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

When assessing the “costs” associated with practicing Stoicism or any other philosophy of life, readers should realize that there are costs associated with not having a philosophy of life. I have already mentioned one such cost: the danger that you will spend your days pursuing valueless things and will therefore waste your life.

A third benefit of undertaking acts of voluntary discomfort is that it helps us appreciate what we already have. In particular, by purposely causing ourselves discomfort, we will better appreciate whatever comfort we experience.

In my research on desire, I discovered nearly unanimous agreement among thoughtful people that we are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability. There was also agreement that one wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have. This seemed

He remarks that when someone says he wants to be perfectly straightforward with us, we should be on the lookout for a concealed dagger.

According to Epictetus, the primary concern of philosophy should be the art of living: Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.

Furthermore, in such cases the question isn’t whether the person will soon die; the question is whether hers will be a good death at her own hands or a pointlessly painful death through natural processes. Besides counseling us to live a good life, Musonius counsels us…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

“Is this the proper function of a philosopher?” they will ask. It is, if we think, as the Stoics did, that the proper role of philosophy is to develop a philosophy of life.

A primary motive in going to Walden, he tells us, was his fear that he would, “when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”8

We need to keep in mind the difference between the Cynics and the Stoics. Cynicism requires its adherents to live in abject poverty; Stoicism does not. As Seneca reminds us, Stoic philosophy “calls for plain living, but not for penance.”22 More generally, it is perfectly acceptable, says Seneca, for a Stoic to acquire wealth, as long as he does not