Stoic Meditations

We should choose for our friends those who are, as far as possible, free from strong desires: for vices are contagious, and pass from someone to their neighbor, and injure those who touch them. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

No good is done by forcing one’s mind to engage in uncongenial work: it is vain to struggle against Nature. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We ought first to examine our own selves, next the business which we propose to transact, next those for whose sake or in whose company we transact it. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We ought therefore, to expand or contract ourselves according as the state of things presents itself to us, or as Fortune offers us opportunities. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The services of a good citizen are never thrown away: he does good by being heard and seen, by his expression, his gestures, his silent determination, and his very walk. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Often a man who is very old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca explains that there are many ways to help improve the human cosmopolis: one can be a candidate for public office, a defense lawyer, or a teacher. Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus encouraged involvement in politics, but where themselves teachers. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

How long are we to go on doing the same thing? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Hence men undertake aimless wanderings and travel along distant shores, trying to soothe that fickleness of disposition which always is dissatisfied with the present. As Lucretius says: “Thus every mortal from himself does flee.” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

What you desire, to be undisturbed, is a great thing, nay, the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a man almost to the level of a god. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

I will obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life, not because the purple robe attracts me, but in order that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my countrymen, and indeed to all mankind. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca explains that he prefers simple cloths and easily prepared food, not the kind that "goes out of the body by the same path by which it came in." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero introduces Chrysippus' example of a rolling cylinder as an analogy for the inner workings of the human will. This results in a defense of compatibilism about free will based on distinguishing internal from external causes. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains that the Greco-Romans were divided on free will along three possible positions, which turn out to be the very same that still characterize the modern debate on the subject. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero presents Carneades' response to Chrysippus' argument about free will and determinism. Though interesting, this time it is the Skeptics who got it wrong and the Stoics who are on target. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero explains Chrysippus' theory of co-causality, which plays a crucial role in his rejection of the so-called lazy argument concerning free will. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero summarizes the so-called lazy argument about the nature of faith, explaining why it doesn't make any sense. Fate, according to the Stoics, just is the universal web of causes and effects. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

No external cause need be sought to explain the voluntary movements of the mind; for voluntary motion possesses the intrinsic property of being in our power and of obeying us, and its obedience is not uncaused, for its nature is itself the cause of this. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Cicero nails the Epicureans for their ad hoc theory of the so-called swerve, a sudden lateral movement of atoms meant to preserve the notion of free will in an otherwise mechanistic universe. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Is the fact that Carneades went to the Academy on a given day the result of necessary causes determined from the beginning of time, or of local causes that could have been otherwise? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support