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September 16 - October 1, 2024
Stoicism therefore evolved out of Cynicism, and the two traditions remained very closely associated right down to the time of Marcus Aurelius.
The ancient philosophy of Cynicism focused on cultivating virtue and strength of character through rigorous training that consisted of enduring various forms of “voluntary hardship.”
He emphasized the fundamental difference between a Sophist and a Stoic: the former speaks to win praise from his audience, the latter to improve them by helping them to achieve wisdom and virtue.
when animals are alarmed by the appearance of danger, they take flight, but after they have escaped, their anxiety soon abates and they return to grazing in peace once again.16 By contrast, the human capacity for thought allows us to perpetuate our worries beyond these natural bounds. Reason, our greatest blessing, is also our greatest curse.
It would be an oversimplification to say that this just means to stop complaining, but in many cases the Stoics did advise along those lines.
The Sophists, as we’ve seen, sought to persuade others by appealing to their emotions, typically in order to win praise. The Stoics, by contrast, placed supreme value on grasping and communicating the truth by appealing to reason.
The term “mentor” comes from Homer’s Odyssey.
We use the word “pleasure” very broadly to encompass almost any positive feeling. However, the Stoics distinguished between the sort of pleasure (hedone) we get from “external” things like food or sex or flattery and the deeper sense of inner joy (chara) that Marcus is talking about.
it’s important to leave out emotive language (“They just treated me like trash and threw me out on my backside.”) or value judgments (“This is totally unfair!”). Just stick to the facts as accurately and objectively as possible.
For if it troubles me not at all that my body only occupies a small portion of space, then why should I be afraid that it only occupies a small span of time?
