What Are the Stoic Virtues?

Question

What are the Stoic virtues, and why do they occupy the center of Stoic ethics? The answer is that for the Stoics, virtue is the only good, and the virtues are the forms that the single virtue takes in the conduct of life.

Quick Answer

The four Stoic virtues are wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Each is a form of knowledge. Wisdom (phronesis) is knowledge of what is good, evil, and indifferent. Justice (dikaiosyne) is knowledge of what is owed to each person — the good applied to our dealings with others. Courage (andreia) is knowledge of what is to be endured and feared — the good applied to danger and hardship. Temperance (sophrosyne) is knowledge of what is to be desired and avoided — the good applied to appetite and impulse. The Stoics held that these four are not four separate dispositions but one and the same knowledge of the good, viewed under different aspects: whoever possesses one virtue possesses them all, because the virtues are one.

Historical Wisdom

The doctrine of the four cardinal virtues is one of the great continuities of the Western ethical tradition. Its origin is Socrates, who taught that virtue is knowledge and that the virtues are one; Plato systematized the four virtues in the Republic, where they appear as the excellences of the four parts of the soul and the four classes of the ideal city; Aristotle developed the account of the virtues as states of character in the Nicomachean Ethics. The Stoics, from Zeno of Citium onward, made the doctrine their own: they defined each virtue as a form of knowledge, and they developed the Socratic thesis of the unity of the virtues into the doctrine that the virtues are the same knowledge viewed under different aspects. The fourfold scheme passed from the Stoics into the Roman tradition (Cicero's On Duties is organized around it), into the Christian tradition (where it became the four cardinal virtues, complemented by the three theological virtues), and into the modern tradition, where it remains the standard scheme of the virtues.

Philosophical Perspectives

The Stoic account of the virtues has three distinctive features. The first is the intellectualism inherited from Socrates: each virtue is a form of knowledge. This is not the claim that the virtues are merely intellectual — the Stoics insisted that virtue is also a disposition of the whole soul — but the claim that knowledge is the core of virtue: the person who truly knows what is good cannot fail to act on that knowledge, because the knowledge transforms the soul.

The second feature is the unity of the virtues. The Stoics held that the virtues are one: the same knowledge of the good, applied to different domains. Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil as such; justice is that knowledge applied to others; courage is it applied to danger; temperance is it applied to desire. The unity thesis has the radical consequence that the virtues cannot be separated: the person who is truly just is also wise, courageous, and temperate, because the four are not four dispositions but one. This is why the Stoics could say that the wise person possesses all the virtues and the vicious person none.

The third feature is the identity of virtue and happiness. Since virtue is the only good, and since the virtues are the forms of virtue, the virtuous life is the happy life, and the person who possesses the virtues is happy whatever fortune brings. The doctrine grounds the whole of Stoic practice: the cultivation of the virtues is the whole of the moral task, and the disciplines of desire, action, and assent are the training by which the virtues are acquired.

Lessons From Thinkers

From Zeno of Citium: virtue is the only good, and the virtues are its forms. From Chrysippus: the virtues are knowledge, and they are one. From Marcus Aurelius: the virtues are the test of every action — "what is this to me? Is it a matter of virtue, of justice, of courage, of temperance?" From Cicero: the four virtues organize the whole of practical duty — the honorable life is the life governed by wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. And from the modern Stoics: the virtues are not abstract ideals but the practical standards of daily life — the questions we ask of every action and every situation.

Practical Application

The four Stoic virtues structure the whole of daily practice. Wisdom is the discipline of judgment: to see things as they are, to distinguish what is up to us from what is not. Justice is the discipline of conduct toward others: to act fairly, to keep promises, to serve the common good. Courage is the discipline of endurance: to face hardship, danger, and loss without being broken by them. Temperance is the discipline of desire: to want the right things, in the right amounts, at the right times. The daily Stoic practice — the morning reflection and the evening review — applies the four questions to the day: Was my judgment wise? Was my conduct just? Was my endurance courageous? Was my desire temperate? The virtues are thus not a list of ideals but the structure of the examined life.

Quotes

The Stoic definition of the virtues is transmitted in the doxographical tradition: "Virtue is a disposition of the soul, and the virtues are wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance." Marcus Aurelius states the unity of the virtues in the Meditations: "The virtue of the soul is to be just, to be temperate, to be courageous, to be wise." And Zeno's definition of the end of life — living in agreement with nature, which is living virtuously — is the summary of the whole: the good life is the life of the four virtues.

Related Questions

• What Is Stoicism? — the system in which the virtues are the center.
• What Is Virtue Ethics? — the wider tradition of the virtues.
• What Is Courage? — the virtue of endurance in detail.
• What Are Stoic Indifferents? — the doctrine the virtues oppose.