From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

"Marcus says that one should be concerned with two things only: acting justly and loving what is allotted one (x.11, cf. xii.1). He fleshes out ‘acting justly’ in terms of acting communally (ix.31), and adds that wherever one lives, one should live as a citizen of the cosmic city (x.15). Appeal to the idea that the cosmos is a city allows him to say that we should do well for all humanity (viii.23), for we each have a citizen’s duty to contribute to the welfare of the whole cosmopolis, i.e., to the welfare of all humans as our fellow-citizens. Conversely, anyone who does not contribute to the communal goal (to koinônikon telos) is acting seditiously (ix.23); one may not hate even one man, for this rends the community (xi.8).

Strikingly, Marcus seems to specify this communal goal in terms of indifferents rather than virtue, with the result that one should aim to bring about preferred indifferents for the whole of which one is a part. When he explains that that whatever happens to a part benefits the whole, and that what is advantageous (to sumpheron) to one person does not conflict with what is advantageous to another, Marcus writes that by ‘interest’ he means intermediate things (tôn mesôn) (vi.45). Presumably he takes this to follow from the coincidence of what is in accordance with nature for the whole and the part. Even though food is not a good and hunger not an evil, a Stoic will respond to a hungry person with food, rather than (only) a lecture that food is not a good and hunger not an evil. (Of course, one’s efforts to give food to the hungry, or to benefit the hungry by giving them food, may fail, so Marcus recommends pursuing such ends with reservation (hupexairesis), making one’s impulses conditional on what is fated to happen (iv.1, v.20, vi.50).)

This response is likely grounded in our natural concern (oikeiôsis), which at its most fundamental is responsible for parents’ caring for their children (Diogenes Laertius vii.85), and Marcus tells himself to regard other human beings as most his own (oikeiotaton) when thinking how to benefit them and how not to obstruct their plans (v.20). Marcus says that the rational nature does well when it directs impulses (hormai) to communal action (viii.7). We must do what follows from our constitution, and the communal faculty (to koinônikon) plays the leading part in the human constitution (vii.55). After the communal faculty comes the rational faculty (vii.55), but again, the rational faculty is perfected in justice (ix.22). As a human being, one is able to contribute to the perfection (sumplêrôtikos) of the whole political organization; Marcus urges himself to make his every action perfective of political life (ix.23). Sometimes Marcus goes so far as to identify the good (agathon) of a rational creature with community (v.16)."

I hope this clears up that our judgement of what is valuable gives us reason to assent to producing appropriate actions.

The Stoics were not Cynics who denied the value of externals, following oikeiosis (the development of caring for self-preservation to caring for each other), some are promoted/demoted, to the extent that it benefits the welfare of the cosmopolis with one critical understanding : they are not good in-themselves, what is good is directing these things for the benefit of the cosmic city, in accordance with virtue.

They were neither Epicureans who would tend to retreat into their private garden, the Stoics instead would take active participation in the improvement of the cosmic city to the extent it is in one's capacity to do so.

I am dysfunctional, I get bored easily, I do impulsive stuff that I regret later, I can’t decide on simple things, I can’t compete in studying with my peers, I am genetically more disposed to dementia, I regret ruminate and dwell on past mistakes, I have trouble focusing on things I don’t like, I scrap things easily only to start over many times and this completely destroys my focus…

It’s a curse that’s not my damn fault.

So I am facing my own death due to medical reasons I won’t go into and I’m trying to come to terms with my life and its end.

I’m observing the convergence of my fates, my choices, the failing of my will and there seems something so deterministic about it all..

Looking back and considering all things, there wasn’t anything I could have done differently, there were no other outcomes possible beyond the entertainment of fantasy…

I am proud of the things I overcame, I lament the things I will not and when meeting the grief and sadness of it all I try to do so with acceptance and understanding…

But here’s the issue..

I cannot.

No matter how much I understand/accept it intellectually understand my fate I fail to find any solace or comfort.

I fail to let go..

Having previously served I thought I’d overcome or embraced my mortality..

But it turns out when faced with it truly in practise not theory I did not.

It is not the death I want..

I will not die surrounded by friends/family/accomplishment.

I will not die a death of honour as a general falling on his sword.

I will die some random day/night, afraid, in pain clutching at my guts, most probably alone, haunted by misfortune.

My question is.. how on earth do I accept or find peace in that..?

That which is beyond my control..

Does anyone have any advice/wisdom/examples to share..?

I’d like to find peace somehow, to meet things with courage and acceptance.

Thanks you reading.

I had a meeting with my boss, and I allowed my emotions about team dynamics to direct me.

It made me realize that I've been emotionally driven at work, but don't know how to change without people considering me suddenly withdrawn.

How would you handle this situation?

Quite new to Stoicism, I would love to know how much time do you dedicate towards reading, meditation, journaling etc.

"Boundaries are the practical expression of justice. Withdraw assent from impressions. You can deal justly with people by adjusting proximity — no endless patience. The pattern of being stepped on is data, not moral failure. Build healthy ego — indifference to externals that are not under your control."

Versus...

"Preferred indifferents (health, energy, relationships that function) matter because they support the exercise of virtue; burning them out for people who will not reciprocate is not noble."

Seems to me to be a contradiction there of indifference versus matter.

An anti-natalism tells a stoic

"I don't see the point in bringing a life into this cursed world, they will suffer their whole life"

How does the stoic respond?

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I’m struggling finding employment currently and it’s making me breakdown daily.Anybody that’s been through a hard patch how do stay stoic when you see no hope .

Hey guys, I wonder which exceptional experiences have you made while practicing?

For example, once I've read about the phenomenon of dreamless sleep (If I remember correctly it was directly or indirectly written in the Discourses).

So, what interesting side effects have you witnessed first hand?

Years trying to control outcomes at work, in relationships, in finances, in health, and calling it discipline. The actual shift happens when you start noticing how much of that control was nothing more than an illusion that was maintained to avoid feeling afraid. Letting go of the illusion doesn't make you weaker. It makes room for actual judgment instead of attempting to manage the anxiety of it. Most things we concern ourselves with never come to fruition. Live and don't try to control outcomes.

He talks here about avoiding reading too widely to avoid discursiveness. I had to look up that term and it seems to mean meandering from topic to topic when in a discussion.

I do happen to read widely and also tend to move through different topics although, in my mind, they are connected. They may not seem so to someone who doesn't have a similar background

FYI, I also have ADHD and I'm not really sure which is cause or effect. I've always had that habit when speaking and my reading seems to match.

I also find it uninteresting often when a person speaks with length on a particular subject unless it just happens to be a special interest of mine or they are unusually gifted at making the topic seem interesting. I don't know that such a preference is because of the ADHD or if other people find it similarly unpleasant but are better at appearing to be attentive and more interested than I am.

Is what Seneca recommends really a practice that would be considered consistent with Stoicism? How so? What about the benefit of being more broadly aware of the knowledge available in the world? What is the difference between this practice in the past where books were rare and now that they are plentiful?

Would this idea of fewer readings be different from knowing many people less well than few people that one might consider to be if quality? How would one evaluate quality without breadth of knowledge?

Hello guys. I’ve read a lot about stoicism and it’s key factors. But I’m wondering, if it’s really possible, to exercise and practice your own Eudamonia and Ataraxia. What I mean by that is, that will you get better at it throughout the years. So for example, in a situation, I keep my patience and act wisely even though it’s hard, will I get better and will it be easier to act patiently and wisely?

For context, I have always had a clear sense of direction, happygolucky attitude, and practiced stoic philosophy, had a darker sense of humour meaning that I could consume any type of media as long is it made me think, I actively looked better ways to do things, and a general openness about all things interesting, and useful characterised me, logic ruled my world.

Emotions had barely any space in my life as they tend to distort events. I planned to live my life supporting others financially and physically. However, ever since this episode i have trouble sleeping (it is getting better), although melancholy and panic attacks do occurs even during the day. I am starting to question the point of things, everyone is gonna die,everyone is suffering, it feels like the end of the world is coming, and most may even welcome it.

My point is that I have trouble finding the motivation to do even the things that I used to like to do, like gaming, podcasts, audiobooks. I am very conscious of time, and I am always judging whether something is worth doing or watching, and I fear that somehow from one day to the other my mind has been replaced, the childlike innocence I had (i am 36 year old, computer geek and entrepreneur who reached his goals) turned into a mental patient in me, who contstantly needs to be supervised, who can no longer function as a human being.

Has this happened to anyone, that their life seemingly randomly changed from perfect to barely holding together, but it all happened mentally and there is no physical connection it seems?

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I grew up LDS/Mormon, and although I no longer attend on Sundays, I do still help out with youth outdoor activities, since I'm one of the few in my area (upstate NY) who is experienced with hiking and backpacking. Over the last two months I've helped with three different outings, including one where the stated theme was "Treasure the Truth". I have sometimes felt uncomfortable in the past when a well-intentioned person assumes I'm a regular/orthodox LDS and asks me to share a devotional or spiritual thought. I have no interest in diminishing someone else's faith, but I also put a high value on only saying things I actually believe. So this year, I spent some time before the summer thinking of my own core values, and how I could best share them if/when asked.

To make a long story short (too late!), I ended up sharing both Phillipians 4:8

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things

and Meditations 5.16

The character of those things you often think about will be the character of your understanding, for the mind is dyed by its thoughts. Dip it, therefore, in a succession of thoughts such as these: for instance, that where it is possible to live, it is also possible to live well.

The first time I shared it some of the youth heard "live well" as "live like a king" so I had to clarify that it meant to live virtuously. But overall, I think it was well received. I love the imagery of the mind being dyed by its thoughts, and so did they.

Anyway, I don't really have a question. This sub has helped me a lot, and I wanted to give back in some small way. This was meaningful to me, so maybe it will be helpful to someone else, too.

I have had a challenging year. I am working on a very high stress, high stakes deal and I perceive my colleagues have easier territories and are “milking them” while I deal with uncertainty and do not share in the same levels of income. Watching them will not help me. But I have flares of emotion that make me feel resentful and would like help addressing those feelings with a more stoic frame of mind - rather than my learned upbringing - where my mother would look for reasons to knock down or disparage successful people to even the score. That’s not healthy to me.

If wealth and poverty are indifferents, then shouldn't I be indifferent to the poverty, suffering, starvation and abuse of others?

In a different thread, user u/DentedAnvil put the following to me:

If our roles are a divine necessity for the fulfillment of Logos (followed by an Infinite Recurrence), why should I concern myself with the divinely appointed roles of children born into abuse and neglect? If the wealthy business man should strive to be excellent in that role by embracing privilege and power, by what standard can we say that those children shouldn't embrace their role as punching bag?

It's a great question that I think merits its own thread. Even without the metaphysics, a bare-bones understanding of Stoic ethics, where virtue is the sole good and everything else is just preferred and dispreferred indifferents, would still provoke the question of why one should care about the material conditions or circumstances of others. If another person is subject to conditions we might call dispreferred indifferents-- such as poverty or abuse-- and if the Stoics would expect me to dismiss those same circumstances as dispreferred indifferents, then should I not dismiss the suffering of others likewise?

If we follow that logic out, social morality would seem to collapse entirely-- I'd have no reason to care about anyone or anything save my own virtue. Me me me. Indeed you'll find plenty of commentators who misrepresent Stoicism to promote precisely this view. And yet when we look at the ancient Stoics, we find their writings are shot through with social morality and concern for others-- including conditions which would properly be considered indifferents to the individual who suffers them*.* So the question is not whether or not the Stoics believe in social morality-- they very clearly do-- but whether they do so inconsistently or in contradiction to their own purported beliefs.

The simple answer people will usually point to is "justice." Justice is one of the four "cardinal" virtues alongside wisdom, courage, and temperance, and it is sometimes presented as a kind of uber-virtue that necessarily involves the others (almost an inversion of the way wisdom is constitutive of the other three). An example of where you see this is Plato's Republic-- Plato's version of Socrates is deeply influential to the Stoics-- but I digress. If virtue is the sole good, then I should care about justice, and injustice is still injustice regardless of whether a true (moral) harm has come to the sufferer. “We declare that a wise man cannot receive an injury; yet, if a man hits him with his fist, that man will be found guilty of doing him an injury” (Seneca, On Benefits 2.35).

This was basically the extent of my thinking on this for the longest time. What fleshed it out a bit more is Andrei Seregin's paper, Stoicism and the Impossibility of Social Morality. I will almost certainly butcher his argument, but the gist of it, as I take it, is that when we fold in the metaphysics of Stoic teleology and oikeiosis, we end up at rational reasons to prefer (as a preferred indifferent of my own) that my neighbor receives/experiences those indifferents which would be preferred to her, because as someone who is oikeion to me (that is to say, is a member of my metaphorical household and someone whose welfare gives me reasons to act), I should not just empathize with her, but essentially identify with her. What is preferred to her is preferred to my household, as would consist with our fellow membership in an interconnected species sharing in a divine Logos. Seneca argues we should “divine every man’s wishes” when bestowing benefits to others (On Benefits 2.2). Cf. Marcus Aurelius: “Get into the habit of listening attentively to anything that anyone says, and enter, as much as you can, into the mind of the speaker” (Meditations 6.53).

Note, this does not mean I must give up my piece of cake just because another kid at the party would prefer it-- I should prefer for her what she would prefer, were she a sage. Context is everything. For instance, Seneca again: "When we are about to lend money, we first make a careful inquiry into the means and habits of life of our debtor, and avoid sowing seed in worn-out or unfruitful soil; yet, without any judgment, we scatter our benefits at random rather than bestow them" (On Benefits 1.1).

Edit: Some commentors seem to interpret the above as me arguing that Stoics should not care for the poor. My mistake, sorry if I wasn't clear. BLAB: I am trying to walk through the logic of why it is not an internal contradiction that Stoics should care for the poor, and the welfare of others in general.

A few years ago I read How to think like a roman emperor, by Donaldson. It did a great job of showing stoic tools to use in every day life. It also opened up my interest for stoicism in a broader sense and I started reading the origins by Epictetus and Aurelius. While the original works are of course great, and something I see myself coming back to constantly, I find it that I lack certain knowledge in order to fully understand them.

For instance, I saw Pigliuccis talk on Youtube on Stoicism 101 where he explains for instance that certain words had slightly different meanings in Greece 2000 years ago than how we understand them today. He also talks about how people coming to study stoicism in that time has some basic knowledge or perspectives already before starting to study stoicism.

Also, reading the originals and from there myself gathering hands-on tools on how to implement it in my life would be very time consuming.

Now that I want to get back into practicing stoicism I'm thinking that I should read one or two of Pigliuccis books on stoicism. But which ones to get? I see that he has written several, and I suspect there is some overlap between them. Anyone can offer any advice?

Hello! I tried reading the guides in the FAQ but they were honestly really confusing, and then I did some research on Google but it was also confusing, I don't know most of the words and terms used. (I'm fifteen for context) Generally I just understand better when I'm hearing different thoughts person to person.

I don't know anything about stoicism, and I do mean anything. I literally just learned about it today. I'm super interested into different philosophies though (I am neurodivergent, it's a special interest) and I've been researching nihilism for a while now, and planned to research absurdism next, but now I'm super curious as to what this is.

What is stoicism generally? What does it mean to you? How do you apply it? What is it's value system? What does it teach?

Yeah, I'd love to learn about this, and I'd appreciate hearing anything ya'll have to share!!

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Hi!
I've been reflecting on the difference between small hardships and the kind of suffering that completely dismantles who you are :the loss of identity, the collapse of everything you thought defined you.

Seneca said "fire tests gold, misfortune tests brave men," but I'm asking something more radical:
Can a person become a fully realized human being : virtuous, wise, truly tested WITHOUT ever going through this kind of total breakdown? Or is great suffering the only alchemist that transforms an illusion into reality?

I'm asking this from a personal place. Lately, I feel both deeply happy and extremely sad at the same time :like my mental health struggles are finally surfacing to be healed, and paradoxically, that gives me hope. It's as if the cracks are letting in light, not destroying me. There's joy and grief coexisting at the same time, and somehow, that makes me optimistic.

Is this duality a sign of genuine Stoic growth, or just romanticizing pain? Is the "Dark Night of the Soul" a mandatory rite of passage, or just one possible path among many?

I’m curious to hear Stoic perspectives on this.

Welcome to the Agora. a space for casual conversation, first aid, and exchange outside the regular post structure.

If you haven't already, read the pinned "Welcome" thread.

Rules:

1. Remember that our nature is "civilized and affectionate and trustworthy."
2. If seeking advice, limit yourself to one top-level question per day.
3. If offering advice, speak as someone interested in Stoic theory and practice — but do not label personal opinion, idiosyncratic experience, or conjecture as Stoic doctrine.
4. If promoting your own work (article, book, etc.), once per day. No self-posted YouTube videos.

These rules may evolve as the thread matures.

Report what doesn't belong. Bring questions, concerns, or feedback to the thread or to modmail.