Stoicism is “an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.” According to the Oxford Dictionaries.

Stoicism regards the universe as a beautiful, orderly and rational whole. Human is a part of the universe, a little spark. Stoic believe that everyone is a small part of the universe. Every individual is a small “microcosmos” and it is an epitome of the “macrocosmos”. I think that is very interesting angle of looking at the relationship between us and the cosmos, and it is also very romantic and poetic. 

The stoicism in ancient times was a monist and a materialist, which means that they thought that all existing things were made up of one substance. Of course, their precise definition of this “thing” is not correct. Stoicism believes that the basic component of the universe is something they call “vitality”. It has four forms: cohesion, which unifies a physical object; nature, which makes all things become vibrant and alive; soul, which gives animal perception and movement; reason, which gives reason and rationality to human beings. For example, rocks have cohesion, but none of the other three. Plants are both cohesion and nature, but they don’t have soul or reason. Animals have the first three, but not including reason. Human has all four. This is all reality but the existence of things has different forms. 

Stoic emphasizes obedience to the fate, to be comfortable in their position in society, to be indifferent, so that only in this way can we reach happiness. “Throughout each identical phase, every event is predetermined, governed by fate and entirely for the good”. I strongly agree with this theory because I always believed that there is an ultimate law of nature or fate, and with everything being predetermined we just have to live with the flow. Indifference to all events no matter is it good or evil. In addition to the Stoic’s view, I also believe that fate will always take the middle way, and I think I am influenced by Daoism. “The divine plan will work itself out no matter what, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that, but what one can do is react to events in the right way, which is to say harmoniously, virtuously, in tune with the flow of things.” 

Stoic also believes that the conventional goods such as health, wealth, fame and social standing are good depending on situations, but only virtue is good no matter what. The conventional goods are preferable – in Stoic terminology, “preferred indifference” – but whether and when we acquire them is not up to us but up to the divine plan. 

The author of the book Meditation – Marcus Aurelius, a stoic philosopher – also gave interesting explanations about life and death. Even if you want to live three thousand years, or ten times as much, remember: you can’t lose another life than what you are living now, and you can’t live another life than what you are losing. The present is the same for everyone and same as the lost; it should be clear that a short moment is everything that is lost. You cannot lose what you don’t have. And, everything is always the same and keep repeating, whether you see the same thing repeated in 100 years, 200 years, or indefinitely, there is no difference. the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same things. 

We should not be afraid of death, rather, we should even welcome the arrival of death and live towards the death. Suppose that you are now dead, your life is over, and the remaining years will only be regarded as the continuation of your life, and you should live according to the way of nature. Every act, every word and every thought of yours should be like a person who would die at any time. Accept death, it is just like how you anticipate a child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; and that’s how you should await the hour when your soul emerges from its compartment.

Bibliography:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stoicism

Meditation by Marcus Aurelius

    The idea of Epicureans

Introduction

Firstly, let me briefly introduce who is Epicurus:  A major philosopher of the Hellenistic period, he is a great philosopher, and he that views worries as unnecessary and unnatural desires. if we can avoid those desire, he believes that all worries will be eliminated.  For him a good life is to avoid all the suffer, pain and torture, if we can perfectly avoided, than is the ideal of life. He largely relied upon Democritus for his materialistic and atomistic theory of nature. However, he does modify Democritus’ metaphysics because of its skeptical and deterministic implications. Epicurus founded his physics based upon Democritus but discovered that Democritus had no distinguishing ethical doctrine and, therefore, had to formulate his own objective ethics. Epicurus went on to formulate a self-centered moral philosophy in which the individual person is the realm of moral enterprise.

About Death

Secondly, the point of fear of death pretty interesting and convincing, and pretty famous. He made two arguments to against fear of death, first one is No subject of harm. In the text, he said “Death is nothing to us, when we are, death is not come, when death come, we are not. ” I think this point is really persuasive for me, we fear of death because that mentally and physically hurt, but in fact, when we are alive, death are not going to come,S but if we died, which means death came, and our body were not feel the pain, because our body is made of atoms, plus, when we died we lose all the senses of feelings, and we are not pratically feel what pain of death feels like. 

Another of his point also famous and convincing, which known as “symmetry” argument, “being death is the same as being born”, which means “I had been dead for billions and billions of year before I was born”. There is no any awareness before you born, so you are not going to feel anything else, all the things were void, so just don’t be afraid of death, they were not going to be any hurts or pain of die. Our attitude towards life and death should also be symmetrical between the two time boundaries of our existence.

About Happiness
“Epicurus believes that the more we can limit our pleasures and desires, especially to those that are the most necessary and most natural, the more likely we are to attain sustainable pleasure and happiness.”

Where does Happiness come from? Desire. Epicurus divides pleasures and desires into natural and necessary and natural but unnecessary. He argues that the more we limit our pleasures and desires, especially those that are most necessary and natural, the more likely we are to achieve sustainable pleasures and happiness. The inner and outer conditions each person needs to survive are part of Epicurus’ view of nature and the necessary pleasures or desires. Some things are necessary for one to get rid of distractions and personal life itself. According to Epicurus, happiness is objective because it arises from the satisfaction of natural and necessary desires.

That is what Epicurus believe, many people lived in this world were not happy, the reason of that is afraid of death, it is too terrible for them, because death will kill everything. I asked some of my friends, most of them told me they afraid to lose everything. I totally agree with that, but in contrast, what do you really own? Sooner or later, your possessions will run out, your children will start new families, and your friends will have other friends. Although these things are suitable for you to have a connection with, it can’t be said that you completely own them. Everything will be out of your control. Just like what Epicurus said, “the purpose of our life is happiness”

The difference between Epicureans and Stoicism

Epicureans and Stoicism represent two different schools but founded at same time. Stoicism is the unfeeling, emotionless brute instead of Epicurean as the pleasure-loving, self-indulgent hedonist. They both appealed that we should avoid excessive pleasure and desires. But Epicureans did not advocate for excessive self-indulgence the way we may think they did, and Stoicism were not unfeeling and reject emotions. The Stoicisms were concerned with moral behavior and living according to nature, while the Epicureans were concerned with avoiding pain and seeking natural and necessary pleasure.

Reference:

https://dailystoic.com/epicureanism-stoicism/

https://www.iep.utm.edu/epicur/#SSH5g.i

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

https://my.moonshotacademy.cn/serene-zhang/idealism-and-materialism/

As for me, reality means everything that surround us; we live in the reality every day but we don’t actually have the idea of its existence. 

Philosophy had given many great thoughts on reality, but I consider the Empiricism works for me the most. 

Empiricism, in philosophy, the view that all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience. 

People live in the world experiencing everything, eventually they form their own wills; so the reality is really existed. 

However, it is said that one theory can never be true unless it can be proved false. To better understand the senses and experiences, I want to look at this empiricism concept on the other side, which shifts the perspectives to the question: before we can experience anything, we have to determine whether the world physically exists. It had been discussed for centuries because it’s relevant to all the branches; it’s the essence of all the following theories and schools because none of those will exist without the world’s existence. 

I surmise that the reality is existed thus derived the so-called the world view. 

I believe that the world view contains something more than scientific information. It is a crucial regulative principle of all the vital relationships between man and social groups in their historical development. With its roots in the whole system of the individual and society’s spiritual needs and interests, deter mined by human practice, by all man’s accumulated experience, the world-view in its turn exerts a tremendous influence on the life of society and the individual.

The world-view is not only the content, but also the mode of thinking about reality, and also the principles of life itself. An important component of the world-view is the ideals, the cherished, and decisive aims of life. The character of a person’s notion of the world, his world-view, facilitates the posing of certain goals which, when generalized, form a broad plan of life, ideals, notions of wellbeing, good and evil, beauty, and progress, which give the world-view tremendous power to inspire action.

The reality is real; although some believed that the world we live in every day is somewhat a mental belief, which was comprised of thoughts from all directions and the underlying regulations by all wise-men. It appears that the world was actually come up by us, the very creature that lives inside of this “imaginary world”. Whenever it comes to existence, relativity definitely can’t be avoided because it demonstrates how people view the existence; whether it’s from a human point of view or a universe point of view. 

Scientific information takes a relatively huge big part in the “world view”.

In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all physics and proposed new concepts of space and time. It’s quite confusing when linking philosophy to science; most of the scientific theories were hypothesized by someone first, and the proving experiments took place that will decide its authenticity; at the end of the experiment people will be able to know whether it’s true or false. As the result, I assume the reality really exists firstly, so the world view is working truly as well, which turns out that all the thoughts and behaviors occur within human society are authentic and this can go backward proving the world is real. 

With the premises of world’s real existence along with “we came up with the world” theory, can we manage to say and do everything we want?

In terms of the freed mind and action, the free will would be a qualifiable word to indicate the contents. As for Christians, God dignifies us with free will, the power to make decisions of our own rather than having God or fate predetermine what we do. Consider what the Bible teaches. God created humans in his image. Unlike animals, which act mainly on instinct, we resemble our Creator in our capacity to display such qualities as love and justice. Nonetheless, one is still governed and controlled by lots of outer factors such as moral laws, government laws, relationship laws, implicit workplace rules, etc. Why can’t we manage our words and behaviors under most circumstances? I believe that we’re bestowed with free-will, but as we grow up and interact with other individuals who also possess free-will, then our free-will will be compromised, which somehow violates the definition of free-will. Consequently, people are going to have to live by rules. In conclusion, I personally don’t hold the opinion of humans possessing free-will; what we were born with will eventually be descended into human-rights or other manifestations. 

The reality is real and why it’s call “real-ity”; people live in this reality with limitations, which affects our natural-born free-will. But our pursuit of freedom and free right have never stopped. This is reasonable because we came up with the world at last.

Resources:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s02.html

https://cn.bing.com/search?q=freewill+&go=Search&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=freewill+&sc=6-9&sk=&cvid=A5C1DF60F52645B495F143C1D3B13C13