Literature on stoicism

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I don't think a Stoic would necessarily be against expressions of suffering in art.

So your early-twentieth-century popular songs about keeping cheerful; tunes from the eras of World War One and the Depression, like Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag; weren't intrinsically stoical?

[bgmnts]

So your early-twentieth-century popular songs about keeping cheerful; tunes from the eras of World War One and the Depression, like Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag; weren't intrinsically stoical?

In terms of being stoical, as in a synonym for being unemotional etc, indeed they were. I don't believe this is Stoic philosophy though, from my limited understanding. Although you could argue temperance lends itself to trying to repress negative emotions.

Perhaps it's my own personal interpretation but I'd consider a balanced expression of negative and positive emotions the goal, rather than an absence or repression of emotion.

My kettle takeaway at least from Seneca and Marcus Aurelius is that practicing virtue is the true good in life, irrepressible good by nature, and it should be strived for I suppose.

[Astronaut Omens]

My understanding of this is limited too, maybe I've just read different bits from you, but I would say that, to the extent that ancient Stoicism is a distinctive doctrine at all, it goes beyond a common-sense feeling of being well-balanced and not excessively emotional. For example, this quote from Epicetus's Enchiridion seems to be suggesting a much stronger emotional stance than just avoiding being hysterical:

In every thing which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved, remember to add this to the (description, notion); what is the nature of each thing, beginning from the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken, you will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.

I can't find a quote just now but I remember Seneca talking quite a bit about not fearing death- again, I'd say that goes beyond just being well-balanced towards a more contentiously "un-emotional" stance towards life.

[bgmnts]

I have to read Epictetus and try to understand it but that perhaps comes across as repression, although there is something in Stoicism that focuses on what is natural to humanity etc, and I just think death is a part of life. In the Stoic worldview of everything being connected as one in a natural state of life, I suppose earthenware could be compared to human life.

Seneca recognises grief as a necessary function though - regarding his mother's grief towards his exile:

I realized that your grief should not be intruded upon while it was fresh and agonizing, in case the consolations themselves should rouse and inflame it

(To me, this shows he knows grief should be grieved and not immediately treated)

And then:

Let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness.
Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.

All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched

My interpretation of Seneca is an iconoclastic view of what is considered generally right. Desires (wealth, fame, pleasure etc) are not end goals to virtuosity, and conversely neither are general fears (death, ostracisation, illness etc).

And I feel he is talking about the excess of either, rather than the existence of it. Of course the excess of negative emotions is purely subjective so fuck knows.

I do find philosophical language to be impenetrable though mostly so I could be well off.

Although I do agree with Seneca that to accept and experience misery is just as useful and necessary to accept as happiness or pleasure. I would never consider myself stoical in the adjectival sense myself but I do strive to accept both states and not excessively desire or fear.

[ProvanFan]

I've got a stoic aunt up north

[Astronaut Omens]

(To me, this shows he knows grief should be grieved and not immediately treated)

Thank you for this, this does show Seneca to be a lot more measured than I thought.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

For example, this quote from Epicetus's Enchiridion seems to be suggesting a much stronger emotional stance than just avoiding being hysterical:

a lot of contemporary discourse/argument about stoicism and its discursive usage and deployment interests me because a lot of the polemics against stoicism (like the Zuckerberg one posted before in this thread) seem to dislike the consequences of exactly this while authorising the same affirmationalist or immanent-tist views. i don't want to quote it here but ive come across an angry refutation of the popularity of stoicism that seems to attack exactly the stance you've posted as somehow hegemonic or privileged while enthusiastically endorsing the philosophical or political consequence

i don really know where im going with this since i dont read a lot of latin literature and little greek but the view of stoicism ive come across frequently - endorsing an philosophy why abhorring its direct consequently - seems depressingly common. but this might be my being over invested in anglophone reception of french writers so heavily skewed towards how the big theory names relationship to the classic world is perceived, rather than any comment on classical work itself.