5. Stoic Ethics in Practice. The Stoics themselves
did not claim to be sages, and it was a matter of debate
in the school whether a man of such inflexible moral
will had ever lived in fact. For the majority, “progress”
(προκοπή) towards this standard was the goal, and Stoic
writers such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are
constantly urging themselves, and, by implication, their
readers to maintain indifference to circumstances and
to value moral choice as the only property of worth.
Confidence in the benevolence of divine purpose, no
matter what happens, and an immense stress on the
dignity of man provide the Stoic with his strength. And
the reward, in Epictetus' words, is “tranquillity, fear-
lessness and freedom” (Discourses II, 1, 21). Suicide,
rationally chosen, is the way out, the “open door,” if
circumstances make a good life impossible.
The basis of Stoic ethics remained constant through-
out the five hundred and more years (ca. 301 B.C.-A.D.
270) of the school's existence. But unlike the followers
of Epicurus, who handed down their founder's teaching
unchanged, later Stoics modified and developed various
aspects of Zeno's doctrines. Chrysippus, the third head
of the Stoa, following Zeno and Cleanthes, was a
scholar of immense versatility, and much of the evi-
dence for Stoicism is derived from summaries and
criticisms of his works preserved in writers like
Plutarch and Galen. Panaetius and Posidonius in the
second and first centuries B.C. won fame throughout
the Roman world, and Cicero's influential De officiis
is based upon a work by Panaetius. This Stoic was an
intimate associate of Scipio Africanus, and the propa-
gation of general Stoic teaching among Romans owed
much to his
humanitas. The traditional Roman atti-
tudes of
officium and
virtus found further justification
in Stoic ethics, which thus claimed the allegiance of
many Roman statesmen. The
De officiis, which Cicero
addressed to his son, stresses practice over theory,
providing a second-best morality of appropriate actions
for the Roman gentleman. It lacks the moral toughness
and personal commitment of Epictetus, the slave of
the imperial period, so admired by the emperor
Marcus.
By cutting through the barriers of birth and wealth,
and by emphasizing the autonomy of the individual,
Stoic ethics did much to liberalize and humanize the
social practice of the Roman empire. In the second
and third centuries A.D. writers as different as the
Christian, Clement of Alexandria, the Aristotelian
scholar, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Plotinus attest
to its influence. The rules for conduct, intended by
early Stoics as preparatory to the attainment of virtue,
survived to challenge the strong and support the weak
in times which neither knew, nor cared to know, the
physics and logic on which Zeno and Chrysippus had
rigorously built their ethics. In its theory, Stoic ethics
looks forward to Kant's categorical imperative. Some
essential aspects of its practice are preserved in the
behavior commended by our words “stoic” and
“stoical.”
