September 18, 2026
- Stoicism
- Virtue is good, vice is bad
- Other sources of pain and pleasure aren’t good or bad, they are indifferents
- You should still care about health even though its indifferent
- Some indifferents are preferred because they’re natural and it is natural to
choose them
- But health isn’t good or contributes to happiness, only virtue is good and
can contribute to happiness
- “Give help to all according to your ability and their fitness; and if they should
have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a
damage. For it is a bad habit” Marcus Aurelius
- Focus on acting justly and piously
- Acting for the common good and loving your fate
- Limit our desires (like Epicureans)
- Rational self control (S+E)
- Focus on what is up to us, not on what you can’t control
- Don’t view bad things as bad in order to restrict desires (Stoics)
- Stoics vs Epicureans
- Epicureans
- Without some basic external goods you cannot live the good life
- Have only natural desires
- Stoics
- If you are not living the good life, it's your fault and up to you
- Will exactly what Zeus wills, courageous acceptance
- Buddhism
- Philosophy of life
- Focused on your mind, love, kindness, compassion
- Give up selfish and altruistic attachments (have no attachments, but have
preferences)
- Siddhartha Gautama aka The Buddha
- When he encounters a world of suffering he renounces all attachments and
seeks enlightenment by becoming a wandering monk
- Embraces extreme asceticism, but abandons it
- Philosophical questions in Nepal circa 563 BC
- Eternal world? Finite world? Immaterial self after death? Achieving
liberation from rebirth and existing?
- Materialists, eternalists, and annihilationists
- Stoicism
- Virtue is good, vice is bad
- Other sources of pain and pleasure aren’t good or bad, they are indifferents
- You should still care about health even though its indifferent
- Some indifferents are preferred because they’re natural and it is natural to
choose them
- But health isn’t good or contributes to happiness, only virtue is good and
can contribute to happiness
- “Give help to all according to your ability and their fitness; and if they should
have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a
damage. For it is a bad habit” Marcus Aurelius
- Focus on acting justly and piously
- Acting for the common good and loving your fate
- Limit our desires (like Epicureans)
- Rational self control (S+E)
- Focus on what is up to us, not on what you can’t control
- Don’t view bad things as bad in order to restrict desires (Stoics)
- Stoics vs Epicureans
- Epicureans
- Without some basic external goods you cannot live the good life
- Have only natural desires
- Stoics
- If you are not living the good life, it's your fault and up to you
- Will exactly what Zeus wills, courageous acceptance
- Buddhism
- Philosophy of life
- Focused on your mind, love, kindness, compassion
- Give up selfish and altruistic attachments (have no attachments, but have
preferences)
- Siddhartha Gautama aka The Buddha
- When he encounters a world of suffering he renounces all attachments and
seeks enlightenment by becoming a wandering monk
- Embraces extreme asceticism, but abandons it
- Philosophical questions in Nepal circa 563 BC
- Eternal world? Finite world? Immaterial self after death? Achieving
liberation from rebirth and existing?
- Materialists, eternalists, and annihilationists
