In the Facebook Stoic Philosophy Group, one interlocutor — Natasha Brown — brought up an interesting issue that goes to the heart of matters central to Stoic philosophy and practice. Her post spurred some excellent and far-ranging discussion, and led me to set down some initial thoughts on the matter in an earlier post in my own main blog. Here’s what she wrote:

The Stoic virtue of self-control has been the one I’ve found consistently most difficult. Whether it’s continuing long-term exercise, eating healthily and so on.

I’m reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. He argues self-control isn’t sustainable, and rather we should seek to modify our environment to make it easier/more difficult to perform certain tasks. He says “make the cues of your good habits easier & the cues of your bad habits invisible,” thus, stimulating the desired behaviour. …

One main way that Stoic philosophy characterizes the good for human beings is as virtue.

This is a term that unfortunately has become watered down in the minds of many in our time. The Stoics didn’t mean by it just any sort of goodness, whether perceived or actual. What they had in mind in talking about virtue — and the four cardinal virtues — was something considerably more robust.

Seneca provides one representative articulation of this in Letter 71 by telling us that the highest or supreme good — the one we need to look to and understand if we want to make decisions about particular matters in our lives competently — is what is right or honorable (honestum, in Latin). He goes on immediately to clarify that this is virtue. To be sure, virtue is not the only good thing, but from his Stoic perspective, virtue is what makes all the other good things good. …

Practically every time I’ve taught Stoic philosophy — whether in an Ancient Philosophy class, or more often in an Ethics or an Introduction to Philosophy class — among other texts, I’ve assigned my students Epictetus’ Enchiridion, literally, his “Handbook” — a selection of passages compiled from the much longer set of his Discourses, those hopefully being more or less representative sample of Epictetus’ oral teachings, recorded by one of his pupils and friends. …

It’s more complicated than just order and chaos. . .

The distinction between what is “up to us” — “under our control”, “in our power,” or if you prefer, “our business” (ep’hemin in Greek) — and what is not up to us (ouk ep’hemin), eventually becomes a central doctrine of the Stoic school and tradition of philosophy. This particularly so in the thought of the late Stoic Epictetus, where the presently much-discussed “dichotomy of control” receives its definitive formulation. The handbook, or Enchiridion, compiled by his student Arrian from the much longer Discourses (preserved and composed by Arrian as well), begins by invoking this very distinction:

Of things that exist, some are in our power and some are not in our power. Those that are in our power are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and in a word, those things that are our own doing. Those that are not under our control are the body, property or possessions, reputation, positions of authority, and in a word, such things that are not our own doing. …

A few years back, I came across some of an Australian comedian, Michael Connell’s, philosophically-focused comedy routines on YouTube. After I emailed him and proposed having a chat sometime, we ended up not only doing that, but also carrying on an online correspondence and occasionally collaborating on various projects where our skills and interests intersected.

The first of these collaborations took place on my long-since-lapsed philosophy forum series. Back then, I was experimenting with Google Hangouts on Air, and so I proposed that Michael and I discuss philosophy and comedy. …

can we rightly call classic “existentialist” authors by that name?