What Makes You a Degenerate? | Stoic Philosophy

Here is your great soul – the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

Imagine a society where everything runs smoothly and harmoniously. People work together, support each other, and there’s peace and prosperity aside from some minor frictions. But throughout the years, the values at the core of this society’s success begin to fade. People become increasingly unhappy, violent, hostile towards one another, and love and compassion disappear. This society is now in decline; it’s going through a phase of degeneracy.

Similarly, individual people can degenerate as well. The noun “degenerate” is commonly used to describe someone who has lost certain qualities which one considers preferable. Some forms of degeneracy are natural and unavoidable, like aging and death. But other forms are a consequence of choice, like how we treat our bodies and minds. In this case, “degeneracy” refers to moral decline and the erosion of values like honesty, integrity, and restraint. From this viewpoint, a ‘degenerate’ moves below the threshold of an optimal moral state, whatever it may be.

The problem with calling someone or something morally “degenerate” is that it’s often a subjective matter. For example, for someone with very rigid morals and values, most people probably pass for degenerates. But for someone who’s very loose and open-minded, degeneracy may appear much more scarce or in a completely different manner. So, morals are often a matter of taste.

The ancient Stoics based their morals on reason. They created an ethical system that focuses on living in agreement with nature, or, a universal rational principle. Stoic ethics distinguish virtues from vices, seeing a life of virtue as the optimal way to live. From the Stoic point of view, someone who lives a life of vice can be considered a degenerate.

This video explores a couple of examples from Stoic literature on how the ancient Stoics saw degeneracy or, put differently, a bad and sub-par way of life leading to unhappiness. If you enjoy this essay, please hit the like button, which helps the channel.

A Stoic’s main goal is to live in agreement with nature. Living according to nature has nothing to do with nature religions, living off-grid, or engaging in primitivism. The Stoics believed that the universe is rational: all events happen according to a well-organized scheme, designed by an impersonal higher power, commonly referred to as Zeus.

Zeus created the universe and its living beings with distinct characteristics and unique relationships to the environment. Humans, the Stoics observed, distinguish themselves from other living beings by the faculty of reason. Because the universe is based on reason, human beings, therefore, have a taste of the divine, as they’re able to determine the cosmic order using their intelligence and rationally decide the optimal way to live.

So, to flourish, the Stoics believed we should live in agreement with our nature, nature around us, and fate, all of which are part of Zeus’ plan. If one doesn’t live in accordance with nature, this person lives a morally degenerate existence of vice.

As this all still sounds pretty vague, the Stoics created a system of virtue, subdivided into four cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. An opposing system of vice can be subdivided into foolishness, injustice, cowardice, and intemperance. The following part explores some interesting and telling examples of degeneracy from a Stoic ethical viewpoint.

(1) Fighting fate Trying to control fate is like building sandcastles on the beach, expecting the sea not to destroy them. Yet, we wish for things to happen as we want them to happen, and thus we’re disappointed when Fate provides us with an unwanted outcome. And so we cry when we lose our jobs, we get angry when someone takes what we believe is ours, and we weep when those we love pass away. But through any ...