“What is good?” This question is at the center of ethics. Before an ethical system can be constructed, criteria need to be established. For the ancients, and for many modern ethicists as well, the distinction between good and bad depend on life’s aim. Those choices which approach or are in accord with life’s aim are good. Those choices which frustrate or miss life’s aim are bad. I mentioned in the introduction that the aim of the Stoic life is agreement with nature. That lifestyle and those actions that agree with fully developed human nature are virtuous, and those that do not are vicious.
