Stoicism is often read as a philosophy of detachment, and this topic is the correction. The Stoics held that rational beings are made for one another, that our obligations follow from the relationships we actually stand in - son, neighbour, citizen, friend - and that withdrawal from other people is a failure rather than an achievement.
The reach is deliberately wide: justice, the common good, gratitude, family, friendship, mercy in the exercise of power, and the claim that the human race is a single community.
50 passages
"As the sum total of friendship consists in making our friends equal to ourselves, we ought to consider the interests of both parties; I must give to him that wants, yet so that I do not want myself; I must help him who is perishing, yet so that I do not perish myself, unless by so doing I can save a great man or a great cause."
"NOT to return gratitude for benefits, my Æbutius Liberalis, is both base in itself, and is thought base by all men; wherefore even ungrateful men complain of ingratitude, and yet what all condemn is at the same time rooted in all; and so far do men sometimes run into the other extreme that some of them become our bitterest enemies, not merely after receiving benefits from us, but because they have received them."
"Those persons are much mistaken who regard it as a proof of a great mind to make offers to give, and to fill many men's pockets and houses with their presents, for sometimes these are due not to a great mind, but to a great fortune; they do not know how far more great and more difficult it sometimes is to receive than to lavish gifts."
"I shall be treacherous, and hear myself blamed for inconsistency, only if I do not fulfil, my promise when all conditions remain the same as when I made it; otherwise, any change makes me free to reconsider the entire case, and absolves me from my promise."
"But in marriage there must be above all perfect companionship and mutual love of husband and wife, both in health and in sickness and under all conditions, since it was with desire for this as well as for having children that both entered upon marriage."
""If," our adversary may say, "you wish to imitate the gods, then bestow benefits upon the ungrateful as well as the grateful; for the sun rises upon the wicked as well as the good, the seas are open even to pirates." By this question he really asks whether a good man would bestow a benefit upon an ungrateful person, knowing him to be ungrateful."
""I would," said he, "have bought a cloak if I had had the money for it." After this, however eager any one was to give, he gave too late; for he had already been wanting in his duty to Socrates."
"I shall take no notice whatever of those whose benefits are bestowed in a mercenary spirit, who do not consider to whom, but upon what terms they give, whose benefits are entirely selfish."
"At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: 'I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?"
"The next condition, which is the most important of all, must necessarily be present, namely, that I should confer the benefit for the sake of him whom I wish to receive it, that I should judge him worthy of it, bestow it of my own free will, and receive pleasure from my own gift, none of which conditions are present in the cases of which we have just now spoken; for we do not bestow such things as those upon these who are worthy of them, but we give them carelessly, as trifles, and do not give them so much to a man as to humanity."
"So it is also in life: If there be given you, instead of a little bulb and a small shell-fish, a little wife and child, there will be no objection to that; only, if the Captain calls, give up all these things and run to the ship, without even turning around to look back."
"What a noble spirit it shows in a slave to have been willing to die for his master, at a time when few were faithful enough to wish their master to live! to be found kind when the state was cruel, faithful when it was treacherous! to be eager for the reward of fidelity, though it was death, at a time when such rich rewards were offered for treachery!"
"A thing which is compared to another thing is unintelligible without that other thing; a thing which is joined to something else does not exist apart from it; so that which is given does not exist without the other person, nor can a benefit have any existence without another person."
"By no force of words, by no power of genius, can one rightly express how desirable, how admirable, how never to be erased from human memory it is to be able to say, "I obeyed my parents, I gave way to them, I was submissive to their authority whether it was just, or unjust and harsh; the only point in which I resisted them was, not to be conquered by them in benefits." Continue this struggle, I beg of you, and even though weary, yet re-form your ranks."
""A man," it is argued, "who has received a benefit, however gratefully he may have received it, has not yet accomplished all his duty, for there remains the part of repayment; just as in playing at ball it is something to catch the ball cleverly and carefully, but a man is not called a good player unless he can handily and quickly send back the ball which he has caught." This analogy is imperfect; and why?"
"This which is the duty of a parent, is also that of the prince whom with no unmeaning flattery we call "The Father of our Country.” Other names are given as titles of honour: we have styled some men "The Great," "The Fortunate," or "The August" and have thus satisfied their passion for grandeur by bestowing upon them all the dignity that we could: but when we style a man "The Father of his Country" we give him to understand that we have entrusted him with a father's power over us, which is of the mildest character for a father takes thought for his children and subordinates his own interests to theirs."
"Caesar added: "In future I will take care never to quarrel with you, for my own sake." Caesar acted honourably in pardoning him, and in being liberal as well as forgiving; no one can hear this anecdote without praising Caesar, but he must praise the slave first."
""Benefits, then, will be fewer, but more genuine: well, what harm is there in restricting people from giving recklessly?" Even those who would have no legislation upon the subject follow this rule, that we ought to be somewhat careful in giving, and in choosing those upon whom we bestow favours."
"You do not know how great is the value of friendship, if you do not understand how much you give to him to whom you give a friend, a commodity which is scarce not only in men's houses, but in whole centuries, and which is nowhere scarcer than in the places where it is thought to be most plentiful."
"Yet it is not right to pardon indiscriminately; for when no distinction is made between good and bad men, disorder follows, and all vices break forth; we must therefore take care to distinguish those characters which admit of reform from those which are hopelessly depraved."
"In the same way, my Liberalis, as some things remain in our memory as soon as they are learned, while to know others it is not enough to have learned them, for our knowledge slips away from us unless it be kept up--I allude to geometry and astronomy, and such other sciences as are Hard to remember because of their intricacy-- so the greatness of some benefits prevents their being forgotten, while others, individually less, though many more in number, and bestowed at different times, pass from our minds, because, as I have stated above, we do not constantly think about them, and do not willingly recognize how much we owe to each of our benefactors."
"In all ways you should make your benefit as acceptable as possible by presenting it in the most attractive form; but the method of Tiberius is not to confer benefits, but to reproach."
"For this reason we need not wonder that princes, kings, and all other protectors of a state, whatever their titles may be, should be loved beyond the circle of their immediate relatives; for since right-thinking men prefer the interests of the state to their own, it follows that he who bears the burden of state affairs must be dearer to them than their own friends."
""Well," say they, "what disgrace can there be in a man of consular rank kissing gold and pearls, and what part of Caesar's whole body was it less pollution to kiss?" So, then, that man, the object of whose life was to change a free state into a Persian despotism, was not satisfied when a senator, an aged man, a man who had filled the highest offices in the state, prostrated himself before him in the presence of all the nobles, just as the vanquished prostrate themselves before their conqueror!"
"One ought to proportion one's thanks to the importance of the benefit received, and to use the phrases, "You have laid more of us than you think under an obligation," for everyone likes to find his good actions extend further than he expected."
"But I do not call it clemency to be wearied of cruelty; true clemency, Caesar, is that which you display, which has not begun from remorse at its past ferocity, on which there is no stain, which has never shed the blood of your countrymen: this, when combined with unlimited power, shows the truest self-control and all-embracing love of the human race as of one's self, not corrupted by any low desires, any extravagant ideas, or any of the bad examples of former emperors into trying, by actual experiment, how great a tyranny you would be allowed to exercise over his countrymen, but inclining rather to blunting your sword of empire."
"Consider within yourself, whether you have always shown gratitude to those to whom you owe it, whether no one's kindness has ever been wasted upon you, whether you constantly bear in mind all the benefits which you have received."
"There is no law forbidding us to divulge our friend's secrets; there is no law which bids us keep faith even with an enemy; pray what law is there which binds us to stand by what we have promised?"
"To help, to be of service, is the part of a generous and noble mind; he who gives acts like a god, he who demands repayment acts like a money-lender."
"It may be argued that "we render men less willing to confer benefits by not supporting the claim of those which have been bestowed to meet with gratitude, and by not punishing those who repudiate them." But you would find, on the other hand, that men would be far less willing to receive benefits, if by so doing they were likely to incur the danger of having to plead their cause in court, and having more difficulty in proving their integrity."
"Such a man has no wish to become bankrupt, but only to make the fullest and most copious return for benefits, and that not only to parents and friends, but also to more humble persons; for even if he receives a benefit from his own slave, he does not consider from whom he receives it, but what he receives."
"Go, let men see how sacred a thing is the table of hospitality; show them your face, that upon it they may read the decree which prevents its being a capital crime to give refuge to the unfortunate under one's roof."
"Reasonable beings, constituted for one fellowship of co-operation, are in their separated bodies analogous to the several members of the body in individual organisms."
"To cure your friend of being slow to ask a favour of you, you may join to your gift the familiar rebuke, "I am angry with you for not having long ago let me know what you wanted, for having asked for it so formally, or for having made interest with a third party." "I congratulate myself that you have been pleased to make trial of me; hereafter, if you want anything, ask for it as your right; however, for this time I pardon your want of manners." By so doing you will cause him to value your friendship more highly than that, whatever it may have been, which he came to ask of you."
Seneca supplies most of these passages, largely from his treatises on benefits and on clemency, which are the closest thing the corpus has to a sustained social ethics - how to give, how to receive, how to be owed something, how to hold power without cruelty.
The Stoic argument is not that you should serve others despite your own interest, but that the distinction is confused. You are a part of something; a part that works against the whole is malfunctioning, not sacrificing. Marcus states it flatly: we came into the world for the sake of one another.