Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

it is in fact predetermined who will make this effort and whether it will succeed, but we don’t and can’t know who in particular will in fact try and whether he or she will succeed. If we knew this sort of thing then we might well be paralysed, not to mention depressed. But given the limits on human knowledge about these particulars we just carry o

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.

He seems to have said that a conditional such as ‘if p then q’ is true if p and not-q conflict with each other.

The differences between rocks, plants, animals, and humans are all attributable to differences in the form of the pneuma that shapes the raw material in them.

human nature is defined teleologically, in terms of its built-in purpose or function, and this function is fundamental to Stoic ethics.

The ability to give or withhold assent to an impression is the fundamental power that our rationality gives us for dealing with the outside world;

As Socrates said, no one does wrong willingly, and presumably the thing to do is to teach such people rather than to get angry or vengeful.

this pneuma is also the basic active principle which permeates the whole cosmos and is labelled Nature in a more global sense than that which characterizes individual entities.

This rejection of a separate divine sphere marks another and very important difference between the Stoics and the Aristotelian/Platonic traditions. Stoics regarded the universe as a more radical unity, with the divine power that sustains it (something that both Plato and Aristotle believed in, unlike the atomists) not hived off into a distinct meta