How to Be a Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living

by Massimo Pigliucci

Stoicism is not about suppressing or hiding emotion—rather, it is about acknowledging our emotions, reflecting on what causes them, and redirecting them for our own good. It is also about keeping in mind what is and what is not under our control, focusing our efforts on the former and not wasting them on the latter. It is about practicing virtue and excellence and navigating the world to the best of our abilities, while being mindful of the moral dimension of all our actions.

One of the key tenets of Stoicism is that we ought to recognize, and take seriously, the difference between what we can and cannot master.

Stoicism was very much a philosophy of social engagement and encouraged love for all humankind and Nature as well.

The Stoics accepted the scientific principle of universal causality: everything has a cause, and everything in the universe unfolds according to natural processes.

One of my favorite quotations, again from Epictetus, exemplifies this down-to-earth practicality: “Death is necessary2 and cannot be avoided. I mean, where am I going to go to get away from it?”

Life, for the Stoics, is an ongoing project, and death, its logical, natural end point, is nothing special in and of itself and nothing that we should particularly fear.

To a Stoic, it ultimately does not matter if we think the Logos is God or Nature, as long as we recognize that a decent human life is about the cultivation of one’s character and concern for other people (and even for Nature itself) and is best enjoyed by way of a proper—but not fanatical—detachment from mere worldly goods.

What is the goal of virtue, after all, except a life that flows smoothly?

This transitional, second period of Stoic history is referred to as the “middle Stoa.” The great Roman orator Cicero, who was sympathetic to Stoic ideas, is one of our major sources for both the early and the middle Stoa. Eventually, the Roman Republic—after the death of Julius Caesar and the ascent to power of Octavian Augustus—gave way to the Empire. Stoicism thrived as a major school during this time, known as the “late Stoa.”

The idea of Stoicism, however, survived in the writings of the many historical figures who were influenced by it (including those who were sometimes critical of it), among them some of the Early Church Fathers, Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, Erasmus, Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Montesquieu, and Spinoza. Modern Existentialism and even neo-orthodox Protestant theology have also been influenced by Stoicism.

Although Stoicism was designed from the beginning as a very practical philosophy, it would not be a “philosophy” if it were not based on a theoretical framework of some sort. That framework is the idea that in order to live a good (in the sense of eudaimonic) life, one has to understand two things: the nature of the world (and by extension, one’s place in it) and the nature of human reasoning (including when it fails, as it so often does).

The Stoics used several metaphors to get their point across. One of the most incisive is that of a garden, introduced by Chrysippus, who said that the fruits of the garden represent the ethics. To get good fruits we must nurture the plants with fine nutrients: the soil of the garden, then, is the physics, providing our understanding of the world in which we live. Moreover, our “garden” needs to be fenced off from unwanted and destructive influences, or it will be taken over by weeds and nothing good will grow in it: the fence is the logic, keeping bad reasoning out of the way.

These are often referred to as the three Stoic disciplines: desire, action, and assent.

The discipline of desire (also referred to as Stoic acceptance) tells us what is and is not proper to want. This, in turn, derives from the fact that some things are in our power and others are not. We can appreciate that crucial difference from an understanding of how the world works, as only people who are not schooled in physics make the mistake of thinking that they control more than they actually do (that is, they engage in wishful thinking).

The discipline of action (known also as Stoic philanthropy, in the sense of concern for others) tells us how to behave in the world. It is the result of a proper understanding of ethics, the study of how to live our lives, and it draws on the virtue of justice.

Finally, the discipline of assent (or Stoic mindfulness) tells us how to react to situations, in the sense of either giving our assent to our initial impressions of a situation or withdrawing it. This discipline is arrived at via the study of logic—what is and is not reasonable to think—and requires the virtue of practical wisdom.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

“Make the best use3 of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing.”

One of the first lessons from Stoicism, then, is to focus our attention and efforts where we have the most power and then let the universe run as it will. This will save us both a lot of energy and a lot of worry.

the Stoic archer has deliberately chosen to attempt to hit the mark, and he has done the best he can do within his power to accomplish the goal. But he is also ready to accept a possible negative outcome with equanimity, because the outcome was never entirely under his control.

Epictetus tells us that regret is a waste of our emotional energy. We cannot change the past—it is outside of our control. We can, and should, learn from it, but the only situations we can do something about are those happening here and now.

Notice that I am not counseling resignation. Stoicism is too often misinterpreted as a passive philosophy, yet resignation goes precisely against not just what the Stoics themselves said but also, more importantly, what they practiced. The Stoics we know of were teachers, politicians, generals, and emperors—hardly the sort of people who would have fallen into a fatalistic torpor. Rather, they were wise enough to make the distinction between their internal goals, over which they had control, and the external outcome, which they could influence but not control. As the Serenity Prayer says, it is the hallmark of a mature and wise person to realize that difference.

Accept that most things in life are not under your control. However, you should strive hard to maximise your chances for success and achievement. Seize every opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity.

If we take this notion seriously, it turns out that most things are not really under our control, from small and insignificant matters to really important ones. The logical consequence of this realization—which is also endorsed by Buddhism and other philosophical and religious traditions—should be to practice non-attachment to things and people.

What Epictetus was telling me, then, was that it is best to look the reality of life straight in the face, with courage. And that reality includes the fact that no one is immortal, no one is “ours” in the sense that we are entitled to him or her. Understanding this is not just a way to maintain sanity when a loved one dies, or a dear friend leaves for another country.

the point of life for human beings is to use reason to build the best society that it is humanly possible to build.

It seems to me that ethics has to come from somewhere,8 and a naturalistic account of it is the most promising approach. It is also the approach used by all the Greco-Roman philosophies, and by Stoicism in particular.

Epictetus was telling me that a fundamental aspect of being human is that we are social, not just in the sense that we like the company of others, but in the deeper sense that we couldn’t really exist without the help of others; the implication is that when we do things for the good of the polity, we are actually (perhaps indirectly) benefiting ourselves.

Each of us is, as it were,13 circumscribed by many circles.… The first, indeed, and most proximate circle is that which everyone describes about his own mind as a centre.… The second from this, and which is at a greater distance from the centre, but comprehends the first circle, is that in which parents, brothers, wife, and children are arranged.… Next to this is that which contains the common people, then that which comprehends those of the same tribe, afterwards that which contains the citizens.… But the outermost and greatest circle, and which comprehends all the other circles, is that of the whole human race.… It is the province of him who strives to conduct himself properly in each of these connections to collect, in a certain respect, the circles, as it were, to one centre, and always to endeavor earnestly to transfer himself from the comprehending circles to the several particulars which they comprehend.

Hierocles even suggested how to behave in a way that helps us internalize the concept that the people in the various circles are of concern to us. For instance, he advised his students to refer to strangers as “brother” or “sister” or, if they were older, as “uncle” or “aunt,” as a constant reminder that we should treat other people as if they really are our relatives, as reason counsels that we are all in the same boat together, so to speak.

The idea is to train ourselves to treat people in the outer circles the way we treat people from the inner circles.

The Stoics perfected this idea of ethical development and called it oikeiôsis, which is often translated as “familiarization with” or “appropriation of” other people’s concerns as if they were our own. This led them (and the Cynics who immediately preceded them and influenced them greatly) to coin and use a word that is still crucial to our modern vocabulary: cosmopolitanism, which literally means “being a citizen of the world.”

The point of the analogy is that the ball itself, though central to the game and apparently the focus of everyone’s attention, is actually indifferent—meaning that it could take a variety of colors and shapes, be made of different materials, or be of different sizes, but it isn’t valuable in itself. The ball is only a means to an end and isn’t the important thing—it is what one does with the ball that defines the game, how well it is played, and who wins or loses.

The Stoics made a eudaimonic life a reachable goal for everyone, regardless of social status, financial resources, physical health, or degree of attractiveness. Although all of these qualities are indifferent to your ability to pursue a virtuous life—to become a morally worthy person—they are still preferred (just as any normal human being would readily tell you) so long as they don’t get in the way of your practice of the virtues.

“There is great difference between joy and pain;11 if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it. So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.”

If you follow Aristotle (and, let’s be frank, a lot of what passes for common sense), you need to be part of the lucky elite or you won’t have a good life. This outlook puts most people on the perennially losing side of things, condemning them to the pursuit of material goods because they mistakenly think that their happiness and worth depend on acquiring them. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill: you keep running, but you ain’t goin’ nowhere.

the Stoics can be thought of as pantheistic (or perhaps panentheistic8)—that is, as believing that God is the universe itself and therefore we all partake in the divine nature. The only difference between human beings and other animals is that we are capable of the highest attribute of God/Universe: reason. That is why the proper way to live our lives is by using reason to tackle our problems.

there is very little practical difference between this God and a simple acknowledgment (made by the Stoics) that the universe works through a web of cause and effect; this very modern concept is entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world as we understand it.

Are you instead an agnostic or atheist? If so, the Logos represents the indisputable fact that the cosmos really is organized rationally, even though we still do not know how such organization came about, whether by design or as a result of brute cause and effect. If this were not the case, then logic, mathematics, and science itself would go out the window, and you do believe in them, right?

The Stoics adopted Socrates’s classification of four aspects of virtue, which they thought of as four tightly interlinked character traits: (practical) wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Practical wisdom allows us to make decisions that improve our eudaimonia, the (ethically) good life. Courage can be physical, but more broadly refers to the moral aspect—for instance, the ability to act well under challenging circumstances, as Priscus and Malala did. Temperance makes it possible for us to control our desires and actions so that we don’t yield to excesses. Justice, for Socrates and the Stoics, refers not to an abstract theory of how society should be run, but rather to the practice of treating other human beings with dignity and fairness.

“The Pythagoreans bid us6 in the morning look to the heavens that we may be reminded of those bodies that continually do the same things and in the same manner perform their work, and also be reminded of their purity and nudity. For there is no veil over a star.”

Returning to the virtues, the broader point here is not that Stoicism somehow got it right while other traditions did not, but rather that human societies that have developed philosophies of life have repeatedly come up with remarkably similar lists of what we call virtues. I do not want to speculate on whether such convergence is rooted in the earlier biological evolution of humanity, though it is clear from studies in comparative primatology that we share with other species of primates a number of prosocial behaviors that we tend to call “moral.”

Whether it is biology, culture, or, more likely, a combination of both, the fact is that very disparate human societies, rooted in very distinct religious-philosophical traditions, all seem to value the same core group of character traits in their members, and these are the very same traits and attitudes that Stoics have been teaching about for more than two millennia.

The point is that nobody errs on purpose. Whatever we do, we think it is the right thing to do, according to whatever criterion we have developed or adopted to establish right action.

“evil” is often the result of lack of thought, meaning that people usually don’t want to do evil, and certainly don’t think of themselves as evildoers. But they also tend to follow the general opinion without critical analysis, and indeed—as in Eichmann’s case—they are often convinced that they are doing a good job.

people don’t do “evil” on purpose, they do it out of “ignorance.”

Intelligent stupidity “is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself.” The danger lies “not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, [and] any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings.” Instead, intelligent stupidity is a “spiritual sickness,” and in need of a spiritual cure.

“Why then are you indignant with her, because, unhappy woman, she is deluded on the greatest matters and is transformed from a human being into a serpent? Why do you not rather pity her—if so it may be? As we pity the blind and the lame, so should we pity those who are blinded and lamed in their most sovereign faculties. The man who remembers this, I say, will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile none, blame none, hate none, offend none.”

As we pity the blind and the lame, so should we pity those who are blinded and lamed in their most sovereign faculties. The man who remembers this, I say, will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile none, blame none, hate none, offend none.”

Epictetus advises pity, not indignation or anger, as our proper attitude toward Medea because she is not “evil,” whatever that may mean, but a person lacking something important, like a lame person (the same word Epictetus uses to describe his own condition).

If we internalize this Stoic attitude—or its equivalent in Buddhism or Christianity—we indeed will be angry or indignant with no one; there will be no one we revile, blame, hate, or are offended by.