For the Stoics, self-love is our primary motivation. It is natural for us to have a concern for ourselves, to select what is conductive to our survival and avoid what is detrimental to it. As we grow, we become increasingly aware of what is about the things that attract and repulse us. The behavior of the person who has not made the crucial discovery of the good is constituted by appropriate actions only. Appropriate action is an action done in accordance with nature. What is natural has value because it is congenial to us. For instance, health and life are valuable. We are naturally attracted by health and life. What we do as children on impulse is to preserve ourselves and we value health and life. But when impulse is turned into reason, the original impulse to go for certain things (life and health) and avoid their opposite (death, illness) is also gone. There is only concern for rationality. Love for rationality may be understood as a concern for oneself as a rational being. The original impulse takes the form of a concern to maintain, cultivate one’s rationality.

Performing appropriate actions is not yet living virtuously. As long as we perform appropriate actions, and reflect on them, we come to think that this behavior is the Good. Since this moment, we grasp the good. The good lies in consistency. The original concern for ourselves has turned into concern for rationality. Now we perform right actions, that is actions done in accordance with nature and done with the right motivation. So, the final goal is living in agreement, according to reason, with nature. In other words, the final goal is to live invariably selecting natural things and rejecting unnatural things.

The goal of life, however, is not just attaining natural things. It consists in the reasonable selection of natural things. Living a natural life does not mean living in an agreement with nature. A child may lead a natural life in the sense of behaving in the way nature has planned for him. By living a natural life, we acquire reason as part of our natural development. Once reason is acquired, it is possible for us to begin to understand why we live the way we do. We naturally develop a certain pattern of selection. At this point, we have to involve ourselves to attain perfect knowledge, virtue, which only guarantees that we live in accordance with nature. Virtue becomes that art of selecting things in accordance with nature. The Stoics believe that virtue is not something we are born with. It is something which we, by our own efforts, can acquire. Nature has constructed us in such a way that, if nothing goes wrong, we would, in the course of our natural development, become virtuous. Nature leads us to virtue.

In conclusion, the Stoics notoriously claim that virtue is the only good and all other goods are valuables. Health, money, friendship are valuable things. They are not good nor bad since they are not desirable in their own right and independently of a desire for the good. They are not appropriate objects of choice except as means to the good.

Bibliography:

  • Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers VII 85-87,
  • Cicero, On Goals III 15-21.