Stoicism: The Misunderstood Guide to a Good Life
Stoicism often gets a bad rap. People associate it with unemotional behavior, passivity, and resignation. But it can’t get any further than the truth.
Stoicism is so much more than what people think.
It’s a philosophy; it’s a way of life; it’s a guide to a good life.
But how did an ancient Greco-Roman philosophy get such a bad reputation in the first place?
I believe the answer partly lies in two modern human limitations:
- Our inability to know what is in our control and what isn’t.
- Our inability to take responsibility for the former and accept the latter.
Fortunately for us, Stoicism has answers (and a lot of quotes, as you’ll see).
But bear with me first, as I go through some basic terms used in philosophy.
Philosophy and Virtue
The word philosophy comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means love of wisdom.
Socrates, the founder of Western Philosophy, believed that virtue and wisdom were above everything else.¹
Thus, a philosopher in the Socratic sense was someone who loved wisdom and used it to live a virtuous life.
But what is a virtuous life?
When the Greeks talked about virtue they used the word arete — αρετή in Greek. Virtue for them meant excellence of character.
Basically, to excel in your life by living up to your highest potential.
Then morality got added to the mix, which gave virtue a moral dimension.
Morality is the system we have created to determine if some thought, decision, or action is good or bad.
This means that virtues are character qualities or traits that are deemed morally good. If your behavior can be described as morally good, then it is virtuous.
The ancients valued virtues and based their lives upon. This is what a good life meant for them.
A lot has changed. We don’t live our lives in accordance with virtues anymore. Instead, we now measure life in positives and negatives, and we want more of the former and less of the latter.
Thinking about it, it’s not that bad. We want more positivity and less negativity in our lives. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Well, yes there is.
In an ideal world, this approach would have been perfect because we would control everything. Choosing only the positives and discarding the negatives would be the logical thing to do. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?
Life is not perfect; it’s unpredictable, full of ups and downs.
Nothing ever stays the same — this is the nature of our world. Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, said that no man can ever step in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
“Change is the only constant in life.”
– Heraclitus
But if everything changes, then what should we base our lives upon? The ancient Greeks gave us the answer more than two thousand years ago.
According to Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers to ever live, the purpose of life is ευδαιμονία (eudaimonia) — a Greek word often translated as well-being, happiness, or human flourishing.
The Stoics believe that to achieve eudaimonia you have to be virtuous.
“What is the goal of virtue, after all, except a life that flows smoothly.”²
– Epictetus
And quoting Epictetus brings me to Stoicism.
A Little History…
The story begins with a shipwreck.
Zeno of Citium was a wealthy young Phoenician merchant from the island of Cyprus.
He was transporting purple dye, which was extremely valuable because it was used to paint royal garments, when his ship was caught in a violent storm. Zeno survived; the ship didn’t.
He washed ashore at the Greek port of Piraeus. Zeno then found himself penniless wandering through the streets of Athens.
Having no purpose he walked many miles to the Temple of Apollo, where he sought guidance from the Oracle of Delphi named Pythia. She told Zeno to “take the color not of dead shellfish but of dead men.”³ He realized that this meant studying the teachings of wise men.
Then he encountered the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes and became his student.
Cynicism is a word we often use when we’re talking about a negative attitude. Back then it was a philosophical school that focused on the cultivation of virtue through rigorous training, such as voluntarily giving up all your wealth, or wearing only ragged clothes.
Basically, the name Cynic derives from ancient Greek κυνικός, which means dog-like. And that’s because they resembled dogs wandering through the streets.
Nevertheless, many of the Cynics were badasses, and one of those is Diogenes the Cynic. You may have heard of his encounter with Alexander the Great.
When Alexander asked him if he wished for anything, Diogenes said he would like Alexander to move because he’s standing in the sun’s way.⁴ Talk about balls of steel.
Zeno liked Cynicism’s focus on virtue but thought it was a little dull as a philosophy. He wanted something more intellectual. After studying the other philosophical schools of his time for many years, he found that none of them fit the bill. He then decided to create his own. Thus, Stoicism was born.
Stoicism takes its name from the Ποικίλη Στοά (Stoa Poikile), one of the most famous places in the Ancient Agora of Athens — the central, public gathering place of Ancient Athens, where people discussed politics, philosophy or anything worth talking about.
When Zeno died, his student Cleanthes became the second head of the Stoic school. He was a modest and practical man, just like Zeno. He preserved and developed Zeno’s teachings.
Then came Chrysippus, one of the most important intellectuals and Stoic thinkers. He was more aggressive than his predecessors. That’s because in his time philosophy evolved into an argumentative sport, where philosophical debates became common, and he had to defend Stoicism against other philosophies. He upgraded Stoicism by developing its Physics, Logic, and Ethics — he made Stoicism a proper philosophy.
After several centuries, Stoicism found its way to the Roman Republic and ultimately influenced its development to an Empire.
The famous Roman orator Cicero wrote extensively on Stoicism. He was not a Stoic himself, but he had a friend and rival who was. His name was Cato of Utica. He became a hero and inspired the next generation of Stoics after standing up against the tyrannical Julius Caesar.
Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian became Augustus and found the Roman Empire. He had a Stoic tutor named Arius Didymus. This began a tradition in which Roman Emperors were taught philosophy and associated themselves with Stoicism.
Many generations after Augustus, young Nero became Emperor. But he was too young to rule by himself, so he needed advisors. Seneca, one of the most important Stoic thinkers of all time, became his speechwriter and political advisor.
Unfortunately, Nero failed his philosophy class and decided to become a tyrant instead — leading him to order Seneca to kill himself. Seneca’s suicide was quiet and calm, and has since become an example of Stoicism’s outlook on death.
Nero had a secretary. His name was Epaphroditus and he owned a slave. The slave’s name was Epictetus, which in Greek means “acquired”. After he gained his freedom, he went on to become one of the most famous philosophy teachers in Rome. He became a Stoic sage and one of the most important figures in Stoicism. Basically, you can’t have Stoicism without Epictetus.
Last but not least, we’ve got perhaps the most famous Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. His reign was exemplary. In many ways, he was considered the perfect ruler; he was what Plato called the Philosopher King. Marcus was the last famous Stoic of the ancient world.
But this is just scratching the surface of Stoicism’s rich history.
Let’s see what Stoicism has to offer. Basics first.
The Basics of Stoicism
The Stoics, like Socrates, believed that if philosophy wasn’t useful in everyday life, then it wasn’t useful at all. This is why Stoicism was created to be a practical philosophy. But a philosophy had to be based on a theoretical framework that explained its usefulness.
Ultimately, for the Stoics, living a good life requires two things:
- Understanding the nature of the world (and one’s place in it).
- Understanding the nature of human reasoning.
To acquire these you must first study them. To do that the Stoics used three basic branches of philosophy:
- Physics: The study of how the world works.
- Logic: The study of reasoning.
- Ethics: The study of the morality of human behavior.
These give us three main Stoic disciplines⁵:
- The discipline of desire.
- The discipline of action.
- The discipline of assent.
The discipline of desire (also known as Stoic Acceptance) concerns the ability to know what’s in our control and what’s not. Basically, it teaches us which things we must strive for and which things we must reject.
The discipline of action (also known as Stoic Philanthropy) concerns the social aspects of our behavior. If we want to be virtuous we must treat others with kindness and fairness.
The discipline of assent (also known as Stoic Mindfulness) concerns the ability to think and act in accordance with reason.
The four cardinal virtues of Stoic philosophy come from the teachings of Plato.⁶
For the Stoics, the most important virtue is wisdom. We can think of the other three as wisdom applied to different circumstances in everyday life. Courage and temperance are wisdom applied to our fears and desires. Justice is wisdom applied to how we behave towards others.
Since the Stoics focus solely on living virtuously, they think of virtue as the only good in life. Everything else is either bad or indifferent. That’s why they separate human pursuits into three categories: good, bad, and indifferent.
Everything related to the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice is deemed good. Anything that goes against those is deemed bad.
But there are things that don’t belong to either category. These are what the Stoics call indifferent.
Indifferents can be “preferred” and “dispreferred”. For example, the Stoics consider wealth and health as indifferents, because they are neither good or bad. But they are preferred indifferents. Health is preferable to disease and wealth preferable to poverty because they make it easier to live a virtuous life — what ultimately matters.
This Stoic trichotomy often confuses people. How can one only care about virtue? How can everything besides virtue be either bad or indifferent? How can you treat important things like health or wealth as indifferent?
The answers to these questions are found in the three Stoic disciplines, which are up next.
Stoic Acceptance
There is a legendary book called The Enchiridion. It’s a literal manual on Stoicism, written by Epictetus’ student Arrian, which contains most of Epictetus’ practical advice. It starts like this⁷:
“We are responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held responsible. The former include our judgement, our impulse, our desire, aversion and our mental faculties in general; the latter include the body, material possessions, our reputation, status — in a word, anything not in our power to control.”
This quote encapsulates Epictetus’ whole philosophy.
It explains the most important principle of Stoicism. It’s called the Stoic dichotomy of control.
The Stoic Dichotomy of Control
The nature of the world is unpredictable, so our place in it is also unpredictable. Therefore, understanding what is in our power is the first step to navigating the diverse and complex circumstances of our lives.
Epictetus says that the only thing we can control is our thoughts, desires, and fears. We can’t control our height, our birth circumstances, or the opinions of others. This is the dichotomy of control. And understanding this has profound consequences.
Are you worried about things you can’t control? You’re wasting your time and energy. It’s pointless to worry and complain about things you can’t control. That’s because you can’t influence or change them. And if you can’t change something, there is only one thing left to do — change the way you think about it and move forward.
“Make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature.”⁸
– Epictetus
Embrace and accept whatever life throws at you because it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Then, make the best of it. This is the nature of the world, and that’s your place in it.
Marcus Aurelius, despite being the Roman Emperor, had a rough life. He survived many hardships; he was born with a fragile body; he had an arrogant and hedonistic brother; he dealt with an almost civil war; and he lead the Empire through a war against the German tribes in the times of the Antonine Plague. And if that wasn’t enough, he also witnessed most of his children die.⁹
In his personal writings Meditations he had this to say about complaining¹⁰:
“Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it’s unendurable… then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well. Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so. In your interest, or in your nature.”
Do you still feel like complaining? I really hope you’re not.
Understanding and embracing the principle of the dichotomy of control will liberate you by giving you the strength to endure anything.
Most of the time we suffer because we perceive things that happen to us as harmful. But are they really, or is it just our thoughts about them that make them harmful? The Stoics argue it’s the latter.
Nothing will have the power to disturb your soul when you realize that it’s your interpretation of an experience that makes it disturbing. Seneca believed that imagination made us suffer more than reality.
The first and most important lesson of Stoicism is to focus your attention and efforts on the things you control.
“Your ability to control your thoughts — treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perception — false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.”¹²
– Marcus Aurelius
Stoic Philanthropy
Virtue isn’t external, it’s embodied inside our character. And since we only control our character, we ought to live virtuously and in accordance with the world. For the Stoics, this was the purpose of life.
In this respect, the Stoics were absolute — there was no half-assing things. If you were, for example, courageous in the battlefield but hedonistic in your leisure time, you were not virtuous. Stoicism is a demanding philosophy.
The Value of Character
It’s one thing to understand things theoretically, and a whole another thing to put them to practice. To cultivate virtue, you not only have to understand what it means but to also live with it.
Here’s Epictetus spitting some truth¹³:
“The essence of good and evil consists in the condition of our character. And externals are the means by which our character finds its particular good and evil. It finds its good by not attaching value to the means. Correct judgements about externals make our character good, as perverse or distorted ones make it bad.”
Your character is defined by your judgements. If you value and desire externals, you will always feel and act like their puppet. If, however, you value what you can control — your character — you will break free and become the master of your fate.
Basically, our value derives from our character. And since our character is determined by how we decide to live, then our value is the way we live.
It’s not what we say that matters; it’s what we do.
Cosmopolitanism
Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynicism, was asked where he came from. His answer was, “I am a citizen of the world.” This is where cosmopolitanism began. Stoicism got the idea from Cynicism and developed it.
The Stoics were influenced by Socrates, who thought that virtue can be taught. Therefore, the Stoics believed that anyone can learn how to live a good life.
And since living a good life depends solely on one’s character and living virtuously, secondary characteristics like status, race, religion, political alignment, or birth circumstance don’t matter.
This makes Stoicism an egalitarian philosophy. It teaches us that we are all equal in this world because we are all humans born with the capacity for reason.
But this is also where individuals differ from one another. According to the Stoics, individuals are bound to make moral errors, because the majority do no have a firm grasp on the true nature of good and evil.
And if someone appears evil, it’s because of ignorance and not maliciousness.
Marcus Aurelius repeated this to himself each morning¹⁵:
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.”
Humans are social animals. Cooperating with other people is not only inevitable but necessary for our well-being. Therefore living virtuously is not only an individual endeavor but a social one as well. And it requires justice.
For the Stoics, justice isn’t an abstract system of rules and laws on how society should be run. It’s the practice of treating others with fairness and kindness.
That’s what we should do if we want to be virtuous. And while we do it, we shouldn’t brag about it — there is nothing to win from that.
Live virtuously, and let virtue become its own reward.
Marcus Aurelius puts it perfectly¹⁶:
“A man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”
Stoic Mindfulness
What matters is not what happens to us, but how we react to it. Essentially, this is what Stoic mindfulness is about.
Mindfulness is the process of focusing on the present. It’s when you become aware of your own thinking.
The Stoics believed that we are rational animals by nature. That’s why reason plays a big part in Stoicism.
It’s what we use to think logically. And this is why the Stoics practiced their own kind of mindfulness by using reason to evaluate their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Assent is the translation of συγκατάθεσις (sunkatathesis), a Greek term the Stoics used when they wanted to approve a thought or enable an action.¹⁷
Impression, Assent, Impulse
Two people never view reality in the same way. Because even though they may perceive the same things, they don’t interpret them in the same way. Humans construct their reality by interpreting it.
According to the Stoics, interpretations originate in our impressions. These are mental images or intuitions that originate from experience or unconscious thinking. Think of impressions as spontaneous statements. For example, when someone insults us, we feel a statement like “this is an insult” in our minds.
But we don’t react immediately. Impressions require our assent first. Giving assent to an impression means consciously approving it. After we approve of the initial impression, an impulse is created. This impulse is what ultimately drives our actions and feelings.
In our previous example, our mind creates the impression of “this is an insult.” We consciously approve of this statement by giving assent to it, saying “it’s bad that someone insulted me.” And then an impulse is created and we experience negative feelings — either anger or sadness.
It works like this: Impression > Assent > Impulse
We don’t control our initial impressions, but we control our assent. And since we control our assent, we also control our impulses — how we react.
This is why the Stoics say that, since we are rational animals, we can delay reacting to our impressions until we properly assess if they are reasonable or not. If they are unreasonable, we should not give assent to them.
This is where the virtue of wisdom comes into play. Wisdom is choosing the right impressions to give assent to.
“Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman, you will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint. Faced with pain, you will discover the power of endurance. If you are insulted, you will discover patience. In time, you will grow to be confident that there is not a single impression that you will not have the moral means to tolerate.”¹⁸
– Epictetus
Attitude
Many of the problems we face in the modern world are psychological, and they are mainly based on our upbringing. From a young age, we are conditioned to value and, therefore, seek mainly positive experiences.
Unfortunately, life has other plans for us. We can’t have a life without both positivity and negativity. Negative experiences are an essential part of life. We are bound to face unfavorable circumstances sometime — it’s inevitable.
We shouldn’t chase our next positivity hit, because this will only bring sadness. Instead, we should do is learn how to deal with life’s negatives.
At this point, I am reminded of two brilliant quotes:
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”¹⁹
– Mark Manson
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
– Bruce Lee
Manson means that life isn’t perfect, and its default settings are painful. But you are responsible for your impulses because you choose which impressions to give assent to. You can play the victim and complain when things get rough, or you can embrace the pain and improve by dealing with it head-on. You must choose, but choose wisely.
Bruce Lee is taking a jab (pun intended) at the modern way of thinking. Chasing positivity is the same as praying for an easy life. Unfortunately, pain is inevitable and the way life tests us is by being difficult. There’s only one thing left to do — learn how to deal with life. And we do that by having the strength to endure its difficulties.
Guess which philosophy teaches you that suffering is optional while also giving you the strength to endure pain. You guessed it. It’s Stoicism.
Our attitude is the lens through which we look at the world and it is mainly determined by our thoughts. Attitude plays an important role in how we interpret what happens to us. Having the right attitude, therefore, is essential.
A Stoic attitude understands the dichotomy of control. It knows there are things it can control and things it can’t. It doesn’t care about bad or indifferent things; it gives assent only to what matters. And what truly matters is living virtuously.
Practice the Stoic attitude. Be mindful of your thoughts, because, ultimately, they determine your life.
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”²⁰
– Marcus Aurelius
The Misunderstanding
I started this article wondering why an ancient philosophy like Stoicism is so often misunderstood. Here’s what I found when I looked for the etymology of stoic:
“Meaning “person who represses feelings or endures patiently” first recorded 1570s. The adjective is recorded from the 1590s in the “repressing feelings” sense, c. 1600 in the philosophical sense.”²¹
This has led people to believe that Stoicism is a passive philosophy that breeds cold, unemotional superhumans. As we’ve seen, this is a major simplification and can’t be further from the truth. It’s easy to see why people misunderstand Stoicism and use the adjective stoic with negative connotations.
Many Stoic terms are of Greek origin. For example, one important Stoic term is απάθεια (apatheia), which can be translated as equanimity. It refers to a calm state of mind that enables someone to keep his composure and not be disturbed by passions.
Unfortunately, apatheia is now used in a negative way to describe someone who represses his emotions and doesn’t seem to care about anything.
The Stoics were not unemotional robots; they were people just like you and me. They just believed in the human potential to choose right from wrong.
Think about it. Do you feel it’s natural to be disturbed every time you have a negative experience? Do you think it’s normal to let your passions control you? Are you ok with your life being like a roller coaster ride? If your answers were “No”, then you’re on the right path.
But why do people degrade someone who remains calm in the face of adversity? Because deep down they want to be like that, but they can’t. We have a tendency to belittle what we can’t do.
This reminds me of a story my grandma used to tell me about when I was a child. It’s a fable called The Fox and the Grapes.²² The story is about a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but can’t because they are too far up high. Rather than admit its inability to reach them, the fox states they are undesirable.
The moral of the story is that some people will disparage what they can’t achieve or have for themselves.
But, remember, people don’t do bad things out of malice but because of ignorance.
Love of Fate
“Everything is ok.”
A mentor of mine said that, but I didn’t understand how profound it was at the time. I now know what he meant. He was basically talking about amor fati, Latin for ‘love of fate’.
The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche talked about it when he said²³:
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it-all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary-but love it.”
The Stoics and Nietzsche may have lived more than a millennium apart, but they were unto the same thing. Stoicism teaches us how to live a good life.
You can’t do that without first understanding the world and your place in it and then making the best out of anything that happens to us.
To live a good life, we have to love our fate.
It’s only proper that I end this article with two final quotes.
“The things ordained for you-teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you-treat them with love. With real love.”²⁴
- Marcus Aurelius
“Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way
they happen: this is the path to peace.”²⁵- Epictetus
Endnotes
- Plato, Euthydemus, section 279a-282d
- Epictetus, Discourses, book I, chap. 4, section 5
- Donald J. Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, chap. 1, p. 30
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_and_Alexander
- Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic, chap. 2, p. 22
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
- Epictetus, Enchiridion, chap. 1, section 1
- Epictetus, Discourses, book I, chap. 1, section 17
- Donald J. Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, chap. 1, p. 18
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 10, section 3
- Epictetus, Enchiridion, chap. 1, section 5
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 3, section 9
- Epictetus, Discourses, book I, chap. 29, section 1
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 10, section 16
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 2, section 1
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 5, section 6
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_Stoicism_terms
- Epictetus, Enchiridion, chap. 10
- https://markmanson.net/values/life-philosophy
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 5, section 16
- https://www.etymonline.com/word/stoic
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, chap. 2, section 10, p. 54
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 6, section 39
- Epictetus, Enchiridion, chap. 8
