What's the fatal flaw of stoicism?

What's the fatal flaw of stoicism?

feels

autism

The fact that it claims to be about doing what is "natural" when in reality maintaining stoic conduct requires a lot of willpower and goes against one's "natural" inclinations.

Stoicism simply tells you not to overblow in your mind the problems you face. How does that require willpower?

Remove's the stoic's sense of agency

>maintaining stoic conduct

Explain how this is against nature?

there isn't one. people misunderstand it a bit but that's hardly fatal.

will power is natural and good, of corse not in the service of stoicism but in favor of vice that that would be way more instinctual

People are generally egotistical so minimizing our own problems requires effort and certainly doesn't come "naturally."

It is natural to become enraged when someone strikes you but that is hardly a stoic response.

>It is natural to become enraged
Not for someone with developed cerebral cortex.

Stoicism has nothing to do with emotional repression.

it doesn't? Could you explain what it's about then to an uneducated faggot like me?

*tips*

Rage is most often accompanied by actions.

It's a cuck philosophy. Go work a min wage job and your manager will find or place an error in your work so they can blackmail you.

What does the second part even have to do with this thread other than you just not liking it. I see flaws in it but I just don't go throwing insults without any argument at the very least.

If you take to the philosophy well, it should relieve this burden somewhat.

>somewhat

There's always the permanent solution

It encourages the acceptance of harm rather than promoting the will to fight it

The will to fight harm is within your control though.

Shut the fuck up and go back to /pol/ you virgin neckbeard loser. I know you're done being /r9k/ but that doesn't mean you have to bring up your edgy shit to Veeky Forums.

THERE WILL BE NO RACEWAR AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE A GF

What in the name of holy fuck are you talking about?

>solution

I said it encourages it, not that it requires it. It promotes a mindset in which enduring suffering is held to higher esteem than avoiding it or destroying its source. I consider this to be a negative in most cases

Yup. Final.

The ancient idea of "by nature" was very different than our idea of "we're filthy monkeys with urges and instincts."

Acting according to your nature, as a human, was to make use of your faculty for reason.

Stoicism is less "repress emotions" and more "Don't let shit outside your control get to you."

In essence a big tenet of it is "Can you do anything about the thing that's bothering you? Yes? Go ahead and do it. No? Why are you mad about it?"

It had nothing against being happy, and most stoic philosophers are all about finding joy, as long as you don't find it by enslaving yourself to vices (which they believe will make you more miserable in the long run) or gambling your happiness on external happiness (IE "I'll be happy if I just win the lottery!"). Of course, people like misunderstand the "accept stuff outside of your control" and take it to mean "accept all bad things regardless of circumstance."

>To be, or not to be, that is the question:
>Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
>The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
>Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
>And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
>No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
>The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
>That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
>Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
>To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
>For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
>When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
>Must give us pause.

I think we're both led to generalize the reaction to scenarios that test a stoic.

In your view I see overreaction to matters of little consequence and measured response to threats depending on their nature, you perhaps see in stoicism submission to the small corrosive encounters that wear at one's dignity.

>It promotes a mindset in which enduring suffering is held to higher esteem than avoiding it or destroying its source.

That isn't true, though. Most of the tricks in the stoic philosophy ARE about avoiding suffering. It's merely also there to prepare you for the inevitable scenarios where you're going to suffer - IE your child dies, or you get a terminal illness. Those are the scenarios where the stoic stiff upper lip come into play, by accepting that bad shit happens and that if you can't change the outcome tormenting yourself over it does you no good.

It isn't saying "If you see a car about to hit your child don't even bother, just stick it out." There would be nothing wrong with trying to prevent the misery of your child's death, but if your kid did get hit by that car and died, they'd recommend not tearing yourself apart over the outcome because being depressed isn't going to bring your kid back.

I think you guys have misunderstood my point. I'm not saying that stoicism TEACHES you to endure suffering you dont have to endure, i'm saying the mindset inherent in stoicism ENCOURAGES that position. It can be overcome by a sufficiently internalised grasp of the philosophy, but if you cant or dont do this the resulting mindset can be destructive

I know what you mean, I think the other anons are just pretending to be retarded

Nietzsche's criticism on Stoics in Beyond Good and Evil is a pretty good one.

Can you summarize it?

I heard of it second hand, but from where I heard it he apparently misunderstood it the same way lots of people today do.

According to Nietzsche, nature has no pity or concern for anyone. Therefore living "naturally" would be disregarding anyone but yourself, which is not what Stoics do.

I suppose there's room for that sort of argument, and the stoics got a lot of their physics wrong so they're certainly not the ultimate authority on what 'nature' truly is.

That said, as far as I gather when Stoics talk about "living according to nature" it often means "according to what man was meant to do." Which as far as they were concerned was to behave as a rational and social creature. A human living according to his nature exercised his reason and was a functional member of society.

Meant by whom?

I've read Marcus Aurelius, Seneca's letters, a bit of Epictetus (the Enchiridion) and a few secondary sources. Usually when I see someone say living according to nature (Marcus Aurelius does it most to my memory, but I'm a bit drunk so take what I say with a grain of salt) it was usually in that sort of context.

Wasn't Nietzsche extremely critical of asceticism, not stoicism?

I know they are pretty similar but they seem to have a few key differences, mainly that asceticism is based around the self deprivation of pleasure which goes entirely against Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit whereas stoicism seems more about accepting the parts of life you can't control.

Wasn't Nietzsche extremely critical of asceticism, not stoicism?

I know they are pretty similar but they seem to have a few key differences, mainly that asceticism is based around the self deprivation of pleasure which goes entirely against Nietzsche's Dionysian spirit whereas stoicism seems more about accepting the parts of life you can't control.

Not at all, Nietzsche admired Stoics in some way but he considers Stoicism a life-denying philosophy for they want to be like nature, considering indifference as a power.

passivity

Nietzsche expressly hated Stoicism, since it did not place power and passion as the highest values.

>Nietzsche admired Stoics in some wa
What are you basing this on? Nietzsche admired the Stoics like he admired Plato...that is, not at all.

ascetism doesn't have contact with the world, thus cannot build knowledge, nor can it reward power and rewards to truth.

the stoicists weren't passive. they formed what was essentially a precursor to a political block within the senate.

the problem was that politics eventually came to overcome their search for the truth, a flaw that would later come to be studied in depth during the medieval and industrial era and lead to things such as organizational psychology.

political units are incapable of acting as rational or scientific observers.

Stoicism
>I cuck myself over to happenstance.
And you wonder why it's so popular among powerless plebs.

It's not Epicureanism

Honestly the only problem is assholes who don't take the time to actually learn the system and think it's just trying to turn you into an unfeeling machine. Having as objective a view of your ability to affect things in your life is a great thing to have. I went through a hard patch and the Enchiridion and Seneca's letters really helped me out.

But that's exactly the problem. Emotions are not under your complete control.
So
>don't let it bother you
is worthless advice in the end.

Stoicism isn't really flawed, it is more like a kick in the right direction with the finer details left to the individual to figure out.

>a system that can't incentivize behavior isn't flawed
uhhhhh

Trying to justify their ethics with shitty metaphysics, instead of autonomously.

Emotions may not be under your complete control but your reaction to them is. And the more you practice the virtues, the easier it becomes.

"Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, "You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be." And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you."

I've read Marcus Aurelius but none of the others.
Aurelius, as far as I understood it, did *not* mean the common misconception of nature as a list of "shoulds." Rather it was clear to me that with nature he meant the world at large and how it is. So it was about the realization that everything that happens is, in fact, natural.
And that's the personal struggle he was in and that he keeps teaching about - if everything happening is natural and exactly how it's supposed to be, then why are you getting upset about it?

I always thought that was the essence of the stoic school and what set them apart from the cynics for example.

That's more or less my understanding. I've heard of a Stoic metaphor that we are like a dog tied to the back of a cart. Fate pulls us along and we can either fight with it and bewail what's happening, but still end up where Fate leads us; or understand that everything besides our own action is outside of our control and live and act according to that knowledge.

>Emotions may not be under your complete control but your reaction to them is.
Exactly. Namely repressing them. You can't turn off your emotions and any reactions require it to be there already. You can't let an emotion not bother you when you're already feeling it. And when you're not feeling it then you don't need to not let it bother you.

That's what the poster you originally responded to meant I think and that's why I think you're wrong when you say
>Stoicism has nothing to do with emotional repression.
It has a lot to do with it. It's just not part of their teachings. As in they don't tell you to repress your emotions. They tell you to be so much in control of yourself, that you don't feel the emotion in the first place. But as we all know the stoics themselves were far from being able to do that.

You can be affected by emotion, what Stoicism is teaching is learning what is triggering that emotion. It's not about removing feeling, it's about controlling your reaction to it through study and practice. You can still feel it and not let it bother you.

"Remember that following desire promises the attainment of that of which you are desirous; and aversion promises the avoiding that to which you are averse. However, he who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion wretched. If, then, you confine your aversion to those objects only which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties, which you have in your own control, you will never incur anything to which you are averse. But if you are averse to sickness, or death, or poverty, you will be wretched. Remove aversion, then, from all things that are not in our control, and transfer it to things contrary to the nature of what is in our control."

>Namely repressing them.

Not that guy, but there are other ways to handle emotion than repression. Coping skills are indeed skills.

>You can still feel a feel and not feel it.
That's deep man.

Just one question: How come towards the end Marcus Aurelius still was the same miserable fuck, who begged the gods to make him endure all the idiots surrounding him, who talked about suicide more than ever, as he was in the beginning of writing his Meditations?

I didn't say there aren't any other ways. I'm saying practically there is a lot of repression involved.

Not him, all you ever get a picture of is Marcus Aurelius at the bad points of his life, because he wrote in that journal to remind himself of his lessons as a Stoic, which he largely only did when he failed them. Towards the end, his health was failing him, most of his kids had died before him, and he was on constant military campaign. Cut him some fucking slack, you cunt.

I'm not even a Stoic, you're just a child.

>I'm saying practically there is a lot of repression involved.

Based on what? Are you just projecting your own shitty skills at handling your emotions on to everyone else? Or do you just have no conception of what it is to handle your emotions in a healthy fashion that you can't see the merit of a philosophy that suggests doing just that as a virtue to aspire to?

>le fedora meme
This isn't even about atheism. It's just easy not to get enraged. Are you really not aware that there are people like this? Do you just get mad all the time and curse at traffic? It just occurred to me that maybe you are actually this person. The one who is always mad.

I'm not a huge fan of Aurelius myself, so I can't really speak to him.

Look at it this way, it's the same reason a child dropping a cup of milk and an adult dropping a cup of milk have different reactions to it. For a toddler that can send them into hysteria, where an adult would just wipe it up and get another glass. They're both feeling loss when it comes to the dropped milk, but the adult has the benefit of knowing how to get milk, that dropped milk isn't a terrible thing, and had had years of adjusting their emotions to situations like this. That's what stoicism is in a nutshell, it's understanding that a lot of what we are worried about (death, sickness, misfortune) are really out of our control for the most part, learning what we can control, and adjusting our expectations and desires to that.

Stoicism is interesting, but ultimately I think how much of a stoic you are or can become is wholly dependent on your genes and upbringing.

Some people have a easier time controlling their emotions than others; and this is neither the fault of people nor is it praise-worthy that people are able to. It just is.

deriving an "ought" from an "is".

>ad hominem
>strawmanning
>implying personal experience isn't valid empirical data
>reverse special snowflaking

Same problem as utilitarianism: Obedience to the doctrine requires a largely accurate picture of all hypothetical cause and effect, which people do not have.

Answer the questions, cunt.