A Simplified Modern Approach to Stoicism

http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2013/02/03/a-simplified-modern-approach-to-stoicism/

by edmaroferreira • 13 years ago

118 48 13 years ago

philosophy-of-cbt.com

guylhem3• 13 years ago

Shorter list :

- Read the "Epistulæ Morales ad Lucilium" from Seneca

- Read the "Bhagavad Gita" to avoid being stuck in a given interpretation.

- Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself

And therefore make your own list of how to live your day. Feeling grateful and trying to see the lord in every being you encounter, friend or foe, is is mine.

Also "no man does evil knowingly" seems wrong - sorry, but a tiny minority of people really want to see the world burn.

Just remember there are very few of them, that by default you should assume people have good intentions but sometimes fail.

EDIT: Following the excellent comment of nerdfiles one can only see with "showdead" option, order of reading is important, and my suggestion might not be the best.

Not everyone can start with Seneca. You will certainly need a starting point to take advantage of the stoic teachings, ie something to help you see how useful stoicism could be to you.

This starting point is Logic for many people, but it can be anything that tries to teach how to look for the truth and to pinpoint problems. I personally found Atlas Shrugged very interesting, others will have different tastes. The Dharma can be useful. Richard Feynman work is great. A vast personal experience could also help, since people who have traveled the world usually develop interesting insights.

(BTW nerdfiles, your account has been blacklisted)

blowski2• 13 years ago

> Also "no man does evil knowingly" seems wrong - sorry, but a tiny minority of people really want to see the world burn.

I think the point is that those people believe the world deserves to burn, or that by burning, it would be a better place. Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

> Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself.

You can't find the truth by yourself. It's just too big and complicated. Individuals believing that they have discovered some kind of truth is at the root of a lot of suffering. Going after the truth is a good thing, but you cannot and should not do it alone.

BHSPitMonkey• 13 years ago

> Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

This is still just as naive, in my opinion. There are plenty of people who knowingly trample others to advance their own selfish goals, who know that it's unfair, and who sincerely don't care.

kingmanaz6• 13 years ago

>- Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself

Keep an open mind. While reading the Stoics take the trouble to read Augustine's Confessions or dip into Aquinus' Summa Theologica. Breeze through the Quran. Spend some time with the Book of Mormon. Drop into a synagog and get to know the worshipers there. Don't dismiss ideas out of hand. Contemplate them, and let your curiosity lead you where you need to be.

guylhem3• 13 years ago

Excellent suggestion: religious textbooks are great sources of inspiration.

However, they are dangerous, in the fact that while 90% of the content is great, the remaining 10% may damage one's personal progression. These 10% require adequate preparation to be seen as what they are - pitfalls, which is why I suggested to "shy away" from them, at least initially.

It is far too easy to get "stuck" in religion and take the whole 100% as perfectly valid thoughts. Swallowing up the full doctrine "fills" the cup of the mind, which is no longer open to further knowledge.

The only "safe" reading might be the Dharma, because of it self-criticizing nature and the suggestion to dismiss the teachings if they conflict with reality and experience

pstuart• 13 years ago

If you're going to include the Book of Mormon, you should at least include Dianetics as well. Both are equally valid.

barry-cotter2• 13 years ago

Dear God, don't read the Book of Mormon or the Quran. I thought the Bible was soporific but those two...

hnriot2• 13 years ago

Seriously? The Book of Mormon? Why not the same L Ron Hubbard, or maybe some Robert Heinlein?

You can't really put the writings of the Augustine the hippo [sic] alongside the Book of Mormon.

jacoblyles• 13 years ago

Religion has the great advantage of being practiced in community. It may not have the pure wisdom of Seneca, but what good it can offer is more likely to stick.

Unfortunately, the Christian community offers more social capital than the Stoic or the atheist in the west.

cwp• 13 years ago

Sure. If you want to be a politician in the West, you can't really avoid participating in a Christian community of one kind or another. But people who are interested in stoicism probably have other goals.

michaelsbradley• 13 years ago

Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.[1] (d. 1616) has sometimes been called a "Christian Seneca".[2]

I had never heard of him or his major work "Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues" until 2004, when someone I met on a retreat recommended that I hunt down a copy of Joseph Rickaby's[3] masterful translation from the original Spanish.[4][5]

I had the opportunity to read through "PPCV" over the period of about a year back in 2007-2008, and I can only say that it leaves a remarkable and lasting impression. I would think his treatises on humility, examination of conscience, and mental prayer (meditation) would be of great interest even to those who aren't particularly religious -- i.e. the practical wisdom contained therein is like a toolkit for coming to "know oneself" for true.

[1] http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Alonso_Rodriguez

[2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2540029

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rickaby

[4] http://bit.ly/PPCV-1of2

[5] http://bit.ly/PPCV-2of2

10dpd• 13 years ago

Even shorter list: 1. Plan your day. 2. Execute on the plan 3. Review and score how it went.

solutionscbt5• 13 years ago

Hmm... Might be good advice. That's just the format or structure used to explain the exercise minus any content, though: a beginning, middle, and end. The actual content in my article is the practice of a form of mindfulness based on the central precept of Stoicism. In other words, you've missed out the "Stoic" part.

lpolovets• 13 years ago

If anyone is interested in a book on the subject, I really like William Irvine's "A Guide to the Good Life" (http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953...)

I have some extensive book notes here: http://www.quora.com/Leo-Polovets/Exceptionally-long-book-no...

AndyIngram• 13 years ago

I am currently reading this book and also find it a good modern interpretation. It has a concise background on the stoics and combines and interprets the teachings of many of them in to an easy to understand principles. I bought this in combination with Seneca's "letters of a Stoic" and "Meditations", by Marcus Aurelius thinking it would a good introduction before reading these.

I have noticed many of Stoic practices reproduced or supported by popular religious practices which makes sense if they aid in practitioners feeling the tranquillity/happiness that the stoics sought, even if done through fables and commandments.

kingmanaz6• 13 years ago

Personally, I would cut out the middle men. Avoid glossy-covered and over-marketed summaries of other men's work. Grab a copy of Epictetus' discourses and his Enchiridion. Read Aurelius' meditations. Get familiar with Plutarch's Lives.

This will get one started cheaply: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LUCRETIUS-EPICTETUS-12-Britannica-Gr... Be aware, this volume includes Lucretius who is not a stoic, rather, a typical reductionist Epicurian. The Enchiridion can also be found cheaply: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Enchiridion-Dover-Thrift-Editions-By... . Here's a fine translation of Plutarch's Lives: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Plutarch-Great-Books-of-the-Western-... . These works are cheap and readily available used on eBay and elsewhere. Take advantage of it if you are seriously interested in learning.

Avoid the marketing. Read Knuth or K&R rather than "How to Program in 24 hours", etc. The same goes for philosophy. There's nothing new under the sun. Seek out what's stood the test of time, incorporate it into your fundamentals, and proceed from there.

snth2• 13 years ago

Ah, but we do know more about the world in many ways than the original Stoics did. William Irvine's book recasts the Stoic teachings a bit: we don't believe that we were created by Zeus, for example, so he talks about how to interpret Stoicism in an atheist way (if one wishes).

ryanholiday• 13 years ago

Agreed. Stoicism is not "philosophy" as we've been taught to think of it (that is, dense, boring, confusing).

Even the old translations of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus are straight forward enough for anyone.

DanBC• 13 years ago

BBC Radio 4 has a programme called "In Our Time". Many episodes of this programme will be of interest to HN readers.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl)

Epicurianism is going to be broadcast soon. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qf083)

Here's a list of the philosophy programmes: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/phi...)

And here's the episode for Stoicism: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9fs)

umbrella• 13 years ago

-Contemplation of Death: Contemplate your own death regularly, the deaths of loved ones and even the demise of the universe itself.

Mission Accomplished.

Evbn2• 13 years ago

Wait, the quoted text is considered advice? Ugh.

solutionscbt5• 13 years ago

No, it's not advice. It's an item from a bullet-point list of contemplative exercises found in traditional Stoicism and other Socratic philosophies. The meditation on death (melete thanatou) was mentioned by Socrates as an integral part of his approach to philosophy, according to Plato and it's common to many other philosophical and spiritual traditions, even Eastern approaches such as Buddhism. You'd need to read the literature to understand the concept of the exercise, although that doesn't necessarily mean you'd agree with it you won't get a reasonable idea of what it's about just from that one sentence description, and that's not what it's meant for anyway. Still not everyone's cup of tea, though.

karunr• 13 years ago

"Give me the wisdom the see the difference".

But sometimes people (Aaron Swartz comes to mind) find the courage to fight and try and change things even when the odds of winning against large companies or the government seem remote.

Sometimes humanity advances when certain individuals fight against the odds. I wish I had their courage.

solutionscbt5• 13 years ago

I'm the author of the article. Someone else kindly posted it here. I just noticed an awful lot of traffic suddenly coming from this link. So thought I'd say thanks! Also, if anyone has any questions please let me know. Happy to help. The article is just based on some research I'm doing for a book called Teach yourself Stoicism, incidentally. You may also be interested in the research on Stoicism that's been going on at the University of Exeter, with which I've been helping a bit. This is their blog:

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/

Regards,

Donald Robertson

dkarl• 13 years ago

Here's a very interesting article about Albert Ellis, one of the originators of cognitive-behavioral therapy, who was directly influenced by Stoicism: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013ta_talk_gr...

solutionscbt5• 13 years ago

On the same site as this article you can also complete a "Stoic Attitudes Scale" that we've been developing in collaboration with a team of psychologists and academics linked to the research on Stoicism at Exeter University:

http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/complete-online-survey-the-stoi...

About 100 people have done it so far but at this stage we're just collecting feedback on the concepts included for incorporation into a revised design. The feedback has been that people have found it really interesting and useful, though. Feel free to check it out, you can still complete it online.

Regards,

Donald Robertson

solutionscbt5• 13 years ago

You might also be interested in this online poll that's been running for a while "Who's your favourite Stoic?" Over 400 responses so far and you can vote or view the results, which are kind of interesting in their own right:

http://poll.fm/3zsyo

Regards,

Donald Robertson

A Simplified Modern Approach to Stoicism

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