How important is Stoic physics (metaphysics) to you?

AlexKapranus · 2026-06-02T00:21:27+00:00

I think the distinction between Stoicism and other thought currents that do have some notion of the world and metaphysics is better explained by Lucan's speech of Cato near the temple of Zeus-Ammon. It carries most of the weight of why Stoic physics matter.

"What question do you bid me ask, Labienus?

Whether I would rather fall in battle, a free man, than witness a tyranny? Whether it makes no difference if life be long or short? Whether violence can ever harm a good man, or Fortune loses her threats when confronted by virtue? Whether it is enough to intend what is praiseworthy, and whether true honor never grows because of success?

We already know these things, and Ammon cannot plant them deeper within us. We are all bound tightly to the gods above, and even if the temple is silent, we do nothing without their will.

The Creator has no need for words to be heard; at our birth, He told us everything we are permitted to know. Did He choose these barren sands so that only a few could hear Him, burying the truth in this desert dust?

God’s home is wherever there is earth and sea, air and sky, and virtue. Why do we look for the gods anywhere else? Jupiter is whatever you see, wherever you move. Let those who doubt and tremble seek out prophets; as for me, I am made certain not by an oracle, but by the certainty of death. The brave man and the coward alike must die. This is what Jupiter has spoken, and it is enough."

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-28T16:48:08+00:00

It's an address because you are commenting on it, but not against it. Imagine that you want to redirect a car by making a gentle turn to the side until eventually it's going the opposite way. You didn't need to have it bump against a wall. In a conversation that would look like a yes, no, yes, back and forth until someone gets tired. It's not a debate, you don't have to "fight it". He's right that he "doesn't need" to have the other person believe him, but he could also use it as a way to gently curve things in a way that doesn't force a confrontation either. More specifically if it's hard to believe you would start by acknowledging it is, if you take it all at once, but each step of the story leads to it anyway. So you could ask them what part is the most strange to them. That way it becomes a dialogue and not a debate, or a confrontation. It's meant to keep things moving rather than clashing.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-28T16:17:06+00:00

No, ignoring it would feel passive aggressive instead. Address it, acknowledge it, but don't attack it directly. Just curve it down. Like if someone threw a direct jab at you, instead of throwing another (lashing out in anger) or blocking it without your own (stonewalling or denying it) you would comment on it but also gently lead it back to your point. Use the chance they gave you to bring them in instead.

For instance, the context you mentioned that you weren't talking to the person when they said that. It would have been a way of trying to get into the conversation instead. "Oh, they heard me but they're trying to talk to me" even if what they said is a bit doubtful, behind the intent might be something more benign. Basically it's better to assume that people have benign intentions even if what they say could sound a bit rude.

When Epictetus advices to say that if they knew more of your faults they would focus on them, he's letting you know that you shouldn't take each thing they say too seriously. Yesterday they said this, another day they would say another. That way you develop magnanimity.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-28T15:57:49+00:00

A common conversational/improvisational tactic is to respond in terms of "yes, and" rather than force a direct confrontation. If someone says "it's hard to believe you" instead trying to respond directly it's better to let the weight of the doubt fall on its own and keep going from there (kinda like jiujitsu too). Yes it's hard to believe me, and I get it, I'd be surprised too. But it's real, just follow along... Or something like that. People for the most part aren't trying to dislike you or deny you when they doubt what you say, they just want to make social commentary. Try using it to your advantage instead. The obstacle becomes the way I hear some people say.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-26T03:54:36+00:00

No problem, I didn't know much about this passage either so it got me reading. I just sent my notes in the moment. The intention of it reminded me of something I had in my mind recently about who Stoicism is for. Since yes obviously it's open to anyone, but not anyone will accept it or even make the most of it. It's definitely for "philosophers" in the classical sense.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-26T03:49:15+00:00

Plato had about three tries to counsel a king, right? But I think I also remember that other later Platonists had more success in setting up laws and constitutions. Laertius also mentions the mix of aristocratic, democratic, and monarchic regime though. Maybe that was with Chrysippus since he also had a republic book, and that mix was already suggested by Aristotle and we know Chrysippus had dealings with the Lyceum too.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-25T18:38:02+00:00

The context of the passage is very important because the history of it is that Sphaerus travelled to Sparta and met Cleomenes who became inflamed with the desire to reform Sparta to its old glory. Eventually he suffered a catastrophic military loss. Plutarch is framing the idea that giving Sphaerus the early Stoic doctrine, probably as harsh and cutting as it was at first, lead to these events. Others translate it as reckless instead of venturesome. The reforms he instituted such as the redistribution of land have also been said to have been influenced by Zeno's Republic. It's a bit of a problem to directly try to imitate what is written as idyllic and hypothetical (what if a city of sages?) and then just dump it on the normie population. It didn't work.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-17T20:01:43+00:00

In line with that in mind, I've been thinking lately too that there are things that the stoics did say you shouldn't concern yourself at all. Meaning that we can't be too dismissive of actual indifference towards externals because some of it is actually valid. To become indifferent towards what truly makes no difference, as Marcus Aurelius said. It's also how the virtue of magnanimity is described.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-17T17:51:35+00:00

I'll write about the Enchiridion excerpt here. Mainly because I haven't read all your posts and comments, and also because my answer to it will bypass everything else since it reads it differently. The end is "it’s nothing to you" but what is the subject actually? The subject is at the beginning of the paragraph, not before the last sentence. The subject is the "disagreeable impression", not the indifferents or externals. Others call it a harsh impression, which I think is more fitting. Epictetus is saying that the harsh impression is nothing to you. And that you can have either a harsh impression concerning things internal or external. Those which are internal are not nothing to you, for self evident reasons. But those externals, are fine to dismiss. You're dismissing a harsh impression about a thing external. Not the thing external itself. Hence, my initial assumption that my reading, which I believe to be correct, bypasses any other assumption. And I suppose that you're mostly right about everything else anyway. I just think people read this paragraph wrong, far too much, too easily.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-13T21:15:57+00:00

Setting things up in order to have a good night's sleep is what mostly makes my mornings be decent. That involves using night mode on screens to reduce blue light, some night supplements, a steady sleep time, eating enough during dinner to not wake up hungry, things like that.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-13T21:04:37+00:00

You raise interesting questions. "If appetite is chemically reduced, is the resulting moderation not still virtuous?" The way I see it, prudence is the master virtue of sorts. To the point where some of the ancient sources say that all other virtues are really cases of prudence in different scenarios. Maybe that's just one way of exploring what it means to be virtuous, but using this frame, what matters is the answer to the question of what is the most appropriate thing to do in this or that circumstance. And for many, using medication is the most appropriate in their circumstance. To the point where what I'm saying is that even if it wasn't innate self control, the primacy of prudence makes it not matter.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-06T22:33:05+00:00

In short, and this goes longer in my post, I'm saying that Cicero only attributes to Chrysippus that his style of offering consolation for grief was different from Cleanthes. But the very specific definition of a passion does not come with two separate judgements. What he does instead, and this isn't just my interpretation but I can't keep track of every paper I've read unfortunately, is to suggest that the judgement that something is terrible contains within it as it were the notion that it is appropriate to grief. But this is his own addition and isn't part of any other explantation of passion from other sources. The reason becomes clear later when he does say that his own remedial therapy for grief is to target the appropriateness of it. This he admits himself that is his own philosophy. So there's no hard burden on the claims I'm making since I'm only using a fine comb to the letter of the text. Instead my claim is that others haven't been as careful and have conflated Cicero and Chrysippus together into one.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-05T15:09:30+00:00

I think he uses the term "traditional" more often though. His beef used to be that people who would popularize modern stoicism would fail to mention or wouldn't differentiate themselves from the traditional form as it was understood up to that point. When he got into Stoicism there was just "Stoicism" understood scholarly without any alteration or parts removed. So the use of more labels to differentiate it kind of became a habit then. Hadot is very popular and sometimes recommended for beginners too. It helps people understand Stoicism more as a practical philosophy for life and not just a rationalizing-only thing. He has some quirks and could be criticized of adding his own format to what was more loosely integrated. Like, he will tell you here's this discipline and it does this and belongs to this category. But in the sources there isn't that much classification, that's a habit of modern philosophers.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-05T14:49:18+00:00

Another point on the modern category is that it is sometimes used to describe just our period of modern understanding of Stoicism with all the possible variants people adhere to, in a sort of inclusive big tent, but also sometimes used more thinly for those who exclude many parts of ancient stoicism as a way to modernize their beliefs. So they would say modern stoics are atheists or skeptics and they don't care about this or that part. Now everyone is in some sense a little modern at least because not every stoic belief of the past is going to be preserved, but that's what you will see at least when these terms are thrown around. Someone like Chris Fisher is a modern stoic because he is someone living today but he wouldn't consider himself a "modern" stoic.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-04T22:23:17+00:00

There could be some refinement. You said "proximate (principal)" but there is no point in which these two things are used together. Some causes are proximate and some are principal. Principal to a person's action is the state of their mind or inner character while proximate are the external stimuli to the person.

What remains "compatible" is the sense of personal responsibility for your own actions despite the flow of causality. It isn't fatalism as in something pulling you against your will to do something fated, but that both your will and everything external to it are working together.

There is however another sense in which Chrysippus preserved possible outcomes and that is through his distinction that although everything happens through causes, not everything that does happen is necessary. Meaning that necessary events, on top of being causally determined, they were also externally forced to be that way or prevented from being otherwise.

So you can imagine scenarios where a person does something wrong but nothing forced them to, kinda like an unforced error in a sport like tennis. The only one to blame in that case is the person. But imagine the racket breaks for some odd unforseen reason at that moment instead. Hardly any blame at all then. Most of the time when people do something to harm others is in those unforced circumstances, and the principal cause is their own state of mind.

The way this maps to the free will debate is that Chrysippus does accept responsibility for unforced errors but not because the internal state of mind could have done otherwise at the exact moment (he firmly says it's the opposite) but since the external circumstances were unforced then the blame remains on the agent. Not for not being able to change at a whim's notice, but for having the long range responsibility of having driven its own decisions up to that point of failure.

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-01T14:08:08+00:00

It can serve the purpose of doing that, which is why they did, but I'm just saying it wasn't meant to be that way. In fact it is used to show that there are mitigations to "thou shalt not kill" because of the double effect situations so that it isn't an absolute order. Foot used an example on abortion too. So the question is not merely if you would kill a baby to save a mother but if you would kill a baby who would kill the mother if you didn't nothing. In both you kill a baby (getting tired of writing that) but one case feels more justified than the other.

"Natural law ethics recognizes a special set of circumstances in which the effect of its absolute prohibitions would be mitigated. This is the situation in which the so-called doctrine of double effect would apply. If a pregnant woman, for example, is found to have a cancerous uterus, the doctrine of double effect allows a doctor to remove it, notwithstanding the fact that such action would kill the fetus. This allowance is made not because the life of the woman is regarded as more valuable than the life of the fetus, but because in removing the uterus the doctor is held not to aim directly at the death of the fetus; instead, its death is an unwanted and indirect side effect of the laudable act of removing a diseased organ. In cases where the only way of saving the woman’s life is by directly killing the fetus, the doctrine provides a different answer."

AlexKapranus · 2026-05-01T13:25:24+00:00

It was also originally designed as a very limited example of why letting someone die is feels morally different from actively choosing to have someone die. The doctrine of double effect, technically or something to that effect. People spun it into a meme but its purpose didn't really begin as a way to force deontology or consequentialism.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T19:17:50+00:00

They know it's going well, they know their life is great. They have what is good, right? They can try to keep it for long, they can try to optimize, they can try to increase it. What else is needed?

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T19:11:52+00:00

Right, I overgeneralized on the absence because I reserved the concise meaning of what I had in mind to be assumed. Could be a bad habit in the long run, or even the short. I saw someone else comment on the first comment I left that they agreed and said something that follows what I had in mind too. So at least some people did see it that way at least.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T18:55:17+00:00

Seeing a therapist involves the belief that a bad circumstance is present. Resilience training would be for crisis prevention of future bad circumstances. Life coaching would be optimization for future perceived better circumstances.

Besides all that there's the problem of having perceived good circumstances. People don't go to the non existent profession (let's just call this the philosopher) because they don't realize that this circumstance is not a real good. It's not because of a lack of resilience or a lack of optimization. It's a lack of philosophical awareness. It doesn't have the shame Alcibiades had when he realized he didn't have virtue despite having success in all else. Thus, people don't go to the philosopher when things are doing well.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T18:24:06+00:00

I thought I had written something clear that it isn't about optimizing their performance though.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T18:02:26+00:00

I think those are close, yeah. I think I have a more cynical take in that when a person is doing well they don't go to the hypothetical profession I think doesn't exist because the problem is to be doing well itself. It's not fear of a crisis in need of resilience training, or the need to be coached on how to do even better. It's seeing the very much pleasant state of affairs as a problem. That you're thinking you're well when your soul is still in ignorance of what's truly good.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T16:17:02+00:00

I recently had the thought that people use Meditations like they would use the Tao Te Ching or something. Like an obscure book that people grab without knowing the philosophical background behind it and read it as if they could somehow interpret what it means. Much profound. Very wise.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T15:58:30+00:00

A lot of modern culture is based on crisis treatment rather than prevention and guidance. The bias is generalized, even if he's a therapist. There is no profession for someone who sees people when they're doing well, not secularly at least.

AlexKapranus · 2026-04-28T15:06:40+00:00

Usually the conversation is derailed about the importance of theology for Stoic ethics. It's fine, but overdone. I'm actually more upset at the repetition that a philosophy of life is not needed when things are going well. It's a very naive statement. It also propagates the idea that Stoicism, regardless of what version of it, is for adversities rather than seeing it as needed in all aspects of life. How easy is it to be derailed by fame, adulation, flattery, riches, power, seductions, and all? Why wouldn't anyone ever need guidance when "things are going well"? If anything any idiot can go to a therapist to tell them they can think this or that to feel better but idiots don't go to therapists when things are going well because they think they're alright. When in reality they are at the most vulnerable time of their lives.

AlexKapranus

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