Orlando Stoics

This is our IN-PERSON Stoic discussion and reading (no Zoom link available). We meet every 2 weeks on Saturdays.

READING

This week we will more deeply examine Katherine Hayles’ philosophical engagement with language which begins from the recognition that language is never disembodied—it is always mediated through a material substrate, whether ink on paper, sound waves in air, or digital code on a screen. In her view, language cannot be separated from the technologies that carry it; each medium transforms not only how meaning is conveyed but what meaning itself can be. This insistence on embodiment opposes the Cartesian and structuralist traditions that treat language as an abstract system of signs detached from material reality.
Hayles’ work, particularly in How We Became Posthuman and Writing Machines, explores how digital technologies have redefined the conditions of textuality. Where print culture stabilized meaning through the fixity of the page, digital language introduces fluidity, interactivity, and algorithmic co-authorship. The written word thus becomes a dynamic process rather than a static representation, raising new philosophical questions about authorship, interpretation, and agency—questions that echo but also extend poststructuralist debates from Foucault and Derrida into the digital era.
At the deepest level, Hayles’ philosophy of language is an ontology of mediation: she sees language not merely as a tool for human expression but as a living interface between consciousness, code, and world. In digital environments, she argues, humans and intelligent systems co-constitute meaning through reciprocal flows of information. Language becomes the site where embodiment meets computation, where the symbolic and the material continuously reshape one another—a vision that collapses the old humanist distinction between “word” and “world” into a single, interdependent ecology of signification.
We hope you'll join Plato’s Cave and the Orlando Stoics for this thought-provoking discussion.
READING MATERIALS

This week we’ll examine the debate over “Silicon Valley Stoicism” — the modern trend of turning Stoic philosophy into a set of productivity hacks or resilience tools — and contrast it with the Stoic understanding of natural law, virtue, and the common good. Our readings explore how Stoicism is often misrepresented in tech culture as a personal operating system for success rather than a philosophy of justice, humility, and moral progress.

Writers like Massimo Pigliucci and Donald Robertson respond to Nellie Bowles’ New York Times critique of the so-called “Cicero Institute,” clarifying that Stoicism is not about self-inflicted suffering or fame through endurance. Rather, it teaches that wealth and comfort are “preferred indifferents,” and that true freedom lies in aligning one’s will with reason and nature. The ancient Stoics — from Zeno, a shipwrecked merchant, to Epictetus, a former slave — embodied this principle, showing that virtue and service to humanity, not power or notoriety, define the good life.

Together, we’ll discuss how Stoic natural law (living according to nature and reason) contrasts with Silicon Valley’s instrumental approach to Stoic ideas. Can Stoicism be meaningfully applied in entrepreneurial or high-stress environments without losing its moral center? How do the Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom guide us in the modern pursuit of innovation and success?

Reading Material

Esta reunión es cada miércoles a las 7 p.m. EST

CALENDARIO
11/12/2025
Carta 61: La buena disposición de Séneca para la muerte
Carta 77: Sabiduría y serenidad ante la muerte
11/19/2025
Carta 78: Ante las perspectivas de la muerte
Carta 101: Vivamos cada día con plenitud ante la inminencia de la muerte

IV. La muerte
11/26/2025
Carta 4: El temor a la muerte nos distrae de la realización de la vida
Carta 30: Cómo debemos esperar la muerte
12/3/2025
Carta 36: Aprendizaje del desprecio a la muerte
Carta 63: Moderación en el duelo por el amigo muerto
12/10/2025
Carta 70: Frente a la vida humillada, la muerte deliberada
Carta 82: Los falsos silogismos de Zenón sobre la muerte
Carta 99: Debemos perseverar en el recuerdo en la muerte de un ser querido

V. Otras cartas
12/17/2025
Carta 40: El discurso de la verdad debe ser sencillo y sin adornos
Carta 47: Trato humano con los esclavos
Carta 75: Sencillez en el estilo.
Carta 84: En la lectura debemos imitar a las

ZONAS HORARIAS

Hora de encuentro (EE. UU.):
19:00 h, hora del este
18:00 h, hora central
17:00 h, hora de las montañas
16:00 h, hora del Pacífico

Para nuestros amigos internacionales:
Conviertan la hora con la herramienta gratuita
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

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