Students of Stoicism

The Pillar of Stoic Ethics: On Appropriate Acts 3/4

Pillar of Stoic Ethics: The Fragments of Kathēkon and the Republic You Would Build
Welcome back, fellow students!
Over the last two meetings, we worked through Cicero’s account of Stoic ethics in On Moral Ends, Book III. Cicero gave us a continuous, polished argument: the five stages of moral development, the archer analogy, the distinction between appropriate acts and fully right actions, and the hidden bargains we attach to our good behavior. This time, we go behind Cicero to the sources he was drawing from.
Long and Sedley’s The Hellenistic Philosophers collects the surviving fragments on proper functions, or kathēkon, from the original Stoic thinkers. These are not essays. They are pieces: quotations pulled from lost works, summaries written by later authors, and paraphrases passed down across centuries. No single fragment tells the whole story. But taken together, they reveal something that Cicero’s smooth prose sometimes conceals: these ideas were built from argument, disagreement, and careful definition.
A quick reminder on how to read fragments: start with the translated source passages (marked with capital letters, A through Q). Read them first on their own. Then read the commentary that follows, which connects the pieces and explains what the Stoics were trying to work out. If a fragment feels confusing by itself, that is normal. The commentary is where the picture comes together.

Reading Assignment
Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, pages 359 through 368 (Section 59: Proper Functions).
Pay special attention to three things. First, how the definition of proper function extends from plants and animals all the way up to the wise person’s right action. Second, the distinction between “intermediate” proper functions that any reasonable person performs and “perfect” proper functions that only the truly virtuous person performs, even though the outward action may look identical. Third, the Chrysippus passage we keep returning to: the person who performs all proper functions without exception but whose life is not yet happy, because something still needs to settle into place.

Group Exercise: Build Your Republic
Every major school of Hellenistic philosophy responded to Plato’s Republic. Zeno wrote his own, imagining a community of the wise governed by natural law, with no courts, no temples, and no currency. Chrysippus wrote one. Diogenes the Cynic wrote one. Each of them took Plato’s question, what would the ideal society look like, and answered it from their own philosophy.
This month, you will do the same thing.
Create your own personal republic. Go as deep or as light as you want. Think it through quietly or write it down in detail. Start by giving it a name based on your own name. Take a syllable, a play on words, whatever feels right. Jasmine might become Jazztopia. You will find your own version.
Then shape your society. How is it structured? What do your citizens look like, and how do they treat each other? How do you enforce law and order, or do you? What are the strengths of your republic, and what are its weaknesses or risks?
Notice the connection to our reading. When you decide what roles exist in your republic and what those roles require, you are defining proper functions for your citizens. You are doing exactly what the Stoics did.
Bring your republic to the group ready to defend it, and ready to have it challenged. We will use the Socratic Method from the Logic Pillar. If someone exposes a weakness, that is not a defeat. That is the republic getting better. This is what Chrysippus did when he revised Zeno. He was not being disloyal. He was being a better Stoic.
This exercise will continue through the rest of the Ethics Pillar. Each session, we will return to our republics and refine them in light of whatever new material we have covered.

Monthly Practice: The Archer’s Journal (Continued)
If you have been keeping the Archer’s Journal from previous sessions, continue it. If you have not started, this is a good time to begin. Choose one goal you are working toward. At the end of each day, answer two questions separately. First, did you aim well? Second, did you hit the target? Over time, notice which one actually determines how you feel about the day.

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