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The kathekon: A Report on Some Recent Work at Cornell

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... 263-265) interprets the καθῆκον as an activity useful for the agent's survival. Brennan (2014) and Klein (2015) claim that human καθήκοντα are actions by which the agents try to follow the course of nature. ...
... pp. 341-346 n. 1),Barney (2003),Brennan (2014). 2 Among the scholars defending the probabilistic interpretation one must mentionBonhöffer (1894, pp. ...
... 263-265) interprets the καθῆκον as an activity useful for the agent's survival. Brennan (2014) and Klein (2015) claim that human καθήκοντα are actions by which the agents try to follow the course of nature. ...
... pp. 341-346 n. 1),Barney (2003),Brennan (2014). 2 Among the scholars defending the probabilistic interpretation one must mentionBonhöffer (1894, pp. ...
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The aim of this paper is to enquire if the Stoics consider certain social activities appropriate only for men or women, a much-debated question in the scholarship. Here it is argued that the Stoics are not committed to gendered divisions of tasks. This claim is pled through an analysis of the various testimonies and of the Stoic notion of appropriate activity (καθῆκον). This result leads to reconsider the Stoics’ stand within their cultural environment and will hopefully contribute to the debate on their thinking on womanhood. This study is thus structured: firstly, the notion of καθῆκον is presented; next, the evidence of the Stoic use of gender as a parameter in determining καθήκοντα is discussed; then, a reconstruction of the social role the early Stoics assigned to women in their planned constitutions is attempted; finally, the reflection of later Stoics on the role of women in actual societies is addressed.
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A ética estoica tem uma característica amplamente humana e social e esta característica fica mais evidente através do termo kathēkonta, que traduzimos por atos adequados com forte ênfase social, pelo menos nos escritos do filósofo estoico Hiérocles. Neste artigo, apresentamos de forma ampla o conceito de kathēkonta, sua importância para uma ética que leva em conta o indivíduo ordinário ou comum com suas relações sociais e circunstâncias. Embora a ética estoica tenha fundamentação metafísica (o tópico da física estoica) e teológica (Zeus ou a Natureza Divina), os kethēkonta enquanto ética do indivíduo ordinário ou comum tem como parâmetro as relações sociais que estabelecemos, as circunstâncias empíricas dessas relações, a agência humana e suas características enquanto natureza humana. Pode-se pensar que a base dessa ética dos kathēkonta é, ao invés de metafísica, tanto o cosmopolitismo estoico, onde somos todos cidadãos iguais de um mesmo cosmos, quanto pela sympatheia estoica, que nos liga tanto através de nossa racionalidade humana quanto de nossa natureza enquanto seres humanos. Definiremos kathēkonta enquanto atos adequados sociais e afirmaremos sua importância, nos dias de hoje, para um fundamento de uma coesão social.
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A familiar interpretation of the Stoic doctrine of the πάθη runs as follows: The Stoics claim the πάθη are impulses (ὁρμαί). The Stoics take impulses to be causes of action. So, the Stoics think the πάθη are causes of action Premise (1) is uncontroversial, but the evidence for (2) needs to be reconsidered. I argue that the Stoics have two distinct but related conceptions of ὁρμή – a psychological construal and a behavioural construal. On the psychological construal (2) is true, but there is strong evidence that (1) is true only on the behavioural construal. That is, when the Stoics classify πάθη as impulses they are thinking of them not as impulses to act, but as cases of action in their own right.
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Stoic ethical thought is sometimes regarded as a transition from teleological accounts of morality to modern or deontological accounts. Yet any such claims about Stoic ethics need to be understood in light of the Stoics' well-attested commitment to eudaimonism. This chapter argues that this commitment is best understood as a commitment to rational eudaimonism in particular and that Stoic ethics, as such, is not correctly regarded as a departure from the teleological framework characteristic of Platonic and Aristotelian theories. Although the Stoics appropriate the notion of nomos to characterize the natural order, and although they regard this order as a source of virtue's content, the Stoic conception of natural law does not imply a source of obligation independent of eudaimonist considerations.
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This reader-friendly introduction to the ethical system of the Ancient Greek Stoics combines state-of-the art scholarship with lively and accessible prose. It builds on the renewed attention that the Hellenistic philosophers have enjoyed in the last few decades, incorporating the best results of recent critical debates while staking out new positions on a variety of topics. Starting from scrupulous attention to the evidence (references are provided to all of the standard collections of Stoic texts), it then provides translations of the original texts, with extensive annotations that will allow readers to pursue further reading. No knowledge of Greek is required. An introductory section provides context by introducing the reader to the most important figures in the Stoic school, the philosophical climate in which they worked, and a brief summary of the leading tenets of the Stoic system. The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides a thorough exploration of the Stoic school's theories of psychology, focusing on their analyses of fear, desire, and other emotions. The second section develops the more centrally ethical topics of value, obligation, and right action. The third section explores the Stoic school's views on fate, determinism, and moral responsibility.
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I argue that comparisons of Stoic virtue to stochastic skills — now standard in the secondary literature on Stoicism — are based on a misreading of the sources and distort the Stoic position in two respects. In paradigmatic stochastic skills such as archery, medicine, or navigation the value of the skill’s external end justifies the existence and practice of the skill and constitutes an appropriate focus of rational motivation. Neither claim applies to virtue as the Stoics understand it. The stochastic model of virtue almost certainly originated with Carneades and should be distinguished clearly from the Stoic account. Doing so clarifies the Stoic position and shows that it anticipates what Thomas Hurka calls a modern view of value.
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INTRODUCTION: THE SCOPE OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY, ANCIENT AND MODERN Moral psychology addresses itself to the interface between ethics and psychology. One of the basic principles of moral psychology is the apparently trivial one, that all ethically correct actions are, to begin with, actions: inasmuch as they are the deliberate or at least intentional actions of human beings, ethical actions will share features with the class to which they belong, and fall under whatever constraints belong to the larger kind. This of course raises an immediate question about the coherence of the topic so described. Psychology is clearly a descriptive field, and ethics is the normative field par excellence; the one tells us how the human mind does function, the other tells us how human agents ought to act. Given this fundamental difference, we may not assume, without further argument, that the first discussion can place any constraints whatsoever on the second. The mere fact that psychology places limits on what is humanly possible does not show, without further argument, that ethics must keep its demands within those limits. The further argument tends to come, nowadays, in terms of a sort of mixing axiom of morality and modality, that the agent cannot be obligated to do anything it is not possible for the agent to do. This is usually abbreviated to the slogan that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, though its teeth are more often bared in the contrapositive formulation, that ‘not possible’ implies ‘not obligatory’.
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Analyse de la notion de reserve dans la morale et la psychologie de l'action des Stoiciens. Refutant l'interpretation standard de B. Inwood fondee sur la notion de pulsion conditionnelle, l'A. montre que la reserve consiste a eliminer toute forme de frustration phenomenologique et toute reaction psychique liee a la non satisfaction.
to the Boston Area Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy
  • Tad Brennan
BRENNAN, Tad 1996: "Reasonable Impressions in Stoicism', Phronesis, 41 (1996), p. 318-334. -1999: "Demoralizing the Stoics", unpublished paper delivered to the Boston Area Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy, 1999. -2000: "Reservation in Stoic Ethics" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 82 (2000), p. 149-177. -2003: "Stoic Moral Psychology", in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge, 2003 (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy), p. 257-294. -2005: The Stoic Life: emotions, duties, and fate, Oxford, 2005.
Sur Deux Notions de l'Éthique Stoïcienne: de la ‘Réserve' au ‘Renversement
  • Jacques Brunschwig
BRUNSCHWIG, Jacques 2005: "Sur Deux Notions de l'Éthique Stoïcienne: de la 'Réserve' au 'Renversement'," in G. Romeyer Dherbey, J.-B. Gourinat (eds.), Les Stoïciens, Paris, 2005 (Bibliothèque d'histoire de la philosophie), p. 357-380.
Demoralizing the Stoics”, unpublished paper delivered to the Boston Area Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy
  • Tad Brennan
Nature and Reason in Stoic Ethics, unpublished dissertation
  • Jacob Klein