Stoic versus Capitalist Conceptions of the Common Good

In the immortal words of Marcus Aurelius: “First, nothing aimless or without ulterior reference. Second, no reference to any end other than the common good.” (Meditations, xii.20) In other words, our moral duties have a social dimension, not just a personal one, for we are not only born for cooperation—just like our hands, feet, and other limbs and body parts—we also share an even more general and inexorable moral duty to act on behalf of the common good, not just in our private self-interest. On the surface, however, if there were ever an area of ethics where Stoic ideals and capitalist realities were most incompatible or incongruent, this would be it. After all, the logic of Stoicism is to promote the common good, while the logic of the capitalist system is to promote one’s own ends or self-interest and let the “invisible hand” work its magic.[1] But such a superficial interpretation of Stoic versus capitalist motives is incomplete, because as Robert Rosenkranz explains in The Stoic…