Stoicism for Dummies

“Though Stoicism began in Ancient Greece, it flowered in imperial Rome, becoming for many centuries the leading philosophy of the Roman Empire. The Romans were tough, practical-minded people; they excelled as warriors, builders, administrators, and lawmakers, and generally had little interest in abstract speculation or subtle theorizing.

In Stoicism, educated Romans found a stern and demanding creed that provided guidance and consolation in an age of crumbling faiths, political despotism, and constant social upheaval. As rulers of a vast empire encompassing many diverse nations and ethnic groups, Romans also found Stoic teachings on universal law and world citizenship highly relatable. Much like Christianity, Stoicism had special appeal in Roman times to slaves and the poor, who found solace in its teachings about inner toughness, acceptance, managing negative emotions, and the essential connectedness of all humans.

What Romans valued most in Greek Stoicism was its ethics and practical art of living. In the philosophy of Romans like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, we can see concretely what it means to think and live as a Stoic.”

“The even more Ancient Greek word that the later Romans translated as virtus and that we also typically read as ‘virtue’ is the philosophically very important term areté, which was used by Greek philosophers generally to refer to the ideal peak human excellence. Areté is also often described as denoting a maximum of ability or even a superior potency for proper action. It’s meant to involve excellence in all things essentially human, from the moral and intellectual to the physical. The term encompasses the full range of qualities thought to facilitate the highest form of human potential and achievement. …

One of the authors of this book has an amazing friend, Brian Johnson, who spreads wisdom in the world and has the transliterated Greek word ARETÉ tattooed in thick block letters on the inside of his forearm, one inch tall and four inches across (see Figure 8-1). Throughout the day, he’s reminded by the bold ink of the vital importance of this concept for his life as the founder and CEO of the Heroic Public Benefit Corporation—teaching ancient and modern practices of excellence in our lives—and as a man, husband, father, and productive citizen who deeply cares about others. Areté counts. Virtue matters.”

“The rich and famous did not have to wait until now to discover the disconnect between wealth, celebrity, status, or power and the deep goal of happiness. Pursuing the former to get the latter is a mistake that’s long been understood. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself:

Up to now, all your wanderings in search of the good life have been unsuccessful. It was not to be found in the intricacies of logic or in wealth, fame, worldly pleasures, or anything else. Where, then does the secret lie? In doing what nature seeks. But how? By adopting strict principles for the regulation of impulse and action, such as rules regarding what’s good or bad for us. So, for example, the rule that nothing can be good for a man unless it helps to make him just, self-disciplined, courageous, and independent, and nothing can be bad unless it has the opposite result. (Meditations 8.1)

The emperor may be the only person in history to have sought the good life or happiness ‘in the intricacies of logic,’ and it’s not at all a surprise that this path failed, along with wealth, fame, and pleasure. At the end of the passage here, he talks about having come instead to see the importance of seeking virtue and avoiding vice. We keep chasing the wrong things and hoping they’ll work, even when it becomes clear they don’t. The Stoics wanted to get us off this false path and onto the right road of virtue.”

“Everything that comes our way is a potential tool for use in self-development and in improving the world. But it depends on us whether those things function as tools and are employed well. Seneca writes:

Tools lie idle unless the workman uses them to perform his task. (On Benefits, 5.25.6)

What matters is how we use the things that enter our lives. Marcus Aurelius has a magnificent image, a fiery metaphor for how we can use our troubles, whether pains, sufferings, setbacks, obstacles, or hugely tempting pleasures that threaten to lure us off the proper path of life. He says:

When the governing power in us is true to nature, it stands poised and ready to adjust to every challenge and use each new opportunity. It’s ready for anything and pursues its own aims and embraces whatever it confronts, finding advantage in even opposition. It’s like fire in this way. While a small flame can be extinguished by trash that’s dumped on it, a big enough fire will just use and consume anything dropped in it. The more that’s thrown at it, the higher it rises and the hotter it burns. (Meditations, 4.1)

For a wise and strong person, everything is just fuel for the inner fire. So, to the Stoics, we don’t properly seek for pleasure or run from pain, but rather wisely develop our ability to use either well when they come into our lives. And like a strong flame, we then grow and prosper and rise higher from whatever we confront.”

“Stoics believe that it’s important to have good role models. For many of us, it’s often easier to see what is morally good if we simply ask, ‘What would role model X do?’ Rather than to engage in some complex pattern of moral reasoning, which we, being far from perfect, could easily botch. Because of this, Seneca quotes with approval Epicurus’s advice that we should ‘cherish some good man and keep him always before our eyes, so that we will live as if he were watching and do everything as if he could see us’ (Letters 11.9). …

A good role model can provide a concrete pattern and a vivid reminder of what it means to live a virtuous life. In tough situations we should call such a person to mind. What would she do? What would he advise or approve?

For some fans of the Stoics, these philosophers themselves can be in the choir of role models. What would Epictetus say? What would Marcus do, or at least complain about not having done when he write in his journal later in the day? A good role model, even a character in fiction, if vividly enough brought to mind, can help us become more resilient in the face of challenge and disappointment, while also more serene in how we carry on.”