For B., a Stoic moral philosophy is one that sees virtue as the one value with which no others can be compared, and interprets virtue in terms of an individual's organised and coherent plan for living his or her own life, based on an understanding of the natural world, of which we are a part, even though that world can no longer be understood in the ancient way as teleologically organised. As for the ancient Stoics, it is the way you live and what you try to achieve that matters, not what you actually achieve, for that is beyond your control. B. sets out his theory in chapters each followed by a Commentary, which includes consideration of the relation of B.'s theory to ancient Stoicism in so far as we can reconstruct the latter. It is therefore in the Commentaries that discussion, often extensive and with copious quotation, of the ancient material is to be found. After two brief introductory chapters, one sketching the historical influence of Stoic ideas and the second outlining the possibilities for Stoic treatments of ethics today, ch.3 argues that ethics should be based on our knowledge of the world, and examines the way in which agents can or should calculate the way in which they should behave in each situation.
Practical reason assesses the soundness of normative propositions for various purposes.
And concern should be with one's life as a whole, not just with individual situations. On p.21 B. argues that concern for a whole life sets Stoic ethics apart from Epicureanism. An Epicurean's life is indeed, as B. notes on p.148, not going to be such a complex overall project as a Stoic's, just because, as Martha Nussbaum has rightly complained, Epicureanism models ideal human life on that of the Olympian gods to whom rather little that matters ever actually happens. Nevertheless, a recent discussion of Epicurean katastematic pleasure by Jeffrey Purinton 5 does see it precisely as the overall aim to which individual kinetic pleasures contribute if properly selected. The Commentary to ch.3 surveys the sources for ancient Stoic ethics, and explains B.'s decision to avoid Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius because of their emphasis on theology and practical therapeutics rather than on moral theory, suggesting that this may reflect Arrian, Epictetus' reporter, rather than Epictetus himself.