This episode is a continuation of Episode 8, which covered the theoritical aspect of the this spiritual exercise. This episode cover the practice of this spiritual exercise. The Discipline of Assent blog post is currently being rewritten to reflect the material covered in these two podcast episodes.
This podcast episode provides a new theoretical foundation for my previous blog post on The Discipline of Assent, which is being completely updated for the release of Episode 9 of Stoicism on Fire. Make sure to come back for the next episode where the spiritual exercise of the Discipline of Assent will build upon the theory of this episode.
This episode of Stoicism On Fire kicks off a series I call the path of the Prokopton. A prokopton is someone who is making progress along the Stoic path. This podcast is about the practice of Attention. The Stoics called it prosochē in Greek, and that word signifies an attitude and practice of attention. Pierre Hadot considered prosochē the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude.[1] It is a state of continuous, vigilant, and unrelenting attentiveness to oneself—to the present impressions, present desires, and present actions,...
As doctors always keep their knives and instruments at hand to deal with urgent cases, so you too should keep your doctrines at the ready, to enable you to understand things divine and human, and so to perform every action, even the very smallest, as one who is mindful of the bond that unites the two realms; for you will never act well in any of your dealings with the human unless you refer it to the divine, and conversely...
What defined a Stoic above all else was the choice of a life in which every thought, every desire, and every action would be guided by no other law than that of universal Reason. ~ Pierre Hadot[1] The Stoics placed a rational, divine, and providential cosmos at the center of their philosophical system and relied on it as a guide for their every thought, desire, and action. For the Stoic, Nature is the measure of all things. As an expression...
It escapes most people, that the study of arguments which have equivocal or hypothetical premises, and those which are developed by questioning, and, in a word, all such arguments, has a connection with how we should behave in our lives. For what we seek in every matter is how the virtuous man may find the path he should follow and the way he should behave with regard to it. (Discourses 1.7.1) This is the second of several posts that will...
So, what is traditional Stoicism? Ironically, “traditional Stoicism” is something new; it is used almost exclusively on social media to describe what was traditionally known simply as Stoicism. This new modifier became necessary with the recent advent of “modern Stoicism.” In a nutshell, traditional Stoics attempt to remain as close as possible to the path created by the founders, which includes three fields of study and practice—logic, physics, and ethics. Modern Stoics diverge from the Stoic’s original path because they...
This site will provide content and resources for people interested in the study and practice of Stoicism as it is represented in the surviving Stoic texts and interpreted by reputable scholars. Traditional Stoics attempts to follow, as much as possible, the same path toward excellence and happiness trod by Roman Senator, Seneca; freed slave turned philosopher, Epictetus; and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Those who attempt to follow the traditional Stoic path take the founder’s claims about the integrated nature of...
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