The Golden Rule in Stoicism

Page 6 THE STOI C Volume 2, Issue 2 The Golden Rule in Stoicism The Golden Rule In discussing the master-slave relation- Nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor The Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would ship, the Stoic philosopher Seneca like- hate him, for we are made for co-operation, like to be treated by them” is one of the sim- wise wrote: like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act plest and most influential of all ethical But this is the kernel of my advice: Treat against one another then is contrary to principles. Although the Golden Rule is your inferiors as you would be treated by most commonly associated with Christian- nature; and it is acting against one another your betters. ity, it was arguably also implicit in many to be vexed and to turn away. Seneca, Letters, 47 traditions, including Stoicism. Meditations, 2.1 Seneca has this to say on anger: The Golden Rule in Stoicism Conclusion The Stoic philosopher Hierocles says. No one says to himself, “I myself have done Do unto others as you would have them or might have done this very thing which I do unto you. For Socrates, treating friends The first admonition, therefore, is very clear, am angry with another for doing” … Let us otherwise was a moral contradiction, a easily obtained, and is common to all men. put ourselves in the place of him with double standard, and therefore irrational. For it is a sane assertion, which every man whom we are angry: at present. An over- A few generations later, the Stoics took will consider as evident. And it is this: Act by weening conceit of our own importance his ethical philosophy and developed it everyone, in the same manner as if you makes us prone to anger, and we are quite into more of a system. Zeno, the founder supposed yourself to be him, and him to be willing to do to others what we cannot en- of Stoicism, had said, like Aristotle before you. dure should be done to ourselves him, that a friend is “another me” (alter Hierocles, Fragments (Stobaeus) Seneca, On Anger, 3.12 ego est amicus). However, we are to strive to make all men (and women) our friends. Hierocles goes on to illustrate this point In one of the fragments sometimes at- by reference to the master-slave relation- tributed to Epictetus, he writes: The Golden Rule gradually became more ship: explicit and took on its familiar form in What you avoid suffering yourself, seek not authors such as Seneca when he admon- For he will use a servant well who considers to impose on others. ishes us for being “quite willing to do to with himself, how he would think it proper Epictetus, Fragments others what we cannot endure should be to be used by him, if he indeed was the Marcus Aurelius nowhere states the Gold- done to ourselves”. master, and himself the servant. en Rule as explicitly as either Hierocles or Finally, in Marcus Aurelius, the last fa- Seneca. The closest he comes is in the mous Stoic of antiquity, we find a system- following passage: atic emphasis on the ethics of brotherly love, which the Stoics called philostorgia See that you never feel towards misan- (“natural affection”.) We’re to regard our- thropes as such people feel towards the selves and others as brothers and sisters, human race. even as limbs of the same organism. From Meditations, 7.65 this vision of the unity of humankind, it follows naturally that we should apply the However, throughout The Meditations, he does adopt the related assumption that we same moral standard to others that we apply to ourselves. This is probably one should treat all others as our “kinsmen” and fellow citizens. For instance, in per- aspect of what the Stoics meant when they Donald Robertson is an author and haps one of the book’s most famous pas- described the supreme goal of life accord- Cognitive Behavior Therapist. His latest sages he writes: ing to their philosophy as living consist- book is How to Think Like a Roman Em- ently. peror (https://amzn.to/2SswfJ1). .

Load more