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Living in agreement with Nature

Living in agreement with Nature refers to the larger of the two ideas in the call for living in agreement believed by Stoicism to be the ideal manner of living life or the end-goal of happy living. The other is Living in agreement with oneself.

To live in agreement with Nature was the logical next step to living in agreement with oneself. Living in agreement with Nature means, according to Diogenes Laertius, “engaging in no activity wont to be forbidden by the universal law”.

The universal law, or physics, was the study of that nature which the Stoics believed was driven by the omnipresent and corporeal form of Zeus’s mind. More important, this physics was believed to be rational and universal. So living in agreement with nature meant ensuring that one’s own beliefs are in line with the larger, all-encompassing rationale driving the cosmos. In short, this was living in concordance with the Nature of a human and, likewise, the Nature of nature itself.

Helpfully, the Stoics provided a set of guidelines to help us achieve this agreement with Nature in the form of Stoic virtues. The intent of these was to act as tools to help individuals live in agreement with oneself as well as with Nature.

Concepts
Nature
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Living in agreement with oneself The Stoic concept of Living in agreement with Nature has a second parameter. This also likely predates the concept of Nature itself, having been in Nature The concept of Nature is an important and recurring one in Stoic philosophy but carries a meaning (or meanings as we will see presently) quite
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Living in agreement with oneself The Stoic concept of Living in agreement with Nature has a second parameter. This also likely predates the concept of Nature itself, having been in
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Nature The concept of Nature is an important and recurring one in Stoic philosophy but carries a meaning (or meanings as we will see presently) quite
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