Is Stoicism really as awful as it fans make it seem?

Seneca was a hypocrite that's all I know.

submission to the state as the best case for errybody. seneca was a senator under nero who used regularly beg to an hero, and nero would say no because he liked having seneca around as a senator and playwright, and finally nero told seneca to commit suicide to cover a scandal seneca wasn't even involved in, you know, once seneca was old enough that he needed his friends to help him slit his wrists. romans invented the idea of fascism, the nazis just stole the shit that isn't norse straight from rome.

"Deal with" is another word for negate, dissolve.
You should deal with strive screaming hysterically not taking and accepting it like a wimp

Stoicism is great insofar as it is supplemented with another worldview that can support it. It's a very masculine philosophy, and if gone unchecked it can break a man. It demands a lot of you. I consider myself a stoic, but I don't strictly follow tenets or the smaller nuances of stoicism. That's no way to live.
I think both far ends of the political spectrum could use a little stoicism. Being an emotional reactionary child with an identity crisis somehow got normalized.
The only thing the redpill destroys is your chances of getting laid
Stoicism is literally the opposite of being a "cuck".

>Stoicism is literally the opposite of being a "cuck".

Isn't it natural in Stoicism to embrace the shame of another man fucking your wife if you can't do anything about it?

Why?
Why is that better?
>deal with means negate
I don't really think so. It's just about having a level of understanding and acceptance rather than being filled with constant anxiety and bitterness.
It doesn't mean you have no emotions, it's just having the perspective not to get worked up pointlessly

>The only thing the redpill destroys is your chances of getting laid

kek

I rather be filled with anxiety and bitterness.
Its far better because it affirms the idea that things should be better for you, that the situation is not good enough for you.

it's as awful as any other ideology that tells you how to live.
do you really need to read a book / multiple books to tell you that freaking out pointlessly is bad?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with freaking out pointlessly, I actively encourage it

Epictetus is good
Aurelius is enjoyable but not particularly enlightening
Seneca I didn't like

Yeah but a cuck gets fucked over and either likes it or moans about it.

A stoic realizes he cannot do anything, it doesn't even matter anyway and it thus isn't worth his time.

Ah I see, so he'll sit and masturbate to it as he would to live performance porn. Interesting

i really wish you wouldn't say stuff like that. it gives me a lot of anxiety.

That feeling is the blood running through your veins.
Hysteria is the only true sanity

wtf I love Stoicism now

>It's no coincidence that stoicism only gained traction in the most corrupt, degenerate era of the Roman Empire.
Asides from the fact that this is wrong (what is the Hellenic world?) it is a coincidence. Do you expect Pict barbarians to learn any sort of Romano/Greek philosophy? Or anyone else for that matter. Do you expect some Indian to think 'I'm going to magically know about stoicism somehow and employ it in my life'?

There is the classic homely of the dog being dragged by a leash attached to a cart. The dog must move with the cart, that is out of its control. The stoic says that it is better to walk with the cart. The opposite view is to cause needless injury yourself and yet still arrive at the exact same location.
>accepting it like a wimp
How is acceptance of inevitable and unchangeable things wimpy? I think you make the mistake of thinking that acceptance means a passive thing. You could say that Leonidas accepted his death by choosing to defend that pass. It was not a quite, wimpy death. You can strive hysterically and accept. They are not mutually exclusive.

Stoicism is 99% practice and 1% reading. Also you are only talking about part of stoicism. For some reason most people seem to think stoicism is just a therapeutic philosophy. This is only an aspect of it. It is a philosophy on how to do good and how to be good. The therapy is just to help one be and do good. It is a philosophy of doing, of active engagement with others.

Why is it that everyone only reads these three and calls it a day? There are far more interesting and better stoics out there to read.

No because there would be no shame. But that doesn't make stoics cucks. You just invented a situation where you have to be one, it doesn't matter what your philosophy is, Nietzschean cuck: Aristotelian cuck, Thomistic cuck, Kantian cuck, you're still a cuck before your philosophy comes into it.

>No because there would be no shame

So your wife is getting fucked by a big hung black man and you don't feel bad about it? Your reaction is just "Oh that happened"

Fucking hell dude...

Excellent post, thank you for sharing.

What's some Stoic literature aside from the three that everyone is familiar with that you'd recommend?

This is wrong, a person CAN do something about getting cucked. Divorcing, killing one or both of the involved parties, etc. Stoicism doesn't apply here.

Dirvorce I could understand but why would a Stoic kill a partner, for what purpose if he doesn't feel ashamed or angry?

Two people are waiting for a train and both miss it due to circumstances outside of their control. One gets angry and has a bad day, the other does not mind and has a good day. You are saying you would prefer to have a shit day over a good one.

>Stoicism doesn't apply here
Yes it does. Stoicism isn't just a tool to dig up when something bad that happens outside of your control. How you would choose after it had happened to you would still be informed by the virtues and be a stoic response.

I would avoid reading the ancient writers. They come from such an alien time that you will misunderstand every single important term they use. This is why you see people on the internet who don't know a single thing about the philosophy who have actually read books by ancient stoics. You need really preparation before you read them, and even then due to the massive changes that have taken place in the world of philosophy it would mostly be an academic exercise. There's nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying.

A Guide to the Good Life by Irving is a good place to start. He's not that great of a stoic in that his understanding of it isn't that great but it serves as an accessible introduction by someone writing about actually applying ideas of stoicism to your life. Becker's A New Stoicism as a book that asks the hypothetical question what if the Christians never abolished the Stoa and stoicism had continued into the current day. It must be remembered that stoicism is a philosophy, not a religion. It has no orthodoxy and the nature of its thoughts would change and develop as we learned more about the world. So Becker takes these considerations into account when describing ways stoicism may have evolved.

For more difficult stuff you have MacIntyre and Nussbaum, both very good contemporary philosophers involved in the academic virtue ethics revival. There is the obvious answer of Anscombe but I think her writings are really only groundwork for the real advances in ethics that the people who came after her did. If you want to read something short and easy there is her Modern Moral Philosophy where she quickly outlines a major problem she has with consequential philosophies. MacIntyre did a wonder set of books starting with After Virtue that set out his system. After Virtue can be taken as a stand alone if you wish. Reading it will let you understand what virtue ethics actually is (there is a reasonable difficult conceptual problem for most people trying to understand what it actually is because it is so different from the way we normally think ethically).

>You are saying you would prefer to have a shit day over a good one.

Yes I am, absolutely.
I would rather become outraged that someone could betray me than respond to it like I had stepped on gum.
Hysterical anger is a noble thing

>Isn't it natural in Stoicism to embrace the shame of another man fucking your wife if you can't do anything about it?
But you could do something about it, namely divorce her.

Your idea of nobility is juvenile.

Of course, Children are the most noble of beings, problems begin as soon as we are indoctrinated into society as "adults"

Is Stoicism always virtue ethical in its approach, or does even that vary between thinkers?

WEW lad

>not crying and shitting yourself when you don't get what you want

Cuck

Yes. Stoicism makes no sense if deprived of the idea of the virtues. This is why I recommend something like MacIntyre's After Virtue. He himself may not be a stoic but simply knowing about virtue ethics in general will also ease you into understanding stoicism.

Thank you. Do you think After Virtue would be a good start to learn about virtue ethics? Also, which philosopher(s) should I look to after whatever you recommend for the start? I'd like to read at least two or three of Aristotle's works and as far as I'm aware he came up with virtue ethics in the form we have today, so I'd like to get to the primary sources if possible.

I would suggest a really good and thorough primer if you want to read the ethical works by Aristotle for the same reason that I mentioned in regards to the stoics. That being said Aristotle is legit.

If you want other ancients there are quite interesting figures like Posidonius, a later stoic known for arguing with other stoics over the ideas of the school. Boethius also comes to mind, while not a stoic is still a pretty interesting figure. I tend to for the most part prefer this later thinkers to the earlier ones. The schools of philosophy they come from have had longer to work on their systems and tend to be better documented.

Gregory Sadler (The PhD philosophy youtube guy) is an Aristotelian and has put up a lot of great content about the Greeks. in addition to his youtube channel youtube.com/user/gbisadler he also has a blog about virtue ethics. gbsadler.blogspot.co.nz/

looks like you are a girl

Stoicism is a means to an end. People who live their life for these values are morons who can't accept that they have power and responsibility.

I wish. Ophelia is the only true Ubermensch in literature

Awesome, thanks a lot. Does Aristotle treat what we're talking about here in anything other than his Nicomachean Ethics?

>huuurrr redpill
Sometimes I wish that goddamned movie had never come out, but even so the alt-tards would have doubtless latched on to something else in pop culture to get their pointless point across.

Honour

he literally walked the walk until his death what are you talking about?

That's reddit tier understanding of stoicism.

>Why is it that everyone only reads these three and calls it a day? There are far more interesting and better stoics out there to read.

Who else can I read my man?

I'm pretty sure nothing is as awful as reddit makes it seem

Decent post

I don't have a wife because I don't need it and it can hurt me desu

>Is angry and upset but doesn't quite know why
>Lashes out against the meme

Underrated toast.

> Stoicism is great insofar as it is supplemented with another worldview that can support it. It's a very masculine philosophy, and if gone unchecked it can break a man.

explain

>Why is it that everyone only reads these three and calls it a day? There are far more interesting and better stoics out there to read.

such as?

I know he has a second book about ethics called the Eudemian Ethics, I'm not sure what relationship it has to the Nicomachean Ethics. I have not read it. There is also his Politics which I would also group with these two. His other things such as his metaphysics and biology can be helpful in interpreting his ethical works but I would suggest skipping them in favour of a secondary source unless you are a huge Aristotle fan.

Read my earlier post where I made a couple of recommendations.

It sounds like you are under the false impression that stoicism is simply a means for enduring difficult trials. This is wrong. Stoicism is a means to an end however, that end being (though I have to say this reservedly because we are getting into controversial territory here) eudaimonia, perhaps best expressed as (again a really controversial topic) the possessing and expressing of all of the virtues. I fail to see how people are moronic who aim to be excellent in all that they do and are.

I spent a few minutes trying to find this old link. reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3hdidw/week_6_the_virtues_and_virtue_ethics/?st=iwvusmvb&sh=05037cd4
This is a pretty solid, easy short introduction to virtue ethics. The comment section is also pretty good, you get to see people asking questions about common misconceptions about it.
>inb4 reddit

If you want to learn about virtue ethics you should really start with Aristotle.

After Virtue is very good, but MacIntyres whole deal is that we need to understand broader social and historical contexts for us to be ethical people, so I think the man himself would object if you hadn't read the nicomachean ethics first