Discovering Harmony: Uniting Stoicism & Epicureanism

Wednesday Wisdom #170

Happy Wednesday, wisdom lovers!

Last week, we wrote about The Source of Self-Respect.
 

This week: Stoicism and Epicureanism - Five Similarities

Let's get to it 👇

---

Weekly Reflection

The Hellenistic period was chaotic. A time of war, corruption, and slavery. As an antidote to the chaos, two schools of philosophy were founded around roughly the same time, Stoicism and Epicureanism. The two schools were rivals, and never quite saw eye-to-eye. Strikingly, Seneca quotes Epicurus several times in his letters and essays. But Seneca is a Stoic, he's not supposed to be quoting a rival school, right? That's not how Seneca thought. 

"I'll never be ashamed to quote a bad writer with a good saying." He wrote in one of his essays. Not implying that Epicurus was a bad writer, just that wisdom can come from all sources. In reality, the two schools have quite a bit in common. Here are five common threads between Stoicism and Epicureanism.