Book Review: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
This book is an excellent entry-level into Stoicism. This book aims to give a resolutely practical approach to Stoicism. The author William B. Irvine takes us inside the application of Stoicism against common issues such as grief, anger, the temptation of fame and wealth, and other challenges to inner balance and tranquility.
“Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence.”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
The first section of the book goes into a basic overview of the history of philosophy and highlights various stoic philosophers of note. This section was not nearly as valuable to me since I appreciate application over history.
The next portion of the book is called Stoic Psychological Techniques. This is where the application begins. One of the exercises he engages the reader in is the technique called “Negative visualization”. Irvine asks us that we imagine the loss of the good things in our life, our life, family, friends, and possessions. The goal of this experiment is to ensure that we must not take these things for granted and by experiencing this loss we can truly understand how we are blessed and often take things for granted.
“After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen.”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
A second technique he discusses is what he names “the dichotomy of control”. This is seemingly very simple, assessing all events in life and dividing them into things that you do and do not have control over. Viewing the events in this mentality allows us to reduce the anxiety over things we can not change, and help us isolate things that we can impact.
Irvine then goes on to advise on how to approach grief, anger, and fame. This mostly comes down to using the previous techniques and applying them to the things that cause these emotional reactions. When grieving, imagine you never had what you wept about, revealing how truly blessed you were to have had that time, to begin with. He also quotes Seneca about anger being a brief instance of insanity, and if you have lost so much control over yourself to become that emotionally unstable and angry that we must again consider the cosmic insignificance of the situation.
“The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
Overall this was a really fun book to dive into. The history section for me was honestly super difficult to get through. However, once we got into the thought experiments and the actual application I found myself fully immersed in this book. The skills and techniques taught in this book can be incredibly useful when applied to your life. Overall I would suggest reading this book, and if you don’t love history just skip the first part.
Originally published at http://blog.p3rishable.com on March 3, 2022.