Think of others as yourself 

How should a Stoic treat others? Here is a piece of advice from Hierocles: 

Act by everyone, in the same manner as if you supposed yourself to be him, and him to be you. 

Hierocles, Fragments 

Hierocles goes on to illustrate this point by reference to the master-slave relationship: 

For he will use a servant well who considers with himself, how he would think it proper to be used by him, if he indeed was the master, and himself the servant. The same thing also must be said of parents with respect to children, and of children with respect to parents; and, in short, of all men with respect to all. 

Hierocles, Fragments 

Epictetus says: 

What you avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others. 

Epictetus, Fragments 

Think of your own shortcomings 

In On Anger, Seneca explains that when growing angry with another person over some perceived transgression, Stoics should remind themselves that they are capable of doing the same or similar things. 

No one says to himself, “I myself have done or might have done this very thing which I am angry with another for doing. 

Seneca, On Anger, 3.12 

A few sentences later, he expands upon this by also applying a version of the Golden Rule to the problem of anger: 

Let us put ourselves in the place of him with whom we are angry: at present an overweening conceit of our own importance makes us prone to anger, and we are quite willing to do to others what we cannot endure should be done to ourselves. 

Seneca, On Anger, 3.12 

Think of reciprocity 

Seneca applies this wisdom to the question of how best to bestow gifts or favors on others: 

Let us consider… in what way a benefit should be bestowed. I think that I can point out the shortest way to this; let us give in the way in which we ourselves should like to receive. 

Seneca, On Benefits, 2.1 

Think of our interdepence 

In perhaps one of the book’s most famous passages Marcus Aurelius writes: 

Nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, for we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1 

Love even those who are wrong 

In one of the most striking passages in The Meditations, he appears to echo the Christian notion of loving even one’s enemies: 

It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to thee that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally..’ 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.22 

Finally: 

A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also. So too a man when he is separated from another man has fallen off from the whole social community. ... it is in our power to grow again to that which is near to us, and again to become a part which helps to make up the whole. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.22 

Conclusion 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Stoics took his ethical philosophy and developed it into more of a system. Zeno had said that a friend is “another me” (alter ego est amicus). The Golden Rule gradually become more explicit and took on its familiar form in authors such as Seneca when he admonishes us for being “quite willing to do to others what we cannot endure should be done to ourselves.” 

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Donald Robertson is an author and Cognitive Behavior Therapist. His latest book is How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (https://amzn.to/2SswfJ1).

 

 

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