Stoicism

MPhil, Bangor University, 2003: The Problem of Evil: Anglican and Baptist Perspectives

PhD, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, 2010: Theodicy and Practical Theology

From my MPhil: University of Wales Stoicism:

Woods described Stoicism as follows: In direct contrast to escapism stands Stoicism. Founded by Zeno, in 300 B.C., . . . With regard to suffering, Stoicism is apathetic. Without knowing it, many people follow the basic philosophy of Stoicism. Suffering is to be faced with a spirit of self-sufficiency. . . . The Stoic determines to live so that no person or thing is essential to his existence. He strives to arrive at the point where he does not care what happens to anyone, including himself. Woods (1974)(1982: 19-20).
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March 5, 2018

Blackburn explains that stoicism is a unified, logical, physical and moral philosophy. (363). The name arises from stoa poikile or painted porch in Athens where Stoicism was initially taught. (363).
The first recognized with this philosophy was Zeno of Citium that founded the related school in 300 BC. (363). There were other documented stoics over the next centuries. (363). The philosophy eventually entered into the Roman Empire. (363)

Stoicism is based on apprehensive perception, with a cosmology that supports determinism and order. (363). Interestingly, Blackburn writes that stoicism provided a proof for God's existence that used an argument from design. (363-364).

It holds to an intellectual calmness and the moral order of the universe. (364).

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stoicism is a type of eudaimonic virtue ethics, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve happiness (in the eudaimonic sense). However, the Stoics also recognized the existence of “indifferents” (to eudaimonia) that could nevertheless be preferred (for example, health, wealth, education) or dispreferred (for example, sickness, poverty, ignorance), because they had (respectively, positive or negative) planning value with respect to the ability to practice virtue. Stoicism was very much a philosophy meant to be applied to everyday living, focused on ethics (understood as the study of how to live one’s life), which was in turn informed by what the Stoics called “physics” (nowadays, a combination of natural science and metaphysics) and what they called “logic” (a combination of modern logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, and cognitive science).

Massimo Pigliucci City
University of New York, U. S. A.

Eudaimonic is happiness and welfare.

BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

WOODS, B.W. (1974) Christians in Pain, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House.