And if we look to bodily goods, such knowledge, better than anything else, would perceive what is fitting and expedient for the capabilities of each temperament.
Instead, they are best seen simply as facilitating right action, by removing impediments to it (anxiety about the future, fear of death) or saving us from obvious errors (ignoring the concerns of others, giving priority to bodily goods).
First, human excellence is a good of the soul — not a material or bodily good such as wealth or political power.
In this teaching the Stoics are addressing the problem of bodily and external goods raised by Aristotle.
However, in Book I Aristotle has already pointed out the problem of bodily and external goods in relation to happiness.
Aristotle holds happiness to be virtuous activity of the soul; but he raises — without solving — the problem of bodily and external goods and happiness.
On the crucial question of whether to recognize external and bodily items as goods in addition to virtue, he agreed with Aristotle and the Peripatos and disagreed with the Stoics, who made virtue the sole good.
The Stoics and Epicureans hold that happiness depends on detachment from vulnerable or difficult to obtain bodily and external goods and consists in a psychological state more under one's own direct control.
His solution, which is the most distinctive feature of his ethical system and the one that seems to have drawn the most criticism, is to distinguish between the happy life (vita beata in Cicero's Latin), for which virtue is sufficient, and the completely or entirely happy life (vita beatissima) (Fin. 5.71, 95; T.D. 5.22), which requires bodily and external goods as well.
In fact, those features rated beautiful, most notably bodily symmetry, are good predictors of healthy, desirable attributes such as strong immune systems in other words, aesthetic sensibilities have evolutionary roots.Karl Grammer, of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Urban Ethology, in Vienna, has shown that body odour, too, is correlated with symmetry and linked to immunological strength.
The bodily condition was good (body condition score [BCS] 3 out of a maximum of 5).
