1] Marxism and Stoicism : Stoicism - Reddit
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Hello. I've recently been wanting to get into Stoicism, not for any specific reason. I'm no longer depressed, so this isn't going to act as a therapy ...
Is stoicism compatible with Marxism? : askphilosophy
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Is it possible to conciliate Stoicism and Marxism? : askphilosophy
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I'm looking for a philosophical critique on wealth : Stoicism
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Marxism - Philosophy for life
www.philosophyforlife.org/category/marxism/
So you were raised in Marxist philosophy, both your parents were members of the Communist Party. Do you think Marxism and Stoicism are opposing ...the possibility of a left stoicism? | synthetic zero
https://syntheticzero.net/2015/10/.../the-possibility-of-a-left-stoicis...
이 페이지 번역하기2015. 10. 18. - I suspect that for some the appeal to difference and otherness is already far too tiresome. We have moved into an era of Marxism obsessed with ...
Modern Stoicism - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Stoicism
이 페이지 번역하기Modern Stoicism is an intellectual and popular movement in the late 20th and early 21st ... history; if Stoics had had to confront Bacon and Descartes, Newton and Locke, Hobbes and Bentham, Hume and Kant, Darwin and Marx." Or, as ...
Background · Philosophically · Key concepts · Stoicism versus Aristotle
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Posted by
u/israelregardie
2 months ago Is stoicism compatible with Marxism?
Or does leftist leanings, marxism, anarchism, etc, mean you are by default trying to shake things up and therefore not "accepting things you cannot change"?
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[deleted]
5 points·2 months ago·edited 2 months ago
Justice is a virtue in Stoicism. Political activism of the sort carried by Marxists could be viewed as a matter of pursuing socioeconomic justice.
What makes a Stoic attitude toward politics distinctive is the attitude toward results; the Stoics advocated taking an "it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game" attitude, doing everything one can honorably do for the benefit of society, whether in politics or other endeavors, but maintaining indifference to the results.
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dankmeme_abduljabbar
3 points·2 months ago
Isn't a big part of (most schools of) leftism believing that you can change the socio-economic situation? If so, I don't see why they'd be incompatible.
level 1
willbell
early modern phil., meta-ethics1 point·2 months ago
Stoicism allows that it is possible that the natural course of events is for you to 'shake things up' - after all, things have been shook up in the past so that must have been just as much of the natural train of events as anything else. What the Stoic will say is that while a current society is in need of change, that does not detract from the naturalness of the current society. This actually goes quite well with kinds of orthodox Marxism on which a 'capitalist stage' was necessary in order to transition to communism.
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level 1
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago·edited 2 months ago
I actually just recently wrote about a similar topic here. The main idea regarding suffering would apply to Stoicism when analyzed from a Marxist framework.
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level 2
TrottingTortoise
1 point·2 months ago
Can you source your claim that Marxism sets up a "metaphysically materialist framework" of the sort that is necessarily incompatible with God, dualism of mind, and so on? I do not get that sense from Marx.
IE, when he writes about the First Premises of Materialist Method in The German Ideology, he seems not to set up materialism as a belief that the material is all that exists, but to note that "the premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones [...] they are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity." His point in mentioning this is that "the writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men."
I'm tempted to suggest that it might be more in line with Marx to say that the categories of material/immaterial should be seen through a historicist lens, and that adoption of that sort of transhistorical metaphysical view is a mistake. For example, he continues in The German Ideology to say that:
We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence.
Emphasis my own, and this also ties into the controversial discussion as to what extent Marxism can be said to be about any pursuit of "justice" (/u/subzero_3 's comment). Additionally, Theses on Feuerbachbegins:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.
It seems to me that Marx was much more considered about the real activity of human beings and would have rejected any sort of far-reaching materialist metaphysics. His critique of religion is also not a critique on the metaphysical impossibility of God, but instead follows from his view that religious ideology would be in relationship with the life-process of real men, and "to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
This all seems difficult to square with a view that happens to be a "metaphysically materialist framework."
------------
level 3
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago
There are I think two different questions which we can ask to summarize the discussion at hand:
If the immaterial exists, like God, does the immaterial have a causal influence on the material? By "material" we mean things like the universe or society.
Can the immaterial exist in a Marxist understanding of reality?
It's clear that for #1 the answer is inarguably "no." If the answer was yes, Marxism as an entire framework would be invalidated since Marxism seeks to explain reality and society's processes (economics, culture, etc) through the activity of the material and argues that the immaterial (whether God or Hegel's idealism) has no causal influence on society. I would agree that to my knowledge there is nothing in Marxism that warrants responding "no" to #2. Marx himself never refuted the existence of deities themselves, but rather criticized what effect religion has on society and how many people attribute causation in society to religion or deities.
Reincarnation does argue that the immaterial has an effect on the material, and/or vice-versa, so it is not compatible with Marxism. When I say Marxism is a metaphysically materialist framework, it is in the specific sense of #1.
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level 4
[deleted]
1 point·2 months ago
Reincarnation does argue that the immaterial has an effect on the material, and/or vice-versa, so it is not compatible with Marxism.
I don’t see how reincarnation is inherently incompatible with materialism. Generally speaking, materialism is understood in terms of matter behaving in some predictable, law-like manner, and reincarnation is typically posited to be just another natural law of the universe.
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level 5
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago
reincarnation is typically posited to be just another natural law of the universe.
Which would be a very commonly rejected claim.
------------------
level 6
[deleted]
1 point·2 months ago
Rejected for epistemic or methodological reasons, sure. But then again, historical materialism is widely rejected as pseudoscience too. The point was, there’s nothing inherentlyimmaterialistic about reincarnation.
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Is it possible to conciliate Stoicism and Marxism?
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living_in_bad_faith
generalist5 points·3 months ago
Sure, I suppose. Ideologies and belief systems are not like Pokemon, there is no 'collecting' them. If you find the writings of the Stoics to be meaningful, that's fine and well. If you find the writings of Marx to be meaningful that's also fine and well. If you live the kind of life described as ideal by Stoics, and you also think Marx had an accurate assessment of human political and economic history, you're probably doing a fine job of "conciliating" the two.
In what ways do you think they might be irreconcilable? Perhaps if you volunteered why you do or do not think they can be enmeshed there will be more to discuss here.
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bobthebobbest
Aesthetics, German Idealism, Critical Theory4 points·3 months ago
I guess, maybe. But I think a more rigorous employment of Marx would say something like the current popular revival of interest in stoicism is a symptom of capitalism.
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CarlxxMarx
Frankfurt School, Žižek, Marxism0 points·3 months ago
While I don't disagree with /u/living_in_bad_faith or /u/bobthebobbest and I'm no expert on stoicism, a central tenant of Marxism does seem to be the injunction to engage with the political world (this can take a variety of forms, sometimes seemingly contradictory). Insofar as stoicism is a way to come to terms with the world as it exists and Marxism is expressly about changing it, there could easily be friction between the two.
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nopolorelse
2 points·3 months ago
I wouldn't agree. Stoicism has no problem with changing the world, and there's plenty of calls for civic engagement of one sort or another. Seneca in On Tranquillity goes into some detail on the different things you can do. There's plenty more, that just happens to be fresh as I read it yesterday.
What Stoicism does do is make a very clear distinction between what you can and can't control. Hence the Stoic Marxist might not get up in the morning thinking "I'm going to overthrow capitalism today", because he might fail, and there's no point being invested in what you can't control. But he'd get up in the morning thinking "I'm going to work towards the overthrow of capitalism today, by organising that meeting and speaking to Mark about..."
I don't know much about Marx (and probably less about the Stoics than I think) but I can't see any contradictions.
-------------------
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CarlxxMarx
Frankfurt School, Žižek, Marxism1 point·3 months ago
Thanks for that correction on stoicism!
That being said,
What Stoicism does do is make a very clear distinction between what you can and can't control
makes it a bit rough to square the two, since a lot of Marxist work is about making it clear that certain things--like capitalism, the wage relation, etc--which appear to be the natural state of things are, in fact, entirely contingent and therefore mutable (even if that doesn't mean we can just decide to change capitalism by ourselves).
It's more a shade of contradiction rather than a full blown one, I freely admit.
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nopolorelse
5 points·3 months ago
They're absolutely contingent, but contingent on what society as a whole decides to do - not on the actions of the individual. The Stoic would ideally have a clear idea of what, realistically, they can do to change that, and would understand that it is, in the grand scheme of things, probably not very much. But then they'd do it.
I think we agree. But as this is the Internet, we should probably do a few more rounds of offering finer adjustments to each other's statements so it looks like we're arguing.
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u/Scrafer
2 years ago
Is Stoicism compatible with Socialism?
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MovimientoDeVerdad
10 points·2 years ago
Stoicism and socialism are not necessarily mutually exclusive but I think the idea that you should be indifferent to pain (as is proposed by stoicism) is sort of against the idea that we should recognize the pain of our current situation (capitalism) and replace it with a better system(socialism).
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Bifrons
3 points·2 years ago·edited 2 years ago
Stoicism doesn't purport that you should be indifferent to pain, but to channel it into a way that isn't destructive to you or to others. Stoicism holds that you should lead a virtuous life (or a life of excellence), to learn all that you can, and to help society. It's true that stoicism advocates acceptance of things beyond your control, but it also advocates trying to make the world a better place and accepting the result, regardless of the outcome.
If capitalism hurts society at large, I would think that the stoic thing to do would be to try to implement a system that would help society better than capitalism could.
It's also worth noting that, at least the last few Stoic writers from the ancient world, were mostly government officials, one being the emperor of Rome.
Edit: After rereading your comment, I would agree that stoicism advocates that you should be indifferent to pain, but your wording is cumbersome. I would say that stoicism purports that people can and do experience pain, and that pain is outside of your control. Because of this, you should view it as indifferent with regards to virtue - the pain itself doesn't affect how you conduct yourself as a person. However, what you choose to do once experiencing the pain isn't an indifferent, and you could choose to act virtuouslyor not.
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thouliha
6 points·2 years ago
Agree. Stoicism is primarily a fatalistic doctrine of acceptance of things largely beyond your control. The acceptance brings equanimity and peace of mind, and encourages moderation and nonviolence.
Socialism emphasizes a lot of the opposite; that we should strive against the overwhelming status quo of private ownership, that class antagonisms increase, and can only be broken in violent revolution against the capitalists.
Basically, that we should fight to end suffering, rather than accepting it fatalistically. It makes sense to me at least, I don't think human slavery is ever acceptable, no matter how overwhelming it was as a system, and the same goes for capitalism.
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Scrafer
6 points·2 years ago
But I thought stoicism only preached acceptance to things completely out of our control, like bad weather or cancer. If capitalism is something that would be able to be toppled, couldn't a socialist stay a stoic while still acting on behalf of socialism?
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kjakeb
2 points·2 years ago
things completely out of our control like cancer
umm..what?
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Scrafer
1 point·2 years ago
I meant more like fatal diseases and things like that, sorry.
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thouliha
3 points·2 years ago
Stoicism emphasizes resignation, even if things are in your control. There is the story of epictetes, one of the main stoics, who was a slave, as he calm tells his master: "if you continue twisting my leg, it'll break ". The master continues twisting it till it breaks, whereupon epictetes says, "see? I told you".
I've also read Marcus Aurelius' meditations, and can say that it also it also prefers resignation over action. Stoicism emphasizes lowering expectations, and modifying your inner world, not trying to change the outer one for the better.
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Bifrons
4 points·2 years ago
Stoicism emphasizes resignation, even if things are in your control
My understanding is that stoicism emphasizes trying your hardest at whatever you do and accepting the result regardless of the outcome, not resignation. This link from /r/stoicism describes the idea well.
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Moontouch
Political Philosophy | Moral Philosophy | Che Guevara4 points·2 years ago
I've thinking for a while now about doing a Marxist analysis of Stoicism. Stoicism can certainly have private and practical benefits today, but from a Marxist POV the answer would yield something like it being born out of the highly oppressive, hierarchical, and difficult conditions of ancient life. Stoicism is a position/practice I really do not believe will be tremendously necessary or useful in a socialist society.
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totheleft_totheleft
1 point·2 years ago
That would be very interesting.
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tones2013
1 point·2 years ago
Well to be fair in a purely socialist society a lot of people would feel like their toes were being stepped on as far as liberty goes. Everyone would need to compromise at least a little. Stoicism would help with accepting that.
Also by your logic it would be useful for discouraging counter revolutions.
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Moontouch
Political Philosophy | Moral Philosophy | Che Guevara1 point·2 years ago
people would feel like their toes were being stepped on as far as liberty goes
Unjustified premise.
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https://syntheticzero.net/2015/10/.../the-possibility-of-a-left-stoicis...
이 페이지 번역하기2015. 10. 18. - I suspect that for some the appeal to difference and otherness is already far too tiresome. We have moved into an era of Marxism obsessed with ...
Modern Stoicism - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Stoicism
이 페이지 번역하기Modern Stoicism is an intellectual and popular movement in the late 20th and early 21st ... history; if Stoics had had to confront Bacon and Descartes, Newton and Locke, Hobbes and Bentham, Hume and Kant, Darwin and Marx." Or, as ...
Background · Philosophically · Key concepts · Stoicism versus Aristotle
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askphilosophy Posts
Posted by
u/israelregardie
2 months ago Is stoicism compatible with Marxism?
Or does leftist leanings, marxism, anarchism, etc, mean you are by default trying to shake things up and therefore not "accepting things you cannot change"?
9 Comments
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[deleted]
5 points·2 months ago·edited 2 months ago
Justice is a virtue in Stoicism. Political activism of the sort carried by Marxists could be viewed as a matter of pursuing socioeconomic justice.
What makes a Stoic attitude toward politics distinctive is the attitude toward results; the Stoics advocated taking an "it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game" attitude, doing everything one can honorably do for the benefit of society, whether in politics or other endeavors, but maintaining indifference to the results.
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dankmeme_abduljabbar
3 points·2 months ago
Isn't a big part of (most schools of) leftism believing that you can change the socio-economic situation? If so, I don't see why they'd be incompatible.
level 1
willbell
early modern phil., meta-ethics1 point·2 months ago
Stoicism allows that it is possible that the natural course of events is for you to 'shake things up' - after all, things have been shook up in the past so that must have been just as much of the natural train of events as anything else. What the Stoic will say is that while a current society is in need of change, that does not detract from the naturalness of the current society. This actually goes quite well with kinds of orthodox Marxism on which a 'capitalist stage' was necessary in order to transition to communism.
------------
level 1
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago·edited 2 months ago
I actually just recently wrote about a similar topic here. The main idea regarding suffering would apply to Stoicism when analyzed from a Marxist framework.
----------------
level 2
TrottingTortoise
1 point·2 months ago
Can you source your claim that Marxism sets up a "metaphysically materialist framework" of the sort that is necessarily incompatible with God, dualism of mind, and so on? I do not get that sense from Marx.
IE, when he writes about the First Premises of Materialist Method in The German Ideology, he seems not to set up materialism as a belief that the material is all that exists, but to note that "the premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones [...] they are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity." His point in mentioning this is that "the writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men."
I'm tempted to suggest that it might be more in line with Marx to say that the categories of material/immaterial should be seen through a historicist lens, and that adoption of that sort of transhistorical metaphysical view is a mistake. For example, he continues in The German Ideology to say that:
We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence.
Emphasis my own, and this also ties into the controversial discussion as to what extent Marxism can be said to be about any pursuit of "justice" (/u/subzero_3 's comment). Additionally, Theses on Feuerbachbegins:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.
It seems to me that Marx was much more considered about the real activity of human beings and would have rejected any sort of far-reaching materialist metaphysics. His critique of religion is also not a critique on the metaphysical impossibility of God, but instead follows from his view that religious ideology would be in relationship with the life-process of real men, and "to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
This all seems difficult to square with a view that happens to be a "metaphysically materialist framework."
------------
level 3
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago
There are I think two different questions which we can ask to summarize the discussion at hand:
If the immaterial exists, like God, does the immaterial have a causal influence on the material? By "material" we mean things like the universe or society.
Can the immaterial exist in a Marxist understanding of reality?
It's clear that for #1 the answer is inarguably "no." If the answer was yes, Marxism as an entire framework would be invalidated since Marxism seeks to explain reality and society's processes (economics, culture, etc) through the activity of the material and argues that the immaterial (whether God or Hegel's idealism) has no causal influence on society. I would agree that to my knowledge there is nothing in Marxism that warrants responding "no" to #2. Marx himself never refuted the existence of deities themselves, but rather criticized what effect religion has on society and how many people attribute causation in society to religion or deities.
Reincarnation does argue that the immaterial has an effect on the material, and/or vice-versa, so it is not compatible with Marxism. When I say Marxism is a metaphysically materialist framework, it is in the specific sense of #1.
---------------
level 4
[deleted]
1 point·2 months ago
Reincarnation does argue that the immaterial has an effect on the material, and/or vice-versa, so it is not compatible with Marxism.
I don’t see how reincarnation is inherently incompatible with materialism. Generally speaking, materialism is understood in terms of matter behaving in some predictable, law-like manner, and reincarnation is typically posited to be just another natural law of the universe.
------------------
level 5
Moontouch
Marxism, political phil. applied ethics0 points·2 months ago
reincarnation is typically posited to be just another natural law of the universe.
Which would be a very commonly rejected claim.
------------------
level 6
[deleted]
1 point·2 months ago
Rejected for epistemic or methodological reasons, sure. But then again, historical materialism is widely rejected as pseudoscience too. The point was, there’s nothing inherentlyimmaterialistic about reincarnation.
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Is it possible to conciliate Stoicism and Marxism?
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living_in_bad_faith
generalist5 points·3 months ago
Sure, I suppose. Ideologies and belief systems are not like Pokemon, there is no 'collecting' them. If you find the writings of the Stoics to be meaningful, that's fine and well. If you find the writings of Marx to be meaningful that's also fine and well. If you live the kind of life described as ideal by Stoics, and you also think Marx had an accurate assessment of human political and economic history, you're probably doing a fine job of "conciliating" the two.
In what ways do you think they might be irreconcilable? Perhaps if you volunteered why you do or do not think they can be enmeshed there will be more to discuss here.
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bobthebobbest
Aesthetics, German Idealism, Critical Theory4 points·3 months ago
I guess, maybe. But I think a more rigorous employment of Marx would say something like the current popular revival of interest in stoicism is a symptom of capitalism.
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CarlxxMarx
Frankfurt School, Žižek, Marxism0 points·3 months ago
While I don't disagree with /u/living_in_bad_faith or /u/bobthebobbest and I'm no expert on stoicism, a central tenant of Marxism does seem to be the injunction to engage with the political world (this can take a variety of forms, sometimes seemingly contradictory). Insofar as stoicism is a way to come to terms with the world as it exists and Marxism is expressly about changing it, there could easily be friction between the two.
level 2
nopolorelse
2 points·3 months ago
I wouldn't agree. Stoicism has no problem with changing the world, and there's plenty of calls for civic engagement of one sort or another. Seneca in On Tranquillity goes into some detail on the different things you can do. There's plenty more, that just happens to be fresh as I read it yesterday.
What Stoicism does do is make a very clear distinction between what you can and can't control. Hence the Stoic Marxist might not get up in the morning thinking "I'm going to overthrow capitalism today", because he might fail, and there's no point being invested in what you can't control. But he'd get up in the morning thinking "I'm going to work towards the overthrow of capitalism today, by organising that meeting and speaking to Mark about..."
I don't know much about Marx (and probably less about the Stoics than I think) but I can't see any contradictions.
-------------------
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CarlxxMarx
Frankfurt School, Žižek, Marxism1 point·3 months ago
Thanks for that correction on stoicism!
That being said,
What Stoicism does do is make a very clear distinction between what you can and can't control
makes it a bit rough to square the two, since a lot of Marxist work is about making it clear that certain things--like capitalism, the wage relation, etc--which appear to be the natural state of things are, in fact, entirely contingent and therefore mutable (even if that doesn't mean we can just decide to change capitalism by ourselves).
It's more a shade of contradiction rather than a full blown one, I freely admit.
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nopolorelse
5 points·3 months ago
They're absolutely contingent, but contingent on what society as a whole decides to do - not on the actions of the individual. The Stoic would ideally have a clear idea of what, realistically, they can do to change that, and would understand that it is, in the grand scheme of things, probably not very much. But then they'd do it.
I think we agree. But as this is the Internet, we should probably do a few more rounds of offering finer adjustments to each other's statements so it looks like we're arguing.
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Posted by
u/Scrafer
2 years ago
Is Stoicism compatible with Socialism?
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MovimientoDeVerdad
10 points·2 years ago
Stoicism and socialism are not necessarily mutually exclusive but I think the idea that you should be indifferent to pain (as is proposed by stoicism) is sort of against the idea that we should recognize the pain of our current situation (capitalism) and replace it with a better system(socialism).
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Bifrons
3 points·2 years ago·edited 2 years ago
Stoicism doesn't purport that you should be indifferent to pain, but to channel it into a way that isn't destructive to you or to others. Stoicism holds that you should lead a virtuous life (or a life of excellence), to learn all that you can, and to help society. It's true that stoicism advocates acceptance of things beyond your control, but it also advocates trying to make the world a better place and accepting the result, regardless of the outcome.
If capitalism hurts society at large, I would think that the stoic thing to do would be to try to implement a system that would help society better than capitalism could.
It's also worth noting that, at least the last few Stoic writers from the ancient world, were mostly government officials, one being the emperor of Rome.
Edit: After rereading your comment, I would agree that stoicism advocates that you should be indifferent to pain, but your wording is cumbersome. I would say that stoicism purports that people can and do experience pain, and that pain is outside of your control. Because of this, you should view it as indifferent with regards to virtue - the pain itself doesn't affect how you conduct yourself as a person. However, what you choose to do once experiencing the pain isn't an indifferent, and you could choose to act virtuouslyor not.
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thouliha
6 points·2 years ago
Agree. Stoicism is primarily a fatalistic doctrine of acceptance of things largely beyond your control. The acceptance brings equanimity and peace of mind, and encourages moderation and nonviolence.
Socialism emphasizes a lot of the opposite; that we should strive against the overwhelming status quo of private ownership, that class antagonisms increase, and can only be broken in violent revolution against the capitalists.
Basically, that we should fight to end suffering, rather than accepting it fatalistically. It makes sense to me at least, I don't think human slavery is ever acceptable, no matter how overwhelming it was as a system, and the same goes for capitalism.
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Scrafer
6 points·2 years ago
But I thought stoicism only preached acceptance to things completely out of our control, like bad weather or cancer. If capitalism is something that would be able to be toppled, couldn't a socialist stay a stoic while still acting on behalf of socialism?
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kjakeb
2 points·2 years ago
things completely out of our control like cancer
umm..what?
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Scrafer
1 point·2 years ago
I meant more like fatal diseases and things like that, sorry.
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level 4
thouliha
3 points·2 years ago
Stoicism emphasizes resignation, even if things are in your control. There is the story of epictetes, one of the main stoics, who was a slave, as he calm tells his master: "if you continue twisting my leg, it'll break ". The master continues twisting it till it breaks, whereupon epictetes says, "see? I told you".
I've also read Marcus Aurelius' meditations, and can say that it also it also prefers resignation over action. Stoicism emphasizes lowering expectations, and modifying your inner world, not trying to change the outer one for the better.
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level 5
Bifrons
4 points·2 years ago
Stoicism emphasizes resignation, even if things are in your control
My understanding is that stoicism emphasizes trying your hardest at whatever you do and accepting the result regardless of the outcome, not resignation. This link from /r/stoicism describes the idea well.
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level 3
Moontouch
Political Philosophy | Moral Philosophy | Che Guevara4 points·2 years ago
I've thinking for a while now about doing a Marxist analysis of Stoicism. Stoicism can certainly have private and practical benefits today, but from a Marxist POV the answer would yield something like it being born out of the highly oppressive, hierarchical, and difficult conditions of ancient life. Stoicism is a position/practice I really do not believe will be tremendously necessary or useful in a socialist society.
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totheleft_totheleft
1 point·2 years ago
That would be very interesting.
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level 4
tones2013
1 point·2 years ago
Well to be fair in a purely socialist society a lot of people would feel like their toes were being stepped on as far as liberty goes. Everyone would need to compromise at least a little. Stoicism would help with accepting that.
Also by your logic it would be useful for discouraging counter revolutions.
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level 5
Moontouch
Political Philosophy | Moral Philosophy | Che Guevara1 point·2 years ago
people would feel like their toes were being stepped on as far as liberty goes
Unjustified premise.
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