Buddhism are instances of naturalistic ethics and demonstrate their similarity with respect to moral psychology. Finally, I juxtapose the two schools of thought with Aristotelian Virtue Ethics—a weak form of naturalistic ethics—in order to motivate the significance of the similarity. Roman Stoicism Handbook by Epictetus is, perhaps, the most widely acknowledged text on Roman Stoicism. In it, Epictetus begins by drawing a central distinction: that which is in one’s power by nature (one’s actions), and that which is beyond one’s power. In our power are opinion ([Greek: hupolaepsis]), movement towards a thing ([Greek: hormae]), desire, aversion ([Greek: echchlisis]), turning from a thing; and in a word, whatever are our acts. Not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices (magisterial power), and in a word, whatever are not our own acts (Enchiridion I). For Epictetus, the Stoic lifestyle is one in which you exercise careful epistemic consideration of these categories and regulate your psychology by their dictates. For the Stoic, to pursue or avoid something beyond one’s power—bodily pleasure, reputation, disease—is a simple category error. It is to mistake one’s domain of personal concern to contain considerations that, by the simple fact of nature, do not belong there. Therefore, it follows to direct that which is in one’s control—opinion, desire, aversion—toward only the things within the same category. Epictetus provides the example of a Roman bathhouse: If you are going to bathe, place before yourself what happens in the bath; some splashing the water, others pushing against one another, others abusing one another, and some stealing; and thus with more safety you will undertake the matter, if you say to yourself, I now intend to bathe, and to maintain my will in a manner conformable to nature (Enchiridion IV). There is a category error being implicated here. For many a Roman, to desire to bathe is to set as their ends an implausible goal: a perfectly quiet and uninterrupted experience. For the enlightened Stoic, the pushing and splashing are not deviations from the goal; they are simply entailments of bathing that ought to bear on the agent’s intentions from the start. If one commits to creating this rationally informed species of intentions, then they will never be unsatisfied by coming to the bathhouse
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