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

by William B. Irvine

Students who knew logic could detect the fallacies committed by others and thereby prevail over them in arguments.

Physics was the second component of Zeno’s Stoicism. Living, as they did, in a time without science, Zeno’s students doubtless appreciated explanations of the world around them. And besides providing explanations of natural phenomena, as modern physics does, Stoic physics was concerned with what we would call theology.

Ethics was the third and most important component of Zeno’s Stoicism. The Stoic conception of ethics, readers should realize, differs from our modern conception.

It is concerned not with moral right and wrong but with having a “good spirit,” that is, with living a good, happy life or with what is sometimes called moral wisdom.

Its central, organizing concern is about what we ought to do or be to live well—to flourish.”

The Stoics, however, thought it entirely possible for someone to have a bad life despite making a very good living.

To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life. And for what function were people designed?

We have the ability to reason. From this we can conclude, Zeno would assert, that we were designed to be reasonable. And if we use our reason, we will further conclude that we were designed to do certain things, that we have certain duties.

The Stoics came up with various metaphors to explain the relationship between the three components of their philosophy. They asserted, for example, that Stoic philosophy is like a fertile field, with “Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil.”

After importing Stoicism, the Romans adapted the doctrine to suit their needs. For one thing, they showed less interest in logic and physics than the Greeks had. Indeed, by the time of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the great Roman Stoics, logic and physics had essentially been abandoned: In the Meditations, we find Marcus congratulating himself for not having wasted time studying these subjects.

Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy. For the Roman Stoics, the goals of attaining tranquility and attaining virtue were connected, and for this reason, when they discuss virtue, they are likely to discuss tranquility as well.

Someone who is not tranquil—someone, that is, who is distracted by negative emotions such as anger or grief—might find it difficult to do what his reason tells him to do: His emotions will triumph over his intellect.

the Roman Stoics had less confidence than the Greeks in the power of pure reason to motivate people.

THE MOST IMPORTANT of the Roman Stoics—and the Stoics from whom, I think, modern individuals have the most to gain—were Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.1 The contributions these four made to Roman Stoicism were nicely complementary.

Seneca talks about the things that typically make people unhappy—such as grief, anger, old age, and social anxieties—and about what we can do to make our life not just tolerable but joyful.

even if Seneca had never written a word of philosophy, he would have made it into the history books for three other reasons. He would be remembered as a successful playwright. He would be remembered for his financial undertakings:

he claims (as we have seen) that someone who practices Stoic principles “must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are “paltry and trivial and fleeting.”

GAIUS MUSONIUS RUFUS, the least well-known of the four great Roman Stoics, was born in around 30 AD. Because of his family’s standing, Musonius could have gone far in politics, but instead he started a school of philosophy.

ACCORDING TO MUSONIUS, we should study philosophy, since how otherwise could we hope to live well?14 Furthermore, he says that studying philosophy should affect us personally and profoundly;

Musonius also thought the practice of philosophy required one not to withdraw from the world, as the Epicureans advised, but to be a vigorous participant in public affairs. Musonius therefore taught his students how to retain their Stoic tranquility while participating.

Romans valued those slaves who showed signs of intelligence and initiative. They trained them so they could make the best use of their gifts, and they subsequently put their slaves to work as teachers, counselors, and administrators. Epictetus appears to have developed an interest in philosophy early in life.

the Cynics, as we have seen, proselytized in a manner that the Stoics did not.

Epictetus expected his pupils to satisfy two conditions: “(1) wanting to benefit from philosophy and (2) understanding what a commitment to philosophy entails.”20 Epictetus knew that his words would be wasted on students who didn’t yet recognize their own inadequacies or who weren’t willing to take the steps necessary to deal with them.

He wanted his remarks to strike close to home. He therefore told his students that a Stoic school should be like a physician’s consulting room and that patients should leave feeling bad rather than feeling good,22 the idea being that any treatment likely to cure a patient is also likely to cause him discomfort.

your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living.

The techniques in question were quite practical and completely applicable to students’ everyday lives. He taught them, among other things, how to respond to insults, how to deal with incompetent servants, how to deal with an angry brother, how to deal with the loss of a loved one,

Furthermore, they would retain their dignity and tranquility regardless of the hardships life might subsequently inflict on them.

atheism appears to have been a rarity in ancient Rome. (Then again, what Epictetus had in mind when he referred to Zeus is probably different from what most Romans had in mind. In particular, it is possible that Epictetus identified Zeus with Nature.)

Epictetus would then tell the prospective student that if he wishes to have a good life, he must consider his nature and the purpose for which God created him and live accordingly; he must, as Zeno put it, live in accordance with nature. The person who does this won’t simply pursue pleasure, as an animal might; instead, he will use his reasoning ability to reflect on the human condition.

Many readers will therefore, at this point, be thinking, “If I have to believe in Zeus and divine creation to practice Stoicism, then Stoicism is for me a nonstarter.” Readers should therefore realize that it is entirely possible to practice Stoicism—and in particular, to employ Stoic strategies for attaining tranquility—without believing in Zeus or, for that matter, in divine creation.

BEGIN EACH DAY by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”29 These words were written not by a slave like Epictetus, whom we would naturally expect to encounter insolence and ill will; they were written by the person who was at the time the most powerful man in the world: Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome.

According to Marcus, it was Apollonius who impressed on him the need to be decisive and reasonable, taught him how to combine days full of intense activity with periods of relaxation, and taught him how, “with the same unaltered composure,” to withstand sickness and pain—and in particular, Marcus notes, how to withstand the mental anguish he later experienced on losing a son.

WHEN MARCUS WAS SIXTEEN, Emperor Hadrian adopted Marcus’s maternal uncle, Antoninus, who in turn adopted Marcus. (Marcus’s father had died when Marcus was quite young.) From the time Marcus entered palace life, he had political power, and when Antoninus became emperor, Marcus served as virtual co-emperor.

As Roman emperors go, Marcus was exceptionally good. For one thing, he exercised great restraint in his use of power. No emperor, we are told, showed more respect to the Senate than Marcus did. He took care not to waste public money.37 And although he didn’t need to ask the Senate for permission to spend money, he routinely did so,

Marcus, wrote the historian Edward Gibbon, was the last of the Five Good Emperors (the other four being Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus) who ruled from 96–180

Marcus is, in other words, a rare example of a philosopher king and perhaps the only example of a philosopher whom subjects wanted to have as their king. LIKE THE OTHER Roman Stoics, Marcus didn’t feel compelled to prove that tranquility was worth pursuing. To the contrary, he thought its value was obvious.

of the at least fourteen children she bore him, only six survived. Added to this were the stresses that came with ruling an empire. During his reign, there were numerous frontier uprisings,

In much the same way as Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion was a boon for Christianity, Marcus’s Stoicism could have been a boon for that philosophy. Marcus, however, did not preach Stoicism. He did not lecture his fellow Romans on the benefits of practicing Stoicism; nor did he expose them to his philosophical writings. (The Meditations was a private journal

I would like to suggest, though, that the unpopularity of Stoicism is due not to a defect in the philosophy but to other factors. For one thing, modern individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They instead tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling.

If we think about these things, we will lessen their impact on us when, despite our efforts at prevention, they happen: “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”1 Misfortune weighs most heavily, he says, on those who “expect nothing but good fortune.”2 Epictetus echoes this advice: We should keep in mind that “all things everywhere are perishable.”

We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.

hedonic adaptation. To illustrate the adaptation process, they point to studies of lottery winners. Winning a lottery typically allows someone to live the life of his dreams. It turns out, though, that after an initial period of exhilaration, lottery winners end up about as happy as they previously were.

We also experience hedonic adaptation in our relationships. We meet the man or woman of our dreams, and after a tumultuous courtship succeed in marrying this person. We start out in a state of wedded bliss, but before long we find ourselves contemplating our spouse’s flaws and, not long after that, fantasizing about starting a relationship with someone new.

As a result of the adaptation process, people find themselves on a satisfaction treadmill. They are unhappy when they detect an unfulfilled desire within them. They work hard to fulfill this desire, in the belief that on fulfilling it, they will gain satisfaction. The problem, though, is that once they fulfill a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a result stop desiring it—or at any rate, don’t find it as desirable as they once did.

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.

the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have. This advice is easy to state and is doubtless true; the trick is in putting it into practice in our life.

They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique—let us refer to it as negative visualization—was employed by the Stoics

Thus, “we should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.”6 While enjoying the companionship of loved ones, then, we should periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. If nothing else, our own death will end it.

when we kiss our child, to remember that she is mortal and not something we own—that she has been given to us “for the present, not inseparably nor for ever.”

To see how imagining the death of a child can make us appreciate her, consider two fathers. The first takes Epictetus’s advice to heart and periodically reflects on his child’s mortality. The second refuses to entertain such gloomy thoughts. He instead assumes that his child will outlive him and that she will always be around for him to enjoy. The first father will almost certainly be more attentive and loving than the second.