This podcast episode provides a new theoretical foundation for my previous blog post on The Discipline of Desire, which is being completely updated. Make sure to come back for the next episode where the spiritual exercise of the Discipline of Desire will build upon the theory of this episode.
It would be impossible to give a full account of the philosophy of the Stoics without, at the same time, treating of their theology; for no early system is so closely connected with religion as that of the Stoics. Founded, as the whole view of the world is, upon the theory of one Divine Being…There is hardly a single prominent feature in the Stoic system whichis not, more or less, connected with theology.[1] The Stoic God is an all-pervasive, immanent,...
A virtuous and good person, keeping in mind who he is, and where he has come from, and by whom he was created, concentrates on one thing alone: how he may fill his post in a disciplined manner, remaining obedient to God. (Discourses 3.24.95) I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every year when it was broadcast on live TV. I always loved the famous scene where Dorothy, Tin Man, and Scarecrow enter the scary forest. As a young child,...
Who, then, is a Stoic?… someone who has been fashioned in accordance with the judgements that he professes… someone who is ill and yet happy, in danger and yet happy, dying and yet happy, exiled and yet happy… one who is in the process of formation, one who is tending in that direction… a man who wants to be of one mind with God, and never find fault with God or man again, and to fail in none of his desires, to fall into...
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...
If I know Providence, I know my good and can follow it; so, no complaint. If I know not my good, I do not in reality know Providence. So if I complain, I complain of a specter and not a Deity: I complain as an animal, not as a man.[1] Either providence or atoms. By repeated use of this simple disjunction, Marcus Aurelius condensed and contrasted the worldviews proposed by the Stoics and the Epicureans, and emphasized the importance of...
[T]rue education consists precisely in this, in learning to wish that everything should come about just as it does. And how do things come about? As the one who ordains them has ordained… It is with this order of things in mind that we should approach our education, and not so as to change the existing order of things (for that has not been permitted to us, nor would it be better that it should be), but rather, things around...
NOTE: An updated version of this blog post and an accompanying Stoicism On Fire podcast episode is available here. Many people introduced to Stoicism by twenty-first-century popularizers are surprised by the religious nature of the philosophy. The deafening silence on this topic leaves most people unaware of the deep religious piety of the Stoics. This silence belies the copious references to divinity and providence in the Stoic texts and the extensive scholarship, from a variety of fields, acknowledging the religious nature...
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