Three Stoic doctrines have heavily influenced the course of later moral philosophy: (1) Eudaemonism: the ultimate end for rational action is the agent's own happiness. (2) Naturalism: happiness and virtue consist in living in accord with nature. (3) Moralism: moral virtue is to be chosen for its own sake and is to be preferred above any combination of items with non-moral value. These Stoic doctrines provide some later moralists with a starting-point and an outline that they try to develop and amplify. These moralists include supporters of the position that I will call 'Scholastic naturalism'. For other later moralists, Stoicism provides a target; they develop their own positions by explaining why they reject the Stoic position. Still others defend some of these Stoic doctrines and reject others.

For obvious reasons, my account of the influence of these Stoic doctrines will be highly selective. I will simply sketch Scholastic naturalism through a few remarks about Aquinas, Suarez, and Grotius. On the other side, I will examine Pufendorf’s reasons for rejecting Scholastic naturalism, and the attempts of Butler and Hutcheson to defend some Stoic doctrines while rejecting others.

My interest in these reactions to Stoicism and Scholastic naturalism is primarily philosophical. I hope to understand how different people argue for or against these doctrines, and to see how reasonable the arguments are. It will be clear that I cannot complete this task in this one chapter; I will simply try to identify the main arguments and to raise some relevant questions about them.