Seneca says that Stoics should keep likenesses of great men and even celebrate their birthdays (Letters, 64). He lists his favourite philosophical role-models as:

• Socrates
• Plato – somewhat surprisingly for a Stoic
• Zeno, the founder of Stoicism
• Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa
• Laelius the Wise
• Cato of Utica

When Epictetus is telling his students who they should aspire to be like the philosophers he mentions most frequently are Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic, he also mentions Zeno and Cleanthes but more frequently than them he refers to Chrysippus. Epictetus also praises Heraclitus and Pythagoras.

Marcus Aurelius lists Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Epictetus, and Chrysippus, as the philosophers he particularly admires.

Some things that might perhaps be noteworthy...

• It seems odd that Seneca lists Zeno and Cleanthes but doesn't mention Chrysippus, the most prolific and influential of the early Stoics, especially as Epictetus and Marcus do name him as a great philosopher.
• It's also striking that Seneca lists Plato and one perhaps gets the impression that he takes the place given by Epictetus to Diogenes the Cynic. Plato and Diogenes were traditionally seen as representing two quite contrasting (almost opposite) attitudes toward what it means to be a philosopher.
• It's also interesting that Seneca names Cato and Laelius, two Romans from the Republic, whereas Epictetus tends to praise members of the Stoic Opposition such as Paconius Agrippinus and Helvidius Priscus, who were critical of Nero.
• Seneca perhaps seems less interested in Heraclitus than Epictetus and Marcus were.

It may be that Seneca was more aligned with a form of Middle Stoicism that held Plato in higher regard. Epictetus was arguably returning to an old school version of Stoicism, which particularly revered the Cynics for their self-discipline. (Seneca, of course, says a lot more than Epictetus about Epicureanism but his remarks are complex and although they appear favourable at first glance on closer inspection he was actually very critical of this philosophy.)

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a project that combines stoic philosophy with modern AI, and I thought this community might appreciate it (or at least have some strong opinions).

Basically, I took two versions of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and trained a custom GPT model on them. Now I’m asking it questions like, “What do you think of social media?” or “How would you view artificial intelligence?” to see how Marcus might weigh in on today’s issues.

That said, I'd love to get your thoughts on the following:

• Is it ethical to use AI to generate responses as a historical figure?
• Can an AI really capture the essence of a philosopher when talking about modern stuff?
• What do you think about blending ancient wisdom with current tech like this?

I read somewhere that just relying on YouTube to start that discussion isn’t the best long-term strategy, so I figured I’d bring this to Reddit to get some feedback and maybe spark a discussion.

If you’re curious or want to check out the channel, here’s the link. (Link removed to avoid self promotion. If you’re interested you can find it on my profile.)

I’d love to hear what you think—good, bad, or ugly.

Thanks!

Basically, I am wondering if being a bit selfish and cold towards others comes with the territory of stoicism. I still care about others. I don’t want to be a complete heartless dickhead but is that something that needs to change in order for me to continue on this path? I know I need to stop caring about things like that altogether and I am working on it. I have always been a very anxious guy and I am sick of that overthinking, it has only ever caused me pain, so I really want to change my personality altogether.

If these are the only two choices. Embracing the anger and letting it give you the energy to do things - pursue your goals, do basic self-care, try to prove doubters wrong, supress self-doubt etc.

Or on the other hand, teach yourself to not allow your anger to motivate you. And then replace it with nothing else, because you haven't yet found anything else. And then languish, throw away your potential because you don't have the drive (same as how many people with ADHD lack cognitive energy to do things, unless they have something to create a sense of urgency like an imminent deadline to put their brain in gear. Or anger).

I can remember being much more motivated and making more progress in life (in tangible ways) when I allowed my anger to be a gift. It made me long-term better off. Motivated me to self-advocate, to work dilligently at work during times when I had no other motivation (I did have other motivations, like helping service users or honouring my manager, but I'm talking about reality, and in reality those motivations weren't ALWAYS there every second of every shift. I see motivation like an regenerating onion, with multiple layers - when one layer is gone you rely on another, when that one is fading the other layer has already grown back. More layers, the better), to say "fuck it" and put myself into situations I was scared of or to stop procrastinating.

Removing my anger or telling myself I shouldn't use it hasn't helped my motivation levels at all (I'm not new to this. I first started doing the "count to 10" when I was 13yo, over 15 years ago, as my father had explosive rage problems and I didn't want to be like him. I also worked on being less argumentative and "turning the other cheek". By 14 it was almost impossible to make me more than mildly annoyed (and paved the way for depression to take hold, since I'd thrown away my personality (at the same time as I'd just moved cities, so had no friends who knew the old me to help me get it back), lost my sense of self and became "boring" to others) which increased bullying against me, but that's not the topic here. Point is I'm not new to the idea of controlling anger. I've been into combat sports for a long time, and for years practiced walking the line between anger and control - so that you get a strength/focus/reaction boost from adrenaline, but retain your cognition to make smart decisions). Being able to internally say "fuck it" and be a little angry when you're tired and badly sleep-deprived, but still want to attend a hobby after work, or going outside to do an errand that will move your life forward when you're nervous or procrastinating, is better to look back on a year later, than doing nothing - I've never looked back on inaction and thought "oh yes, I'm glad I did nothing". Likewise, I've never looked back on beneficial actions and thought "oh dear, that action was beneficial to my life and congruent with my life objectives, but I regret doing it because I used anger as a partial fuel".

What might the stoics say is better between these two?

Sometimes in life people can't afford to sit around reading philosophy - there are bills to pay, and our biological clock is ticking.

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Hello, all. Looking for stoic advice on work. Long story short, I’m an anesthesiology resident, as such I don’t set my hours, which average anywhere from 50-80 hours/week. I like the actual practice of anesthesia, but the hours are long and can be very depressing at times. Some days I find meaning, but others I struggle to find any meaning (e.g. if I’m in a case for placement of a penile prosthesis, or a 96 year old with no quality of life getting a procedure to live an extra week).

Lately I just find work and the pursuit of money to be pointless. I would much rather be a self-sufficient farmer than go to a hospital that doesn’t value me and I don’t always find value in. However, I’m in year 11 of 12 of training since finishing high school and it seems silly to quit at this point.

TLDR: how does a stoic perspective help find meaning in a modern job

So my friends used my phone while I wasn't there because I was taking a test, and I'm sure they've checked up my gallery, back then my gallery is full of obscene pictures or basically Nudinity, those photos are already in my trash bin in my cellphone but they still managed to check it out, I know they won't bring it up on in front of me but I'm just afraid of what they're going to think of me differently, I'm not the same person I was whose always on phub and in constant pain under the sin of lust, is there anything I can even do to make them think I'm not the same person I was? Any advice and help would do, thanks! (Excuse my bad English)

I got hurt by a group of people a year ago, and its taken me about half of this year to really find myself again and start to enjoy life to the fullest. However, no matter how much time passes and how happy I am, i keep going back to comparing every potential problem to that one.

I constantly find myself asking 'what if this goes wrong just like x situation?' 'what if I'm unaware of a problem going on behind my back right now like i was then?' and I don't know how to stop comparing everything to what I went through then.

Everytime some small disagreements or fights come up with friends, I think 'everything's going wrong again like it did'. I hate how much autonomy I give them over my current life, even though they aren't in it. I want to look at experiences and hurt to come as new ones and not a continuation of old patterns. Please share some insight on this, I feel really trapped in this cycle

Hello all. This has been a very positive community for me and glad I joined. I am hoping you guys can help me, as I am going in for a day surgery on Friday and looking to apply stoicism to this event in my life.

Please let me know if any quotes or chapters come to mind that may help. Thanks!

I am so weak. I cry over everything. I spend so long thinking about Al of the things I don’t have in my life. I fall into depression and suicidal thoughts regularly. Stoicism teaches you can control how you look at situations but I cannot. It’s like my mind logically knows there’s a better way to think about things, but my emotions just can’t cooperate. I’m not an angry person, so I don’t lash out at people or anything like that. I just cry and cry and cry. I hate this. Just need some support.

What are people's thoughts on compromising sometimes and performing actions that go against your values? For example in cases where just doing something avoids a long and drawn out argument with someone but that action isn't something you support of? I can't help by feel as if I'm a hypocrite in those situations

I mean it has theories about a God? Could some people? I mean definitions vary.

I own Discourses, Meditations, the Enchiridion, and Senecas letters (although I haven't gotten around to reading them yet because I keep going back to Discourses).

I was wondering if there were some other good sources of information you all would recommend, I bought Donald Robertson's How to think like a Roman Emperor.

I've recently watched Gladiator 2 at a cinema, I am aware that Ridley Scott's adaptations of his characters that are based on Roman Figures are not so accurate. However, Macrinus (Denzel Washington) quotes Marcus Aurelius from his Meditations; "the best revenge is to be unlike the one who performs the injury'. I just want a bit of clarification as to whether or not this was really written in his Meditations. I have a copy of the Meditations from Collins Classic and I can't seem to find that specific phrase.

Stoicism says we should not worry about things outside of our control. Ive heard that and learned lessons about it so much that it’s engraved in my head.

Yet, I still find myself worrying.

I worry about if my YouTube channel will fail, it’s been 4 years and progress is diminishing. But I tell myself “if it fails, you learned a lot from it, made some money, and you can always get a normal job.”

I worry about if my Ex, will reply back to the message I sent then I tell myself “accept whatever she says, if she reply’s with good intentions then that’s good but if she doesn’t reply at all, that’s also good at least you know you tried everything to make it right and now you can find someone new.”

I have lots of worries . But I try my best to view them in a different light, however it feels like I’m lying to myself? Like I don’t believe what I say, as I still sit around anxiously waiting for her to respond, I still get sad when I look at my views on a video I worked hard on and it still hasn’t did good.

How do you believe what you say? Is there practices to all of this, what helps you?

So a friend of mine really upset me yesterday. I was livid. I’m learning that anger occurs when our perceived reality is incongruent with nature (how things are). So in essence, I’m angry because I never thought my friend would behave this way, however he did, so my perception of how things are or ought to be was incorrect.

So moving forward, I first have accepted I was out of tune with nature. I misjudged things. And there’s really nothing to be hold anger against here, because this is who this person is, as demonstrated by there actions. If I should feel anything, it’s possibly a brief internal mourning of a state of nature I incorrectly assumed but is not real.

I can continue on not angry at this person, but with a more calibrated picture of who they are as I may interact with them going forward.

Is this the correct application as is taught by stoicism.

Note: for some reason I can’t always see comments in the sub so if you ask a question and I don’t respond, I feel free to dm.

I’’m new to learning about stoicism and trying to put some principals into practice. However, I’m finding myself right now just fuming mad about a situation. More specifically about how a supposed “friend” treated me.

How do you let go of the anger so that you can deal with the situation free of emotion?

And that goes against one of the foundational markers of Stoicism: letting go of the fear of what you can’t control. I just…can’t do that. No matter how hard I genuinely try, so much so that I start to come off as uncaring and indifference when I should definitely care, I always come back to my baseline. My baseline being that I worry about the future.

I have the expectation that a) things probably won’t work out for me in the end since they rarely do and b) any good thing that does happen to me, or some good news I receive, will soon be followed by something bad. That’s just how my life is and always has been.

So, much as I find wisdom in the writers of this philosophy and way of life, old and new, I just don’t think I’m equipped mentally for it. I tried.

Hey everyone,

Long-time lurker here. I've read countless posts about the dichotomy of control and accepting what we can't change, but honestly? I'm stuck. Really stuck.

I work nights at a slot machine club, watching people throw their lives away at the machines. Last week I lost €100 of my own money due to a work mistake - all because I tried to be "nice" instead of standing my ground. Classic me, I guess.

The thing is, it's not just about the money. It's this deep-seated resentment I can't shake. I still remember the kids who bullied me for being the tall, awkward one. Now I see them on social media - successful careers, happy families - while I'm barely getting by. Some nights, my kyphoscoliosis flares up, and I lie there thinking: "They were right about me all along."

Everyone says "just let go." My question is: how? How do you let go when the pain is both mental and physical? When therapy waiting lists are years long, and all doctors do is prescribe more pills?

I understand the theory of Stoicism. Focus on what you can control, accept what you can't. But how do you actually do that when your mind won't shut up about all the injustice? When you see the bullies winning and good people losing every single day at work?

Sometimes I fantasize about escaping to the Alps, just disappearing from everything. I've tried dating apps, but who would want someone this... broken? (Yeah, I know that's not very Stoic thinking.)

I guess what I'm really asking is: Does Stoicism have anything to offer someone who's just... tired? Someone who's not particularly noble or wise, just angry and exhausted? How do you practice virtue when you can barely practice getting out of bed?

Would appreciate any thoughts from people who've been here.

My mother passed away two years ago in an accident. It was a devastating blow, like a powerful uppercut to my chin—especially since I grew up with her as my sole parent. Losing her made me feel profoundly alone in the world.

But even in death, she continues to teach me.

As per her wishes, my mother was cremated, and her ashes are kept in a beautiful ceramic container. One day, a guest accidentally knocked it over, breaking the lid. In that moment, I panicked. I hadn’t seen her ashes since the day of her cremation, and I was the one who carefully placed them into the container.

I felt a wave of emotion rising, but then I heard her voice in my head, saying something she always told me as a child whenever I broke something around the house—a plate, a vase, anything fragile: “Anything that has a shape will eventually break.”

Her words calmed me. The next day, I went to a hardware store and bought some gold paint and glue. I mixed the two together and carefully repaired the broken lid. Now, it looks even better than before.

Sometimes, stoicism comes from unexpected places. For me, it came from my mother, even after she was gone.

Hello. I am new to stoicism and want to practice this philosophy in the one place I feel the most stressed. School. School is pretty overwhelming for me. Most of the time, its the people. I'm constantly worried what others might say and how I'll react. I go throughout the school day thinking about imaginative situations that I might come across. My hands get cold. Being new to stoicism, I'm seeking some advice. Whether it's a mantra or book or something I can always use in the future to solve this problem I face. I am confident I can overcome this with the right tools.

Like a lot of Americans right now, I've been following the story of Luigi Mangione, the man who murdered the CEO of United Healthcare. I was reading through Luigi's Twitter account, and I saw that he has retweeted Ryan Holiday several times, which tells me that he might have had at least a passing familiarity with Stoicism. I also read his review of Ted Kaczynski/The Unabomber's manifesto. He thinks Kaczynski makes a compelling case for violence as a driver of positive change.

In general, Mangione seems like a smart guy who thought a lot about what was right and what was wrong. Murdering the CEO of United Healthcare apparently seemed like a reasonable action to him.

I'm definitely not saying that Luigi Mangione is a practicing Stoic. And I'm not shedding any tears about the death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO - I don't think he or his company were behaving justly.

But these events have me wondering: how can a practicing Stoic be certain that they are not using their reasoning to justify wrongdoing? What, if anything, prevents a Stoic from reasoning their way into becoming the Unabomber?

I've been thinking about concepts of free will and Amor Fati. I know a lot of people in the punk scene who don't believe in fate and think its just a hopeless way of accepting the status quo. o, at first I was confused. I think maybe it is a categorical error. The use of a word to mean multiple things to different people. IE Amor Fati means no matter your present state you should be thankful for it and accept it but that doesn't mean you shrug and say "well, that's that!" and don't try to better yourself or your situation.

No, the clutch is in neutral....

Why make a decision in gear?

Be Neutral, observe, decide.

I apologize but this is a re-post. Someone commented and I got heady and deleted the post. But anyway, I wanted to repost it and share it again.

I woke up at 2:30 a.m. in my hotel room, feeling parched. The air from the AC was warm and dry, and my throat was scratchy. I’d already finished the water from the small black refrigerator, so I decided to drive to a nearby convenience store, about six or seven blocks away, to buy a gallon of water.

When I pulled into the store’s parking lot, I noticed a man experiencing homelessness sitting on the sidewalk. He had a backpack, a cup of coffee from the store, and a donut resting on the lid. Not wanting to disturb him, I turned off my headlights before parking. For context, I volunteer part-time as a social worker for individuals experiencing homelessness and families with low incomes, so I’m especially aware of how people in his situation are often treated.

As I approached the store, I saw the door was locked, even though I’d checked earlier and knew this location was supposed to be open. The man calmly said, “They locked the door; they’ll open it for you.” I nodded and said, “Oh, thanks.” Moments later, the clerk appeared, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Before I could step inside, she started yelling at the man, berating him in a degrading tone, and telling him to move. I told her, “He’s not bothering anyone. This is a public space, and he has every right to be here.”

That set her off. She turned her anger toward me, shouting with even more intensity. I could feel my heart racing and my blood boiling, but I took a deep breath and said, “Ma’am, I was just sharing my opinion. It seems it doesn’t matter to you, and I don’t want to argue. If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”

I bought the water and left. When I stepped back outside, the man was already gone.

It breaks my heart how often people mistreat and misunderstand those experiencing homelessness. Many of them work regular jobs but simply can’t afford to live in cities with skyrocketing costs. I just wanted to share this moment and remind everyone to show a little compassion.

Mine’s “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

I was wondering what stoicism says about this. I feel so I lack discipline and am too emotionally attached to my boyfriend even the thought of us breaking up or so would absolutely break me. I find it hard to express my feelings sometimes and wanting to say things, but then I feel like what if he ends things with me so I hold back. I have asked myself questions as to why I am this why and what about him makes me so drawn to him...it's nothing really. I live with him too. I just don't want to be tooo emotionally attached to him. Im able to do my own things and so on but I also think about him and his actions.

Hello,

I need your advice today. It's been several weeks since I started Epictetus' discourses and I'm making really slow progress. I find it very complicated to read and I must admit that I'm gradually losing my desire to read it.

I wanted to know if it was a "compulsory" step (to be taken with a pinch of salt) and if you had any other ways of progressing along the stoicism path? Are there any other books that would allow me to learn more / that talk about discourses? I've been on this subreddit for months (reading mostly, and trying to understand), and I've been listening podcast too. How do you daily pratice?

for context, my boyfriend has pointed out recently that i have a lot of changing to do and he has been disappointed for the past 11 months as he thinks i’ve not changed at all. im not just doing this so i dont push him further away but im doing it so i could really be a better person.

my family has a history of anger issues & bpd disorder and ive shown some signs of them too. i want to break this generational curse so i dont end up as miserable and stubborn as them. due to this, i have a lot of family issues which caused me to go into deep depression over the last 4-5 years & i have trouble breaking out my pattern of being depressed and handling my severe mood swings.

i really need to change but my motivation lasts for a few hours and then i get sucked back to my negative bubble. once i really change as a person im sure everything around me could change too.

tldr: how to keep consistent in changing when i keep falling back to old habits?