| 6013 | Panaetius said we should live according to our natural starting-points [Panaetius, by Asmis] |
| Full Idea: Panaetius reformulated the Stoic goal as living in accordance with the starting-points given to us by nature. | |
| From: report of Panaetius (fragments/reports [c.145 BCE]) by Elizabeth Asmis - Panaetius | |
| A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the substitution of meritocratic equality of opportunity for communistic actual equality. In other words, it doesn't sound very Stoic. 'Live according to nature' implies more restraint than this ambitious version. |
| 13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: Nature does not give a man virtue; the process of becoming a good man is an art. ...Virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 090) | |
| A reaction: This is an important gloss from a leading stoic on the slogan of 'live according to nature'. One might say that the natural life must be 'tracked' (as Philip Larkin says we track happiness). The natural life is, above all, the rational life, for stoics. |
| 13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
| Full Idea: For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream. | |
| From: Seneca the Younger (Letters from a Stoic [c.60], 102) | |
| A reaction: A classic statement of the well-known stoic slogan, but expressed with Seneca's characteristic elegance. There is always a slight hidden of dubious fatalism in the slogan. 'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!' - Dylan Thomas. |
| 3069 | The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 7.61) |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: This is pure stoicism, and shows that Spinoza is in many ways the culmination of the seventeenth century stoic revival (e.g. in the art of Poussin). I love the idea that right reason and nature are in perfect harmony. I wonder why? |
| 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |
| A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
| 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |
| A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
| 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Though shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |
| A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |