What is Stoicism?

Stoicism is a practical philosophy of life. Its central claim is that virtue — wisdom, courage, justice, temperance — is the only true good, and that a flourishing life follows from cultivating it. Everything else — wealth, health, reputation, even our own bodies — is welcome but not required. What is required is the right use of our own judgment.

Origins

The school began around 300 BCE when Zeno of Citium began teaching at the Stoa Poikilē, the painted porch of the Athenian agora. From its founders — Zeno, Cleanthes, and the systematizer Chrysippus — it spread to Rome, where it shaped the lives of Seneca, the freed slave Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Stoics are the voices that survive in greatest detail; their letters, lectures, and private notes are the texts most readers begin with today.

Three parts of philosophy

The Stoics divided philosophy into three: physics, logic, and ethics. They are not separate fields but a single garden — physics is its soil, logic its walls, ethics its fruit.

• Physics

  An account of the world — rational, lawful, and whole. To live according to nature is to align oneself with this order, neither flattering it nor fighting it.

• Logic

  The discipline of clear thinking — what follows from what, what an impression actually shows, when assent is warranted and when withheld.

• Ethics

  The art of living. How to act, what to want, how to bear what comes. The fruit the other two parts exist to ripen.

The aim

Stoicism does not promise an unmoved life, only an unshakeable one. The aim is eudaimonia — usually rendered flourishing, more literally a good daimon, a steady spirit. It is reached by living virtuously and accepting what is not in your power: by attending to your own judgments, desires, and actions, and consenting to the rest as it is given.

Some things are up to us, and some are not. Up to us are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing. Not up to us are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.

— Epictetus, Enchiridion 1

Why it endures

The Stoics wrote in a world of plagues, exiles, civil wars, and abrupt deaths. Their consolation is not a pleasant one — it is the consolation of clear-sightedness. That is why it continues to find readers in waiting rooms, on battlefields, in twelve-step rooms, in startups, in hospice. Stoicism is optimistic about what a person can do with their own mind, and unsentimental about everything else.

Where to begin

Read slowly. Stoicism is a practice, not a theory. Pick one habit — the morning premeditation, the evening review, a single principle held in mind through a difficult conversation — and try it for a week.