Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Stoicism

  • Why Control Negative Thoughts About Other People?

    Negative thoughts are of the other, but in oneself.  They cannot harm what they are of, but they can pollute and disturb what they are in.

  • Lichtenberg on Religion and Stoicism

    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 112, Notebook G, Aph. #24: To make man as religion wants him to be resembles the undertaking of the Stoics: it is only another grade of the impossible. I agree completely with Herr Lichtenberg that the Stoic ideal is…

  • The Stoic Insight and Its Limits

    Within limits we have the power to control our minds, our moods, our responses to people and things, and in consequence our happiness.  Happiness is in some measure made or unmade in the mind.  We all know people who make themselves miserable by their refusal to practice very elementary mental hygiene.  Just as I can…

  • Augustine Against the Stoics

    Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar.  In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4: And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills,…

  • Captain of My Soul but not Master of my Fate

    William Ernest Henley's Invictus ends as follows: It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.       Half-right, say I.  I am the captain of the ship of soul, my soul; I control rudder and sails and chart my course.  But I…

  • The Stoic Speaks

    Love can turn to hate, and hate to love.  But an indifference well-cultivated remains indifference.  Let it be a benign indifference.

  • The Emersonian Travel Passage in Seneca

    In a previous complaint about the travails of travel, I quoted a line from Emerson's "Self-Reliance": "Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places." I claimed that the thought was Seneca's before it was Emerson's. In the meantime the passage has been located in my hardcopy of the Loeb Classical Library, no. 75…

  • Can What Is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for Us?

    In The Stoic Ideal, I stated that the Stoic ideal is "is for us impossible, and so no ideal at all."   The ideal of the Stoic sage is the attainment of a state of god-like impassibility by means of a retreat into the inner citadel of the self, a retreat  of such a nature that…

  • Augustine Against the Stoics

    Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar.  In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4: And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills,…

  • The Stoic Ideal

    The Stoic sage would be as impassible as God is impassible. But here's something to think about: Jesus on the cross died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal. What is the lesson? Perhaps that to be impassible is for us impossible, and so…

  • I Stub My Toe

    I just stubbed a bare toe on the oaken leg of my computer table. But it took a second or two after the moment of impact for the pain to 'register.' So I philosophized: if there was no pain at the moment of   impact when the (minor) damage was done, but there is pain now…

  • Christian Stoicism

    Richard Wurmbrand, From Torture to Triumph (Monarch, 1991), p. 5:      A brother who had been terribly tortured by the Communist police     shared the same prison cell with me and told the following incident:      I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A sharpshooter set out     to demonstrate his skill. In the arena…

  • Seneca on Books and the Library at Alexandria

    De Tranquillitate Animi, IX, 4 (tr. Basore): What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to…

  • Seneca and the Consolations of Chess and Philosophy

    A correspondent reminds me of the following passage from Seneca's De Tranquillitate XIV, 6-7, tr. Basore: Will you believe that Canus spent the ten intervening days before his execution in no anxiety of any sort? What the man said, what he did, how tranquil he was, passes all credence. He was playing chess when the…

  • Epictetus Advises Imelda Marcos

    Epictetus, Enchiridion, tr. E. Carter, XXXIX: The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward, as down a precipice; as in…