Stoic Meditations

[We can point] out that nothing has happened but what is common to human nature; [which] does not only inform us what human nature is, but implies that all things are tolerable which others have borne and are bearing.

Cicero presents three major objections to Epicureanism, which he argues is a fundamentally incoherent philosophy. See if you agree with his analysis.

I should agree with Epicurus that we ought to be called off from grief to contemplate good things, if we could only agree upon what was good.

Cicero says that if one is distraught she should read Socrates rather than listen to music. I disagree. Music may be soothing in the long run. Socrates is the long term cure.

There are two ways to think about potential future setbacks: emotionally, and rationally. The first approach only causes perpetual distress. The second one prepares our mind to deal with what may be coming.

Cicero tells us that Anaxagoras, the Presocratic philosopher, was ready to accept the death of his son, because he had always known he was a mortal. This isn't lack of care, it's mental preparedness.

Grief, Cicero tells us, is a highly destructive emotion. While we shouldn't go around telling others not to grieve, we ourselves should take care to react differently to the loss of a loved one.

Cicero gives us a classification of disturbances of the mind: when we think that something is good (now or in the future) but it actually isn't. And when we think that something is bad (now or in the future) but it actually isn't.

Cicero makes an argument that the ideal Stoic, the sage, should feel neither envy nor pity. He was spectacularly wrong, and directly contradicted by Marcus Aurelius. Let's see why.

The word envy comes from Latin for "looking too closely into other people's fortune." Let us see why this is most definitely not a thing that a Stoic should indulge in.