/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16024900]

Book That Changed My Life

[Anonymous No.16024904]

>>16024900
This. There will never be a book as influential as this in my life. I am certain of that.

[Anonymous No.16025942]

>>16024900
I own it but haven't read it yet. What do I need to let it positively affect me? Or can I just read it and will want to be better?

[Anonymous No.16025953]

This but unironically.

[Anonymous No.16025983]

>>16025953
No, it didn't.

[Anonymous No.16025997]

>>16025953
This is my favorite meme

[Anonymous No.16026025]

>>16025953
>Writing by committee
>Edited by committee
>Full of contradictions
>Copied from jews
>Copied from greeks

Lol.

[Anonymous No.16026672]

First chapter is boring as shit
cba to continue reading reddit neckbeard guide to life

[Anonymous No.16026701]

>>16024900

>literally the most normie basic bitch core book in existence that only gets you up to a base level of being able to survive in the world changed your life

[Anonymous No.16026842]

>>16026701
I know you're just being a bitch, but if Meditations really only gets you up to a basic level then goddamn, it actually really changed my life for the better

[Anonymous No.16026909]

>>16026842

The fact that Marcus Aurelius never intended the "book", which was really just random notes, to be published really says it all
If he had thought that any of what he was writing was truly groundbreaking or profound surely that wouldn't have been the case
He probably thought anybody could figure this stuff out and other people had already said it all better and well yeah he would've been right

[Anonymous No.16027727]

always and forever

[Anonymous No.16027810]

>>16026909
weve lost 99% of the culture he was consooming so this is now a main source for some of these ideas regardless if he could have foreseen that happening

[Anonymous No.16028219]

>>16025953
Paul plagiarized Seneca.

[Anonymous No.16028230]

>>16026701
People copied this book by hand for two thousand years for a reason, retard.

[Anonymous No.16028346]

I call him Fartus Aurelius because his work is about as valuable as rotten, pungent fart

[Anonymous No.16028583]

>>16024900
>meme relius
for the worse u guess

[Anonymous No.16029538]

>>16028346
is your journal any more interesting?

[Anonymous No.16029842]

>>16024900
The antipode to stoicism embraces its essence. Stoicism is virtue ethics + mastery of judgment (emotion, will, etc.) but mastery of emotion can also be deployed in service of pure, unadulterated hedonism. A quotation from The Picture of Dorian Grey, that relentless pursuer of decadence and sensuality:

>"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require the years to get rid of emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, enjoy them, and to dominate them."

Notice how the stoic would not disagree with the basic thrust of his assertion, that subordination of emotion entails mastery of pleasure or pain. But mere mastery is clearly not enough to live the virtuous life, for Dorian uses his mastery to live like a libertine. The stoic call to master emotion produces a hollowing out of the soul and requires an ethical orientation directed "above the passions". But one can live virtuously without the suppression of desire, as every other system of virtue ethics makes clear, making all this rather redundant. What then is the point of stoicism beyond making onionboys feel good?

[Anonymous No.16029895]

>>16029842
>subordination of emotion
That is not what stoicism is. A healthy race requires emotionally healthy individuals.

[Anonymous No.16029931]

>>16025953
I've tried to read it 50 fucking times. I never make it past the first 2-3 books.

I simply just don't give a shit about what Jewish clans were battling each other in the desert during the bronze age or whatever. And that slowly percolates into realizing I don't care about Jewish ideas/philosophy at all.

[Anonymous No.16029942]

>>16029895
>That is not what stoicism is.

That's not what it claims to be, but that's what it amounts to in practice. Mastery of judgment requires, according to the stoics, an acknowledgment that the only thing one can control is within yourself (again: will, judgment, emotion). This entails a constant safeguarding against the possibility that you will react out of turn according to doctrine. Epictetus in his handbook literally says:

> “Freedom is not attained through the satisfaction of desires, but through the suppression of desires.”

You can call it mastery, but what it really is is suppression.

[Anonymous No.16029964]

His wife cheated

[Anonymous No.16029969]

>>16029942
Suppression of impulse is not suppression of social instinct.

[Anonymous No.16029997]

>>16029969
What is social instinct but customs inherited over the ages? There are no stoic societies.

[Anonymous No.16030044]

>>16029997
Instinct is innate, you fucking postmodern retard. Even monkeys have an innate sense of justice. Evolution doesn't end at the neck, get over it.

[Anonymous No.16030093]

>>16030044
Not my point. A stoic would reject most legal, ethical and political custom from Rome to the present day. How does Marcus Aurelius respond to a medieval blood oath, or retribution for the death of kin? The inward-directed individualism of the stoic, which demands the ethical if not ontological separation of self from most positive or negative interest in the world necessarily demands separation from practices that would determine honor, dishonor, justice, injustice, etc. That's why you get absurd statements like that of Seneca, who says the stoic ought to kill himself if he can't bear some inflicted shame or indignity. Many of our instincts are inherited cultural practices. Sorry bro, your philosophy is a failure

[Anonymous No.16030118]

>>16029931
Filtered by the nose

[Anonymous No.16030589]

>>16030093
A stoic would disregard his own virtues that do not stand scrutiny.

[Anonymous No.16030640]

>>16024900
>dude stop caring lmao
>his son becomes one of the worst roman emperors in history
People only pretend to like this book because their favorite youtube guru told them to.

[Anonymous No.16030669]

>>16030093
The stoics endlessly advise you to participate in society. Dunno how you could get individualism from any of them.

[Anonymous No.16030682]

>>16030669
Socrates made an excruciatingly detailed argument as to why he should submit himself to the law.

[Anonymous No.16030698]

>>16028230
they were all gay?

[Anonymous No.16030702]

>>16030682
I'm too dumb to see the relationship btwn this and my comment on the stoics.

[Anonymous No.16031047]

>>16030669
That's exactly the problem with stoicism. The tension between a traditional commitment to virtue ethics (with all the public obligations that entails) and the separation of the self from things "outside your control" (everything but rational judgment).

[Anonymous No.16031116]

>>16025983
>>16025997
>>16026025
samefag

[Anonymous No.16031133]

>>16031047
I dont understand the tension, here?

[Anonymous No.16031160]

>>16031133
As I explained above, mastery of judgment BY ITSELF is not enough to get you to a virtuous life, as it can just as easily be used in the service of a libertine and hedonistic lifestyle. It must be supplemented by traditional virtue ethics, which stresses obligations and commitments that self-mastery/domination, by itself, does not.

[Anonymous No.16031187]

>>16031160
But the stoics do lay on the virtue ethics, they do stress social obligations and they do it at the same time as emphasizing judgment. I dont understand the tension between these ideas that youre implying exists. Sorry if I'm like being a dumbass or something.

[Anonymous No.16031290]

>>16031187
Yes, they stress these things, and they're wrong to do so because there's friction at best and incompatibility at worst. Virtue ethics demands positive interest in things outside yourself, while self-mastery demands the negation of all things to the self - subordination, suppression. Virtue need not enter the equation for the latter. The "moral freedom" of the stoics is located in self mastery, but this liberation takes precedence over the afterthought that is virtue

[Anonymous No.16031357]

>>16031290
>Virtue ethics demands positive interest in things outside yourself
Idk about that. Stoics emphasize ethics-in-action, "doing one's duty" as derived from one's Nature and as identified by right judgment. There is no need to say that anything outside your will is good or bad, in order to get to virtuous action.

[Anonymous No.16031395]

>>16024900
what do I have in store for myself if I read this book?

[Anonymous No.16031482]

>>16031357
>There is no need to say that anything outside your will is good or bad, in order to get to virtuous action.

How do you get to a standard of virtue by which you can act in accordance with "right" judgment without determining what external acts are good and which are bad? Since again, self-mastery is morally neutral this seems impossible

[Anonymous No.16031492]

>>16024900

[Anonymous No.16031498]

>>16031482
All action you take is a product of your will, it's in your control and so it's fit for judgment. What is an external act? How could one act without willing? The basis stoics put forward for judgment is Nature, which they posit is social when it comes to humans.

[Anonymous No.16031541]

>>16031498
Problem is nature doesn't teach self-mastery. The classic Nietzscheian response is apt here: that what the stoics claim is "living according to nature" is no such thing. An external act are those taken by others outside yourself, which the stoic simultaneously claims ought not to fall within the realm of your concern as an individual who exercises rational judgment and also that virtuous communal action is still possible. It isn't.