A school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium of Citium focussed on personal eudaemonic virtue ethics informed by its system of Logic and views on natural world. The stoics identified the path to eudaimonia with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues and living in accordance with nature.
Stoicism teaches that we canât control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our âreasoned choiceââour ability to use our reason to choose how we categorise, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.
Stoics ultimately framed their work around a series of exercises in three critical disciplines:
- The Discipline of Perception: how we see and perceive the world around us
- The Discipline of Action: the decisions and actions we takeâand to what end
- The Discipline of Will: how we deal with the things we cannot change, attain clear and convincing judgment, and come to a true understanding of our place in the world
The Stoics seek steadiness, stability, and tranquilityâtraits most of us aspire to but seem to experience only fleetingly.
Perception
Stoicism teaches that one ought to control ones perceptions, since we cannot control the external world it is important to focus our attention on the only thing within our control which is how we see the world.
Today, you wonât control the external events that happen. Is that scary? A little, but itâs balanced when we see that we can control our opinion about those events. You decide whether theyâre good or bad, whether theyâre fair or unfair. You donât control the situation, but you control what you think about it.
Itâs about filtering out the outside world through our judgement, taking the crooked and confusing nature of external events and making them orderly.
Stoic Philosophers
Notable stoics include: