The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

4. Consistency. The Stoics had a test for virtue, and perhaps a shortcut to it: consistency. Consistency sounds like a quality that has nothing to do with substance; it might seem as easy to be consistently bad (or wrong) as consistently virtuous. But consider the relationship between consistency and the openness of thought and action described in the previous section. True consistency would mean always thinking the same thing is right and never deviating from it. It also would mean acting and thinking the same way in all settings – in public, at home, and alone, never phony; for phoniness may accurately enough be described not only as dishonesty but as a form of inconsistency. Someone who managed to be consistent in the senses just described would, the Stoic suggests, inevitably be virtuous. To abandon the old definitions of wisdom and use one that covers the whole range of human life, I can be content with this: What is wisdom? To always want the same things and reject the same things. No need to add that little qualification, “so long as what you want is right” – since one could not always be pleased with the same thing if it were not right. Seneca, Epistles 20.5 This is how a foolish mind is most clearly shown: it appears now as one thing, now as another, and – worst of all, in my opinion – it does not appear as itself. Believe me, it is a great thing to act as just one person. Seneca, Epistles 120.19, 22