2025-10-30
       
 (TXT) Encheiridion 30
       
          Appropriate actions are in general measured by relationships.
       
       Honestly, I am still figuring this one out.  What is it about
       relationships that determines duty?  Is it cultural?  How the
       the people around us understand what the behavior and attitude of
       a good son is towards a father? Or is there something intrinsic to
       the relationship from which we can reason out what our duty in
       the relationship is supposed to be?
       
       My feeling from the reading (and other reading) is that there
       really is something essential to the relationship that forms the
       basis for reason to then derive our duty within it.  Stoics love 
       to do things, "in accordance with nature", and I assume that
       natural order extends to the relationships that hold between
       people.  But when I look at these relationships, I find nothing
       intrinsic within them that would guide me into knowing what my
       my duty is as a party to them.  My biological father helped
       conceive me.  My father raised me.  I do feel some obligations
       to the person who did this, but I can see how these feelings and
       the shape they take as far as behavior and attitude are
       culturally determined by my upbringing and the surrounding
       society.
       
       I wonder if this is a problem because I do not hold to the Stoic
       panentheistic universe, and that this idea would help me
       understand what is going on here.
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