Jimmy Soni is the author of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar, a biography of Cato the Younger. Soni’s forthcoming biography of mathematician, Claude Shannon, will be published in 2017. What came first, your interest in stoicism or your interest in Cato the Younger? What initially sparked that interest? It […]
“This post originally appeared on Quora: What are some Stoic teachings on letting go?“ The most important step in letting go is realizing that nothing has intrinsic value — nothing is good or bad. In our daily lives, how we motivate ourselves is to think “some steak would be good right now” or “it sure would […]
Stoicism is apparently popular again — at least, that’s how it appears, given the spate of recent popular books, articles and events on the topic. There’s Julie Beck’s essay from The Atlantic on the benefits of thinking about death like a Stoic, Oliver Burkeman’s book on the “negative path” to happiness that includes a chapter entitled “What […]
William B. Irvine is professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. For more on his life and writings, visit his author website at WilliamBIrvine.com There is the perception that practitioners of Stoicism tend to try […]
Today I want to describe various Stoic exercises that you can do to develop a Stoic outlook on life. While this is obviously useful for the would-be Stoic, I think that everyone can benefit these exercises. If you don’t know much about Stoicism then here would be a good start, or you can read some of […]
When I was nineteen years old I was told to read a book: Meditations, by the stoic philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius. Of course, I didn’t fully understand it at the time, again I was a teenager, but I immediately tore the book apart and made a million notes on it. It was for me, what the […]
A CEO calls her staff into the conference room on the eve of the launch of a major new initiative. They file in and take their seats around the table. She calls the meeting to attention and begins, “I have bad news. The project has failed spectacularly. What went wrong?” The team is perplexed: What?! […]