Heda argues that the stoics use the providence or dam's disjunction to establish irrefutably that even if epicureanism were true, absolutely one would still have to live as a stoic. "It is impossible that the universe could produce human rationality unless the latter were already in some way present in the former," Heda writes. The essence of stoicism is experience of the absolute nature of moral conscience and of the purity of intention", he adds.
What defined a Stoic above all else was the choice of a life in which every thought, every desire, and every action would be guided by no other law than that of universal Reason. ~ Pierre Hadot[i]
The Stoics placed a rational, divine, and providentially ordered cosmos at the center of their philosophical system and relied on it to guide their every thought, desire, and action. For the Stoic, Nature is the measure of all things. Therefore, the Stoics argued to experience well-being (eudaimonia), we must live in agreement with Nature.
[i] Hadot, P., & Chase, M. (1998). The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 308
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