Pictured above: Jean Paul Sartre (existentialism), “Saint Max” Stirner (egoism/young Hegelian), Marcus Aurelius (stoicism)

I LOVE INDIVIDUALISM I LOVE ABSTRACTIONISM troll

  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    No matter how often people say it, this still isn’t what Stoicism is. Stoicism* is about doing what you can and understanding that the end result is inevitably out of your hands. I think there are lots of things to criticize Stoicism for (virtue ethics is goofy and unserious) but this isn’t it. Genuinely, the Stoics hit you over the head so much with immediate circumstances, and therefore any outcome, being outside of your control that I struggle to imagine that the author of this meme got a quarter of the way through Meditations.

    That’s functionally also what Radical Freedom is, it’s just phrased in a much less constructive way because Sartre thought he was clever or something.

    *as far as pertains to the OP

    • QueerCommie [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      I get that. Still, Christianity is steeped in stoicism and Christianity is a hegemonic ideology. It’s hard to see how “doing what you can despite circumstances” is a radical proposition when that is the case and capitalism makes everyone calculate their interests given their circumstances. That’s not to say it’s bad either. What’s radical is understanding that interest and power is not located hermetically sealed private individuals but shared among one’s class.

      • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Christianity and Stoicism eventually formed a significant connection, “Christian Stoicism” is a thing and the most famous example is probably Boethius, but I am not sure that it’s really that important to Christianity on a fundamental level and, furthermore, Stoicism does not ascribe much power at all to individuals but does identify common interest as being a major priority, and this also appears repeatedly in Aurelius’s Meditations, where he continuously coaches himself to not squabble with people because they (inclusive) must all work together.

        • QueerCommie [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          This is what I’m thinking of.

          Christianity, like every great revolutionary movement, was made by the masses. It arose in Palestine, in a manner utterly unknown to us, at a time when new sects, new religions, new prophets arose by the hundred. It is, in fact, a mere average, formed spontaneously out of the mutual friction of the more progressive of such sects, and afterwards formed into a doctrine by the addition of theorems of the Alexiandrian Jew, Philo, and later on of strong stoic infiltrations. In fact, if we may call Philo the doctrinal father of Christianity, Seneca was her uncle. Whole passages in the New Testament seem almost literally copied from his works; and you will find, on the other hand, passages in Persius’ satires which seem copied from the then unwritten New Testament.

          Individualism does not imply that every individual is powerful. Maybe “moralism” is a better term because it finds the virtue of society in how well individuals behave and subordinate themselves to common ideals. Stoicism more easily lends to “cope within your lowly position” than realizing that in class society regardless of people’s morals different interests are irreconcilable. Instead of determining which groups matter materially, it reifies “humanity,” or I suppose in this instance, “the city/empire.”

          • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            3 months ago

            I think, while we can obviously extract a political significance from anything, part of the issue here is that Stoicism isn’t a political philosophy in the normal sense of the term, and even in what I read of Seneca he’s mostly doing self-help epistolaries like how Aurelius is doing self-help notes. I think, as an ethical philosophy, it’s a matter of interpretation rather than explicit doctrine what the politics of Stoicism is, and I don’t see there being any issue with a progressive interpretation of its values. We’ve seen many times people say that it directs people to merely cope with their class position, but is that true? Epictetus, who would have been regarded by Seneca and Aurelius as the Greek father of Roman Stoicism, was still born a slave and did not by any means suggest that people should remain where they are, and indeed discusses quite a lot about improving oneself and at least attempting to become something great, along with what we’ve discussed about being in cooperation with others, and Seneca for example is very clear that becoming a good person is at odds with politicking and chasing riches and status (despite he himself doing this).

            • QueerCommie [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              Self help and morals are fine and all, but some people do seem to think they’re conducive to revolutionary politics and not largely copes.

              Forgive my sarcasm, but

              “Epictetus was poor, but he did what was within his power and pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He preached to others to do the same. Working class icon. Meanwhile, Seneca said politicians are evil, but tried to be a good ruler. Cool dudes.”

              Marx:

              The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.