Meetup : Phoenix, AZ: Stoicism and Visitors: 6 December 6:00PM

post by Danny_Hintze · 2012-11-23T19:08:59.983Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 6 comments

Contents

  Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix, AZ: Stoicism and Visitors: 5 December 6:00PM
  Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix, AZ: Stoicism and Visitors: 5 December 6:00PM
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6 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix, AZ: Stoicism and Visitors: 5 December 6:00PM

WHEN: 06 December 2012 06:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 1038 South Mill Avenue, Tempe, AZ

Jay will give a brief presentation on Stoicism and we will get to see some friends from Australia! The meeting will be at the Chipotle near Gammage Theater.

Discussion article for the meetup : Phoenix, AZ: Stoicism and Visitors: 5 December 6:00PM

6 comments

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comment by advancedatheist · 2012-11-24T03:04:12.666Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I wish I could attend that. Too bad the once vast Stoic literature survived in fragments, though scholars in recent years have put a lot of effort into inferring its overall structure from what little they have to work with. The Stoics in their prime offered a comprehensive philosophy which addressed everything upper class Greeks and Romans of an intellectual turn cared about, but we have only an inkling of that now because we've inherited a biased sample consisting mainly of popular works of Stoic ethics, like Seneca's Letters and Epictetus' Discourses.

By contrast a lot more of Plato's and Aristotle's works have come down to us. Their over-representation in post-Roman Western culture gives a distorted picture of how men in Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial antiquity understood philosophy. I keep hoping that archeologists will find complete works by Chrysippus some day to fill in the huge gaps in our understanding of Stoicism.

Replies from: Jayson_Virissimo
comment by Jayson_Virissimo · 2012-11-28T06:44:27.946Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Stoicism is indeed a very comprehensive and rich philosophy of life (and perhaps easier to make coherent with modern natural and social science than Zen Buddhism or Objectivism), but I don't plan on talking about Stoicism as such (which IMO, is slightly off-topic for a Less Wrong meetup, but also extremely interesting to me personally). Instead, I will only be discussing a few of the psychological hacks first written down by the Roman Stoics that seem justified on evolutionary psychological grounds.

comment by katydee · 2012-11-25T00:11:06.660Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What's the best way to contact Jay? I'm interested in corresponding with him with regards to an upcoming post on Stoicism that I am writing.

Replies from: Jayson_Virissimo
comment by Jayson_Virissimo · 2012-11-25T19:12:01.510Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

"Jay" is my name in low latency situations.

comment by Jayson_Virissimo · 2012-11-28T05:07:42.956Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

BTW, the title says December 5th, but the body says December 6th. Which is it?

Replies from: Danny_Hintze
comment by Danny_Hintze · 2012-11-30T08:24:53.132Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The 6th. Major kudos for catching that.