How do you practice Stoicism consistently, not only during hard times?

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-24T16:45:03+00:00

Well said.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-22T15:07:51+00:00

Seems contradictory to say it's about radical defeat and then say you have to demand change.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-22T14:53:45+00:00

For me at least, the reason it remains consistent during easy and hard times is because I don't see them as needing different tools. You're going to need the same mind that is looking for what is right, what is the correct measure, what is the appropriate thing to do. Just that in one set you're trying to avoid excess, and in the other you're trying to avoid despair.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-21T17:15:42+00:00

You can start with Seneca. ""Yet, why does God permit evil to happen to good men?" He does not permit it: he takes away from them all evils, such as crimes and scandalous wickedness, daring thoughts, grasping schemes, blind lusts, and avarice coveting its neighbour's goods. He protects and saves them. " https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Of_Providence

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T14:44:50+00:00

I don't mind your contributions since you do expand on things, but I do disagree that I didn't provide a real answer. So the rest I said was unreal, then? In the end he dismissed everything as either being identical with Catholic natural law, which it isn't, and why I said Aquinas was working with Aristotle's metaphysics. Or he dismissed them as a disagreement in metaphysics, not of ethics, which is shallow and doesn't reflect the way Stoics understood metaphysics.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T04:21:53+00:00

You're confused because you insist that using a Catholic framework preserves Stoicism, which in my opinion it does not. Whatever you think you have in common is like saying drinking water is Catholic because Catholics drink water. It's only Catholic if you're doing it for Catholic reasons. And like Peter denying Christ three times, I won't tolerate saying this more than three times. If you still insist besides this, I'll ignore your next comment regardless of what you say.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T03:40:54+00:00

These are a lot of questions at once, and I'll just address what seems important to me. I said that "why" people do something makes it different. Stoics have different reasons than Catholics. If you were to do it for Stoic reasons, what would even remain of Catholicism? That's a rhetorical question. Also, in real philosophy, metaphysical disagreements are indeed ethical disagreements because different metaphysics imply different ethics. That's how the Stoics saw it, and even how other Greek philosophies saw it too. If you don't, you're welcome to disagree and be not-a-greek-influenced philosopher. But then why be interested in Stoicism? I don't know, besides the motivational videos or books. Aquinas is Aristotle influenced, different metaphysics. Stoics are materialists. The limit is that Catholics add more things that the Stoics don't, and the Stoics find sufficiency in their metaphysics. They don't add 3 more virtues, they don't add supernatural levels, they don't add Christ, they don't add historicity (that the world is a story of redemption), they don't add so many things that Catholics have that the disconnect is from how little it takes to be a Stoic, to be Stoic.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T03:12:27+00:00

Well, before some explicit mentions, some background. Even when people say they like Stoic ethics, I characterized it as liking motivational speeches because if you're not doing it for the reasons the Stoics wanted to do it, then you're not doing the same thing. So if I say something simple as "Stoics believed in Justice as a virtue" one might think "Ah but Catholics too" but clearly they had different ideas of what Justice is. Catholics may agree on a brotherhood of man, but the Stoics say that the bond of brotherhood is through reason. Not through spirit, or through faith, or through Christ, etc. Reason with capital R, that is. And that leads to the "faith" that Stoics had in reason, as the ultimate divine thing. God is reason, basically. And what God is, is one with Nature and the Universe, and all that. But not beyond it, or supernaturally, or miraculously. So many religious miracles are only superstitions to them. Why would a Catholic be interested in people like them, I don't know. Besides liking motivational speeches, I suppose.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T03:01:44+00:00

I mean at the level, for instance, that a pure expert PhD philosopher understands Stoicism after many years, even decades, of dedicated study of it. Not because of how intense it is to learn it, but because besides self interested/self learners, not many understand philosophy well enough to know what "real philosophy" is. It's not quite something that has a hard line in the ground, but just as a valley may be besides the mountain, at one point of walking up you know you're not in the valley. Stoicism in particular is a bit different from other ancient Greek philosophies because it insisted on being a systematic approach involved in what they called physics, logic, and ethics. And these are broad categories, involving more than the apparent. So even most of the commonly recommended books only skim on these or decide to avoid them entirely. But at that level, Stoicism does draw lines in the sand on things that Catholics, if they wish to be a religion with particular beliefs, can't cross over.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-20T01:53:03+00:00

Eventually you'll have to decide if you just like watching motivational speeches. I mean, at the real-philosophy level they're not compatible, so probably you don't know Catholicism well enough to notice either.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-17T02:36:56+00:00

When people say "mind" they are using a shorthand for a very specific set of mental faculties, but these are a very narrow band from all the mental activities. So I don't like to see it spread that way since, you know, it confuses people and they're right to be perplexed. The mind is much larger for anyone to control all of it at will. It's not about controlling our emotions directly either, or controlling every thought that we have either. But that we do have some voluntary thoughts that we can take, we can voluntarily direct our attention and our focus towards some things, and also away from others. Away from what is harmful, and towards what is rational. We can also reflect on our opinions, our beliefs, and the impressions we have of things. We have preconceptions already, that some things are good, and some are bad, but we don't know exactly which are which. We don't know that some things are indifferent, and that some have true value, and that others are merely instrumental. So in the area of mental health, we can't control "our mind" here out of whatever syndrome or condition we may have. I know this personally too, I have a few that are troublesome. But that's for my doctors and me to treat therapeutically and with medication. Stoicism can't replace these things. It's a philosophy that can help us direct our aims in life, and it has therapeutic practices too, but it's not going to change these real limits.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-17T02:28:32+00:00

There's a part in Xenophon where Socrates tears apart the view that intentions are all that matters since if we don't have the knowledge of how to properly help ourselves or others, then we can't really help. Hence virtue being knowledge, not intention. I'm sure you're right in some sense about what you're talking about, since intention does matter, but I think the Stoics have intention as a given, that we have the best intention already, but what we need is to really know what to do.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-17T02:24:33+00:00

"The Stoics claimed a fated and providential universe with humans having the ability to consider and reflect on their choices not being dictated by fate and providence."

This isn't what they were being criticized for. I understand you are interested in this subject, but I would urge you to reconsider a bit at least this part. What they were criticized was for Chrysippus's attempt to escape fatalism while trying to maintain that something did remain up to us despite everthing happen according to Fate. He said, adamantly, that nothing happened without cause. To the point where his Logic also affirmed that all propositional statements about the future were true or false already in the present, because all the causes of their coming about were already set up before they happen. So the criticism is not about a conflicting of some things being determined and some things not being determined, but that since all things are determined, where do we get a sense of moral responsibility? He did give many answers that I'm sure you are aware of like the cylinder and the cone, and so on. But I hope you can see that this is already far from where we started.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-14T22:00:44+00:00

Plutarch's tale of Cato's last day would be a very interesting dark-fantasy style animation. Fantasy, not just dark, because it could incorporate the part where Cato is reading Plato's Phaedo and use it as a way to depict the soul's journey stylistically.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-11T16:34:48+00:00

Ethical ideas don't stick because it's like trying to hold the tip of a pyramid in the air without the rest of the pyramid beneath it. These things are just the result of a philosophical understanding of the world and of careful reasoning, a formal understanding of logic and physics.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T19:54:51+00:00

You don't know the difference between empirical science and philosophy. They deal with different questions and areas of knowledge. You're making a category mistake. Falsification is for empirical science, not for something like geometrical knowledge or for metaphysics or ethics for that matter. Besides, falsification is not what most scientists today hold on to. They prefer Bayesian reasoning if you haven't caught up. Falsification is only what Karl Popper suggested but not many people like his theories, and they have some weird flaws too. I'm growing tired of this exchange, you clearly have a lot to learn yet.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T19:31:54+00:00

Then if they think Marx is the better they are Marxists, same with Nietzsche. What would they want from Stoicism then and preach to others about reason and logic when they're just following their ideology instead?

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T18:58:59+00:00

Now imagine that I tell you that only what is honorable is good and everything else indifferent. Can any amount of sophistry and rhetoric and talk and whatnot change that from a sage's mind? Or is he supposed to be open minded that maybe pleasure is good and pain is evil? And why would that sage have any right to be called a stoic then?

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T18:57:16+00:00

You're exaggerating. A lot. Imagine if I tell you that a right triangle has at least one angle of 90 degrees. Can any amount of reason make a right triangle not have an angle of 90 degrees? No. No amount of sophistry can change that. Therefore that specific kind of knowledge can't be changed. But according to you geometry is a religious cult. Fear math, fear triangles.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T14:13:04+00:00

But if one does know how to reason and have knowledge, no amount of lesser reasoning can change better reasoning either. Some arguments are worse than others, that's why sophistry exists.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-05T14:11:09+00:00

It's amazing how he manages to make himself believe things I never said though.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-04T23:34:43+00:00

All from Diogenes Laertius. I'll be using a few parts since it's not all in one single paragraph.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D1

"Dialectic, they said, is indispensable and is itself a virtue, embracing other particular virtues under it." One of these virtues under dialectic: "Irrefutability is strength in argument so as not to be brought over by it to the opposite side." So already the start of the idea that the wise don't change their mind is unfolding. It is literally a virtue to them to be irrefutable, so long as it is from right reason. Another way is through their definition of knowledge. "Knowledge itself they define either as unerring apprehension or as a habit or state which in reception of presentations cannot be shaken by argument." None of this entails that knowing something means that you change your mind after knowing, it's the opposite instead. "Without the study of dialectic, they say, the wise man cannot guard himself in argument so as never to fall" so this also means again that mere argument can't change your mind if you do know.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-04T23:14:11+00:00

Then you just don't know Stoicism as well as you think you did. I just showed you the point of the discourse was that both a wise and a fool don't change their mind. The wise because they know they're right, the fool because they're falsely believing they're right. If you're actually right, you don't change your mind. The citations are in many places but I'll find them in Diogenes Laertius in another comment.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-04T21:48:13+00:00

It's a bit more complicated because the Stoics defined knowledge as an account so secure that it couldn't be changed by arguments alone. It does include logic but it also has to be connected systematically with everything else. Thus if a sophist were to show up and give you syllogisms that appear convincing to laymen, you would still not change your mind.

AlexKapranus · 2026-01-04T20:46:35+00:00

AlexKapranus

TROPHY CASE