What is the ideal life? What way should you live? Do you want to have a life you can describe as happy? Complete? Fulfilled? Do you follow on from what came before you or do you forge a new path? Start a family or not? Put down roots or travel endlessly? Focus on acquiring or…
Are you doing? If you aren’t doing, what are you? In the absence of an action, you might say you’re simply being. Well, not even that. Because you can't be without doing. Doing is Being. There's a poem by Ray Bradbury that takes that very title. Again: Doing is Being. “To not do is to…
Enda Harte is student of Stoicism who lives in Ireland and works in the music industry. Under the moniker The Irish Stoic, he writes on Medium and publishes engaging content on social media. It was great to be able to interview Enda recently. His well-informed answers, which you can find below, feature excellent advice and…
By Kai Whiting and Allan John When Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism he wasn’t particularly interested in what constituted the ideal Stoic individual but rather what made the ideal Stoic community. We know this because his magnum opus is his Republic – a utopian vision of how wise people (sages) live together in one city…
Home truths. Harsh truths. Strong medicine. Metaphorical invasive surgery. Different terms alluding to the same thing: the category of advice that will make you question your beliefs. The personal stuff that you weren’t quite ready to face. The interruption that doesn’t tap you on the shoulder to get your attention so much as whack you…
Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and a well-known student of Stoicism. He is also the author of several books, including How to Be a Stoic, A Handbook for New Stoics and The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life. It was great to be able to interview Massimo…
By Kai Whiting and Allan John The Stoic founder Zeno of Citium held that excellent character must be the guiding light for your interactions with other people and the world around you, exemplified by your adherence to, and enactment of, the four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, self-control and wisdom. The Stoic practice is fundamentally…
Henry Manampiring is the author of Filosofi Teras (Philosophy from the Porch) and through his book has played a huge role in introducing Stoicism to his home country of Indonesia. He found Stoicism to be effective in combatting depression and now shares the principles of the philosophy to help others in similar situations. It was…
Still you are indignant and complain, and you don’t understand that in all the evils to which you refer, there is really only one – that you are indignant and complain.Seneca, Epistles 96.1 There is so much to complain about. Even aside from big issues like pandemics, lockdowns, injustices, and inequality, there are the everyday…
Kai Whiting is a researcher and lecturer in sustainability and Stoicism based at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. With his co-author Leonidas Konstantakos, Kai wrote the excellent book Being Better: Stoicism for a World Worth Living in, which I highly recommend. It was great to be able to interview Kai recently. His answers, which…