Stoicism Paper

The age old question undergrads must be asking themselves every semester (unless they're one of those know-it-all types): "How do I write a paper when I know jack shit about the topic?" So it goes for me and this Stoicism paper - which is pretty much representative of how I felt about the entire course. A blank "dunce" look would just sweep across my face whenever we started talking about Zeno and Chrysippus and Panaetius and preferred or dispreferred indifferents and the cosmopolis and the duties of our 4 personae, and later Seneca and Epictetus and Nero...

I guess my basic thesis statement is that all lot of the seeming incoherence of the Stoics' moral and political imperatives comes from the fact that (Cicero's account of) their doctrines does not take into consideration the reality that not everyone in the world is a sage.

So I'm reading up a bunch of articles that look like they might address the difference between the sage and non-sage: Gill, Schofield, Kidd, Annas. The conclusion? I still don't have the foggiest idea what I'm talking about. My research has made one thing, and only one thing, clear: that Stoicism will be promising fodder when the time comes for me to write a law school application - you know, in such a way that I don't look like I'm selling out. Especially because that's exactly what I'm doing.

All is NOT in vain! Hehe