Monthly Archives: March 2014

On paradoxes.

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“Whenever philosophy or life presents you with a seeming paradox, thinking on whence that word came might be valuable. Paradox comes from the Greek meaning ‘against the popular opinion,‘ not originally an incongruous or contradictory idea.

“A paradox offers a chance to think differently, to approach something from a new direction, and quite literally to change the way our brains operate.”

— K.L. Patrick

SES Course

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I’ve registered and am taking New Stoa‘s The College of Stoic Philosophers SES Course.
The class uses several texts, and I will present my progress in chronological order divided by readings.
I don’t receive any compensation for any links provided, and many of these works are available for free on a variety of digital formats.

The Curriculum:

  • Stoicism, by John Sellars       [Amazon link] 
  • Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca       [Amazon Link]
  • The Discourses of Epictetus, by Arrian

  • Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius       [Amazon Link]

  • The Mneme Manual, by Erik Wiegardt       [Download Link]

SW2013 End-Questionnaires

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For Stoic Week 2013, there are several questionnaires designed to be taken before and after the project.
These surveys were actually closed by the time I got to the last of them, since I did the project out of step with the intended timeframe.  C’est la vie, n’est pas?

Thoughts:

So, instead I will take this time to discuss my thoughts on the Stoic Week.  I think it was a good exercise, and I can see how valuable it would be to someone very new to Stoic thought.  There was something in the manner that I did not quite prefer, something a little “touchy feely” in the tone.  This did not detract from the value of the experiment however.

While I was doing this project, I also began working with the New Stoa group, and entered their SES course, which seems to be more academically orientated than is Stoic Week.  This is good for two reasons: my skills and mindset bend towards the academic, but my desires for Stoicism lean to the practical.  I think this produced in me a more balanced approached.

I hope that Stoic Week does a 2014 iteration in the fall, and I look forward to participating more fully then.

SW2013 Day 7: Sunday

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The View from Above.

“A fine reflection from Plato. One who would converse about human beings should look on all things earthly as though from some point far above, upon herds, armies, and agriculture, marriages and divorces, births and deaths, the clamour of law courts, deserted wastes, alien peoples of every kind, festivals, lamentations, and markets, this intermixture of everything and ordered combination of opposites.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.48

The exercise can be downloaded and followed here [LINK].