The Logical Structure of Stoic Ethics (LSSE)

The Logical Structure of Stoic Ethics (LSSE)

The Formal Architecture of Core Stoicism

By Dave Kelly

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1. Introduction

The Logical Structure of Stoic Ethics (LSSE) is the formal chain of propositions that defines how Stoic ethics works as a self-contained rational system.

It originates in Grant C. Sterling’s Core Stoicism and represents a precise logical distillation of his teaching that virtue alone is good, vice alone evil, and every other thing indifferent.

The LSSE is not a commentary or an interpretation—it is the internal logic of the Stoic moral universe.

It specifies how impressions become judgments, how judgments generate actions, and how actions determine virtue or vice.

The LSSE replaces the diffuse “four cardinal virtues” model with a single, rigorous moral physics grounded in prohairesis—the rational faculty of moral choice.

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2. The Function of the LSSE

The LSSE serves three distinct purposes:

1. Architectural:

It defines Stoic ethics as a deductive structure rather than a collection of sayings.

Every practice, exercise, and doctrine in Epictetus can be traced to one or more propositions in the chain.

2. Diagnostic:

It allows the practitioner to identify where an error occurs—at the level of assent, impulse, value judgment, or action.

This makes Stoic training an exact moral science, not a therapeutic art.

3. Operational:

It governs all internal exercises, including the Eight-Step Process of Making Correct Use of Impressions.

Each step corresponds to one or more LSSE propositions.

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3. Canonical 32 Propositions of the LSSE

(Numbering is logical, not chronological; each statement presupposes those above it.)

I. Ontological and Epistemic Foundations

1. There exist two distinct substances: rational mind (prohairesis) and material body.

2. Only the mind can make moral choices; the body and externals cannot.

3. Human freedom consists solely in the power of assent to impressions.

4. Every impression presents a propositional content that may be true or false.

5. To assent is to accept an impression’s proposition as true.

6. Right assent aligns the mind with reason; wrong assent diverges from reason.

7. Reason apprehends moral truth directly (ethical intuitionism).

8. Moral truths are objective, necessary, and independent of opinion.

II. Moral Ontology

9. Only virtue (right assent) is good.

10. Only vice (wrong assent) is evil.

11. All externals—health, wealth, reputation, pleasure, pain, life, death—are indifferent.

12. Indifferents have no power to help or harm moral character.

13. Apparent value in externals arises from false judgment.

14. Moral value resides exclusively in the condition of prohairesis.

15. The good of a rational being is to make right use of impressions.

III. Action Theory

16. Every action = assent + impulse.

17. Impulse follows immediately upon assent; there is no willpower as a separate faculty.

18. The moral quality of an action is determined at the moment of assent, not by outcome.

19. Outcomes are external and indifferent.

20. Right action = rational goal + rational means + reservation.

21. Acting with reservation means recognizing that success or failure are externals.

22. Only the rational choice itself is “ours”; results belong to the external order.

IV. Affective Logic

23. Emotions (pathē) are false judgments about externals as good or bad.

24. Initial feelings (propathēiai) are non-cognitive bodily reactions that precede judgment.

25. Good feelings (eupatheiai) are true judgments about internals as good.

26. Freedom from disturbance results from consistent refusal to judge externals as good or bad.

27. Continuous calm and joy arise naturally from right assent.

V. Moral Causality and Responsibility

28. Assent is the sole origin of moral causation.

29. External events can occasion impressions but cannot determine assent.

30. Therefore, moral responsibility belongs wholly to prohairesis.

31. Vice results from self-caused false assent, not from circumstance.

32. Eudaimonia—the best life possible—is the necessary consequence of consistently right assent.

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4. How to Use the LSSE

A. As a Diagnostic Grid

Each proposition locates a precise stage in moral processing.

When disturbance arises, trace it back through the chain:

Identify the impression (Prop. 4).

Examine the assent given (Prop. 5).

Determine whether the value judgment violated Props. 9–11.

Correct the goal, means, or reservation (Props. 20–21).

This yields a clear map of moral error.

B. As a Framework for Training

The Eight-Step Process is an applied form of the LSSE:

Steps 1–3 operate within Propositions 4–8 (impression and assent).

Steps 4–5 correspond to Propositions 9–15 (value recognition).

Steps 6–8 implement Propositions 16–21 (rational action and reservation).

C. As a Logical Proof of Eudaimonia

Because the chain is deductive, the final proposition (32) is not an aspiration but a theorem:

If all preceding propositions hold and are practiced, flourishing follows by necessity.

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5. Relation to Epictetus’s Enchiridion 1–5

The first five chapters of the Enchiridion contain the entire LSSE in embryonic form:

Ch. 1: Props. 1–3, 9–11 (control and value).

Ch. 2: Props. 16–19 (action and outcome).

Ch. 3: Props. 23–27 (disturbance and emotion).

Ch. 4: Props. 20–21 (reservation).

Ch. 5: Props. 28–32 (moral responsibility and eudaimonia).

The LSSE simply unfolds this implicit structure into explicit logic.

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6. Why the LSSE Matters

Without this framework, Stoicism risks collapsing into eclectic moral psychology.

The LSSE restores it as a rational moral science:

It safeguards internalism by excluding appeals to biology or cosmology.

It grounds every exercise in demonstrable necessity.

It transforms Stoic practice from advice to proof.

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7. Conclusion

The LSSE is the spine of Core Stoicism.

Every concept—assent, impulse, impression, emotion, virtue, vice, reservation, eudaimonia—finds its logical place within this architecture.

To study Stoicism without the LSSE is to see its surface; to study it with the LSSE is to grasp its mechanism.

When you make correct use of impressions, you are not merely “applying philosophy.”

You are executing a theorem of moral reason whose final proposition is certain:

Virtue is the only good, and the virtuous life is unassailable.

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© 2025 Dave Kelly

From the Oak Lawn Stoic System / Core Stoicism Series