AKC 2009

The Stoics on impartiality

  1. Two puzzles about moral psychology and moral value:
  2. Why should we care for others as such? (the problem of altruism)?
  3. Why should we care for others in particular? (the problem of love and friendship)
  1. Caring for others in particular: Plato and Aristotle on love and friendship
  2. Platonic eros and the love of the beautiful Symposium
  3. Is this caring for others, or only instrumental to my own ends?
  4. Is it caring for others in particular?
  5. Aristotle on friendship Nicomachean Ethics 9
  6. Useful and virtuous friends
  7. The useful friends are instrumental?
  8. The virtuous friends are useless?
  1. The Stoics on oneself and others: the theory of oikeiosis (appropriation) I.
  2. The concentric circles
  3. Animals are born with a relation of appropriation to themselves
  4. They recognize this
  5. And seek it, avoid what is alien.
  6.  they have a sense of ‘me and mine’
  7. As they grow or develop they will (should?) enlarge this sense of ‘me and mine’ outward form self to one’s own body to one’s family, and through the concentric circles of kinship (appropriation)
  8. This should be extended right outwards ‘to the furthest Mysian’.
  9. Some Stoic assumptions:
  10. Material monism
  11. Cognition and action
  12. Will this explain why we care for other individuals?
  13. Notice that it shifts between whether we do and whether we should.
  1. Two versions of why we should care for others as such:
  2. Extended egoism
  3. But is this caring for others?
  4. Identification with others
  5. But why would we care?
  1. Caring for others as such: Plato and Aristotle on the nature of political commitment
  2. Is what we need here altruism? Or impartiality?
  3. The philosopher-kings (Plato, Republic)
  4. The return to the cave
  5. Why should the philosopher return to the cave?
  6. What is the philosopher’s stance to the others in the cave?
  7. An impersonal account of the good?
  8. The philosopher stands outside?
  9. Impartiality?
  10. The philosopher as one among others?
  11. Aristotle on political friends (Aristotle, Politics)
  12. What motivates political action and engagement?
  13. Partiality?
  14. Engagement and joint activity?
  15. The problem of superman.
  16. Aristotle’s rejection of the philosopher-king
  1. Stoic impartiality, the theory of oikeiosis II
  2. Extended egoism
  3. A broad personal good?
  4. Or impersonal because the ‘person’ has been swallowed up?
  5. Identification
  6. An account of oneself among others?
  7. Does this motivate?
  8. Is this the first account of impartiality in antiquity?