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...
Prosochē, the practice of attention, is the fundamental spiritual attitude necessary to practice Stoicism as a way of life.[1] It is the practice of consistent, vigilant attention to impressions, assents, desires, and actions, for the purpose of creating excellence (virtue) in one’s inner self and thereby experiencing a good flow in life (eudaimonia). This post is excerpted from an essay I wrote on prosochē in 2013, if you find this post interesting, I encourage you to read the essay. What...
I recently finished Barbara Ehrenreich’s thought-provoking book, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything. Some may be familiar with her 2010 New York Times bestseller, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America. Barbara is an atheist, a third generation atheist in fact. Moreover, she was educated as a scientist. Nevertheless, she had an unnerving experience in her mid-teens that she ignored for most of her adult life because it defied the materialist conception of reality she adhered...
Stoic ethics is interdependent with a specific model of the cosmos. The Stoics rejected and argued stridently against the random, meaningless universe of the Epicureans. In contrast, the Stoics built their philosophy around a rational, intelligent, and providentially ordered cosmos. They considered this worldview essential to their systematic philosophy because it provides the necessary framework for Stoic ethical theory and practice. There are numerous outstanding expositions of Stoic ethical theory. Since I am not defending Stoic ethical theory, I 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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