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Stoic ethics, developed by Zeno of Citium and refined by Chrysippus, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, holds that virtue is the sole good and the only thing necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia. External things—wealth, health, reputation—are "preferred indifferents": rationally preferable but not genuinely good, because they cannot make a life good or bad. Emotions (pathē) are understood as false judgments about value: fear is the judgment that a future indifferent is truly bad, grief that a past indifferent was truly bad. The Stoic sage replaces these with correct affective responses (eupatheiai) grounded in accurate value assessments. Living according to nature means living according to reason, which is the distinctive human capacity, and recognizing one's place in a rational, providentially ordered cosmos. Stoic ethics is a form of virtue ethics but differs from Aristotle in denying that external goods contribute to flourishing.
Read Epictetus's Enchiridion and selected letters of Seneca (especially On the Shortness of Life and On Anger). Practice the Stoic exercise of distinguishing what is "up to us" (our judgments and choices) from what is not. Then compare the Stoic and Aristotelian accounts of the role of external goods in the good life.
From virtue ethics, you know the Aristotelian framework: the good life is eudaimonia, achieved through virtuous activity — developing the excellences of character appropriate to a fully functioning human being. Aristotle thought external goods (health, friendship, moderate wealth) were genuinely necessary for flourishing; you can't fully live well if you are destitute or isolated. The Stoics accepted the centrality of virtue but made one radical modification: they cut external goods out of the picture entirely. For the Stoics, virtue is not merely necessary for eudaimonia — it is sufficient. The virtuous person flourishes regardless of whether they are healthy, wealthy, or well-regarded.
The key Stoic move is the distinction between what is "up to us" (eph' hēmin) and what is not. What is up to us is our prohairesis — our faculty of rational choice, the power to assent or withhold assent from impressions, to form judgments and intentions. This is entirely within our control. Everything external — wealth, health, reputation, the behavior of others, even our own bodies — is not within our control. The Stoics called external things "preferred indifferents": it is rationally preferable to have health rather than illness (and we should pursue them with appropriate effort), but they are not genuinely good because they cannot make a life good or bad. Only the correct exercise of prohairesis — virtue — constitutes genuine good.
The Stoic account of emotions is where this framework becomes psychologically rich. Emotions, on the Stoic view, are not merely feelings — they are judgments. Fear is the judgment that something bad is coming. Grief is the judgment that something truly bad has happened. Anger is the judgment that one has been genuinely wronged and that vengeance is appropriate. If nothing external is truly bad, then these emotions rest on cognitive errors. The Stoic practice is not to suppress feelings but to correct the underlying judgments. The sage does not lack emotional responses; they have eupatheiai ("good emotions") — something like joy at genuinely good things (virtue exercised), warmth toward others grounded in recognition of their rational nature, and appropriate concern without distress at things beyond their control.
"Living according to nature" sounds like an endorsement of simple outdoor living, but the Stoic meaning is precise: living according to your nature as a rational being embedded in a rationally ordered cosmos (logos). Reason is the distinctive human capacity, and the cosmos itself is permeated by rational structure. To live well is to align your judgments with this rational order — including the recognition that your wellbeing depends on nothing outside your rational faculty. This is the deepest contrast with Aristotle: where the Aristotelian flourishing agent needs the support of community, health, and resources, the Stoic sage carries their flourishing internally. The Stoic ideal of the sage (sophos) is an extreme: a person whose every judgment is correct and whose happiness is therefore completely invulnerable to circumstance. Most Stoics acknowledged this ideal was rarely if ever instantiated — but it oriented the practice of philosophical self-improvement.
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