The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

by Ryan Holiday

clear of most of the other books about Stoicism (and I’ve read them) with one exception: the works of Pierre Hadot. While all the other academics and popularizers of Stoicism mostly miss the point or needlessly complicate things, Hadot clarifies. His interpretation of Marcus Aurelius in the book The Inner Citadel—that Marcus was not writing some systemic explanation of the universe but creating a set of practical exercises the emperor was actually practicing himself—was a huge leap forward. His book Philosophy as a Way of Life explains how philosophy has been wrongly interpreted as a thing people talk about rather than something that people do. If you really want to dive into practical philosophy, Hadot is the guy to read. (Also his translations of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus—which he does for himself from the originals in his analysis—are quite good.) Some other great authors/philosophers to read—particularly their books of maxims or aphorisms, which are in line with a lot of stoic thinking: Heraclitus Plutarch Socrates Cicero Montaigne Arthur Schopenhauer

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