Not only is virtue its own reward, but any additional benefits it might produce are not similarly valuable and cannot be a reason for choosing virtue.

Plato thought that the effective organization of the human body and the fact that the world apparently exists to serve our needs (if only we are wise enough to use it well) were clear signs that a benevolent and providential divinity established our world and continues to run it in the most orderly and helpful way possible.

Not only, then, are the Stoics determinists (perhaps the earliest determinists of the western tradition) but they are also providential determinists.

only virtue can be counted on to benefit unconditionally and only vice counts as harmful in all possible circumstances.

beauty, consistency, and orderliness are even more worth preserving in the domain of deliberation and action,

the craftsman god is not all-powerful. Like any other craftworker, god has to make the best product that he can with the materials available to him. Recalcitrant matter means that, literally with the best will in the world, there are bound to be bad outcomes. That doesn’t mean that the world isn’t as good as it can be—the best of all possible

The Greek term we conventionally translate as ‘virtue’ is aretē, the original sense of which is simply ‘excellence’; it did not involve any restricted or special sense of ‘morality’, as the term ‘virtue’ tends to do for us.

For logical relations were held to be relations among contents (the sayables) as abstracted from their material hosts.

even though my actions are causally determined, they are very much my own; personal agency is preserved.