http://modernstoicism.com/interview-john-sellars/
EXCERPT: Q: What’s the most important aspect of Stoicism to you?
One of the things I admire about Stoicism is what we might call its ‘reality principle’, to borrow a phrase. Both Epictetus and Marcus continually insist that we face up to the reality of both particular situations we find ourselves in and the human condition in general. We cannot control every aspect of our lives, sometimes bad things happen and we just have to accept it, we cannot control other people and how they behave towards us, we cannot avoid the fact that we shall die and so will all our loved ones. These are just facts. I particularly like the idea that it is by studying Nature and understanding better how the natural world works that we can come to accept these as simply parts of the natural order of things rather than great tragedies or sources for melancholy. I think that connection between ‘physics’ and ‘ethics’ is important; you find the same connection in Epicureanism, which I also admire....
MORE: http://modernstoicism.com/interview-john-sellars/
What Does “In Accordance With Nature” Mean?
http://modernstoicism.com/what-does-in-a...eg-sadler/
EXCERPT: One guiding ideal for Stoics is living “in accordance with nature”. But what does this phrase really mean? To judge by the many questions and comments one sees in Stoicism-oriented social media, blogs and websites, this doctrine seems to be a perennial source of confusion. I get asked about it frequently when I teach online classes, lead seminars, give talks, or even post lecture videos.
When you first hear or read it, “in accordance with nature” sounds like a helpful criterion we could use to guide and measure our choices, beliefs, reasonings, desires, and actions. But then confusions and worries arise. For, without some clear conception in mind of what “nature” and “in accordance with” mean, it appears we might be just playing around with generalities, and thereby fooling ourselves with words that lack any definite meaning but do appeal to us on some merely emotional level. And that – if it really is the case – should be very troubling to a Stoic (pun intended)!
Given the uncertainties and confusions raised by this issue, it is quite natural to ask: Is there a simple and straightforward answer to this question – What does “in accordance with nature” mean? Well, I have some good news and some bad news for you.
The good news is that if it is a simple answer you’re looking for, you’re in luck! For there isn’t just one, but a whole slew of answers meeting that criterion. Then there’s the bad news: they all tend to be more or less wrong. Simple answers about complex matters abound, since there are multiple ways to go wrong through oversimplification.
There is, fortunately, a set of consistent answers contained within classic literature of (or about) Stoic philosophy. Unfortunately for us in the present, a significant portion of Stoic writings are lost (as is the case with many of the schools and thinkers of antiquity). Perhaps one of the greatest loss in this respect is the work that Zeno reportedly wrote, titled “On Life According To Nature” (Peri to kata phuisin biou). Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that book in our hands? Nevertheless, the texts that we do still possess provide a fairly clear, though necessarily complex, account of this key Stoic concept and doctrine.
Which texts should we turn to, if our goal is to better understand what “in accordance with nature” means for the Stoics? In my view...
MORE: http://modernstoicism.com/what-does-in-a...eg-sadler/
Why Stoicism is one of the best mind-hacks ever devised
https://aeon.co/essays/why-stoicism-is-o...er-devised
EXCERPT: We do this to our philosophies. We redraft their contours based on projected shadows, or give them a cartoonish shape like a caricaturist emphasising all the wrong features. This is how Buddhism becomes, in the popular imagination, a doctrine of passivity and even laziness, while Existentialism becomes synonymous with apathy and futile despair. Something similar has happened to Stoicism, which is considered – when considered at all – a philosophy of grim endurance, of carrying on rather than getting over, of tolerating rather than transcending life’s agonies and adversities.
No wonder it’s not more popular. No wonder the Stoic sage, in Western culture, has never obtained the popularity of the Zen master. Even though Stoicism is far more accessible, not only does it lack the exotic mystique of Eastern practice; it’s also regarded as a philosophy of merely breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive. What this attitude ignores is the promise proffered by Stoicism of lasting transcendence and imperturbable tranquility.
It ignores gratitude, too. This is part of the tranquility, because it’s what makes the tranquility possible. Stoicism is, as much as anything, a philosophy of gratitude – and a gratitude, moreover, rugged enough to endure anything. Philosophers who pine for supreme psychological liberation have often failed to realise that they belong to a confederacy that includes the Stoics. ‘According to nature you want to live?’ Friedrich Nietzsche taunts the Stoics in Beyond Good and Evil (1886):
"O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power – how could you live according to this indifference? Living – is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living – estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative ‘live according to nature’ meant at bottom as much as ‘live according to life’ – how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourself are and must be?"
This is pretty good, as denunciations of Stoicism go, seductive in its articulateness and energy, and therefore effective, however uninformed.
Which is why it’s so disheartening to see Nietzsche fly off the rails of sanity in the next two paragraphs, accusing the Stoics of trying to ‘impose’ their ‘morality… on nature’, of being ‘no longer able to see [nature] differently’ because of an ‘arrogant’ determination to ‘tyrannise’ nature as the Stoic has tyrannised himself. Then (in some of the least subtle psychological projection you’re ever likely to see, given what we know of Nietzsche’s mad drive for psychological supremacy), he accuses all of philosophy as being a ‘tyrannical drive’, ‘the most spiritual will to power’, to the ‘creation of the world’.
The truth is, indifference really is a power, selectively applied, and living in such a way is not only eminently possible, with a conscious adoption of certain attitudes, but facilitates a freer, more expansive, more adventurous mode of living. Joy and grief are still there, along with all the other emotions, but they are tempered – and, in their temperance, they are less tyrannical....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/why-stoicism-is-o...er-devised