4 ms·
You can get the cliffs notes version of virtue ethics from the stoics. Very approachable and clear to implement in life. As an aside, I find it amusing that a
by mberning 3y ago
You can get the cliffs notes version of virtue ethics from the stoics. Very approachable and clear to implement in life.
As an aside, I find it amusing that a piece in the New Yorker has the gall to criticize Aristotle of all people for meandering prose which often leads nowhere.
- leoh 3y agoIt’s depressing to me how few folks are willing to tolerate “meandering prose” from folks they respect. There seems to be a complete lack of understanding that this approach has been powerful for so many. It seems to me that hardly anyone anymore understands or tolerated fruitful historical processes for creating systems of ideas. Which, incidentally, involves reading.
- gcoladon 3y agoI can't help but be reminded of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMHixb0KSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMHixb0KSI
- taylorportman 3y agoyes but have you considered httpd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53urw0rd5
- throw0101a 3y agoSome differences between the two as well: > The main point of contention between Aristotelian and Stoics is the issue of whether virtue is sufficient for happiness (Aristotle, NE 1.8-10, Cicero, On Ends Books 3-5). Both Aristotle and Stoics claim that virtue is an essential component of happiness. But while Aristotle sees happiness as dependent on a combination of virtue and bodily goods (for instance, health) and external goods (for instance, money, power and friends), for the Stoics happiness depends solely on virtue. Thus, for Aristotle virtue is necessary for happiness, but not sufficient, whereas for the Stoics it is both necessary and sufficient. * https://modernstoicism.com/aristotelian-and-stoic-happiness-by-gabriele-galluzzo-and-chris-gill/ https://modernstoicism.com/aristotelian-and-stoic-happiness-... > * If all external things are deemed by the Stoa unnecessary for our happiness, this will include other people. Yet the affect of love, with its valuation of the other and her good as part of our own, seems to be set irremovably deep in our nature and infancy, and to be the portal to the most meaningful experiences of life: a thought underlying Aristotle’s arguments concerning philia. The Stoic opposition to the pathē more widely, likewise, seems psychologically unrealistic – since passions like love and fear are so basic to our psyches – and to threaten to rob our subjective lives of too much of what gives them their colour. Finally, at a more technical level, the Stoic emphases on virtue as a technē or epistēmē seems to rob practical rationality of the subtle flexibility Aristotle’s differentiation of praxis and phronēsis had won for virtue ethics, and to point forwards towards Kant’s and the utilitarians’ paradoxically impractical, rule-based moralities (Kant greatly admired the Stoics).* * https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315729053.ch3 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315729053...
- mberning 3y agoSeneca seemed to have an Aristotelian streak.
- bandrami 3y agoJust here to throw in that the English word "happiness" probably doesn't give a great sense of the Greek εὐδαιμονία but it's what we're stuck with.
- briancleland 3y ago"Thriving" or "wellbeing" are better translations.
- bandrami 3y agoAristotle's writings are already Cliffs notes; they're basically lecture notes as it is. That said, Aristotle and Epictetus differed pretty significantly on the question of what constitutes happiness (this English word doesn't really capture the full sense of the Greek well), which is the core question of the ethics.
- briancleland 3y agoWhile they both might be cited as examples of "virtue ethics" (a modern term and category) Stoicism and Aristotelianism are completely different philosophies.