The Practicing Stoic. Ward Farnsworth
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First published in 2018 by
DAVID R. GODINE · Publisher
Post Office Box 450
Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452
Copyright © 2018 by Ward Farnsworth
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, Fifteen Court Square, Suite 320, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Farnsworth, Ward, 1967– author.
Title: The practicing stoic : a philosophical user’s manual / Ward Farnsworth. Description: Jaffrey : David R. Godine, Publisher, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053581 | ISBN 9781567926118 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Stoics.
Classification: LCC B528 .F37 2018 | DDC I88–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053581
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-56792-611-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-56792-633-0
FIRST EDITION 2018
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PREFACE
This is a book about human nature and its management. The wisest students of that subject in ancient times, and perhaps of all time, were known as the Stoics. Their recommendations about how to think and live do not resemble the grim lack of feeling we associate with the word “Stoic” in English today. The original Stoics were philosophers and psychologists of the most ingenious kind, and also highly practical; they offered solutions to the problems of everyday life, and advice about how to overcome our irrationalities, that are still relevant and helpful now. The chapters that follow explain the most useful of their teachings in twelve lessons.
That was a brief statement of the book’s purpose. The reader who finds it enough can proceed to Chapter 1. For those wanting a fuller account of the rationale for what follows, here is a more complete statement.
1 The body of ideas known as Stoicism contains some of the finest and most durable wisdom of any age. The Stoics were deep students of desire, fear, status, emotion, and much else that bedeviled the human race thousands of years ago and bedevils it still. They were philosophers of a down-to-earth sort, seeking by force of their insights to free ordinary people from their sufferings and illusions. The Stoics had their limitations, of course; they held some beliefs that very few people do anymore. But in other ways they were far ahead of their times. They said a number of the best things that anyone ever has.The teachings of the Stoics are as interesting and valuable now as when first written – maybe more so, since the passage of two millennia has confirmed so much of what they said. The idiocies, miseries, and other discouragements of our era tend to seem novel or modern; hearing them described in a classical dialogue reminds us that they are nothing new. This itself was a claim of the Stoics: that the stories and problems of humanity don’t change, but just put on new masks. The same can be said for the remedies. The most productive advice anyone offers nowadays, casually or in a bestseller, often amounts to a restatement or rediscovery of something the Stoics said with more economy, intelligence, and wit long ago. The reader does better by going straight to the sages.
2 The Stoicism in this book is a set of ideas developed by philosophers in Ancient Greece and Rome. To repeat what was mentioned at the outset – for it cannot be said enough – Stoicism did not mean for them what the word now means