Egoism and Stoicism

Control in the psych geist has many different potentials. The other is controlling, the mother is controlling, the job is controlling, we are trying to hold onto control. We are never controlling in the way our mother is controlling.

Stoicism relates control to understanding the nature of the world. When we understand the nature of the world, we can then align to the world. Dialectical Egoism understands the world as force and an agent who aligns to those forces in the world.

The question of knowledge is also the question of self-interest. We pursue knowledges which we determine that we should, and remain ignorant of ways of thinking which we consider bad. Ethics and knowledge can not seperate because both are required to determine the ordering of logic and information. Dialectical Egoism posits there is an ethics within the ordering itself, pushed by intent, forming a gap.

Stoicism addresses the gap. Whatever the intent of the Roman Bath, to keep the people clean communally, Epictetus aligns himself to the negative possibilities within the bath, or negative universals. He prepares himself for cursing, and gods forbid, splashing.

Stoicism attends to negative potentialities within nature and describes agency being truly free when one recognizes the limits of agency. This idea is in psychoanalysis as well in the form of accepting castration, which is to say accepting limits.

Where is positive freedom found? This is where Egoism and Stoicism divide. Stoicism describes in many places, in Seneca and in Epictetus, a general necessity of humility and humbleness, an embarassment towards riches. Here I see a problem. If riches are embarassing, then is one not caring about reputation? Seneca argues in his letters that it is the virtue itself of humility and the corrupting nature of riches, which cause one to pursue things which make one no longer at peace.

This makes Stoicism a more specific system than Egoism. Egoism encompasses Stoicism as a Cause, but really Stoicism is its own system. A Cause in dialectical egoism being an ethical universal.

A System is larger than a Cause. A System mediates Causes. Ethical Universals are subject and inspiration for systems.

As an egoist, I aim to integrate certain lessons from the system of Stoicism into my own practice. Stoicism has definite positive potentialities of freedom in the relation to limits, and possible positive potentialities, although I am less optimistic as the positive potentialities of virtues which are good in themselves as they seem somewhat Christian to me. I recognize here this is not fully engages with the connection of the seeming aversion towards riches, which for me is more like maintaining the structure of my life financially rather than riches-as-luxury, so I hope to work through Stoicism through the Dialectical Egoism project more thoroughly through this 21stcenturysynthesis blog.