2025-11-01
(TXT) Encheiridion 32
So, when it is necessary to share a danger with a friend or
with your country, do not use fortune-telling about whether
you should share the danger.
The lesson is simple, we do not need fortune-telling, or any
other method of prognostics, to tell us that we ought to do
rightly, to be couragous in the face of what is wrong, to behave
justly, and to act with kindness. Knowing the future cannot
tell us how to react to it, for this can only come from within,
through reason and virtue.
As an aside, it is rather difficult to avoid the divine in the
writings of the Stoics, and I haven't yet figured out how to best
navigate that, as it often throws me into a fit of introspection
about the impossibility of knowledge in this area, and it seems
to me that this is often fruitless mental worrying at an old bone
that has long ceased to offer any sort of mental or moral
nourishment. It doesn't help that I am probably prone to
this feelings of religous longing, but seeing as I do not know
to satisfy them, it seems best to avoid aggravating the wound.
So, yeah, not sure what do to about that if I am going to be
reading the Stoics.
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