Questions

All questions 140

• Did Marcus Aurelius really say life depends on the quality of your thoughts?

  A look at what Marcus actually wrote in Meditations 5.16 and how it fits his larger view of the mind.

• Do you have to believe in providence to be a Stoic?

  Marcus Aurelius offers a fallback argument that works whether the universe is governed by providence or by chance, and it shows what Stoic practice actually depends on.

• What did Seneca say about solitude and crowds?

  Seneca warns that crowds corrupt an unfinished character, but he is just as wary of solitude for a mind not yet its own good company.

• How does Epictetus say to master desire?

  A look at what Epictetus actually recommends in the Handbook: not indulging desire, but redirecting it toward what is up to you.

• What does Epictetus mean by saying every situation has two handles?

  A short look at Handbook 43, where Epictetus turns a jug's two handles into a lesson about how to pick up any event.

• How can Stoicism help with social anxiety and embarrassment?

  A look at what Epictetus and Seneca actually say about the fear of other people's judgment and the body's own reactions.

• Why do people do wrong, according to the Stoics?

  Learn why Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius trace wrongdoing to error, not malice, and why that changes how you respond to it.

• Can we really control our beliefs and desires?

  A look at what Epictetus means when he places opinion, desire, and aversion inside our control, and what that claim does and does not promise.

• What is the Stoic reserve clause?

  A look at how Marcus Aurelius pursues outward goals while keeping his real aim, his own character, untouched by failure.

• What do the Stoics say about aging?

  Seneca's letters on his own old age show how a Stoic separates the decline of the body from the condition of the mind.

• Should Stoics practice voluntary discomfort?

  A look at what Seneca and Epictetus actually recommend when they tell students to go hungry, cold, or thirsty on purpose.

• What do the Stoics say about happiness?

  A look at why the Stoics locate happiness entirely in the quality of our own reason, not in luck, pleasure, or success.

• How did Socrates influence the Stoics?

  See how Epictetus treats Socrates as the model of a person who has mastered judgment, dialogue, and fear of death.

• What are the four Stoic virtues?

  A plain account of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation as the Stoics understood them, and why they treated these as the only true goods.

• How do you deal with difficult people at work as a Stoic?

  Learn how Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius handle office rivals, backstabbers, and irritating colleagues without pretending they are not difficult.

• What does living according to nature mean?

  A look at what Stoics actually mean when they say to live in accordance with nature, and why it is not about the outdoors or instinct.

• How did the Stoics practice the evening review?

  A look at how Seneca and Epictetus turned the end of the day into a disciplined check on judgment and action.

• What are the three Stoic disciplines of desire, action and assent?

  A short guide to Epictetus's three fields of training and what each one asks of you.

• How do the Stoics say to forgive people?

  Learn why Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius treat wrongdoing as a kind of blindness, and how that changes anger into pity.

• How should a Stoic respond to political division and upsetting news?

  A look at what Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius actually say about anger, blame, and the people we disagree with.

• What is prohairesis in Epictetus?

  A plain account of Epictetus's term for the faculty of choice, the one thing in a person that is truly their own.

• Should a Stoic comply with unjust authority or resist it?

  Epictetus answers that the question is often misframed, because what the tyrant can actually touch is never your character.

• How can Stoicism help when you feel stuck or without purpose?

  What Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca say about finding work worth doing, and how to start today.

• How do Stoics deal with failure?

  A look at what Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus actually say about failing at your own principles, and why the Stoic answer is to return, not to quit or to despair.

• What do the Stoics say about ambition and career success?

  Learn why Epictetus treats promotions, status, and invitations as indifferents you can pursue but never need.

• How do the Stoics build self-discipline?

  A look at how Epictetus treats self-discipline as a trained habit, built by deliberate practice against pleasure and pain, not by willpower alone.

• Should a Stoic care about outcomes they cannot control?

  Epictetus's answer: care about how you act, not about whether you succeed, and see why that is not the same as indifference.

• Should Stoics be involved in politics?

  A look at what Seneca actually says about public life, retirement, and the wise man's true field of action.

• How do Stoics stop overthinking and stay in the present?

  Marcus Aurelius's method for cutting anxious thought down to the one thing actually in front of you.

• What is negative visualization in Stoicism?

  Learn what the Stoics actually meant by rehearsing loss in advance, and why it is not pessimism.

• Are virtue and vice really the only good and bad?

  A look at why the Stoics located good and bad only in character, and left everything else, health, wealth, even death, as indifferent.

• What is the view from above?

  A look at Marcus Aurelius's practice of imagining human life from a great height, and why it is meant to sober you rather than make you feel small.

• Can Stoicism help with addiction and breaking bad habits?

  A look at what Epictetus actually says about how habits form, relapse, and are broken, and what that does and does not promise.

• What is memento mori and how do you practice it?

  Learn what the Stoics meant by keeping death in view, and how Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca actually practiced it.

• What do people misunderstand about the dichotomy of control?

  The dichotomy of control is not a stress-management trick. It is a claim about what you are and what counts as good.

• How is Stoicism different from Cynicism?

  A look at why Stoicism treated Cynicism as an advanced calling rather than a starting point, and what that says about the two schools.

• How did the Stoics respond to the Skeptics?

  Learn how Epictetus answered the Pyrrhonists and Academics who denied that anything can be known.

• How should a Stoic respond to insults or mockery?

  A look at what Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius actually say about being insulted, and why the insult is never the real problem.

• What is Stoic role ethics?

  Learn how Epictetus grounds duty in the relations we occupy, from citizen to son to brother, without making the good depend on anyone else's behavior.

• What is the difference between Stoicism and Epicureanism?

  A look at how Stoics and Epicureans disagreed about what makes life good, and why that disagreement runs deeper than pleasure versus virtue.

• What do the Stoics say about love and heartbreak?

  A look at what Epictetus and Seneca say about loving people you might lose, and why the Stoics reject numbness as the answer to heartbreak.

• How do the Stoics say to cope with the death of a loved one?

  A look at what Seneca and Epictetus actually say about grief, and why their advice is not to feel nothing.

• Does Stoicism tell you to suppress grief?

  A look at what Seneca and Epictetus actually say about weeping, mourning, and the difference between feeling grief and indulging it.

• What did the Stoics believe about God?

  A look at how Epictetus and Seneca understood God as the rational order of nature and a presence within each person, not a distant judge.

• Is Stoicism actually possible to live by?

  A look at what the Stoics themselves say about the gap between the ideal and the daily practice of living well.

• What is really in my control according to the Stoics?

  A look at Epictetus's opening claim in the Handbook: what actually counts as up to you, and why the answer is narrower than most people think.

• Is Stoicism about suppressing emotions?

  Learn what the Stoics actually asked of grief and feeling, and why it is not the same as bottling emotions up.

• What do the Stoics say about death?

  A look at why the Stoics treat death as neither good nor evil, and how keeping it in view is meant to sharpen how you live rather than frighten you.

• How should a beginner practice Stoicism daily?

  A look at the morning and evening exercises Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus actually used to make Stoic judgment a daily habit.

• What are the core ideas of Stoicism?

  A guide to the handful of ideas that hold Stoic philosophy together, grounded in Epictetus and Seneca.

• How do the Stoics say to manage anger?

  A look at how Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius trace anger to judgment, not to what other people do.

• How can Stoicism help with anxiety?

  A look at how Epictetus and Seneca diagnose anxiety as a judgment about the future, and what changes when you treat it that way.

• Does Stoicism tell you not to love your family?

  A look at what Epictetus actually says about kissing your child, and why the Stoics distinguish loving well from loving in fear.

• Why does Epictetus say to remind yourself that your child will die?

  A look at why Epictetus tells you to remember your child's mortality while kissing them, and why that is not coldness but clarity.

• Does a Humean view of ethics explain why we praise altruism in others?

  You will learn how a spectatorial, Humean picture of moral judgment can explain why we praise altruism in others even if we are not moved to be altruistic ourselves.

• Are humans naturally selfish, altruistic, or something else according to evolutionary theory?

  A look at a Hi-Phi Nation conversation on whether evolution made us selfish, altruistic, or something less flattering than either.

• What is the principle of comparable sacrifice in ethics?

  A look at the moral principle that obligates you to prevent great harm to a stranger whenever doing so costs you little.

• Can evolution explain why some humans donate kidneys to strangers?

  A look at how one evolutionary psychologist tries to explain a form of altruism that kin selection and reciprocity cannot account for, and why not everyone is convinced.

• Does the character Hari in Solaris achieve genuine personhood?

  You will learn how the podcast conversation on Tarkovsky's Solaris frames Hari's arc from a limited copy to a being with something like moral standing.

• Why do vampire bats share blood with unrelated bats?

  What vampire bat blood-sharing shows about the difference between kin selection and reciprocal altruism.