Stoicism

What Stoicism is

Stoicism is a practical philosophy that began in ancient Greece and flourished in Rome. It was never meant to be studied only in books. It was meant to be lived, every day, the way an athlete trains or a musician practices.

Its root idea is simple enough to fit in one sentence: some things are up to us, and some things are not. Our judgments, our choices, and our efforts are up to us. The weather, other people’s opinions, our reputation, and much of what happens to our bodies and possessions are not. Almost all our unhappiness, the Stoics said, comes from mixing up the two: fretting over what we cannot control, and neglecting what we can.

Behind that root idea is a larger goal the Stoics called “living in agreement with nature.” By this they meant living by reason, the one gift that makes us human, and seeing ourselves as part of a vast, orderly universe rather than as isolated individuals at war with it.

How it began

Stoicism began with a shipwreck. Around 300 BC, a merchant named Zeno, from the town of Citium on the island of Cyprus, lost his cargo at sea and found himself stranded in Athens. According to the old story, he wandered into a bookshop and heard someone reading aloud about Socrates. Zeno asked where he could find a man like that. The bookseller pointed to a philosopher passing by and said, “Follow him.”

Zeno studied for years and then began teaching on his own. He chose a public place: a long covered walkway beside the Athens marketplace, decorated with famous paintings. The Greeks called it the Stoa Poikile, the Painted Porch. His followers became known as “the people of the porch,” the Stoics.

That setting says something about the philosophy itself. Zeno did not teach behind temple walls or in a private garden. He taught in the open, where merchants, soldiers, and ordinary citizens walked by. Stoicism was meant for people living in the middle of busy lives.

The school lasted about five hundred years, first in Greece and then in Rome, where it became the most widely followed philosophy of the educated classes.

The great teachers

Most early Stoic writings have been lost. What survives comes mainly from three Romans, a statesman, a former slave, and an emperor, which shows how widely the philosophy reached. Here are the five teachers most worth knowing.

It is remarkable that one of the clearest Stoic voices belonged to a slave and another to an emperor. Epictetus had almost no control over his outward life, and Marcus had almost unlimited power. Both arrived at the same conclusion: the only freedom that truly matters is freedom inside the mind.

How it is organized

Unlike many traditions, Stoicism was carefully organized by its own teachers. There are three ways of looking at its structure, and they fit together.

The garden: three parts of philosophy

The Stoics compared their philosophy to a fruitful garden. Logic is the wall around it: clear thinking that keeps out confusion and false ideas. Physics, meaning the study of nature and how the world works, is the rich soil. Ethics, how to live, is the fruit. The fruit is the whole point, but it will not grow without the wall and the soil.

The three disciplines

Epictetus taught three areas of daily training, and Marcus Aurelius followed them closely:

The discipline of desire: wanting only what is truly within our power, and accepting what happens with calm.

The discipline of action: doing our duty toward other people with fairness and goodwill.

The discipline of assent: not agreeing to a thought or first impression until we have examined it.

The four virtues

All of this training aims to build four qualities of character, which the Stoics considered the only true good:

The seven basic principles

Here is Stoicism arranged in a natural order, from its foundation to its daily practice. Each principle builds on the one before it. The next page gathers the Stoics’ own words under each of these seven headings.

1. Know what is up to you

   Our judgments, choices, and efforts are ours. Nearly everything else is not. This is the foundation for everything that follows.

2. It is our opinions that disturb us

   Events themselves are neutral. What upsets us is the judgment we add to them. Change the judgment, and the disturbance changes.

3. Accept what happens

   What is outside our control we meet with calm acceptance, even welcome, as part of the larger order of things, rather than wasting ourselves fighting it.

4. Live justly with others

   We are made to work together, like hands and feet. A good person serves the common good, beginning with family and widening outward to all humanity.

5. Examine your thoughts and name them truly

   Do not accept a first impression without looking at it closely. See it plainly, call it by its right name, and much of its power fades.

6. Grow in virtue

   Wisdom, courage, justice, and self-control are the only true goods. Wealth, health, and fame are pleasant but do not make a person good.

7. Practice every day

   Prepare each morning for the day ahead, review each evening what went well and badly, remember that life is short, and step back often to see life from a great height.

The Stoic soul

Stoicism is often described as cool and rational, but its teachers spoke with real reverence about something divine living inside each person.

Epictetus told his students that each of them was a fragment of God and carried a part of the divine within them wherever they went. Marcus Aurelius called it the daimon, an inner guiding spirit given to each person, and much of his journal is about keeping that inner spirit calm, clean, and in charge. Seneca put it most warmly of all.

There is a beautiful connection here to this site’s name. The Stoic word for soul was pneuma, which means breath. The Stoics believed a living, intelligent breath runs through the whole universe and holds it together, and that each person’s soul is a small portion of that great breath. In Stoic terms, a deeper breath is very nearly a deeper soul.

The For Modern Times page will look at how this Stoic idea of the soul compares with the observing soul described on our home page, and where modern understanding can carry it further.

Why it still matters

Stoicism faded as an organized school around the third century AD, but its ideas never disappeared. They flowed quietly into much of Western life.

Early Christianity. When the apostle Paul preached in Athens, Stoic philosophers were among his listeners, according to the Book of Acts. Early Christian writers borrowed freely from Stoic ideas about conscience, self-discipline, and the brotherhood of all people.

America’s founders. George Washington loved a play about Cato, a Roman Stoic hero, and had it performed for his troops at Valley Forge. Thomas Jefferson kept the works of Seneca and Epictetus in his library.

Modern psychology. The founders of today’s most widely used talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, openly credited Epictetus. His idea that our opinions about events, not the events themselves, disturb us is the very foundation of that therapy.

Strength in hard times. Admiral James Stockdale, a Navy pilot held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than seven years, said the teachings of Epictetus, which he had studied before the war, helped him survive and keep his fellow prisoners together.

A modern revival. Today Stoicism is enjoying a new popularity, with books, podcasts, and groups around the world. People are rediscovering what its ancient students knew: that it works, and that anyone can practice it.

Continue

The next page lets the Stoics speak for themselves. It gathers the best passages from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, arranged under the seven principles on this page, each with a short note in plain English on what it means and how to use it.