Questions

All questions 140

• Did Marcus Aurelius really say life depends on the quality of your thoughts?

  A look at what Marcus actually wrote in Meditations 5.16 and how it fits his larger view of the mind.

• Do you have to believe in providence to be a Stoic?

  Marcus Aurelius offers a fallback argument that works whether the universe is governed by providence or by chance, and it shows what Stoic practice actually depends on.

• What did Seneca say about solitude and crowds?

  Seneca warns that crowds corrupt an unfinished character, but he is just as wary of solitude for a mind not yet its own good company.

• How does Epictetus say to master desire?

  A look at what Epictetus actually recommends in the Handbook: not indulging desire, but redirecting it toward what is up to you.

• What does Epictetus mean by saying every situation has two handles?

  A short look at Handbook 43, where Epictetus turns a jug's two handles into a lesson about how to pick up any event.

• How can Stoicism help with social anxiety and embarrassment?

  A look at what Epictetus and Seneca actually say about the fear of other people's judgment and the body's own reactions.

• Why do people do wrong, according to the Stoics?

  Learn why Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius trace wrongdoing to error, not malice, and why that changes how you respond to it.

• Can we really control our beliefs and desires?

  A look at what Epictetus means when he places opinion, desire, and aversion inside our control, and what that claim does and does not promise.

• What is the Stoic reserve clause?

  Learn how Marcus Aurelius pursues his goals while holding the outcome loosely, and why that is not the same as not trying.

• What do the Stoics say about aging?

  Seneca's letters on his own old age show how a Stoic separates the decline of the body from the condition of the mind.

• Should Stoics practice voluntary discomfort?

  A look at what Seneca and Epictetus actually recommend when they tell students to go hungry, cold, or thirsty on purpose.

• What do the Stoics say about happiness?

  The Stoics locate happiness not in circumstances but in the perfection of reason, the one thing genuinely up to us.

• How did Socrates influence the Stoics?

  See how Epictetus treats Socrates as the model of a person who has mastered judgment, dialogue, and fear of death.

• What are the four Stoic virtues?

  A plain account of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation as the Stoics understood them, and why they treated these as the only true goods.

• How do you deal with difficult people at work as a Stoic?

  Learn how Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius handle office rivals, backstabbers, and irritating colleagues without pretending they are not difficult.

• What does living according to nature mean?

  A look at what Stoics actually mean when they say to live in accordance with nature, and why it is not about the outdoors or instinct.

• How did the Stoics practice the evening review?

  A look at how Seneca and Epictetus turned the end of the day into a disciplined check on judgment and action.

• What are the three Stoic disciplines of desire, action and assent?

  A short guide to Epictetus's three fields of training and what each one asks of you.

• How do the Stoics say to forgive people?

  Learn why Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius treat wrongdoing as a kind of blindness, and how that changes anger into pity.

• How should a Stoic respond to political division and upsetting news?

  A look at what Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius actually say about anger, blame, and the people we disagree with.

• What is prohairesis in Epictetus?

  A plain account of Epictetus's term for the faculty of choice, the one thing in a person that is truly their own.

• Should a Stoic comply with unjust authority or resist it?

  Epictetus gives a surprising answer: the question is often malformed, because a tyrant's power over your body is not power over what actually makes you free.

• How can Stoicism help when you feel stuck or without purpose?

  A look at what Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca actually say to someone who has lost their sense of direction.

• How do Stoics deal with failure?

  A look at what Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus actually say about failing at your own principles, and why the Stoic answer is to return, not to quit or to despair.

• What do the Stoics say about ambition and career success?

  A look at what Epictetus says career success actually costs, and why the Stoics treat it as a preferred indifferent rather than a good.

• How do the Stoics build self-discipline?

  A look at how Epictetus treats self-discipline as a trained habit, built by deliberate practice against pleasure and pain, not by willpower alone.

• Should a Stoic care about outcomes they cannot control?

  Epictetus's answer: care about how you act, not about whether you succeed, and see why that is not the same as indifference.

• Should Stoics be involved in politics?

  A look at what Seneca actually says about public life, retirement, and the wise man's true field of action.

• How do Stoics stop overthinking and stay in the present?

  Marcus Aurelius's method for cutting anxious thought down to the one thing actually in front of you.

• What is negative visualization in Stoicism?

  A look at how the Stoics used mental rehearsal of hardship, and why it aims at clarity rather than fear.

• Are virtue and vice really the only good and bad?

  A look at why the Stoics located good and bad only in character, and left everything else, health, wealth, even death, as indifferent.

• What is the view from above?

  A look at Marcus Aurelius's practice of imagining human life from a great height, and why it is meant to sober you rather than make you feel small.

• Can Stoicism help with addiction and breaking bad habits?

  Epictetus gives a mechanical theory of how habits form and unform, and a concrete drill for meeting temptation before it becomes action.

• What is memento mori and how do you practice it?

  Learn what the Stoics meant by keeping death in view, and how Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca actually practiced it.

• What do people misunderstand about the dichotomy of control?

  The dichotomy of control is not a stress-management trick. It is a claim about what you are and what counts as good.

• How is Stoicism different from Cynicism?

  A look at why Stoicism treated Cynicism as an advanced calling rather than a starting point, and what that says about the two schools.

• How did the Stoics respond to the Skeptics?

  Learn how Epictetus answered the Pyrrhonists and Academics who denied that anything can be known.

• How should a Stoic respond to insults or mockery?

  A look at what Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius actually say about being insulted, and why the insult is never the real problem.

• What is Stoic role ethics?

  Learn how Epictetus grounds duty in the relations we occupy, from citizen to son to brother, without making the good depend on anyone else's behavior.

• What is the difference between Stoicism and Epicureanism?

  Two rival schools agreed that philosophy should make you happy, but they disagreed sharply about what happiness is made of and where it comes from.

• What do the Stoics say about love and heartbreak?

  A look at what Epictetus and Seneca say about loving people you might lose, and why the Stoics reject numbness as the answer to heartbreak.

• How do the Stoics say to cope with the death of a loved one?

  A look at what Seneca and Epictetus actually recommend when grief hits, and why it is not the same as suppressing it.

• Does Stoicism tell you to suppress grief?

  Seneca's letters on mourning show that Stoicism asks you to moderate grief, not to hide or deny it.

• What did the Stoics believe about God?

  A look at how Epictetus and Seneca understood God as the rational order of nature and a presence within each person, not a distant judge.

• Is Stoicism actually possible to live by?

  A look at what the Stoics themselves say about the gap between the ideal and the daily practice of living well.

• What is really in my control according to the Stoics?

  A look at Epictetus's opening claim in the Handbook: what actually counts as up to you, and why the answer is narrower than most people think.

• Is Stoicism about suppressing emotions?

  Learn what the Stoics actually asked of grief and feeling, and why it is not the same as bottling emotions up.

• What do the Stoics say about death?

  A look at why the Stoics treat death as neither good nor evil, and how keeping it in view is meant to sharpen how you live rather than frighten you.

• How should a beginner practice Stoicism daily?

  A look at the morning and evening exercises Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus actually used to make Stoic judgment a daily habit.

• What are the core ideas of Stoicism?

  A guide to the handful of ideas that hold Stoic philosophy together, grounded in Epictetus and Seneca.

• How do the Stoics say to manage anger?

  A look at how Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius trace anger to judgment, not to what other people do.

• How can Stoicism help with anxiety?

  A look at how Epictetus and Seneca diagnose anxiety as a judgment about the future, and what changes when you treat it that way.

• Does Stoicism tell you not to love your family?

  A look at what Epictetus actually says about kissing your child, and why the Stoics distinguish loving well from loving in fear.

• Why does Epictetus say to remind yourself that your child will die?

  A look at why Epictetus tells us to remember our children's mortality, and why that is not the same as loving them less.

• Does a Humean view of ethics explain why we praise altruism in others?

  You will learn how a spectatorial, Humean picture of moral judgment can explain why we praise altruism in others even if we are not moved to be altruistic ourselves.

• Are humans naturally selfish, altruistic, or something else according to evolutionary theory?

  A look at a Hi-Phi Nation conversation on whether evolution made us selfish, altruistic, or something less flattering than either.

• What is the principle of comparable sacrifice in ethics?

  A look at the moral principle that obligates you to prevent great harm to a stranger whenever doing so costs you little.

• Can evolution explain why some humans donate kidneys to strangers?

  A look at how one evolutionary psychologist tries to explain a form of altruism that kin selection and reciprocity cannot account for, and why not everyone is convinced.

• Does the character Hari in Solaris achieve genuine personhood?

  You will learn how the podcast conversation on Tarkovsky's Solaris frames Hari's arc from a limited copy to a being with something like moral standing.

• Why do vampire bats share blood with unrelated bats?

  What vampire bat blood-sharing shows about the difference between kin selection and reciprocal altruism.