The Laughing Stoic (IO SATURNALIA!)

     In honor of the beginning of Saturnalia today, I thought I would post a link to an article entitled "The Laughing Stoic". This article discusses the Stoic embrace of positive emotions such as joy and happiness, often overlooked by those who mistakenly think that Stoicism rejects all emotion!

http://stoicscollege.com/PDF/eJournal01.pdf

Enjoy the article! IO SATURNALIA!

A Note on Stoic Joy

     I apologize for the long absence since my last post to this blog; let it suffice to say that several conditions and events conspired to keep me from my usual schedule, and I did not sufficiently strive to prevent this from happening. Anyway, today's thought is from Margaret R. Graver's Stoicism and Emotion:

"Joy is `well-reasoned elevation,' corresponding on a feeling level to the happy excitement the ordinary person experiences on winning a raffle or leaving on vacation. But joy differs from those feelings in being directed at genuine goods: a generous action, for instance, would be an occasion for joy, and the proper object of the feeling would be the generosity itself, as exercised on that occasion. Hence the person of perfect understanding, whose every action is an exercise of virtue, has reason to be joyful at every moment of the day. And this is a condition to which anyone may aspire."

Margaret R. Graver. Stoicism and Emotion (pp. 52-53). Kindle Edition.