George Tanner - Stoicism--A Detailed Breakdown of Stoicism Philosophy and Wisdom from the Greats: A Complete Guide To Stoicism

Stoicism:

A Detailed Breakdown on Stoicism Philosophy and Wisdom from the Greats

George Tanner

2017

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Stoicism: Learn A Detailed Breakdown on Stoicism Philosophy and Wisdom from the Greats

By George Tanner

Copyright @2017 By George Tanner

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Introduction

F or over two thousand years the Stoic school has lived, died and been reborn according to the whims of fortune. In its earliest days, it consisted of a small but precocious group of Greeks pacing the public spaces of Athens, teaching virtue by example and challenging vice with argument and irony. In its middle period, it yawned through the Greek islands and into Anatolia and developed a consistent doctrine which earned it a place among the great schools of ancient philosophy. At its height, it stretched across the Mediterranean, carried by the ships and soldiers of the Roman Empire, and whispered in the ears of statesmen and slaves alike. And when its flame was extinguished with the Empire in which it burned, it lived on through Christian doctrine and belief, a specter floating through the pens and consciousnesses of monks and theologians as they copied and recopied texts and carried its ideas into the modern age.

Today it lives again, first and with the great energy in cognitive behavioral therapy, and second in its own right, as a philosophy whose message resonates in spite of its age. Its emphasis on living well, on attention to others, our community, our planet, meet modern problems at the heart and shift the focus of daily life from living well in the sense of pleasure to living well in the sense of virtue. And as a bonus, Stoicism teaches how to deal with difficult coworkers, to cope with stress, to live according to our values, and to choose values that are becoming of our nature as human beings.

So what is Stoicism? The answer to this question in many ways turns on another question: What is wisdom? Further, what part does wisdom play in our daily lives? For the Stoics, wisdom is the virtue that governs all others. It directs us first to choose our ends, those things for the sake of which we do everything else, and how to pursue those ends. If I am a thief and I come up with a new trick or a subtle way of pilfering what does not belong to me, I am clever because I was inventive in obtaining my goal. But I am not wise because my goal, to take what is not mine, is not just, because it damages both the person from whom I am stealing, insofar as I have hurt them materially, and myself, insofar as I have degraded myself by the practice of a vice. Similarly, if I have a noble end, for example dedicating myself to charity, but in order to carry out this end I take loans and bury myself in unsustainable debt, I am not wise because I acted imprudently in pursuit of my goal. Both justice and prudence are cardinal virtues for the Stoics, and they appear together such that it is impossible to practice one while violating another. Stealing from one person in order to be charitable to another, for example, is neither just nor prudent. It is not just because, as before, it is an injury to myself and to another party, and it is not prudent because it is unjust. Stoicism is that school of philosophy for which wisdom, being for them the state that obtains in a fully developed human nature, is the end of all ethical activity, is the goal of practicing the virtues in correct relationship with one another, and is thus the goal of an ethical life.

Stoicism as an ancient school may be thought in opposition to its rivals. Aristotles Peripatetic school held that the end goal of an ethical life was eudaimonia , which roughly translates as human flourishing. Wisdom and the other virtues were and are important for Aristotelian ethics, but, unlike for the Stoics, they were not sufficient for the good life, nor did they exhaust human happinesspleasure and a bit of good fortune are also necessary on Aristotles view. For the Epicureans, another rival school, pleasure is the aim of ethical life, is sufficient for a good life, in particular, the relief of pain. More than any other school, the Epicureans were direct competitors with the Stoics. It might be easy to see why. They are, for example, not as concerned with virtue as either the Peripatetics or the Stoics, and though they also hold wisdom to be a cardinal virtue, prudence, for them correct choices with respect to pleasure and pain, is the center of the virtues.

The love of wisdom is, for the Stoics as with their contemporaries, a life in a state of what may be called a kind of desperation. It is akin to a lover who thinks only of their beloved. In his Symposium, Plato has Socrates say that love lives between humans and their desires. The end of love, the result of the lovers union with their beloved, is reproduction. In the case of people, loves aim is the creation of children. In the case of trades, loves aim is the production of crafts. And in the case of wisdom, the lover seeks to produce and to spread concepts. In a sense, then, the philosophers goal is always pedagogical. Where possible the philosopher seeks out the truth of the world behind appearances. But not satisfied with keeping knowledge, the philosopher endeavors to spread it through thought and action, to right error by example and fill the gaps of discourse.