I'm not familiar with the responding literature, but one thing that stands out is his reduction to "living according to life" and dismissal of that as tautological.
He poses the question "Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different?" A central point of Stoicism is answering no to that. Recognizing that our preferences are merely preferences, not needs, and that we can go forward without them controlling our attitude toward what life brings.
Of course we have preferences, and we make evaluations, and we endeavor to change. But Stoicism is partly about grasping those things loosely rather than staking our emotional well-being on them.
Even the cutesy "live according to life": does anyone deny that we often resist life? We know there will be setbacks, losses, death, etc., and instead of anticipating and flowing with them we are surprised and dismayed.
Nietzsche valued a sort of resistance to life. But it's a strawman to treat that value as axiomatic and dismiss Stoicism as inherently contradictory.
He poses the question "Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different?" A central point of Stoicism is answering no to that. Recognizing that our preferences are merely preferences, not needs, and that we can go forward without them controlling our attitude toward what life brings.
Of course we have preferences, and we make evaluations, and we endeavor to change. But Stoicism is partly about grasping those things loosely rather than staking our emotional well-being on them.
Even the cutesy "live according to life": does anyone deny that we often resist life? We know there will be setbacks, losses, death, etc., and instead of anticipating and flowing with them we are surprised and dismayed.
Nietzsche valued a sort of resistance to life. But it's a strawman to treat that value as axiomatic and dismiss Stoicism as inherently contradictory.