10 lessons from Max Bye

In this final episode I wrap up the stoic season with a random stoicism quiz I found online.

Feel free to follow along: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/sep/stoicism-quiz.html

The most authentic way to prove that you are in fact a stoic-doer.

Really enjoyed researching stoicism. Thank you for listening all the way through.

How have I taking stoic principles into my life: What are the best books and in what order to read them?
What's the bits I have taken off the page and brought into the world.

From practicing and reading stoicism, what are my negative initial impressions.

Here's the great summary of stoic physics I promised:

Source: https://www.academia.edu/271550/Early_Stoic_Determinism_Le_Déterminisme_Dans_LAncien_Stoïcisme

For the Stoics, the world is a unitary and continuous body, without any gaps; it is located in the void, and it contains no smallest parts. Stoic physics is thus a continuum theory. The world is constituted of two principles, the active and the passive. The passive principle is called “matter” and “substance”; it is amorphous and unqualified; it possesses neither power of cohesion nor power of movement. The active principle is a power that is eternal and self-moved; it is responsible for all form, quality, individuation, differentiation, cohesion and change in the world. Both principles are material. In physical terms, for Chrysippus, the active principle is pneuma or breath, which is a special combination of air and fire; the passive principle is a combination of earth and water. (For Zeno, physically the active principle is creative fire.) The two principles form a complete blending both in the world as a whole, and in any object in the world; that is, they are completely co-extended, but they and their respective qualities are fully preserved in that mixture, and they are in principle separable again.

The function of the active principle can be contemplated from two view-points: from a global perspective, which considers the whole cosmos as one unified entity; and from the innerworldly perspective, which looks at particular objects and their interrelations. The active principle is responsible both for the cohesion, form and change of the cosmos as a whole, and for the individuation, cohesion, form, change and duration of the objects in the world.

The individual objects are each held together (as the objects they are) by the active principle, which gives them a certain tension or tenor. Different objects have different complexity, owing to the complexity of their tenor. With increasing complexity, inanimate objects have tenor (in the specific sense); plants have nature; non-rational animals have soul; and rational beings have reason as their highest organising principle. They each also have all the lower kinds of tenor. Physically, these kinds of tenor are pneuma of increasing purity or fineness. The finest pneuma, reason, is situated in beings of the highest order, i.e. rational beings, in the ruling part of their soul. The world as a whole is a being of the highest order, i.e. a rational being, too. Like human beings, in addition to tenor, nature and soul, it has reason. This rational organising principle, the reason of the cosmos, is called “god” or “god’s soul”, “nature”, or “ruling principle”. Sometimes it is placed in the aether, as the accumulation of finest pneuma in the cosmos. Sometimes all of the active principle, sometimes only its finest part is called the “reason of god”.

Stoic determinism is causal determinism in one of its main aspects. However, we must beware of rash comparisons with modern theories of causal determinism. Modern theories may consider causes as events, facts, things, or properties, but mostly there is the assumption that cause and effect belong to the same ontological category, and that what is effect in one instance of causation can be cause in a subsequent instance. On this point, the Stoics differ: for them causes and effects belong to two different ontological categories; this has various consequences for their account of determinism.

Let's talk about the two great camps of thought started around 300BC: stoicism and epicurism. 

What is the difference? What are the similarities and what is the better philosophy?

In this episode we talk about how to apply stoic values in the context of living in accordance with nature.

What does this mean? How do the values help and what is Nietzsche's deal? He liked to criticise the stoics here's the full quote discussed in the episode from Beyond Good and Evil:

“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.” 

In this episode we talk about the last of the stoic values: moderation.

What is it? And how do different Netflix shows get it right and wrong.