Seneca's Treatise on Benefits: 

Real Kindness and Real Agency

Prof. Margaret R. Graver

Dartmouth College

May 5, 2022

Starts in Hanover, NH 12.00 pm / London 5.00 pm / Budapest 6.00 pm / Athens 7.00 pm

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While the central concept of Stoic ethics was the appropriate action or kathēkon, considerable philosophical attention was also given to the act of kindness (euergēsia), that is, the supererogatory favor. Seneca's surviving treatise presents the Stoic analysis and explores a set of interrelated puzzles raised by it. Issues of agency and volition are especially prominent, in ways that have implications also for the larger Stoic theory of action.