Universal Reason, the Ultimate Guide for a Stoic Life

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Hado: Stoics believe there is nothing greater than the moral good, and therefore accepts what has been willed by destiny. In other words, universal reason is the rational order inherent in the cosmos, which we can understand because our human reason is a fragment of that universal reason. The stoics asserted there is objective truth, laws of nature and an objective standard of morality,. We are subject to those laws ofnature and its moral standard. As haydo notes, the stoic sage knows the same happiness as universal reason, which is allegorically personified by zeus.

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 FULL TRANSCRIPT COMING SOON