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March 11
Day 70/365: Socrates on the supreme
Logan
March 11, 2025
Welcome to The Stoic Ledger, a daily money meditation from one of the Stoic sages.
70/365: Socrates on the supreme
“You seem, Antiphon, to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme.” – Socrates
Stoicism is a descendant of Socratic reasoning and thought. As such, it’s important to see the generational ideas that trickled downstream to Stoicism.
In this exchange, Socrates proves the Stoic case that less is more.
He shows that whatever lands closest to the natural, which is to say fewer desires, is the supreme ideal.
Society says more is better. But we should be in a dead sprint the other way.
Distill, reduce, avoid, delete the desires that come your way.
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