Stoic Meditations

Do not grow weary, perform your duty, and act as becomes a good person. Help one with money, another with credit, another with your favor; this one with good advice, that one with sound maxims. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Let us bestow benefits, not put them out at interest. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and without due reflexion, I should say that there is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know how to bestow or how to receive a benefit. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Atilius Regulus in his second consulship was taken prisoner in Africa by the stratagem of Xanthippus, a Spartan general serving under the command of Hannibal’s father Hamilcar. … --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Pray, tell me, does it coincide with the character of your good person to lie for their own profit, to slander, to overreach, to deceive? Nay, verily; anything but that! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

“When a man enters the foot-race,” says Chrysippus with his usual aptness, “it is his duty to put forth all his strength and strive with all his might to win; but he ought never with his foot to trip, or with his hand to foul a competitor.” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents the Stoic argument that we are born to be virtuous, meaning prosocial. The Epicureans thought we are born to seek pleasure and avoid pain. They both had a point. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that ethical reasoning is akin to mathematics: it begins with certain axioms that are taken for granted. Which axioms does your ethical thinking assume to be true? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Those who say that regard should be had for the rights of fellow-citizens, but not of foreigners, would destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Injustice is fatal to social life and fellowship between people. For, if we are so disposed that each, to gain some personal profit, will defraud or injure his neighbor, then the bonds of human society must of necessity be broken. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If your friend were a tyrant, would you kill him? That is the situation that Brutus faced with respect to Caesar, and which Cicero analyzes in this episode. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

There were, broadly speaking, two major clusters of Hellenistic philosophies: the Socratic ones and, for lack of a better term, the ataraxic ones. Let's take a look at the differences.

Whether moral goodness is the only good, as the Stoics believe, or whether, as the Peripatetics think, it is the highest of many goods, it is beyond question that expediency can never conflict with moral rectitude.

But the chief thing in all public administration and public service is to avoid even the slightest suspicion of self-seeking. For to exploit the state for selfish profit is not only immoral; it is criminal, infamous.

We must apologize also, to the best of our ability, if we have involuntarily hurt anyone’s feelings, and we must by future services and kind offices atone for the apparent offense.

Relieving the poor is a form of charity that is a service to the state as well as to the individual.

The reason for making constitutional laws was the same as that for making kings. For what people have always sought is equality of rights before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.

Think of the aqueducts, canals, irrigation works, breakwaters, artificial harbors; how should we have these without the work of people?