When I first encountered Stoicism, I realized that I already was a Stoic, I just didn’t know the name. I continue to be one, but don’t feel bound to follow the dictates of the ancient Stoics, who often showed their own biases especially with regards to gender. I will take wisdom and virtue where I find it, though.
One thing that frustrates me about a lot of contemporary Stoic discourse is the predominance of Dualism, especially body / mind dualism, which is philosophically bankrupt. I am not my brain and have no more control over it than any other part of my body.
Another is the tendency to treat Stoicism like it’s a kind of Rationalism; I’m deep in the Virtue Ethics groove and distrustful of all Consequentialists, including Rationalists: Wishful thinking has no place in Stoicism.
So to say “I am a Stoic” remains fraught, as so many take a different meaning from it then I do, and indeed different from each other. But a Stoic I remain, unable to change that about the world and so adapting to it instead.
I’m unfamiliar with Absurdism.
When I first encountered Stoicism, I realized that I already was a Stoic, I just didn’t know the name. I continue to be one, but don’t feel bound to follow the dictates of the ancient Stoics, who often showed their own biases especially with regards to gender. I will take wisdom and virtue where I find it, though.
One thing that frustrates me about a lot of contemporary Stoic discourse is the predominance of Dualism, especially body / mind dualism, which is philosophically bankrupt. I am not my brain and have no more control over it than any other part of my body.
Another is the tendency to treat Stoicism like it’s a kind of Rationalism; I’m deep in the Virtue Ethics groove and distrustful of all Consequentialists, including Rationalists: Wishful thinking has no place in Stoicism.
So to say “I am a Stoic” remains fraught, as so many take a different meaning from it then I do, and indeed different from each other. But a Stoic I remain, unable to change that about the world and so adapting to it instead.