![]() And by the second century, Christian theologians were using a mixture of Stoic and Middle Platonic philosophy to explain their own Christian ideas. Even the writings of an Academic Sceptic like Cicero were filled with references to Stoic ideas. They were called Late Stoics or Middle Platonists or Neo-Pythagorians or other technical terms like that, but all of them had mixed a lot of Stoic ideas into their thought. The only thing we ultimately have real control over, they taught, is what is going on inside us, inside our own heads.) How did these ideas get down to the twentieth century? By the end of the Greco-Roman period, most philosophers were teaching mixtures of Stoic and Platonic (and sometimes Aristotelian) philosophy. (This observation was a standard part of ancient Stoic belief also. Epictetus had once been a slave in the mad emperor Nero’s palace, and knew whereof he spoke when he talked about being in situations where we had no control over people, places, or things. The Discourses of Epictetus is the best Stoic work to look at to see how the ancient Stoics understood these terms. Augustine, who knew his ancient philosophy thoroughly, later on attacked the idea of serenity as the goal of the good life in his City of God, which he wrote at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., specifically identifying this as a Stoic idea. And the ancients knew about sexual lust of course! They had felt its power too.Īt any rate, any ancient Greek philosopher who looked at the Serenity Prayer would note these two items – – the distinction between the things we cannot change and the things we can, and the idea of serenity as the goal of the good life – – and nod his head and say, “Yes, this must be by a Stoic.” These were technical terms which these ancient philosophers argued over, and everybody knew that this was the Stoic position on those issues. But the Stoics knew that there were a lot of other passions which could destroy you when they got out of control, such as desire, grief, fear, and even joy (modern drug addicts can assure you that this is so). ![]() His plays usually focus on the destructive power of ira (out of control anger) and furor (which is out of control anger carried to truly insane lengths). To see what they meant by the pathe, the overwhelming “passions” which led us to our destruction, see the Roman tragedies written by Seneca. “things up to us.” And the goal of the good life in Stoic philosophy is always described as the attainment of “serenity,” which in ancient Greek was apatheia, which meant freedom from overwhelming emotional storms (what were called the pathe in Greek, that is, the fierce passions like the furious and insane rage which drove Medea to kill her own children and Clytemnestra to murder her husband, King Agamemnon, by chopping him up with an ax as he lay soaking in his bathtub). ![]() In ancient Greek (in the Stoic literature), it is called the distinction between ta ouk eph’ hemin and ta eph’ hemin, that is, read literally, “things not up to us” vs. ![]() In terms of the ancient background of the Serenity Prayer, the distinction between “the things we do not have the power to change” and “the things we do have the power to change” is a fundamental and central part of ancient Greco-Roman Stoic philosophy. By Glenn Chesnut, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Indiana University. ![]()
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