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The Paradoxa Stoicorum (English: Stoic Paradoxes) is a work by the academic skeptic philosopher Cicero in which he attempts to explain six famous Stoic sayings that appear to go against common understanding: (1) virtue is the sole good; (2) virtue is the sole requisite for happiness; (3) all good deeds are equally virtuous and all bad deeds equally vicious; (4) all fools are mad; (5) only the ...
[1] The full title of the work is Quare bonis viris multa mala accidant, cum sit providentia ("Why do misfortunes happen to good men, if providence exists"). This longer title reflects the true theme of the essay which is not so much concerned with providence but with theodicy and the question of why bad things happen to good people. [1]
Stoicism begins and ends by relating the modern revival of Stoicism as embodied by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. [1] It covers the history of the school and its doctrines in what it classified as the three areas of philosophy: physics , ethics and logic .
Stoicism considers all existence as cyclical, the cosmos as eternally self-creating and self-destroying (see also Eternal return). Stoicism does not posit a beginning or end to the Universe. [32] According to the Stoics, the logos was the active reason or anima mundi pervading and animating the entire Universe. It was conceived as material and ...
In the next two books Stoic ethics are discussed. In the third book Cicero's interlocutor, Marcus Porcius Cato, presents Stoic doctrine. Here Cicero introduces the technical terms used by the Stoics into Latin. The highest and only good of the Stoics is virtue (moral good).
Although it has not survived, more is known about it than any of his other works. It outlined Zeno's vision of the ideal Stoic society. A manuscript that was attributed to Zeno, matching a known title of one of Zeno's works, Περὶ φύσεως (On Nature), was discovered in 1949 in an Old Armenian translation.
[1] Seneca's seemingly positive outlook on his own exile follows his Stoic philosophy teachings that one should not be upset by uncontrollable events. This quote from De Consolatione ad Helviam, shows Seneca's presentation of his life as tolerable, and even spiritually enjoyable: I am joyous and cheerful, as if under the best of circumstances.
The first English translation did not appear until 1758 with the appearance of Elizabeth Carter's translation. This proved to be very successful, with a second edition appearing a year later (1759), a third edition in 1768, and a fourth edition published posthumously in 1807.