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

Anti-Stoics might concede that these are important insights but go on to point out that a lot has happened in the two millennia since the Roman Stoics pondered the human psyche. In particular, the twentieth century witnessed the transformation of psychology into a proper scientific discipline. Anti-Stoics might add that among the most significant p

While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires.

A practicing Stoic will keep the trichotomy of control firmly in mind as he goes about his daily affairs. He will perform a kind of triage in which he sorts the elements of his life into three categories: those over which he has complete control, those over which he has no control at all, and those over which he has some but not complete control. T

More generally, I saw no need to ponder a philosophy of life. I instead felt comfortable with what is, for almost everyone, the default philosophy of life: to spend one’s days seeking an interesting mix of affluence, social status, and pleasure. My philosophy of life, in other words, was what might charitably be called an enlightened form of hedoni

We will instead turn our attention to the pursuit of tranquility and what the Stoics called virtue.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; his essays “Wisdom of Life” and “Counsels and Maxims,” although not explicitly Stoical, have a distinctly Stoical tone.

Handbook

the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

Suppose you can identify your grand goal in living. Suppose, too, that you can explain why this goal is worth attaining. Even then, there is a danger that you will mislive. In particular, if you lack an effective strategy for attaining your goal, it is unlikely that you will attain it. Thus, the second component of a philosophy of life is a strateg

BESIDES RECOMMENDING that we be fatalistic with respect to the past, the Stoics, I think, advocate fatalism with respect to the present. It is clear, after all, that we cannot, through our actions, affect the present, if by the present we mean this very moment. It may be possible for me to act in a way that affects what happens in a decade, a day,