Massimo Pigliucci

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth getting upset about from those that are not. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we bank in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever you are, Stoicism has something for you—and How to Be a Stoic is your essential guide.

Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

How to Be a Stoic

Nadine 

A well written study of stoicism and its benefits to the way you approach life. I borrowed it from the library but it's a keeper and one I'd buy to keep.

In the tradition of How to Live and How Proust Can Change Your Life, a philosopher asks how ancient Stoicism can help us flourish today Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that focuses our attention on what is possible and gives us perspective on what is unimportant. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we handle our money in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever we are, Stoicism has something for us--and How to Be a Stoic is the essential guide.

Nikolay Bachiyski

I hadn’t read about stoicism before, yet, it puts so well in words many of my life philosophies and practices. Especially those hard for me to explain. Like being ready to lose anything or anyone and caring about them at the same time. Or that I don’t have to be a robot to stay calm if events are out of my control.

The idea that living a good life depends on understanding both how the world and human's reasoning work is severely underrepresented in self-help and philosophy literature, I’ve come to it via experience or reading on behavioral psychology. Understanding of how our brains and the world work is the central piece in stoicism and I loved it for that.

I found the book to be a decent introduction to stoicism. Ample historical context led to the main points, explained with philosophical quotes from the original Greek & Roman stoics, their words interpreted to mere mortals language. Every now and then there were personal examples that felt like preaching to the choir – people with different behavior or moral views, may not relate to staying calm amidst military coups or avoiding fine-dining.

The “How To” aspect of the book also deserves some attention, it's in the title, it must be important. I doubt it's humanly possible to effectively explain how to change one's life philosophy in a short book, though Massimo Pigliucci tried. There are some exercises and ideas what to do. They all sound really hard to accomplish for those outside of the already practicing stoics. Of course, I would love to be wrong, let me know if the advice in the book turned you into anything close to a stoic.

“How to Be a Stoic” taught me a bit about stoicism and I will be reading more for sure.

Ivaylo Durmonski

I was expecting a how-to guide on becoming a Stoic and I wasn’t disappointed. How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci, is just that: well-written, reinforced with facts and a lot of references from various sources read, that gives you the gist of becoming a calm citizen of the world.

Yet, there’s something that I didn’t like at all: the political talk. At some point, the author decided to compare how politicians nowadays act according to this ancient philosophy. Probably some folks might find this comparison interesting but I’m certainly not one of them.

Nonetheless, the book offers a lot of interesting ideas, practices, backed by a lot of examples and personal stories, that will help the reader in his quest for a happy and meaningful life.

The key takeaway for me is this:

Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. We should understand the difference, focus on the things we can control and take the rest as it happens.

Read the full summary:
https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...

David

How to be stoic is a Journey through the stoic philosophy giving really good daily resources to be more present and understand, a bit better, the reality of living

How to Be a Stoic Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

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