Philosophy
c. 185 to c. 110 BCE, Rhodes and Athens
The middle Stoa made human: duty fitted to each person’s role, and a Stoicism that a Roman statesman could actually live by.
Start learning Panaetius →How Panaetius softened the austere old Stoa for the world of affairs - doubting the periodic conflagration, quietly setting aside astrology and divination, and admitting that virtue alone may not be quite enough for a h…
Panaetius’s most original idea, preserved in Cicero’s De Officiis: each of us wears four ‘masks’ or roles - our common rational nature, our individual temperament, the circumstances fortune deals…
Panaetius centred ethics on kathekonta - the ‘appropriate actions’ that any reasonable person can be guided to perform - rather than on the flawless katorthomata of the ideal sage, giving moral direction to…
The central problem Panaetius set for ethics - the apparent clashes between the honestum (what is honourable) and the utile (what is advantageous) - and the resolution, worked out through Cicero, that nothing truly dish…
How Greek philosophy entered the Roman elite through the friendship of Panaetius, the general Scipio Aemilianus, and the historian Polybius - the ‘Scipionic circle’ - and how Panaetius’s practical Stoi…
More in Philosophy
AristotlePlatoImmanuel KantFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus Aureliusepoché — a humanities education that remembers you.