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Evil Stoicism

Sometimes, when I look at modern interpretations of Stoicism, I think Stoicism will crash and burn for good this time around. Today I saw a post in a very large group on Stoicism on Facebook which read:

"Anyone ever gone full on not giving one fuck about externals?"

Obviously, This is madness and what gives Stoicism a bad name. The heart of Stoicism is to care and to care about every manifestation - actual or potential - of virtue. Internal or external. 

How could justice be a virtue if we shouldn't care about anything apart from ourselves? In fact: how could our own reason be good if it was the only good? 

Our reason is good because it's a manifestation of logos. And any manifestation of logos is exactly as good as ours.


Caricature 1 AD - 300 AD, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden



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  1. VictoriaOctober 3, 2020 at 11:14 AM

    Haha it seems like someone maybe trolling the Stoic group.

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    1. Jannik LindquistOctober 3, 2020 at 12:01 PM

      If only....Sadly, he's dead serious and lots of commenters back him up. This "solipsistic" interpretation of Stoicism is very common, sadly.

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