3 ms·

It could be quote from Epictetus, who had a similar philosophy and lived his life as a slave, made lame by his master breaking his leg, before becoming a philos

• giraffe_lady 4y ago
  These dudes also had a (to most contemporary people) deeply weird metaphysics that brought them to these understandings and allowed them to share them despite extreme differences in their lives. Unless you also believe that the entire universe including yourself is a single sentient being and every event is perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some contradictions here. It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it can still be individually valuable of course, but other parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with it. A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity. You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role in the world.
  • codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
    Stoicism, Daoism, Buddhism, all the Hindu religions stemming from advaita vedanta, heck even proto Indo Europeans all have very similar monistic metaphysics, I don't think it's weird at all. Different names for the same thing: - logos - Dao - Brahman - Wralda > It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. I absolutely agree with this, and I'd say anyone who wants to take Stoicism seriously should adapt a similar metaphysical perspective. I'd also say that anyone who already understands one of the above religions already has the ability to readily understand the others, at least compared to the standard Westerner.