Stocism and godlessness

[Anonymous No.10834367]

Can one be a stoic without god? I've been reading Meditations and a defining characteristic of Marcus' beliefs seems to be that everything that happens was meant to happen due to divine providence. That god wouldn't overburden you with hardship that you could not bear, etc.

[Anonymous No.10834389]

>>10834367
>Can one be a stoic without god?

The Stoic reason which permeates everything is understood to be divine. It is hard to imagine a 'godless' Stoicism.

[Anonymous No.10834393]

From my minor acquaintance with the Greek Stoics, it seems that they based their ataraxia on the idea that the gods would reward honorable behavior in the next life, and this is why one ought to die rather then tell a known falsehood.

But it is possible to still hold this position, i.e. to "stake one's life for truth," in the absence of God, like Schopenhauer did. Rather than viewing that kind of death as something one does for God, it is viewed as something one does for oneself: Schopenhauer would have rather died than intellectually belittle himself for someone he knew to be his lesser.

[Anonymous No.10836090]

What did the stoics mean when they said "nature"?

[Anonymous No.10836156]

>>10834367
Yes. You can't be stoic with god.

[Anonymous No.10836174]

Stoicism was intellectually destroyed by Epicurus and the skeptics, in fact the stoics gained their strenght from sheer rage and contempt for the other schools, and had to rely on the roman state to keep being popular.

These schools are more similar than different, so no hard feelings stoicbros.

[Anonymous No.10836176]

>>10836090

Ultimate reality.

[Anonymous No.10836177]

Aurelius seems to use nature, god and gods interchangeably. I see no reason why an atheist couldn't take comfort from his writings.

[Anonymous No.10836192]

>>10834367
A lot of it is also based on a sense of civic nationalism, being a good citizen, doing your part, etc. I think you just have to end up tweaking it a little and find your own reasoning for certain things if you disagree with Marcus.

[Anonymous No.10836197]

Stoicism and atheism are both invalid retard ideologies. Burn that shite book and read somehting worth while.
>>10836176
No such thing exists
>>10836192
so,
>being a bootlicker
Stoics are literally subhuman

[Anonymous No.10836211]

Anyone without god is probably too dumb to understand philosophy anyway

[Anonymous No.10836221]

>>10836211
T.

[Anonymous No.10836225]

Read "The Inner Citadel" god is an attempt to personalize the reason of the universe or logos. They did not believe in the god of the bible. Even Aurlius himself says in book IV 3,5 god or atoms it matters not.

[Anonymous No.10836233]

>>10836197
>No such thing exists

How can you even say that?
Something must be more fundamental than everything else. No?

[Anonymous No.10836245]

>>10836233
Holy shit Platonists are fucking retarded

[Anonymous No.10836296]

>We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Was he a stoic?

[Anonymous No.10836688]

>>10836245
Present an argument against their claim instead of being a weak, boring faggot

[Anonymous No.10836735]

>>10836688
>muh argymint

[Anonymous No.10837002]

>>10836735
Not an argument

[Anonymous No.10837151]

>>10836225
Oh good point, didn't think of it that way.

[Anonymous No.10837198]

>>10836177
An intelligent god might not overburden you but nature is indifferent and will kill or maim you arbitrarily

[Anonymous No.10837536]

>>10836197

fuck off, christ-faggot

Don't you have some minister's cock to suck?

[Anonymous No.10837692]

>>10834367
>Can one be a stoic without god?
I think the godless have even more need of stoicism than the religious.

[Anonymous No.10838623]

>>10837198
Nature is a spook

[Anonymous No.10838646]

>>10834367
HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IS UP WITH ENDLESSLY DEBATING DEAD GREEKS LIKE YOU'RE SOME GOD DAMNED GENIUS ABOVE THE REST OF THE WORLD

SERIOUSLY NIGGER ARE YOU TRYING TO LOOK SMART BECAUSE IT ISN'T WORKING

[Anonymous No.10838749]

>>10838646
I mean it's actually a very simple and surface level question faggot-kun. Are you legitimately retarded?

[Anonymous No.10839145]

>>10838646
t:you

[Anonymous No.10840150]

>>10834367
I was thinking about this a lot reading meditations, but I concluded that while some aspects of stoicism get rickety if you don't presuppose a God, some the main points can be tweaked slightly to suit an atheistic worldview.

The biggest takeaway was how it challenges the very concept of unfairness, the whole impulse behind that thought 'I shouldn't be dealing with this.' The universe doesn't make mistakes any more than it does things on purpose. Whatever you're struggling with was a completely reasonable, unsurprising, and legitimate thing to happen. You know trillions of things can happen. Some of them will happen to you. Nothing cosmically wrong has transpired, and you have no grounds for being petulant, any more than a computer could be outraged at encountering a 1 rather than a zero. It's almost a truism that your happiness depends not on what you experience, but your opinion on it. These ideas attempt to preclude or at least temper negative opinions, and thus unhappiness.

A lot of stoic thought is also kept relevant by how it taps into a basic psychological truth: hedonism doesn't work. Indulgence and pleasure seeking doesn't make you happy. The stoics make some dodgy statements about what does and why, but fundamentally they're hitting off the important factors; you need to feel like you're doing good, that you have a valid, respectable place in the social order. This is at its core an extension of basic primate thought-if most of the pack likes you, you're doing good, because evolutionary that's advantageous. But we're also complex creatures, so we can get similar validation from a strong belief that the tribe SHOULD like what we're doing, even if in practice many of them don't. Meditations kept reassuring you 'this, this and that is how you should act to be a good person in society'. If you take those instructions to heart and believe them, then act accordingly, you will not only mentally and physically tire yourself out on a regular basis, which within limits is fantastic for mental health and viscerally rewarding, but you will get the true happiness of social validation, whether or not you ACTUALLY have it.

You can recontextualise almost every concept in that book into a functional, albeit sometimes more tenuous, secular version.

[Anonymous No.10840166]

>>10834367
They're broad principles, OP. I love Marcus and the other stoics, but please stop acting like it's a complex philosophy. Just don't be a pussy, that's it. And the philosophers give you some pretty sayings and allegories as encouragement.

[Anonymous No.10840197]

Why don't you guys care about Stoic physics?
Isn't kind of dumb to ignore a giant chunk of Stoic philosophy?

[Anonymous No.10840208]

I'm not from here but this thread is fucking amazing, keep it up guys.

[Anonymous No.10840215]

>>10834367
sure, I'm agnostic and stoic.
if your question is "can I be a stoic but also avoid being a mindless christcuck?" then the answer is yes, of course you should!

[Anonymous No.10840324]

>>10840166
I think you're over simplifying stoicism. Sure it isn't some of the most complex philosophy (esp. since Aurelius' thoughts are kinda simplified versions of more complex philosophy) out there but it definitely goes beyond "don't be a pussy" and other surface level self-help book tier shit.

[Anonymous No.10840328]

>>10840324
Sure, there's the part where occasionally the earth erupts into flames. i.e. bullshit

[Anonymous No.10840339]

>>10836090
They meant reality, the cold hard facts. Don't be delusional, don't trick yourself, accept that life is spontaneous and out of your control and live in accordance with it.
Things aren't fair but throwing a tantrum or acting like a bitch about it makes nothing better.

[Anonymous No.10840346]

>>10836197
>Christ faggot
>Boot licker
you're dealing with a Varg.

[Anonymous No.10840421]

>>10836225
Exactly this. Aurelius' one major contribution to Stoicism was his observation that for practical purpose it doesn't matter whether the universe is 'order or mere atoms.'

[Anonymous No.10840438]

>>10834367
as far as being a "true" Stoic, I would say yeah, you have to believe the pantheistic / metaphysical / epistemological aspects of the philosophy.

with that being said, it's clearly still possibly to find other justifications to follow their ethics. as far as I'm concerned, that's all that really matters. if you DON'T believe in their justification for how they reach their ethical ideals, don't force yourself. like I said, being a "true" Stoic or not doesn't mean you can't by in large act like one.

[Anonymous No.10840782]

>>10836197
No post on /lit/ using the word ‘bootlicker’ has ever been worth reading and this one’s no different.

[Anonymous No.10840784]

>>10838646
>>>/r/eddit

[Anonymous No.10840790]

>>10834367
>says something completely fucking stupid
>what are you a cry baby?
genius

[Anonymous No.10841738]

>>10840782
But your post also says it

[Anonymous No.10841985]

>>10834367
>Denying the existence of the divine in the first place
What are you some sort of heathen OP?

[Anonymous No.10842654]

>>10840150
Good post lad

[Anonymous No.10842920]

Why couldn't stoicism be combined with agnosticism? What is it about stoicism that requires a belief in God? Explain to a brainlet

[Anonymous No.10842937]

>>10834393
>But it is possible to still hold this position, i.e. to "stake one's life for truth," in the absence of God, like Schopenhauer did

Was this before or after he threw an old lady down a flight of stairs?

[Anonymous No.10843031]

>>10842920
their religious beliefs were the basis they used to justify their ethics. they argued, through God, their ethical ideals were objective. as far as being a "classical" Stoic, you would need to believe said justification.

[Anonymous No.10843057]

>>10842920
>>10843031
depends on what god means to you. God could represent something thats bigger than you are.

[Anonymous No.10843099]

>>10843057
>depends on what god means to you.
what depends on that? all I'm saying is what the Stoics used to justify their philosophy. if you don't believe what they did in that regard, you technically aren't a Stoic (in at least the classical sense)

[Anonymous No.10843119]

>>10843031
i thought the central idea of stoicism was emotional indifference

[Anonymous No.10843122]

>>10843099
thats just how neo stoics would read something like meditations I think, like people in the silicon valley. But you clearly were talking about the stoics in ancient times. I don't know why I included you in that post.

[Anonymous No.10843125]

You could believe in karma >>10834367

[Anonymous No.10843148]

>>10843119
that's partly it. be indifferent to things out of your (complete) control, and in things you can (fully) control, be the most virtuous. *that* is the center of their philosophy, but the *justification* for this philosophy was centered around their idea of God.

[Anonymous No.10843151]

>>10843122
no worries anon

[Anonymous No.10843155]

>>10834367
Cowards need God

[Anonymous No.10843156]

>>10837198
Aurelius doesn't think that dying is unfair. If nature kills you then nature meant to kill you.

[Anonymous No.10843167]

>>10843156
>>10837198
this. the Stoics were very much deterministic

[Anonymous No.10843477]

>>10843099
But the gods they believed in also drastically differed from the modern day concept of god. In Marcus' time the Christian population was a fairly disliked minority since they wouldn't worship Zeus and the like. I don't think anyone can really be a 100% classical stoic in the sense that you follow it exactly as Marcus did. However you can still arrive at the same conclusions albeit with different justifications.

[Anonymous No.10843705]

>>10843156
>>10843167
Something being determined is not the same as something being "meant" to happen.

[Anonymous No.10843714]

>>10843477
the god(s) they lay down are very vague and often pantheistic. it's not realistic, but I think it is at least hypothetically possible for someone to practice Stoicism in the same manner. but I agree that you don't need their justifications to practice their ethics.

[Anonymous No.10843718]

>>10842937
That was part of the fight for truth, she was chattering loudly while he was trying to write

[Anonymous No.10843749]

>>10843705
take that up with the Stoics

[Anonymous No.10843844]

i believe this.

i believe stocism is the precursor to finding god and the reason having faith is valuable in the very first place

[Anonymous No.10843858]

>>10843844
you need faith to follow out the Stoic's ethics?

[Anonymous No.10843862]

>>10834367
>I've been reading Meditations
Have you? I've been reading the 2018 Cute Cats and Wise Sayings of the Day Calendar..

[Anonymous No.10843868]

>>10841738
NI!

[Anonymous No.10843902]

>>10843858
huh? no i need discipline and lessons to learn what is right and what it takes to be a good man, and then the nature of god is revealed to me through my own strife outwards and away from baser natures

[Anonymous No.10843930]

>>10836174
I'll never understand where Epicurians draw their legitimacy from, considering that in order to actually follow their teachings you need to be a rich aristocrat with need to support yourself.

[Anonymous No.10843934]

>>10843902
that would seem to suggest faith isn't necessarily important. you can be disciplined, learn lessons, and have "God's nature" reveal itself without faith

[Anonymous No.10844027]

>>10843934
i find that when i see the rewards of what my discipline has brought me it is a glimpse into gods nature and gives me faith in its existence

[Anonymous No.10844057]

>>10844027
that's fine, but it still stands, as you describe it, the rewards aren't contingent on faith. you are seeing glimpses of God independent of whatever faith you happen to have.

[Anonymous No.10844085]

>>10843705
Brainlet here. Pls explain

[Anonymous No.10844086]

>>10834367
Epicureanism is far superior

[Anonymous No.10844093]

>>10844057
i mean yeah ive always believed that i "all ways have", through my two eyes looking at the world. its impossible for me to not have faith. its whether or not i should submit myself to him and do his will because i believe it is for the greater good

[Anonymous No.10844099]

>>10844085
Not that guy, but I think he's saying that something being causally determined by virtue of physical laws is not the same thing as that same thing being ordained by the Will of Fate, or whatever you want to call the disembodied order of the universe. I think he's just getting at the difference between determinism and fatalism.

This >>10843156 is a good example. The idea of nature "meaning" to kill you implies that there is some kind of universal moral order, which is something materialistic determinists completely eschew.

[Anonymous No.10844107]

>>10843930
>lowercase e