/lit/ - Literature

To really embrace this philosophy requires crossing a bridge you likely won't be able to, and that's the bridge of devotion. With religion this is easier, because you feel the swell of popularity around you given that many are undertaking the same journey; but Stoicism is a thing of the self, for it is not an organized religion and it has no cults.

Instead this is a personal decision that you make. But, in order to do so, and you might find it difficult, you have to really accept the metaphysics. His >>5822248 dislike of pantheism and determinism really make it impossible to follow this philosophy, because without the acceptance that our lives are nothing more than extensions of nature, that we ourselves are such extensions modes of the infinite substance , you really can't activate the ethics.

When you accept that your entire life is already contained and mapped out, only then can you realize that you cannot change this, and that the best approach to things is to live your life in accordance with nature: that when misfortune befalls you, it had to be that way, and couldn't possibly be different.

Until you REALLY BELIEVE this, you can never activate Stoic ethics.

How can philosophy once again become a useful pillar of society? Before the domination of Christianity there was not just one but several enlightened philosophies that flourished throughout the Roman/Hellenic world and so many of them are worth considering. Christianity is like a Greatest Hits of Greek Philosophy and much of what came afterwords just seems to be regurgitations of ground that the Greeks had already covered; by the time of the present philosophy has taken such a back seat due to its unwillingness to make bold claims that it has effectively written itself out of any usefulness: philosophy is useless presently precisely because it wants to be.

Why is it that only Plato and Aristotle can dabble into virtue ethics? Do we have to live by these ancient systems forever? Even in European classical times people like Smith wrote about moral philosophy but these texts seem to be rare: serious replacements for Christian philosophy in the present when it comes to ethics seem scarce. In the end, it seems a person either has to be religious to be ethical or else you'll be lost in the woods.

Is religion then the singular avenue towards an ethical life? Or is the only other alternative following the ancient systems mapped out by people like Plato and Aristotle?