Wisdom is about understanding how to act and feel appropriately.
Wisdom includes excellent deliberation, healthy judgment, perspective,
and good sense. It opposes the vice of folly or thoughtlessness.
Justice is about knowing how to act and feel well in our relationships
with others. Justice includes good-heartedness, integrity, public service,
and fairness. It opposes the vice of wrongdoing or injustice.
Courage is about knowing how to act and feel correctly when facing
fearful situations. Courage includes bravery, perseverance, honesty, and
confidence. It opposes the vice of cowardice.
Self-Discipline (or temperance) is about knowing how to act and feel
right, despite emotions such as strong desire, inner resistance, or lust.
Self-discipline includes orderliness, self-control, forgiveness, and humility.
It opposes the vice of excess.
Attention (literally): If we want to be the best we can be in eveiy
situation, if we want to live with arete, then we need to be aware of our
every step. Today, we call this “mindfulness,” the Stoics used the term
“attention” (prosoche).
In the words of Marcus Aurelius, we should pay
“vigorous attention ... to the performance of the task in hand with precise
analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with
dispassionate justice.” We can achieve such a mind free of other thoughts
by performing “each action as if it were the last of your life.”
“Attention (prosoche) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude,” explains
author Pierre Ha dot. “It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind,
self-consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit.
Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher is fully aware of what he does at
each instant, and he wills his actions fully.” Even if this consciousness
which never sleeps is the Stoic’s goal, Epictetus said that it’s not possible
to be faultless, but we can try and “we must be content if by never
remitting this attention we shall escape at least a few errors.”
Therefore, when we do good to others, we actually benefit
ourselves. Benefiting others is a form of virtue, and it ultimately benefits
ourselves as virtue is its own reward. Now that you know doing good to
others benefits yourself, you could selfishly do good to others. All for your
own benefit.
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