• Complain

Ryan Holiday - Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Here you can read online Ryan Holiday - Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2020, publisher: Portfolio, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Ryan Holiday Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
  • Book:
    Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Portfolio
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2020
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

From the bestselling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience and virtue.Nearly 2,300 years after a ruined merchant named Zeno first established a school on the Stoa Poikile of Athens, Stoicism has found a new audience among those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. Its no wonder; the philosophy and its embrace of self-mastery, virtue, and indifference to that which we cannot control is as urgent today as it was in the chaos of the Roman Empire. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known--and not so well-known--Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it, dusting off powerful lessons to be learned from their struggles and successes. More than a mere history book, every example in these pages, from Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius--slaves to emperors--is designed to help the reader apply philosophy in their own lives. Holiday and Hanselman unveil the core values and ideas that unite figures from Seneca to Cato to Cicero across the centuries. Among them are the idea that self-rule is the greatest empire, that character is fate; how Stoics benefit from preparing not only for success, but failure; and learn to love, not merely accept, the hand they are dealt in life. A treasure of valuable insights and stories, this book can be visited again and again by any reader in search of inspiration from the past.

Ryan Holiday: author's other books


Who wrote Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Also by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman The Daily Stoic Journal The Daily - photo 1
Also by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman The Daily Stoic Journal The Daily - photo 2

Also by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

The Daily Stoic Journal

The Daily Stoic

Also by Ryan Holiday

The Obstacle Is the Way

Ego Is the Enemy

Stillness Is the Key

Trust Me, Im Lying

Growth Hacker Marketing

Perennial Seller

Conspiracy

PORTFOLIO PENGUIN An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC - photo 3

PORTFOLIO PENGUIN An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC - photo 4

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright 2020 by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman Penguin supports - photo 5

Copyright 2020 by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Illustrations by Rebecca DeField. Used with permission.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Holiday, Ryan, author. | Hanselman, Stephen, author.

Title: Lives of the stoics : the art of living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius / Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, authors of The daily stoic.

Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, 2020. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020011797 (print) | LCCN 2020011798 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525541875 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525541882 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Stoics.

Classification: LCC B528 .H66 2020 (print) | LCC B528 (ebook) | DDC 188dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011797

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020011798

Cover design: Sarah Brody

Cover illustrations: Rebecca DeField / 2020 Ryan Holiday. All rights reserved.

pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r1

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

The only reason to study philosophy is to become a better person.

Anything else, as Nietzsche said, is merely a critique of words by means of other words.

No school of thought believed thisin the power of deeds over ideasmore than Stoicism, an ancient philosophy that dates to Greece in the third century BC.

It was Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of the Roman era, far removed from the academy, who would say quite bluntly that there was no other purpose to reading and study if not to live a happy life.

Yet this is not the role philosophy plays in the modern world. Today its about what smart people say, what big words they use, what paradoxes and riddles they can baffle us with.

No wonder we dismiss it as impractical. It is!

This book will be about a different and far more accessible type of wisdom, the kind that comes from people like Seneca, a man who served his country at the highest levels, endured exile and loss, struggled with ambition and personal flaws, and ultimately died tragically and heroically trying to make good on his theories. Unlike the so-called pen-and-ink philosophers, as the type was derisively known even two thousand years ago, the Stoics were most concerned with how one lived. The choices you made, the causes you served, the principles you adhered to in the face of adversity. They cared about what you did, not what you said.

Their philosophy, the one that we need today more than ever, was a philosophy not of ephemeral ideas but of action. Its four virtues are simple and straightforward: Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

It should not surprise us then that we can learn just as much from the Stoics lived experiences (their works) as we can from their philosophical writings (their words). The wisdom offered by Cato the Youngers published works is scantas a lifelong public servant, he was too busy in office and in battle to write down more than a few sentences. But the story of how he comported himselfwith ironclad integrity and selflessnessamid the decline and fall of the Republic teaches more about philosophy than any essay. Along those lines, little survives to us about the theories of Diotimus, an early-first-century BC Stoic, but the legend of his literary fraud shows us how easily even righteous people can go astray. The same goes for the life of Seneca, whose eloquent letters and books survive to us at length, and yet must be contrasted with the compromises required by his job in Neros administration.

And its not just the lives of the Stoics that teach volumes but also their deathsevery Stoic was born to die, whether it was by assassination, suicide, or, most uniquely, of laughter, as was the case for Chrysippus. Cicero once said that to philosophize is to learn how to die. So the Stoics instruct us wisely not only in how to live, but in how to face the scariest part of life: the end. They teach us, by example, the art of going out well.

The Stoics profiled here are mostly men. This was the curse of the ancients: It was a mans world. Still, they were diverse. The philosophers in this book hailed from the far-flung corners of the known world, from Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. And though their philosophy would take root in Athens, the Stoics saw the whole earth as their country. The founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Kition, a Phoenician, would famously refuse Athenian citizenship because it conflicted with his sincere belief in cosmopolitanism. Stoicism eventually made its way to Rome, where it loomed large in Roman life, directing the course of one of the biggest and most multicultural empires in history.

Across the first five hundred years of Stoic history, its members form an astonishing spectrum of stations in life, ranging from Marcus Aurelius, the all-powerful emperor, to Epictetus, a lowly slave who was crippled in captivity but whose writings and life were an example that inspired many, including Marcus. Some of their names you may already be familiar with, and others (Aristo, Diogenes of Babylon, Porcia, Antipater, Panaetius, Posidonius, Arius, and Musonius Rufus) likely not. But each is worth knowing about, whether they were merchants or generals, writers or athletes, parents or professors, daughters or diplomats.

Each has something important to teach us. Each walked the path of virtue in a way that we must learn from.

The word stoic in English means the unemotional endurance of pain. Yet even a cursory look at the stories of these (mostly) men proves an enormous difference between the expectations of that lowercase stoicism and the realities of the philosophy, uppercase Stoicism. Stoicism is a vibrant, expansive philosophy filled with people who loved, who grieved, who strove, who fought bravely at close range in the great battles of history, who raised children, who wrote important works, who stood tall, who believed, and who lived. In their own time, these philosophers resisted the stereotype of lowercase stoicism, that they were unfeeling beasts of burden who suffered through life and looked only inward.

The Stoics were never simply resigned to the current state of things, accepting without objection the injustices of the world. Rather, they formed the most ardent Resistance to the tyranny of Julius Caesar, Nero, and others in the ancient world, even influencing popular democratic reforms. Just as Stoicism was the stern nurse of heroes during the first century of the Empire, to borrow historian Richard Gummeres expression, it would play a similar role for many centuries after, including inspiring the leaders of the American Revolution as well as patriots like Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who led a black regiment for the Union cause in the Civil War (and was a translator of Epictetus). The Stoics have always been people who bled and died for change, whether it was appreciated or successful or not.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius»

Look at similar books to Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius»

Discussion, reviews of the book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.