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What Would Stoics Do

St. George Stock (modern guide) · 1850–1922

A Guide to Stoicism Foreword — St. George Stock (modern guide)

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Original English text (1908)

St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism Foreword

If you strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful misuse of language, what is left is simply the moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. Stoicism was not so much a new doctrine as the form under which the old Greek philosophy finally presented itself to the world at large. It owed its popularity in some measure to its extravagance. A great deal might be said about Stoicism as a religion and about the part it played in the formation of Christianity but these subjects were excluded by the plan of this volume which was to present a sketch of the Stoic doctrine based on the original authorities.
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St. George Stock (modern guide), A Guide to Stoicism Foreword (1908)

https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/a-guide-to-stoicism/foreword

St. George Stock, Stoicism (1908), text of the Haldeman-Julius reprint “A Guide to Stoicism”. Text: Project Gutenberg #7514. Sources and licences

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A modern editor argues that, without its paradoxes, Stoicism is mostly the moral philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle with some Heraclitean physics added. It was the popular face of Greek philosophy rather than a brand-new system, and the book leaves out its religious side.

Themes and situations

  • Learning and progress
  • Virtue and character

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