From the book
Stobaeus, Volume II
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe expression names moral nobility and goodness. Musonius uses it for the excellence toward which human nature supplies an orientation, rather than for an already completed achievement.
- In StobaeusPeople claim to be good, sensible, just or temperate even without naming a teacher or practice; the argument distinguishes that natural orientation from their actual condition.
- In this editionMoral goodness makes the ethical force clear. Do not infer a historical social class, bodily attractiveness or proof of virtue from the expression alone.
- A place to readChapter 9 · Excerpt 8 · Passage 4 Read the repeated favorable self-descriptions together with the absence of named teaching or practice, then follow the argument’s distinction between a beginning and completed virtue.
- English renderings
- moral goodness; nobility and goodness
Meaning
Kalokagathia joins the language of being noble and good. In Musonius’s argument the expression concerns the moral excellence toward which human nature supplies a beginning.
Use in the book
The source first observes that people claim to be good, sensible, just or temperate even when unable to identify a teacher of their moral goodness. It then calls the soul’s natural orientation a predisposition toward kalokagathia and a seed of virtue. The sequence makes a distinction essential to the argument: having a natural orientation toward goodness does not prove that every claimant already has it. Deception and shame explain why the claims cannot simply be accepted at face value. The expression therefore names the goal of a moral capacity rather than a merely flattering social description.
Musonius proceeds through several questions people answer favorably about themselves. Each answer chooses the morally approved description, even where the respondent cannot explain his training. The pattern is evidence for a natural share or orientation, but it does not make the respondents’ claims reliable assessments of their achievement. The surrounding argument will also account for deception and shame. Reading this paragraph as a description of completed goodness would therefore collapse the very distinction the sequence develops between a natural beginning and its successful cultivation.
Places to read
- Chapter 9 · Excerpt 8 · Passage 42Claims of goodness need not be supported by an identified teacher or course of practice.
- Chapter 9 · Excerpt 8 · Passage 52A predisposition toward moral goodness is distinguished from actually being good.
Translation in this edition
Moral goodness is clear in this context. The fuller nobility and goodness can recall the compound’s ethical components without turning noble into an assertion about ancestry.
καλοκἀγαθίαν
Attested. Chapter 9 · Excerpt 8 · Passage 5; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 184.
πρὸς καλοκἀγαθίαν καὶ σπέρμα ἀρετῆς
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume II, printed pp. 183–184. The positive witness is an abstract noun in the argument, not a supplied heading. The passage does not define membership in an historical social class or praise bodily attractiveness.