“Q: Curt, what is a good book to understand stoicism?” |Mindfulness| Mythology >

“Q: Curt, what is a good book to understand stoicism?”

|Mindfulness| Mythology > Ritual > Religion > “Self Help” > Philosophy > The Natural Law > The Sciences > “Computation”.

There is a difference between emotional inspiration from the stoics, reading the thoughts of those who practiced stoicism, and the ‘science’ of the disciplines of stoicism in training mindfulness and pursuit of virtues.

So it depends upon whether you want the self help version, the philosophical version, or the scientific version. I can’t address the self help versions because I believe from the evidence they’re ineffective. I can address the philosophical versions because they market has spoken over the gnerations that there are just three main books, and endless commentary on them.

–“Modern Stoicism is largely based on the wonderful thinking of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca through their “main 3 books” of Meditations, Discourses, and Letters, respectively.”–

But for the scientific version (which is relavant to the work of the institute) the best author is Donald Robertson, precisely because he not only covers the philosophers, but he ‘sciences’ stoicism as cognitive behavioral therapy. Fundamentally, (and my ex wife practiced this by her own intutition) you keep in mind the virtues you’re consider your day when you wake up by planning how the events of they day will improve you and your virtues, then during the day keep that in mind, then at night review your day. Like most rituals, this takes about ninety days to habituate, and after three years it will become purely intuitionistic, and you will do so on autopilot.

AS A RELIGION
The christian virtues are an attempt to integrate stoic thought, while preserving ‘authority’ of the scripture and church.

The heroic narrative of man’s ascendance, stoic discipline, the natural law, and science as a description of the universe, is the best religion because it’s simply not false.

But it will require more training than the other religions.

As such like all European civilizational thought, it’s just more costly with a higher barrier to entry.

Cheers
Curt

Reply addressees: @thedualMan