/stoicism/

Sup Forums, What do u think about stoicism?

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It's fucking great

Boy, girl, the difference blurs with age.

t. Marcus Aurelius

Sounds pretty gay.

It is literally patrician tier

"Are you angry with the man who smells like a goat, or the one with foul breath? What will you have him do? That's the way his mouth is, that's the way his armpits are, so it is inevitable that they should give out odours to match. 'But the man is endowed with reason' you say, 'and if he puts his mind to it he can work out why causes offence.' Well, good for you! so you too are no less endowed with reason: bring your rationality, then, to bear on his rationality - show him, tell him. If he listens, you will cure him, and no need for anger. Neither hypocrite nor whore." Book IV, 28

"Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first." VI, 29

Stoicism is also very hard personally, and requires a lot of strength, of character, and intention, and so many more things, for example:
"...In this world there is only one thing of value, to live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just. VI, 47.
Another difficult example, Marcus is talking about prayer, and being a man who lost several children in infancy whom he loved dearly it makes the quote all the more difficult to read:
"...one man prays how can I sleep with that woman? You pray how can I be rid of the desire to sleep with her. One prays how can I be rid of that man? You pray how can I be rid of the desire to be rid of him. Another prays, how can I save my little child? You must pray, How can I learn to not fear his loss." IX, 40.

In reading the Meditations one can see how some statements are pure stream of consciousness.

He mentions the impermanence of nature, things ebbing and flowing, the mysteries of the gods/god, and also an unbelievable level of personal control.
For example;
"...when you complain of disloyalty or ingratitude, turn inwards on yourself. The fault is clearly your own, if you trusted that a man of that character would keep his trust (his word), or if you conferred a favour without making it an end in itself, your very action its own and complete reward. What more do you want, man, from a kind act? Is it not enough that you have done something consonant with your own nature - do you now put a price on it? As if the eye demanded a return for seeing, or the feet for walking... man was made to do good: and whenever he does ... he has done what he was designed for, and inherits his own. (It is it's own reward). IX, 42, 4.

I love that book, good lessons for life that aren't memeish

>Boy, girl, the difference blurs with age.
Stoicism, reasonable again.

I hate Stoics.

Stoic and Christian philosophers are part of the reason Heraclitus' philosophy didn't become the based war religion of Europe.

What are some good books to look into after Meditations? Made me really crave for something similar.

amazon.com/Letters-Penguin-Classics-Lucius-Annaeus/dp/0140442103

>Stoic and Christian philosophers are part of the reason Heraclitus' philosophy didn't become the based war religion of Europe.
I can see the reasoning here but you're getting it from egalitarian Lefty and Christian faggots. Stoicism was the favorite philosophy of the Military. But the elite went away from nature and fell in love with cosmopolitan facades. That's why it failed.


Remember that this slave who they all love to qoute wasn't even the writer. His entire works are from a college student who wrote them after he returned from war as a general and had PTSD in my opinion.

>Stoicism was the favorite philosophy of the Military.

Is that philoshopy of stop fighting chaos and embrace the chaos itself?

Nice, will look into that. Thanks. Will need to keep looking for more literature after that one.

>And he was a good philosopher...

>Is that philoshopy of stop fighting chaos and embrace the chaos itself?
There is no chaos in Stoicism. Everything flows, everything is ordered...

KEK is light. Cuck is the womb. "He is a feather in the wind."

Epicureanism is better.

That's body-oder shaming, and you will be sent to HR with a formal complaint and be made to take sensitivity training.

I prefer Seneca, he is much more readable.

Teaches you to not give a shit if your parents have their heads cut off in front of you by invading barbarians because "lol none of it matters when you die anyways."

It's Christcuck-tier "turn the other cheek" bullshit at its finest. It's basically the original NEET philosophy and teaches that you shouldn't give a shit about anything or anyone. So if you're a worthless faggot like that, then go ahead and enjoy it.

One, fuck Penguin books. Stay away from them. Use Loeb.
Two, the three stoic classics are Marcus's Meditations, Seneca's Letters, and Epictetus's Discourses and Encheiridion.

Jesus you don't understand stoicism

Your actions can be guided by reason or guided by emotion. It is simply a choice.

I do. I read Meditations and a half dozen other works on the retarded philosophy. It's fucking stupid. I agree with the whole "don't let things get to you" premise, but Stoicism takes it to the extreme. It's a cuck philosophy and you're a cuck for liking it
>use Loeb
You're a fucking idiot. Loeb books are literal translations, they are extremely hard to follow and often times do not even convey the message the original author was trying to get across. They are useful only as tools for scholars who are comparing different translations of a text. You would know this if you had a college education.

You're describing nihilism, user.

Which is basically what Stoicism is. Nietzsche was directly inspired by Aurelius

Nietzsche was not a nihilist you braindead retarded scumfucker.

Seneca's dialogs, mainly 'On Providence' helped me getting out of my crippling depression so I can only encourage people to learn about stoicism

I thought the same before I read anything from the stoics
It is not about turning the other cheek but simply not letting the damage make you a worse person - a depressed, passive person, or agressive (in the bad sense) for that matter
Altough there are some notions in stoicism that resemble cuckoldry, the main point of it is not cucking yourself but taking hardships in a way that you make something good out of it. You have to note though that stoicism is all about virtue and it is always up to you what you define as virtue. If you consider strength as a virtue, then you will be anything but a cuck. So in my opinion being a cuck has nothing to do with stoicism. You can be a cuck as a stoic though just as much as you can be a chad stoic.

Stoicism is gay. It was the original universalist cuck creed, predating christfaggotry.

>write profound sounding things
>achieve eternal fame
>give your fuckup son the empire and ruin everything for everyone

*then you will hardly be a cuck

>getting this ass mad over someone else's fuckup

stoicism is the only philosophy that doesn't disappoint.

It's the manliest philosophy out there.

It's universalist, egalitarian and effeminate. Not manly at all.

I particularly like when he talks about principles, or personal virtues/values;

"Your principles are living things. How else could they be deadened, except by the extinction of the corresponding metnal images? The constant rekindling of these is up to you. 'I am able to form the judgment I should about this event. If able, why trouble? All that lies outside my own mind is nothing to it.' Learn this, and you stand upright. You can live once more. Look at things as you used to look at them: in this is the resumption of life." VII, 2.

He also equates one's principles to a boxers fists, rather than a sword or a tool. A principle you always have with you, ready to use, they cannot be put down or thrown away, at least not easily or without pain.

Why did MA disregard imagination as unwanted and useless?

Book 7, 17th paragraph, for reference.

>>use Loeb
>You're a fucking idiot. Loeb books are literal translations, they are extremely hard to follow and often times do not even convey the message the original author was trying to get across. They are useful only as tools for scholars who are comparing different translations of a text. You would know this if you had a college education.

>I only trust my Marxist professors to translate things for me

Some are hard to follow, some are not.They are not necessarily "literal" translations, they are translations into English. Since there is only one English language, I assume the translator's tried to convey the original meaning as best they could, otherwise why the hell did they do it?

It is nice to have the source text there, so one can see what was translated - if one wishes to do so. I do not trust any translations written after WWII, that is when they Marxists began taking over academia, and they can all go fuck themselves.

You have no idea what my level education is, not that it matters. Some of the biggest fucking morons in America come out of Ivy League schools. Your correlation of intelligence with education betrays both your own lack of the former, and, unfortunately, surplus of the latter.

I think he's probably referring more towards wishful thinking, daydreaming and fantasizing about things which he cannot himself implement, or that which would otherwise distract himself from what he wants to do.

>you peasants have a tough life but you should put up with it while I live like a king
I like the guy but this came across as a bit ignorant

>Seneca's dialogs, mainly 'On Providence' helped me getting out of my crippling depression so I can only encourage people to learn about stoicism

Glad to hear it. Regarding Seneca's letters to Lucius, it is amazing what young men had available to them when we were civilized, isn't it? Can you imagine this kind of advice and leadership and guidance in a young man's life in today's world?

Keep up the good work.

In the previous paragraph he talks about the directing mind being naturally unhindered, unless it creates its own hindrances. For example your imagination may say something like "that's impossible" but before you created that for yourself it was possible, the next paragraph then where he says "...imagination why are you doing what you do? Go away... I have no need for you... you have come in your old habit..."
The old habit is the thought or self doubt disguising itself to then sap his desire for action.

Let me pull my Loeb to see....

OK, the footnote to "well-being" in the first sentence makes reference to a definition by Chrysippus, a famous greek stoic, as "harmony of our daimon with God's will."
My Greek-English lexicon, by Liddell & Scott, defines daimon as divine spirit. (it is actually the root of our modern word "demon.")

So, I would take this as, if our soul is aligned with God's Will, then imagination can stray us from that path, and distort our view of things. I don't think that this is an outright condemnation of imagination, just a warning to not let it distract you from seeing what is real. In modern parlance, "Don't read too much into it, bro, she was just upset that day."

>One, fuck Penguin books.
Penguin's Books on tape version is the best! Leob is a Christian translator. He's shit and it's not smooth from what I can recal.

>It was the original universalist cuck creed
That was Zoroastrianism

egocentric shit?

...

>That was Zoroastrianism
I read that Alexander burned all of the original Zoroastrian texts when he conquered one of the Persian cities. That, to me, is horrifying, and no different than ISIS destroying ancient cities and monuments.

no

Stoicism is straight up queer talk. It encourages passivity and encourages the oppressed to submit meekly to the oppression of the powerful: accept your lot, know your place, do not challenge the status quo, while claiming to be above everyone else morally and intellectually. No wonder it's all the rage with Sup Forums's pseuds.

>I read that Alexander burned all of the original Zoroastrian texts when he conquered one of the Persian cities. That, to me, is horrifying, and no different than ISIS destroying ancient cities and monuments.
Yeah that's pretty fucked up. Too bad he didn't burn the Torah, but I think it was just being invented at the time. In fact, maybe that's why...

I think you need to stand out of my fucking sunlight, yah poofter!

>It encourages passivity and encourages the oppressed to submit meekly to the oppression of the powerful: accept your lot, know your place, do not challenge the status quo, while claiming to be above everyone else morally and intellectually.
That's Buddhism you eurasion cuck. See pic

Every town has their resident crazy. This was one was just written about.

i like it. original idgaf

You're an angry young man

Shut up, hippie

he meant that boomers are old pussies

>You're an angry young man
Shut up, Boomer.

there's millions of us

>My passive cuck philosophy isn't like that at all! I-it's the other passive cuck philosophy!

what's the most Stoic thing you have done this week

>doesnt understand stoicism
>doesnt understand turn the other cheek
This is what happens when women control the foundation myth and their sons learn drivel from their mothers

Wow, that's what we say on Lent. I do see a lot of Stoic influence on traditional Catholicism.

‘Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.’
‘Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.’

And rightly so, in my opinion. Channel that anger to good, you have millenia of wisdom to guide you.

>doesnt understand turn the other cheek
>Dude, the turn the other cheek thing is really about being a badass warrior, or some headcanon shit about being equal to the Romans even though 0 theology supports this and it's some 20th cuntury revisionist fanfic

simply ebin

I love these threads

Living in accordance with natural law is good prep for Christianity, the final red pill.

Wtf the stoics incorporated heraclitus into their philosophy

fpbp

good post

turning the other cheek is about not destroying yourself in revenge, dipshit

Sounds like Taoism

This passage directly addresses the curse of inaction and the desire to move, to live as you know or desire within yourself to do:

"Enough of this miserable way of life, enough of grumbling and aping! Why are you troubled? What is new in this? What is it that drives you mad? The cause? Then face it. Or rather the material? Then face that. Apart from cause and material there is nothing. But you should even know, late though it is (he is dying at the time of writing), see to your relation to the gods also: make yourself simpler, and better. Three years is as good as a hundred in this quest." IX, 37.

It was probably the translation to spanish that butchered the paragraph up. It reads like he literally dismissed creative thought out of the blue.

That's unfortunate, because being such a creative guy, and how he praises artists and dancers it would be decidedly out of character for him to dismiss entirely imagination.
It's unfortunate how dependent we are on translation.

>what's the most Stoic thing you have done this week
I signed the South African immigration petition to move them to America BECAUSE I LIVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH NATURE AND I WONT LET MY KIND BE DESTROYED BY BEASTS!

Makes sense. Being this a personal diary, his context would answer a lot of questions.

video for everyone, one of my favs:

youtube.com/watch?v=5897dMWJiSM

Great lecture, and the lecturer is quite articulate. It's succinct and really good at pointing out the man that Marcus Aurelius was.

>u
...

>Move them to America

Why? So your government pet niggers can hound them for being racist?

>Why? So your government pet niggers can hound them for being racist?
You're from Russia faggot. You arrest people for race-ism there.

Is there some sort of stoic meditation?

How do you mean?

use your brain

I always keep coming back to this comfy philosophy.

>buy meditations of Marcus Aurelius in English because I'm afraid that the German version might just be a translation of the English one and meaning might get lost that way
>find out that it's in archaic English after buying
mistakes were made

Look for stoic maxims, then sit quietly and ponder them what they mean, how they apply to your life, how they would apply to to different scenarios.

You can also do a daily review in the evening, of your actions and reactions throughout the day.

I did this with Erasmus's Encheiridion. After a few pages I just have to stop, reading it is like lifting weights.

>reading it is like lifting weights.
kek, good analogy

Essential and non negotiable.

Fucktard.

It's a good thing to live by in part. Because man can make comforts and things easier does not mean he should.

There is no information more valuable than knowing how your mind works. There is no possession more precious and rare than your own body. There is no privilege greater than ruling your own will.

Anyone reading the inner citadel by hadot? It's really good

That's been on my list for years, thanks for reminding me. Recommended edition?

Mundane pagan shitposting

A lot of people will reject this post due to Carlos being a massive faggot, but Journey to Ixtlan outlines stoicism in action in a very engaging metaphorical story. If you know about stoicism but don't practice the ideas, try reading this book to get a different perspective on how they can be applied to life

>The warrior must be impeccable.