Here I continue trying to explain the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, and to show how it related to their views of ethics – especially with respect to questions of altruism. It is a little difficult for many moderns to get their minds around the Stoic idea that “reason” is a divine quality that infuses the world; it is possibly even harder to understand how this divine quality relates to the gods.  Do they “have” it in greater quantity than us?  Is Reason itself actually a distinct divine being of some kind? The problem is exacerbated by the Stoic writings themselves, since often an author, say Epictetus, will speak of “Reason” and sometimes of “Zeus” (the head of the gods) and sometimes of the “gods” -- and in each instance appear to be referring to the same thing.  The “Reason/Logos” that infuses the world can be thought of as the sensibility of the world; it can be “the reason” something is or happens as it does; it can be “human reason”; and it can be personalized [...]

I’ve been discussing Aristotle (really, it’s interesting!) and what he thought it took to be “happy” – not the giddy fleeting emotion but have a satisfying sense of contentment and fulfillment in life.  For him, it means having the most “excellent” life you can and that requires being the most “excellent” person you can and that means having full amounts of the various kinds of human “excellences.”  In English translations of Aristotle, "excellences" are usually rendered "virtues" (that's because our English equivalent of the Greek word he uses comes to us from Latin rather than the Greek, and the word "VIR" in Latin means "man."  The excellences of a VIR are his VIRtues). For Aristotle, “virtues” require a good life in community with others. So the virtues involved how to make life good in the socio-political context one inhabits, which for Aristotle was the “polis” – the Greek term for the city (since there were not empires or national governments connected with Greece; it was ruled city states).  And that means that virtues [...]

In my previous post I began explaining why I’m calling the teachings of Jesus the “origins of altruism.”  Aren’t people naturally altruistic to some extent?  Didn’t ancient Greek (and then Roman) cultures – the context in which Christianity emerged -- understand how we ought to behave to others, and insist people needed to be “good to others”? I started to answer by discussing Aristotle (don’t worry, it’s not boring), and his point (if you have trouble buying this, read the post!) that what people *ultimately* want is not good friends and family, wealth, meaningful employment, material possessions, or a really good blog; in the end, all of these things are simply means to our ultimate desire, to be “happy.” If Aristotle is right on this point (I happen to think he is), the clear implication is that we need, each of us, to figure out how we should live in the world, what we should do, and how we should be in order to attain that state of “happiness.”  Not in the simplistic, surface sense [...]

Some readers have wondered why I’m calling my book “The Origins of Altruism: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West.”  (At least I’m calling it that at this point).   Are you saying Jesus invented altruism?  What??  Hasn’t every ethical teacher from the very beginning stressed that we have to balance “what we want” with “what would be good for another”?  And isn’t that always part of religion: behaving well toward others as a kind of divine mandate? Answer: well, yes and no.  This will take a few posts to explain. As it turns out, and to the surprise of many moderns, ethics did not play a large role in ancient pagan religions.  Worshiping the gods normally did not involve any public recognition of bad social behavior or feelings of guilt for mistreating another with requests for forgiveness.  If someone had neglected the god, then apology or confession might be in order; but the gods were not focused on how humans treated one another, not all that concerned about whether you [...]