I have claimed that Stoicism is an individualist philosophy (in which I disagree with Theophile) in the sense that Stoicism is essentially directed towards the achievement of eudaimonia by an individual person. On the other hand, I reject the view of several people on this List who hold that Stoicism is completely individualistic (that it is, basically, a sort of egoism or the ethical cousin of political libertarianism). For the Stoic, we have duties to others that may require us to risk our lives for others (like Horatius), sacrifice our worldly goods, etc. On this issue, I am much closer to Theophile than to Steve.

3) What is the relationship between society and our knowledge of the moral life? This is a question about the source of our awareness of duty, not what duty itself consists in.

Regarding question 3: Now we come to the purely epistemological issue. Can we know what we ought to do without an irreducibly social element? And now I reject both Theophile's and Steve's positions.

The Stoic view (and my view) is that ethics is a matter of reason, and reason is knowledge of the Logos. (I will omit a discussion of whether the Logos is a material or immaterial principle—I don't actually think it matters for the purpose of this questions, although of course it matters for many other questions!) I see no reason to think that we must somehow look at the effects of our actions on society or on others to know what is right. I am a theist, but I don't derive ethical principles from divine commands. I am happy to talk about the Cosmopolis, but I simply don't understand how we figure out what the cosmopolis requires without first knowing what duties come with what roles, and what things are preferred and dispreferred. On the other hand, while it is certainly true that we sometimes mistake "what we're familiar with" for "what is right", this doesn't seem to me to be any cause for substantial skepticism about role-duties or pref/dispref indifferents, especially those which are recognized throughout a multitude of societies.

In this I think that I really am a traditional Stoic. As I have said before—I don't think the problem is that we don't know what the right thing is to do... the problem is that we often don't want to do it. I know that as a human being (and as a citizen) I have a duty not to steal from my fellow man... but I sometimes see something that someone else has that I really want, and I try to convince myself that somehow I don't really know what to do. I don't believe that I ought not steal because my society tells me that—sometimes society is wrong. I don't believe it because it harms others... such information is only relevant if I know that I ought not harm others, and my knowledge that I shouldn't steal seems just as obvious to me as my knowledge that I ought not harm others. I don't believe it because God forbids it, although I do think God forbids it. I think "Ceteris paribus, one ought not steal" is just as obvious as a principle of reason as "2+2=4" or "no proposition can be true and false at the same time", etc. And I think it is significant that the Stoics spend less than 0.1% of their time trying to explain where our knowledge of ethical truths comes from (except for the generic appeals to "reason" and "logos"). But, as I said, the issue here is only this—can we know what to do without deriving it from social considerations, and I think the answer is a definite yes. But that doesn't mean we need to be skeptical or hostile to social considerations, either.

Regards, and apologies for the length and the lack of direct citations,
Grant