Any stoics here?

STOICISM IS THE ETHOS OF RESIGNATION, AND OF FATALISTIC DILIGENCE —STOICISM IS THE ETHOS OF THE "SUPERFLUOUS MAN".

It's a shitty overplayed meme anyway.

I draw a lot of inspiration from the stoics but some aspects of it have too much buy-in for me to consider myself necessarily a 'practicing stoic'. I don't believe in many things acting 'according to their nature' for example, or that there's much of a natural order in the sense the stoics saw it. I do think a lot of the practical parts are super helpful though, particularly in terms of not concerning yourself with externals and that a vast majority of our suffering is self-inflicted.

Seneca
> look at your wrists to find the way out
Epictetus
> the door is always open if you want to leave
what do they mean by this

damn it now I'm starting to like stoicism because of this autistic fag. he's already ruined gnosticism for me.

Literally a slave ideology.

The way I figure it, it's an expression that fate can't steal anything from you if you can return it freely. To be able to take your own life is basically the ultimate admission of that, rather than clinging to life fearfully. I don't think they're encouraging you to kill yourself, but expressing that life is just another thing you shouldn't fear losing and be willing to give if fortune asks it of you. IE Seneca's description of Cato.

>here is a contest worthy of God — a brave man matched against bad fortune, all the more so if he has made the challenge. I cannot, I say, imagine a finer spectacle on earth for Jupiter to view, should he wish to turn his attention there, than that of Cato, when his cause had been shattered more than once already, yet standing upright amid the ruins of the republic. ‘Let all the world fall under one man’s sway,’ he said, ‘let Caesar’s legions guard the land and his ships the sea, let his troops blockade the city-gates, Cato has yet a means of escape: with one hand he will open a broad path to freedom. This sword, that even civil war has not sullied or stained with guilt, shall at last render good and noble service: the freedom that it could not give to its country it will give to Cato!

I can't say I totally agree with them on it and maybe I misunderstand something, but that's my impression. Suicide isn't really a cowardly act to the stoics.

Brainlet here
I have a question, Whats the stance of stoics and self defense? If a man attacks you do you defend or let him hit you?

You defend yourself, of course.

>or let him hit you?

That's Christianity, user.

Why? Perfect occation to practice your stoic virtue also you may get angry if you fight or scalate things and it would be irrational

Socrates: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons; and those who are agreed and those who are not agreed upon this point have no common ground, and can only despise one another, when they see how widely they differ. Tell me, then, whether you agree with and assent to my first principle, that neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right.

Stoicism works for both a slave as it does for people who have everything. The point of Stoicism is that what Aurelius had that someone like Diogenes did not were irrelevant.

Let's take an extreme example: Lindsay Lohan. She was very pretty. Had a very attractive body. She had a lot of charisma and talent and was very well paid. Yet, her life became hell, even with all that.

You would defend yourself without getting angry.

ACCORDING TO ORTHODOX STOIC RATIONALE, ONE SHOULD "TURN THE OTHER CHEEK", IN FIGURATIVE SENSE, AND IN LITERAL SENSE, NEITHER PLEADING FOR HALT, NOR DEMANDING MORE.

I think those points you dislike are mostly by modern people.
Epictetus, Seneca, etc did not need this kind of belief.

YOU IGNORE WHAT CHRISTIANITY IS.

You defend yourself.

Stoicism isn't about just giving up like how it tends to be portrayed by people who hate it without having read any of it. The only things you 'give up on' in stoicism are things you can't control in the first place. You can't directly control whether you'll have a heart attack tomorrow so worrying about it isn't helpful to you, but you can control how much you eat and exercise so you can certainly eat well and exercise, which will probably have a result on your chance of a heart attack. No stoic with any sense would go "you could get a heart attack, it doesn't matter, nothing matters." It's all about the control you can exercise on the thing concerning you, and the control you can exercise over how it makes you unhappy.

A stoic would no doubt say 'defend yourself', and if the guy cuts off your hand, find a fucking doctor. But don't spend the rest of your life lamenting not having a hand. Your hand is gone, end of story. If you can get a prosthetic, great, but don't whine about the hand you lost.

There is nothing wrong with being proactive / reactive in regards to things within your control, but to concern yourself with things outside your control is worthless to you and will just make you unhappy. If you found out today that you'd die tomorrow and there was NOTHING that could be done, a stoic would say "The misery of your impending death is self inflicted, it's in your head. Don't be miserable over your death tomorrow unless you want to just ruin your last day alive crying over it."

[citation needed]

NOT REALLY —WHAT IS NEEDED IS CAPABILITY TO THINK, AND KNOWLEDGE OF IN WHAT STOICISM CONSISTS —WHICH ONE THESE TWO REQUIREMENTS DO YOU LACK?

Stoic virtue doesn't mean you let yourself be physically abused for free

There's a difference between vengeance and self-defense. If a man hurt you and you hurt him back because he hurt you that's different than a man hurting you and you hurting him back to prevent him from doing you further harm.

“By the sword you did your work, and by the sword you die.” ― Aeschylus, Agamemnon.

"Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." — Matthew 26:52

"But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee." — Luke 14:10

Another of his sayings, quoted also in the name of Simeon ben Azzai is, "Take thy place a few seats below thy rank until thou art bidden to take a higher place; for it is better that they should say to thee 'Come up higher' than that they should bid thee 'Go down lower'."

I actually heard you say in another thread that you're full of shit and never read any stoicism in your life. I can't prove it but apparently we don't need to anymore.

I mean you cannot control your attacker will but you could defend yourself against his attack in a very neutral and virtous way after that you tell him that he choosed to feel pain

Evidently the latter, I guess you can't actually educate this poor pleb instead of insisting I take you at your word?

NOT BECOMING ANGERED IS NOT NECESSARILY A STOIC ATTITUDE; IT IS ACTIONS THAT ARE RELEVANT, NOT EMOTIONS —OR LACK OF THEM.

There's a fair amount of it in Marcus Aurelius, but you're right that I haven't seen as much of it in Epictetus and Seneca.

Those were good answer thanks for making me less brainlet

You defend yourself, but don't go after the person for revenge.

Stoicism was the ideology of a significant part of the elite of the Roman Empire.