Stoic Meditations

According to Stoic moral developmental psychology we begin life as self centered organisms, whose prosocial behavior develops initially by instinct, and then proceeds further with the aid of reason. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Things like health and wealth are choiceworthy. But what gives them value is, specifically, that they are the raw materials through which we exercise our chief good: virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that human beings are naturally drawn to the use of reason, beginning when they are children. He also talks about the Stoic concept of katalepsis, the kind of impression so strong that it is undeniable. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero has Cato the Younger explain a fundamental concept of Stoic developmental psychology: how virtue is rooted in innate self love, and how we do things that are good for us regardless of pleasure and pain. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains why philosophy needs a technical vocabulary, and we look at the sort of issues this may cause when talking to people who are unfamiliar with such vocabulary. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

At the onset of book III of Cicero's De Finibus, Cato the Younger explain the difference between the Epicurean and Stoic positions on the respective values of pleasure and virtue. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

People exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius contemplates two possible scenarios for what happens after we die. Neither one of which justifies our fears on the matter. Better to focus instead on the fact that we are alive, here and now. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius reminds us that just as we do not control other people's bodies, so we do not control their opinions and judgments. We should, therefore, be concerned chiefly with improving our own. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

“A cucumber is bitter.” Throw it away. “There are briars in the road.” Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The mind that is free from passions is a citadel, for we have nothing more secure to which we can fly for refuge and repel every attack. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that if life is unbearable, one has the option to leave. But we have a duty, toward ourselves and others, to stay, if at all possible. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Take me and cast me where you will; for there I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper constitution. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Those who rather pursue posthumous fame do not consider that the people of tomorrow will be exactly like these whom they cannot bear now; and both are mortal. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

It is my delight to keep the ruling faculty sound without turning away from any of the things that happen to people, but looking at and receiving all with welcoming eyes and using everything according to its value. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

I see no virtue that is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue that is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Do not let your thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles that you may expect to befall you: but on every occasion ask yourself, What is there in this that is intolerable and past bearing? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

All things happen in a more endurable fashion to people who are prepared for them. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Freedom consists in raising one’s mind superior to injuries and becoming a person whose pleasures come from himself alone. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support