Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Here's the sort of formulation that gives Stoicism a bad name...

Epictetus, Discourses, Book IV, 4:
It would be lovelier still if you could secure happiness, free of emotion, poised and dependent on no one except yourself.
Here the view of emotion is overly simplistic: emotion equals weakness. The role of emotion in motivation (for virtues like courage), attention, or even the proper functioning of memory, is completely unrecognized.

No comments:

Post a Comment