A personal outline of modern Stoicism
(This only applies to my own practice AFAIK)
External sites
Buzz words
Axiom
- Virtue is the only good
Doctrines
- Virtue
- Oikeiosis
- Nature
Exercises
- Desire
- Impulse
- Assent
- Simplicity/frugality
- self-denial
- morning preparation
- negative visualization
- contemplation of the sage
- view from above
- view from below
- contemplation of death
- night review
- journaling
- overcoming fear
- overcoming shame
- self-control
- listing roles
- examine passions
- experiencing and prioritizing the present moment
Tools
- stripping down impressions
- attention
- postponement
- empathy
- pause before making a judgement
- pause and take a deep breath
- speak little and well
- choose your company well
- speak without judging ( "don't say he bathes badly, but in haste" )
- dealing with guilt
- congnitive distancing
- objective representation
- visualize the situation happening to someone else
Derivatives
- dichotomy of control
- quantality of virtue (it's either on or off)
- kataleptic impressions
- strong assent
- amor fati
reorganize it
- values -> virtue and oikeiosis
- lifestyle -> exercises -> tools
- what we believe
- what we know
- what we do
- how we feel
physics
- monism / physicalism
- self is an illusion, a story that we identify with most strongly
- free will is part of the "self" illusion
- everything is determined
- (?) moral anti-realism, "projectivism" looks like a good candidate
logic
- katalepsis is impossible
ethics
- oikeiosis
- no preferred or dispreferred indifferents
- duty can be invoked for everything that we "select"
- pleasure is a duty to self
- cannot treat other stoics as if they only value their "will"
- assent, impulse, desire are only things of value and most important for daily practice
- all of the stoic exercises can be tied to secondary virtues
- all of the secondary virtues can be tied to at least 1 cardinal virtue
- we have a "duty" to "progress in virtue" rather than seek it for its own sake
- understanding our roles gives direction to virtue
Questions no one knows the answer to
- what does the new sage look like?
- what is our motivation to progress (assuming sage-hood is impossible)? is it duty?
- how does one re-build a (nearly) complete philosophy. It cannot be done in a postmodern world. We will never have a believable grand
narrative again.
- we should look at the sage as (argumentum or) reductio ad absurdum
- what do you want from your philosophy? happiness (or flourishing)
- is flourishing something that you can experience in real-time? or is it only seen in retrospect?
- see First value
Updates are being made to this document directly. No change log is being kept.