Will Stoicism help me out or is it a meme philosophy?

Will Stoicism help me out or is it a meme philosophy?

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It's helpful, it will probably make you a better person and it will ground you in the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. That understanding of the Twin Philosophers will then lead to you developing beyond Stoicism and becoming a Platonist, or you will remain a Stoic and still be a p cool person.

thanks, friend.

>Platonism
>2017

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

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

No worries. The more troubling question is, where do you start?

If you are looking to be a Stoic for practical reasons, and you don't have a lot of background in the Classics, and perhaps you don't even want to do too much reading, then you should probably start with Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and then read Epictetus Enchiridion. Both are short texts, both will give you a good, practical sense of what it means to be Stoic and how to behave and motive yourself.

If you want to go further than that, and have some understanding of theology/metaphysics, then you should read a lot of Aristotle and Plato.

Smile if you want, but the works of the Twin Philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, represent an absolute high point in human understanding of metaphysics, theology, and the morality that flows from that foundation.

>If you are looking to be a Stoic for practical reasons, and you don't have a lot of background in the Classics, and perhaps you don't even want to do too much reading, then you should probably start with Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and then read Epictetus Enchiridion. Both are short texts, both will give you a good, practical sense of what it means to be Stoic and how to behave and motive yourself.

Actual Stoicism is based.

Stoicism as practiced by numales who read Meditations once and think Aurelius is a model Stoic is not. Every time I see someone start talking about being a "Stoic" and citing Marcus I'm reminded that even something so seemingly esoteric as Stoicism attracts more dilettantes and pretenders than actual practitioners.

Regardless, anyone who is serious about practicing Stoicism will eventually encounter Theravada Buddhism and realize that it's very similar but superior in every way.

"Stoicism" is very popular among Chads who want to pretend to be philosophers and numales who want to pretend to be emotionless hardasses. The numale stereotype, the liberal atheist who thinks he's really smart and always wants to impress people with how educated and worldly he is, will almost always cite Stoicism as his personal philosophy. He imagines that this provides him with a moral structure without the need to rely on religion (showing how little Stoic writing he's actually read) and he knows that the average person will know absolutely nothing about it, so that even his minimal knowledge will seem impressive.

I see this a lot and it's almost always the same kind of guys doing it. You can basically tell whether someone has a brain or is just a retarded dilettante based on which Stoics they mention by name. If someone cites Epictetus, they're probably ok. If someone cites Aurelius, there's an extremely high likelihood that they're a numale poser. That's just the facts, boys.

Buddhism is an intellectual disease, just like Abrahamic religion.

Hebrew mythology infected the West, and Buddhism infected the East.

If you want a simple test to understand whether you should study a philosophy, ask these questions: Did it originate East of Ionia and West of Qin? Was it written after the 2nd c. CE?

If you answer yes to either of those questions, or dare I say both, then rest assured that the philosophy is dog shit at best and you will be wasting you time.

there's nothing to understand
metaphysics is pointless speculation

...

Hey there OP, I might not understand your struggle, but I know you'll gain a lot from this. I'll guide you through:

Stoicism

Early Stoa
>Zeno of Citium
>Chrysippus of Soli

Late Stoa
>Seneca the Younger
>Epictetus
>Marcus Aurelius

Notable Works:

On the Shortness of Life
-Seneca
youtu.be/ABRN0E_mI0U

The Meditations
-Marcus Aurelius
youtu.be/rqqjU7zCI10

The Echiridion of Epictetus
-Epictetus
youtu.be/aaFe3nGhdGI

The Physical Thesis
-Chrysippus

At least I'm not one of those brainlets who worships Diogenes, a mentally ill homeless man who shit himself constantly and masturbated in public.

>The Echiridion of Epictetus
>-Epictetus
>youtu.be/aaFe3nGhdGI [Remove]

>51 minutes

Is this the same document? It seems pretty short for 51 minutes.

classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

Why are you posting Bob Ross to his?

Epicureanism is better and nowhere near as depressing.

Stoicism is about sorting through the bullshit that doesn't matter or that you can't control, and focusing on the shit that does matter. It's about self-improvement.

So is Epicureanism. It's fundamentally about min-maxing your pain and pleasure.

In practice, many of these self-improvment philosophies have little practical difference.

This is wrong...

The 3 were rival schools for most of their history. Even in their beginings, Anthistenes and Plato hated themselves and Aristotelian philosophy is very different from Platonic.

And after some centuries, the end result was not that Stoicism was thrown away. The late Academics were influenced highly by the Stoics and pretty much adopted Stoic ethics. Cicero was an academic and he for Ethics he mostly followed Stoicism.
Epictetus was very influential on the Neoplatonists.

Saying that Stoics were somewhat inferior is very weird given the history.

>Saying that Stoics were somewhat inferior is very weird given the history.

It's just "hurr durr my school is better than yours" shitposting.

Cicero was very syncretic. He studied all the major Greek schools, and used them all in various situations, and switched between them. Cicero's approach is probably the best as it takes the best from each school.

Depends on what you want. If you want to be a happier person, more emotionally stable and a better person (this may look idiotic, but not everyone wants this, some people have different priorities), Stoicism is great. Classical ethics in general leads to better lifestyles.

What should he be fighting for then?

>Yes, I think that's fair. Not that Marcus Aurelius was bad, he was not. But the Meditations are his diary, they are not meant to be nearly as deep as the Discourses (which were the basis that Marcus Aurelius followed).

Like the first fucking page of Meditations is Aurelius mentioning how thankful he is to the friend who loaned him a copy of Epictetus' discourses. Come on man, apply yourself.

Stoicism is a practical philosophy and Epictetus' discourses are intended to explain it so that readers can understand it in both theory and practice. It's intended to teach you.

Aurelius' writings are, again his own personal diary intended primarily to aid him in keeping certain things in mind which he had already learned. It offers very little in the way of explanation because, again, he was writing it for his own personal use. It's interesting from a historical and biographical standpoint but virtually useless from a philosophical one. More importantly, it offers absolutely nothing new. This is not necessarily a criticism, because it wasn't intended to. It is just Marcus writing down things he wants to remember from his readings of philosophy.

It's like we have a novel and a guy who wrote a book report on it and you're here saying that you don't see the difference between the two and that you actually prefer the book report to the original work. It's sad.

Epictetus was a hack who stole all his teachings from Christ.

yes but only if you follow it with discipline and if you are able to adapt to many situations in your life when stuff can go wrong

But why are those religions so bad? It'd be nice if you gave some reasons why they're so bad instead of just saying they are.

t. Someone starting to get into Buddhism

Stoicism is for things are "doing well" too, not only for crisis.