This Is How It's Meant To Be Done | It Is Well to Be Flexible
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What is the essence of Stoicism as a conversational philosophy?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. This is how it's meant to be done. Because so much of Stoicism comes down to us in books, it's easy to assume that it's a written philosophy. That philosophy was something the Stoics did alone, in private, hunched over a wax tablet or some unfurled scroll. Isn't that how we got meditations or Seneca's letters? yeah, but that's not how we got the philosophy itself. Stoicism began on a porch in Athens, the Stoapochile, the painted porch where Zeno would talk and trade ideas with whoever was around. The great playwright David Mamet had a funny way of putting it on the David Stoic podcast a while back.
He says what he loves about the Stoics is that they were just porch guys, just regular people hanging out, talking about how to become the best version of themselves. Cato, the man widely admired as one of the greatest Stoics, we don't even have secondhand reports of his words. But we know that he liked to do his philosophizing on foot. Or Plutarch tells us that he would take meandering walks through Rome, talking with whomever he met on his rounds. And that for all his austere habits, he loved philosophical dinner parties where they talked about ideas long into the night. You know, Epictetus never wrote anything down. His discourses comes to us from a student who tells us that whatever he used to hear him say, he wrote down word for word as best he could as a record for later use of Epictetus' thoughts and frank expressions.
And that's how Epictetus taught, in person, going back and forth in real time. So for most of its history, Stoicism was a spoken conversational philosophy. It's meant to be heard, meant to be talked about, meant for that back and forth.
How did Stoicism evolve from spoken discussions to written texts?
And it's a great tradition that we're a part of, one that's gone on unbroken for thousands of years. And by the way, we are continuing it here with Daily Stoic and me, Ryan Holiday. I'm going to be hitting the road the old way here very soon. It's part of the Daily Stoic live tour. I'm making the rounds. I'm going to be in Portland here in early June, San Francisco, California. then Chicago, Boston, D.C., Detroit, Australia, Midwest, East Coast, all over, even New Zealand. And I'd love to see you. Come ask me questions, trade ideas, hang out, talk to me, talk to other Stoics. Grab your tickets at dailystoiclive.com.
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Who were the key figures in early Stoicism and what were their practices?
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It is well to be flexible. Begins with a quote from Seneca on tranquility of mind. He can't serve in the military. Let him seek public office. Must he live in the private sector? Let him be a spokesperson. Is he condemned to silence? Let him aid his fellow citizens by silent public witness. Is it dangerous to enter the forum? Let him display himself in private homes at public events and gatherings as a good associate, a faithful friend, and a moderate table mate.
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Chapters
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