Culture
Episode #237 ... The Stoics Are Wrong - Nietzsche, Schopenhauer
In Episode #237 of 'Philosophize This!', Stephen West explores the critiques of Stoicism from Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche argues that Stoics lack a life-affirming ...
Episode #237 ... The Stoics Are Wrong - Nietzsche, Schopenhauer
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Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophize this patreon.com slash philosophize this
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philosophical writing on substacket philosophize this on there. I hope you love the show today.
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So this podcast is kind of a part two of last episode we did talking about meditations by Marcus
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Arelius. Today we're talking about the rebuttal to all that by Frederick Nietzsche and Arthur
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Schopenhauer. Just to be clear, the two of them never collabed on any of this stuff. This is
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taken from each of their work individually and it's woven together here today because they
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represent such different arguments about why they thought the Stoics were wrong, which to put it
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in a single sentence that I'll spend the rest of this episode today explaining. Frederick Nietzsche
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thought the Stoics weren't life affirming enough in their view of the world and so robbed themselves
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as some of the most critical aspects of life. And Arthur Schopenhauer thought that the Stoics were
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too life affirming of worldly things at least, in a way that prevents a Stoic from ever really
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understanding the world at a deep level. There's obviously much more to it, but this bird's eye
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view of the whole thing can be helpful to have it to start sometimes I think and will understand it
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by the end of the episode. I'm going to start with some Nietzsche here today though. And maybe
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the best place to start is to say that you know, the Stoics are pretty good candidates for being
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the poster children of one of the biggest problems Nietzsche had with the entire history of Western
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philosophy. See by the time Nietzsche's doing his work in the late 1800s, he thought there'd been
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over 2000 years of decline in Western thinking and along with it a decline in Western civilization,
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I guess. He called it decadence, though it has nothing to do with decadence as we might use that
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word today in English. Decadence was a sign of a physiological and cultural decline that's
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gone on in people over time. The world's become a place apparently where there are more and more
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people who over intellectualize about everything, more people who have weakened drives, a weak sense
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of vitality, far more weakness of the will going on, more people that spend their time morally judging
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other people rather than doing the things themselves. There's many more examples of decadence in this,
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but that's all originated Nietzsche thought and people like Socrates and Plato who started this
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trend of people being practically obsessed with the idea that there must be some kind of rational
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stable order to the way that things play out in the universe. Now how could those two things be
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connected? Well look, don't get them wrong. Nietzsche is by all means a fan of rationality as a tool we
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can use to shape our thinking. He thinks obviously we need it, but he thinks that if you treated
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reason as though it's the tool that can explain all of reality for you, then you're always going to be
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missing out on all sorts of more dynamic pieces of our reality that are just unfolding in every moment,
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creativity, improvisation, instinct, passion. In other words, anything about reality at the level
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of becoming an emergence, it's people ignoring these important pieces of reality in favor of the
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rational that's a big contributor to this cultural decline. Turns out these things are very important
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for our understanding of life in the universe. And it's right here at the metaphysical level that we
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can start to see the first glimmers of where Nietzsche's going to think the Stoics went wrong.
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It's in these classic concepts of being versus becoming. The question is how do you think about the
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universe? Well, the Stoics viewed it mostly in terms of being, Nietzsche's going to view it in terms
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of becoming. What's meant by this is that the Stoics are always trying to direct their behavior
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towards something static that they think exists out there in a stable way, whether that's apothea,
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whether that's being an alignment with nature or the divine logos, whether that's just those
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four cardinal virtues of Stoicism and just as courage, wisdom, and temperance. Point is,
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the Stoics have a way of looking at their place in the world where they're always aiming to be
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something. Again, it's being not becoming. They believe it's possible for them to do the work every
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day and eventually be an alignment with virtue. Now, if you're Nietzsche, whenever someone starts
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talking like this, they're always imposing some kind of rational order onto the true indifference
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and flux of the universe. They're trying to make it into something more stable than it actually is.
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Nietzsche thinks this is naïve. See, he's more in the camp of thinking. We're transformation of
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any type, personal or otherwise, is something that's always iterative. It's constantly in a state
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of unfolding. It's not something you can arrive at, and it's not really something you can nail down
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with a set of rational protocols even if you wanted to. In other words, Nietzsche doesn't think the
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Stoics take the indifference and emergence of the universe seriously enough. He has this great
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section and beyond good and evil when he's talking about the Stoic idea where, you know, when external
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things happen to us. Well, we can't control them, right? Because they're a part of nature. And because
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they're a part of nature, they belong in a class of things that the Stoics call indifference. Meaning,
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when it comes to nature unfolding in the way that it does, we can't say whether these things are good
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or bad. The only thing we can say is good or bad are the reactions that a person has to what happens.
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A good Stoic then learns to accept these indifference for what they are. And hopefully even one day,
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if they're a really good Stoic, they can learn to love the events of nature and the spirit of the
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Stoic concept of a Morphati. But Nietzsche asks, how is it possible for someone to align their
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behavior with something indifferent? I mean, what are we doing here? Either this is a benevolent
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rational order that we need to be modeling our behavior after, or it's indifferent. And when it
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comes down to it, Nietzsche's not trying to pick on the Stoics specifically. It's not like the
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Stoics are especially wrong here to him. To Nietzsche, they're just doing what human beings do.
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They're exercising their will to power. They're creating a set of values and an ethics that goes
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along with them. And then they're projecting those values onto the universe and mistaking them
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as being written into the universe. And that's not just Stoicism. How about Christianity,
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Vedism, Kantian ethics? Practically everyone is doing the same thing for Nietzsche. It's just the
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Stoics do it with a rational divine logo set the bottom. The Stoics will sit around,
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given themselves a round of applause when their values seem to be there. When they see rationality
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in an ecosystem or with how the planets orbit or something. But then when the hurricane rolls
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through town and decimates everything in its path, oh, well, that belongs to the indifferent
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category. I may prefer for the hurricane to not carry grandma away along with the spare bedroom
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of the house. But look, this is not something I can really say is good or bad. And yet you should
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structure your life around emulating it. Nietzsche might ask. For Nietzsche, everything in Stoicism
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begins from assuming that there's a rational order to things that we have absolutely no reason
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to be assuming. And this assumption has real impacts on the experience of a Stoic and the place
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they always need to be orienting to things in their life from. Maybe the most obvious place you
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can see this is in the very different ways that the Stoics and Nietzsche talk about the concept of
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a Morphatee. Remember the Stoics say, you should embrace everything that comes your way. Love your
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fate, they say. Because all this that's going on is a part of the rational order of the universe,
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whether you realize why it's happening or not. So you can see they start by projecting a metaphysics
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onto things where everything is rational. And then only from there will they say to love it
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because it's rational. But the Morphatee of Nietzsche, he says, is far more radical than that. He
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wants to love his fate, whether it's rational or not, whether it's order, disorder, chaos, I mean,
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to Nietzsche, to say that nature is indifferent and then to really take that statement seriously,
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that means you'd be someone who would affirm reality, whether there was some kind of ultimate
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rational plan to what or not. And the challenge Nietzsche puts out there for people is for you to
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live so passionately, so affirming of anything necessary the universe throws your way.
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You don't need any sort of transcendent purpose that makes things feel more palatable to you.
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You wouldn't have a need to try to control and govern down what a human life is just to make it
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something more manageable. And this critique obviously extends beyond just Stoicism to any
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approach that does this like the more religious ones we just mentioned. In fact, Nietzsche says at
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our people that see life as a state of peril, like something they need to escape. And to him,
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they're willing to use this rationality of theirs to practice what he calls a kind of self tyranny,
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just so they can avoid a world where they have to face the irrational side of existence head on.
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Because think of the move the Stoics often find themselves doing in the name of being a more moral
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person. They encounter something in the world that makes them feel intense anger or desire or
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fear any of these emotions that are part of an everyday human experience. And their job is to
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govern these emotions down, correct the mistaken judgment that's at the heart of them.
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So they can get back to the rational, calm, centered experience that Stoic say is an acceptable
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experience to have. Should anything in their life, like say a romantic relationship, not operate
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from a place of cultivating virtue, then to remain in that relationship for too long for a Stoic
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is something a moral that needs to be corrected. For example, say you're an imperfect person like
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the rest of humanity. Say you're actually a little damaged because of things that have happened in
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your past and say you meet someone else who's also a little damaged by things in theirs.
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And say the two of you have a relationship for a while that gets a little messy. It's chaotic at
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moments. You try to stay calm every day. But let's say in practice, you pretty often get dragged
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into an argument because of all the dynamics in play. You say stuff you wish you didn't say,
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partner does the same thing. You guys do this together eventually make up and do it all over again
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the very next week. But let's also say that after years of doing this, you guys break up. You look
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back on all that happened and you realize that despite everything, you guys were there for each
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other in ways that you absolutely needed during that time in your life. You look back on it and you
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say, geez, well, all of that certainly wasn't ideal back then. It wouldn't exactly describe it as
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rational. But wow, did I learn a lot from it? And boy, am I glad that in some sense, I had this
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person when I did. Now for Nietzsche, this messy relationship is a part of self-transformation.
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For him, this is the non-ideal, real way that most human life plays out most of the time.
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And by the way to him, all of this would be potential fuel for the kind of self-overcoming
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and growth that Nietzsche thinks is crucial. But for an aspiring, stoic sage, on the other hand,
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this whole relationship from the start was rooted in a lack of virtue. It wasn't rationally
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ordered enough. It put you in a place often where it made it much more difficult for you to cultivate
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your own morality. God, and you better hope you didn't get overly vulnerable when you were in
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this relationship, because there's yet another black mark on the record that you're going to have
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to answer for to the stoics. Point is, instead of being able to see this as a real piece of your
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life that you can transmute into something greater, underneath his reading, if this didn't help you
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become a better stoic, the stoic has to see most of this time you spent there as essentially a waste
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of your life. Every argument you had was a mistaken judgment. Every bit of jealousy you had was
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just ignorance on your part. You should have essentially avoided this entire section of your life.
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And the fact that you didn't is already a moral failure. But again, to Nietzsche, this is your
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life we're talking about. Should we really be riding off entire sections of our life? And for what
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reason, just that we weren't rational and calm enough to be a good stoic during that time?
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Nietzsche is going to say to think of all the stuff you miss out on in life. When you tyrannize
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yourself like this, just for the ability to feel more tranquil all the time. You become tranquilized.
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First of all, when all you do is try to conform every event that happens to you to fit for
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cardinal virtues and justice, courage, wisdom, and temperance. You miss out on the ability to ever
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create your own moral approach that takes your actual life in circumstances and chooses a way of
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acting that corresponds with them. That's one thing you will never be doing as a stoic. No,
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you just got to cause play as Marcus Aurelius every day of your life as a grown adult. Might as well
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dress up as him for Halloween. This is too passive of an approach to ever be life affirming if you're
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Nietzsche. Second, for him, all these non-ideal things that happen to people, contrary to a
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stoic idea of self-transformation, it's these moments to Nietzsche of suffering and excess
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that often lead someone to develop qualities that allow them to do great things. Greatness often
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requires excess to him. And sometimes it requires intense emotions. Sometimes quitting your job out
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of anger at your boss puts you on a different path in life where you end up living more fully.
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Sometimes going to a music festival and getting lost emotionally in a song or something
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is a moment that leads someone to transformation that changes the course of their life. But again,
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if you're the stoics, all this stuff is just indulgent and excessive at a certain level. And Nietzsche
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says, if a stoic thinks becoming a more moral person is just keeping yourself as centered and in the
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middle as much as possible, then he's going to say that's an entire approach to life that really
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does produce a lot of mediocre people in practice. You know, the picture of a stoic sage to Nietzsche
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is something like an old man sitting around who is constantly safe and lukewarm and unambitious
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about everything. Just a person whose biggest ambition, I guess, is to rationally subordinate
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everything about their experience as their primary function in life. That's what they get up
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every day and try to do. It's the picture of a person. He says that minimizes the pleasure they
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get to be able to minimize the pain they get. They minimize the intense situations they put themselves
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in that might actually lead to growth because to not do that would be morally irresponsible. It aligns
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my life in a way that goes against those four arbitrary virtues I for some reason committed
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myself to. This is a pointless limitation from a Nietzsche in perspective. In fact,
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he lumps the stoics in with what he calls the Improvers of Life from the history of philosophy.
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He's saying it sarcastically when he says that they're not actually improving what a human life is,
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but he says their entire goal from the beginning, if you pay attention, is built around this idea
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that we need to make human life different and correct it in some way. You know, follow this set of
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protocols and the horror of what life is will be fixed for you. Congratulations. Nietzsche wants
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nothing to do with that. Again, he wants nothing more than to face what life is as head on as he
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possibly can. He has this funny line about the Stoics recess quote, is our life really so painful
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in burdensome that it would be advantageous for us to trade it for a fossilized stoic way of life?
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Things are not bad enough for us that they have to be bad for us in the Stoic style, in quote.
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And this really does sum up where Nietzsche is coming from. The Stoics don't affirm life at the
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level that he thinks is necessary to become who you truly are. He thinks they deny big pieces of
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life, then fossilize it over, and they do this all for the sake of being able to rationally control
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it and maintain a state of calm. Now, a Stoic might say back to all this, you know what Nietzsche?
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You're misunderstanding a lot about where I'm coming from. And one of the major things
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you're misunderstanding is the order that a lot of this stuff happens in. For example, yes,
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Stoics are often calm and tranquil if they're making the right judgments about things,
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but the goal isn't for a Stoic to have calmness and tranquility at all costs.
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Remember, Stoicism is a type of virtue ethics. The real goal a Stoic needs to focus on is
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adherence to the virtues. And should calmness and tranquility be a common byproduct of living
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as rationally as we can, well, that's just a matter of coincidence. You can't just say where people
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that value calm over everything else simply because we happen to be calm most of the time.
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But as it turns out, Nietzsche wasn't the only one to send this kind of criticism over in the
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Stoic direction. Arthur Schopenhauer also thought the Stoics were doing things in this area that the
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And now back to the podcast. Shope and Hower Thoughts Stoicism was an elaborate, sophisticated
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collection of ideas that centered primarily around the avoidance of suffering. That's the main
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goal of stoicism, he thinks. See, it turns out it matters a lot whether the avoidance of suffering
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is the goal or whether the goal is to stick to behaviors that happen to produce less suffering.
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Should be said, both of these are going to be mistakes to Shope and Hower, but he'd probably
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want to start his critique of the Stoics by calling him out for what he thinks they actually are.
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These are people that go throughout their life. They come across suffering and then they train
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themselves to react with indifference and resilience towards that suffering. What this means is
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that regardless of what the Stoics say they're doing, Shope and Hower thinks Stoicism is a movement
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that is udimonistic. It's just a fancy way of saying that it's part of the tradition from around
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this time that stoicism was created, along with the ethics of Aristotle, along with the other
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Hellenistic schools, where the goal of ethics from this tradition was what they called udimonia.
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Literally, well-spirited, if you break down the word, for Shope and Hower, it's essentially the
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reduction of suffering. In other words, the true goal of Stoicism for him is the inner peace of
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mind free from suffering. The virtues then become just things that are instrumental to be able to
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get there. Now, a good question here is, why would any of this matter? I mean, reducing suffering
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sounds pretty good to me. I don't really have a problem with that. But for Shope and Hower,
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this is a big problem. Suffering to him is not something that's optional that we can try to remove.
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Suffering just is an intrinsic part of life. Any approach that talks about removing suffering
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is the ultimate goal. He thinks it's always going to be based on some kind of an illusion.
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And for something that calls itself, especially a moral approach to life, for it to make its
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chief concern to remove something as necessary as suffering is, well, first of all, this is almost
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paradoxical, Shope and Hower says, it certainly isn't morality. In fact, he says at one point that
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things like Stoicism should really be filed under the category of ancient advice, more than it should
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morality. I mean, you can see how much Stoicism has reducing suffering as its main goal, when you
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consider how different it is to other moral approaches. Shope and Hower says, a Stoic will come across
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suffering in the world. Say they feel some intense anger after seeing an injustice. Maybe it's heart
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break. Maybe they get a long-term illness. Doesn't really matter what it is. The Stoic's job in every
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one of these circumstances is to correct the judgments that lead to that feeling of suffering so they
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don't have to feel it anymore. Now, other moral approaches look at suffering totally different
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than this. A Christian, for example, may come across suffering. And they generally aren't the
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kind of person that's trying to get away from it. They sit in the suffering and learn to work
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through it, because in that kind of moral approach, being in the suffering is worth it to them for
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the sake of some higher moral ideal. This is a totally different approach than the Stoics have.
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One sits in the suffering and finds a way through it. The other is constantly trying to fix the
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suffering as though it's a defective human life, which leads to another big difference, Shope and Hower
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sees between these approaches. The Stoic approach is incredibly selfish by comparison, he says.
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Meaning it's always all about me feeling less suffering. Me, me, me. Correct in all my judgments.
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So I don't have to feel anything but total peace of mind. That's the main goal of my life.
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If other people around me are suffering at an emotional level, well look, those judgments they're
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making about their situation are really just a matter of ignorance. I mean, maybe I can try to
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educate them, but other than that, can I really do anything to help them? They got to help themselves.
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Now, someone could say back to this, but what about the fact that Stoics often do help people?
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I mean, Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. Epic teed has spent his life trying to educate people.
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These don't sound like selfish people to me. To which Shope and Hower might ask,
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yeah, but why are they helping other people around them? It's because if they don't,
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then it might mess with their chi. These people and their problems around me are going to mess up
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this hard-earned piece of mind I've cultivated by learning to judge things in a Stoic way. In other
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things, one of the big problems Shope and Hower thinks the Stoics run into when it comes to morality.
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This is what happens when you try to replace morality with just some regimen that allows you to
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remove suffering from your life. See, to Shope and Hower, morality begins when you start to
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internalize the suffering that other people are enduring around you. To see another person's
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suffering, writhing in pain in the street over something, and to have your first response to that
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be, well, I need to make sure I'm not feeling too intensely about this thing I'm seeing right now.
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I need to keep steady and calm about all this. What if that's not the sign of a moral sage?
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What if that's the sign of a person that's trained themselves to disconnect from the world around
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them so they don't have to face it or feel it? He has a great section where he's talking about the
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Stoics in his book, The World Is Will and Representation, where essentially he says,
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imagine a person who's just intellectually dull for a second. Like imagine someone where they don't
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engage with the world at a deep level. They don't think about things that much. And as a result of
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that, when they come across things, could be the Grand Canyon, could be a group of people suffering,
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whatever it is, this person finds themselves never really feeling much of anything about it.
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Shope and Hower says it's possible that person could think that they're just a wise Stoic,
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someone that's cultivated just the right amount of rational acceptance now that they don't get lost
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in the passions anymore in their life, like all those less enlightened people. But again, really,
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this could just be a selfish, unfeeling person that's putting in very little effort. Shope and Hower
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to people that are uninspired to begin with. In fact, if we accept Shope and Hower's premise here,
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say you lived in a society where you thought there was a growing number of people who tended to be
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selfish and emotionally disconnected and alienated from their fellow people. Well, wouldn't that be the
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exact kind of society where it would be popular to watch a video on Marcus Aurelius one day,
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hear his whole moral approach and be like, yeah, yeah, see that's some wise stuff he just said
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right there. Those are the kinds of ideas I think are the best way to live. Oh, what a great guy.
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See, for Shope and Hower to think it's beneath you to emotionally grieve over something,
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or to feel compassion for someone who's suffering, to think you need to govern that away somehow
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in order to be a better person, that's not a sign that you've arrived at some deep moral insight.
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It's a sign that you're part of a movement that places self-centered peace of mind above everything
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else. But again, compassion is where true morality begins for Shope and Hower, far from the cosmopolitanism
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of Stoicism, which he thought was just a rational duty towards others for yourself ultimately.
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The word he uses for true compassion literally translates to suffering with. It starts with
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internalizing and truly feeling the experience of the other. So when things happen to us in the
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external world, as they say, if you're Shope and Hower, you don't file them away into a class of
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things you call indifferent. No, the absolute first step for him is you try to find your connection to
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the things that are happening so you might actually be able to understand it properly and do
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something about it. Now, another way to put what we're talking about here is to say that morality
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seems to be centered around getting outside of yourself to an extent. It seems to be renouncing
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something about your own individual will and surrendering your will through compassion.
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And it's right here that we can see the other major problem that Shope and Hower is going to have
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with the Stoics. When your biggest goal is to try to remove suffering from the equation,
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you end up missing out on all that suffering has to teach you. I mean, if one goal for the Stoics
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is personal transformation, think of how being an intense sadness, for example, can teach you
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something about what it is to strive for things and have them taken from you. Think of how compassion,
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again, awakens someone's ability to read the suffering of others accurately. Think of how loneliness
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can strip away distractions and bring someone to a place where they come to reflect on their own
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existence. Think of how boredom might show someone how satisfaction in a moment is something that's
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never going to last and how we're always striving for something more. We never seem to have enough.
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Suffering has the ability in other words. When you meet it head on and are not always trying to fix it,
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it has the ability to teach us things about the nature of our existence that simply controlling
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yourself towards predefined virtues can never provide to someone. More than that to Shope and Hower,
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even if you disagreed with everything he said so far about how important suffering is,
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he still would come back with the argument that if you pay attention closely, everything the
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Stoics are doing to try to get rid of that suffering isn't really work in any way, that the Stoics
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still suffer all the time. Read any Stoic journal like meditations and consider how much even a
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devoted follower like Marcus Aurelius talks about how he comes up short until the very end of his life.
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But worse than that, the Stoic Shope and Hower thinks often suffers more than someone who just
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comes across the suffering throughout their life because they end up suffering twice, not only do
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they suffer for the thing just normally, but then in their attempt to train themselves to keep
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centered all the time, they end up adding on a whole other layer of suffering on top of the
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original thing as they try to unnaturally suppress it. So as you can note out guess by this point,
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Shope and Hower is going to be a fan of at least starting from a place where we acknowledge
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the suffering of life and how inevitable that whole process is for the kinds of creatures we are.
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But where do we go from there? Like as he's saying, we just got to lay around and suffer all day just
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because it's a part of life. Turn off the AC in your car. Give your kids only the worst
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flavors of Capri's son. Just learn right now that the world's always going to be against you.
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Well no, in a way he also thinks we need to do something serious in response to suffering. He just
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thinks that the stoic project doesn't actually solve the problem. In fact, stoicism is a half
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measure in the eyes of Shope and Hower. It's too affirming of worldly selfish drives to ever
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fully realize the true nature of suffering in human life. Let me explain. Shope and Hower believes
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that suffering comes from something he calls the will. Now he's not talking about your will,
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like the way you would will yourself to not eat ice cream or something. Think of the will as
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something that's going on at a metaphysical level. A single blind aimless force that underlies
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everything that you ever see in the world. This will pulls rocks towards the earth through the force
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of gravity. It drives plants to grow. It causes animals to hunt. And in the case of us human beings,
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the will is something we experience through things like hunger, fear, rage, jealousy, ambition.
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The will is the thing that keeps us and the kinds of lives humans typically lead where we
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restlessly strive for things that we want and then never actually get the things we want for any
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real length of time. We may accomplish a goal, get temporary satisfaction in a moment,
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but then even just a few moments later, we're restlessly striving again for the next thing.
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And then the next thing, the kind of neurotic grasping for things that not only keeps the species
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going for Shope and Hower, but it makes the whole universe go round. Anyway, so you can understand
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that if you viewed this as the picture of what a human life is, then this obviously isn't going
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to be something you're going to solve by just controlling your reactions to things and trying to
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become more courageous or something. You can also imagine how, from the perspective of Shope and Hower,
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if you were to spend most of your life just trying to be a good stoic, how we think that might
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actually work against you, learning about the real situation you're in. This is yet another layer
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to what he thinks a commitment to stoicism misses out on in practice. But now that we have this picture
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of this underlying will that's responsible for suffering in his view, one of the most important
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things that Shope and Hower thinks the stoics are missing out on is any area of human experience
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that isn't centered around the individual will. What he means is that if you're stoic,
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every second of your life is spent as an individual moral agent that has things happen to you
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and then wills yourself onto the situation and tries to control your judgments and reactions
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the best you possibly can. But isn't there also a whole other side to what life is that isn't just
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about freedom of the will, but freedom from the will? See, Shope and Hower thinks if you really want
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to deal with the problem of suffering, then you have to deal with the problem of constantly
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listening to this underlying will. And there's several steps he thinks you could take along a
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spiritual path that tries to deal with this problem. The first step would be to notice how we're
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constantly willing ourselves and constantly making choices and then to try to get out of that need
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to constantly be making choices. In other words, the first step for him on this path is going to be
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aesthetic contemplation. To try to get to a place where you're not seeing the world is something
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for you to use all the time. And that when you practice being what he calls a quote, pure willless
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subject of knowledge, you'll find that the super strong urge you usually have to strive for whatever
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it is you want, that voice starts to quiet inside of you just a little. Now, once you've done that
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for Shope and Hower, the next thing you could do is practice compassion. You know, as we've already
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talked about, really trying to internalize the suffering of other people and see things from a
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perspective other than your own. This is going to lead to another level of stepping outside of this
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individual will that leads to suffering. Last thing he thinks a person can do is an ascetic
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renunciation of the will altogether. Now, plenty of history here of people practicing this in all
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sorts of ways, fasting, chastity, practicing restraint when you strongly want something, even just
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working to be more humble when your ego could otherwise take over a situation. All of this will
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lead a person's Shope and Hower thinks to just a quieter mode of being altogether. And it's not
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that the will is going to disappear and you're not going to want things anymore, but he thinks a devoted
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practice like this actually helps the problem in an area that a practicing stoic that never considers
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anything but stoicism will never even know exists. A life centered around again, not just freedom of
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the will, but freedom from the will. So after listening to these two episodes, is there anything from
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stoicism that's missing? Is what's missing from stoicism? The very thing that's attractive about it to
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you. As always, I leave you to decide where you stand on all this. And as always, my goal here is to
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entertain ideas without necessarily accepting them. There's plenty of shows out there that'll tell you
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what to think if that's the service you want provided to you. This podcast is never going to be one
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of them. If you value the show as an educational resource, patreon.com slash philosophize this.
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Thanks for telling a friend about the show and most of all. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next
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time.