Did I waste my time reading the Stoics? I read Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius...

>there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so
--Marco Polo

It doesn't hurt to read their teachings, it helps lock in the information for you most of the time as well as introduce some topics you probably really didn't think about.
It also just depends on how you use that information you learned that you think is common sense. Is it really common sense and do you actively practice it if it is?
Like my acquaintance who says he's all about the Stoics, swears his life by it, but then become the most LoOk At Me gUySS iM ThE MoSt eNlIghTeNeD oNe oF uS HuRrRr. In reality, he just a pretensions baby who adopted retarded MDE follower ideologies.

>reads all this and misses the entire point of stoicism

>this post
>mfw

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Anyone have a stoic’s guide?

Explain what it means to be stoic and explain the basics of the philosophy. 100% you either didn’t read them or you didn’t understand them. The majority of stoic threads on here are filled with misinformation like this . The Stoics don’t say you can’t be happy, I fact they encourage you to attain happiness through virtue whilst minimizing sadness and suffering.
The Enchiridion is what you’re looking for, it’s a literal handbook on the philosophy.

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Where in the hell the points of the Stoics are common sense?

In my country, most people believe the opposite of the Stoics.
They believe
>pleasure is the good. Money, status, etc are good because they allow you to have more pleasure. The more pleasure you have, the better you are. Sex brings a lot of pleasure, so you should have a lot of sex. You should follow whatever desires you have in your head, as long as you don't hurt others.

Brainlet

The one in your picture is Epicurus.

I think the most ignorant post is this one

Thanks user

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stoicism is an excellent personal philosophy for life to follow for when you've been thrown into an inescapably shitty situation and have to make the best of it, like being imprisoned, physically disabled, or suffering from a terminal illness.

it is one of the worst personal philosophies when there is still a plethora of opportunities available for you, such as being a young healthy adult in a first-world country, because following it and nothing else shifts your frame of reference from that of a proactive agent into an obedient and complacent slave of fate.

t. read major stoic texts (enchiridion and discourses, meditations, seneca's letters)

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>it is one of the worst personal philosophies when there is still a plethora of opportunities available for you, such as being a young healthy adult in a first-world country, because following it and nothing else shifts your frame of reference from that of a proactive agent into an obedient and complacent slave of fate.

Stoicism is not a philosophy of laziness.
But that said, what do you value as a good? Is it virtue or is it something else?

Daily reminder that you haven't "read" the Stoics, nor are you in any position to criticize their Ethics, without engaging with their logic and their physics, from which such ethics depends.
Before having an opinion on them you need to read at least pic related. Otherwise you are a faggot brainlet reading/criticizing self-help.

Pic related is the one and only starting point for Stoic philosophy. If you start from the late Stoa you are studying the latest appendix of a system that has been developed through centuries. People in this board talk about the Stoics as if they were Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius: those are late Stoics, and Marcus is not even considered a full stoic philosopher but an eclectic who did not have occasion to study physics and logic as he himself openly claim to regret several times through the meditations. If you do not know who Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysyppus are, you have not read the Stoics. You have read self-help books from antiquity.

>pic related
>no pic
Such power

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Sorry, pic related should have been this: Long & Sedley - The Hellenistic Philosophers

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why so many successful, driven business leader types recommend stoicism then?

That's BS. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius said Stoic ethics hold no matter if Stoic physics is right or not.

Stoicism is important in eras of plenty so that you don't confuse wealth and pleasure with the good as so many people do nowadays, with bad results.

The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, "We ought not to lie;" the second is that of demonstrations, such as, "What is the origin of our obligation not to lie;" the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, "What is the origin of this is a demonstration." For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the second on the account of the first. But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first. Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are immediately prepared to show how it is demonstrated that lying is not right.

To keep idiots like you satisfied with your own lot you dumb fuck

^ this

it's safe to assume that the majority of successful, driven business leaders are competitive. what do competitive people dislike? more competition! therefore, if people ask for advice, tell them to just be happy with what they have instead of wanting to introduce more competition.

>tell them to just be happy with what they have instead of wanting to introduce more competition
That's not stoicism tho

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Or because succeeding in business often requires persistence

No.

Epictetus and Marcus both belong to the late Stoa, and write almost four centuries after the foundation of the school. Epictetus, despite not considering logic an end in itself (as no Stoic would be, as the system is intertwined) believes it is essential for ethical development (1.7, 1.17, 1.26). A lot of his doctrines are little more than assumptions on the if unsustained by a physical/metaphysical theory of the kind Epictetus inherits by Zeno and Chrysippus. Take, for instance, the doctrine of impression and assent, which assumes the unity of the soul and its ability to potentially overrule any external stimulus: without a theory of the mind (based in physics given the Stoics corporealist background), there is no reason to assume that our soul is structured in such way that would make the claim that we can have absolute control over our emotions true.

As for Marcus, again: a philosophically inspired emperor which wrote beautiful things to himself, but who admits his lack of understanding of some essential topics - which, again, would make his ethics more solid. Here's Marcus admitting his lack of knowledge in physics (one of several passages):
> Nature has not blended your soul and body so closely together in the compound being that she does not allow you to circumscribe yourself and ensure that what is yours is subject to yourself. Always keep this in mind, and also further this point, that happiness depends on very few conditions; and just because YOU HAVE RESIGNED ANY HOPE OF EXCELLING IN DIALECTICAL AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, do not on that account despair of becoing a free man, and one who is modest, concerned for his fellows, and obedient to god (vii.67)

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Here are some quotations for the priority of logic and physics over ethics, taken from the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (several fragments are quoted in Long & Sedley):

Some fragments on the priority of logic and physics over ethics -
>Diogenes Laertius VII 39 (SVF II.37): "they claim that philosophy is divided in three parts: physics, ethics and logic. This division is attributed to Zeno... and also to Chrysyppus in the first book of the Logic and in the first book of the Physics.
>Diogenes Laertius VII.40 (SVF II.43): "Others put first the logic, then the physics, then the ethics. Among these are Zeno and, in his book on Logic, Chrysippus"

Some fragments of the order of teaching (which is different from the priority of the matters):
>Plutarch, Stoic Refutations 1035a (SVF II.42): "Chrysippus believes that young students should first follow the lessons of logic, then ethics and last those of physics... 'Of the physics, the last argument to treat is theology (o peri to theon logos), the teaching of which they call 'initiation' "
>Sextus Empyricus, Against the Physicists VII 22 (SVF II.43): "Also the Stoics believe that one should start from logic, and then proceed to ethics. Last comes physics... which is the most divine and necessitates of deeper principles."

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the relation between the three parts:
>Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the soul). Their views in logic and physics are no less distinctive and interesting than those in ethics itself.

If you read an ethic that is not based in a theory of how the world/nature works, for any ancient philosopher from Plato onwards, you are reading self-help. You are accepting instructions on how to act from an authority, without understanding why. This is not what a philosopher do. If you are interested in the relation between ethics and world functioning, read Pierre Hadot - What is Ancient Philosophy? It is a beautiful book and it has a lot to say on the relation between these two things.

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Stoic ethics doesn't need "Stoic Logic" to work. "Aristotelian logic" works just as well for what Epictetus mentioned. You don't need to study specifically "Stoic Logic" if what you are interested in is Stoic ethics.

>Take, for instance, the doctrine of impression and assent, which assumes the unity of the soul and its ability to potentially overrule any external stimulus: without a theory of the mind (based in physics given the Stoics corporealist background), there is no reason to assume that our soul is structured in such way that would make the claim that we can have absolute control over our emotions true.
The discipline of assent is just using your better judgement to confront your impressions, instead of openly accepting them. You can use that regardless of your believes of how the mind soul works.

Marcus Aurelius did study other aspects of Stoic and other philosophies. But he was not brilliant in it. He also mentioned that if Epicurean physics is right, Stoic Ethics still is right.

Yes, I know the Stoics also studied other parts of the philosophy. They also viewed their study as ends in themselves.

>Stoic ethics doesn't need "Stoic Logic" to work. "Aristotelian logic" works just as well for what Epictetus mentioned. You don't need to study specifically "Stoic Logic" if what you are interested in is Stoic ethics.
This. For example, Epictetus's Handbook was used to teach ethics by later Platonists. There's a Platonic commentary on it by Simplicius that was translated into English recently.

There were also Stoics such as Aristo, who was a student of Zeno, that rejected logic and physics and taught only ethics. You're just looking at one side of it.

121:4.3.2. The Stoic. Stoicism was the superior philosophy of the better classes. The Stoics believed that a controlling Reason-Fate dominated all nature. They taught that the soul of man was divine; that it was imprisoned in the evil body of physical nature. Man's soul achieved liberty by living in harmony with nature, with God; thus virtue came to be its own reward. Stoicism ascended to a sublime morality, ideals never since transcended by any purely human system of philosophy. While the Stoics professed to be the "offspring of God," they failed to know him and therefore failed to find him. Stoicism remained a philosophy; it never became a religion. Its followers sought to attune their minds to the harmony of the Universal Mind, but they failed to envisage themselves as the children of a loving Father. Paul leaned heavily toward Stoicism when he wrote, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

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>Stoicism remained a philosophy; it never became a religion.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

I am looking at the major figures of the early Stoa which were, according to the sources, Zeno, Cleanthes and especially Chrysyppus, who was considered a second father of the Stoa. If you look at the fragments, it is not a case that most of the sources are on them - Aristo has barely ten pages worth of stuff on him.

The doctrine of assent is build upon a very specific theory of the soul which claims the soul to be unified and not composite. Namely, the soul is not divided into rational and irrational parts (be it a dichotomy or a tripartition). If the soul has parts, you have no control over the insurgence of the irrational and you believe that the subject is effectively split. You are not responsible for your feelings. According to the theory of assent, instead, you are: as the soul is unified, the part that receives the impression is the same that has the power to control it. What happens is that, for each and every one of your mental experiences, you have are potentially in control, because the faculty that commands (the hegemonikon) is the only one. Without a split subject, they can say that perfect control over yourself is possible and so is the perfectly wise man - who is happy even if cooked alive in the Phalaris bull. The fact that you are completely responsible for your own mental life, for the Stoics, is rooted in a precise theory of the soul (which in turn is rooted in a precise physical theory about the corporeal nature of the soul etc.). Without that foundation, you are not able to properly justify the ethics.

It is not that he was not brilliant, it is that he did not have time to dedicate his studies to physics or logic in detail, as it requires a lot of time and Marcus, being an emperor, was travelling for very long periods. His claims on the compatibility between Epicurean and Stoic physics shows his ignorance very clearly. Stoics went a long way to explain that the body universe is a continuous without void in it, while Epicureans admitted void. For the Stoics, if there is such thing as void between parts of the cosmos, then some things would happen by pure chance - as causal relations are only between bodies - and this, as a consequence, would completely flatten their ethics, which is based on a deterministic worldview.

Also, my point was not that the Stoics simply studied other parts of philosophy, but that all the parts of philosophy are deeply interdependent for them, so that you cannot comprehend one of them without engaging with the others.

This is not true. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism were mass shared philosophies and they admitted slaves among the students. The popularity of their ethics over their physics and logic is exactly due to their popularization among lower classes (hence the need of texts like the "manual" of Epictetus).

>If you read an ethic that is not based in a theory of how the world/nature works, for any ancient philosopher from Plato onwards, you are reading self-help. You are accepting instructions on how to act from an authority, without understanding why.
So? If it works it works.

You're the brainlet because you didn't learn the value of humility.

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Aristo still is a fairly prominent member of the Stoic school.
The Epicurean sage also would be perfectly fine while being in the Bull of Phalaris. So would the Neoplatonist one.

Marcus Aurelius was for an early age selected as a future Emperor. Hadrian gave him the best education and the best tutors there were. Marcus Aurelius mentioned in the Meditations that he was not a bright scholar, but he certainly was better educated in Stoicism than you or anyone alive is. Someone like you calling him ignorant is a fucking joke.
Epictetus was the most prominent Stoic of his era. He also said that Stoic ethics also hold true if Epicurean physics are true. Will you also call him ignorant?

Thank you. Your recc will not go in vain

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Yea Marcus is a noon but doesn't that make him the perfect starter pack for stocism? It was his personal journal laid bare for us to read, how he built his character and philosophy through stoicism. I don't know, what do you think?

Aristo is borderline irrelevant compared to Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysyppus, who are the Stoics you should study if you want to understand something about Stoicism.

The Epicurean sage would not be happy in the bull of Phalaris. He would maybe think - as in the case of death - that pain will be over soon, but epicurean apatheia is different from Stoic because it depends on changing the external conditions and not engaging with excessive evils/pleasures ("live hidden") rather than gaining control over your emotions. Which again channels into the Epicurean worldview - according to Epicurean atomism there is no ordering power (nor order in general) therefore you cannot achieve perfect control over anything as everything is in the hands of change. Stoic ethics focuses on mastering the internal set of your representation because you have over it the same absolute power god has over the universe - i.e. you are an instantiation of the power of god and can therefore have perfect power over everything that depends directly upon yourself.

For the Neoplatonic sage every stage that is not fusion with the One is to a certain degree decadence into mutliplicity and therefore unhappiness. Being an incarnated soul is already a problem for them, let it be being an incarnated soul inside the phalaris bull suffering unspeakable pain. The Stoic sage is happy because, theoretically, he has such a perfect control over his emotions that he does not suffer because of the pain. The Neoplatonic sage is happy because he escapes his body and unites with the one - therefore he is not happy while he is there, he is happy insofar as he can escape his earthly condition.

Marcus is a self-proclaimed ignorant and not only I, but everyone who engages with ancient logic, physics and metaphysics is better learned than Marcus Aurelius, according to Marcus Aurelius himself.

The extent to which Epictetus was acquainted with physics is debated in the literature but none of his predecessors, who have written more and more importantly than him, would agree. Moreover the eristic argument in which you show how your ethical conclusions are valid also according to the physics of your adversary was very common and is used by Plutarch as well. This does not imply that Plutarch endorses atomistic physics, though, as he makes it openly clear in multiple writings that his positions on physics and metaphysics are Platonic. With this you may at best establish the priority of Ethics over physics for Epictetus, but not for the Stoics in general. This attitude was shared by several thinkers of the Late Stoa, when the system had been bastardized to appeal to the masses - and, in particular, roman readers, as they were notoriously averse to metaphysics and preferred ethics and practical advice over the intricacies of Greek philosophy.

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*everything is the hands of chance, not change, sorry.

Also, Epictetus being the most eminent Stoic of his era is not an argument against Chrysyppus being the most important and innovative Stoic in general, bringing the Stoic philosophical system to full bloom. There is not a word worth of Epictetus that you cannot bring back to fragments of Chrysyppus. Epictetus is derivative and he's more widely read only because is text is more easily accessible.

It depends on what your aims are. I still believe it is a beautiful book and I have indeed found it helpful in several moments of my life - it is a book for difficult times. But if your aim is to study Stoic philosophy or, in general, as a philosopher, you want to dig deeper into what is at the base of that ethic, I would say Long & Sedley is a better starting point as it gives you a good overview of the whole philosophical system. It is more difficult to digest, surely, but it really depends on your attitude. Most people engage with philosophy only on a superficial level and dodge physics, metaphysics and especially logic. An ancient philosopher would engage with everything.

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>Aristo is borderline irrelevant compared to Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysyppus, who are the Stoics you should study if you want to understand something about Stoicism.
It doesn't matter if Aristo was more or less famous than Cleanthes. What matters is that he was a Stoic master and who explicitly disagreed with you.

>The Epicurean sage would not be happy in the bull of Phalaris.
Yes, he would. From the Tusculan Disputations: "...but even this will not satisfy Epicurus, that robust and hardy man! No; his wise man, even if he were in Phalaris’s bull, would say, How sweet it is! how little do I regard it! What sweet? is it not sufficient, if it is not disagreeable?"
So, that kind of makes the rest of your paragraph useless. If you look at the last letter of Epicurus he says "On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could increase them; but I set above them all the gladness of mind at the memory of our past conversations. But I would have you, as becomes your lifelong attitude to me and to philosophy, watch over the children of Metrodorus."

>Marcus is a self-proclaimed ignorant and not only I, but everyone who engages with ancient logic, physics and metaphysics is better learned than Marcus Aurelius, according to Marcus Aurelius himself.
Marcus claimed to not be brilliant in intellectual areas, not that he didn't study other areas of philosophy. In Ethics, he claimed to be far away from being a Sage.
And no, you don't know more than he did. Marcus Aurelius was taught by the best professors of his era. He had access to all the books of the early, middle and late Stoics. You, on the other hand, have as your best source for early and middle Stoicism "Diogenes Laertius", who was not an expert in Stoic Ethics.
To claim yourself more knowledgeable than he was on Stoicism is not only arrogance, it is ignorance.

>The extent to which Epictetus was acquainted with physics is debated in the literature but none of his predecessors, who have written more and more importantly than him, would agree.
Show me their books, please.
Epictetus is as good of an authority on Stoicism as anyone else can be. He was not as much of an innovator as Zeno or Chrysyppus, but in terms of knowledge he was as great of a master as you could find. And in terms of knowledge of Stoicism, he is much stronger than you or anyone from the 20th/21st century can hope to be. He lived when Stoicism was still practiced, spoke the language of the Stoics, had access to all the material...

It is a fucking joke to see someone like you who doesn't know 1% of what he did of Stoicism to claim that his position is without merit.

Being more innovative or not doesn't make Epictetus less knowledgeable of the system.
>There is not a word worth of Epictetus that you cannot bring back to fragments of Chrysyppus.
Then, do me a favor and prove it.

This. Chrysyppus' works haven't even survived except for fragments so it's really retarded to defer to him.

If a minor Stoic disagrees with the major ones it is enough to dismiss him. I never claimed that there was absolute agreement among all Stoics for what concerns the priority of physics.

Cicero's opinion on Epicurus does not stand, if you consider the passage you just quoted. Epicurus admits to be in pain and claims to be rejoicing int he memory of the past. The stoic sage would literally not be in pain, as pain (lupe) was considered one of the canonical four passions from Zeno onwards which are excluded from the psychological life of the perfectly wise man insofar as they are passions, i.e. excessive and irrational impulses, which the perfectly wise man never has.

Marcus claims to be ignorant, not only not excellent. I have quoted one passage, here are more.
>I.17, towards the end he literally declares not have read logic and physics: "when I conceived my passion for philosophy, I did not fall in with any sophist, nor did I sit down to pore over books or work out syllogisms or busy myself with speculations about matters in the heavens"
>viii.1 where he considers himself a poor philosopher more generally: "it is now beyond your power to have lived your whole life, or at least the time that has passed since your youth, as a philosopher, for you have made it plain to many people, including yourself, that you fall far short of philosophy"
I am not arrogant nor ignorant. Marcus literally did not read books of logic of physics. He says this openly and scholars take his word for it. Receiving education in philosophy for a Roman Emperor rarely meant to engage with logic and physics, first because the Romans were generally hostile to those matters, and second because those subjects required years to master and the education of young Emperors was focused on politics. Most people who study ancient philosophy today will read, for instance, Aristotle's Metaphysics or Plato's Timaeus, which Marcus never did. So there are several people even on this board who are better versed than him in logic and physics.

Their books do not exist but there are four volumes worth of testimonia in Greek and Latin put together by Hans von Arnim, two of which concerned with Chrysyppus alone (and again, less of 10 pages of these volumes are concerned with Aristo): amazon.com/s?k=stoicorum veterum fragmenta&crid=3E50WNT4KWBJJ&sprefix=stoicorum ve,stripbooks-intl-ship,203&ref=nb_sb_ss_fb_1_12. In terms of quantity of references and richness of doctrine there is absolutely no comparison between Chrysyppus, proposing a complete philosophical system, and Epictetus. And the sources quoted here are philosophers that span from contemporaries of Zeno and Chrysyppus and people who had access to their books and quote them directly up to Hellenistic sources, many of which are professional philosophers who engage with the material directly. You are either not aware of the existence of the SVF or are unable to access it because you don't know latin and greek.

I cannot spend the whole night reconnecting any doctrine of Epictetus to a fragment of Chrysyppus. And again, you seem to have no knowledge of the quantity of material you can find on Chrysyppus. Fragments in ancient philosophy are not "lines", they are fully written pages of philosophy reassuming doctrines of someone. For Chrysyppus we have two full volumes of these.

But I am up for a challenge, as I know my Stoics well enough: you can write down any doctrine of Epictetus you want, and I will point you to one or more fragments of previous in Long & Sedley or in the SVF. I am going to sleep at the moment, but tomorrow is Saturday so I will have time to leaf over and write down some posts with the quotations.

>just stop suffering bro ignore the hardships of life
No wonder this shit is so popular among middle class zoomers. what are the hardships theyre enduring? quitting porn? lol

>ancient philosophy practiced by peasants and emperors alike
>zoomers
This is your brain on Yea Forums

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Avoid suffering, deal with it when it comes.

If you want to wallow in it, it’s only going to compound your misery.
>quitting porn
Well, don’t make it an addiction.

Hehe. Only hentai :3

Actually it’s all pretty degenerate stuff. Don’t watch too much porn period if at all :3

Stoicism is reserved for the sound of mind. Neurotics simply can't grasp the concept of ascending beyond one's own emotions. Hence the mass sperg posting "debunking" Stoicism in this thread.

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you don't live by the stoics. but being familiar with them will give you a place to fall back to when shit gets bad.

Stocism should be about you, not btfo brainlets.

>If a minor Stoic disagrees with the major ones it is enough to dismiss him
No, it is not. If we are considering the Stoic school, we have to consider not only the famous one but the less famous ones. And any Stoic whose name still is known today was not a minor Stoic, but a fairly prominent one.

>Cicero's opinion on Epicurus does not stand, if you consider the passage you just quoted.
Cicero is after Diogenes Laertius the main source for Chryssipus. If his opinion on Epicurus does not stand, neither does his opinion on Chyrssipus. And he is a better source than Laertius and Plutarch.

>The stoic sage would literally not be in pain
*Narrator voice: He would

>Marcus claims to be ignorant, not only not excellent. I have quoted one passage, here are more.
He did study logic and physics. He had multiple philosophy professors at the same time, some of which disagreed with each other. What he said is that he didn't spend a long time on it and that he was grateful for that.

>the SVF
A large part of it comes from Diogenes Laertius, Cicero and Plutarch.
Epictetus is a better source for Stoicism than any of them.

OK.

Let's think of two parts

Epictetus on cleanliness
sacred-texts.com/cla/dep/dep097.htm

Epictetus book 2 chapter 4: on an adulterer

read some hedonistic books

Their actual philosophy sucks but it's good for getting you into a productive mindset. So no, you didn't waste your time as long as you use the writings effectively.

>we have to consider the most famous ones
Of course we have to - but we can also talk about what the mainstream opinion of the Stoic school was, and it was not Aristo's according to the sources, but Zeno's, Cleanthes' and Chrysyppus.
>any Stoic whose name is still known today was not a minor Stoic
That is simply not true. You can establish the priority of certain philosophers over other and the ancients were doing it as well. Cleanthes was a pupil of Zeno as well and he succeeded him as the head of the Stoa instead of Aristo and Spherus for a reason. The same is true about Chrysyppus succeeding Cleanthes. The fact that Aristo was quoted way less by the sources means that people in the philosophical tradition deemed his ideas less relevant than Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysyppus. If you want to say that he is as relevant as them you are alone against the vast majority of ancient philosophers.

Cicero's opinion does not stand not because he's Cicero but because it's in contradiction with your quotation from primary epicurean material (letters) which should always have the priority in interpretation. If the primary sources are at contradiction with a testimonia, you take the primary source for true. Cicero is a perfectly fine source.

According to the Stoics, which is the whole point here, he would not. The ideal Stoic sage was notoriously such a high standard that people accused them to be aiming at something unrealistic. But for as much unrealistic as it may seem, this is what they believed.

As for Marcus, the fact that he had multiple philosophy professors does not imply he studied physics and logic. And the passage I quoted literally said that he did not sit to read those books, not that he studied them poorly. Are you going to argue that he was studying them while standing because he said he "did not sit"? I do not know how else to convince you more than providing direct quotes.

The SVF is not in large parte from Diogenes, Cicero and Plutarch and by saying you show that you have never handled the volumes yourself. There are many sources which are more prolific than them in providing pages and pages of summaries of stoic doctrines such as (to quote some) Sextus Empiricus, Stobaeus, Alexander of Aphrodisia, Galenus, Philo, Plotinus and Proclus. Most of them were considered respectable philosophers in their time and it is reasonable to think that their accounts are accurate, especially because on several general issues their accounts agree despite the fact that there are several centuries of distance between one author and the other.

Epictetus may be a good source for what concerns Ethics, but when it comes to physics and logic which, again, are fundamental parts of the system, there are far better sources.

Read Long & Sedley. I think it would really help you to know Stoicism better, as it translates a minor selection of some relevant passages from the SVF and can give you a sense of how the system works.

*suggests theosophy*

the stoics are for brainlets

I need the indication of the book and chapter on cleanliness, please.

But here's the doctrine on adultery attributed to Zeno by Von Arnim:

>Origenes c. Celsum VII 63 p.739 (SVF 1.244): "the philosophers who follow Zeno reject adultery... because of what is common [i.e. common/societal living]. It is in fact contrary to nature for a reasonable living being that a woman who is already bound to another man generates bastards and destroys the family of another man."

Now you could debate whether Origenes, coming after Epictetus, attributes the doctrine to the "followers of Zeno" to mean the Stoics in general and takes it specifically from Epictetus. But, despite the fact that Origen was acquainted with Epictetus, there is no definitive proof that the doctrine is not to be referred to the early Stoa in general, as Von Arnim seems to believe. Moreover, the "not committing adultery", as well as any other societal rule, is grounded in Stoic cosmopolitanism, i.e. in the idea that since world-order can be represented as a political structure (Long & Sedley 67K, 67M, 46G, 57F - you can check all these fragments if you download a PDF of long and Sedley from libgen), divine administration and natural laws are the ground for moral values and the basis of human life in agreement with nature (L&S 59Q, 63C).

>Of course we have to - but we can also talk about what the mainstream opinion of the Stoic school was, and it was not Aristo's according to the sources, but Zeno's, Cleanthes' and Chrysyppus.
Your point is that you can't have Stoic ethics divorced from Stoic physics and Stoic logics. A fairly famous early Stoic argued not only that you can but he even discarded them. Epictetus mentioned in a fragment that even if Epicurean physics is correct, Stoic ethics still holds. And his Ethics are fairly compatible with the Socrates from Plato. I would even say that after reading Plato it would be better to read the Discourses than to read Aristotle.

>That is simply not true.
The fact that Aristo is still known today makes him a very prominent Stoic. There were thousands and thousands of Stoic philosophers and very few were known to this day. There were only 7 Stoic philosophers that were mentioned by Diogenes Laertius. Aristo was one of them.

>it's in contradiction with your quotation from primary epicurean material
Epicurus, the Epicurean sage himself, was feeling the highest kind of pain in the exact day he would die and was still feeling happy. I would also like to remind you that you are arguing by using secondary sources against primary sources.

>As for Marcus, the fact that he had multiple philosophy professors does not imply he studied physics and logic.
He did study those disciplines, but he didn't busy himself with them and didn't study them deeply. I have taken some mathematics courses in university. But if you ask me if I did study mathematics, I would say not.

Most people mentioning Chryssipus philosophy quote those 3 guys I mentioned.

We are arguing about Stoic Ethics, so Epictetus is a pretty good authority.

Through which philosophers' writings do the teachings of Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysyppus survive?

>I need the indication of the book and chapter on cleanliness, please.
Discourses, Book 4 chapter 11.

>Origenes c. Celsum VII 63 p.739 (SVF 1.244): "the philosophers who follow Zeno reject adultery... because of what is common [i.e. common/societal living]. It is in fact contrary to nature for a reasonable living being that a woman who is already bound to another man generates bastards and destroys the family of another man."

That's not really a fragment of Chryssipus

Epictetus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius are the only Stoic writers who have surviving texts.
You can argue that Cicero was kind of sympathetic to Stoicism, but he wasn't a Stoic.

I'm oops, I was wrong about Musonius Rufus. So, it's only the other 3 (or Arrian, in the case of Epictetus)

I feel like at this point you are just repeating the same thing over and over. Aristo is not a fairly famous early Stoic. The fact that his doctrines are barely debated by posterity confirms this. Again: 10 pages worth of references is everything it has ever been said or written about Aristo in ancient times. You have one full book of stuff for Zeno and two for Chrysyppus. Zeno and Chrysyppus are the philsophers people were referring to and debating when mentioning the Stoics in ancient times and they believed physics and logic were fundamental. This is enough to claim this was the mainstream position of early Stoics, despite what you say. The only reason you can keep holding your opinion is because you have no familiarity whatsoever with the SVF. Quantitatively speaking, these are the number of testimonia on each:

Zeno: 332
Aristo: 70
Cleanthes: 168
Chrysyppus: 1993

There is more than double the evidence for the minor of the three major Stoics. Aristo is a minor author and you cannot take one fragment by him as representative of the general Stoic opinion, especially when the major figures contradict him openly.

Stoic ethics is not compatible with Platonic ethics, and you would know this if you had read Plato. The Stoics maybe closer to some positions on Socratic Intellectualism Plato held in the beginning, but if you look at the psychology of Republic IX you can see that it is clearly incompatible for Stoic ethics, very simply because Plato belives irrational desires have an independent source and are separated from rational desires. The subject is split: you cannot have control over your whole mental life.
Ethics is compatible with Socrates (which is by no means Plato, in case you wondered) because Socrates was the model of the sage in general, not only for Plato (see, for instance, Xenophon) and by the time of the Stoa Socratic dialogues written by authors other than plato were circulating widely.

I am using primary evidence of Epicurus to disprove an interpretation of the doctrines in the secondary sources you provided as if they were saying the same as the primary sources. I am not saying secondary sources are useless, but they must come after primary. In lack of primary sources, like for Chrysyppus and Zeno, you rely on secondary. But trust me, with respectively 1993 and 301 testimonia there is sufficient agreement to reconstruct what the main lines of the system were.
Also, in the passage you quoted Epicurus never says he is happy, he says he puts the gladness of remembering above the pain, which by a far stretch you associate with happiness. But happiness (eudaimonia) is a specific technical term in philosophy, you can't just fling it around every time epicurus says he feels glad for something.

I am dropping the Marcus part because if after a direct quotation that he did not read books of physics and logic you are still not convinced there is not much I can do beside asking you to please reread the text again.

>Most people mentioning Chryssipus philosophy quote those 3 guys I mentioned
Who are "most people"? Be less vague. The SVF is full of references by other authors. In proportion Plutarch and Diogenes are by no means the main sources for Stoic testimonia. Open the SVF or Long & Sedley and you will easily see that I am right. Long & Sedley is on libgen in PDF, you can verify right now.

>We are arguing about Stoic Ethics, so Epictetus is a pretty good authority.
We are not, as you said. My point is that Ethics does not stand alone according to most Stoics. Of course Epictetus is an authority in Ethics, since it's the only thing he writes about. I don't deny the Enchiridion is a beautiful book, but anyone who studies ancient philosophy know it's derivative and not nearly as deep as the construction of the Stoic system that appears out of reading material on Zeno or Chrysyppus.

They are summarized in a variety of works of ancient philosophers answering to their doctrines. Plutarch, Diogenes, Cicero, Stobaeus, Sextus Empiricus, Galenus, Alexander of Aphrodisia, Philo, Plotinus, Proclus and many many others. The material is very scattered but Hans Von Arnim put it together in the 4 volumes of the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, dividing the testimonia into categories (Logic, Physics, Ethics) for the major authors.

Long & Sedley made a similar work, selecting some passages from Von Arnim and dividing them into categories, at the end of which they discuss the general philosophical doctrines emerging from the material. Some aspects are debatable but we were able to reconstruct with a sufficiently highly degree of accuracy what the complete Stoic philosophical system looked like, since some doctrines were consistently presented in the same way toward several centuries of philosophical debates.

Sedley is the best starting point if you want to have a general feeling of the system. If instead you want a beautiful classical book to read on the worldview of the early Stoa, I would suggest something by Cicero, such as On the Nature of the Gods.

Thanks very much, user.

Aristo was a very prominent philosopher in his era and over 2,000 years after his death his name still survived and some of his ideas are still known. It doesn't matter if he is more or less famous than Chrysyppus. What matters is that a fairly prominent Stoic disagreed with you on the importance of physics to ethics.
You write as if it was a set in stone doctrine of Stoicism, when it was a point of contention. You had Aristo, one of the 7 Stoics mentioned by DL, who disagreed with you. You had Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius who are to this day the most famous Stoics, who disagreed with you.

But no, you pretend to be a bigger authority on Stoicism than all of them. You, some 21st century guy who haven't had a single book of the men you claim to follow, since none of them survived.

>Stoic ethics is not compatible with Platonic ethics, and you would know this if you had read Plato.
I said EPICTETUS' ethics. Which were used as an Ethics manual by late Platonists, by the way, so it seems that they have agreed with me. I have read all of Plato's works, except for The Laws.

Virtue is the sole good and it is necessary and sufficient for happiness. Vicious behavior is caused by ignorance of what is the good.

>Epicurus never says he is happy
He literally called the day he was dying a "blissful day"

>Who are "most people"?
Most modern academics that I have read use Diogenes Laertius, Cicero and Plutarch as their main sources for the early Stoics.

>We are not, as you said.
We are arguing over if Stoic ethics is independent of the other areas of Stoicism. Epictetus is as good of a source as anyone over this.

>but anyone who studies ancient philosophy know it's derivative
The philosophers of his era were not modern academics trying to publish the most innovative research in the most prestigious journals. Epictetus couldn't care less if his work was innovative or not.

But, he had more knowledge about Stoicism than anyone alive could ever hope to have. He had contact with all of the lost material of the early Stoics, middle Stoics and late Stoics.He knew all of them, and not in secondary fragments. He was taught by the "Roman Socrates".
And he disagreed with you.

The greatest of the late Stoics, the man who learned everything Chryssipus and his successors have written. The man who spent his entire life studying and teaching Stoicism. The man who young elite Romans traveled hundreds of miles to be lectured by in Stoic ethics. He... disagreed with you.

Yet, you talk with all this arrogance about how anyone who disagrees with you is some kind of ignorant simpleton.

As I said several times, I have no problem with internal disagreement in the Stoa, but the point is to understand what position is more relevant to the understanding of Stoic philosophy in general. Diogenes was not the only authority in ancient philosophy and I don't understand why you keep referring to his 7 Stoics as if this was the best criteria to decide whether a thinker is relevant or not. The best criteria is clearly to judge by how widely someone's theory were discussed and how much impact they had. Now is a guy who was mentioned 70 times throughout the history of philosophy is less relevant than a guy who was mentioned almost 2000 times and called the second father of the Stoa or not?

>Most Modern Academics I have read
Well, you may have read the wrong ones or you may have to read more. Long & Sedley is the absolutely fundamental test anyone studying the early Stoa touches upon and the best translated collection of Stoic testimonia out there: they quote way more than Plutarch and Diogenes. All modern academics use this book as a reference - together with the SVF. Also, I have asked you to be less vague. Could you provide some names of academics?

You are not addressing my argument on the Platonic tripartition of the soul, which is clearly incompatible with Stoic ethics. Some Neoplatonists (Plotinus in particular) integrated elements of Stoicism in their philosophy, but Plutarch spent a lot of pages of his treatise On Stoic Self-Contradictions. Also, if you claim that vice derives solely from ignorance, you still claim that Plato maintains Socratic intellectualism consistently throughout his dialogues. The Stoics may have relied on it, but for Plato it does not seem to be the case: what do you make of weakness of will (akrasia) in the Protagoras and the Republic?

On Epicurus: I (and any serious scholar you may meet or read) want the Greek word eudaimonia to appear in a philosophical text before assuming people are talking about happiness - this is what you do when you work rigorously on ancient texts. Maybe learn Greek.

Also, please, answer these two questions:

1. If physics and logic are not as relevant as I claim, how comes that authors who are contemporaries and posterior to Epictetus, such as Galenus, Sextus Empiricus, Plotinus, Proclus and Stobaeus, when referring to the thought of "the Stoics" still refer profusely to their physics and logic? Why is everyone still engaging massively with Stoic physics and logic as it is presented by Zeno and Chrysyppus if "Epictetus is as good of a source as anyone"?

2. If you make the argument that I am wrong because Epictetus is better learned in Stoicism than me, shouldn't the same criticism be appliable to Epictetus as well? Wouldn't Chrysyppus automatically be right in claiming the importance of physics and logic, since he is the author of the books Epictetus is so well-read in - and therefore surely more learned than Epictetus in the doctrines he invented himself?

>As I said several times, I have no problem with internal disagreement in the Stoa, but the point is to understand what position is more relevant to the understanding of Stoic philosophy in general.
You are just refusing to read, right now. Take a look at what you posted here . You argue as if "is physics important for ethics" was a non-debate and everyone who disagreed with it was some ignorant self-help author. When it was a point of contention, no matter if among the later or earlier Stoics. Aristo was not as influential as Chryssippus but he was a very famous Stoic.

>Well, you may have read the wrong ones or you may have to read more.
Are you really going to deny that Diogenes Laertius, Cicero and Plutarch are not some of the most used sources when discussing early Stoicism?

>You are not addressing my argument on the Platonic tripartition of the soul, which is clearly incompatible with Stoic ethics
I frankly don't think the tripartite theory of the soul is incompatible with Stoic ethics.

> Also, if you claim that vice derives solely from ignorance, you still claim that Plato maintains Socratic intellectualism consistently throughout his dialogues. The Stoics may have relied on it, but for Plato it does not seem to be the case: what do you make of weakness of will (akrasia) in the Protagoras and the Republic?
From what I remember, Socrates said the opposite of what you think in Protagoras.

>On Epicurus: I (and any serious scholar you may meet or read) want the Greek word eudaimonia to appear in a philosophical text before assuming people are talking about happiness - this is what you do when you work rigorously on ancient texts. Maybe learn Greek.
In your opinion, Epicurus was not happy when he said he was living in a "blissfull day"?

>1. If physics and logic are not as relevant as I claim, how comes that authors who are contemporaries and posterior to Epictetus, such as Galenus, Sextus Empiricus, Plotinus, Proclus and Stobaeus, when referring to the thought of "the Stoics" still refer profusely to their physics and logic? Why is everyone still engaging massively with Stoic physics and logic as it is presented by Zeno and Chrysyppus if "Epictetus is as good of a source as anyone"?
Physics and logic are parts of Stoic philosophy, regardless of being important or not for Stoic Ethics.

>2. If you make the argument that I am wrong because Epictetus is better learned in Stoicism than me, shouldn't the same criticism be appliable to Epictetus as well? Wouldn't Chrysyppus automatically be right in claiming the importance of physics and logic, since he is the author of the books Epictetus is so well-read in - and therefore surely more learned than Epictetus in the doctrines he invented himself?
Chrysyppus and Epictetus were both well learned Stoic masters. Notice that Epictetus had access to all of Chrysyppus books and the subsequent "development" of Stoic ethics.
Which we don't.

On Epicurus, it was not only Cicero who said he would be happy even in the bull of Phalaris

Seneca
>"Epicurus even maintains that the wise man, though he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: ‘This is pleasant, and concerns me not at all.’

Lactantius:
>Epicurus was much more strong in saying "The Sage is always happy, and even enclosed in the bull of Phalaris, he will utter this pronouncement: ‘It is pleasant and I care nothing.

Epicurus was a tough man

imagine needing to read 2000 year old self-help books disguised as philosophy to get through life

What is the problem? I am saying there is a main voice of Stoicism and minor voices. Aristo is a minor voice and as such is not representative of the system as a whole. Who cares if he was famous? You don't seem to be understanding my point. The question I posed is relevant and you need physics and logic in order to understand ethics according to the founder of the Stoa (Zeno) and the second father of the Stoa (Chrysyppus).

I am not denying that Diogenes, Cicero and Plutarch are relevant, I just said that they are not more relevant than another fairly large group of authors which you are not considering at all. This is just a provocation. Address the other names I gave you. Do you know who these people are? Do you know what they wrote about the Stoics?

>tripartite soul is not incompatible with Stoic ethics
Most Stoics would disagree. Expand. In the Protagoras Plato starts problematizing akrasia and claims the problem can be resolved through calculation, by preserving Intellectualism. In the Republic, though, when akrasia appears again, Intellectualism is no more a viable option (see the discussion of epithumia in R. IX). You have read the whole Plato, maybe it is time to start studying it, also?

I claim that Epicurus was not apathe if he was feeling pain, and therefore, according to Epicurus definition of eudaimonia as apatheia, he is not happy in a painful but also blissful day. That is why looking at the Greek is important.

As for the rest, I stand for my position. And Ethic whish is not based in a systematic worldview (physics/metaphysics) is self-help. It can be very well-written, and it may also happen to state some truths without the appropriate justifications for it, but engaging with it without referring to other branches of philosophy makes it inferior to complete philosophical systems. You are prescribed certain actions because the world is and works in a certain way, it's as simple as that. This was a view shared by most ancient philosophy, as stated very clearly in Pierre Hadot - What is Ancient Philosophy? and as shown by the fact that philosophers, from Plato onwards, engaged with every aspect of philosophy. Working on ethics alone means to bastardize philosophy and make it accessible to the masses, like Epictetus did, or trying self-help yourself, as Marcus did while writing his Meditations. I'm not denying these books have value, but if you have to assess their relevance in the history of philosophy in general, this is what you have.

>Who cares if he was famous?
And even if this was relevant to our debate, Chrysyppus is 1993/70 times more famous than him, so what is even the point of bringin "fame" in? The ideas that were most discussed are the most relevant and are the ones most authors in antiquity assumed to be properly Stoic. Among these is the idea that physics and/or logic are more important than Ethics. Epictetus is a voice out of the chorus of both the most important Stoic and contemporary and posterior ancient philosopher's understanding of what Stoicism is. There is no way to prove that it is the main line in Stoicism that Ethics can be studied independently from logic and physics. No one through the history of philosophy agrees with you, together with most modern scholars and - lesser among others - me. On the other side: you, 70 quotations from Aristo, and a self-help book by Epictetus. Come on.

you need to embrace a totalizing ideology to btfo brainlets. An ideology that can explain every aspect of human lifefrom the micro to the macro. I chose oldschool, economic deterministic, materialistic marxism

Lmao, fucking this

>I am saying there is a main voice of Stoicism and minor voices.
You were acting as if there was a sole voice on Stoicism and that disagreeing with it was complete ignorance, when prominent Stoics disagreed with it. Epictetus can't be considered a minor voice.

>I am not denying that Diogenes, Cicero and Plutarch are relevant
Yes you were. You were acting as if they were not some of the most important sources on early Stoicism.

>Most Stoics would disagree.
That doesn't mean the theories are completely incompatible.

>akrasia
What I remember from Protagoras is the opposite from what you are arguing. Are you just trolling me?
"no one who knows or believes there is something else better than what he is doing, something possible, will go on doing what he has been doing when he could be doing what is better. To give in to oneself is nothing other than ignorance, and to control oneself is nothing other than wisdom"

>I claim that Epicurus was not apathe if he was feeling pain, and therefore, according to Epicurus definition of eudaimonia as apatheia, he is not happy in a painful but also blissful day. That is why looking at the Greek is important.
Then why do multiple sources say he claimed that the sage WOULD be happy even if tortured in the bull of Phalaris

>make it accessible to the masses, like Epictetus did
Because Epictetus was super famous for teaching to anyone. He kicked out people from his classes for not being prepared to listen to his lessons.

>No one through the history of philosophy agrees with you
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are not no one.

> Some writers, such as Annas (1993), suppose that Stoic moral philosophy largely floats free of Stoic metaphysics, and especially from Stoic theology. Other writers, such as Cooper (1996, and 2012), suppose that Stoic moral philosophy is intimately intertwined with Stoic metaphysics.

>all the brainlets in this thread
"philosophy" is a SPOOK

Attached: sweet.jpg (594x444, 109K)

I think a much more likely scenario is that these people have gotten to the pinnacle of success, and they still feel unfulfilled. They still are slaves to human desire and folly, and stoicism offers some kind of respite from the fact you can't outrun the human condition.

Stirnerism is a spook

>Epictetus
he is based

lmaoooo