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

by William B. Irvine

One way to overcome this obsession, the Stoics think, is to realize that in order to win the admiration of other people, we will have to adopt their values. More precisely, we will have to live a life that is successful according to their notion of success.

Realize that many other people, including, quite possibly, your friends and relatives, want you to fail in your undertakings. They may not tell you this to your face, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t silently rooting against you. People do this in part because your success makes them look bad and therefore makes them uncomfortable: If you can succeed, why can’t they? Consequently, if you attempt something daring they might ridicule you, predict disaster, and try to talk you out of pursuing your goal. If, despite their warnings, you make your attempt and succeed, they might finally congratulate you—or they might not.

The Stoics work hard to avoid falling victim to this kind of connoisseurship.

People who achieve luxurious lifestyles are rarely satisfied: Experiencing luxury only whets their appetite for even more luxury.

Epictetus encourages us to keep in mind that self-respect, trustworthiness, and high-mindedness are more valuable than wealth, meaning that if the only way to gain wealth is to give up these personal characteristics, we would be foolish to seek wealth.

Seneca apparently spent his time in exile reading, writing, and studying nature.

Indeed, many people go through life repeatedly making the same mistakes and are no closer to happiness in their eighties than they were in their twenties. These individuals, rather than enjoying their life, will have been embittered by it, and now, near the end of their life, they live to complain—about their circumstances, their relatives, the food, the weather, in short, about absolutely everything.

the Greek dramatist Sophocles offered another viewpoint. When he had grown old and someone asked whether, despite his years, he could still make love to a woman, he replied, “I am very glad to have escaped from this, like a slave who has escaped from a mad and cruel master.”

I would, in particular, question the claim, made by many psychological therapists, that people are not well equipped to deal with grief on their own. I think people are less brittle and more resilient, emotionally speaking, than therapists give them credit for.

In conclusion, although the Stoics’ advice on how best to deal with negative emotions is old-fashioned, it would nevertheless appear to be good advice. According to Seneca, “A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is.”

It is true that our government and our society determine, to a considerable extent, our external circumstances, but the Stoics understood that there is at best a loose connection between our external circumstances and how happy we are. In particular, it is entirely possible for someone banished to a desolate island to be happier than someone living a life of luxury.

the Stoics don’t think it is helpful for people to consider themselves victims of society—or victims of anything else, for that matter. If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life;

More important, we can use our reasoning ability to conclude that many of the things that our evolutionary programming encourages us to seek, such as social status and more of anything we already have, may be valuable if our goal is simply to survive and reproduce, but aren’t at all valuable if our goal is instead to experience tranquility while we are alive.

There are people, I think, whose personality is uniquely well-suited to Stoicism. Even if no one formally introduces these individuals to Stoicism, they will figure it out on their own. These “congenital Stoics” are perpetually optimistic, and they are appreciative of the world they find themselves in.

In summary, my advice to those seeking a philosophy of life parallels my advice to those seeking a mate. They should realize that which mate is best for them depends on their personality and circumstances. This means that no one is the ideal mate for everyone and that some people are a suitable mate for no one at all. Furthermore, they should realize that for the vast majority of people, life with a less than perfect mate is better than life with no mate at all.

Those wishing to read the Stoics would do well to start with the essays of Seneca, especially, “On the Happy Life,” “On Tranquility of Mind,” and “On the Shortness of Life.” These can be found in Seneca: Dialogues and Essays (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Readers wishing to sample Epictetus are encouraged to start with his Handbook

Encheiridion). It has the advantage of being short, easily obtainable, and philosophically accessible. In the world of philosophical literature, it stands out as a gem.

the novelist Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full, in which a character accidentally discovers Stoicism and subsequently starts practicing it.