Thoughts on Truth - Philosophy

I will reiterate, the following is merely my interpretation. My thoughts on the Stoics' thoughts on truth. I am not an expert on anything but being a loser. I tried to take what seemed to me like some important ideas from my interpretations of all the extant writings of: Arius Didymus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca (which might include some ecclectic not Stoic points, like from Epicurus), Epictetus, Hierocles, and Marcus Aurelius; the Stoic sections from Long and Sedley; also what other writers like Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and Aulus Gellius wrote about Stoicism. Still very incomplete. The following is a mix of direct quotes, paraphrases, and my interpretations of strategies being made use of.

You can make the decision to optimize (time, life, energy, morality, tranquility, etc.) for we are wasting time, and incurring senseless suffering, and doing ill, not valuing what we should be, valuing what we shouldn't be, and recognizing how little time we have, and its quality is poor at the end.

We have already mostly died.

A man is not poor if the little he has is enough for him, contentment is an honorable estate, craving more is poverty.

Moving about and discursivity in anything shows a disordered spirit, too much variety cloys, and is not beneficial, even ideas can't get firm hold in your mind.

Focus on the current task, the current day.

No evil is great which is the last evil of all.

Combine repose and action.

Make life as a whole agreeable by banishing all worry about it. No good thing renders its possessor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss.

Judge a person before before you make them your friend. Then regard him as loyal and you will make him loyal. Some, fearing to be deceived, have taught men to deceive.

Improve your mind with all haste so that you may have longer enjoyment of an improved mind, one at peace with itself.

Encourage and toughen your spirit against mishaps and make it so that things cannot be missed.

Pursue the discussions you undertake for the sake of actions.

Focus on very few proofs, only for what is unclear and uncertain but practical, persuasive, not easily overturned, most useful, and clear ones from clear and plain things, suited to the intelligence and education (including to hard work and endurance) of the listener, and exhibit actions in harmony with what is said.

It is our nature to live virtuously.

More wrong to do wrong than to be wronged.

You control your impulse to act or not to act. You manage your desires and aversions, how you approach things, how you apply yourself to them and prepare for them. Progress is seen in turning towards things away from externals, observing and keeping to these guiding principles in everything that befalls, and make it a point of fidelity and honor.

Expect the worst. In the morning steel yourself up for all the things that could go wrong.

Whatever happens, frame to be thankful that it isn't worse.

Using pride and shame, dignity and belittling to your benefit.

Feel universal peace toward all, no matter how they treat you.

Laugh at "harm" and "misfortune"

Be convinced in these convictions

Daily: reflection and writing out on what to expect in life, where you need to improve, exercise and rehearse being wise, meditate on "truths" and what to value, and the heroic power you have to remain tranquil and good, heroic accomplishments of this.

Enjoy the game of life detached from its pieces

Making the most out of misfortune as training, practice, or a challenge for what "really matters"

You are a necessary and planned part of the whole, and priveledged among all creatures with rationality to understand our part and thus power to be happy.

Complete faith and submission to providence.

Look at misfortunes as the cost of becoming a person at peace.

mindfulness not to slip

No desires, and don't seek to avoid what's not in your power to avoid.

Simplify and reduce your efforts and aims to what you should do.

Benefitting our fellows and society.

Your life, your body, and externals aren't yours, so when the time comes, let them go like that, and until that time comes just focus on and do what the current hour demands, only making proper use of impressions, attend solely to it.

Act like a wise man.

Make the best of what's in our power, take the rest as it naturally happens, which is how it should happen and as god pleases.

If you must suffer something alone, think would you rather the whole world suffer the same for your consolation? (Reframe to be glad it's only you).

If you must suffer something, must you also groan while suffering it, you can't be prevented from doing it with cheer.

Narrowing our concern to only one thing, frees us from encumberence, which is the only thing that matters, and which is in our control.

Given the facts of reality, it does not make sense to not be limited, harmed, and die.

Look at anything you have a nonrational concern for at what it really is or as something foul, love for your bodily life, your body is only clay or a corpse, etc.

Impressions are given to you, you can't help that, but whether you assent to it, how you view it, the use you make of it is up to you.

You can have pride and gratitude that you have a piece of god in you (and are a child of god), the best thing, in fact, the only valuable thing, so focus on the better part of yourself over the flesh, and this part of you is something that not even god has the power to restrain, this makes you not want to think ignoble thoughts about yourself.

Don't find fault with things, don't groan. Don't flatter.

You can't be hindered or restrained and you are free if you choose the course of events that would by necessity inevitably happen.

I never told you that I alone have a head that can't be chopped off.

Don't be an obstacle for yourself.

Rhetoric and models inspire, excite, persuade.

Make the only thing unendurable to you to be what is contrary to reason, one can endure a lot when they believe the occurence is a reasonable thing.

Some relativity of what is rational/irrational, acceptable/unacceptable based on individual character and personal valuations, of necessity every man must deal with each thing according to the opinion that he holds about it.

Being the purple in the garment as opposed to merely being a thread in the garment.

You are making progress, neither a bull nor the noble-spirited man come to be what they are all at once. He must train hard and prepare himself, and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate to him.

What is great and exceptional perhaps belongs to others, but don't cease to take pains or neglect ourselves, body, or property, just because you despair at arriving at the highest degree of perfection.

At what price will you sell your will and choice?

Desire has good things for its object, aversion bad things; and peace and serenity can only be attained if one achieves what he desires and is free from what he wants to avoid. The man who is making progress has learned this and has either rid himself of desire altogether or put it off to another time and applies aversion only to what's in the sphere of choice.

Progress is to be sought where your task lies, don't praise "progress" in reading Chrysippus, that distracts him from awareness of his deficiencies. Your activities should make you progress, and progress should be seen, not just what you're using to progress. You can't progress if you are always worried to fall in misfortune. Your activities must achieve in how you exercise your impulse to act and not to act, how you manage your desires and aversions, how you approach things, apply yourself to them, prepare for them, whether in harmony with nature or out of it, and have evidence of acting in harmony with nature, turning away from externals towards working on his own faculty of choice, being guided by his guiding principles with fidelity and honor, following these rules.

What matters in studying and travelling is how to rid this life of lamentation, complaint, misfortune, and disappointment, to learn what death, exile, prison, hemlock is, and to speak like Socrates in prison.

The ability to see each particular event in the context of the whole, and also the quality of having a sense of gratitude, give one the ability to readily find reason to praise providence for everything that happens.

To have reasoning dominant is the end for which humans were created.

Unpleasant and difficult things are in life but are to be found everywhere.

You have faculties which give you the power to endure everything that happens, you have greatness of soul, courage, and endurance.

Your nose is running and you ask why this rheum is in the world, but how much better for you it would be to wipe it away rather than complain.

Heracles would have been nothing special if there hadn't existed all the objects of his labors, and what good would his qualities have been if such circumstances and opportunities had not stirred him to action and exercised him. It would have been madness and folly to create such labors for himself, but as they did exist, they were of service to reveal Heracles's nature.

Tell yourself you have the means and resources to bring honor to yourself by taking whatever comes to pass.

Show me what occasion you have for complaint and reproach. I show you you have the equipment and resources for greatness of soul and courage.

Studies that don't help us morally are a distraction and provide exceptional occasion for conceit and vanity. And in general every faculty is dangerous for weak and uninstructed persons, as being apt to render them presumptuous and vain.

You are a citizen of the universe.

Why should one associated with god as our father and guardian, convinced of his kinship with the gods, connected to him by reason, fear anything that happens among men, but free us from griefs and terrors; for even kinship with Caesar doesn't make us safe or free from fear.

Don't worry about how you will feed yourself; runaway slaves, and the irrational beasts make it on their own self-sufficiency, and doesn't lack its proper food, and the animals don't lose its proper way of life according to its nature.

The time of your abiding here is short and easy for a philosopher. Be content to remain where god has stationed you, releasing you from service.

Take care of the body and the necessities for the management and commerce of life because you have affinity with the gods.

What tyrant or what robber are formidable to those who account the body and its possessions as nothing? The things we care about they cannot affect, one man is not rendered unfortunate by another.

When you have had your fill today, you sit weeping about tomorrow and how you shall get food. Why? If you get it you'll have it; if not, you'll die. The door is open: why do you lament? What room is left for tears? What occasion for flattery? Why envy anybody else? Why admire the rich and powerful, especially if they are strong and quick to anger, for what can they do to us? Instead we consider ourselves an assemblage of guts and genitals, and we fear and desire accordingly, and we flatter those that can help us in those matters, and fear the same people. One shouldn't try and get something from someone else when one can get from oneself, and I can get greatness of soul and noble spirit from myself. I will not be so insensible of my own possessions, and I realize one man is not rendered unfortunate by another.

We should only inquire into the nature or condition of our judgements alone, for there is universally one cause for every action of ours and for every no action, the cause that it seemed right to do so, only our presuppositions and judgments, and if we did not think things were of such a nature we would not have performed the actions that follow from such a judgment, of which we are the masters. To study it takes time.

The way we proceed in every art and science is to teach one to want to do it as it ought to be done, not however one wills. Otherwise, there would be no purpose in knowing anything, if it were to be adopted to each person's personal wishes. Freedom is the greatest and highest matter can't be desired at random. True instruction is learning to will that things should happen as they do, as god appointed, everything happening for the sake of the harmony of the universe, and to each of us he gave a body, property, and companions. We can't change the constitution of things, nor would it be better if we could. So our course of instruction should let us see things are as they are and as they are born to be to keep our mind in harmony with them.

We don't have the power to change others by associating with them, so the method of dealing with mankind is they act as they see fit while we remain in accord with nature. When you are alone you should call that peace and freedom instead of desolation; and when in company not to call it a crowd, tumult, or vexation or them cheats, robbers, and find fault with even those closest to you, but call it a feast, a festival, and thus accept all things with contentment. The punishment for those who don't is to be just as they are.

He is already in a prison, for he is there against his will, as Socrates was not in prison as he was willingly there.

Should I accuse the universe for one paltry leg? Will I not give it up to the whole, give it back willingly to he who gave it?

Your body is a small part compared to the whole, but your reason is no less than the gods', measured only by its judgements, so put your good there.

Don't complain about what necessarily must be so.

You only create trouble drawing upon yourself the things you aren't accountable for.

Do everything as you ought, sensibly, and with restraint and self-control, this is acceptable to the gods.

You can bear people because they are your brothers, and of the same high descent from Zeus. Remember what you are, and they are your relations, if you are in a superior position and treat them like slaves, you are looking to the pit and these wretched laws and not to the laws of the gods.

All things are bound together in a unity. All things on Earth are influenced by the Heavens, especially your soul, its part of god, and he's aware of their every motion, and can always see what you are doing, so always honor your true self above all else.

The subject matter of the art of living is each person's own life. Other's are external to you.

Do not expect any great thing to come into being all of a sudden, so the fruits of man's minds take a long time and aren't easy.

You should honor nature herself, not the interpretor of nature, and admire the interpretation itself and not the man on account of his interpretation.

Philosophers say all men's actions are produced from one source: feeling. The feeling that something is or is not so, or the feeling that it is uncertain, the feeling that it conduces to my advantage. This coupled with the fact...

More to come later