Reddit reviews A New Stoicism

There's lots of great stuff on virtue ethics. If you're looking for a developed treatment of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, there's really no other alternative to Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. She does a great job of taking Aristotle further than he does himself, but trying to keep in the spirit of his ethics. If you're also interested in Aristotle, I'd check out Julia Annas' Intelligent Virtue. Both work to interpret the ideas from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

If you're interested in the Stoics, read Epictetus' Handbook AKA Enchiridion and Cicero's De Finibus. You can google those and find free translations everywhere. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is similarly good. If you're looking for a good contemporary account, as far as I know, Lawrence Becker's A New Stoicism is the standard. I'd highly recommend that. Skip over the primer on logic if you don't want it.

For other approaches to virtue ethics, I'd check out Christine Swanton's Virtue Ethics: a Pluralistic View.

I could go on, but if you read these, you'd know more about virtue ethics than most.

> There's been quite a few posts lately about why virtue is actually good. What is the concrete argument in favor of virtue being good?

I have not yet read it, but Lawrence Becker's A New Stoicism attempts to formally answer this question.

> and although Stoic principles still function well as a way of living, the moral impetus seems to be lost

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here by the moral impetus being lost.

> Why are we supposed to be virtuous and to follow reason and the like? It is because logos is the first principle of the cosmos

This was my response to /u/anaxarchos:

"I don't see how the claim that virtue is the sole good is dependent on the claim that the universe is providentially ordered. If living virtuously results in the best possible life, and if we want the best possible life, then it makes sense to live virtuously. Or if having the most money resulted in the best possible life, then it would make sense to do whatever it takes to acquire the most money."

(Of course, the claims that either "living virtuously results in the best possible life" or "having the most money results in the best possible life" would still need to be defended. But neither necessarily depends on Providence existing.)

Yes. The one about ethics. Here. Or, well, fuck it, here.

Lawrence Becker's A New Stoicism is an example of an attempt to revive stoic ethical philosophy in a rigorous academic manner.

• Publisher page: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6231.html
  
  
• GoodReads
  
  
• Amazon
  
  
• Brief review: Society for Philosophy in Practice
  
  Edit: added links

A New Stoicism by Lawrence Becker (if you are interested in ethics). It's not an easy read, but you don't need any external references to understand it.

Dr. Laurence Becker tackled this very question in his book A New Stoicism. He sought to establish a secular foundation for Stoic ethics.