STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 20 January 2012

[Ghost Dog]

63. How about Stoicism, by way of an antidote?

Stoicism (Greek Στωικισμός ) is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.[1]

Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how he behaved.[2]

Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase 'stoic calm', though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.[1]

From its founding, Stoic doctrine was a popular and durable philosophy,[citation needed] with a following throughout Greece and the Roman Empire, including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, until the closing of all philosophy schools in 529 AD by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character as at odds with the Christian faith.[3][4]..

/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

For the Stoics nothing passes unexplained. There's a reason for everything in Nature. They believed there is an active "force" which is everywhere coextensive with matter. The Stoics believed that there was something acting within them — as they put it — "a spirit deeply infused, germinating and developing as from a seed in the heart of each separate thing that exists." ...

... Out of their cosmology the Stoics developed their ethics — which focused on Virtue. They believed Virtue to be the law that governed the Universe. For them, that which Reason (God/Logos) ordained must be accepted as binding upon the "particle of reason which is in each one of us." In turn, human law comes into existence when persons recognize this obligation — hence justice, responsibility, and freedom revolved around this obligation to (Reason).

The Stoics expressed these ethics further into the ideas of community. The individual must recognize the "society of rational beings of which he is a member, and subordinate his own ends to the ends and needs of this society" — the city of Zeus.

This city of Zeus was the ideal cosmopolis. In this city, the Stoics believed all is ordained by reason — working intelligently. The citizens exist for the sake of one another, working towards contributing towards one another's good. Such intercourse would find expression in justice, in friendship, in family and political life.

More specifically — in their own times — the Stoics boldly and bravely declared there was no difference "between Greek and barbarian, between male and female, and bond and free." All persons were members of "one body as partaking in reason."

/... http://www.novaroma.org/via_romana/stoicism.html

Or, did you already cover this?