Day 150: Stoicism and CBT on Training the Mind | Dying Every Day

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Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Day 150.

“Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by the opinions about the things: for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have seemed so to Socrates.”  — Epictetus, Enchiridion

Epictetus is not making a philosophical argument. He is performing one.

He has taken the belief—death is terrible—and subjected it to a test. He has sought evidence and found a counterexample in Socrates, who faced death with equanimity. 

Epictetus concluded from examination, not argument alone, that the terror lies in the opinion of death, not death itself.

This activity is philosophy as a cognitive practice. A man sitting alone, identifying a distorted belief, testing it against evidence, revising it, and recording the revision. Doing it again tomorrow. And the day after. [...]

#stoicism #philosophy #lifelessons

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