Sublime

Attaining complete peace of mind is for Spinoza the true religious salvation, which makes us accept everything that happens to us as necessary rather than as something that we can change. The problem with such peace of mind, as Hegel points out, is that it is completely empty. The Stoic says that he is committed to “the true,” “the good,” and “the

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After importing Stoicism, the Romans adapted the doctrine to suit their needs. For one thing, they showed less interest in logic and physics than the Greeks had. Indeed, by the time of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the great Roman Stoics, logic and physics had essentially been abandoned: In the Meditations, we find Marcus congratulating himself for

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Le rapport entre le premier thème et la physique (qui, à côté de la logique et de l’éthique, est, elle aussi, une des trois parties de la philosophie17, selon les stoïciens) est plus difficile à saisir et pourtant, à la réflexion, il est tout aussi évident. La discipline du désir conduit d’une part à ne désirer que ce qui dépend de nous, d’autre pa

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Stoicism is about developing the tools to deal as effectively as humanly possible with the ensuing conflicts, does not demand perfection, and does not provide specific answers: those are for fools (Epictetus’s word) who think the world is black and white, good versus evil, where it is always possible to clearly tell the good guys from the bad guys.

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Le principe de tout stoïcisme en effet, c'est précisément l'indifférence aux choses indifférentes : cela signifie, premièrement, que la seule valeur est le bien moral, qui dépend de notre liberté, et que tout ce qui ne dépend pas de notre liberté (la pauvreté, la richesse, la santé, la maladie) n'est ni bon ni mauvais, et donc indifférent; en secon

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