What are some criticisms of Stoicism and Cynicism? Why should one not follow these paths?

>to himself privately
You mean publicly in letters, essays, and dramas.

I was talking about Marcus here, not Seneca.

Turning down life’s few pleasures to endure great suffering alone ( atleast he used opium )

I disagree with you on Marcus Aurelius, but...
The most important surviving book on Stoicism is the "Discourses of Epictetus", which was written by Arrian.
Arrian was the best historian and philosopher of his era. He was a competent politician who have risen to the highest levels a Roman could rise in the Empire. I don't think anyone would call him a retard or someone one shouldn't look up as an example.

The Stoic opposition (Epictetus' teacher was a mentor of most of them) fought against tyrants at Rome.

I'm reading Epictetus right now. It's reddit as fuck.

>‘Tell us your secrets.’
>[23] ‘I refuse, as this is up to me.’
>‘I will put you in chains.’
>‘What’s that you say, friend? It’s only my leg you will chain, not even God can conquer my will.’
>[24] ‘I will throw you into prison.’
>‘Correction – it is my body you will throw there.’
>‘I will behead you.’
>‘Well, when did I ever claim that mine was the only neck that couldn’t be severed?’
>[25] That’s the kind of attitude you need to cultivate if you would be a philosopher, the sort of sentiments you should write down every day and put in practice, and one which will invariably get you a gold star on Reddit.

>he's a retard anyway
>doesn't give a single reason why

>and one which will invariably get you a gold star on Reddit.
huh, he was ahead of his time

Damn he predicted reddit? Must've been a better clairvoyant than Nostradamus.

Reddit doesn't have this mindset at all. They probably think the same thing you do about the quote.

Clearly I was talking about Seneca. If I wanted to shit on Marcus, I would have greentexted differently.

>just accept your lot in life, bro
>Said the most powerful man in the Empire

But he was still talking to himself privately.
He was the most powerful man in the Empire, but that doesn't mean his job was easy. He could have just let everything go to shit or let advisors do everything while he partied like a motherfucker, but he didn't. He worked hard at solving problems for the greater good and living a virtuous life.

It absolutely does. Go on any Reddit thread, all of them have this same kind of smarmy conversation, where nobody is really engaging with each other but trying to rattle off supercilious witticisms and cutely dancing around the point like kittens. A real Stoic would be silent or laconic, taking whatever is coming to him with a phlegmatic demeanour and a calm smile, not an air of haughty mawkishness.

I unironically was a Stoicuck untill I read Nietzsche's critique in Beyond Good and Evil. If you're a genuine Stoic you'll hate the purple prose, but it is a calculated technique by N. In short, Stoicism is tyranny against the self and nature for N. Isn't crying, dominating, fighting and fucking in accordance with Nature?

>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 endeavouring 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.

Attached: vanitas.jpg (1200x800, 423K)

yikes this is cringe.

Nietzsche was such a faggot, jesus christ.

I haven't read much Nietzsche, did he actually write like this? It's like Shadow The Hedgehog in high school ranting.

Very cringe.
The Stoics also had a different meaning for nature.

Sure, head on over to Project Gutenberg, some of his books are on there I think.

... and these are the reasons why:

That's what people sometimes missed. Marcus could've had sex with anyone he wanted, asked for all the money in the Empire, killed anyone that rubbed him off the wrong, etc. and yet we see a man ruminating about the human condition, trying his best to act in accordance with nature and playing it out his role the best he could. Constantly reminding himself that people might be wicked sometimes but that they're still fellow human beings with whom he shares the gift of reason.

Epictetus would've probably laughed his ass off especially with "one which will invariably get you a gold star on Reddit".

>live according to nature
we can't grasp nature of things
>live according to virtues
virtues are societal conventions

>richest man in the Empire.
>makes a philosophy about not caring when servants do stupid things
they would love Ayn Rand

>internet stoics
This is the worst meme in years.

welcome to Yea Forums

cope. his point is irrefutable. stoicism btfo