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Comment by RhodoYolo | Hacker News Reader

No one talks about the fact that one of the biggest stoics, Marcus Aurelius was a terrible emperor the roman empire. He settled the goths inside roman land with a forced migration - which didn't turn out too well not too long later. Teleological thinking is built into Stoicism that is the kink in it's armour.

He 'taught' you how to live a good life, in a journal that was 'his personal journal, not meant for publication'. It clearly reads like it was meant to be published and his son turned out to be commodes, easily top 5 worst emporers of all time.

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FYI, “chink” in the armor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chink_in_one%27s_armor

Sounds like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't read into Marcus Aurelius' personal achievements as a vindication of stoicism, and nor do I care if his diary was for public consumption. His musings and messages are much more important to me.

That's like criticising Jesus because he was betrayed by one of his disciples.

This is fair.

My personal philosophy is to imitate success. Marcus was born to the purple so it makes sense to limit and find balance in the stoics before him. True stoics have this 'lack of free will' twinge to them, where bad things happening is a way of life and you have to just roll with the punches.

Let's look at another Stoic and his accomplishments, seneca. He was exiled, came back and tutored Nero (Another crazy emperor) and ended up killing himself.

Why is Stoicism held to such a high standard when it's examples are so poor. It seems to turn people into this laconic acceptance instead of having fun and doing stupid shit for the sake of it.

It's far from clear that Aurelius was a bad emperor. Most historians have judged him to be quite a good one, in fact.

Rather than a weakness, the teleology inherent in Stoicism is part of what makes it attractive against the ubiquitous reductive materialism of the modern world. One can just as easily point to materialism's lack of teleology as a critical weakness that ruins any virtues it might otherwise have had.

I also disagree that his journal reads as though it was meant for publication. In fact I get the opposite impression when reading it, that a man like Aurelius would have been mortified to know some of these entries would be known and re-read by audiences of millions of people for thousands of years to come.

It's also not clear how having a son who turned out to be a bad man and heir would count against a philosophy that explicitly rejects the idea that we can control such things.

All your points are fair - If stoicism works for you than all the more power. The fundamental tenant of all philosophies is to live the best life possible. For me, this is where the true beauty in philosophies lies.

Stocism doesn't work for me, I like to wear nice clothes, indulge in nice dinners when i should have saved more money, do stupid things like travel (Which seneca seems to have a strong dislike for) and have a general unbalanced life, where i get drunk with my friends and hate my life for the next three days. Life is about the highs and the lows, who needs balance.

How does it "clearly read like it was meant to be published?"

Well - Maybe there was some light editing done. But to keep it so unpersonal is personally amazing to me if you thought no one was ever going to see it.

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