There are people on Veeky Forums right now who are not stoics

>There are people on Veeky Forums right now who are not stoics

It seems elementary true and impossible to argue with.

Quick rundown on Stoism please
t. didn't start reading the Greeks

Stoicism is fine in a limited and practical sense, but it doesn't stand on its own two feet. To the extent that it goes beyond giving common people a reasonable sense of perspective and calming them down, it's a second-rate school of philosophy that is utterly reliant on the superior works of Plato and Aristotle.

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

STOP "SPAMMING" Veeky Forums WITH THESE THREADS, IDIOT.

Step one: stop speaking entirely in memes and buzzwords. For fucks sake I'm surprised you didn't say >give me a quick rundown on stoicism, what did Marcus Aurelias mean by this.

Stoicism is a very practical school of ethics that borrows from other Hellenic schools of thought. It's main lesson is that there are things within your control, and things outside your control, and you should accept that reality and then make your decisions and moderate your emotions after taking that into consideration.

Judging by the texts we have, it is very focused on practical issues, and it became very popular because of this. If you're looking for a philosophy that answers fundamental questions about metaphysics and morality, Stoicism is not it. If, however, you want philosophical help to deal with accepting your role in society and how to react to the actions of others, it's great and easy to follow.

*BRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPP*
thanks man

Virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness.

People usually live to have money, pleasure, status, etc. But those things can't give you happiness. If they could, Hollywood stars would all be happy, since they have all of those. Yet, many of them are miserable.

And being independent of those things that people desire so much is the key to happiness. The multi-millionaire who desires deeply to be a billionaire is unhappier than the middle-class man who is satisfied with the money he has. The woman who has slept with many men in the search for more pleasure is unhappier than the nun who is satisfied with a simple austere life. The superstar who wishes to be more popular than Taylor Swift is unhappier than the amateur jazz singer who is satisfied with weekend shows to his friends.

This doesn't mean you don't aim to improve yourself. You aim to become more wise and independent of those things and also to achieve excelence in your pursuits (as long as they are not vicious). So, if you are a programmer, you aim to be as good of a programmer as you can be. Also, you should (as a virtuous person) aim to help society as much as you can.

It's fine as a way to avoid suffering. But why is suffering necessarily bad?

Stoic was a very well regarded school of ethics in antiquity, whose status was as high as it could get. And in antiquity they had complete texts of all schools. For example, Cicero certainly didn't consider Stoics second rate and had a huge respect for them.

Also, the man known to be the greatest logician of antiquity was a Stoic.

No, I don't mean they're second-rate in terms of their practical ethics, I mean they are second-rate and heavily reliant on other schools of thought when you start raising fundamental questions of metaphysics and morality.

Stoicism was absolutely a hugely popular and successful school of thought, they dealt with a lot of practical problems and helped people out. I'm pretty sure it was the dominant school of thought for a good length of time.

How so? They claim descent from Socrates, but so did Plato (and Aristotle was a student of Plato).

Their line of descent from Socrates was not even from Plato, but from Antisthenes (whose works did not survive until today) and they developed in parallel to the other schools.

As far as I can tell, the Stoics lacked texts that dealt with metaphysics to the extent that we find in the works of Plato and Aristotle.

That might be explained in part by the fact that we're missing a lot of texts. I've read Epictetus, all of Marcus Aurelius, the accounts of philosophers like Zeno given by Diogenes Laertius, and various other works that reference Stoicism (you mention Cicero, for example). I don't recall encountering a detailed metaphysical account of reality like I did in the works of Plato and Aristotle, but to the extent that I did find such things in Stoicism it was highly, highly derivative of Aristotle. I understand Stoics claim to be descended from people other people whose works we've lost, but in this sense they're definitely from Plato and Aristotle, it's unmistakable.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it explains why I said that Stoicism is not standing on its own two feet. Without that detailed metaphysics, which appears to either not exist or is at any rate borrowed wholesale from Aristotle, Stoicism is necessarily limited in scope and value.

I would recommend you to read John Sellar's book. Your criticism seems weird to me.

Why would I read some secondary source?

If you have a primary source citation where a Stoic is laying out a detailed metaphysical foundation for Stoicism's practical ethics, then cite it. If it even exists; I assume that at best I'm going to get a citation to Plutarch or DL or someone else giving a bullet-point rundown of Stoic metaphysics. Maybe this detailed account is in Seneca's works (I haven't read much of him) or one of the remaining sections of Epictetus that I haven't read.

Because Sellars have read the fragments that contain what you are asking for.
The fragments are collected in the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta
Seneca's texts and the Discourses of Epictetus are focused on practical ethics.

The real question is how to determine what is truly out of your control. With enough balls you can change a lot of things. Don't forget about chaos theory either, some things might be under your control without you even knowing that they are.

>t. Plato

>implying a tripfag's opinion matters

If anything you hating it is an endorsement of Stoicism.

I already indicated that I read various fragments and biographical accounts when I stated that I had read DL, Cicero, Plutarch, and others.

If there's a particular fragment that you think is relevant, then cite it. If you haven't read anything other than modern texts, then find the section of the modern text you like and find the citation to the primary source material ( Assuming it even cites the primary source, lmao).

If you have no connection to the primary source material, then your words on the ancient stoics have no weight. You can go discuss the ideas of modern stoics and academics, but that's very much a separate topic.

>Virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness.
I don't think it is, unfortunately. For example, one of my friends has chronic pain caused by a nerve disorder. He's as virtuous of a man as any I know, but the pain issue makes it really hard for him to be happy. It sucks.

I have already said it. It is in the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta.
You don't know as much as you think you do, if you have never heard about it. And reading Sellar's book would be useful.

Socrates, the Stoics and the Epicureans disagree.

What
Do
You
Think
Is
In
The
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta

Do you think it's a text written by a Stoic 2,000 years ago, rather than a giant pile of quotes from a large number of different works? Are you a fucking idiot? Why yes, yes you are a fucking idiot. Learn what constitutes ancient greek fragments and testimonia before you reply to this, and tell me what particular section or specific text you want to cite.

You may as well just say:

"Plato said x. Go read it in the works of Plato and people who spoke about Plato. What do you mean you don't know about the entire corpus of Platonic texts and all later, testimonial accounts of Plato from the ancient world? That's your citation for x!"

I made the mistake of thinking you were a honest person arguing in good faith.
You asked for information about Stoic metaphysics. I pointed out where you could find it, both in a text by a modern academic who did read the existing fragments and later in the fragments themselves that were collected in a single work.

But you on the other hand, will ignore those texts and will claim that what is contained there doesn't exist so that you can continue to pretend that what you have said before is correct.

So many words, so few citations to the source material. Actually, is "few" the correct term when you have offered zero citations?

I described the state of Stoic metaphysics and indicated that I wasn't terribly impressed and that they appeared to be joined at the hip with Aristotle. You... apparently disagreed and told me to read a modern author, and then flailed around helplessly when I expected you to actually cite an ancient text. I'm still not convinced that you understand that DL, Plutarch, Cicero, and a variety of other ancient texts constitute the SVF.

Considering there are no surviving texts from the early Stoics, the fragments are the best we have. Yes, the SVF contains fragments from DL, Cicero but also from many other sources. Which you obviously have not read and have no interest in reading.

I have great interest in reading them, let me know the citation(s) for this detailed metaphysical account of reality as understood by Stoics. Bonus points if it isn't clearly a very close derivative of Plato and Aristotle.

For some reason I always thought being stoic meant you don't really give a shit about things.