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“good practical advice and information on the stoic thought process and how it relates to life. A little tedious at times. Will probably re-read later”
chris w wrote this review Saturday, October 3 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Written by a philosophy professor, this book is an attempt to present a modern day stoic philosophy, with an emphasis on practical techniques.
TheophileEscargot wrote this review Sunday, April 12 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Mercifully, it's not written like some modern self-help books, littered with charts and cute diagrams and bullet points: just plain prose in short chapters.
While interesting in its own right, I think you might get a skewed impression if you tried to understand classical stoicism based on this. Irvine presents stoicism as being opposed to "negative emotions". Classical stoicism was subtly different. The ideal state was apathia the absence of "passion", where passion did not include feelings like joy or tranquility: stoics were encouraged to feel those. But even so, I think classical stoics would have opposed some passionate feelings that we could consider "positive emotions".
The actual stoical techniques Irvine presents are not particularly startling. One technique he favours is one I'm not convinced by: "negative visualisation" where you think about all the terrible things that could happen to you in order to be grateful that they're not happening yet, and prepared when they do. This seems a bit unhelpful, and could actually violate the main principle of not worrying about things that are not under your control.
The main things are to monitor and evaluate your own thoughts and actions according to stoic principles. Irvine thinks you should divide things into three categories. Things you can't change, and therefore shouldn't worry about. Things you can change, and therefore should. However he also adds a third category, of things you have some control over: for these he thinks you should internalise a goal that is fully under your control. So if playing tennis, you goal should be to play as well as you can, not just to win the game.
I'm not sure that this would have been necessary to a classical stoic. Their culture emphasized arete, the concept of which included both virtue and excellence. So I suspect winning a tennis match would have been considered a virtuous act of itself by Epictetus. Irvine however thinks its necessary to explain why ancient stoics were active high-achievers, and thinks internalising goals may have been how: it seems to me that arete explains it, and the concept was just too basic for them to talk about.
I think it's useful that Irvine attempts to substitute the religious elements of stoicism with a secular approach. His view is that evolution has given human beings intense pain, pleasure and worry emotions that are not particularly useful in the modern world; and that the advantage of stoic philosophy is that we can use our reason to keep them under control. This is less philosophically elegant than Epictetus' approach: in Irvine's view stoicism is a deliberate denial of nature, rather than an expression of it, but is probably more appealing to potential stoics.
Overall then, despite some quibbles, I think this is an interesting and worthwhile book. Worth reading if you're interested in stoicism as a practical modern philosophy, though not that useful if you're mainly interested in ancient stoicism. However, Irvine is no Seneca: comes across as a bit rigid and humourless at times.”
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