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Often appears with: justice as a virtue · pleasure, pain, and the good life · living according to nature · duty, conscience, and obligation · wise use of appearances · wise man · virtue and happiness · vice and folly · the nature and attributes of God · the fear of death · temperance and self-mastery · supreme vs perfect good
Usually: argument (7) · exhortation (6) · the test or trial (2) · detachment (2) · temptation (1) · censure (1) · curiosity (1) · reverence (1) · wonder (1)
“Man, thou hast forgotten thy purpose; thy journeying was not to this, but through this.” Epictetus (trans. T. W. Rolleston), The Teaching of Epictetus · observation
“What should hinder one that spoke like Demosthenes to be unfortunate? or one that could resolve syllogisms like Chrysippus to be miserable, to grieve, to envy; in a word, to be troubled and unhappy?” Epictetus (trans. T. W. Rolleston), The Teaching of Epictetus · insight
“Therefore, to return to my original proposition, every bad man is ungrateful, because he has the seeds of every villainy in him; but he alone is rightly so called who is naturally inclined to this vice.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits · insight
“Pleasure is uncertain, short, apt to pall upon us, and the more eagerly we indulge in it, the sooner we bring on a reaction of feeling against it.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits · insight
The text explains Stoic ethics as living according to Nature: act by reason, follow the divinity within, cooperate socially, and treat all people as kin by shared intelligence.
dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good and bad men, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.” The Ethical part of Antoninus’ Philosophy follows from his general principles. The end of all his philosophy is to live conformably to Nature, both a man’s own nature and the nature of the universe. Bishop Butler has explained what the Greek…
Kant distinguishes the supreme good (supremum) from the perfect good (consummatum), arguing that virtue is the supreme good while happiness completes the perfect good, and he reviews Epicurean and Stoic models of their unity.
Conception of the "Summum Bonum". The conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which might occasion needless disputes if we did not attend to it. The summum may mean either the supreme (supremum) or the perfect (consummatum). The former is that condition which is itself unconditioned, i.e., is not subordinate to any other (originarium); the second is that whole which is not a part of a greater whole of …
Seneca argues that “timidity” is really folly and that the fool contains every vice, which makes him inherently ungrateful; therefore, one should not bestow benefits on such people.
a spendthrift, or place a deposit in the hands of one who had already often refused to many persons to give up the property with which they had entrusted him. XXVII. We call some men timid because they are fools: in this they are like the bad men who are steeped in all vices without distinction. Strictly speaking, we call those persons timid who are alarmed even at unmeaning noises. A fool possesses all vices, but h…
Seneca, following Demetrius, urges daily internal practice of key ethical rules: nothing is evil except what is base, pleasure is low and uncertain, and the wise man depends on honor not fortune.
merely to amuse our leisure; yet, when once anchored in safety, the mind may consider these matters also, though it can derive no strength, but only culture from their discussion." II. The above are the rules which my friend Demetrius bids him who would make progress in philosophy to clutch with both hands, never to let go, but to cling to them, and make them a part of himself, and by daily meditation upon them to b…
The author introduces Stoic ethics by explaining the “summum bonum” as living according to nature, defining nature as God’s will, and describing “natural conceptions” (prolepseis) as criteria of moral truth learned through experience.
We turn now to that department of the Stoic philosophy with which the reader of Epictetus is most concerned--its Ethics. The ethical question resolves itself into a search for the supreme object of human endeavor, the *Summum Bonum*, the absolute and essential good. This, for the Stoic, embodied itself in the formula, "to live according to Nature." But what is Nature? The will of God, as revealed in the heart and co…
Epictetus teaches that virtues are good, vices evil, and indifferent things include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and affliction, then urges practical remembrance when facing storms or threats from Caesar.
"Me to Ciconia brought the wind from Troy." --*Od.* ix, 39. _Of things some are good, some evil, and some indifferent. Now the good things are the virtues, and those that have the nature of virtue, and the evil things the vices, and those that have the nature of vice; and the indifferent things are between these, as wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, affliction._ And how do you know this? Because Hellanicus affi…
Epictetus compares worldly pursuits and philosophical lectures to pleasant inns on a journey, urging students to focus only on living according to Nature, reason, and duties in their native city.
very exercise of the best thing; since that shall in no other wise subsist according to Nature save by wise dealing in these matters, and preferring certain things to others. 6. But what is done in the world? As if a man journeying to his own country should pass by an excellent inn, and the inn being agreeable to him, should stay, and abide in it. Man, thou hast forgotten thy purpose; thy journeying was not to this,…