Research

Doctoral Thesis

Thesis Title: ‘Moral Responsibility and Ethics in Stoic Philosophy’

Thesis Supervisors: Prof Simon Shogry (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford), Prof Jan Westerhoff (Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford)

Thesis Summary: 

The Stoics hold that all human actions are fated. As such, they have been accused, by both ancient and modern critics, of rendering moral responsibility implausible. The common scholarly opinion is that the Stoics defend themselves by presenting a compatibilist thesis wherein we are the source of our actions, not something external, and that this renders us morally responsible despite our actions being fated. In this thesis, I contest this consensus, since such an explanation does not sufficiently account for why only humans are morally responsible and not, for example, other animals. Instead, I offer a novel interpretation of Stoic compatibilism, arguing that being the source of our actions is merely a prerequisite for moral responsibility, whereas what really makes us morally responsible is our rationality. The responses of both inanimate objects and non-rational animals to external stimuli are determined by what they are, while humans possess reason, which allows them to evaluate their experiences of the world and modulate their responses accordingly. Hence, our reactions to the world are not determined by what we are (a human being), but by who we are (our individual character).