A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

Excellent review of the topic in practical terms.Solid but unforced description of the va!ue of exercising "Stoic techniques" regardless of one's religious persuasion (or dissuasion).Always amazed at the relevance of Stoic thought two thousand years on.

This review refers to the MP3 CD. The target audience of this book are ordinary people ( non-academics ) who are interested in the practical aspects of Stoicism for dealing with the vagaries of life. Mission accomplished. The voice actor used for this audio CD was well matched to the subject matter. The lessons were in clear, ordinary language. The topics were subjects any human being could relate too. The material was chock full of practical strategies for dealing with many aspects of life. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 due to two problems I had with the "book". The first problem, a minor one, was the author intentionally gender flipping pronouns. "When a stoic reflects on X she should....". "When a cook adds salt he usually...." . I found it to be didactic and a little bit PC. i imagine any woman intelligent and educated enough to be interested in Stoicism would find the intentional manipulation of pronouns to be patronizing. The other problem I had with the book was chapter 20. I think the author's intent was to expand upon an insight the stoics had about grief that he mentioned earlier in the book and to warn the reader about getting distracted in looking for happiness in external sources. However, I think chapter 20 could be strongly misunderstood by many to be an attack on psychological counseling and political action for improving the world. Neither are incompatible with Stoicism and the author stated many times that his goal for the book was to "sell Stoicism". Given that, in future editions of the book I think chapter 20 should be dropped. It doesn't help in selling Stoicism and might possibly have the opposite effect. However, this is an excellent book for making the practical aspects of Stoicism easily accessible to anyone and I highly encourage everyone to read it.

I bought this book because I've been pretty interested in different philosophies for the last couple years now. Particularly because I've been pursuing fame and money and my mentors have told me that I should become a student of philosophy if I want either of those two things.Along the way, I've been exposed to a lot of different ways of thinking, concepts, and ideas around my mindset and how I should value different things. Most notably the idea that: "Until I learn to become a happy person with what I have, I'll never be happy after getting the things that I desire to have"While I've known - in theory - that I should have been able to find happiness on my own... I just haven't ever been able to put it to practice.Until now.This book (and the art of stoicism) has given me an amazing set of tools which, for the first time ever, has allowed me to experience joy in my current day-to-day life. And not only that, but I find myself to be ever more productive with a much higher desire to go after certain goals that I have in life because I've found that joy!Many of the concepts explained in the book are similar to what people would have read in other religious or Law Of Attraction or philosophical types of books... except it's all explained using simple logic and rational. Something that I think anyone can relate to and makes sense without necessarily trying to get you to believe in the supernatural.And for me, at least, it's helped me to finally solidify some concepts that I've been trying for years to wrap my head around.So having said that, if you're thinking about getting this book then I definitely would get it. It is perhaps now one of my more favorite books regarding philosophy that I have ever read.

Like everyone else encountering this book, I was intrigued by the apparent oxymoron in the concept of "stoic joy" found in its title. I assumed stoics were supposed to be impassive people who shut themselves off from all feelings as a way to avoid suffering while paying the heavy price of eliminating joy as well. This book quickly put those misconceptions to rest. Written by a classics scholar at Oxford, it starts by setting the historical context in which Stoicism arose in ancient Greece, where the focus of the various schools was more on science and logic, to its flourishing in Rome where it shifted inward, toward personal improvement. As someone who attempted to read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius directly and finding only limited use in it, I found this extremely well researched book (over 20 pages of notes and references) here a good distillation and synthesizes of the teachings of these ancient masters in a way that is easier for me to relate to. But more than that, it provides concrete techniques that we can start to apply right away. With catchy, counterintuitive names such as negative visualization (imagining the worst happening to us, with the effect of making us grateful for what we have now), fatalism about the past (since we cannot do anything about it), trichotomy of control (distinguishing between what we fully control, what we don't control at all, and what we partially control, and what to do in each case), voluntary discomfort, etc. with regular practice these techniques let us be content and even joyful with what we have. The book ends by making a case for Stoicism in the modern world and providing a great reading guide to continue learning about it.I get from Irvine that Stoicism could be regarded as a discarded antique, hidden in someone's attic, that has just been rediscovered, dusted off and put to good use again. I think this book understates the influence Stoicism had on building the intellectual foundations of Christianity and some spiritual practices such as the self-examination and asceticism (sometimes called mortification) that many would be very surprised to learn have non-Christian origins. It even survives in the Serenity prayer that many attribute to Alcoholics Anonymous but actually comes almost straight from Marcus Aurelius.At a time when we have New Age teachings such as the The Secret, literally telling us that the universe can rearrange itself to accommodate our desires, and a strong anti-intellectual current in much of contemporary Christianity, appealing primarily to the emotions, many rational people in the West turn to Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies without realizing the richness to be found in Stoicism. Stoicism may be countercultural in the current context but through the work of Irvine and other authors it won't be so for long, as it resonates with our current understanding of the World without necessarily being inconsistent with other belief systems we may have.