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 different from what we might attribute to it today. To remind us of this, most Stoic texts, including this one, refer to Nature with a capital ‘N’.
To Stoics, Nature was in a way self-actualisation. When Zeno of Citium of first wrote about the Stoic end-goal he described it as “living in agreement”. It was a broader concept than the later (and current) Stoic end-goal but captured the most fundamental philosophical description: living in agreement with some consistent reason kept you happy while living in conflict either with consistent reason or by relying on multiple, inconsistent reasons kept you unhappy.
The current Stoic end-goal, modified by Zeno’s successor Cleanthes was “Living in agreement with Nature” and this is where the concept of Nature first enters Stoicism. An early definition of Nature is given by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives and opinions of eminent philosophers as follows:
The nature according to which one should live Chrysippus takes to be both universal nature and, in particular, human nature. Cleanthes, however, holds that it is only the universal nature that should be followed, and not that of the particular.
So the double-definition of Nature has been in place since the very beginning. The Stoics believed in living as nature intended us to live and in living as we, as humans and individuals, were intended to live. By ‘intended to live’ we do not refer to pre-set gender identities for example, rather to more basic needs such as eating to survive or work for self-preservation or defend ourselves upon being attacked etc.
The idea of living in accordance with nature continues to be central in Stoicism long after Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For example, in Meditations we see—
This you must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders you from always doing and saying the things that conform to the nature of which you are a part.
Marcus Aurelius
References
Brennan, Tad, ‘9 Final Ends’, The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate (Oxford, 2005; Oxford Academic, 1 Feb 2006), doi.org/10.1093/0199256268.003.0009.