misutii
28 Feb 2005, 09:08 AM
as many of you may have noticed....i'm on a topic binge....and yes procrastination is again to blame.
Regardless, recently i have been reading Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations"
For those that don't know, Marcus Aurelius was the last "Good" Roman Emperor. He was born in the 120s and ruled Rome from 161 to 189, dying at the age of 59. To any of you who have seen Gladiator.... Marcus Aurelius was the wise old Emperor killed by his son Commodus (in reality he did have a son named Commodus.... who was an utterly awful Emperor.... however his son did not kill him)
Anyways Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. Stoicism was a religion in the Ancient World, originating in Greece, it was popular among the Roman Nobility.
I'm including a quote from the introduction of this book because i can't think of a better way to say it, but Stoicism is in my opinion the best religion of the ancient world because it is more of a philosophy than a religion. It is not organized, it simply has followers. I think it would appeal to INTPs because it stresses not reacting blindly with emotions. Basically it dictates that everything that happens has happened before, and will happen again, so we are helpless to change events and must instead accept them
i bolded the parts that i especially wish you to read. ask about anything you might be interested in that you don't understand, for clarification: "LOGOS" can be definied differently by different Stoics, some believe it to be God, some believe it to be Reason, some believe it to be both, regardless however, it is the logos that drives the universe.
Stoicism
"Stoicism, having flowed through some five hundred years of Greek and Roman History, is not so much a single systematic doctrine as a winding intellectual current. Arising and flourishing amidst the uncertanties of the Hellenistic domain of the third century BC 0 a tune if political and social upheaval following the deaths of Aristotle and Alexander- Stoicism stressed the search for inner peace and ethical certainty despite the apparent chaos of the external world by emulating in one's personal conduct the underlying orderliness and lawfulness of nature.
...Several of the key elements of the early Stoics emege clearly... Dividing philosophy in physics, logic, and ethics, they sought to unify theory and practice an a comprehensive cosmology. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, for whom the highest realities were spiritual or ideational, the Stoics held that the essence of reality was material, arguing that an incorporeal soul could not direct the activities of a corporeal body. Unlike the purposeless dead matter of modern variants of materialism, this elemental 'stuff' of the universe is an ever-living creative fire, a divinity, in fact, that forms all life; physics and theology converge in a materialist pantheism. This 'stuff' has several names: God, Zeus, creative fire, ether, the word for reason (logos), order, law of destiny, fate.
Through varying degrees of tension or tonicity, the primal fire spawns the various things of the world in cycles; in each periodos or magnus annus it gradually separates into four elements (water, earthly fire, air, and earth); eventually conflagaration again reduces all to the elemental fire, which then expands into the universe once again, and so on for eternity, each cycle an exact repitition of the last.
While avowing the divine presence of all things, Zeno (the first stoic) disdained the panoply of institutional religion, rejecting temples and rituals and stressing rather the worship of God through inner affirmation and outward virtue. The Stoic discovers the model for his virtuous conductin in studying the laws of nature; just as each object, plant, and animal serves its fated role in the larger order, so the human strives to steer his actions in accordance with his unique power, reason, his inner mirror of the "logos" (reason) that governs the universe.
By focusing on those things that are within his power - his own will and perception - and detaching himself from the things that are not- health, death, the actions of others, natural disasters and so on- he attains the inner peace of the wise and just man. This cultivated detachment (apatheia) achieved through disciplined self-restraint and moderation applies as well to the worldly allures of sensual indulgence, power and fame, which the Stoic abjures not from puritanical repugnance, but from his concern to free the soul for undistracted service to the logos (reason).
Apatheia (detachment) does not equal apathy, however. The logos of Stoicism is not a fate to be passively acknowledged but a spiritual potential to be actively won through intellectual and practical effort. Moreover, the universality of reason enjoins a social consciousness that embraces the just life not only for oneself but for all humanity under the "fatherhood of God". Trabscending the parochial confines of class, tribe and nationality, the logos obliges each 'citizen of the universe' to help in building.. a cosmopolis that would be the very image of the rationally ordered physical world.
The social consciousness of Stoicism is not, however, a summons to the activism of mass movements. Civic virtue is a mirage unless anchored in the inner virtue of each citizen; for the Stoic the best antidote to outer turmoil is inner peace. In Marcus's words, "How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure." And elsewhere he writes, "For nowhere either with more quiet or freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility."
Thus does the Stoic define himself as a rational being in the face of all that beggars rationality. In Shakespeare's words, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Marcus, quoting the Cynic Monimus; puts it even more succinctly: "All is opinion." """""""""""""""""""""
--------------------------------
So for those still with me...... what do you think?
I find that Stoicism is clearly the religion of ancient learned man, whereas christianity, relying on false hopes is quite obviously the religion of the ancient peasant. my studies seem to demonstrate this... unfortunately it was the peasant that would prevail, Stoicism was too passive and individualistic to appeal to the masses.
Regardless, recently i have been reading Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations"
For those that don't know, Marcus Aurelius was the last "Good" Roman Emperor. He was born in the 120s and ruled Rome from 161 to 189, dying at the age of 59. To any of you who have seen Gladiator.... Marcus Aurelius was the wise old Emperor killed by his son Commodus (in reality he did have a son named Commodus.... who was an utterly awful Emperor.... however his son did not kill him)
Anyways Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. Stoicism was a religion in the Ancient World, originating in Greece, it was popular among the Roman Nobility.
I'm including a quote from the introduction of this book because i can't think of a better way to say it, but Stoicism is in my opinion the best religion of the ancient world because it is more of a philosophy than a religion. It is not organized, it simply has followers. I think it would appeal to INTPs because it stresses not reacting blindly with emotions. Basically it dictates that everything that happens has happened before, and will happen again, so we are helpless to change events and must instead accept them
i bolded the parts that i especially wish you to read. ask about anything you might be interested in that you don't understand, for clarification: "LOGOS" can be definied differently by different Stoics, some believe it to be God, some believe it to be Reason, some believe it to be both, regardless however, it is the logos that drives the universe.
Stoicism
"Stoicism, having flowed through some five hundred years of Greek and Roman History, is not so much a single systematic doctrine as a winding intellectual current. Arising and flourishing amidst the uncertanties of the Hellenistic domain of the third century BC 0 a tune if political and social upheaval following the deaths of Aristotle and Alexander- Stoicism stressed the search for inner peace and ethical certainty despite the apparent chaos of the external world by emulating in one's personal conduct the underlying orderliness and lawfulness of nature.
...Several of the key elements of the early Stoics emege clearly... Dividing philosophy in physics, logic, and ethics, they sought to unify theory and practice an a comprehensive cosmology. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, for whom the highest realities were spiritual or ideational, the Stoics held that the essence of reality was material, arguing that an incorporeal soul could not direct the activities of a corporeal body. Unlike the purposeless dead matter of modern variants of materialism, this elemental 'stuff' of the universe is an ever-living creative fire, a divinity, in fact, that forms all life; physics and theology converge in a materialist pantheism. This 'stuff' has several names: God, Zeus, creative fire, ether, the word for reason (logos), order, law of destiny, fate.
Through varying degrees of tension or tonicity, the primal fire spawns the various things of the world in cycles; in each periodos or magnus annus it gradually separates into four elements (water, earthly fire, air, and earth); eventually conflagaration again reduces all to the elemental fire, which then expands into the universe once again, and so on for eternity, each cycle an exact repitition of the last.
While avowing the divine presence of all things, Zeno (the first stoic) disdained the panoply of institutional religion, rejecting temples and rituals and stressing rather the worship of God through inner affirmation and outward virtue. The Stoic discovers the model for his virtuous conductin in studying the laws of nature; just as each object, plant, and animal serves its fated role in the larger order, so the human strives to steer his actions in accordance with his unique power, reason, his inner mirror of the "logos" (reason) that governs the universe.
By focusing on those things that are within his power - his own will and perception - and detaching himself from the things that are not- health, death, the actions of others, natural disasters and so on- he attains the inner peace of the wise and just man. This cultivated detachment (apatheia) achieved through disciplined self-restraint and moderation applies as well to the worldly allures of sensual indulgence, power and fame, which the Stoic abjures not from puritanical repugnance, but from his concern to free the soul for undistracted service to the logos (reason).
Apatheia (detachment) does not equal apathy, however. The logos of Stoicism is not a fate to be passively acknowledged but a spiritual potential to be actively won through intellectual and practical effort. Moreover, the universality of reason enjoins a social consciousness that embraces the just life not only for oneself but for all humanity under the "fatherhood of God". Trabscending the parochial confines of class, tribe and nationality, the logos obliges each 'citizen of the universe' to help in building.. a cosmopolis that would be the very image of the rationally ordered physical world.
The social consciousness of Stoicism is not, however, a summons to the activism of mass movements. Civic virtue is a mirage unless anchored in the inner virtue of each citizen; for the Stoic the best antidote to outer turmoil is inner peace. In Marcus's words, "How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure." And elsewhere he writes, "For nowhere either with more quiet or freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility."
Thus does the Stoic define himself as a rational being in the face of all that beggars rationality. In Shakespeare's words, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Marcus, quoting the Cynic Monimus; puts it even more succinctly: "All is opinion." """""""""""""""""""""
--------------------------------
So for those still with me...... what do you think?
I find that Stoicism is clearly the religion of ancient learned man, whereas christianity, relying on false hopes is quite obviously the religion of the ancient peasant. my studies seem to demonstrate this... unfortunately it was the peasant that would prevail, Stoicism was too passive and individualistic to appeal to the masses.