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re-listening to the Zimmer Dark knight soundtrack recently:
Still love it. I tend to listen to these soundtracks without reference to the film or show that it is involved. I find the best of this soundtrack to be conveying genuine emotional experience
Cicero: Fame is the accumulated dispositions of people whose opinions are worth nothing
Deeds, not fame.
Seneca: "At the cost of anxiety"
no one is considered indebted if they have taken up our TIME- it is the one thing a grateful debtor cannot repay
Epictetus: He who has no need for wealth and power is greater than those lust for it and chase it . They beg, carry burdens, flatter.
If you are to set a high value on liberty, you as a consequence set a low value on everything else.
The fear of losing a thing is as bad as the regret of having lost it
setbacks show what we are really capable of doing.
Seneca: These things were nothing! And I was preparing for them as if they were great.
Shame and glory are both fickle motives because they rely on the opinion, bad and good respectively, of others. One acts fully rationally when one performs an action for its own sake – that is, because to do so is right. In this sense reason, when perfected, becomes virtue (II.47)."
". The goodness of virtue always trumps the badness of pain; the goodness of avoiding pain is always – but only – trumped by the avoidance of vice or the exercise of virtue. There is, as Cicero sees it, a two-fold psychological effect with regard to pain that comes with virtue. First, the nobility and (Cicero admits) the glory of acting honourably lessens the agent’s fear of pain, and to that extent offers an alleviation of the emotional stress associated with it (II.59). Second, acting from virtue not only results in less fraught feelings towards pain but in a reduction of the pain itself (II.53). This latter point, while more contentious, is not psychologically implausible, though Cicero, in speaking of the mitigation of pain as being brought about ‘somehow or other’ in such circumstances, declines to spell out a mechanism."
"y. The philosophical schools were seen as united among themselves and with ordinary opinion in agreeing that death was no evil. Greek and Roman, man and woman, could thus face it with the same equanimity. Yet this universalism eventually resembled more a kind of ineffectual idealism. Good cheer in the face of death is, in practice, to be achieved through the cultivation of virtue, not by the mere acknowledgement of death’s harmlessness."
"Greed, ambition, lust for power: these are what Cicero calls ‘diseases of the soul’, and the term is extended to any emotional disturbance, such as distress, as well (III.5). In fact the chief topic of Book III will be whether distress is something that the wise person experiences at all, and if not, then how one should go about ridding oneself of it. The removal of distress, as with other emotional disturbances, is, as Cicero sees it, the task of philosophy, which he dubs the ‘art of healing the soul’ (III.6) and explicitly compares with medicine (III.1, 6)"
"What lies behind the Stoic arguments is a connection, already implicit in Cicero’s critique of Caesar and Pompey in the preface, between emotional disturbance and moral deficiency. The wise person is virtuous – virtue being perfected reason – and the arguments seek to show that being susceptible to distress is incompatible with the possession of virtue. Thus the brave person is not fearful; yet if one is subject to distress, one will be subject to fear, since what distresses us with its presence causes fear in us by its prospect. Hence the wise person cannot be subject to distress, since this would mean he will also be fearful and therefore lacking in bravery (III.14). Similarly, temperance requires a calm and measured approach, and thereby a freedom from all disturbance. Since distress is a form of disturbance, a wise person cannot be susceptible to distress (III.16–18). Anger cannot be a feature of the wise person’s psychology either, since anger is the desire to inflict pain on those who have injured one, which implies one’s rejoicing when the desire is satisfied. But to rejoice in another’s pain is evidently a vice and thus incompatible with wisdom; and since anger is a form of distress, the wise person cannot on these grounds be susceptible to anger (III.19). These deductions seek to show how admitting distress as something the wise can experience implicates the latter in a whole network of vices incompatible with the status of wisdom. Even an emotion such as pity is rejected on the grounds that those who are pained at another’s misfortune will also be pained at a person’s good fortune, an interesting observation based on the idea that if one sees a good person suffer one is liable to resent the prospering of others (III.21)
the Stoics reckon anger a type of desire (namely, to avenge an unjustified harm), rather than seeing it principally in terms of aversion or disapproval. But in addition, and crucially, the Stoics treat (with some plausibility) many supposedly positive emotions as disturbances, hence ideally to be gotten rid of. No emotion should remain that is incompatible with the thoroughgoing peace of mind that characterizes the wise. An emotion such as excitement can, in this sense, be regarded as fit for elimination. There are three types of emotion that are not regarded as disturbances, and as therefore the sole preserve of the wise, with no need of remedy. These emotions Cicero calls, in view of their steadiness, ‘consistencies’ (Latin constantiae; IV.14). Cicero is glossing the Greek eupatheiai, which might relatively literally be rendered as ‘good feelings’. His Latin term adverts to the lack of conflict (and hence the tranquillity) that the wise person experiences. The three consistencies are: wish, joy and precaution. Wish is a rational desire for some good, joy is a rational and tranquil recognition that some good is present, and precaution is a rational aversion to evil (IV.12–13).
The Stoics, as we saw, have a shortcut: since nothing is evil except vice or good except virtue, there is no reason to respond emotionally to any other features of the world but these.
Courage and the individual
The balance he is trying to strike between individual interest and the social good is further illustrated in the discussion of courage. More firmly than in the case of wisdom, it turns out that courage cannot count as such without justice. Indeed, courage is the object of some suspicion on Cicero’s part. He declares that the individual to be favoured is the one who displays the ‘gentler’ virtues of temperance, moderation and justice; a courageous spirit, he says, is generally too impetuous in the absence of wisdom; it is those gentler virtues that particularly attach to a good man (I.46). Courage is found in animals – Cicero cites lions and horses – but animals lack justice, fairness and goodness (I.50). Thus Cicero endorses the Stoic account of courage as that virtue that fights for fairness, adding that nothing can be honourable in the absence of justice: in cases where high-spiritedness fights not for common safety but for its own advantage it ranks as a vice (I.62)."
While emphasizing that it is in what one does rather than in the glory one attains that genuine worth lies (I.65), he is in fact somewhat suspicious of those who claim an indifference to glory, remarking with some perspicuity that such an attitude often masks a fear of toil or humiliation (I.71). And his upholding of glory, albeit as constrained by the requirements of justice, reveals a deeper point about Cicero’s outlook. From a political and military point of view, it is fundamentally individualistic. What the countless examples of heroes and villains, in this and his other works, demonstrates cumulatively is that for Cicero great change is in the main effected, for better or worse, by the actions of individuals rather than by wider social, political or economic forces
When we view things from the perspective of death, it is impossible to let a single one of life's instants pass by lightly. If, like Marcus and the Stoics, we believe that the only good thing is moral action and a perfectly good and pure intent, then we must transform our way of thinking and of acting in this very instant. The thought of death confers seriousness, infinite value, and splendor to every present instant of life. " To perform each oflife's actions as ifit were the last" means to live the present instant with such intensity and such love that, in a sense, an entire lifetime is contained and completed within it.
Most people are not alive, because they do not live in the present, but are always outside of themselves, alienated, and dragged backwards and forwards by the past and by the present. They do not know that the present is the only point at which they are truly themselves and free. The present is the only point which, thanks to our action and our consciousness, gives us access to the totality of the world.
"Transpose this method to life in its entirety." Here we recognize the methods of definition and delimitation of the present instant, which I have just discussed. We must not, says Marcus, lose our self-control because of a song or a dance, since these things can ultimately be resolved into a series of notes or movements which are nothing but so many successive instants. Similarly, we must not let ourselves become discouraged by the global representation of the whole of lifethat is, of all the hardships and difficulties which await us. Like a song or a dance, our lives are divisible into smaller units, and consist only of such units. In order to execute a song or a dance step, we need to perform each one of these units in succession. Life, too, consists only of a series of such instants which we live in succession, and the better we are able to isolate each one and define it precisely, the better we shall be able to gain control over the entire series. The other intention of the exercise of defining the present is to intensify the attention we bring to bear upon what we are doing or experiencing. Here, we are no longer concerned with diminishing hardships or suffering; on the contrary, our goal is to exalt the consciousness of our existence and our freedom. Marcus does not expand upon this theme, but we can sense it in the insistence with which he returns to the necessity of concentrating upon our present representations, our present actions, and the present event, as well as the necessity of avoiding worry about the past or the future (XII, r, r -2) : All the happiness you are seeking by such long, roundabout ways: you can have it all right now .... I mean, if you leave all of the past behind you, if you abandon the future to providence, and if you arrange the present in accordance with piety and justice. It should be pointed out here that, for Marcus, "piety" represents that discipline of desire which makes us consent "piously" to the divine will, as the latter is made manifest in events. Likewise, "justice" corresponds to the discipline of action, which makes us act in the service of the human community. Marcus repeats the same exhortation elsewhere (XII, 3, 4) : If you apply yourself to living only that which you are living-in other words, the present-then you can live the rest of your life until your death in peace, benevolence, and serenity.
Philosophy wants only that which your nature wants. You, however, wanted something else, which was not in accordance with nature. And yet, what is more attractive than what is in conformity with nature? Is this not how pleasure leads us astray?6 Look and see, however, if there is anything more attractive than greatness of soul, freedom, simplicity, benevolence, and piety; for what is more attractive than wisdom itself? (V, 9, 3-5) . You must consider the activity which it is possible for you to carry out in conformity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible for you (X, 33, 2) . For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in conformity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words of Seneca:7 "The effect of wisdom is a continuous joy ... and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy." Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme: To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains for you to do but enjoy life, linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
I can and I must live the present which I am living at this moment as if it were the last moment of my life; for even if it is not followed by any other instant, I will be able, because of the absolute value of moral intention and of the love of the good which I have lived in this instant, to say in that very instant: I have realized my life, and have gotten everything I could have expected out of it.29 It is this that enables me to die. As Marcus says (XI, 1, 1): The rational soul ... attains its proper end wherever it achieves the limit of its life. It is not like the dance or the theater or other arts of that kind, in which all the action is incomplete if they are interrupted. On the contrary: the action of the rational soul, in each of its parts, and at whatever point one considers it, carries out for itself what it was planning fully and without fault, so that it can say, "I have reached my fulfillment." Whereas a dance or the reading of a poem reach their goal only when they are finished, moral activity reaches its goal in the very instant when it is accomplished. It is therefore entirely contained within the present moment, which is to say, within the unity of the moral intention which, in this very moment, animates my actions or my inner disposition. Once again, we note that the present instant can thus immediately open up the totality of being and of value. One thinks of the words of Wittgenstein: " If we understand by " eternity" not an infinite temporal duration, but a lack of temporality, then he who lives within the present lives eternally. "30
notes from a stoic expert and professor:
https://massimopigliucci.com/2019/08/13/book-club-summary-the-inner-citadel/
Meditations is good but overrated- I wish a similar analysis was done for Seneca's writings.
"For they are not praised because they deserve to be desired but rather they are desired because they are praised.
When the error of individuals goes on to create error on the part of the public, this in turn creates more error on the part of more individuals"
Three pillars of Zen is an outstanding book on Buddhism- finished it today
Seneca's insight- the wise man has NO EVIL. If he does have a little submerged, it will grow from these roots.