
A Guide to the Good Life - DanielBMarkham
http://hn-books.com/Books/A-Guide-to-the-Good-Life-The-Ancient-Art-of-Stoic-Joy.htm
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acabal
I read this a long time ago and I can't recommend it enough. It does a good
job of introducing the concepts of stoicism and defending the philosophy from
our modern assumptions of the word. A very good read.

The word 'stoicism' has kind of a bad rap, but I find it a very peaceful and
comforting philosophy, and one I actively try to model my life against. Like
most life philosophies it's not something that comes naturally or immediately;
rather it's something to keep in the back of one's mind and actively strive
towards over the course of years.

Those interested can also read Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, and the
Enchiridion, by Epictetus. Both are very short. Be careful with the
translation you get of Meditations: if the first few paragraphs seem
excruciatingly baroque, then you got a bad one--drop it and find a better
translation.

~~~
choxi
_Be careful with the translation you get of Meditations: if the first few
paragraphs seem excruciatingly baroque, then you got a bad one--drop it and
find a better translation._

I downloaded the one that's free off of iBooks and it was impossible to read.
Could you recommend a better translation?

~~~
countersixte
I recently read the Gregory Hays translation [1] and thought it was great.
Meditations was Marcus Aurelius's "notes to self" and the Hays edition
captures this informal nature. It makes for an easy and delightful read.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-
Aur...](http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-
Aurelius/dp/0812968255)

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flycaliguy
This is my game changer read, excited to see it here. Everything from dealing
with my father's death to that black emptiness I've fought my entire life,
I've read this book a few times now. It has a lot in common with Cognitive
Therapy but doesn't require filling out mood journals (does anybody actually
manage to do that?)

It serves as an excellent intro to Seneca's Letter's from a Stoic, which is
another great book to revisit over the years.

There are some samples from the book available on Boing Boing
([http://boingboing.net/author/william_b_irvine](http://boingboing.net/author/william_b_irvine)).

~~~
aytekin
Thanks for the link. Full of great ideas such as:

"analyzing what it is in your daily life that disrupts your tranquillity and
thinking about what you can do to prevent such disruptions."

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elf_m_sternberg
Ditto everyone else's comments. This is a really good book. Readers should be
aware that Irvine's goal of "persistent tranquility" isn't really what the
Stoics had in mind; their objective was much more radical, in the same way
that TED-talk "mindfulness" is a parboiled version of a much more radical
Buddhism.

But still, a good intro.

There are other good Stoicism books, and anyone who's been through cognitive
behavioral therapy will find Irvine's book a bit of a refresher course. Anyone
have any comments about "Philosophy for Life" or "Stocism and the Art of
Happiness"?

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peter_schwarz
This is a great introduction to Stoicism for the modern world. The author
takes quite a few of the concepts and updates them through a 21st century
philosophic viewpoint (mainly through the use of more rigorous logic behind
the scenes).

The best update comes with how one should deal with things one can and cannot
effect. He updates this from two to three: things you have no effect on
whatsoever, things you have some effect on, and things you have total control
of. Earthquakes are one on example of the first - no idea of when they are
coming and one just has to do her best to deal with it. The second involves
dealing with other people: one can control what one says and does to another,
but no control over how that person reacts. Third, one has control over
oneself.

There are a few ideas in there that I think don't pass modern studies of
sociology/psychology - the chapter on relationships , in particular - but
otherwise a very compelling read.

~~~
brc
Those concepts are in the '7 habits of highly successful people' \- but
introduced as the circle of influence and the circle of concern. The idea
promoted is that stress will result when you try and deal with things outside
of your circle of influence, and you have to keep operating within that
circle.

Obviously, very few pop-self-help books like 7 habits contain genuinely new
ideas, and the concept is borrowed from much older ideas. Nonetheless I think
it was helpful to me when I first read it. It has a message of both keeping
perspective and also reducing useless stress, but at the same time telling you
that the only way to take action is to increase the amount of influence you
have.

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RockyMcNuts
Philosophy, Stoicism, Buddhism are helpful in dealing with reality, adversity,
mortality etc. But to deal with people you still need positive thinking, love,
the Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey etc. self-help canon. A yin and yang
dichotomy, not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

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atmosx
> How could these people be of such high caliber yet believe such vastly
> different things?

I guess a Greek philosopher (Socrates or Plato) would say that it's because
things like Truth, Justice and Virtue do exist independently and universally.
They are not attached to people's religion, human laws, etc.

In ancient Greek tragedies you can find themes that deal with this sort of
questions[1] and if you look into Plato[1] you'll find incredibly thorough
analysis on various topics such as _knowledge_ , _religion_ , _laws_ ,
_justice_ , _slavery_ , etc. Considering the fact that Gods in Ancient Greece
were beyond our definition of _religion_ today, they were all over the place,
in every-day life, that's astonishing.

I was born Christian and Greece is the only _modern_ theocratic European
state, but I also reckon that religion and philosophy play well together only
if you allow doubt into the equation. Otherwise you better stick with the
beliefs/answers of your religion - whatever that religion might be - and stay
the hell out of philosophers of such caliber or your mind is going to explode.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone_(Sophocles)#Significan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone_\(Sophocles\)#Significance_and_interpretation)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato)

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dchuk
Genuinely one of the best books I've ever read. It was interesting to realize
that the Stoic philosophy was something I had relatively independently come to
on my own, so reading this book taught me more about it while also confirming
some previous ideas I had floating around.

I recommend this to everyone no matter what their ideologies consist of.

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lpolovets
If anyone's interested, I posted thorough notes for the book about a year ago:
[https://booknotes.quora.com/Notes-on-A-Guide-to-the-Good-
Lif...](https://booknotes.quora.com/Notes-on-A-Guide-to-the-Good-Life-by-
Irvine?share=1)

~~~
Renaud
Thank you for that. It's helpful to have such a high-level, yet concise, view
of the book.

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detcader
"Following Socrates, the Stoics held that unhappiness and evil are the results
of human ignorance of the reason in nature. If someone is unkind, it is
because they are unaware of their own universal reason, which leads to the
conclusion of kindness." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism#Stoic_ethics_and_virt...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism#Stoic_ethics_and_virtues)

That's often not why people are unkind. People can be unkind because of
specific systems we can name, like racism. How does this philosophy (with
"justice" as one of the four tenants) propose a person approaches power
structures?

~~~
yarrel
Those systems are not supernatural though.

Do you believe racism is rational?

~~~
johnchristopher
In a given context being racist means you are part of the group/family that
you really need to belong to in order to ensure your survival.

Emphasis is on `being` racist.

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pgt
Thanks for posting this. I'm working through some career changes and this
reminded me to focus on the process, instead of the result, because I have no
control over the result, only my attitude and efforts.

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waterfowl
This is a really good book. I think it was promoted on one of the big
financial independence blogs a year or two ago and I enjoyed reading it a lot.
Makes you think a lot.

~~~
rpicard
I started reading a little about stoicism after seeing it on Mr. Money
Mustache a year or so ago. That might be what you're thinking of.

Like a lot of other people, the philosophy was something I had been practicing
in a raw form for a while, but seeing it codified makes it much easier to
really put it to use.

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hhm
This is a great book. Highly recommended.

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NextUserName
> _Medieval Christian scholars were faced with a dilemma: their religious
> beliefs required them to believe that the soul was saved through a
> relationship with Jesus, yet going through the newly discovered Greek and
> Roman writings it was obvious to them that great men of virtue and honor
> were alive many centuries before Jesus lived. How could these people be of
> such high caliber yet believe such vastly different things?_

If they were faced with a dilemma than they were certainly fools. Don't
Christians believe that God created the world and thus was present long before
Jesus was born? Did they think that virtue and honor did not exist (or were
not even possible) before the birth of Christ? What about Noah, Job, Moses,
David, Joseph, Daniel, The nations of Israel and Judah, ETC. of the old
testament. These were scholars and had not read of these people or did not
think that great men who were believers in God could influence those outside
of their religion in a positive way? Did they not read when king Darius of
Babylon make the God of Daniel the Official God of the land?

I am completely confused by this _dilemma_.

~~~
fit2rule
Oh great, you read the Bible. The Christians you're talking about hadn't even
_written_ the thing in their day and age.

~~~
joshuacc
The Bible was certainly written before the medieval period. The Biblical canon
was pretty much set by the late 4th century. And all of the books included in
the canon had been complete before that point.

