All of the following e-Books were written by Erik Wiegardt, Director of New Stoa and Scholarch of the College of Stoic Philosophers. They may be read without cost or obligation. It is hoped that by making these e-Books freely available, you will be encouraged to study and practice this great and ancient philosophy today, and every day, for the rest of your life.
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The Stoic Handbook is an easy-reading introduction to Stoicism for the brand new student. An excellent overview of everything.
"Everyone can be a philosopher. Everyone. We all have that ability. We were born with it. Human beings are rational, thinking, reasoning creatures, and Nature has made us that way. As Nature created the giraffe to reach higher and the cheetah to run faster and the bull elephant to be stronger, so did it create the human being to be wiser. Potentially. . . ." |
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The Path of the Sage has been revised four times since it was self-published in 1996 and mailed free to the first 100 members who asked for it. It is a general foundation in Stoic philosophy, including sections on history, physics, logic, ethics, and metaphysics.
"The story of this book began long before it was written. And, it began in frustration, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the world as it was when I was 19 years old and a private in the US Army. I had recently discovered the Discourses of Epictetus, and after reading it I remember saying to myself, “I’m a Stoic.” I wanted to be a Stoic not only in theory and in practice, but also on paper, officially. I wanted to raise my right hand and register my name as a Stoic. In 1964 such a place where I could do that didn't exist. . . ." |
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The 32 Principal Doctrines of the Stoa identifies and defines orthodox tenets of Stoic philosophy without a lot of verbiage. This book is short on pages but long on linguistic density. Some background in Stoic literature is recommended.
"I. God, the One God, the One, the Logos, reason, is continuous in space and time and corporeality. It is the activating Force permeating and organizing inert matter to create the living body and fate of a cosmos with these attributes. . . ."
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The Book of Doubt follows a tradition in Stoic literature that examines other philosophies in order to better understand one's own. This is a book that investigates skepticism in considerable detail as it was being formulated at the time of the Early Greek Stoa and up to the Roman period.
"After a couple of years of focused research that provided the background for my first book, The Path of the Sage, one day, for no apparent reason, I stopped and asked myself how I knew any of this was true. How did I know whether the Stoics just made it all up, that Stoicism was anything other than a rational and internally consistent version of a religion? That thought bothered me considerably, and I puzzled over it at length. . . ." |
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Beyond Theory does two things: it takes Stoicism from theory to practice, and it introduces a new concept in the history of Stoic philosophy. It begins in antiquity with the hypomnemata exercises of Marcus Aurelius, then leaps forward to a new kind of practice in meditation.
"Virtually all of this book comes down to us from antiquity, but only Part One is from the western side of our ancient world and the left side of our ancient brain. Socrates may have achieved perfection by the use of reason alone, but we don't really know. That was more than two millenia ago. The Stoa is capable of expanding and evolving. It must be. It either evolves or it ossifies and dies. Without change, it becomes nothing more than an intellectual artifact, an academic curiosity. All existence is in a state of flux, as Heraclitus said, and our philosophy can be no exception. . . ." |