Category: Stoicism
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Avoidance Always Possible
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 20, Loeb Classical Library no. 58, p. 141, tr. Haines: Suppose that a competitor in the ring has gashed us with his nails and butted us violently with his head, we do not protest or take it amiss or suspect our opponent in future of foul play. Still we do keep…
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Seneca: Omnis Vita Servitium Est
Assume the worst. Assume that Seneca was a hypocrite: he didn't believe what he wrote or try to live in accordance with it. What would it matter? How is it relevant to the fact that countless thousands, over the centuries, have derived inspiration, consolation, and strength from passages such as the following? If a message…
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Seneca on Leisure and Philosophy
Some say Seneca was a hypocrite. But even if it is true, even if he did not believe or practice what he preached in his voluminous writings, what would it matter when he has bequeathed to us such gems as the following? Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they…
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We Annoy Ourselves
There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or it is…
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Seneca on Drinking
In this festive season it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow. A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence is found in Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore: At times we ought to reach even the point…
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Heights and Precipices: Quae Excelsa Videbantur, Praerupta Sunt
Seneca, Tranquillitate Animi, X, 5 (tr. Basore) counsels the chastening but not the extirpation of desire: . . . we must not send our desires upon a distant quest, but we should permit them to have access to what is near, since they do not endure to be shut up altogether. Leaving those things that either…
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Admiration and Contempt
Often it is like this. He is not admirable; it is your unadmirable propensity to admire that confers upon him a quality he does not possess. She is not contemptible; it is your contemptible tendency to contemn that makes of her what she is not. One ideal is to so apportion admiration and contempt that…
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We Annoy Ourselves
There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think of another, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or…
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Alain on Keeping to the Present
Emile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951) was a French professor of philosophy among whose students were Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Chartier’s sunny disposition, however, did not rub off on the brooding Weil. Under the pseudonym ‘Alain,’ Chartier published thousands of two-page essays in newspapers. Were he alive and active today he would most likely be a philosoblogger.…
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Can You Get Through the Next Hour?
The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne. This aphorism of mine is in the Stoic spirit. It illustrates the Stoic method of division. Any process or procedure or undertaking which seems overwhelming or unbearable when surveyed as a whole can…
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Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom
I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late…