Practical Stoicism

By Tanner Campbell

ABOUT THIS PODCAST

Those approaching Stoicism for the first time, with the intention of adopting it as a life philosophy, can find it both impossibly dense and extreme in its expectations of its students. For this reason, it is important that there exist a practical interpretation of the high-minded values of this ancient philosophy - to make the understanding and adoption of the basic tenets of Stoicism easier for those just starting out. This podcast helps newcomers get acquainted and comfortable with the practical aspects of Stoicism - it is a stepping stone to those heavier and denser parts of the philosophy that we all, if we truly wish to commit ourselves to practicing the philosophy of Stoicism, must delve into eventually. Episodes publish weekly.

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Episodes (19)

Episode 14 · 2 months ago

The wretchedness of gossip and busybodies

This week we're working through Meditation 13 from Book 2 of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. "Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, “delving into the things that lie beneath” and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature — divine and human. What is Divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deservers our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad — as terrible a blindness as the kind that can’t tell white from black." Meditations: A New Translation (the book I read these meditations from) --> [link]

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Episode 13 · 2 months ago

Skeletons wear no crowns

This week we're working through Meditation 12 from Book 2 of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. "The speed with which all of them vanish — the objects in the world, and the memory of time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things — how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are — that’s what our intellectual powers are for. And to understand what those people really amount to, whose opinions and voices that constitute fame. And what dying is — and that if you look at it in the abstract and break down your imaginary ideas of it by logical analysis, you realize that it’s nothing but a process of nature, which only children can be afraid of. (And not only a process of nature but a necessary one.) And how man grasps God, with what part of himself he does so, and how that part is conditioned when he does." Meditations: A New Translation (the book I read these meditations from) --> [link]

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Episode 12 · 2 months ago

We have the tools we need to avoid all permanent harm to our lives

Something bad may happen to you, but you have all the tools you need to limit the ubiquity of the damage it does to you in the long-term. This week we're working through Meditation 11 from Book 2 of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening; the gods would never subject you to harm. And if they don’t exist, or don’t care what happens to us, what would be the point of living in a world without gods or providence? But they do exist, they do care what happens to us, and everything a person need to avoid real harm they have placed within him. If there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was within you. If it doesn’t harm your character, how can it harm your life? Nature would not have overlooked such dangers through failing to recognize them, or because it saw them but was powerless to prevent or correct them. Nor would it ever, through inability or incompetence, make such a mistake as to let good and bad things happen indiscriminately to good and bad alike. But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these things happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble or shameful - and hence neither good or bad." Meditations: A New Translation (the book I read these meditations from) --> [link]

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Episode 11 · 3 months ago

Failure is failure, and it's expected along the path

Failure is failure, and it's expected along the path. Is one failure more or less forgivable than another failure? I think we only hurt ourselves by believing that so, in concerns to our stoic practice: I say no. This week we're working through Meditation 10 from Book 2 of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. “In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones committed out of anger: which is good philosophy. The angry man seems to turn his back on reason out of a kind of pain and inner convulsion. But the man motivated by desire, who is mastered by pleasure, seems somehow more self-indulgent, less manly in his sins. Theophrastus is right, and philosophically sound, to say that the sin committed out of pleasure deserves a harsher rebuke than the one committed out of pain. The angry man is more like a victim of wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger. The other man rushes into wrongdoing on his own, moved by action to desire.” Meditations: A New Translation (the book I read these meditations from) --> [link]

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