Beyond the Individual: An Interview with Will Johncock – Episode 64
An interview with Will Johncock, author of Beyond the Individual: Stoic Philosophy on Community and Connection.
Exploring Encheiridion 14 – Episode 53
If you want your children and your wife and friends to survive no matter what, you are silly; for you are wanting things to be up to you that are not up to you, and things to be your own that are not your own. You are just as foolish if you want your slave to make no mistakes; for you are wanting inferiority not to be a flaw but something else. But if your wish is not to be...
Exploring Enchiridion 13 – Episode 52
If you want to make progress, don’t mind appearing foolish and silly where outward things are concerned, and don’t wish to appear an expert. Even if some people think you are somebody, distrust yourself. It is not easy, you can be sure, to keep your own will in harmony with nature and simultaneously secure outward things. If you care about the one, you are completely bound to neglect the other. (Ench 13) After a short break from the Encheiridion, I...
What Is Important in Life? Day 6 – Episode 22
The Good Fight Against Fortuna What is most important? Raising your spirits high above chance events; remembering your human status, so that if you are fortunate, you know that will not last long, and if you are unfortunate, you know you are not so if you do not think so. (Natural Questions III, praef. 15) Fortuna—fortune in English—is a prevalent theme in Seneca’s writing. He uses some form of the word more than two hundred times in his Letters and...
What Is Important in Life? Day 2 – Episode 18
The Cosmic Viewpoint What is most important? Raising your mind above the threats and promises of fortune, thinking that nothing is worth hoping for. For what have you to desire? Whenever you sink back from engagement with the divine to the human level, your sight will go dim, just like the eyes of those who return from bright sunlight to dense shadow. (Natural Questions III, praef. 11) The cosmic viewpoint is a central theme of Stoicism, and Seneca’s Natural Questions highlights that...
What Is Important in Life? Day 1 – Episode 17
Seven Days with Seneca What is most important in human life? That is a perennial question that almost all of us ask ourselves, in one form or another, at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, many of us neglect to confront that question until late in life or when unforeseen circumstances force the question upon us. There, amid the faintly glowing embers of a long life approaching its end, or within the smoking and smoldering embers of a cataclysmic life...
What Is “Up to Us”? – Episode 6
Epictetus, the freed slave turned Stoic philosopher and teacher, said the following: Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing. (Enchiridion 1) In episode 5 of the Stoicism On Fire podcast, I covered the practice of attention (prosoche),...
ProsochÄ“: The Practice of Attention – Episode 5
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,...
Choosing the Stoic Path – Episode 4
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ Robert Frost[1] I love those lines from Robert Frost’s timeless poem The Road Not Taken. As a practicing Stoic, they take on new meaning because of the importance of choice. Robert Frost’s traveler stands at a fork in the road, and he must choose—path A or path B. During his contemplation, he acknowledges that he cannot travel...
The Stoic God – Episode 3
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,...
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