The curriculum

Principles

The recurring ideas that organize the Classroom's dialogue and study. These are study lenses, not substitute quotations: the primary texts remain the authority.

Start with what is yours to govern, then learn how impressions become judgements, desires, habits, and actions. Each principle points back into the primary-text Library and forward into training where an exercise is justified.
01

Control & prohairesis

Separate what belongs to your own moral choice from what does not. The Classroom begins here because confusion about externals corrupts everything downstream.

Begin with Enchiridion 1 · train in Practices
02

Impressions

An appearance is not yet a verdict. Learn to notice what presents itself to the mind before treating it as true, terrible, desirable, or insulting.

Study through the primary-text Library · train in Practices
03

Assent

The critical act is what you add to an impression: agreement, refusal, or suspended judgement. Dialogue often slows down here before prescribing action.

Related study: Discourses 2.18 · Practices
04

Judgement

Disturbance is examined through the judgement attached to an event rather than through the external event alone.

Begin with Enchiridion 5 · Practices
05

Desire & aversion

What you demand, pursue, fear, and avoid determines where you place your freedom. Training redirects these movements toward what is genuinely yours.

Begin with Enchiridion 2 · Practices
06

Passions

Strong emotion is not treated as a mysterious enemy. The Classroom investigates the beliefs and judgements that sustain it and the habits that reinforce it.

Use the Library to trace cited passages · then train
07

Virtue & externals

Health, status, money, reputation, and outcomes matter in ordinary life, but they are not the measure of moral character. The distinction protects agency without denying reality.

Related study: Discourses 2.5 · Practices
08

Roles

Practice happens inside relationships and obligations. The question is not merely what you want, but what conduct fits the role and character you are trying to embody.

Study through the primary-text Library · train in Practices
09

Progress

Philosophy is measured by changed judgement and conduct, not by collecting terminology. Study should eventually become practice.

Primary texts first · then Practices
Curriculum summaries are interpretive navigation written by the Classroom. They are deliberately separated from the corpus text. Where a precise primary-text reference has not yet been verified against the processed corpus, this page links to the Library rather than inventing one.