A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

Although they value tranquility, they feel duty-bound to be active participants in the society in which they live. But such participation clearly

Handbook

If we take to heart the advice of the Stoics and forgo luxurious living, we will find that our needs are easily met, for as Seneca reminds us, life’s necessities are cheap and easily obtainable.15 Those who crave luxury typically have to spend considerable time and energy to attain it; those who eschew luxury can devote this same time and energy to

Although the Stoics were not the first to do logic—Aristotle, for example, had done it before them, as had the Megarians—Stoic logic showed an unprecedented degree of sophistication. The Stoics’ interest in logic is a natural consequence of their belief that man’s distinguishing feature is his rationality. Logic is, after all, the study of the prop

FIFTEEN Personal Values On Luxurious Living BESIDES VALUING FAME, people typically value wealth. These two values may seem independent, but a case can be made that the primary reason we seek wealth is that we seek fame.1 More precisely, we seek wealth because we realize that the material goods our wealth can buy us will win the admiration of other

Epictetus takes Seneca’s bedtime-meditation advice one step further: He suggests that as we go about our daily business, we should simultaneously play the roles of participant and spectator.3 We should, in other words, create within ourselves a Stoic observer who watches us and comments on our attempts to practice Stoicism. Along similar lines, Mar

many readers, I realize, this line of reasoning will fall flat. They will insist that duty is the enemy of happiness and consequently that the best way to have a good life is to escape all forms of duty: Rather than spending our days doing things we have to do, we should spend them doing things we want to do. In chapter 20 I return to this question

Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying. More generally, when we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings. Doing this will help us become more empathetic to this individual’s faults and th

Marcus, wrote the historian Edward Gibbon, was the last of the Five Good Emperors (the other four being Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus) who ruled from 96–180 and brought about “the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous.”