Stoicism, from its foundation, has been most famous for its ethical ideas. Even now, stoical suggests a particular ethical stance, endurance of pain or misfortune without complaint. But in antiquity Stoicism was notable also for its unified view of the scope of philosophy and of the nature of reality.
The Stoic ethical ideas drawn from Socrates were that virtue was unified, a type of knowledge, and the only thing that was good in itself. Also Socratic were the ideas that virtue was the sole basis for happiness and that all human beings were capable of achieving full virtue. The Stoics developed these ideas into a systematic theory of value linked with a normative picture of human development. A…
See also Christianity; Epicureanism; Epistemology; Language, Philosophy of: Ancient and Medieval; Logic; Neoplatonism. Algra, Keimpe, et al., eds. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bobzien, Susanne. Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Inwood, Brad. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. O…
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