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Concept

Living according to nature

You will learn what the Stoics meant by nature as a standard, and why it points to reason and community rather than to instinct or simplicity.

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Definition

Living according to nature is the Stoic ideal of acting in accordance with universal nature, the rational order governing the cosmos, and with one's own nature as a reasoning, social being. Because reason is what distinguishes a human being from other animals, this means shaping desires, judgments, and actions by reason rather than by appetite, custom, or the pursuit of comfort.

Key points

  • Living according to nature means acting according to reason, because reason is the distinguishing feature of human nature.
  • The idea is not primarily about wanting less, though that follows from it in Seneca's letters on poverty and appetite.
  • Epictetus rejects instinct, custom, and majority behavior as tests for what is natural, and insists on a reasoned criterion instead.
  • Marcus Aurelius ties living according to nature directly to sociability, since human beings are naturally social and rational animals together.
  • The standard applies independently of comfort: virtue is the same whether it is exercised through joy or through pain.
  • Marcus uses the image of a craftsman fitting work to its purpose to picture nature as a functional standard rather than a feeling.

Explanation

What the phrase actually claims

Living according to nature is often read as a call to live simply. That captures one application of the idea, but not its full meaning. Seneca does tell his reader that poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature is great wealth, and that nature's own demands are just to avert hunger, thirst, and cold (Moral Letters Vol I 4.10). But this is nature as minimal appetite, one narrow application of a much larger claim.

The larger claim is about what kind of thing you are. For the Stoics, nature has given each kind of being a constitution, and the good for that being is to act out that constitution fully. Epictetus makes the comparison explicit. Animals exist to use their appearances: to eat, drink, sleep, reproduce, and that is enough for them. A human being has also been given the faculty of understanding, so use alone is not enough. Nature ends in contemplation and understanding, and in a way of life conformable to nature (Discourses I 6). To live according to nature, for a human being, is to live according to reason, because reason is what makes a human being human. Seneca states the same point directly: man is a reasoning animal, and his highest good is attained if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth, which is soul and reason brought to perfection (Moral Letters Vol I 41.8).

Nature is not instinct, and not majority behavior

This creates an obvious problem: people call all sorts of things natural. Epictetus stages the problem with a father who has abandoned his sick child, and who defends himself by saying he acted naturally, since most fathers would do the same. Epictetus refuses the argument. To do wrong is natural, in that sense, because nearly all of us do wrong; tumors also come from the body, because they do come (Discourses I 11). Frequency is not a criterion. The criterion has to be something else: whatever is at once affectionate and consistent with reason, that is what is according to nature. Nature, in the Stoic sense, is not what people usually do or what any given creature happens to want. It is what reason, examined carefully, endorses.

This is also why Marcus Aurelius ties living according to nature to caring for others rather than to withdrawal. Every rational animal is his kinsman, and to care for all men is according to man's nature (Meditations 3.4). He generalizes this into a rule for action: do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of the animal which is naturally social requires (Meditations 4.24), and elsewhere: say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason (Meditations 4.51). Nature here names a standard that is simultaneously rational and social. A life according to nature is not a life of fewer wants for its own sake. It is a life shaped by reason, and reason, rightly used, discovers that human beings are made for one another.

Nature as measure, not as feeling

Marcus offers a craft analogy that clarifies what is at stake. Every art aims at making its product suited to the work it was made for: the vine-planter, the horse-breaker, the trainer of a dog all aim at this. Education and teaching aim at the same thing in a person: fitting the person to the work of a rational, social being (Meditations 6.16). Nature, on this picture, is a functional standard, like the standard a craftsman uses to judge whether a piece of work is done well, not a felt state of calm or contentment.

This is also why the Stoics distinguish acting according to nature from having what nature prefers happen to you. Seneca allows that joy is according to nature and pain is contrary to it, so between the two, a person will choose joy. But he insists that once you ask about the virtue involved, the virtue is the same whether it is displayed through joy or through sorrow (Moral Letters Vol II 66.19). Illness and pain are themselves not preferred by nature, yet a person can still act according to nature within them, by responding with the same excellence of reason. Living according to nature is not the same as having a comfortable life. It is possible in poverty, in illness, even while enduring wrongs done by others, as when Epictetus advises someone jeered at in a theater to keep his will conformable to nature rather than pin his peace on the outcome of the show (Discourses III 4).

The honest difficulty

The obvious objection is that "nature" can be stretched to justify almost anything, since everyone thinks their own preferences are natural. The Stoics answer that this is exactly why a criterion is needed, and why the criterion cannot be popularity or instinct. It has to be reason, tested the way we test claims about color or heat, by the proper faculty, applied carefully and consistently (Discourses I 11). That is demanding. It means a person cannot settle the question of how to live by appeal to custom, comfort, or what most people do. It means checking, case by case, whether an action is truly consistent with reason and with the fact that we are made to live among other rational beings. Marcus's teacher Sextus is remembered for exactly this combination: a benevolent disposition together with the idea of living conformably to nature (Meditations 1.9), care for others joined to reasoned judgment, not one without the other.

Historical context

The formula comes from early Stoicism, where the end of life was defined as living in agreement with nature, and it runs through the later Roman Stoics represented here: Seneca's letters, Epictetus's discourses as recorded by Arrian, and Marcus Aurelius's private notebook, the Meditations. Each writer applies the same standard differently: Seneca often to the scale of one's wants, Epictetus to the criterion for judging right action, and Marcus to sociability and the discipline of one's own reasoning.

Important philosophers

  • Epictetus Epictetus argues that freedom does not come from your circumstances but from correctly sorting what is up to you from what is not.

Primary-source passages

But God has introduced man to be a spectator of God and of His works; and not only a spectator of them, but an interpreter. ... nature ends in contemplation and understanding, and in a way of life conformable to nature.

Epictetus, Discourses I 6 Read in context

Epictetus grounds living according to nature in what distinguishes human beings from other animals: the capacity to understand, not just use, our experience.

For man is a reasoning animal. Therefore, man’s highest good is attained, if he has fulfilled the good for which nature designed him at birth.

Seneca, Moral Letters Vol I 41.8 Read in context

Seneca states plainly that human nature is defined by reason, and the good life is the fulfillment of that rational nature.

every rational animal is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to man's nature

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4 Read in context

Marcus links living according to nature directly to sociability, not to withdrawal or self-sufficiency.

to move yourself and to restrain yourself in conformity to your proper constitution, to which end both all employments and arts lead. For every art aims at this, that the thing which has been made should be adapted to the work for which it has been made

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.16 Read in context

Marcus uses the image of a craft to show nature as a functional standard, not a feeling of ease.

Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth. ... Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold.

Seneca, Moral Letters Vol I 4.10 Read in context

Seneca's application of the standard to appetite: nature's own demands are simple, even if the deeper claim about reason is not.

there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it. ... but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same

Seneca, Moral Letters Vol II 66.19 Read in context

Seneca separates the preferred condition (joy over pain) from the virtue that can be shown regardless of which one occurs.

Disagreements and interpretations

Nature as simple living

The popular reading takes living according to nature to mean wanting little: plain food, modest shelter, freedom from luxury. This has real support in the texts. Seneca tells his reader that nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand, and that poverty measured against nature's law is great wealth (Moral Letters Vol I 4.10). But taken alone, this reading turns a wide-ranging standard about reason and sociability into a lifestyle preference, and it does not explain why Epictetus and Marcus put so much weight on reasoning and care for others rather than on frugality.

Nature as the standard of reason

The stronger and more central reading, and the one the Discourses argue for explicitly, is that nature names whatever a correctly functioning human reason endorses. Epictetus rejects instinct, custom, and majority behavior as criteria and insists on a tested standard, parallel to how sight is the criterion for color (Discourses I 11). On this reading, living according to nature is inseparable from developing sound judgment, and simplicity of want is at most a frequent side effect, not the substance of the doctrine.

Nature as cosmic order (a further, contestable extension)

Some Stoic material identifies nature with the rational, providential order of the cosmos as a whole, so that living according to nature also means accepting one's role within that larger order, including things not up to us like illness or loss. The passages gathered here support the ethical core of this reading, that virtue is equally present whether we meet joy or pain (Moral Letters Vol II 66.19), but the full cosmic and theological picture rests on Stoic physics beyond what is quoted here, and readers may take it literally or as a metaphor for accepting what we cannot change.

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Concepts

Works

  • Discourses I by Epictetus Epictetus's students recorded his classroom talks, and Book I lays out the single distinction his whole philosophy rests on: what is up to us and what is not.
  • Discourses III by Epictetus This book of the Discourses trains the reader to locate good and evil in the will alone, and to test every impression, from a beautiful face to a dead son, against what is and is not up to us.
  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius A Roman emperor's private notebook of Stoic exercises shows what it looks like to practice philosophy under real pressure, not just write about it.
  • Moral Letters Vol I by Seneca A collection of letters from Seneca to his younger friend Lucilius that turns everyday worries, time, money, death, crowds, and friendship, into daily exercises in Stoic thinking.
  • Moral Letters Vol III by Seneca This third volume of Seneca's letters to Lucilius argues that a life's worth is measured by its use, not its length, and defends the practical work of moral advice against the charge that philosophy needs only its first principles.
  • Discourses II by Epictetus This book of Epictetus's lectures shows how confidence and caution, courage and care, can coexist once you sort the world correctly into what is up to you and what is not.
  • Moral Letters Vol II by Seneca This volume of Seneca's letters to Lucilius argues that all virtue is equal, that goods won through suffering are as complete as goods won through ease, and that a well-lived life matters more than a long one.

Sources

  1. Epictetus, Discourses I Primary text, Stoa library
  2. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Primary text, Stoa library
  3. Seneca, Moral Letters Vol I Primary text, Stoa library
  4. Seneca, Moral Letters Vol II Primary text, Stoa library