The Daily Stoic - The Seeds Of Virtue | Oikeiosis

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

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I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're going to be exploring the life of Margaret Thatcher. The first female leader of Britain. Her 11-year premiership completely overhauled British society. The political legacy of Thatcherism is both pervasive but also controversial. So who was the woman behind the policies?

Wow, what a titan of modern British history, Peter. It's kind of intimidating, actually. We spent days, days recording this one. And just to cut it down, there is so much that happens over the course of Margaret Thatcher's life that we've had to think really hard about what we can include. And this is, of all the characters we've done so far,

the one who's had the most personal impact on my conscious, waking, real-time life. I mean, I lived through her, I was born under her, I'm a Thatcher baby. That's going to be set to dance music, so follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wandery Plus. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there?

Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humour. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic,

and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Be this kind of person. Cato was the kind of person you could trust with the job of cleaning up the notoriously corrupt province of Cyprus. Rutilius Rufus was also that kind of person you could trust with the job of cleaning up the notoriously corrupt province of Cyprus. Rutilius Rufus was also that kind of person. It's why they ultimately framed him on corruption charges. He was getting in the way of the looting.

Marcus Aurelius was that kind of person too. It's why he was never stained purple or Caesarified by power. He was a man of integrity who had rules that he followed that were far stricter than whatever the law allowed. Harry Truman is actually a modern model of this idea. He's the main character in part one of Right Thing Right Now, which you can, as you know, pre-order right now. If it's not right, do not do it, Truman underlined in his own well-worn copy of Meditations. If it's not true, do not say it. First, do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose. Secondly, see that your acts are directed towards a social end. Even though Truman desperately needed money, even though

politics was incredibly corrupt at that time, even though he came up through the Kansas City political machine, he tried to follow Marcus's teachings. I was taught that the expenditure of public money is a public trust, he explained, and I have never changed my opinion on that subject. No one has ever received any public money for which I was responsible unless he gave honest service for it.

Politicians around him grew rich, but Truman's clothing business failed. He was punctilious about paying back every penny he owed. He refused special compensation for his family when their farm was affected by the road he oversaw. And as president, he refused to frank, that is to get free postage on letters he sent to his sister because they were personal and not professional. In all this long career, I had certain rules I followed.

Win, lose, or draw, Truman explained. I refused to handle any political money in any way whatsoever. I engaged in no private interest whatsoever that could be helped by local state or national governments. I refused presents, hotel accommodations, or trips which were paid for by private parties. I made no speeches for money or expenses while I was in the Senate. I lived on the salary I was legally entitled to and considered that I was employed by the taxpayers and the people of my country, state and nation. When the Stokes talk about justice, this is what they're talking about.

Of course, they also care about improving the world. They cared about big picture issues. But as always, they wanted us to focus on what we control. And what is that? Ourselves. Truman didn't control the times he lived in. He didn't control the decay or corruption of his time. Neither did Marcus or Rutilius or Cato. But they did control whether they were the exception to that rule. They controlled whether they stood out, whether they were a small light in the darkness.

And we have that power today. We can be good. We can be honest. We can be decent. We can live and act with justice. Truman was the first guy I was like, okay, I'm gonna build a big chunk of this book around Truman.

I read McCullough's biography, I was talking to someone the other day who had read Right Thing Right Now, and they said, what did you read about Truman to build this out? And I was looking, I go to my shelf here, it's probably 3,000 pages about Truman, so all that gets distilled down

into what's probably a five, 6,000 word section in the book, and I'm just really excited for you to read it. I get excited about these characters, I wanna share them with you, and you can pre-order right thing right now, right now. It's not political statements or admonishments with all that's wrong with the world, it's really practical strategies from people like Truman about how to be a better person.

And if you've gotten anything out of these emails over the years, it would mean a lot. If you supported the book, got a bunch of awesome preorder bonuses, you get signed pages from the manuscript, you could get the very first draft of the Truman chapter, the second pass, the third pass, the audiobook. You could see me working on it as it goes. You just got to order a couple of copies. We can even have dinner together and talk about these ideas. And I'm excited for that philosophy dinner. Anyways, all the details are at dailystoic.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes,

but I can't wait for you to read this book. I'm really excited. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am obviously thinking a lot lately about what Stoicism asks of us. Although it can be so great in self-help, Stoicism also demands that we help others. It's an outward looking philosophy. The word for this, for the Stoics is okayosis, right? That we have this alliance, this connection, this propensity for interacting with others.

And so there's a lot to be said about this connection, this self-interest is part of Stoicism and then the interest of others. Where do they intersect? And my good friend, Stephen Hanselman, who co-wrote the Daily Stoic with me, who's been my agent for many years, he wrote a great essay for the Daily Stoic

on the seeds of virtue, specifically about the principle of justice, which if you want to do more of a deep dive on, you can grab at dailystoic.com. That's the new book, which Steve, of course, not only helped me sell to my publisher, but has been a wonderful editor and advisor all along in the Stoic Virtues series. So I am going to bring you a chunk of that right now. And we're going to be talking about something I talked a lot about in the book, the sort of stoic circles of concern, how we have to care about and connect with

other people. And I'm going to bring you that right now. So enjoy. The Seeds of Virtue. The great Neoplatonic philosopher, writing toward the end of the third century with the benefit of hindsight, believed that the Stoics had anchored their ethical system in justice. But what's interesting about the development of Stoic ethical theory is that while it ultimately claims an unbreakable connection

between the interests of others and our own interests, their theory actually begins with self-interest. The Stoics, like other ancient schools of philosophy, turn to the cradle when seeking to establish the will of nature and find a grounding for ethics, believing, as Cicero wrote in On Ends 5.55, that nature reveals her plan most clearly in childhood. Zeno himself taught that we were born with twin natures and that it was by keeping our individual nature.

Idios 10, Anthroponin equals Daimon. In harmony with the universal or common nature, 10 Koinin Fusin, Dl 7.89, that we would find a happy, virtuous life. Cicero's Academica 2.131 says that Zeno believed virtue was an instinct or a capacity that is derived from nature's recommendation, meaning it is implanted in us by nature and that we use our reason to develop it in our activities. Zeno's student, Cleanthes, also wrote about these implanted seeds of virtue. Unlike Zeno and those who came after him, Cleanthes was the first to center the soul in the mind and not the heart. Cleanthes saw a universe whose primary law was that of justice. See his hymn to Zeus.

That is the proper apportionment of things by nature. He believed that while our inborn capacities give us the start we need, we don't arrive in this world fully formed. These seeds of virtue, along with our reason, are the tools necessary for our development as human beings. That work is our purpose in life. To get there, Kleanthes said we should focus on our common or universal nature.

The Foundation of Stoic Ethics To explain this natural path of development better, the Stoics turned to their notion of oikiosis, which they developed as the foundation of their thinking about ethics. The term is very difficult to translate as it carries a wealth of meaning, grounded in the idea of encountering what is foreign to us and determining whether it is worthy of appropriating or making our own, or whether it will harm us and should be rejected. What things properly belong to us as human beings?

What is fitting, oikios, for us to us as human beings? What is fitting, oikaios, for us to do as human beings? What is of proper concern to us, and what is not? What kind of things should we become familiar with and welcome into our home, oikos? What kind of things should we reject for the harm they might bring, whether immediately or over time. For the Stoics, oioichiosis was the inborn capacity rooted in our self-perception and self-interest

in preserving our Constitution and promoting its growth. That was the anchor of all ethical development. The great scholar, Elaria Ramelli, notes that the idea of oioichiosis dates back in all likelihood all the way to Zeno, and without any doubt at all, to Chrysippus. The early Stoic view leaned hard on grounding ethics in self-perception and self-preservation, the ability to apprehend what is choice-worthy in terms

of our health and growth and what is not. We learn through experience what is worth appropriating and making our own and what is not. Our senses are the first place we engage this capacity of oikiosis, beginning in self-consciousness, the power to know what is a worthy focus of self-concern and what ultimately is worth making our own. Diogenes Lauricus tells us that Chrysippus first fully outlined the teaching. They say that an animal's first impulse is to preserve itself, because nature from the start makes the animal attached to itself.

As Chrysippus states in the first book of his work, On Goals, where he says that for every animal the first thing that belongs to it is its own constitution and its consciousness thereof. For it is not likely that nature would estrange the animal from itself, nor that she would create it, and then neither estrange it from itself, nor make it attach to itself. Accordingly, we are left to conclude that nature, in constituting the animal, made the animal attach to itself, for in this way it repels what is harmful and pursues what is appropriate. DL 7.85.

The Role of Reason Unlike the Epicurean use of cradle arguments, grounded in the senses and feelings of pleasure, the Stoics argued in the next passage, DL 7.86, that it's not feelings and pleasure that control our primary impulses, but reason. And because of this, reason, like a craftsman, overrides impulse. Sometimes what feels good leads to bad results. What we feel is good for us often isn't. Reason alone allows us to keep our individual nature, what's good for me,

and universal nature, what's good for my kind, in harmony. Growing out of self-interest. As we grow, our experience moves beyond the simple biological imperative of survival, and we find that our growth is tied up in our relationships with family and others. Insofar as we are rational and social beings, the Stoics therefore also stressed another pole of oikiosis that was an equally important part of our ethical development. And it had to do with recognizing how the concerns of others

are also part of our natural growth via alliance. By Cicero's time, he was convinced that the Stoic ideal of oikyosis was the proper beginning place of ethics. On ends 3.16. Given this emphasis on the two poles, self, other, of oikiosis, Plutarch tells us that Chrysippus argued in his book, On Justice, that parental love is implanted by nature and is itself one of the cornerstones of justice. Plutarch, Stoic Self-contradictions, 1038b.

Plutarch records that for Chrysippus, oikiosis is a perception, asthesis, and grasp, antilepsis, of what is appropriate, oikion. Our ability to discern through reason and experience

what's a suitable object of concern is fundamental. Moving from self-concern to concern for the other and appropriating our resources and care is the root from which our true ethical development springs. As parents, we naturally care for our children as we would ourselves. This impulse, guided by reason, causes us to take time and attention from ourselves

and our own interests to ensure that our children's needs are met. Cicero on ends 3.62. As children, we recognize this other concern in our parents as something essential for our well-being. As we grow, we are all moving from the seeds of virtue and an innate disposition to choose what enhances our constitution towards ever more fully ethical behavior.

Galen and Posidonius also preserve evidence of Chrysippus's teaching on the topic, which held that our implanted preconceptions, infutoi prolapsus, encompass both what is just, di che on, and good, agathon. Seneca would later reflect in his 121st letter on the development of Stoic teaching about oechaeosis, beginning with the first equipment nature conferred. This art is innate, not learned. That is why no animal has more learning than another. You will see that spiders' webs are all the same, and that in a hive, all the angles of a honeycomb are equal.

Whatever training imparts is variable and uneven. Capacities that come from nature are distributed equally. Nature has conferred nothing beyond the instinct to preserve oneself and a facility in doing so, which is why animals begin to learn at the moment they begin to live. And it is not surprising that they are born with exactly the abilities without which their birth will be fruitless. This is the first equipment nature conferred on them for their continuing existence. Attachment to self and love of self. They would not have the power to survive unless they desired to do so. This

desire just by itself was not enough to help them, but without it nothing else would have done so. Hello, I'm Emily. And I'm Anna. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And just a warning, our latest season will feature a lot of accents. Can I just check what accents? Because... I can't tell this story without going all in.

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Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. In no animal will you find a low regard for self or even a neglect of self. Mute creatures, though dull-witted, in other respects are clever at living. You will see that creatures which are useless to others are not deficient when it comes to themselves. Seneca, Moral Letters, 121.23-24. Our inborn capability.

Humans aren't born with ethical preconceptions fully formed, but only with the inborn capability to form them, which is the power of oikiosis. So, while Stoic ethics begin in self-interest, they culminate in navigating the interests and concerns of others. As we grow, we become more adept at crafting our impulses, so that we can maintain the vital connection between self-concern and the concerns of others.

Just as we naturally work for our own survival and to avoid our demise, so we learn over time that in our interactions with others, we must also promote what benefits them so that their ruin doesn't become our own. When it comes to family, friends, and our social relations, we learn there are duties to act appropriately. Diogenes Lourcius tells us that Zeno was the first to develop the concept of duty,

catechon, or what is incumbent upon us in our dealings with others. Gisela Stryker, in her excellent essay, Following Nature in Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1996, makes a very important suggestion of a staged process of oikiosis that is being worked out by the Stoics, where we as ethical subjects learn to move from valuing self-preservation through an enlightened form of self-love to a more encompassing pursuit of order and harmony with others.

This was a process of increasing rational forms of motivation, which some later Stoics like Posidonius still thought had gaps. Stryker writes, what one learns by experience about human nature is set out in a theory of natural concern, oikiosis, which provides the theoretical background for the stoic teaching about appropriate action. Cate Conta. The Breakthroughs of Stoic Ethics Chrysippus had used the love of parents for their children as a basis of linking to the wider concern for others. As Tad Brennan has written,

Chrysippus also developed a no-shoving principle of ethical behavior that held we should never strive for something that is attained by pushing another away unfairly. After Chrysippus, Antipater developed these notions of doing no harm and the importance of mutual interest and cooperation in his teachings on marriage, family, and business dealings, all groundbreaking developments in the Stoic school. His student, Pannadius, would further develop these ideas in his four-fold role ethics that would expand from Zeno's twin natures, individual and universal, adding to Zeno's two roles, one which we have by virtue of our unique daimon, and the other because of our shared universal nature, two

more sets of roles, those that we have by virtue of our birth and social setting, and those that arise because of particular decisions and commitments we have made. These additional roles added force to the social pull of oikiosis. Another of Chrysippus' ethical breakthroughs was to develop the stoic idea of sympatheia, built on Zeno's belief that we all belong to one common community, which encourages us to meditate on the interconnectedness of all persons and our shared citizenship in the cosmos. Building from Chrysippus and Zeno,

Posidonius took this idea even further. He saw the entire cosmos as a sentient, living being in which all things are interconnected. Sympathia. We are all tied together in cosmic sympathy, Posidonius believed, and none of us are entirely self-sufficient or autonomous. Each of us has been given a role in this large body.

One of us is a finger, another a skin cell, another a liver, and we exist in collaboration and tension with each other. It was God, he thought, that ran through this organism as Numa, a kind of soul of the universe. In this vision, to harm another would be simply to harm yourself. By the time of Seneca, Stoic ethical teaching has fully embraced this move from self-interest to the common good, as he writes in his 95th letter quoting Terrance in bold. This universe that you see, containing the human and the divine, is a unity. We are the limbs of a mighty body.

Nature brought us to birth as kin, since it generated us all from the same materials and for the same purposes, endowing us with affection for one another and making us companionable. Nature established fairness and justice. According to nature's dispensation, it is worse to harm than to be harmed. On the basis of nature's command, let our hands be available to help whenever necessary. Let this verse be in your heart and in your mouth. I am a human being. I regard nothing human as foreign to me. Let us hold things in common, as we are born for the common good.

Our companionship is just like an arch, which would collapse without the stone's mutual support to hold it up. Seneca Moral Letters, 95.52-3. Later, in the 120th letter, Seneca makes the case that as we develop, we learn by experience and analogical reasoning to develop the seeds of the knowledge of virtue

into something that can be emulated and practiced. 120.4-5 Nature gives of the seeds of this ethical knowledge, but not the knowledge itself. We have to work to gain it. Morality and character are something we must constantly work on. Social Harmony Stoic oikiosis is no longer simply appropriating for the self what its constitution requires for physical survival,

but now includes the radical concept of making the unfamiliar concern of others familiar. The old stoic interior sense of appropriation is now fully expanded to embrace the concerns and interests of others. As we saw beginning to develop at the very center of the business ethics debates between Diogenes and Antipater preserved by Cicero, Oikiosus is now fully developed as a principle of justice. Arius Didymus, writing at the time of the rise of the emperor Augustus, had taught that justice is the time of the rise of the emperor Augustus, had taught that justice is the knowledge of apportioning each person and situation what is due.

As Aularia Ramelli notes, this line of development from Antipater to Panadias, and after them to Mycenaeus Rufus and Hyrcalis, was a process of softening the apothea of the old stoa toward indifferent things so that we can pursue interpersonal imperatives that combine not only getting what we need for our own survival, but giving full importance to bringing others closer to ourselves and to their own prospering.

Writing about the time of the birth of Marcus Aurelius, hiercules treats at length the subjects introduced by Antipater and Masonius Rufus, marriage, family, and household management. Like Masonius, he believes that women have the same natural capacities as men, and holds the bond of marriage to be a vehicle for a life of shared harmony and the joint pursuit of virtue. Romeli 57. Stoic ethical teaching is aimed now at social harmony, beginning with the fundamental unit of the household.

It gave the Stoics great clout in Roman society. Hercules' Circles. For Antipater, Masonius, Epictetus, and Hercules, the Stoic will show their sagacity in how well they marry, bring up children, engage as a citizen, and in how well they will be able to draw ever-widening circles of people into their concerns. Hercules' Circles was the picture that great Stoic used to teach oikiosis. We should always seek to draw the further circles toward ourselves, treating family as we would ourselves, friends as family, neighbors as friends, citizens as neighbors,

and ultimately, foreigners as fellow citizens. It's a big lesson we can bring home today too. Along with this picture of the circles, Hercules left us this beautiful summary of oikiosis, one of the best in all of Stoicism. Hence, nature has, as though it were not ignorant of why it creates us, nicely brought each of us into the world with, in a way, an ally. Thus, no one is alone, or born from an oak or a rock, but rather from parents and with brothers and relatives and other members of the household.

Reason too is a great aid which appropriates strangers and those wholly unrelated to us by blood and provides us with an abundance of allies. For this reason, we are eager by nature to win over and make a friend of everyone. Thus, that act is the most complete kind of madness. To wish to be joined with those who bear no affection toward us, by nature and deliberately, to the greatest extent possible, to confer family bond on them, but to neglect those helpers

and caretakers who are at hand and have been bestowed upon us by nature, such as it happens that our brothers are. Oikyosis is a beautiful madness indeed. It's all about the family we choose and how wide we let those circles go without neglecting what's close at hand. That's a definition of justice we could use today when we have broken the connection between our self-interest and the interest of others. We could all stand a little stoic housekeeping to make room for others. Thanks so much for listening.

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