortune in general, like pleasure and external suc-
cess, fall within the category of “indifferents.” The
incidence of such things is not entirely within a man's
control, so that his happiness cannot be assured if it
depends on the gifts of fortune and pleasure. But he
has the power to determine his own attitude to events.
Hence the paradox that the sage is happy even on the
rack and all other men are unhappy no matter what
their situation. Strictly, pleasure and pain are irrelevant
to moral action, since they have nothing to do with
logos. The sage acts from principle or “logic”; pity and
“irrational feelings” are extirpated from his disposition,
though he does experience “rational” emotions such
as joy, and his conduct is invariably beneficial to other
good men. An action performed by the sage, such as
caring for parents, may look the same as the actions
of other men. But the sage's action will be good and
the actions of others bad, since the moral status of any
action is determined by the agent's disposition. The
dispositions of all who are not consistently good are
bad. Hence the further paradox that all men are either
wholly good or wholly bad; there is no midway condi-
tion and there are no degrees of virtue or vice.
This is a hard doctrine, which pays scant regard to
ordinary language or experience, but the reasoning
behind it is clear enough. Aristotle argued that happi-
ness requires a lifetime for its realization and that the
good man will never do anything wrong. Earlier still,
Plato had regarded wrongdoing as a product of
ignorance, claiming that knowledge of the good will
result in virtuous action. If virtue and happiness are
equated it is extremely difficult to account for vicious
action without reference to mistaken judgment, and
this in fact is the Stoic explanation. Bad men commit
errors of the kind mentioned above (Sec. 2) and though
these may differ in degree they do not differ in kind:
they are all equally faults. Virtuous behavior on six
days of the week is not enough. It is all or nothing—
either consistency with reason or inconsistency and
vacillation.
Although Stoic theory divided mankind into sages
and fools, it also recognized the common needs and
desires of all men. Man as a species is so constituted
that he naturally prefers health to sickness, wealth to
poverty, etc. Such conditions of prosperity and
adversity the Stoics termed “natural advantages and
disadvantages,” but they regarded the possession of
them as something morally neutral and irrelevant to
happiness. Virtue and vice are displayed in the manner
in which a man selects “natural advantages” and rejects
their opposites, and how he reacts to their attainment
and loss. The good man will be indifferent to the latter,
but he deliberately selects health and wealth rather
than their opposites, provided that in so doing he does
nothing inconsistent with reason. There are times, as
Cato showed by his suicide, when the Stoic acts con-
trary to his instinctive impulses.
Critics have complained of a double standard here.
If health is preferable to sickness, why should it not
be called “good” or “better”? The Stoic answer is
uncompromising. Health in the abstract is preferable
to sickness, but to call the one “good” and the other
“bad” would confuse them with the category of moral-
ity. The attainment of happiness and virtue can only
be offered to all men, whatever their circumstances,
if its value is shown to be categorically different from
that of “natural advantages.” It is “appropriate” to
prefer health to sickness, to care for one's parents, to
take part in politics, etc., and the consistent perform-
ance of such actions is a prerequisite for the would-be
good man. But though certain acts of this kind are
“unconditionally appropriate,” they are only morally
good when performed by the sage. He, and he alone,
acts always and only from right intentions.
