Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.101 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.101
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
And they say that only the morally beautiful is good. So Hecato in his treatise On Goods, book iii., and Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautiful. They hold, that is, that virtue and whatever partakes of virtue consists in this: which is equivalent to saying that all that is good is beautiful, or that the term “good” has equal force with the term “beautiful,” which comes to the same thing. “Since a thing is good, it is beautiful; now it is beautiful, therefore it is good.” They hold that all goods are equal and that all good is desirable in the highest degree and admits of no lowering or heightening of intensity. Of things that are, some, they say, are good, some are evil, and some neither good nor evil (that is, morally indifferent).
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.101 (on the Stoics), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.101
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesOnly the morally beautiful is good, which means virtue and what shares in it are the only goods, and good and beautiful are the same thing. All goods are equal and can be neither lessened nor increased, while everything else is either evil or morally indifferent. A concise statement of the central Stoic claim about what counts as good.
Older wording
- “morally beautiful”
- — noble or fine in a moral sense
- “morally indifferent”
- — neither good nor bad in itself, like health or wealth
- “partakes of virtue”
- — shares in virtue
Themes and situations
- Virtue and character
- Judgements and impressions
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