Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesDeath, Love, Stoicism
Forget all else, Lucilius, and concentrate your thoughts on this one thing: not to fear the name of death. Through long reflection make death one of your close acquaintances, so that, if the situation arises, you are able even to go out and meet it. — Seneca, On Earthquakes One day you will die. In many ways, though, death is already present with us throughout life. First, and most obviously, there is the fact that we are, most of us, bereaved several times.
Base your needs on the requirements of a healthy body...
Each man’s body is a measure for his property, just as the foot is a measure for his shoe. If, then, you abide by this principle, you will maintain the proper measure, but if you go beyond it, you cannot help but fall headlong over a precipice, as it were, in the end. So also in the case of your shoe; if once you go beyond the foot, you get first a gilded shoe, then a purple one, then an embroidered one. For once you go beyond the measure there is no limit.
How to Decatastrophize the Worst-Case Scenario
In Lesson 1, we began by learning to take a step back from anxious thoughts. Rather than struggling with every thought that enters the mind, you practised distinguishing between thoughts that arise automatically and the way you voluntarily respond to them. We also used a meditation technique, called Leaves on the Stream, to learn to accept automatic thoughts and let go of them.
A New Research Guide to the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale
I’m pleased to share a new practical guide to the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale, or SABS, written by Tim LeBon, the research director of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit. I helped create the original version of SABS in 2013 for the early Modern Stoicism research programme. It was designed to measure philosophical Stoicism as an attitude and way of life. “SABS measures philosophical Stoic attitudes and behaviours.
How to Live in Accord with your Values
A lot of my work as a coach involves helping people to find more purpose and meaning in their lives, usually by clarifying their core values and scheduling activities that are more in alignment with them. It’s a basic premise of this approach that people tend to flourish when they place more emphasis on character-based values, which ancient philosophers call the virtues.
How to Mentally Rehearse Coping
The early pioneers of behaviour therapy said that therapy, insofar as it involves training in coping skills, can be divided into two distinct phases: Skills Acquisition Skills Application We live in a world now where people drink from a veritable firehose of self-improvement content online. Most of the clients I see today have far more exposure to self-help content than people did before the Internet. They’ve often done lots of skillsacquisition.
The Stoic Taxonomy of Anger
In this article, I’m going to provide a careful analysis of the evidence pertaining to the ancient Stoic taxonomy of anger, with particular attention to the terminology used in Latin and Greek, and how their concepts might be interpreted from a modern perspective. This will be quite an in-depth discussion, employing some technical concepts from ancient philosophy and modern psychology.
Book Review: The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth
The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual is a new book by Ward Farnsworth. Farnsworth is Dean of the University of Texas School of Law. He has previously written books on rhetoric, one specifically about the use of metaphor. This book struck me first and foremost as having been written with exceptional verbal clarity and precision. Perhaps that’s due in part to the author’s knowledge of rhetoric and his interest in the law. I really enjoyed the book.
How to Detach from Anxious Thoughts
I became interested in Stoicism over a quarter of a century ago, after completing my philosophy degree at Aberdeen University in Scotland. One of the very first things I learned from the Stoics was that our beliefs shape our emotions to a much greater extent than we normally assume.
Be mindful not to injure your own character...
Just as you are careful, in walking about, not to step on a nail or to sprain your ankle, so be careful also not to hurt your governing principle. And if we observe this rule in every action, we shall be more secure in setting about it. Epictetus is talking about prosoche or attention to ourselves, which we can call “Stoic mindfulness”. Socrates famously walked barefoot and, ironically, was friends with Simon the shoemaker, in whose shop he would sometimes discuss philosophy.