Stoic q&a: Stoicism and developmental defects

[image: Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), The Choice of a Boy between Virtue and Vice]

G. writes: How should Stoics view those born with several developmental defects? My instinctive response is that the moral answer is with humanity and compassion, but I have trouble reaching that conclusion using a Stoic framework. From my readings, so many of Stoicism’s ideas of humanity are wrapped up in notions of intellect and the capacity for reason (e.g., even those suffering from “madness” are still members of the humanity family, only incapable of using reason effectively). But if a person, through accident of birth, fundamentally lacks that capacity, what basis do we have to treat them as a human with all the dignity that entails? To be clear, I am not advocating maltreatment of the mentally disabled — quite the opposite. I just have some reservations about continuing to practice a philosophy that would have no place for the most vulnerable.

It’s a very good question, and I’m going to answer it from two perspectives: ancient Stoicism and modern Stoicism. I have been arguing for a while now that modern Stoicism is, and indeed ought to be, somewhat different from its ancient precursor. Just in the way in which no one is a Buddhist or a Christian in the 21st century in the same way in which people were Buddhists or Christians two millennia ago, the same should be for Stoicism. The only reason some are resistant to this otherwise obvious notion is that — unlike Buddhism and Christianity — Stoicism’s intellectual history got “interrupted,” as Larry Becker wrote, and so we need to do a bit more work in order to outline the contours of a modern Stoicism.

You are correct that Stoicism — both ancient and modern — squarely puts the emphasis on the ability to reason, which is the ability that allows us to consciously choose between virtue and vice. This is because Stoicism is a naturalistic philosophy that seeks its axioms in the study of nature, and particularly human nature. As Diogenes Laertius puts it:

For our individual natures are parts of the nature of the whole universe. And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe…