It Takes a Guide To ‘Get’ It | 9 Core Stoic Beliefs

The Daily Stoic

This episode explores the transformative power of mentorship in mastering Stoic philosophy, highlighting historical figures like Marcus Aurelius and James Stockdale

Key takeaways

• Wisdom is not acquired from first impressions; it requires sustained effort and guidance from a skilled teacher.
• Historical figures like Marcus Aurelius and James Stockdale were deeply influenced by mentors who helped them internalize Epictetus' teachings.

Main topics

• The role of mentorship in understanding Stoicism
• Epictetus' teachings and their impact on historical figures

Notable quotes

"It takes a guide to get it."

"Wisdom doesn't come from first impressions and it does not come easy. It's hard work… and the only way to speed up that process is with the help of a great teacher."

Conclusion

True Stoic wisdom emerges not through isolated reading but through guided,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. It takes a guide to get it. Marcus Aurelius had many advantages in life. He was born a man in a male-dominated society. He was born to a good family. And then, in an unbelievable stroke of good luck, he was chosen to be the most powerful man in the world. But the luckiest break that Marcus Aurelius got came in the form of Rusticus, his philosophy teacher. Just as reading and writing require a master, Marcus wrote in Meditations, still more so was life. Rusticus was that master. He taught Marcus how to think, he taught him how to live. He is also the one who gave his young student a copy of Epictetus, which Marcus tells us he supplied me out of his own library. Rusticus almost certainly attended Epictetus' lectures in person and was an ideal teacher to help make sure that Marcus Aurelius got more than just the gist, that he came to understand it on a soul level. Flash forward 18 centuries later and history repeated itself. In 1962, Commander James Stockdale began studying philosophy under Professor Philip Rhinelander at Stanford University. In addition to the assigned readings, Stockdale would spend about an hour each week in Rhinelander's home, talking about philosophy and wrestling with questions about good and evil, human nature, suffering, and how one ought to live. As their time together came to a close, Rhinelander, knowing that Stockdale was likely to head off to combat, handed Stockdale a copy. of the teachings of Epictetus. Marcus had Rusticus. Stockdale had Rhinelander. Sure, they might have both stumbled into or through Epictetus on their own, but it wouldn't have been the same. Marcus didn't read Epictetus once and move on. You can see his influence throughout meditations and how Marcus thought about anger, how he dealt with difficult people, how he approached duty, handled adversity, and how he chose to react to the things outside his control. And this came from his repeated reading and diligent study of the text. Stockdale carried Epictetus' In Caridian with him, keeping it on his bedside table aboard the USS Ticonderoga, as we've talked about recently. He read and re-read the teachings of Epictetus. Both Marcus and Stockdale committed many of Epictetus' passages to memory. They returned to those lessons and to their teachers because they understood that wisdom doesn't come from first impressions and it does not come easy. It's hard work. And the only way to speed up that process is with the help of a great teacher. And that's what we've been doing all month and are doing for the rest of the month here during Epictetus Month, Daily Stoic. We're doing a deep dive into this slave-turned-teacher whose ideas shaped Marcus Aurelius and Stockdale, and whom the Stoics have returned to for nearly 2,000 years. If you haven't read Epictetus, I think you would like it. You can grab a copy in the painted porch, and we'll also include an awesome guide that walks you through not just what Epictetus said, but how you apply it. And we're going to be doing a deep dive Q &A. into Epictetus on the 27th, which I'd love to have you join us. You just got to sign up by the 26th. And you can even throw in a copy of Meditations in there for an extra 10 bucks if you want. You can grab all that at dailystomach.com slash Epictetus. And I'll see you in there. Speaker 2 (3:57) Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. You're familiar with Stephen Hanselman, I imagine. Stephen Hanselman is the translator on all the ancient translations in the Daily Stoic and in the Daily Stoic Journal. He's also been my book agent since I sold my first book back in 2011. Trust me, I'm lying. And he's just been a wonderful collaborator and friend. And I would say not just a fellow... student of the Stoics, but a teacher of the Stoics. To me, Steve went to Harvard Divinity School. He speaks Greek and Latin, and we worked on Lives of the Stoics together. I have learned so much collaborating with. Steve is my go-to expert on the Stoics, and that's why I'm bringing you this article today. Steve put together something for the Daily Stoic site, Nine Core Stoic Beliefs. There is no sort of 10 Stoic commandments, but they're... are some core beliefs of Stoicism that we see, whether we're talking about Zeno or Cleanthes or Aristo or Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. They didn't agree on everything, but they had some core basic assumptions about life. And that's what I'm bringing you in today's episode. This was read by Michael Reed, who does a lot of voiceover work for The Daily Stoic. It was written by Stephen Hanselman. I'll link to the article in today's show notes. But in the meantime, I'll let you sit back Speaker 1 (5:14) and listen. The Nine Core Stoic Beliefs by Stephen Hanselman. If you want a smooth flow of life, live according to nature. At the core of the Stoic teaching is the founder Zeno's idea that a smooth flow of life, uroa bayou, comes from living in agreement with nature. It was the second leader of the Stoics, Zeno's student, Cleanthes, who added the last part, with nature, te fusi, or according to, katafusin. The Stoics saw an entirely material universe that was shot through with reason and purpose. a great world city of human beings that were connected to it and to each other as both rational and social creatures. Zeno was the first philosopher to treat duty, kathikon, as a central concern, our obligation to act appropriately in our given roles in family and society, and it was no accident that, as a consequence, he taught that we were obligated to participate in public life until we are unable. Zeno divided the Stoic curriculum into three parts that were meant not only to be studied, but practiced. Physics, logic, and ethics. The Stoics saw physics as the fertile field, logic as a protective fence that kept out corruptions, and ethics as the fruit produced by the integration of these three areas of study in our actions. Zeno had challenged his students to get to the place where everything they did was in harmonious accord with each man's guiding spirit and the will of the one who governs the universe. The Stoic God was not transcendent and above nature, but instead was synonymous with it. Their pantheism, God and all things, held that each of us shared in the divine fire. Like other Greek thinkers who preceded him, Zeno believed that each of us has a daimon, an inner genius or purpose, that connects us to the universal nature. Those who live by keeping the individual and universal natures in harmony are happy. and those who don't are not. The disjunction of these two natures is a root source of human misery and not how we are meant to live. So, how do we avoid this disjunction? Happiness isn't found in things, but in virtue alone. It's all about what we value and the choices we make. The early Stoics often disagreed about many particulars, but they all agreed that for human beings, the happy life was to be found only in the pursuit of virtue, arati, or human excellence, a pursuit that involved tempering our desires, aversions, and impulses so that they aligned better with the four cardinal virtues of temperance, sophrosyne, courage, andrea, justice, dikaiosune. and practical wisdom, phrenesis. Simply put, for human beings, virtue happens to be the