Brad Inwood: “Doing the Right Thing”

In this paper, I provide a kind of reconstruction of Socrates’ procedures for practical decision-making, drawn not just from a consideration of the Crito, often recognized as the paradigmatic text for Socratic deliberation about specific courses of action, but also from the Protagoras, Alcibiades and Apology. I then consider the relationship between the Socratic principles extracted from those dialogues and the more fully articulated Stoic theory of practical deliberation, especially as illustrated in Cicero’s On Duties and in works by Seneca and Epictetus. The results of this enquiry provide a quite concrete illustration of what it means to regard Stoicism as a Socratic philosophy.