Dec 8, 2025
Nature: The Stoic’s Ethical Guide and The Capitalist’s Opponent
The development of morality, within the Stoic philosophy, is contingent upon one’s
ability to fulfill one’s natural needs first such as food, water, and shelter. Extrapolating from this
fact, as a society gains wealth one should expect it to also gain morality. Obviously, however,
this is not the case. Today humans inhabit a world that is excessively wealthy where millions still
go without food or shelter each day. To any member of the Stoic school this would be an
inexcusable contradiction. Balbus, the first Stoic representative speaking in Cato’s works, for
example, would identify this selfish hoarding not only as a symptom of under-developed ethics
but also a larger societal rejection of human nature itself. This is because Stoic philosophy
conceptualizes the universe as one being, one logo which is distributed throughout everything
making up the force of Nature. From this understanding, the Stoics come to know human nature,
a subsect of the larger Nature, as a moral guide which should be acted along with. Cato, another
notable Stoic, expands on this, stating that ethics are developed as one moves from consistently
acting in accordance with their nature to consistently acting for universal Nature. Through his
description of this ascension aspects of human nature are revealed, notably, a care for the
common good, the pursuit of truth, and a want to know. Cato further claims that these immediate
wants of human nature must be fulfilled first for an individual to develop properly formed ethics.
He presents this as a hierarchical process which may be ascended through as one familiarizes
with the logos of Nature. Alarmingly, the capitalist system which we all live within today
prevents humanity from achieving substantial ethical development as it forces the individual to
subvert their human nature for the nature of the capitalist. While truth, knowledge, and
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collectivism benefitted humans, scarcity, exclusive knowledge, and individualism benefits the
capitalist. Today, these contradictory goals rage in each and every human and human system as
they attempt to serve their incompatible dual masters’: capital and humanity. More than ever it
seems capital is winning the battle with the invention of AI and the alarmingly fast pooling of
money at the top of the American Government and economy. However, there is hope! Stoicism
promises that with a recentering of human values humanity can be saved and reanimated beyond
the form of the selfish, unnatural, and thus de-moralized capitalist. From the teachings of Stoic
Philosophy it can be understood that the development of ethics is significantly reliant upon
people shifting their attention from their individual nature to the greater universal Nature. This
framework for ethical development challenges capitalism and exposes its individualizing effects
as unnatural and further, ethically retardant, preventing the collective progress of humanity.
Within Stoic philosophy, Nature is a sensing, rational, and active thing made up by and
dispersed throughout everything. Balbus, a Stoic philosopher and orator in Cicero’s On The
Nature of The God’s, gives a thorough explanation of this conception. In the text, Balbus begins
his explanation talking of heat and its importance in forming life and creating growth. He says
that all things which live do so because of heat or, more specifically, the base element of fire
contained within them (Cicero 25). Upon this claim, Balbus observes that the universe also
moves and changes and as it does it must also be permeated by the same fire that animates the
animals and humans. This leads to the most important observation, Balbus proclaims, “There is,
therefore, a nature which holds the entire cosmos together and preserves it, and which is
endowed with sense-perception and reason” (29). This cosmology is of the utmost importance
when understanding how Stoics conceive of and find their way to ethics. Essentially, Balbus and
the Stoics see the cosmos, literally everything, as being of one, God or in this essay Nature.
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Furthermore, like humans, Nature has a leading part like a mind or what Balbus calls a rationale
that has set the universe into movement now spinning around inside of itself like a carousel.
From this understanding of the universe several important facts arise which structure Stoic
ethics. Most notably, that Nature enjoys life and has set life in motion not randomly but with the
intention to continue it and the larger carousel of existence. From this belief in a rational Nature
the Stoic ethical philosophy begins to grow.
Stoic ethics are developed and practiced by observing Nature and aligning one's actions
with Nature’s universal rationale. As Bulbus established, Nature is a universal mind which
extends through all things. In this all living beings are set in motion first and foremost by this
mind or rationale. In another of Cicero’s works, On Ends, the young Cato, a Roman Stoic,
expands on this idea while tying it to a system for the development of virtue and ethics. First
Cato introduces the concept of rational Nature differently from Bulbous asking each reader to
reflect on how their natural inclinations align with what is rationally needed for their survival.
Primarily Cato highlights Nature’s rationale by demonstrating its consistency with the
continuation of life, writing, “just as it is obvious that we naturally shrink from pain, so too is it
apparent that we are driven by nature herself to love those whom we bear” (Cicero 62). Here
Cato establishes the rationality of Nature and further explores how this rational Nature influences
and constructs our own individual natures. Essentially, as each being is a piece of rational
Nature, each being enfolds a portion of Nature's mind which is what ultimately creates life. All
beings' instincts then, their base wants and needs, are simply the results of a piece of Nature's
larger rationality which plans for the survival of beings.
Humans within this are notably elevated from other creatures as they hold a larger ability
to think rationally like Nature itself and create new conceptions which may be further nurtured.
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This ability is what gives humans the power to develop ethics as ethics is literally using
rationality to align oneself with the larger goals of Nature. Cato claims humans have this unique
ability because they can create new cognitions or observations which become things to be
pursued and understood in themselves (Cicero 18). From this, people naturally learn to identify
value which Cato defines as anything that is in accordance with Nature. Cato claims, as one
grows and builds new cognitions throughout life one learns to recognize value and, in that,
Nature's larger rationale. Cato describes the path of ethical education to be one of observation
and Natural selection in which the individual must sharpen their affinity for Nature, their
understanding of its plan, and their ability to continuously reject what is counter to it. As one
maintains this practice of rejecting what is against Nature, one finally turns to ethical good when
such a practice is implemented with consistency or homoglobia. Notably, this means rejecting
the spontaneity of human want for the larger good of Natural wisdom (24).
Finally and most importantly, within Stoicism, the process of ethical development is
constructed hierarchically. Through Cato’s description of ethical growth in On Ends the path
which one must ascend towards virtue is revealed. It begins with living in accordance with one's
nature. Human nature for example, values the collective good, society, truth, and discovering
things in and for themselves (Cicero 18). It is upon and because of these natural affinities that
humans develop ethics. Cato expands, “a human being’s earliest concern is for what is in
accordance with nature. But as soon as one has gained some understanding… and sees an order
and as it were concordance in the things which one ought to do, one then values that concordance
much more highly than those first objects of affection” (22). Within this quote the progression
from nature to ethics is revealed. As humans follow their nature and build conceptions upon it
they soon discover that Nature has a larger plan. The individual realizes for example that they do
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not reproduce exclusively for themself but also for the continuation of all of humanity and
existence. This recognition leads the human to wisdom or the ability to identify the greater good
from and reject the individual good which may not always align with the larger plan of Nature.
Ultimately, this system of ethical development is reliant upon each individual's ability to fulfill
and practice human nature. It is through this practice of humanity that one develops the
necessary conception of universal Nature to form a proper ethical practice.
The modern Capitalist system is structured in such a way that this necessary engagement
with human nature is seen both as impossible and unreasonable. To begin to understand this first
reflect on the system of Capitalism today. Traditionally, capitalism has been thought of as a
system for structuring and enabling the exchange of goods and services. Importantly however,
this is not the primary definition of capitalism. The true mark of capitalism is the existence of the
capitalist, an individual who exclusively owns some of the means of production. This capitalist,
in their ownership, is venerated above non-owning humans thus dividing humanity into the
worker and the capitalist. In this system the individual’s goals and momentary wants take the
place of any higher good which may be pursued for capital proclaims all possible goods are
attainable through it. In this worship of capital, the goals of humanity are forgotten and slowly
replaced with the individual whims of those that hold capital and thus power in itself. Ultimately,
this system is one that does not benefit humanity as a whole but instead benefits itself by
spreading the system of capitalism and the myth of ownership. This system which has grown to
envelop the globe holds at its core the values of scarcity, unequal knowledge, and individual
good, ultimately pitting humans against their own nature.
The qualities Cato identifies as necessary aspects of human nature for ethical
development are directly opposed by the capitalist system. As Cato gives his rundown of ethical
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development he identifies aspects of human nature that lead to such a progressed understanding.
As he details his educational framework, contradictions continuously arise between Stoic Human
nature and capitalist nature. The most significant example of this is gleaned when Cato writes,
“each and every one of us is a part of this cosmos. From which it naturally follows that we put
the common advantage ahead of our own” (64). From this, one can understand human nature to
be innately social and charitable while capitalist nature is individual and selfish. In this,
capitalism prevents the necessary exchange of resources between people for ethical development.
Further, its structure pressures humans, under threat of death, to suffocate their natural selves and
behave as a machine for capital rather than as a human. Along with this, capitalism also subverts
the human desire to know and seek truth. Cato also observes for example that children naturally
take joy in discovering and sharing new conceptions. We enjoy science and discovery not only
because it benefits human wealth but also because it creates collective knowledge. In fact, this
collaborative systematic structure of reasoning is what makes science valuable and useful.
Capitalism however has no dogmatic view of truth or its worth instead valuing only capital itself.
In this, scientific discoveries such as medical advancements are not dispersed for our collective
good but are instead hidden and copyrighted to further expand power and capital. Simply,
because people are taught to place capital above humanity thus making the engagement
necessary to mold nature into ethics almost impossible. The behaviors capitalism encourages and
nurtures are opposed to human nature and thus prevents or dulls the ascension through it into
ethical knowledge.
This is a challenging argument to accept as today every person is entangled within the
global web of capitalist relations. However, the totalizing appearance of the system itself must be
resisted and struggled with for there are other options and ways of life which may return the
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capitalist to the original human. To achieve such a transmutation one must be prepared to
confront the deceptions of capitalism. Most importantly, the capitalist will attempt to claim that
while the process of reaching ethical knowledge has become harder to follow, the means to do so
have become more abundant thus resulting in a net gain of ethics. This is a modification of the
argument that capitalism is positive because it has made more things available to more people
except replacing things for ethics. However, just as that argument neglects to consider the value
of the objects made abundant, the argument for ethical capitalism fails to consider the value of
the ethics developed within it. While capitalism certainly allows for more production it does so
in unnecessary areas. Under capitalism everyone can have cheap plastic toys but some cannot
find shelter. This is the core issue, value is measured not in terms of human worth but in terms of
capital resulting in a wealthy system that consistently fails to distribute the most basic necessities
to its most vulnerable inhabitants. Likewise, while the capitalist may claim capitalism provides
more people with the wealth necessary to follow nature up its rungs to ethics, it does not consider
if these people value the ethics they have found or practice them with any consistency.
Ultimately this results in a world speckled with those who know what is right but who cannot
possibly put it into practice for this means their exodus from the very system through which they
were privileged to develop ethics. Simply, while capitalism may allow for more people to
develop a type of ethics, it does not result in a valuable or well formed ethical practice,
ultimately leaving the individual divided between their role as a human and their role as a being
of capital.
Stoicism and its account of ethical development provide a valuable behavioral critique of
the capitalist system ultimately revealing its demoralizing and inhuman nature. Balbus provides
the basis for this analysis by exemplifying the Stoic conception of Nature as a sort of
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panpsychism. From this, Cicero’s Stoic representative Cato explains the course of ethical
education that, when placed in comparison with modern capitalist behavior, reveals the truly
unnatural system for what it is: anti-human. While human nature is to live socially, to care for
those around you, and to strive for collective good, capitalist nature is individual, selfish, and
fearful. Each person on the Earth today is suffocated by this almost invisible system which, in
every aspect of life, denies humanity and venerates the individual resulting in an ethical desert
scarce in collective progress. Capital is a parasite which reproduces itself above all else. Thus,
capital slowly removes all ethical and humanistic considerations in pursuit of profit. The
solution: to recenter humanity and the collective good, to nurture ethics, and, most critically, to
first provide all humans a position from which they may be enlightened to these other goods. We
are human together and nothing alone.
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Works Cited
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On Moral Ends. Cambridge University Press, 13 Aug. 2001, pp. 1–68.
---. The Nature of the Gods. Penguin UK, 28 Oct. 2004, pp. 1–30.
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