A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

One of the things that makes insults difficult to deal with is that they generally come as surprises. You are calmly chatting with someone when—wham!—he says something that, although it might not have been intended as an insult, can easily be construed as one. Recently, for example, I was talking to a colleague about a book he was writing. He said that in this book, he was going to comment on some political material I had published. I was delighted that he was aware of my work and was going to mention it, but then came the put-down: “I’m trying to decide,” he said, “whether, in my response to what you have written, I should characterize you as evil or merely misguided.” Realize that such comments are to be expected from academics. We are a pathetically contentious lot. We want others not only to be aware of our work but to admire it and, better still, to defer to the conclusions we have drawn. The problem is that our colleagues seek the same admiration and deference from us. Something has to give, and as a result, on campuses everywhere, academics routinely engage in verbal fisticuffs. Put-downs are commonplace, and insults fly. In my pre-Stoic days, I would have felt the sting of this insult and probably would have gotten angry. I would have vigorously defended my work and would have done my best to unleash a counterinsult. But on that particular day, having fallen under the influence of the Stoics,