I’m working on a top-level post about how Stoicism is an instrumentally useful philosophy to adopt, and figured I should give other philosophies a fair shake as well
Oh, I’m not saying “Stoicism is the one true philosophy and all others are inferior—” more like “I’ve found Stoicism to make a surprising number of practically useful and empirically justified claims/suggestions and I’m curious as to whether other philosophies contain the same.” If Epicureanism or Cynicism or postmodernism or whatever have claims of equal validity to those of Stoicism, I’d definitely include those too.
Maybe it would be more fair to write a list of good (empirically tested) suggestions, and then some overview how they map into concepts in various philosophies. It would help you to be more fair towards different philosophies when thinking about the concept. Then, the final text could be written in a different order, for example philosophies first (with useful concepts emphasised) and then the useful concepts explained individually. It would be probably fair to write the philosophies chronologically.
If X is a good idea, then “X is a good idea” is an important fact, while “X is part of philosophy P” is just a historical coincidence. The coincidence may be interesting, especially for people already interested in P; it may give them better emotional connection. Nonetheless, the usefulness of X is that “X is good”, not that “X belongs to P”. The fact that “X is a part of P” gives some bonus points to P, not to X; the quality of X depends only on the quality of X.
Error: bottom line may have been written first!
Oh, I’m not saying “Stoicism is the one true philosophy and all others are inferior—” more like “I’ve found Stoicism to make a surprising number of practically useful and empirically justified claims/suggestions and I’m curious as to whether other philosophies contain the same.” If Epicureanism or Cynicism or postmodernism or whatever have claims of equal validity to those of Stoicism, I’d definitely include those too.
Maybe it would be more fair to write a list of good (empirically tested) suggestions, and then some overview how they map into concepts in various philosophies. It would help you to be more fair towards different philosophies when thinking about the concept. Then, the final text could be written in a different order, for example philosophies first (with useful concepts emphasised) and then the useful concepts explained individually. It would be probably fair to write the philosophies chronologically.
If X is a good idea, then “X is a good idea” is an important fact, while “X is part of philosophy P” is just a historical coincidence. The coincidence may be interesting, especially for people already interested in P; it may give them better emotional connection. Nonetheless, the usefulness of X is that “X is good”, not that “X belongs to P”. The fact that “X is a part of P” gives some bonus points to P, not to X; the quality of X depends only on the quality of X.