This was prepared as a presentation by a Caltech debating society asking me to explain how the ethics of the Stoics relate to their conception of the divine. 

To give a spoiler to the rest of the discussion, the Stoics had a naturalistic ethics based on an understanding of behaviors that can be identified as appropriate to any animal, in the specific case of humans, as social creatures endowed with language and language based reason, we are innately equipped with the potential to identify what is beneficial in the world, and what is harmful, and to apply that thinking to our own wellbeing and to that of the wider human community. Getting to this is a developmental process, that requires the right kind of experiences and education, which the Stoics aimed to provide.

The hard conclusion is that correct reasoning alone, which is an appropriate understanding of the world, and of oneself, is sufficient to living a good life: ethically and subjectively.

It is Socratic moral intellectualism founded on a naturalistic understanding of the human condition. That said, when I say naturalistic, I do mean non magical. however  the Stoics identified Nature as God:   providential, benevolent  and rational, (terms that need unpacking), but this worldview  comes with an optimistic belief that there is an intrinsic beneficial, harmonious connection between us, creatures capable of rational understanding, and  Nature as a whole.  To steal a quote.

Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds

To give some background: Around 300 BC Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school, with a philosophy based on the ethical principles of Socrates, and the metaphysics of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, with other influences of course. I will be focusing on his core principle that there is an intrinsic beneficial, harmonious connection between us, creatures capable of rational understanding, and Nature as a whole.

Stoicism continued to be developed in the Hellenistic period and went on to be adopted by the Romans alongside the other Hellenistic philosophies. It faded from popularity around the 3rd century AD and has been the poor misunderstood cousin of Plato and Aristotle ever since. However it dominated philosophical thinking in the ancient world for 500 years.

The current revival of academic interest can be attributed to Anthony Long in the 1970s and I have taken from him three principles as common to all Stoics throughout its history:

• that the universe is rational and providentially structured,
• that human beings as Intelligent language using creatures have a special status within the universe, and that
• given our language-based intelligence that we are capable of living well, both subjectively and ethically.

The Stoics were the first philosophers in history to develop the idea of a system, a single unified Interrelated and interdependent set of ideas that were mutually supporting. This reflected their understanding of the universe as , a single unified Interrelated and interdependent mutually supporting harmonious system of all things as one thing.

They had a three-fold division of their philosophy or rather three ways of talking about the self-same subject:

• Physics: what a thing is,
• Logic: what we understand of it,
• Ethics: what it does, or what it ought best do. .

In the same way there is only one thing being discussed, the physics, logic and ethics all interdependent, together forming a single whole.

The study of Nature was the foundations of being and the principles of growth and generation of things in the world. The Greek term phusis, from where we get physics, was translated in to Latin as Natura. Stoic physics was not an empirical science, involving experimentation, measurement of quantity or geometry. It was theoretical speculation based on observation and, what turned out to be, some very clever base assumptions

Logic was the study of language and meaning, knowledge and how it is that humans can conceptualise the world and communicate it. Tell true from false, good from bad, and identify what is appropriate to do.

Ethics is an integral part of the physical and logical understanding of what kind of creatures humans are and what kind of world they live in and what functions they perform as humans living in social communities.

The latter applies to goal of life. The goal of all Hellenistic schools at the time was to live a good life, a life worth living, and for the Stoics, understanding what that means is essential to living that kind of life. For them a good life is an ethical life, which they defined as life in accordance with Nature, or in harmony with Nature

And Nature is none other than God and God is none other than the Cosmos itself.

The Stoics thought that God and the no miracles physical universe were one and the same thing, they were pantheists, which means “God is everything”.

Etymologically the term Kosmos means a single order; the term Universe means all things poured into one. and we can keep both of those concepts and use them unmodified, and apply them to the Stoic idea of God..

The Stoics were strict physicalists and denied any independent existence to anything incorporeal, believing that the only means of anything interacting with anything was through physical contact. They rejected the Olympian idea of gods as sweaty guys with beards and rippling muscles fighting over beautiful goddesses, starting wars and seducing humans in bizarre ways.

Instead ,taking the idea from Heraclitus, the Stoics posited a creative fire, as the fundamental substance and the foundation of all existence and the principles by which it is organised. This creative fire is the source of all heat, motion and coherence in the Cosmos and the world as we see it has basically condensed out of it. The classical elements of earth, water, air and fire are phase states: solid, liquid, gas, regular fire,

The Stoics saw the universe as a living thermodynamic bio-chemical system, with the elements variously interacting through heat and cold, density and rarefaction, expansion and contraction, tension and cohesion, forming various complex structures, forming a single self-organising system.

It is an organisation, an organism in the original sense of the term, and propagates from seed, the divine fire is the spermatic logos.  

Everything grows

If you want an analogy; we are to the Cosmos as apples are to the tree which bore it.

The Cosmos, as a living system, is striving to preserve its own integrity, through harmony, coherence, proportion and balance by creating fine and intricate structures within itself. And these are aesthetic terms, that point at beauty, and beauty and goodness in the Greek mind were very closely related, and apply equally to the theology, the physics and the ethics. .

 It is closer to Gaia theory than it is to any Abrahamic or Eastern Religion, and is an image of oneness and wholeness: The harmony of the whole. It is holism:

 Everything within the Cosmos is in harmony with the Cosmos, as tension, vibration, motion, sympathy, and we need to keep the idea in mind of flux, of constant change, formation, dissolution and reformation. To paraphrase Anthony Long:

” the Stoics believe that God is the deep structure of the Cosmos, as manifested in the sun’s motion across the sky, the movement of the heavenly bodies, the passage of day and night, the seasons and the cycles of life.”

AA Long: Heraclitus on measure and the explicit emergence of rationality

This is Providence.

Humans are on an unbroken continuum with animals, plants and minerals generated by the same spermatic principles but only different in complexity of structure. As no animal wants to be mistaken about its environment and what affordances and dangers it holds. to be in harmony with nature, humans need to align themselves with the processes and facts of their environment,

While simple organisms do this biochemically and stimulus and response, and more complex animals do this through impulse and perception and each with their own kind of intelligence, humans have the special gift of language, and navigate the world conceptually and linguistically.

This introduces us to the Greek term logos, heavily used by the Stoics and a core concept. Again adopted from Heraclitus.

Logos means measure, proportion, language and speech and also rationality.
The universe is measured, regular, proportioned, balanced, structured, coherent, systemic, ordered  This is cosmic reason in action. the Divine Logos

Logos also means from the very same set of concepts; account, reckoning, explanation or justification.

To be possessed of logos, means to be possessed of reason which means capable of giving an account of the world, contemplating it, understanding in relevant ways and sharing relevant information about it, engaging in dialogue with oneself and others, and acting accordingly.

A rational person, an ethical person is regular, proportioned, balanced, structured, coherent, systemic, ordered in their thinking and in their lives. To be rational is to know what follows from what, and what is to be done for the right reasons

So the universe is rational, and is comprehensible to humans with an analogous form of rationality. As we come from the universe, grew from it, live in it and use language to navigate it, the structure of language corresponds to the structure of the universe in a true and meaningful way, 

So the model is very much the union between self and nature as the goal of life. And we see this in many different traditions, the idea of becoming one with the whole..

And this is why in aligning oneself with nature, the importance of identifying truth from deception is central, and why the Stoics placed such emphasis on the role of critical self-examination and logic in revealing truths about ourselves and the world.

And as we ought live in harmony with the whole,, in the same way we are born from, embedded in and entangled with the Cosmos, or Nature, we are equally born from embedded in and entangled with the Cosmopolis, the whole of humanity, as a single community of rational ethical beings. It is the same idea of mutual interdependence of all things that is in the physics.

Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together they compose the world. One world, made up of all things. One divinity, present in them all. One substance and one law—the logos that all rational beings share. And one truth … If this is indeed the culmination of one process, beings who share the same birth, the same logos

Meditations  7.9

Humans are social beings with social natures and common interests, and our individual benefits and the benefits of the whole are aligned. We are parts of the whole.

And as the Cosmos is creating beauty within itself giving rise to the beauty and fecundity of nature,
we do the same through the beautification and harmonisation of ourselves internally with both Nature and Cosmopolis, and this beauty is then manifest in our social priorities in acting toward the benefit of the whole.

We are mini-mortal agents of Zeus, creating beauty and harmony in the world and the human community. Here is Seneca

“No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be useful, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.”

Seneca On Clemency

The Stoics argued that just as organs in the body have functions with regard to the body of which they are part, all things in Nature have functions to perform.

The Greek word for virtue, arete, means excellence and is applied to the excellence of any thing as an excellent example of its kind. It is the goal of any living thing to be excellent at being the kind of thing it is, this is to fulfil its functions.

A fish swims, an eagle flies, a bee collects pollen for the hive, and the goal in life of any fish, or eagle, or bee is to do that well. A living thing doing what it is “supposed to be doing” in terms of its own nature and its own functions and its place within whole that is Nature.

In humans, this requires the application of relevant acquired knowledge built off innate capacity,  in order to navigate the facts and values of our social world. We make ethical judgments, choices about what is good and bad which sets our motivations, about what to pursue and what to avoid,

The foundation of the connection to humanity as a whole is the love between parent and child, which comes in seed from the Cosmos, it is in accordance with nature and comes from it.. This love is then extended to other family members, friends, neighbours, communities and ultimately the entire human race. The first impulse of any living creature is to self-preservation, but as a human develops and matures that priority shifts to carers and loved ones, and the mind rises in sophistication such that we develop from being physical creatures to become ethical creatures.

This is Virtue ethics, which emphasizes the importance of developing character, which determines our considered, intentional ethical actions, and for the Stoics our ethical character is entirely informed by understanding, it is a practical applied knowledge of both facts and values, of what is so and what is not so, and what is of benefit, and what is of harm.,

The four traditional virtues are all interrelated forms of knowledge applicable to various circumstances and come as a set, completely entangled, inter-entailed and inseparable.

Wisdom is a knowledge of what things must be done and what must not be done and of what are neither, or a knowledge of what are good things and what are bad and what are neither for a naturally political creature and they prescribe that it is to be so understood with regard to the other virtues, wisdom, justice and courage.

Stobaeus Epitome of Stoic Ethics

Conversely

Stupidity/Foolishness is ignorance of what things are good and what are bad and what are neither, or ignorance of what things are to be done and what not to be done and what are neither. The other vices are lack of restraint, cowardice and injustice.

Stobaeus Epitome of Stoic Ethics

Virtue or excellence, for a human, is thus a kind of practical knowledge, an expertise gained through education and experience. It is a technical skill, it is a craft, it is an art: It is the art of living.

The wise and ethical person is a virtuoso.

This is the moral intellectualism of Socrates that everyone desires the good, so that if people have full and genuine knowledge about what is good, that is what they will do, and cannot choose otherwise.

The sole authentic good for any human is a true understanding of benefit and harm, their own good and the common good, and thus their own happiness. Virtue is the only thing of any value at all, and vice is ignorance, a false understanding, and is the greatest possible catastrophe.

This is a blunt statement of the Socratic principles that the Stoics adopted unmodified.

• Virtue is the only good and ignorance is the only evil.
• Nothing else is either good or bad.

To explain it with a practical example:

A plant is neither good nor bad unless you know whether it is edible, or if it is inedible, whether it is medicinal or if it is toxic. What makes the plant good or bad is your knowledge of what it is and its use: should it be eaten, used to make rope, heal people or kill things?

And getting that right or wrong, to think something is true that is false, that a poisonous plant should be eaten, lies within us. It is for us to know, to find out. There is no good or bad in the plant, the good or bad lies in our judgment, and the value lies not in having the thing, but in knowing its use.

This same principle applies to health, wealth, property and social standing, and the Stoics are adamant that you can be rich and physically beautiful and have all the acclaim and possessions that your heart desires and lead a miserable life, or lead a happy life disfigured and in poverty with nothing to your name.

Stoicism is completely egalitarian in that sense, and no person has any greater or lesser moral worth dependent on their position in society, nor gender nor race…

Happiness lies in knowing how to live your life rather than the possession and enjoyment of material things. it is perfectly natural, to want a certain level of comfort and security, but the pursuit of these are not to be sacrificed over the pursuit of the perfection of your ethical integrity, which is to say your character, your virtue.

This is exemplified by the example of the Emperor Vespasian threatening Senator Priscus Helvidius with death if he spoke against him to the Roman senate. Rather than keep quiet and save his life, Priscus responded:

“Did I ever tell you that I was immortal? You do your job and I’ll do mine. Yours is to put me to death and mine to die fearlessly“.

Epictetus Discourse 1.2

He chose to speak to serve the common good, and if his life is forfeit for that, so be it..

And here is Epictetus.

Now, what does the title ‘citizen’ mean? In this role, a person never acts in his own interest or thinks of himself alone, but, like a hand or foot that had sense and realized its place in the natural order, all its actions and desires aim at nothing except contributing to the common good.”

Epictetus Discourse 2.6.

But before anybody thinks Stoicism is about self-sacrifice or throwing your life away for others, the primary impulse is always self-preservation, and the goal the perfection of self in order to care for your loved ones and to create beauty in the world. And having nice things and a long life are perfectly in accordance with nature..

But your life, health and your wealth only have value in terms of what you do with them  At what price you sacrifice them is up to your reasoned judgment

So to sum up.

The common good, and right reason, right values are touchstones for the Stoics, and everything hinges on the unity of nature, the Cosmos and the Cosmopolis. The prime imperative is to not be stupid and to know what you are doing and why, and getting that right . To understand tthe benefits of rationality and the pitfalls of ignorance, stupidity and hubris.

But where does this leave Stoic ethics now?  You can keep the theology, insist that rationality is a gift from God, and that the capacity to know what is good and bad is the same gift from God.

To stay secular, it is Socratic rational self-examination, with a strong belief that bad decision making leads to a bad life for yourself and others, which is quite easy. But that good decision making is good for an individual will NOT get you to pointing yourself to the common good, that is harder work philosophically. You would need to get a basis of value from somewhere, to answer the very thorny question “why should we care?”

And to do that it is necessary to abandon notions like you cannot get values from facts, or that “goodness” is a meaningless term, or that we cannot know anything. Phillipa Foot’s Natural Goodness is a very close line of thinking. Humans have morals in the same way bats have sonar.

Personally, given the non-magical nature of the theology, there is no real reason to dump it, I am actually very fond of it, and you need the theology and physics to understand the Greeks and they cannot be cut loose. But either way, I think we can keep the naturalism,  holism and the idea of one-ness and idea of the Cosmopolis and the universal community of rational beings as a basis for pro-social ethics and it bleeds out into  environmental ethics as well.

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