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

AS WE HAVE SEEN, the Stoics advise us to seek tranquility. They realized, however, that this recommendation is not, by itself, very helpful, so they went on to offer guidance on how best to attain tranquility. They advise us, to begin with, to practice the psychological techniques described in part 2 of this book. They also offer advice on specific

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

in our culture, we call a midlife crisis. The person experiencing the crisis might sensibly conclude that his unhappiness is the result of wanting the wrong things. In all too many cases, though, he doesn’t draw this conclusion; instead, he concludes that he is unhappy as the result of making certain short-term sacrifices to attain various long-ter

humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the

Marcus also offers some words of advice to those who value what many would take to be the ultimate form of fame: immortal fame. Such fame, Marcus says, is “an empty, hollow thing.” After all, think about how foolish it is to want to be remembered after we die. For one thing, since we are dead, we will not be able to enjoy our fame. For another, we

Besides imagining that the bad things that happened to others happen to us, we can imagine that the bad things that happen to us happened instead to others. In his Handbook, Epictetus advocates this sort of “projective visualization.” Suppose, he says, that our servant breaks a cup.15 We are likely to get angry and have our tranquility disrupted by

As we make progress in our practice of Stoicism, we will become increasingly indifferent to other people’s opinions of us. We will not go through our life with the goal of gaining their approval or avoiding their disapproval, and because we are indifferent to their opinions, we will feel no sting when they insult us. Indeed, a Stoic sage, were one

To avoid becoming angry, says Seneca, we should also keep in mind that the things that anger us generally don’t do us any real harm; they are instead mere annoyances. By allowing ourselves to get angry over little things, we take what might have been a barely noticeable disruption of our day and transform it into a tranquility-shattering state of a

TWENTY-TWO Practicing Stoicism