The Stoic Magazine Library

An ancient Stoic ideal

“Living in harmony,” “in agreement,” or “in accordance” is an ideal of the Stoa from the beginning of that school onward. In his Epitome of Stoic Ethics, Arius Didymus indicates Zeno was first to frame the goal of life along those lines, as to homologoumenos zen  in Greek.  He adds that Zeno means “to live according to a single line of reason [kath’hena logon] and in harmony [sumphonon]”, explaining that “those who live in conflict [makhomenos] are unhappy”.  
 

Practicing Stoicism

If you want to practice Stoicism, you have a number of resources available to you, most of them free. THE STOIC Gym journal alone publishes almost 100 articles every year. Our website TheStoicGym.com has about 700 articles, blog posts, poems, book reviews, videos, etc. We also have many more sources available to us such as ModernStoicism.com, and blogs by the likes of Donald Robertson and Massimo Pigliucci. Now The Stoic Gym is annoucing a new monthly publication – Prokopton. 
 

For if any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good. - Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, 5.12

Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess… but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren’t already yours. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.27

Harmony is a word often used when discussing music, but its application doesn't just exist there. One could make the argument that achieving a state of harmony is what Stoicism aims to do! However, we can understand what the Stoics mean by harmony by exploring what it means in music.

Stoic quotes for every day of the month

Greg Lopez was visiting Israel when the war broke out between Israel and Hamas. How does a Stoic respond to a situation like this? What were his thoughts? Here’s Greg in his own words. - Editor