Peter van den Engel
Aug 9, 2017 · 1 min read

Interesting article about the art of stoicism, but some redifinements have to be made as well.

Fot instance why does a stoic not choose to be a cynic or a hedonist?

From a stoic point of view cynic’s self-sufficiency excludes external goals, that could be more enhansing. Although an unfortunate one would have been made cynical by unreachable goals, due to outside policy he cannot controle.

Hedonism persues short term goals, which are at the same time destructive or empty minded in the long run (like tennis). So, that’s easy to define.

Internalization of goals defenitly is important, because it allows you to shift them, like into a further away future, or recognizing an earlier opportunity.

Things that are partly in controle however don’t mean by definition they have to come under full controle. It might mean that partly controle leads to nowhere, because the end definition appears to be something you were not looking for. So you drop the interest in being able to partly controle it. There is always an option for more interesting things.

The described goals as in wanting to be the pope (?), choosing to have pleasure in what one does, or a type of character by chance, should all look very suspicious and circumstantial to a stoic honestly. They are probably by mistake copied from the hedonist lecture book :-)