How to Do the Right Thing

"It doesn't take long after learning to speak for children to utter the cry, "That's not fair. " That familiar exclamation seems to emerge from a primal human sense: you know how you deserve to be treated, and you know that you have not been treated that way-you've been given a raw deal, you've not been done right by. In this volume for our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, Robert Kaster explores how we treat others at the everyday, person-to-person level, taking as his source the ethical writings of the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Though Seneca does not quite address the demands of "fairness" as the central topic in any of his ethical writings, relevant principles and words of advice appear throughout them. Kaster has selected passages from "On Benefits" and "On Mercy," the twelve short essays on disparate themes collected in his "Dialogues," and the most influential of his works, the "Moral Epistles. " He takes as his organizing principle one of the key premises of Stoic thought: you cannot do right by others unless you sort yourself out first, and sorting yourself out begins and ends with your mind. Doing right by others requires cultivating a great mind (magnus animus) and achieving magnanimity (magnanimitas), the quality that ensures (among other things) that one always give others what they deserve-in every way, from material goods to personal respect, and even punishment. He has organized the selections into five chapters, each giving a different view of doing the right thing when it comes to our relations with others: "Striving for Magnanimity"; "Being Calm, Thinking Clearly"; "Judging Yourself Fairly"; "Doing Right by Others"; and "Being Merciful. "-