If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, prudence, self-control, courage—than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what’s beyond its control—if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed—and enjoy it to the full.
-Marcus Aurelius
All of Stoic ethics can be summarized as the Four Virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control. Every action a Stoic takes should be in service of at least one of these virtues. This post will introduce the Four Virtues in the aggregate. Later posts will explore each in depth.
The Stoics viewed the Four Virtues as the only path to the good life – eudaimonia. Virtue is the only good.
The matter can be imparted quickly and in very few words: “Virtue is the only good; at any rate there is no good without virtue; and virtue itself is situated in our nobler part, that is, the rational part.”
-Seneca
Experience has taught you in how many paths you have strayed and nowhere found the good life: not in logical arguments, not in riches, not in glory, not in self-indulgence, nowhere. Where then is it to be found? In doing what man’s nature requires. How then will he do this? If he hold fast doctrines upon which impulses and actions depend. What doctrines are these? They concern good and evil, how nothing is good for man which does not make him just, sober, brave and free; nothing evil which does not produce effects the opposite of these.
-Marcus Aurelius
Even before the Stoics, philosophers believed the highest aim of life should be eudaimonia. Plato and Aristotle seem to have taken it for granted that eudaimonia is the goal. Pre-Stoic philosophers understood that the real debate lies in how to achieve an eudaimonic life. The Stoics believed they found the path with the Four Virtues.
As attorneys, if we allow the Four Virtues to guide every decision, we will be well on the way to eudaimonia. When we interact with our clients, our colleagues, the Court, and opposing counsel, we have an opportunity to practice living according to the Four Virtues.
But keep in mind that a Stoic does not pursue the Four Virtues for the benefits they bring to him or her.
“But you too cultivate virtue,” he replies, “only because you hope to gain some pleasure from it.” First of all, even though virtue will assure pleasure, it is not on account of pleasure that virtue is pursued. It is not pleasure that it assures, but pleasure as well; nor does virtue exert itself for pleasure, but its effort — though it aims at something else — achieves this too.
-Seneca
Seneca goes on to state that “pleasure is not the reward or cause of virtue, but the byproduct of it.”
So how can you practice the Four Virtues in your practice? What unexpected byproducts have come to you by your virtuous practices?