Tagged: thinkers
Posts filed under thinkers.
Zeno of Citium
The founder of Stoicism. Zeno arrived in Athens as a merchant, lost everything in a shipwreck, discovered philosophy, and spent the rest of his life building one of the most influential schools of thought in Western history.
Seneca
Philosopher, playwright, statesman, and the most widely read Stoic writer in history. Seneca tested his philosophy against wealth, exile, political danger, and death — and wrote about all of it with unmatched clarity.
Musonius Rufus
The Roman Socrates. Musonius Rufus taught Stoicism in first-century Rome with a directness and moral seriousness that influenced Epictetus, shaped the tradition, and remains remarkably relevant today.
Marcus Aurelius
Roman emperor, Stoic philosopher, and author of the Meditations. The most powerful man in the world who spent his private hours holding himself to the most demanding philosophical standard available.
Epictetus
Born a slave, became the most influential Stoic teacher in the Roman world. Epictetus wrote nothing himself — what survives was recorded by a student and has shaped philosophy ever since.
Cleanthes of Assos
The second head of the Stoic school. A former boxer who became Zeno's most devoted student and successor, remembered for a hymn to Zeus that remains the most complete surviving text of early Stoicism.
Chrysippus
The third head of the Stoic school and its most prolific systematizer. Without Chrysippus, Stoicism as we know it would not exist. Almost none of his seven hundred works survive.
Cato the Younger
The Roman senator who made Stoicism political. Cato's uncompromising stand against Julius Caesar — and his death by his own hand rather than submission — became the defining example of Stoic courage in the ancient world.