How Stoicism Actually Works
Once you see this, the rest of Stoic Philosophy makes sense.
“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.” - Marcus Aurelius”
I noticed there’s a lot of misinformation or rather a shallow understanding and misrepresentation of what Stoic Philosophy is and isn’t. Most readers stop here and wonder why they’re still confused, still frustrated by worldly events, still having unanswered questions, still anxious and planets away from happiness. So I took it upon myself to create a foundational primer on the essence of the philosophy, making it easy to understand for both new and experienced practitioners, covering the Dichotomy of Control, the three disciplines (Desire, Assent & Action), and the self they aim to protect and elevate.
What follows is how the three principles fit together, why the order matters and how they apply to your life, what changes when you see prohairesis as the whole self rather than a part of it, and how amor fati becomes a logical conclusion rather than a slogan you just repeat without an understanding of the basics. Let’s begin.
Imagine this. Strip a person of his health, his wealth, his name, his people, and ask what is left. Most answers are wrong. You answer “myself,” and the next question is what that word means now that everything you used to fill it with is gone.
Epictetus answered. He said you’re…