How the book found me
I have start reading Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Other Ancient Philosophers by Massimo Pigliucci. It was originally brought to my attention from a Big Think Youtube Video (a channel I often watch) called Stoicism has been wildly misinterpreted. Here’s the ancient truth: | Massimo Pigliucci.
I clicked on the video as I’ve seen a general resurgence in “Stoicism,” a philosophy I’ve always cursorily felt I identified with but wasn’t quite sure. The things I’ve seen lately always were attributed to “enduring” and “powering through” and vastly attributed to an appeal to an ideal “manliness,” which felt a bit hyperbolic at times. This video (given it came from Big Think which I tend to like) piqued my curiosity as the thumbnail explicitly states “Broism” Dubunked, so the clickbait got me.
So after watching the video and a few others from Massimo, I decided to dig deeper, as the appeal of the book is “Practical application of Ancient Philosophy.” I generally like philosophy and am always looking for a practical view of their application to my life and how I “should be living it.”
So here goes.
Introduction
The book starts out giving me the feeling that I’m going to thoroughly enjoy it, namely because it covers a breadth of Greco-Roman philosophers categorized into three main categories of “how to live a good life,” particularly in a time of strife and upheaval:
The three ports are pleasure (Cyrenaicism and Epicureanism), character (Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Cynicism, and Platonism), and doubt (Socratism, Sophism, Academic Skepticism, and Pyrrhonism). Or, to put it more straightforwardsly: feeling good, being good, and thinking well.
This feels prescient to me. The historical context is put forth on why we should continue to look to this wisdom:
The ideas of the thinkers discussed in this book were articulated to help people cope with a world in turmoil and over which they had little, if any, control. And that’s no coincidence. Much like our own turbulent times, the ancient world that gave birth to these philosophies was a period of unrest, war, and political and social upheaval. Philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome could rarely be found relaxing on long sofas drinking wine and nibbling on cheese (though they likely did a bit of that, too). By and large, they were out there in the real world, teaching others how to deal with the chaos. Many were subject to persecution and, in some cases, violent death at the hands of courts, mobs, or tyrants. As a result, their blueprints for thinking about how to live well are highly relevant to our modern angst during times characterized by major social changes and the accompanying challenges.
The book goes on to say that each section has exercises to help the reader “try out” these various philosophies in today’s life to see how they fit.
Part 1: The Port of Pleasure
This part of the book details the two (different) philosophies of pleasure:
- Cyreniacs: maximization of immediate pleasure, here and now.
- Epicureans: minimization of pain
Both of these had faculties to help skirt the potential of the “hedonic treadmill” in which people just pursue empty pleasure without purpose, thus getting trapped in a dopamine loop.