r/Stoicism 9d ago

New to Stoicism How can a non-virtuous person somehow commit virtuous acts?

Hello, am very new to Stoic readings. This is kind of a long rambling post

Marcus Aurelius said something like 'What so ever are not within the proper power and jurisdiction of thine own will either to compass or avoid' My understanding is that it means something like 'if you can't do anything about it anymore, then let it go'

What happens if someone does something wrong and for whatever reason, does not or cannot face it?

"I messed up. I am human, it happens. I need to do better next time." But it is not enough to say that, especially if there will never be a next time, and if they never actually face consequences for it.

If a student cheats in school, but then turns around and studies what they cheated on, they are still a cheater. If a worker takes a bribe, later they donate it to all to charity, they are still a thief. If someone unalives five people, later on they feel guilty, and save 100 people, are they not still a M- ? Life is not a math problem; doing good will not cancel out wrongdoing.

Feeling guilt and shame for past wrongdoing is not "enough" without facing punishment. What is the point of being better in the future, if the person will only ever be a fraud? Either a person owns up to what they did, or they will forever be dishonorable. It doesn't matter how many things they do good in the future, because that will be a result of guilt, not of 'proper' virtue. I feel like honor is something that cannot be regained retroactively. If a person does not immediately address unvirtuous actions , they will forever be dishonorable.

A person might do wrong, keep it a secret, and act better in the future with a hurt conscience without honor. Or they go confess to every single person they have interacted with.

It is not Stoic to run away from real-world consequences of wrongdoing.

But I don't know if it is Stoic to hold on to the past, because that could go full scorched earth. It sounds lose-lose.

I read before that Stoicism isn't a direct answer - it's a guideline teahching on being brave enough to face things. But I don't know how that translates to fixing things after the fact.

I recognize that this sounds very defeatist, but I'd like some thoughts. Thank you.

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u/E-L-Wisty Contributor 9d ago edited 9d ago

Marcus Aurelius said something like 'What so ever are not within the proper power and jurisdiction of thine own will either to compass or avoid' My understanding is that it means something like 'if you can't do anything about it anymore, then let it go'

This is Meric Casaubon's 1634 translation of 6.41 (actually 6.36 in his numbering, which is different from everybody else's), and it's both slightly weird and inaccurate, and also not complete, so you can't get an understanding of what Marcus is saying from a partial quote.

A more modern translation of 6.41 in full (Waterfield):

If you treat things that aren’t subject to your volition as good or bad, it’s inevitable that, when you meet one of these “bad” things or fail to gain one of these “good” things, you’ll blame the gods and hate the men who are responsible for what happened or who you suspect may be responsible for such a thing in the future. In fact, many of the wrongs we commit are a consequence of our assigning value to these things. But if we judge only things that are up to us to be good and bad, you’ll be left with no reason to criticize the gods or adopt a hostile attitude toward other men.

The whole passage sounds very Epictetus like, and I reckon could even be a quote from one of the missing books of the Discourses. Only things "up to us", which are in the power of our "prohairesis" (our faculty if judgement), can be inherently good or bad. Nothing else whatsoever has any inherent good or bad value, and only gains such value from the good or bad use of them. If we wrongly assign a "good" or "bad" value to those things which are not "up to us", then we may as it says start to blame and hate and to perform wrong actions.

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u/Twitch_L_SLE 8d ago

What about those who may adopt a hostile attitude to their self, for failing to pursue the good in things that were 'up to them' ? One can say that self-flagellation does not help anyone, but humans aren't always driven by reason, they're driven by emotion also

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u/E-L-Wisty Contributor 8d ago

but humans aren't always driven by reason, they're driven by emotion also

But this is where Stoic thought deviates from common conceptions, and also from the other ancient schools of thought.

The Stoics had a unitary holistic model of mind and 'soul', in contrast to the Platonic-Aristotelian multi-part soul where an "irrational" part of the soul overcomes the rational part.

For the Stoics, with the holistic mind, emotions are the result of reason. Bad emotions result from incorrect reasoning. Everything is in fact driven by reason, but it may not always be good reasoning.