What Are Some Ways That Stoicism Is Wrong Or Provides The Wrong Advice

[Joseph Maynor]

I keep hearing here and there that the stoic approach to spirituality is wrong in certain ways.  Let's discuss this!  This is not a basic question, it is a deeper question.  

[RichardY]

Nietzsche called the Stoics "Self-deceivers".

Quote

You want to live "according to nature"? Oh you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purpose and consideration, without mercy and fairness, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to this indifference? Living—is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative "live according to nature" meant at bottom as much as "live according to life"—how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourselves are and must be?— In truth, the matter is altogether different: while you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose and incorporate your morality, your ideal onto nature, even onto nature, you demand that it be nature "according to the Stoa," and you would like all existence to exist only after your own image—as an immense eternal glorification and universalization of Stoicism! For all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, so rigidly and hypnotically to see nature falsely, namely stoically, that you are no longer able to see it differently—and some abysmal arrogance finally still inspires you with the insane hope that because you know how to tyrannize yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—, nature, too, lets itself be tyrannized: is not the Stoic—a piece of nature? ..... But this is an old, eternal story: what formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the "creation of the world," to the causa prima . Beyond Good and Evil.

From listening to Marcus Aurelius Meditations and some of Seneca. They draw a contrast between themselves and the rest of society, probably not fully realising the significance and being unaware, in this sense they are perhaps the ultimate egotists.

I wonder how something like the "Power of Now"(Which I haven't read) would contrast with stoicism or perhaps Schopenhauer(lot of obsolete scientific theories in "World as Will and Representation").

 

[Prabhaker]

@Joseph Maynor

All philosophies, all that can be said, are just like the porch of a palace. I see you every evening in DARSHAN, in the porch - because all questions can be solved only in the porch. Once you are ready there is no question, then you can enter the palace. Have you ever heard the name of a Greek wise man, Zeno? He was the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Just like me, he used to teach in the porch. The word 'stoic' comes from a Greek word STOIKAS, which in turn is from STOA, which means porch. His whole life he was teaching in the porch and people would say: You have such a beautiful house, why do you teach in the porch.' He said: All teaching is just like the porch; when you are ready to listen to the silence you enter the temple - then there is no talk. From the word STOA, porch, his whole philosophy is known as Stoicism.

All words at the most can become porches; they lead you towards the inner temple; but if you cling to them then you remain in the porch - the porch is not the palace.

  Osho ~ Tao The Three Treasures Volume 3 

 

[Joseph Maynor]

I got this idea from listening to one of Emerald's videos -- emotional repression.

Edited July 12, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[RichardY]

@Joseph Maynor Listening to the "Power of Now" just 3 hours in, but in my opinion it is much better than the works on stoicism I have listened to. I wonder if there is anything better than the Power of Now which I rate as excellent, I think Nietzsche's and Carl Jung's work are pretty good as well though. Must be some pinnacle of Intellectual thought, I haven't read Heidegger, but I think "Being and Time" might be worth looking at.