161 definitions
The book's index
Stoicism
121 concepts · 161 definitions
- adversity1
- advice1
- anger1
- apatheia1
- art of living1
- assent1
- assertible1
- book1
- border1
- care of the self1
- caution1
- certainty1
- character1
- choice1
- citizenship1
- city1
- cognition1
- commentary1
- conflagration1
- consciousness1
- consistency1
- consolation1
- convention1
- cosmic sympathy1
- cosmos1
- danger1
- death1
- delight1
- desire2
- disaster1
- distress1
- disturbance1
- duty1
- emotion5
- escape1
- eternal recurrence1
- fate2
- fear3
- fire1
- first impression1
- first movement1
- freedom3
- God3
- good1
- good fortune1
- goodness1
- grief1
- habit1
- happiness3
- humanity1
- hypocrisy1
- immanence1
- indifferent1
- individuality1
- joy1
- justice1
- knowledge2
- life1
- logic1
Philosophy (n.) is medicine for the soul, a sickness graver than any of the body's — and the soul's diseases are the emotions.
Philosophy (n.) is an animal, not an orchard: logic its bones, ethics its flesh, physics its soul — parts that cannot live apart.
Philosophy (n.) is no trick for catching the public: it shapes and builds the soul, orders a life, and without it no one lives free of fear.
Philosophy (n.) is an egg: logic the shell, ethics the white, and physics the yolk at the centre.
Stoicism (n.) is a philosophy of patience rather than hope.
Stoicism (n.) is the philosophy of a culture of bondage and fear: it withdraws into pure thought and mistakes disengagement from the world for freedom.
Stoicism (n.) is a system so firmly jointed that altering one letter shakes the whole structure — its strength, and the loose brick its critics hunted for.
Stoicism (n.) stands halfway between the Cynic and the Aristotelian: virtue is the only good, yet some externals still deserve preference.
Emotion (n.) is not reason's opposite but its mistake: the Stoics read violent feeling as an error in reasoning.
Emotion (n.) is not being moved by impressions but surrendering to them; pallor, tears, a sigh or a flush are only disturbances of the body.
Emotion (n.) may be suffused with intelligence and discernment: if feelings reflect value judgements, they map how we assess the world.
Emotion (n.) is sometimes simply too quick for the mind.
The Sage (n.) is perfectly rational, free of emotion, indifferent to circumstance — and, infamously, happy even while being tortured on the rack.
The Sage (n.) is never impeded, never wrong, richer, freer and happier than anyone — the only person who truly deserves the title king.
The Sage (n.) of the Stoics wants not a life without development but an absolutely active one, as his dynamic, Heraclitean view of nature shows.
The Sage (n.) of the Stoics lives in contempt for the world — without development, without friendly ties to it, in isolation.
Fear (n.) builds a wall between you and Nature: once the wave is judged terrible, it becomes something outside you and against you.
Fear (n.) can seize even the sage in a storm, since impressions force themselves on us; what he keeps is the power to refuse them his assent.
Fear (n.) is the belief in an evil to come; distress, in an evil present; lust, in a good to come; delight, in a good present.
Freedom (n.) is throwing away everything that gives slavery a handle on you, until no one can get a grip on you at all.
Freedom (n.) as detachment from things and from other people is the Stoic idea Sartre could not wholly endorse.
Freedom (n.) in full belongs only to Nature as a whole, since nothing lies outside it to get in its way.
God (n.) simply is Nature — not a maker standing outside the world, but the living cosmos itself.
God (n.) could not act otherwise than he does — but, being perfectly good and rational, he would never want to.
God (n.) in a naturalist's mouth is kept for the sake of appearances: replace the word with 'Nature' and nothing is lost.
Happiness (n.) is the one thing no ancient school bothered to argue for — and we would rightly worry about anyone who did not want it.
Happiness (n.) in this life is a pagan arrogance: we are all sinners, and must wait for the next life to be truly happy.
Happiness (n.) built only on what is up to us can never be taken away; it becomes literally invulnerable.
Virtue (n.) admits no degrees: a good life is just as good whether long or short, so death cannot touch it.
Virtue (n.) is not a means to happiness but the stuff happiness is made of.
Virtue (n.) is a health of the soul, not a selfless sacrifice.
Fate (n.) is simply an unbroken string of causes; chance is a cause that has escaped our notice.
Fate (n.) does not make action idle: a sick man's survival may be co-fated with your calling the doctor, as a birth is co-fated with a night together.