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- The Virtues Are One
Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.
🏛️ Theory
One of the Stoics' radical claims is that the virtues are unified.
Courage, discipline, justice, and practical wisdom are, at the end of the day, the same.
You cannot be courageous without possessing discipline, justice, practical wisdom.
This isn’t a merely semantic debate. It determines how we think and what we value. People often praise others’ skills, even if they don’t think they are good people. For instance, I recently had a conversation with someone who admired a well-known businessman because, even though he was unethical, he was brave.
But this attitude is misleading.
Classically, courage was seen as falling in between recklessness and cowardice. You need knowledge to tell the difference – that is you need to be wise.
Stoics, following Socrates, saw virtuous activity as knowledge. True bravery means knowing what to fear, moderation means knowing the right amount of things, justice amounts to knowing what others are owed, and wisdom is knowing the good and how to apply it. All of these are bound together with knowledge.
So, when we act with vice, we cannot pat ourselves on the back for getting one virtue right even if we missed others. Each stands and falls together. Nor can we admire others who appear virtuous in some respects, when they are not virtuous in others. How “brave” is the unethical businessman? Probably not brave enough – he runs from things he shouldn’t and rashly risks his character.
Capturing all the virtues in our character is a high standard to aspire to. Yet recognizing how deeply the virtues are bound together is a key insight for all of us walking the Stoic path.
🎯 Action
Consider an action that brings together the classical virtues today: courage, justice, moderation, and practical wisdom. And do it.
🔗 Links
🎧️ Listen to Michael Tremblay read and comment on his popular essay What Many People Misunderstand About The Dichotomy Of Control:
🏛️ Meditate on how to live with others with our new meditation series put together by Brittany Polat this year. Listen here.
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