A Simplified Modern Approach to Stoicism | Hacker News Reader

A Simplified Modern Approach to Stoicism

philosophy-of-cbt.com

118 pointsedmaroferreira48 comments

Shorter list :

- Read the "Epistulæ Morales ad Lucilium" from Seneca

- Read the "Bhagavad Gita" to avoid being stuck in a given interpretation.

- Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself

And therefore make your own list of how to live your day. Feeling grateful and trying to see the lord in every being you encounter, friend or foe, is is mine.

Also "no man does evil knowingly" seems wrong - sorry, but a tiny minority of people really want to see the world burn.

Just remember there are very few of them, that by default you should assume people have good intentions but sometimes fail.

EDIT: Following the excellent comment of nerdfiles one can only see with "showdead" option, order of reading is important, and my suggestion might not be the best.

Not everyone can start with Seneca. You will certainly need a starting point to take advantage of the stoic teachings, ie something to help you see how useful stoicism could be to you.

This starting point is Logic for many people, but it can be anything that tries to teach how to look for the truth and to pinpoint problems. I personally found Atlas Shrugged very interesting, others will have different tastes. The Dharma can be useful. Richard Feynman work is great. A vast personal experience could also help, since people who have traveled the world usually develop interesting insights.

(BTW nerdfiles, your account has been blacklisted)

> Also "no man does evil knowingly" seems wrong - sorry, but a tiny minority of people really want to see the world burn.

I think the point is that those people believe the world deserves to burn, or that by burning, it would be a better place. Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

> Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself.

You can't find the truth by yourself. It's just too big and complicated. Individuals believing that they have discovered some kind of truth is at the root of a lot of suffering. Going after the truth is a good thing, but you cannot and should not do it alone.

> Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

This is still just as naive, in my opinion. There are plenty of people who knowingly trample others to advance their own selfish goals, who know that it's unfair, and who sincerely don't care.

Yes, but the point is they do not do evil knowingly, in the sense of comprehending how the nature of their soul came about and determining this is the best course of action under reflection over the space of all possible minds; the evolutionary process endowed them with a cognitive structure that primes them to think that way, and we should mourn the deterministic necessity of them spending time living in that mind and body, but we should never condemn them or call them evil.

Why exactly would you not want to condemn them or call them evil if they are doing things which we believe are bad for society?

Is it not a useful judgment?

I agree - it's not that they are doing good, just that they believe it. It's because of this that you can't just trust your own opinions on what's true and good. Without some kind of external moral compass, you're left with moral relativism.

In general, you can fit the motivations for evil into one of four categories: there's evil for instrumental reasons, evil for ideological reasons, evil as a result of threatened egotism, and evil as a result of pure sadism.

There are some genuinely sadistic people, but they tend to be few and far between, to the point where once we find one of them, they spawn books and movies and huge long wikipedia pages.

There are plenty of people that will trample others to advance their own selfish goals. They know that they're doing something wrong, but they feel they need to in that circumstance, or are just willing to do that.

Then there are people who are genuinely thinking that they're doing good, and that the world will be a better place after they do whatever evil thing they do. In this context it's better to think of evil as a social concept rather than a personal one, because these people don't actually think they're doing something evil in a long-term context-included sense.

I think conflation between some of the above types of evil is causing a lot of needless dispute in this thread.

(This is mostly from the Baumeister chapter in The Social Psychology of Good and Evil, which is a very well-edited collection of notable psychologists discussing this very topic, and I highly recommend it.)

>- Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself

Keep an open mind. While reading the Stoics take the trouble to read Augustine's Confessions or dip into Aquinus' Summa Theologica. Breeze through the Quran. Spend some time with the Book of Mormon. Drop into a synagog and get to know the worshipers there. Don't dismiss ideas out of hand. Contemplate them, and let your curiosity lead you where you need to be.

Excellent suggestion: religious textbooks are great sources of inspiration.

However, they are dangerous, in the fact that while 90% of the content is great, the remaining 10% may damage one's personal progression. These 10% require adequate preparation to be seen as what they are - pitfalls, which is why I suggested to "shy away" from them, at least initially.

It is far too easy to get "stuck" in religion and take the whole 100% as perfectly valid thoughts. Swallowing up the full doctrine "fills" the cup of the mind, which is no longer open to further knowledge.

The only "safe" reading might be the Dharma, because of it self-criticizing nature and the suggestion to dismiss the teachings if they conflict with reality and experience

Dogma prejudices atheists just as often as theists. For example, Darwin's Origin of Species contains a pitfall in that its readers can be persuaded to believe certain families of mankind are less evolved than others. Similarly, Marx's Capital and Manifesto of the Communist Party can lead one to believe that inequality is purely a function of material possession. A disciple of Smith's Wealth of Nations could reduce the world to merely a place to make money and which is the slave of market forces, etc. All of these works, while potentially "dangerous", stand on their own merits and should be read.

"Adequate preparation" is prejudice and should be spelled out as such. Socrates' dialogs stand as examples of the traditional Western method of exploring ideas, wherein one man questions another with the object of mutually understanding the essence of a thing, or, by being prodded toward future learning when having reached an uncomfortable ataraxy. This differs fundamentally from the critical theory taught in modern universities, wherein one is taught, rather than to seek an idea's essence, to tear it down beforehand.

Instead of fearing ideas, one should explore them.

That's an interesting point - one I mostly agree with.

But if you explore the ideas fully, how much do you keep of your initial self? And how do you do that, if you knows beforehand of the pitfalls, such as the ones you mentioned? How can you explore ideas if you already fear them??

From my limited understanding of philosophy, changing oneself too much is not desirable, since in the end the orignal opinions and self are lost - http://lesswrong.com/lw/y5/the_babyeating_aliens_18/

Analysis requires a reference, a broader frame, to detect such pitfalls - it seems pointless to experience ideas whose defaults are already too obvious to you.

>But if you explore the ideas fully, how much do you keep of your initial self?

The point of learning is to change oneself. Socrates addressed this by likening the mind to a wax block, upon which ideas are "stamped" (in his Meno (sp) Plato contradictorily claimed that all knowledge is recalled from a separate preincarnate existence, but that's another topic). In learning one seeks to move from one state of knowing to another. Ideas change oneself. The alternative is shunning ideas, and thereby shunning one's growth.

>And how do you do that, if you knows beforehand of the pitfalls, such as the ones you mentioned?

Do not assume one will be inevitably converted by what one reads.

>How can you explore ideas if you already fear them?

Stop fearing them. Be stoic, or use some other virtue to overcome one's trepidation.

>Analysis requires a reference

Correct. The reference of analysis are its fundamentals. Much of Aristotle's Organon and Metaphysics, as well as Plato's Timaeus, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Plotinus' Enneads, etc., concern the fundamentals of thought. The examination of these fundamentals, while in some sense "obvious", are in no way "pointless".

The true pitfall is fear.

Note that Smith did call out the moral failings of market failures in capitalism, and the need to address them politically.

If you're going to include the Book of Mormon, you should at least include Dianetics as well. Both are equally valid.

Dear God, don't read the Book of Mormon or the Quran. I thought the Bible was soporific but those two...

Seriously? The Book of Mormon? Why not the same L Ron Hubbard, or maybe some Robert Heinlein?

You can't really put the writings of the Augustine the hippo [sic] alongside the Book of Mormon.

Religion has the great advantage of being practiced in community. It may not have the pure wisdom of Seneca, but what good it can offer is more likely to stick.

Unfortunately, the Christian community offers more social capital than the Stoic or the atheist in the west.

Sure. If you want to be a politician in the West, you can't really avoid participating in a Christian community of one kind or another. But people who are interested in stoicism probably have other goals.

This is true only in America, or maybe in the "Anglosaxon" world in general, but certainly not in Europe.

It isn't true of Ireland, Britain, Australia or New Zealand. I don't think it's true of Canada. Among WEIRD [0] nations I think the US is the only one where being openly atheistic would abort any serious political career.

[0]Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democracies

While being an atheist won't sink you, being christian certainly helps in Australia. For example, John Howard was fond of recording video messages which would get played in christian churches during the service.

My guess is that it would be more helpful at a local than a national level, but church influence could definitely swing a few key seats.

According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 43% of Americans would not vote for a qualified atheist candidate. For comparison, the numbers for a Muslim candidate or a gay or lesbian candidate were 40% and 30%, respectively.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/Atheists-Muslims-Bias-Pres...

As a counter-example, everyone in Australia knows that our Prime Minister is at least agnostic. It might well be a point in her favor, to the very slight extent that people care.

Now if only they would stop censoring the Internet and using the same citizen monitoring that the Chinese do it might count for something.

The west is obsessed with religion, as has been pointed out, however hypocritical it might be it's a well practiced ritual in DC if you want to get elected for anything.

Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.[1] (d. 1616) has sometimes been called a "Christian Seneca".[2]

I had never heard of him or his major work "Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues" until 2004, when someone I met on a retreat recommended that I hunt down a copy of Joseph Rickaby's[3] masterful translation from the original Spanish.[4][5]

I had the opportunity to read through "PPCV" over the period of about a year back in 2007-2008, and I can only say that it leaves a remarkable and lasting impression. I would think his treatises on humility, examination of conscience, and mental prayer (meditation) would be of great interest even to those who aren't particularly religious -- i.e. the practical wisdom contained therein is like a toolkit for coming to "know oneself" for true.

[1] http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Alonso_Rodriguez

[2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2540029

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rickaby

[4] http://bit.ly/PPCV-1of2

[5] http://bit.ly/PPCV-2of2

If anyone is interested in a book on the subject, I really like William Irvine's "A Guide to the Good Life" (http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953...)

I have some extensive book notes here: http://www.quora.com/Leo-Polovets/Exceptionally-long-book-no...

I am currently reading this book and also find it a good modern interpretation. It has a concise background on the stoics and combines and interprets the teachings of many of them in to an easy to understand principles. I bought this in combination with Seneca's "letters of a Stoic" and "Meditations", by Marcus Aurelius thinking it would a good introduction before reading these.

I have noticed many of Stoic practices reproduced or supported by popular religious practices which makes sense if they aid in practitioners feeling the tranquillity/happiness that the stoics sought, even if done through fables and commandments.

Personally, I would cut out the middle men. Avoid glossy-covered and over-marketed summaries of other men's work. Grab a copy of Epictetus' discourses and his Enchiridion. Read Aurelius' meditations. Get familiar with Plutarch's Lives.

This will get one started cheaply: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LUCRETIUS-EPICTETUS-12-Britannica-Gr... Be aware, this volume includes Lucretius who is not a stoic, rather, a typical reductionist Epicurian. The Enchiridion can also be found cheaply: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Enchiridion-Dover-Thrift-Editions-By... . Here's a fine translation of Plutarch's Lives: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Plutarch-Great-Books-of-the-Western-... . These works are cheap and readily available used on eBay and elsewhere. Take advantage of it if you are seriously interested in learning.

Avoid the marketing. Read Knuth or K&R rather than "How to Program in 24 hours", etc. The same goes for philosophy. There's nothing new under the sun. Seek out what's stood the test of time, incorporate it into your fundamentals, and proceed from there.

Ah, but we do know more about the world in many ways than the original Stoics did. William Irvine's book recasts the Stoic teachings a bit: we don't believe that we were created by Zeus, for example, so he talks about how to interpret Stoicism in an atheist way (if one wishes).

>Ah, but we do know more about the world

I disagree completely. The appeal to progress is just as much a fallacy as the appeal to tradition. We do know more physical minutia, ie., slates and chalk have fallen to iPhones, sandals to sports cars, and yet the essential spirit of man is the same as it ever was, and that is what the Stoics are addressing.

The descendents of Aristotle have continued reducing the world to its sub-components in the centuries since Plato and he disagreed as to whether reality is in the whole or the part. But again, this is a fundamental division found in philosophy, and ultimately nothing new.

>he talks about how to interpret Stoicism in an atheist way

...it would be better if he had taught how to interperet it in an agnostic way, rather. Atheism is a closed-minded agnosticism.

> The appeal to progress is just as much a fallacy as the appeal to tradition.

And what if the spirit of man is shaped by his technology and culture?

> Atheism is a closed-minded agnosticism.

Ouch. There are no compelling reasons to believe in a god or gods. Atheism is the rational response to this state of affairs. Agnosticism is for the weak.

>what if the spirit of man is shaped by his technology

What if it isn't? Man no longer wars with trebuchets. Does that mean that the nature of man has changed? Similarly, man will someday set aside personal computers for something else. Does that mean that the nature of man will again change? A man's tools are not his nature, rather, nature is known through man's acts. Such acts are exampled in works such as Plutarch's lives or in the Meditations of Aurelius and speak just as true today as when they were written. Epictetus and the above cited wrote for the layman and require no arbitrator to make them pertinent or safe for the present day.

Recognize that there materialistic and idealistic worldviews, and further, that the the former is ubiquitous today. Try to see beyond the coloring of the present. Man's stuff is not the stuff he's made of. Capiche?

>what if the spirit of man is shaped by his culture?

Then one would benefit by looking outside of the prejudices of the present when reading for edification. Avoid marketing forces.

>There are no compelling reasons to believe in a god or gods. Atheism is the rational response to this state of affairs. Agnosticism is for the weak.

Atheists are really just closed minded agnostics. They are believers every bit as much as theists. Both are dogmatic.

Kant rationally discusses this in his Critique of Pure Reason. We have only five senses and a handful of a priori concepts with which to understand the world. All our knowledge is heaped up upon these principles of reasoning. In other words, what we know is fundamentally limited by what is used to know things. Objective certitude is far rarer than it is generally made out to be.

Beware of dogma, whether atheistic or theistic.

We're veering pretty far off topic here, but consider that, rather than attacking atheists or agnostics, we should just be more precise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probabili...

Atheism isn't dogma; whereas theism is. I will show you why.

We have both argued that we should approach this rationally. My reason tells me that I have been given zero proof for the existence of any of the gods described by theists. Kant himself (who you mention) discusses various proofs and dismisses them. What we are left with is the puzzle of existence itself and this feeling (that we all have) of wonder at the majesty and mystery of the world. I am disinclined to attribute any of this to some supernatural agent. Why should I? I see no reason to. Clearly I cannot rationally know there is no god or gods but I as Douglas Adams pointed out I'm not going to take some kind of wishy-washy hedge my bets stance on the matter. When talking about the existence of some kind of objects that has the attributes that god or the gods are claimed to have the burden of proof lies with those who assert this agent's existence. Therefore I shall continue to believe in the non-existence of a god or gods. Show me my dogma: I don't assert the existence of anything without proof, I reject the proof claims of others and assert the non-existence based on lack of evidence.

> A man's tools are not his nature, rather, nature is known through man's acts.

Man's tools alter reality and alter our perception of reality. The camera changes the artist; the atomic bomb changes us all. I guess the term "[essential] spirit of man" is kind of nebulous anyway so I wouldn't argue strongly against you. I am sure we agree on many more points than we would disagree on. I have no beef with stoicism.

We do know more physical minutia, ie., slates and chalk have fallen to iPhones, sandals to sports cars, and yet the essential spirit of man is the same as it ever was, and that is what the Stoics are addressing.

Somehow we know, collectively, not to keep slaves anymore, or go to war so often. I find it difficult to label that as physical minutia.

Agreed. Stoicism is not "philosophy" as we've been taught to think of it (that is, dense, boring, confusing).

Even the old translations of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus are straight forward enough for anyone.

BBC Radio 4 has a programme called "In Our Time". Many episodes of this programme will be of interest to HN readers.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl)

Epicurianism is going to be broadcast soon. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qf083)

Here's a list of the philosophy programmes: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/phi...)

And here's the episode for Stoicism: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9fs)

Even shorter list: 1. Plan your day. 2. Execute on the plan 3. Review and score how it went.

Hmm... Might be good advice. That's just the format or structure used to explain the exercise minus any content, though: a beginning, middle, and end. The actual content in my article is the practice of a form of mindfulness based on the central precept of Stoicism. In other words, you've missed out the "Stoic" part.

On the same site as this article you can also complete a "Stoic Attitudes Scale" that we've been developing in collaboration with a team of psychologists and academics linked to the research on Stoicism at Exeter University:

http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/complete-online-survey-the-stoi...

About 100 people have done it so far but at this stage we're just collecting feedback on the concepts included for incorporation into a revised design. The feedback has been that people have found it really interesting and useful, though. Feel free to check it out, you can still complete it online.

Regards,

Donald Robertson

I'm the author of the article. Someone else kindly posted it here. I just noticed an awful lot of traffic suddenly coming from this link. So thought I'd say thanks! Also, if anyone has any questions please let me know. Happy to help. The article is just based on some research I'm doing for a book called Teach yourself Stoicism, incidentally. You may also be interested in the research on Stoicism that's been going on at the University of Exeter, with which I've been helping a bit. This is their blog:

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/

Regards,

Donald Robertson

Here's a very interesting article about Albert Ellis, one of the originators of cognitive-behavioral therapy, who was directly influenced by Stoicism: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013ta_talk_gr...

"Give me the wisdom the see the difference".

But sometimes people (Aaron Swartz comes to mind) find the courage to fight and try and change things even when the odds of winning against large companies or the government seem remote.

Sometimes humanity advances when certain individuals fight against the odds. I wish I had their courage.

You might also be interested in this online poll that's been running for a while "Who's your favourite Stoic?" Over 400 responses so far and you can vote or view the results, which are kind of interesting in their own right:

http://poll.fm/3zsyo

Regards,

Donald Robertson

-Contemplation of Death: Contemplate your own death regularly, the deaths of loved ones and even the demise of the universe itself.

Mission Accomplished.

Wait, the quoted text is considered advice? Ugh.

No, it's not advice. It's an item from a bullet-point list of contemplative exercises found in traditional Stoicism and other Socratic philosophies. The meditation on death (melete thanatou) was mentioned by Socrates as an integral part of his approach to philosophy, according to Plato and it's common to many other philosophical and spiritual traditions, even Eastern approaches such as Buddhism. You'd need to read the literature to understand the concept of the exercise, although that doesn't necessarily mean you'd agree with it you won't get a reasonable idea of what it's about just from that one sentence description, and that's not what it's meant for anyway. Still not everyone's cup of tea, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com