The Greatest Emotions You Can Have

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Stoics are people who don't experience emotions, and when life does something brutal to them, they just suck it up and stand there and take it. These people sound almost superhuman. For many of us who have more a difficulty dealing with that, it sounds like, oh, i could never do that. One of the stoic insights is that much of our unhappiness is self inflicted. It's a question of you framing the things that happen to you in a way that makes them not just more tolerable but where you can actually extract delight from them.

Author and philosophy professor William Irvine goes in-depth on Stoicism, and why the fundamental tenets of this ancient philosophy can provide answers to some of the toughest problems in today’s society. On this episode Irvine offers a definition and some useful background on Stoicism and its origins, the original Stoics, their thoughts on failure, their advice on decision making, and how we can train ourselves to be more stoic.

Irvine has written seven books including the wildly popular 2008 release A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, and the 2019 follow-up, The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient. Irvine also teaches philosophy and logic courses at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

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