Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Evening Text for Reflection

"Glad and cheerful, let us say, as we go to our rest: ‘I have finished living; I have run the course that
fortune set for me’. If God gives us another day, let us receive it with joy. The happiest person,
who owns himself more fully, is the one who waits for the next day without anxiety. Anyone who
can say, ‘I have had my life’ rises with a bonus, receiving one more day."

~ Seneca, Letters, 12.9

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Sunday Morning Text for Reflection

"Be like the headland, on which the waves break constantly, which still stands firm, while the
foaming waters are put to rest around it. ‘It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.’ On the
contrary, say, ‘It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without
getting upset, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future.’ This kind of event could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have borne it without getting upset."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.49

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Evening Text for Reflection

"I travel along nature’s way until I fall down and take my rest, breathing out my last into the air,
from which I draw my daily breath, and falling down to that earth from which my father drew his
seed, my mother her blood and my nurse her milk, and from which for so many years I have taken
my daily food and drink, the earth which carries my footsteps and which I have used to the full in
so many ways."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.4

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Saturday Morning Text for Reflection

"The works of the gods are full of providence, and the works of fortune are not separate from nature
or the interweaving and intertwining of the things governed by providence. Everything flows from
there. Further factors are necessity and the benefit of the whole universe, of which you are a part.
What is brought by the nature of the whole and what maintains that nature is good for each part of
nature. Just as the changes in the elements maintain the universe so too do the changes in the
compounds."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.3

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Evening Text for Reflection

"What benefits each of us is what is in line with our constitution and nature; my nature is rational
and political. As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome, as a human being it is the universe. It
is only what benefits these cities which is good for me."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.44

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Friday Morning Text for Reflection

"It is important to understand that nature creates in parents affection for their children; and parental
affection is the source from which we trace the shared community of the human race … As it is
obvious that it is natural to us to shrink from pain, so it is clear that we derive from nature itself the
motive to love those to whom we have given birth. From this motive is developed the mutual
concern which unites human beings as such. The fact of their common humanity means that one
person should feel another to be his relative."

~ Cicero, On Ends, 3.62-3

Stoic Week 2017, Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Evening Text for Reflection

"Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, think of the good qualities of those who live with you:
such as the energy of one, the decency of another, the generosity of another, and some other quality
in someone else. There is nothing so cheering as the images of the virtues displayed in the
characters of those who live with you, and grouped together as far as possible. So you should keep them ready at hand."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.48

Stoic Week 2017, Thursday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Thursday Morning Text for Reflection

"Say to yourself first thing in the morning: I shall meet with people who are meddling, ungrateful,
violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable. They are subject to these faults because of their
ignorance of what is good and bad. But I have recognised the nature of the good and seen that it is
the right, and the nature of the bad and seen that it is the wrong, and the nature of the wrongdoer
himself, and seen that he is related to me, not because he has the same blood or seed, but because
he shares in the same mind and portion of divinity. So I cannot be harmed by any of them, as no
one will involve me in what is wrong. Nor can I be angry with my relative or hate him. We were
born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So
to work against each other is contrary to nature; and resentment and rejection count as working
against someone."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Evening Text for Reflection

"Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act – walking makes you
walk better, running makes you a better runner. If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be a
painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and you'll see what the
result is. And if you're laid up a mere ten days, when you get up and try to walk any distance, you'll
find your legs barely able to support you. So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you
don't like doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for the
affairs of the mind... So if you don't want to be hot-tempered, don't feed your temper, or multiply
incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which
you don't get angry. 'I used to be angry every day, then only every other day, then every third...' If
you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one,
until it is wiped out altogether. 'I didn't lose my temper this day, or the next, and not for two, then
three months in succession.' If you can say that, you are now in excellent health, believe me."

 ~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Wednesday Morning Text for Reflection

"If you find anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, courage… turn to it
with all your heart and enjoy the supreme good that you have found… but if you find all other
things to be trivial and valueless in comparison with virtue give no room to anything else, since
once you turn towards that and divert from your proper path, you will no longer be able without
inner conflict to give the highest honour to that which is properly good. It is not right to set up as a
rival to the rational and social good [virtue] anything alien its nature, such as the praise of the
many or positions of power, wealth or enjoyment of pleasures."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.6

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Evening Text For Reflection

"Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation,
desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever forms part of our activity. Not within our power are our
body, possessions, reputation, social status, and, in a word, whatever does not form part of our
activity… if you only regard that which is your own as being your own and that which isn’t your
own as belonging to others (as is indeed the case), no one will ever be able to force you to do
things, no one will create obstacles for you, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll criticise no one,
you’ll do nothing against your will, you’ll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because

no harm can affect you."

~ Epictetus, Handbook, 1

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Morning Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017, Tuesday Morning Text for Reflection

"Ethics has three branches. The first assigns to each thing its proper value and determines what it is
worth … The second deals with motives, and the third with actions. So the objectives of ethics are,
first, to enable you to judge the value of each thing; second, to enable you to have a well-adjusted
and controlled motive towards them; and, third, to enable you to achieve harmony between your

motive and your action so that you can be consistent in everything you do."

 ~ Seneca, Letters, 89.14

Stoic Week 2017, Monday Evening Text For Reflection

Stoic Week 2017 - Evening Text For Reflection

"Never value as beneficial to yourself something which will force you one day to break your word,
abandon your sense of shame, hate, suspect, or curse someone else, pretend, or desire something
that needs the secrecy of walls or curtains. The one who has chosen to value above all his own
mind and guardian-spirit and the worship of his mind’s virtue does not make a drama of his life or
complain and will not need either isolation or crowds of people; most of all, he will live neither
pursuing nor avoiding things. He does not care in any way whether he will have his soul enclosed
by his body for a longer or shorter time; even if he needs to leave right away, he goes away as
readily as if he were performing any of the other actions that can be done in a decent and orderly
way, exercising care for this alone throughout his life, that his mind should never be in a state
which is alien to that of a rational and social being."

 ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.7

Stoic Week 2017, Monday Morning

Stoic Week 2017 - Self-Renewal: A Journey Into Stoicism

"At every hour, give your full concentration... to carrying out the task in hand with a scrupulous and
unaffected dignity and affectionate concern for others and freedom and justice, and give yourself space from other concerns... You see how few things you need to be able to live a smoothly flowing life."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.5


Monday Morning Text For Reflection:


"People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. But this is
altogether un-philosophical, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself at any time you want. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind, especially if he has within himself the kind of thoughts that let him dip into them and so at once gain complete ease of mind; and by ease of mind, I mean nothing but having one’s own mind in good order. So constantly give yourself this retreat and renew yourself. You should have to hand concise and fundamental principles, which will be enough, as soon as you encounter them, to cleanse you from all distress and send you back without resentment at the activities to
which you return."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3

On Thomas Jefferson and the Classical Philosophers

     From Carl J. Richard's The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment:

     "In 1803, Jefferson wrote regarding the classical philosophers: 'Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the government of those passions which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquility of mind. In this branch of philosophy they were really great. In developing our duties to others, they were short and defective.' In 1819 he declared: 'Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement for the duties and charities we owe to others." (p. 187)

Confusing Pain and Evil (Stoicism and Emotion)

On the matter of confusing pain with evil (from Margaret R. Graver's Stoicism and Emotion):

This alternative (and philosophically preferable) explanation is expressed in the passage just quoted, in connection with the confusion between pain and the destruction of our nature. Pain, says Cicero, is thought to be an evil both because of its sharpness and because it is seen to accompany (videtur sequi) destructions of our nature; i.e., instances of harm to our natural constitution." Being injured is not at all the same thing as being in pain, yet because pain does regularly accompany injury, it is easy for the undeveloped mind to assume that it is the pain itself that is to be avoided. Hence the difficulty of persuading a child to accept some necessary but painful medical treatment. With greater experience of the world, the child may come to realize that there are two object types to be kept straight, those which cause pain and those which harm the body, and to regard these things in different ways. Until then, the frequency with which these co-occur will be misleading. Likewise pleasure comes to be understood as a distinct object type from that which promotes health, and good or bad reputation as distinct from reputable or disreputable conduct. Even life itself-that is, the mere continuance of one's existence as an animate organism-is to be distinguished from a proper object, the preservation of one's natural state or (as we might say it) of one's wholeness as a person. A mature person does not necessarily believe that death is to be avoided at all costs.

Margaret R. Graver. Stoicism and Emotion (pp. 160-161). Kindle Edition.

Today's Stoic reading - Reflections of Stoic Ethics at Work

     My Stoic reading for today was an article in "The Stoic Philosopher: A Quarterly EJournal Published by the Marcus Aurelius School of the College of Stoic Philosophers." The article was entitled "Some Reflections about Stoic Ethics at Work." The title could potentially be misleading, by "at work," the author did not mean "in practice" (since every Stoic should be a practical rather than merely theoretical philosopher), but rather "in the workplace." Here is the link to the article by Manolo Trueba:

http://stoicscollege.com/PDF/eJournal07.pdf

     I found the article very interesting, especially in its emphasis on the Stoic as a part of multiple communities, including a work community. I tend to find that modern Stoics spend much more time thinking about themselves, their own emotional states, their own practice, and so forth, and not as much time thinking about this communal aspect of philosophical living. I think it's definitely worth thinking about!

Stoic Ween Evening Text for Reflection - Day 7

Evening Text for Reflection:

'I travel along Nature's Way until the day arrives for me to fall down and take my rest, yielding my last breath to the air from which I draw daily, falling onto that earth which gave my father his seed, my mother her blood...the earth which for so many years has fed and watered me day by day; the earth which bears me as I tread it under foot and which I make use of in a thousand ways.'

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.4.

Stoic Week Lunchtime Exercises (The View From Above) - Day 7

From the Stoic Week Handbook:

Today’s Lunchtime Exercise: The View from Above

On our final day we turn to think about our place within Nature as a whole:

A fine reflection from Plato. One who would converse about human beings should look on all things earthly as though from some point far above, upon herds, armies, and agriculture, marriages and divorces, births and deaths, the clamour of law courts, deserted wastes, alien peoples of every kind, festivals, lamentations, and markets, this intermixture of everything and ordered combination of opposites.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.48

The ‘View from Above’ is a guided visualization that is aimed at instilling a sense of the ‘bigger picture’, and of understanding your role in wider community of humankind. You can download a recording of the View from Above from the main Stoic Week 2013 page:

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/stoic-week-2013/

Anyone who reads the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is bound to notice a recurring theme that involves contemplating the vastness of the universe, of space and time, the multitude of stars, and also the smallness of life on Earth when viewed from above. The French scholar Pierre Hadot called the deliberate effort to mentally visualise human affairs from high overhead “The View from Above”, and he found references to it throughout ancient literature, particularly in Stoic writings.

In a sense, these passages invite us to think like an ancient natural philosopher and simply to contemplate cosmology, the nature of the universe as a whole, in a detached manner. However, the Stoics clearly believed that doing so had profound “therapeutic” value and, as Marcus put it, can purge us of our over-attachment to trivial things by expanding our minds beyond their habitual, narrow perspective. We’re less upset about things when we literally picture them as occurring in a tiny corner of the cosmos: as a grain of sand in cosmic space, and the mere turn of a screw in terms of cosmic time. Why should we picture things in this way? First of all, for the Stoics, totality is reality. It’s a form of self-deception to ignore the wider context and it helps create the illusion that the events we face are somehow more important than they actually are. Second, the ancient Stoics sought to emulate the divine, and the View from Above happens to be the perspective of Zeus. We can even think of it as the Olympian perspective, what Zeus might have been thought to see when looking down upon human affairs from high atop Mount Olympus. If that seems too mythological, then for a more philosophical theology, the perspective of Zeus was perhaps that of omniscience, contemplating the whole of space and time in a single timeless vision. Again, the Stoics and other ancient philosophers aspired to glimpse that vision, and thereby to step into the shoes of Zeus for a moment.

This exercise appears to weave together many different threads within Stoic philosophy. That’s something that may become clearer to you if you practice it regularly. You don’t need to listen to an elaborate guided meditation, though. Just reading the passages from Marcus Aurelius may be enough to inspire you to close your eyes and contemplate things from a more “cosmological” perspective, in this way. Don’t worry if you find it tricky to literally visualise the whole of space and time – that’s normal. Just picture things that evoke the concept for you symbolically. You could draw a circle on a piece of paper, symbolising the totality of space and time, and imagine your whole life as an infinitesimally tiny dot in the middle. The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, who was influenced by the Stoics to some extent, describes a contemplative exercise that involves visualising the whole of space and time as if encapsulated in a glass sphere, like a kind of cosmic snowglobe. Take your time. Allow these images to interact with your wider understanding of Stoic philosophy and practices. Try to take away some piece of learning or sense of change from each meditation of this kind.

Complete the Post-Week Questionnaires

As this is the final day, it is now time to complete the online scales that you filled in before the week, using the same name (email or pseudonym) as before.  Visit the main Stoic Week 2103 page for the links:

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/stoic-week-2013/

Stoic Week Morning Text for Reflection - Day 7

Morning Text for Reflection:

The works of the gods are full of providence. The works of Fortune are not independent of Nature or the spinning and weaving together of the threads governed by Providence. All things flow from that world: and further factors are necessity and the benefit of the whole universe, of which you are a part. Now every part of nature benefits from that which is brought by the nature of the Whole and all which preserves that nature: and the order of the universe is preserved equally by the changes in the elements and changes in their compounds.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.3