What are the best books about stoicism
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Epictetus. Then stop.
How many time a day is this going to be asked?
Lurk, man
Dude, that isn't even a book. That's literally his goddamn diary
Have sex
>a series of passages bound in codex form
>not a book
everybody relates stoicism to him, so I posted a picture of his diary. I want different authors
Just read the surviving works of the big three (Epictetus, Seneca, Aurelius) and if you want to learn further, the fragmentary works of the earlier Stoics. Supplement it with some modern articles on the philosophy to help contextualize it and put it into a bigger picture.
Epictetus and Seneca
After reading one you get the gist of stoicism. It's not even complex, yet so many people misunderstanding
Stoicism is not letting your wife get fucked and being happy
Stoicism is divorcing your wife in a calm manner after she was fucked
I dont agree with you. It sounds very simple, but it has deep roots. I had a lecture about stoicism and felt something in me, cant explain what, some sort of calling.
ty, will save
ty :)
Seconded, Lurk more OP, also start with Seneca, head to Marcus, and then onto Epictetus, feel your cognitive abilities expand with each transition
seneca and cicero
>"Thou"
>"Thou"
>"Thou"
He is giving advices. It's adressed to the reader (his sons most probably). Hence second person singular, you plep. Totally not a diary.
Epictetus, Seneca's letter, Aurelius Meditation
Those are the three anyone should start with. If you only care about how to live a good life, then you can also stop there.
>best books about stoicism
Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction
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The Bible, with the additional feature of being saved forever and having an objective, meaningful reason to live a hopeful life.
Don't forget Cicero, who wasn't strictly speaking a stoic, but shared a lot of their ideas and wrote about their philosophy plenty.
I know the cover and title make it look like a self-help book but trust me it is really good and worth reading.
...
anyone who you probably know is ok, i mean, how many times do you wanna get told to know your place, dont let your emotions get the best of you and to not give into temptation?
The Stoics are the obvious answer, although Rufus is criminally overlooked. Cicero's On Moral End's contains a very useful account of stoic ethics. I've read quite a bit of secondary literature and Stoicism and the Art of Happiness is probably the most useful one.
Lol it’s because the horde of legion-Esque anons think you’re cute or something.
Tell them you’re only into me, baby :3
You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
based and ubermensch-pilled
>Dude, that isn't even a book.
Nietzsche has no idea what the hell he's talking about. I wish people like you would get off his knob and actually think.
>Trichotomy of control largely book
The book was okay, but the fact it popularized this makes me dislike the it.
Nietzsche calling anyone else on the planet prideful is fucking hilarious. He also seems to misunderstand the "live according to nature/life" aspect, since humans often try to life contra to nature, or live in an outright antinatural way. He still manages to be lucid and not completely wrong, but then he goes and says some dumb shit like "you like to see everything made after your own image", as if stoicism isn't a practical philosophy where the entire point is to live your life like that. Then at the very end he at least manages to acknowledge that all philosophy exhibits the same "problem".
How do you live against nature?
participating in most of the vices would qualify. such as excessive drunkenness, sexual depravity, gluttony, suicide, intentional destruction of your own environment
Those urges seem NATURAL though. It can be considered just as unnatural to be a Stoic
Butterfly, you have never read Epictetus; we already established this last stoic thread where I had to quote you literally the first section of the Handbook...
all of those urges that i listed primarily stem from a morbidity within that person, an unhealthy physical or psychological status. it doesn't make sense for something like suicide to be entailed by nature if a healthy lifeform wishes to live, or destroying its living space to the point where it can't survive. life may entail all of those unhealthy aspects, but Nietzsche was being dishonest and used the two interchangeably
>Handbook
Call it the Enchiridion, it sounds so much cooler
>but the fact it popularized this makes me dislike the it
Didn't Meditations already do that?
Pierre Hadot has some good books on stoicism.
didju mean me? cuz i never heard of the dude. this is confusing.
Short answer would be self-destructive behavior.
Long answer with an example: What you truly need is food, water and shelter. Everything else is optional. There are things you don't need, but probably have or want, like money, loads of items, fancy furniture, car, property, etc..
All of these things are fleeting and not truly in your control. Your car breaks, your property can catch fire or be stolen, reputation can be slandered, creatures die, and so on.
Now if you obsess over these fleeting things you will inevitably get damaged when they do what fleeting things do and disappear. Or maybe even the prospect of them disappearing is enough to damage you in one way or another, maybe you are riddled with anxiety or you obsessively try to preserve them (with no avail). Which of course is a fool's errand. Things that disappear will disappear. Many mental illnesses come from this unnatural behavior.
So these things you have but don't truly need. You should feel morally/judgmentally indifferent about them. If they disappear it is not good nor bad, it just the way of things.
There are other ways you can live not in accordance with your nature, this is just an example. And what exactly human nature is, is quite a matter of dispute. Different stoics and cynics will have different views on it.
Watch out, you might get weird internet stalkers
The point Nietzsche makes is that stoic black and white characterization of nature doesn't exist. Everything we do and have is our nature and noone is capable of living against his nature. Reality is fluid and trying to enforce rationality and indifference limits one's perception and abilities. Stoics have a good point about dealing with trouble but when it comes to thriving or really living they are helpless. He acknowledges the strengths of stoic thinking but claims that this is only one small element of a strong mind.