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Comment by Expez | Hacker News Reader

This was a wonderful read.

Could someone who's gone down this path provide a reading list for someone interested in learning more?

The three best-known literary products of Stoic culture and philosophy are probably:

- Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (make sure to get the Hays translation! By far the best). Aurelius was an emperor of Rome; Meditations are his musings to himself in later life. It's interesting to reading the internal grapplings of a man who was, to his countrymen, basically a walking god.

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Letters from a Stoic

- Epictetus' Enchiridion, which translates roughly as "handbook" and was assembled from the teachings of Epictetus, an exiled former slave, to those who traveled to live and study with him.

I strongly recommend all three. If you're interested in more modern interpretations of the above, a couple good jumping off points would be A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine (which was mostly pretty good) or The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot (which studies Meditations). Ryan Holiday also has a book called The Obstacle Is The Way, though I didn't enjoy it as much as any listed above, to be honest.

A personal favorite gem which, found several years ago: http://stoicletters.blogspot.com/. This blog bundles Seneca's letters into a modern style of prose and is much more accessible while conveying much of the same meaning as the original letters.

Interesting that nobody seems to have had anything particularly worth writing on the subject of stoicism for the past nearly-2000 years.

Stoicism is a secular buddhism for people that don't like the buddhist brand.

Or, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb put it in Antifragile: "A Stoic is a Buddhist with attitude."

Why "with attitude"?

I can't be 100% sure what Taleb had in mind, but I think the idea is that Stoics are a little more defiant than Buddhists, whose reputation is more for passivity. In fact I truncated the quote, both for brevity and because I don't like Taleb's self-censorship, but the original reads as follows:

    A Stoic is a Buddhist with attitude, one who says "f*** you" to fate.

(asterisks in original).

Human condition writing like philosophy and religion formation peaked about two millennia ago. Once its figured out, there isn't too much new to say, unlike, say, technology or fashion. You can write a popularization or translation once in awhile. An eternity of profitable textbooks are possible, just like mathematics.

If you'd like a vision into what Moores Law or computer science will look like in 2000 years, you could do worse than comparing to the humanities peaking 2000 years ago. In 2000 years there will be academic disciples reading Knuth and the lambda-ites will continually be having "revival" journalist articles written about them every couple years and their heretical un-natural love of parenthesis.

It would be interesting to argue that position against something like geometry where at the entry level there really isn't much new beyond Euclid however at the higher end there has been progress and at the low end modern textbooks don't resemble "The Elements" very closely even if conceptually there is nothing new.

Strong fact based arguments could be made either way. Halting-problem-like, the most effective way to figure it out will probably be to wait 2000 years and see what happens.

Many places in the gospels and epistles in the Bible are directly addressing stoicism. Granted, those were also written about 2000 years ago. But people today write and talk about Philippians 4 all the time.

+1 to Pierre Hadot. I actually prefer the Inner Citadel to reading the Meditations. A good intro is also William Irvine's a Guide to the Good Life

I was introduced to stoicism through the writings of Admiral James Stockdale who was shot down in Vietnam, and was a prisoner of war for 7+ years.

In his philosophical writings, he talks about how during those seven years, when everything else failed him, he could only fall back on that which he could control, the heart of stoic philosophy.

This is from when he is ejected from his plane, after having been shot down by enemy fire:

"After ejection I had about 30 seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed on the main street of that little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: "Five years down there at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epicetus.""

Here are the two essays I read, and would recommend.

http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf

I believe the second link should be to stoicism2.pdf

Apologies :P

Here is the second essay: http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/Stoicism2.pdf

I'd suggest reading the Enchiridion first. It's arguably the most influential text of all, and it's a very quick read.

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

Thanks, I've started on Marcus Aurelius a couple of times, and it does indeed seem like a bunch of somewhat cryptical notes to self. Enchiridion seems relatively straight-forward in comparison.

Or how about a watching list? I'll start:

- "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga " http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/

- "Oh Boy" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954701/

- "American Beauty" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/

- "Amélie" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/

Meditations is the usual go-to read by Marcus Aurelius. Then if you are still interested check out the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, etc.

I have some resources on my personal webpage, hope you may find these useful:

http://pa-mar.net/Main/Lifestyle/Stoicism.html

(and will probably update it in a few hours adding stuff from this thread ;)

I'd start with "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca, then read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. If you're looking for a modern interpretation of these thoughts check out "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday

For an Eastern flavored version of Stoic philosophy, take a look at the short Dao De Ching:

http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm

Many of the passages out of the Dao De Ching have a striking similarity to passages in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

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