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RE: Stoic's Lounge
(03-13-2017 01:02 PM)scrambled Wrote: Never heard of it; all of these modern money-grab repackaged "365 days of Stoic Lovey-Doveyness Calendar with Inspirational Quotes" are just pilfered from the far superior originals, which are quite readable in translation. Please avoid the lame dumb-down versions and instead read the classic originals:
https://www.hackettpublishing.com/the-meditations
https://www.hackettpublishing.com/the-ha...cheiridion
^This. I'm not going to say a book like The Daily Stoic is worthless because I haven't read it, and clearly it's beneficial to some people, but I'm not impressed with Holiday's previous forays into the world of Stoicism.
I read The Obstacle is the Way and it was a complete waste of time. It took him 200+ pages of historical anecdotes, some misused and/or taken out of context, and casual skimming of Stoic wisdom to basically tell us, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." That's it. He basically came across like an amateurish Robert Greene who just recently discovered Stoicism and found a way to market the hell out of it in its most watered down, juvenile form.
(03-13-2017 01:02 PM)scrambled Wrote: I've studied Stoicism (really it is a 'religion' for men, as opposed to the ones for women & children) for years. Accordingly, I am aware that has serious limitations that should be kept in mind. It's far more useful in defense than offense; ignores biology and even psychology; represents a Greece that was subjected, not the Periclean and Golden Age; and Epicureanism offers an alternative possibly more useful to modern neo-masculinity.
The greatest argument I've read though, from an essay on Sir Francis Bacon:
Baron Macaulay Wrote:An abject superstition, which Democritus or Anaxagoras would have rejected with scorn, added the last disgrace to the long dotage of the Stoic and Platonic schools. Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate which are so delightful and interesting in a child, shock and disgust us in an aged paralytic; and in the same way, those wild mythological fictions which charm us when lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed sensation of pity and loathing when mumbled by Greek philosophy in its old age. We know that guns, cutlery, Spy-glasses, clocks,-are better in our time than they were in the time of our fathers; and were better in the time of our fathers than they were in the time of our grandfathers. We might, therefore, be inclined to think, that when a philosophy which boasted that its object was the elevation and purification of the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office of ministering to the comforts of the body, had flourished in the highest honour for many hundreds of years, a vast moral amelioration must have taken place. Was it so?
Look at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the Christian era, and four centuries after that era. Compare the men whom those schools formed at those two periods. Compare Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericles and Julian. This philosophy confessed, nay boasted, that for every end but one it was useless. Had it attained that one end? Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the Portico, and lingered round the ancient plane trees, to show their title to public veneration:— suppose that he had said, " A thousand years have elapsed since, in this famous city, Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias; during those thousand years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation has been employed in constant efforts to bring to perfection the philosophy which you leach; that philosophy has been munificently patronised by the powerful; its professors have been held in the highest esteem by the public; it has drawn to itself almost all the sap and vigour of the human, intellect—and what has it effected? What profitable truth has it taught us which we should not equally have known without it? What has it enabled us to do which we should not have been equally able to do without it?" Such questions, we suspect, would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower of Bacon what the new philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready—
"It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land on cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail against the wind. These are but a pan of its fruits, and of its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained it, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow."
We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might be written, in which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be introduced as fellow-travellers. They come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage; and find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, mothers weeping in terror over their children. The Stoic assures the dismayed population that there is nothing bad in the small-pox, and that to a wise man, diseases, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dismay. An explosion of noisome vapours has just killed many of those who were at work; and the survivors are afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an accident is nothing but a mere [phantasia].
The Baconian, who has not such a fine word at his command, contents himself with devising a safety-lamp. They find a shipwrecked merchant wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from opulence to beggary The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things which lie without himself, and repeats the whole chapter of Epictetus (To those who fear want.) The Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the difference between the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruit—the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works.
Personally I think this misrepresents the Stoic mentality somewhat. It makes it seem like Stoicism is just this passive, reactionary philosophy that is primarily designed to allow one to endure hardship without taking any meaningful action toward a better life. I disagree.
My understanding of Stoicism has always led me to believe that it's mainly about two things: 1) recognizing that which is in your control and that which isn't, and 2) making the most of situations that are in your control to the extent that you can, while not worrying about outcomes or scenarios that you can't control.
This mentality requires a man to embrace a virtue-based ethos in order to apply himself fully to each and every situation in life, and then letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to aspects of life that are out of his control.
Even grave misfortune can be viewed as an opportunity to grow one's inner strength and cultivate a more virtuous character if you apply yourself fully to making the best of that situation. By the same token, I don't believe that the aim of Stoicism suggests a man should forgo the pursuit of worldly pleasures or personal excellence. He just shouldn't be ruled by those pleasures, or put so much emphasis on them that he'd crumble into ruin should they be taken away. Basically you have to keep things in perspective and remember what is truly important in life.
When it comes to what we can and can't control, things basically fall into one of three categories:
1) Things we have complete control over. Usually this stuff entails aspects of the self, like our mental state, our drive toward self-improvement, different forms of enlightenment, the way we allow others to influence us, etc. We should devote much of our energy to working on these aspects of our lives because, not only will they yield the most fruit, but they also cannot be taken from us easily.
2) Things we have partial control over. These would be things like our careers, our relationships, our health, etc. We should always do our best to improve these aspects of our lives to the best of our abilities, but at the same time we must accept the fact that, in spite of our best efforts, sometimes things won't go our way. We can take solace in the fact that we applied ourselves to the best of our abilities, and use the experience as a learning tool to hopefully affect a better outcome in the future.
3) Things we have no control over. These could be things like getting hit by car that careens onto the sidewalk, or dealing with the sudden, unexpected death of a loved one. We should try not to worry about these things at all, but simply deal with them as they come and try to uphold our virtuous character throughout the ordeal.
As far as Stoicism being better suited to defensive living, it certainly excels in that realm, but I think that if you apply it properly then it's a comprehensive philosophy that can both drive you to accomplish great things while simultaneously giving you the tools to deal with whatever difficulties arise in life, and doing so in a most admirable way.
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