Duty
The 'fitting' action that reason calls for in each moment — the Stoic and Ciceronian root of the very idea of duty.
In Stoic ethics, duty (kathēkon, 'the fitting') is the appropriate action whose performance reason can justify — caring for your health, honoring your parents, serving your community. The early Stoics, beginning with Zeno (c. 300 BCE), developed the notion, and Cicero rendered it into Latin as officium in his influential treatise De Officiis (44 BCE). From there it shaped Roman and later European ideas of moral obligation, right down to Kant.
How it traveled
- CyropaediaAthens · -354explains
- MemorabiliaAthens · -354explains
- On the False EmbassyAthens · -343explains
- On the CrownAthens · -330explains
- HistoriesMegalopolis · -118explains
- In C. VerremFormiae · -70explains
- Pro A. CluentioFormiae · -66explains
- PhilippicaeFormiae · -44explains
- Ab urbe conditaPadua · -27explains
- Institutio OratoriaRome · 95explains
- DiscoursesNicopolis · 108explains
- Civil WarsAlexandria · 165explains
- Ad Se IpsumVindobona (Vienna) · 170explains
- Noctes AtticaeRome · 180explains
- Res GestaeRome · 400explains
- Midrash Tanchuma BuberTiberias · 600
- Shemot RabbahTiberias · 600
- Duties of the HeartZaragoza (Saragossa) · 1080
- Yalkut Shimoni on NachTiberias · 1250
- Yalkut Shimoni on TorahTiberias · 1250
- Sefer HaIkkarimSoria · 1425
- Akeidat YitzchakTarragona · 1490
- Abarbanel on TorahNaples · 1505
- Avodat HaKodesh (Ibn Gabbai)Cairo · 1523
- Reshit ChokhmahTzfat · 1575
- Mesillat YesharimAmsterdam · 1738
- TanyaLiadi · 1797
- Maor VaShemeshKrakow (Cracow) · 1817
- Likutei HalakhotBreslov (Ukraine) · 1840
- Malbim on I SamuelBucharest · 1860
- Malbim on DeuteronomyBucharest · 1860
- Commentary on Sefer Hamitzvot of RasagLviv (Lemberg) · 1914
- Historia RomanaRomeexplains
- Jewish Antiquities—explains
- De Specialibus Legibus (lib. i‑iv)—explains
- Historical LibrarySyracuse (Sicily)explains
- De Beneficiis—explains
- Fragmenta MoraliaAthensexplains
- The Jewish War—explains
- De BellisConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
Key passages(20)
Liber de philosophorum sectis (epitome ap. Stobaeum) · Arius Didymus
de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum · Cicero
Vitae philosophorum · Diogenes Laertius
Zeno was the first to use this term καθῆκον of conduct. Etymologically it is derived from κατά τινας ἥκειν, i.e. reaching as far as, being up to, or incumbent on so and so. And it is an action in itse
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Vitae philosophorum · Diogenes Laertius
Unbefitting, or contrary to duty, are all acts that reason deprecates, e.g. to neglect one’s parents, to be indifferent to one’s brothers, not to agree with friends, to disregard the interests of one’
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Did you hear this when you were with the philosophers? did you learn this? do you not know that human life is a warfare? that one man must keep watch, another must go out as a spy, and a third must fi
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XXX. Duties are universally measured by relations ([Greek: tais schsesi]). Is a man a father? The precept is to take care of him, to yield to him in all things, to submit when he is reproachful, when
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Duties are universally measured by relations (ταῖς σχέσεσι). Is a man a father? The precept is to take care of him, to yield to him in all things, to submit when he is reproachful, when he inflicts bl
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XIII On the philosophical question, what would be more proper on receipt of an order-to do scrupulously what was commanded, or sometimes even to disobey, in the hope that it would be more advantageous
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II How Favorinus discoursed when I consulted hint about the duty of a judge. AT the time when I was first chosen by the praetors to be one of the judges in charge of the suits which are called private
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Dissertationum a Lucio digestarum reliquiae · Musonius Rufus
The Carthaginians now made overtures to the Romans, on account of the great number of the captives, among other causes; and with the envoys they sent also Regulus himself, thinking that through him th
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