Philosophy Is Not A Thought Experiment

Ryan talks about what practicing Stoicism is actually all about.🎓 Sign up for Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life - https://dailystoic.com/101Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Philosophy is not a thought experiment. If the word "stoic" has been totally misunderstood in the English language, as we just talked about the other day, then it must be said that as a concept, philosophy has also been perverted. The mere mention of the word can make us bored or intimidated, because philosophy today is not thought of as something one can use, but almost a purely academic pursuit, an abstraction too big for mere mortals to even comprehend. It is not thought to be, as Epictetus said, "for lovers of wisdom," philosophy coming from that Greek word that literally means "love of wisdom", but instead for smart people, for puzzling over paradoxes

• 1:09Ryan Holiday?

  and riddles, for asking questions without answers. And our modern philosophers today debate whether we're living in a computer simulation, or if reality is anything but a hallucination, or they debate how to respond to the so-called "trolley problem," or whether the ship of Thessius, if every single plank was replaced, would or wouldn't be fundamentally different ship. And that's why too many philosophy books, as Nietzsche said, "do little but use words to argue about other words." And what a sad, ironic fate for something that traces its roots back to just about anywhere but the classroom. As Plutarch observed, Socrates did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher's chair,

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  and reserve a pre-arranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils. On the contrary, he practiced philosophy while joking around and drinking and serving on military campaigns, and hanging around the marketplace with some of his students. And finally, even while under arrest and drinking the hemlock, he was the first to demonstrate that our lives are open to philosophy at all times and in every aspect, while experiencing every emotion and in each and every activity. That's just beautifully put. The truth is, you will never have to pull a lever to stop a trolley from running over one person or five. You have no way of knowing whether this life is real or an illusion. We do, however, have, just as the citizens of the ancient

• 2:35Ryan Holiday?

  world had, real concerns and decisions to make on a daily basis. And that is what philosophy is. It's something that the doers of the world use and have used throughout history to solve their problems and live a good life. And that's what the Stoics were after, what we remain interested in to this day, lights to illuminate the path in life. They wanted to know, as we want to know, how to find tranquility and purpose and self-control and happiness, which is why, instead of asking interesting questions like, is this just a hallucination, the Stoics asked practical questions like, who can help me? What is right? What should or shouldn't I do? And it's those kinds of questions that I'm interested in answering. And that's why I set up this new course I was telling you about, Stoicism

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. It's our most popular course here at Daily Stoic, and that's why we're reopening it to a live cohort here in 2022 that starts on March 22. Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life is a 14-day course designed to show you, to show people, how to integrate philosophy into their actual lives. It's empty of esoteric inquiry. There's no mirror fencing, no perplexing paradoxes, no riddles to solve. It's real stuff for real people. And the people who took it, we have all this great feedback about what it did for them. They were saying, look, I'm new to Stoicism, and this was so immediately impactful. They were in the middle of changing careers, and we talked through that in the course. Someone else said that, throughout

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  the course, I've picked up ways of approaching everyday situations that have been massively beneficial. I still need to work on making them more automatic, rather than apply them when things go awry, which is, of course, what Stoicism is. It's not this magical epiphany. It's a, it's a process that you work. And someone else said, it's a gift to take this course. All the philosophies that have piqued my interest over the years, none have led to the tangible improvements in my life like Stoicism has. I love hearing that. And look, in three live video sessions, what we call Office hours with me, author of, you know, a book or two about Stoicism. We're going to tackle stuff like that. It's going to be a real back and forth between me and you and thousands of other Stoics as part of the course. There's 14 custom emails delivered over the two weeks, 20,000 words of content, basically

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  almost a short book. And it's stuff about who the Stoics were, things a Stoic does, things a Stoic shouldn't do, what sets Stoicism apart from the other philosophies, key components to living a Stoic day, Stoic secret to success, Stoic secrets to resilience, Stoic secrets to productivity. And not only do you get the office hour sessions, but you get the last go arounds office sessions too. So it's hours and hours of deep dives into these topics. I've spoken about Stoicism, everyone from the NBA to the NFL, sitting elected leaders and special forces operators. So I'm really excited to talk to you, all of you about Stoicism and help you apply it to your actual life. This is a live course and it begins on Tuesday, March 22.

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  So you've got to sign up now to be part of that cohort. Registration is now officially open, but it closes on Monday, March 21 at midnight. So I want you to sign up, go to dailystoic.com/101 to sign up. Click the link in today's episode and I'm really looking forward to having you join us as part of Stoicism 101. Also, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life now, you get this course and all the other ones for free. So if you're looking to get serious about Stoicism, this is a great time to do that.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.