Sublime

TE-CH’ING says, “Sages move through the world with an empty self and accept the way things are. Hence, they leave no tracks. They do not insist that their own ideas are right and accept the words of others. Hence, they reveal no flaws. They do not care about life and death, much less profit and loss.

In Seneca’s essay on tranquility, he uses the Greek word euthymia, which he defines as “believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.” It is this state of mind, he says, that produces tranquility.

The ancient Stoics were pantheists—that is, they thought that God was the same thing as the universe. The God/universe was made of matter and regulated by cause and effect. In a sense, the cosmos itself was a living organism, and whatever it was doing was for its own benefit. However, since we are literally bits and pieces of the God/universe, we

Dans le platonisme, mais tout aussi bien dans l’épicurisme et le stoïcisme, la libération de l’angoisse s’obtient donc par un mouvement dans lequel on passe de la subjectivité individuelle et passionnelle à l’objectivité de la perspective universelle. Il s’agit, non pas d’une construction d’un moi, comme œuvre d’art, mais au contraire d’un

La sagesse était un mode de vie qui apportait la tranquillité d’âme (ataraxia), la liberté intérieure (autarkeia), la conscience cosmique. Tout d’abord la philosophie se présentait comme une thérapeutique destinée à guérir l’angoisse.

[Epicureans] insist that heaven is unconcerned with our birth and death – is unconcerned, in fact, with human beings generally – with the result that good people often suffer while wicked people thrive. [The Stoics] disagree, maintaining that although things happen according to fate, this depends not on the movement of the planets but on the