So, rational agency. Let’s tackle this beast right now, because it’s a big one: human beings can make decisions. The more you think about that, the more incredible it seems.
In a universe governed entirely by blind cause and effect, something somehow became capable of seeing cause and effect for itself. It developed the capacity to imagine possible futures, evaluate them, and even choose between them.
As far as we can tell, nothing else in existence can do this. Other animals certainly possess drives. They respond to the environment in ways that keep them alive and procreating. But we go far beyond that. We can examine our drives consciously. We can even overrule them if we have good reason. We can describe those reasons, justify them, evaluate them against each other, and debate their priority.
That is rational agency, and I think it’s rather special. Evolution did its thing, experimented blindly for millions of years, and somehow produced minds capable of understanding reality and, seemingly, directing themselves through it.
Evolution gave us the experience of choice.
The Human Problem
It also gave us the obligation of choice. That is our burden, and it’s a heavy one.
It’s hard to decide between all the options available to us, and that’s before we consider the ancient battle between our urges and rational thoughts. Ask any addict about that battle – ask any person, for that matter. Because, while we’ve inherited the old machinery used by our ancestors to direct their actions through instinct, we also have some new tech in our brains.
This technology designed our farms, our cities, our aeroplanes, our computers and even our democracies – and in doing so, made us richer than any of our ancestors could dream of. And yet the instincts remain, making demands in a world they scarcely understand. In other words, evolution has left us with two operating systems. The ancient system supplies our innate urges, while the new software gives us powerful strategies for meeting them.
The upgrade, unfortunately, hasn’t been without its hiccups. The old system was designed to do everything; it made us want whatever we needed to survive, and even had crude methods of acquiring it. And even though the new system has taken on the procurement side of the operation, it can’t update the old system.
That’s why you can sit in your car, on your way to work, where you’ll engage in a phenomenally complex resource gathering operation, without the old system having the faintest idea what is going on. So it will tell you you’re hungry, even when you’re piling on the pounds and have just had breakfast.
That’s IT rollouts for you.
Making this all work together smoothly is our burden – this is the great human challenge.
Stoicism is one approach to that challenge.
The Classical World
Back in Ancient Greece, philosophy was a major part of public life, with many thinkers addressing some of the biggest ideas in civilisation – not least democracy, which was famously implemented there.
But, as well as matters of governance, the Greeks were interested in questions of how to live well. What was required for a good life? To flourish? What was, in the language of the time, essential to the state of Eudaimonia?
While asking these questions, Plato identified four Cardinal Virtues. These were Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice, which Plato described as the foundations of good character. Like democracy, the Virtues would become influential throughout the world; they were later adopted by Catholicism, for example, and Eastern philosophies also feature similar central concepts. With hindsight, we can see there is something fundamental about the Virtues.
After Plato came Aristotle, who believed these Cardinal Virtues were important, but didn’t go far enough. Human flourishing, he argued, is about far more than good character. We also need some wealth, good friendships and, of course, our health. So he expanded Eudaimonia to include these things too.
And this was the discourse of the day, until a wealthy merchant suffered disaster at sea.
Zeno of Citium, so the story goes, was sailing from Phoenicia to Peiraeus when his ship sank, along with a full complement of merchandise, virtually ruining him overnight. So, naturally, he did what any good thinker might, and headed off to find some philosophers.
The first philosophy to make a deep impression on Zeno was Cynicism, particularly through his teacher, Crates. The Cynics argued that Eudaimonia could be found through radical independence from possessions, status and convention; that was the secret to being protected from the whims of the Fates. While Zeno admired much of this thinking, he saw it as unrealistic; rejecting all attachments might make us invulnerable, but it asked too much from a species that naturally forms them.
But then, looking back at Aristotle’s account of Eudaimonia, Zeno found himself dissatisfied there too. Zeno knew all about Aristotle’s good life; he’d been living it until disaster struck! The problem was that Aristotle’s flourishing depended on at least a degree of good fortune. What do we do when luck is not on our side?
What use is a philosophy we can’t follow? What is the value of a choice we cannot take? If the purpose of philosophy was to guide action then it ought to guide actions available to anyone at any time.
Zeno set about discovering what that philosophy might look like.
Who Gets to Live The Good Life?
Let’s just recap the central problem here: Cynicism had one description of eudaimonia and Aristotle’s virtue ethics had another.
Cynicism’s eudaimonia depended on a rejection of things before they could be taken away. But was such radical independence realistic? Humans naturally form societies, institutions and social ties. Whether or not we should feel embarrassed to walk around naked, we really do.
Aristotle was at the other end of that spectrum. He was, by all accounts, a bit of a party animal and very wealthy; his eudaimonia depended on embracing everything the cynics rejected, which meant being lucky enough to have access to them.
If neither Aristotle nor the Cynics had identified a definition of flourishing that remained meaningful under all circumstances, that suggested an underlying problem. Flourishing seemed to mean either denying oneself a normal life, or being blessed with luck.
If the purpose of philosophy is to guide us in life, it should be able to do that irrespective of the paths our lives might take.
So Zeno kept thinking.
Back to Plato
Zeno returned to Plato’s Four Cardinal Virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice. For Plato, these were the central ingredients of good character. And, while we don’t know what Zeno saw when he revisited them, we can see that they were remarkably salient to the question he had been asking ever since his shipwreck:
What should I do?
There is something rather special about that question, as ordinary as it may seem. In fact, that specialness lies in its very ordinariness to us. How many times a day do we ask ourselves some version of “What should I do”? And yet, how characteristically human this question is too! Trees need not consider it; animals rarely seem to. This question, so ordinary to human minds, is an enquiry made by that thing we all share: rational agency. To ask it is to engage in the realm of reason: to consider our options, weigh them against one another and expect that process to help determine what we do next.
Whatever Zeno himself saw in this, rational agency became as central to his new philosophy as that question – “What should I do?” – is to human life. And such an important faculty needs protecting, because it’s delicate. If fear can simply overturn our conclusions, if appetite can exempt itself from them, if our understanding of reality can bend to whatever we’d prefer to believe – the process breaks down. We end up damaging the very machinery we called upon to decide what to do.
Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice, then, are not merely descriptions of good character. They are what protect rational agency while it does its work.
And there is another crucial feature of rational agency: it is universal. Whenever we ask “What should I do?”, we are already exercising it. Fortune can radically alter the choices available to us, but it cannot change the fact that, whenever there is a choice to make, we must somehow decide among the options that remain.
And that went straight to the heart of Zeno’s problem. Aristotle’s account of Eudaimonia depended partly upon good fortune. Cynicism attempted to escape fortune by radically limiting what we cared about. But rational agency offered another possibility entirely: make Eudaimonia – human flourishing – a function of how well we use our rational agency whenever we ask that most fundamental question: “What should I do?”
So Zeno argued that Eudaimonia, the good life, human flourishing – call it what you will – was simply exercising rational agency well. Whatever our circumstances, there is always a best decision available to us, given what we know and whatever we are trying to achieve. A good decision was one guided by the Virtues, and deciding virtuously was the good life.
Under Zeno’s philosophy, then, everyone gets access to the good life. Circumstances determine the choices available to us; how well we make them is down to us.
So let’s take a look at the Four Cardinal Virtues through that lens – not as traits within your soul, or nice things you might have – but as the ingredients of your next decision.
The Four Cardinal Virtues – A Guide for Rational Agents
Wisdom
Wisdom is about our relationship with reality. When we make a good decision, it is guided by what we know rather than, say, what we might prefer to believe. Wisdom also considers the certainty of our convictions and the consequences of being wrong. Your next decision will be a wise one if you look honestly at what you know about the relevant facts, while resisting the temptation to believe seductive or comforting stories.
Additionally, wisdom is about treating our rational agency as a system, ensuring all of our decisions are coherent so the system operates harmoniously. In other words, it ensures our decisions don’t undo each other.
Courage
Courage allows us to follow our rational decisions even when our instincts make that difficult. If the old machinery doesn’t understand those decisions, it may try to intervene with fear or idleness. Often, even the fear of future discomfort might prevent us doing what we have decided is best. Courage is the tool that helps us overcome this.
Temperance
A little bit of what you fancy does you good: wise words, perhaps. But, knowing that there can be too much of a good thing and being able to stop before that boundary is reached – that’s temperance. If courage motivates us to act despite our feelings, temperance does the opposite, ensuring that indulgence is rational.
Justice
Justice stands slightly apart from the other Virtues. Wisdom, Temperance and Courage protect rational agency within the individual. Justice, on the other hand, protects the social environment in which rational agents operate together.
And that environment matters because we are social creatures. The moment two or more people form a group, their rational agencies begin to interact and inevitably constrain one another. We cannot both have unrestricted use of the same property, make commitments to one another without creating expectations, or pursue conflicting objectives without sometimes getting in each other’s way.
Justice does not create these constraints. They arise naturally wherever rational agents interact. Instead, Justice makes those constraints legible, predictable and stable, so that each of us can make decisions with a reasonable understanding of how other people, and the group itself, will respond.
Property is a simple example. If something belongs to me, I can make plans that depend upon continuing to possess it. A just system makes that expectation reasonably reliable. The same principle applies to agreements, contracts and laws. Even punishment can serve this function: if I know what I am prohibited from doing and what will happen if I do it anyway, those consequences become information I can incorporate into my decisions.
Of course, this requires one additional premise: that we care about the functioning of the groups to which we belong. But most of us clearly do. We care about our relationships, families, workplaces, communities and societies. And once we care about a group, we have reason to preserve an interpersonal environment in which the rational agency of its members can function effectively.
Justice, then, does not eliminate the constraints of social existence. It makes those unavoidable constraints coherent enough for rational agents to navigate them.
One Level Deeper
At first glance, the Cardinal Virtues can seem a little arbitrary. Why don’t they include generosity? Or conscientiousness? Or any other admirable qualities?
The answer is simple: in Stoicism, the Cardinal Virtues only really have one objective: to protect and improve the decision-making process itself. Wisdom focuses on respecting reality in our decisions; temperance and courage both protect our decisions from sometimes unwise instincts; justice is concerned with the preservation of rational agency between agents.
But isn’t that a little bare? What about health? How is that not part of the good life? Shouldn’t we be kind as well?
I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Over To You
More accurately, Stoicism will let you be the judge of that.
You see, the difference between Stoicism and you is that Stoicism is a philosophy and you are a rational agent. There are many things that you can do that a philosophy cannot. And Stoicism, more than any other philosophy I know, respects that difference.
Stoicism has limitations and refuses to overreach them. You can, and probably do, value your health. Your relationships. Your wealth, kindness and the smell of freshly cut grass. And you, unlike Stoicism, can take action in pursuit of those things.
All this philosophy can do is describe a stable model of rational agency so that you can live in alignment with your values, and the reality you must interact with to honour them. Your values have been forged by your genes, your upbringing, and many other experiences since then. There’s nothing Stoicism can do about that.
But it absolutely does do everything it can, and with more clarity – in my opinion – than any other philosophy out there.
Stoicism can only reason with the part of you that can be reasoned with: your consciousness, and the decision-making apparatus that comes with it. The rest – your emotional impulses, your genes and your values – are out of its reach.
So Stoicism doesn’t tell you what you should want and, if it did, what difference would it make? The Virtues, despite the connotations that modern discourse attaches to them, are not badges of worthiness. This morality is not going to get you into heaven. It probably won’t win you any awards.
But nor does it promise to. The Virtues are best understood as the fundamental ingredients of good, coherent decision making, both within your brain, and within the social spheres around you.
You are a thinker and Stoicism is not. You must think for yourself, observe your values within yourself, choose what to pursue and how. But if you do it stoically, you will do so without the risk of waging war on yourself, reality or the people around you.
As for Eudaimonia, well maybe that doesn’t look like happiness to you. Again, that’s beyond the remit of Stoicism. Sweet moments of joy will come and go, as will moments of pain. That’s just life. But a Stoic life will help you make the best you possibly can of your fortune, whether you suffer disaster at sea or come to run an empire.
Because what else can you do?
All you have is your next decision. So make it as well as you can, and take it from there.
Next essay: The Foundations Series: Part 4 – The Inner Citadel
Previous essay: The Foundations Series: Part 2 – Why Reality Matters
The Foundations Series main page
If you’re interested in the philosophical framework that eventually grew from these reflections, you can read my Stoicism Explainer here.