Ataraxia or Bust! | Doug Bates | Substack

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Stoicism

How Greek Philosophy Lost Soundness of Mind

And how Robert Pirsig got so close to figuring it out

Mar 29 • Doug Bates

Is Stoicism Just Religion for Atheists?

Does taking the theology out of Stoicism render it no longer a religion?

Dec 23, 2025 • Doug Bates

Oh, the Sage You Could Be!

A Stoical Story by Dr. Zeussimus

Nov 20, 2025 • Doug Bates

Is Stoicism Cooler than Buddhism?

What psychological research about coolness tells us.

Nov 18, 2025 • Doug Bates

Charlie Kirk and the Failure of Stoic Virtue

How Stoicism Stumbles on the Question of Good and Evil

Nov 8, 2025 • Doug Bates

Buddhism

Happiness Follows Like a Shadow

The Shadow Metaphor in Pyrrhonism and Buddhism

Feb 25 • Doug Bates

The Purgative Metaphor in Pyrrhonism and Buddhism

How Pyrrho reforumulated a Buddhist prescription for a Greek philosophical ailment.

Jan 17 • Doug Bates

Is Stoicism Cooler than Buddhism?

What psychological research about coolness tells us.

Nov 18, 2025 • Doug Bates

Meditate Fast. Take Chances.

Two contrasting reviews of an online Jhourney™ jhana retreat.

Oct 19, 2025 • Doug Bates

The Buddhist Three Doors of Liberation in Pyrrhonism

Emptiness, Signlessness, and Wishlessness

Aug 26, 2025 • Doug Bates

Pyrrhonism

How Greek Philosophy Lost Soundness of Mind

And how Robert Pirsig got so close to figuring it out

Mar 29 • Doug Bates

The 2,000 Year Old Flaw in Our Educational System

The Ancient Skeptics vs. School As We Know It

Mar 17 • Doug Bates

The Structure of a Philosophic Revolution

Thomas Kuhn, Sextus Empiricus, and the Pyrrhonist Paradigm Shift

Mar 12 • Doug Bates

Happiness Follows Like a Shadow

The Shadow Metaphor in Pyrrhonism and Buddhism

Feb 25 • Doug Bates

Why the Ancient Greeks Had No Need for Meditation

Arete, Ataraxia, and Flow

Feb 19 • Doug Bates

Epicureanism

Amathia: How Smart People Fall for Dumb Ideas

The Ancient Greek word for willful ignorance

Jan 23 • Doug Bates

The First Philosopher of Populism

Epicurus as Proto-Populist

May 2, 2025 • Doug Bates

Cicero Exposes the Fallacy of Virtue

Virtue cannot be the only good if it’s not even capable of being itself.

Feb 23, 2025 • Doug Bates

Similarities Between Epicureanism and Pyrrhonism

In some cases Pyrrhonism and Epicureanism look the same - while still being different.

Feb 11, 2025 • Doug Bates

In Defense of the Concept of Mind Viruses

Recently Dan Williams on his Substack Conspicuous Cognition made an audacious claim: mind viruses do not exist and the term is not useful.

Sep 26, 2024 • Doug Bates

Aristotelianism

How Greek Philosophy Lost Soundness of Mind

And how Robert Pirsig got so close to figuring it out

Mar 29 • Doug Bates

On the Methodology of Ancient Greek Moral Philosophies

The odd case of Pyrrho’s similarity to Aristotle

Nov 27, 2024 • Doug Bates

Book Review: Alexander At the End of the World

The Years of Forgetting Aristotle

Aug 2, 2024 • Doug Bates

The Pyrrhonist approach to anger, with a comparison to the Stoic, Epicurean, Aristotelian, and Platonist approaches.

Jul 26, 2024 • Doug Bates

The Dichotomy of Control Isn’t (Exactly) Stoic

In about everybody’s list of key Stoic ideas is the idea commonly called the “dichotomy of control.” As Epictetus famously put it:

Jul 5, 2024 • Doug Bates

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