Simple Stoic Advice
Virtue
Virtue
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.17:
Quote
“The elements move upward, downward, in all directions. The motion of virtue is different — deeper. It moves at a steady pace on a road hard to discern, and always forward.”
Advice
The idea of virtue to the Stoics was that the pursuit of it was our job in life. The Stoics held Four Cardinal Virtues which they sought each and every day.
Donald Robertson, author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and Stoicism and the Art of Happiness once said:
“The doxographer Diogenes Laertius said that the Stoics described the supreme good as “honourable” because it consists of the four factors (virtues) required for the perfection of human nature: wisdom, justice, courage, and orderliness (self-discipline). The “honourable”, he says, denotes those qualities which make their possessor genuinely praiseworthy, by allowing him to fulfil his natural potential as a human being.”
The Four Cardinal Virtues of the Stoics were:
Wisdom (Sophia)
Courage (Andreia)
Justice (Dikaiosyne)
Temperance (Sophrosyne)
Wisdom
Wisdom or Prudence should be thought of as practical wisdom, that is, understanding the world we live in and who we are. Practical Wisdom is key to the Stoic philosophy because it is a summation of everything Epictetus preached about that is good, bad, and indifferent, as well as what is and is not within our control.
Courage
Perhaps one of the simplest of the virtues to understand, courage means being courageous. We hold within our power the ability to be courageous in the face of fear.
Justice
Donald Robertson has stated that justice was often translated to mean righteousness in the past as it has to deal more with morality. The general understanding of the virtue is that of our moral interactions with people within the world and how we treat others.
Temperance
Of all the Stoics virtues, Temperance is perhaps the one people today neglect the most as it has to do with moderation through self-awareness and discipline. Temperance is our moderation of desires.
The path to virtue, according to the Stoics, was not a destination but rather a continuous daily effort to strive to perfecting these virtues in all of our actions.
In an effort to help on the quest of pursuing a virtuous life, the Stoics would imagine the Stoic Sage, the ideal Stoic who embraces the world with equanimity and is not moved by external forces. This was the pursuit of virtue with the understanding that it is an ideal, not a destination, and that it could never actually be achieved, though the pursuit of it was within itself virtuous.
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