July 16, 2026

Take Your Part

They will take part in politics, if nothing hinders them, for thus they will restrain vice and stimulate virtue.

Chrysippus of Soli led the Stoic school in Athens during the third century BCE, systematizing its teachings after Zeno and Cleanthes and writing hundreds of treatises, including one titled On Lives that addressed how a philosopher should actually live day to day. In it he insisted that the wise person will enter public affairs whenever nothing prevents it, because civic work is itself how vice gets checked and virtue gets exercised. For the Stoics, virtue was never a private feeling to cultivate from a couch; it showed itself only in action taken alongside other people, in households, courts, and city squares. This is why the tradition treats getting up and doing useful work as a moral act, not just a practical one: the human being's proper function is contribution, not comfort.

A principle of Stoicism: The Work of a Human Being →