Stoicism and Nondualism
As I share my ideas to adapt (but not “update”) Stoic philosophy for the twenty-first century, I’m continually reminded by readers of the similarities between Stoicism and Nondualist philosophies. Some write that my interpretation of Stoic teachings are similar to Vedantic ideas, others compare them to Buddhism — see Massimo Pigliucci’s profile of my project, for example.
Nondualism is a catch-all label for many philosophies and spiritual traditions that assert that existence is one. Our conventional experience of life is ruled by the dualities of self and other, mind and body, subject and object, and thoughts and matter. And so we conventionally understand ourselves to be separate from the world in a subject-object relationship, and our minds separate from physical matter.
Nondualist ideas generally teach that these separations are false or illusory. Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, mystical strands of the Abrahamic faiths, and other forms of secular thinking all share this central idea and the idea that dualism somehow confines our thinking, holding us back from a true understanding of existence.
Most Nondualist traditions teach that all forms of suffering extend from the false belief that we are separate from the world. So Nondualism is not only a philosophical idea about the world, but also presented as a tonic for the world’s ills and the…
