How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

by Donald J. Robertson

When he was a young man, his best friend had passed away, leaving my father a farm in his will, to everyone’s surprise. He refused the bequest, returning the land to the other man’s family. He used to say, “Money won’t bring you happiness,” and he really believed that.

Most Freemasons are Christians, but they employ nondenominational language, referring to God as “the Great Architect of the Universe.”

most of my clients who suffered from anxiety or depression benefited from the realization that their distress was due to their underlying values. Everyone knows that when we believe very strongly that something very bad has happened, we typically become upset as a result. Likewise, if we believe that something is very good and desirable, we become anxious when it’s threatened or sad if it has already been lost.

For example, in order to feel social anxiety, you have to believe that other people’s negative opinions of you are worth getting upset about, that it’s really bad if they dislike you and really important to win their approval. Even people who suffer from severe social anxiety disorder (social phobia) tend to feel “normal” when speaking to children or to their close friends about trivial matters, with a few exceptions. Nevertheless, they feel highly anxious when talking to people they think are very important about subjects they think are very important. If your fundamental worldview, by contrast, assumes that your status in the eyes of others is of negligible importance, then it follows that you should be beyond the reach of social anxiety.

It very soon became evident to me that Stoicism was, in fact, the school of ancient Western philosophy with the most explicitly therapeutic orientation and the largest armamentarium, or toolbox, of psychological techniques at its disposal.

Indeed, CBT and Stoicism have some fundamental psychological assumptions in common, particularly the “cognitive theory of emotion,” which holds that our emotions are mainly determined by our beliefs.

In America, the marketer and entrepreneur Ryan Holiday embraced Stoicism in The Obstacle Is the Way (2014) and The Daily Stoic (2016, coauthored with Stephen Hanselman). In the UK, the illusionist and television celebrity Derren Brown later published a book called Happy (2017), which drew inspiration from the Stoics. These authors were reaching a whole new audience far beyond academia and introducing it to Stoicism as a form of self-help and a philosophy of life. The scientific skeptic and professor of philosophy Massimo Pigliucci published How to Be a Stoic in 2017. In the same year, Republican politician Pat McGeehan released Stoicism and the Statehouse. Stoicism was also being used in the military, as part of Colonel Thomas Jarrett’s Warrior Resilience Training. The NFL executive and former New England Patriots coach Michael Lombardi embraced it, and the philosophy began to gain more and more adherents from the world of sports. Stoicism was clearly experiencing a resurgence in popularity, and this was just the tip of the iceberg. Online communities for Stoics were flourishing, attracting hundreds of thousands of members across the internet.

She asked me how Socrates became so wise, and I told her the secret of his wisdom: he asked lots of questions about the most important things in life, and then he listened very carefully to the answers.

To learn how to die, according to the Stoics, is to unlearn how to be a slave.

Once we truly accept our own demise as an inescapable fact of life, it makes no more sense for us to wish for immortality than to long for bodies as hard as diamonds or to be able to soar on the wings of a bird.

As long as we can grasp the truth firmly enough that certain misfortunes are inevitable, we no longer feel the need to worry about them. Nor do we yearn for things that we accept are impossible, as long as we can see with crystal clarity that it is futile to do so.

As death is among the most certain things in life, to a man of wisdom it should b...

They felt the pain of loss but did not succumb to it.

Marcus has been bereaved so many times, has practiced his response to it so often, that he no longer weeps uncontrollably. He no longer cries “Why?” and “How could this happen?” or even entertains such thoughts. He has firmly grasped the truth that death is both a natural and inevitable part of life.

He still sheds tears and mourns losses, but as a wise man does. He no longer adds to his natural grief by complaining and shaking his fist at the universe.

From the moment we’re born we’re constantly dying, not only with each stage of life but also one day at a time. Our bodies are no longer the ones to which our mothers gave birth, as Marcus put it. Nobody is the same person he was yesterday. Realizing this makes it easier to let go: we can no more hold on to life than grasp the waters of a rushing stream.

Today many students of Stoicism adopt a similar attitude: they’re attracted to the Stoic worldview but prefer to “update” it by drawing upon a wider range of arguments from modern science and philosophy.

The original Stoic school survived for a couple of centuries before apparently fragmenting—into three different branches, according to one author.

The celebrated Roman general who destroyed Carthage, Scipio Africanus the Younger, became a student of the last scholarch of the Stoic school at Athens, Panaetius of Rhodes. In the second century BC, Scipio gathered around himself a group of intellectuals at Rome known as the Scipionic Circle, which included his close friend Laelius the Wise, another influential Roman Stoic.

if something can be used for either good or evil, it cannot truly be good in itself, so it should be classed as “indifferent” or neutral. The Stoics would say that things like health, wealth, and reputation are, at most, advantages or opportunities rather than being good in themselves.

Social, material, and physical advantages actually give foolish individuals more opportunity to do harm to themselves and others. Look at lottery winners. Those who squander their sudden wealth often end up more miserable than they could have imagined. When handled badly, external advantages like wealth do more harm than good.

The Stoics would go further: the wise and good man may flourish even when faced with sick...

The true goal of life for Stoics isn’t to acquire as many external advantages as possible but to use whatever befalls us wisely, whether it be sickness or health, wealth or poverty, friends or enemies. The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the foo...

Another popular misconception today is that Stoics are unemotional. The ancient Stoics themselves consistently denied this, saying that their ideal was not to be like a man of iron or to have a heart of stone. In fact, they distinguished between three types of emotion: good, bad, and indifferent. They had names for many different types of good passion (eupatheiai), a term encompassing both desires and emotions, which they grouped under three broad headings: 1. A profound sense of joy or gladness and peace of mind, which comes from living with wisdom and virtue 2. A healthy feeling of aversion to vice, like a sense of conscience, honor, dignity, or integrity 3. The desire to help both ourselves and others, through friendship, kindness, and goodwill

Hadrian nicknamed the boy Verissimus, meaning “truest” or “most truthful,” a play on his family name of Verus, which means “true.”

Hadrian was a talented, passionate, and mercurial man, the sort of person you’d describe as very clever, but not necessarily wise.

Arrian, who wrote down and edited The Discourses and Handbook. As we’ll see, Arrian rose to prominence during Hadrian’s reign.

Epictetus, in typical Stoic fashion, continually warned his students not to confuse academic learning with wisdom and to avoid petty arguments, hairsplitting, or wasting time on abstract, academic topics. He emphasized the fundamental difference between a Sophist and a Stoic: the former speaks to win praise from his audience, the latter to improve them by helping them to achieve wisdom and virtue.3

Indeed, philosophy in the ancient world was first and foremost a way of life. Today, “academic philosophy” as taught in universities has turned into a much more bookish and theoretical pursuit. Ancient philosophers, by contrast, were often recognizable because of their lifestyle and even the way they dressed. The Stoics, like the Cynics before them, traditionally wore a single garment called a tribon in Greek. This rudimentary cloak or shawl, made from undyed wool usually of a grayish color, was worn wrapped around the body, often with the shoulders exposed. Certain philosophers, like Socrates and the Cynics, also walked barefoot. Some Roman philosophers still dressed like this, although the style was perhaps occasionally viewed as antiquated and an affectation.

We’re told that Plato’s saying was always on Marcus’s lips: those states prospered where the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers.

In other words, a certain amount of anxiety is natural. Indeed, the hearts of even the most experienced sailors might leap into their mouths when their ship looks like it’s about to be overturned. Bravery would consist in carrying on regardless and dealing with the situation rationally. The Stoic likewise tells himself that although the situation may appear frightening, the truly important thing in life is how he chooses to respond. So he reminds himself to view the storm with Stoic indifference and to respond with wisdom and courage while accepting his initial nervous reaction as harmless and inevitable. What he does not do, though, is make things worse for himself by continuing to worry.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Stoic rhetoric identified five “virtues” of speech: 1. Correct grammar and good vocabulary 2. Clarity of expression, making the ideas easily understood 3. Conciseness, employing no more words than necessary 4. Appropriateness of style, suited to the subject matter and apparently also to the audience 5. Distinction, or artistic excellence, and the avoidance of vulgarity

The Stoics were certainly interested in how our words affect others. However, their priority was to change the way we affect ourselves, our own thoughts and feelings, through our choice of language. We exaggerate, overgeneralize, omit information, and use strong language and colorful metaphors: “She’s always being a bitch!” “That bastard shot me down in flames!” “This job is complete bullshit!” People tend to think that exclamations like these are a natural consequence of strong emotions like anger. But what if they’re also causing or perpetuating our emotions? If you think about it, rhetoric like this is designed to evoke strong feelings. By contrast, undoing the effects of emotional rhetoric by describing the same events more objectively forms the basis of the ancient Stoic therapy of the passions.

The way we talk and think about events involves making value judgments, which shape our feelings. Shakespeare’s Hamlet exclaims, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

Zeno coined the Stoic technical term phantasia kataleptike to refer to this Stoic way of viewing events objectively, separating value judgments from facts. Pierre Hadot translates it as “objective representation,” which is the term we’ll use.29 However, it literally means an impression that gets a grip on reality and thereby prevents us from being swept along by our passions. It anchors our thoughts in reality.

An event like losing your job is not inherently catastrophic; we don’t just passively perceive how bad it is. Rather, we actively catastrophize it, turning it into a catastrophe by imposing a value judgment upon it that blows things out of proportion.

If you believe that the threat outweighs your ability to cope and the seesaw tips toward danger, then you’ll probably feel extremely stressed or anxious. On the other hand, if you reckon that the severity of the threat is low and your ability to cope is high, then the seesaw will tip toward you, and you should feel calm and self-confident. The Stoics, like modern therapists, tried to modify both sides of this equation.

In addition to visualizing people to model their behavior, we can also model their attitudes. Stoics might ask themselves, “What would Socrates or Zeno say about this?” You can imagine your personal role model—or even a whole panel of Stoic Sages—giving you advice. What would they tell you to do? What advice would they give? What would they have to say about how you’re currently handling a problem? Pose these types of questions to yourself as you picture them in your imagination and try to formulate what the response would be. Turn it into a longer discussion if that helps. Again, if you’re modeling Marcus Aurelius, ask “What would Marcus say?”

Modeling is typically followed by the “mental rehearsal” of behavior change: picturing yourself acting more like your role models or imagining yourself following their advice. This often takes several attempts. Think of it as trial-and-error learning. Imagine yourself coping with the challenges you expect to face and exhibiting the virtues you want to learn.

Enjoying the suffering of others is bad. Taking pleasure in watching men risk death or serious injury would therefore be considered a vice by the Stoics. In contrast, enjoying seeing people flourish is good. You might think that’s obvious; however, we can be blinded by pleasure to its consequences for both others and ourselves.

Modern English isn’t well equipped to capture some of the distinctions made in ancient Greek philosophy, especially when it comes to describing emotions and sensations. We use the word “pleasure” very broadly to encompass almost any positive feeling. However, the Stoics distinguished between the sort of pleasure (hedone) we get from “external” things like food or sex or flattery and the deeper sense of inner joy (chara) that Marcus is talking about. Stoic joy is profound. It comes from achieving your fundamental goal in life and experiencing genuine fulfillment, which make ordinary pleasures seem trivial by comparison. Ordinary pleasures often ruffle our minds, especially when indulged in too much. Stoic joy never does this—it’s synonymous with inner peace and knows no excess.9 The Stoics refer to it as the pure form of “joy” that someone experiences who is living a truly great life and has attained genuine personal fulfillment (eudaimonia). Of course, none of us are there yet, but all of us may, potentially, glimpse the goal as long as we’re heading in the right direction.

The Greek word for joy (chara) is closely related to that for gratitude (charis). Indeed, the Stoics encourage you to appreciate the external things Fortune has given you. Marcus cautions, however, that you must exercise moderation in this regard. You should not fall into the habit of overvaluing external things and becoming overly attached to them. You can check this, he says, by asking yourself whether you would be upset if the things you value were ever taken away. The Stoics wanted to develop a healthy sense of gratitude in life, unspoiled by attachment. So they practiced calmly imagining change and loss, like a river gently flowing past, carrying things away. The wise man loves life and is grateful for the opportunities it gives him, but he accepts that everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Marcus therefore wrote that it is a characteristic of the Stoic Sage “to love and welcome all that happens to him and is spun for him as his fate.”13 People today often feel that this is similar to a famous Latin phrase coined by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: amor fati, or love of one’s fate.

The Stoics emphasize gratitude, but they also accept that there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in healthy experiences, as long as it’s not carried to excess. As mentioned earlier, they certainly didn’t think that pleasurable experiences were a bad thing. Rather, pleasure, and its sources, is morally “indifferent,” neither good nor bad.

Socrates had likewise claimed, paradoxically, that those who practice self-control actually obtain more pleasure from things like food and drink than those who indulge in them to excess. Hunger is the best relish, he said, whereas if we overeat we spoil our appetites.

However, an even deeper paradox lies in the notion that, ultimately, the virtue of self-discipline itself might become a greater source of “pleasure” than food or other external objects of our desire. More accurately, exercising moderation may become a source of personal satisfaction and inner fulfillment that outweighs the ordinary pleasures it seeks to overcome. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re talking about self-discipline that’s exercised wisely, not any sort of self-denial that might actually be foolish or unhealthy. For Stoics the intrinsic value of wisdom, as an end in itself, always surpasses everything else, including the pleasure and other external benefits that may accrue as the result of living wisely. Those are more like an added bonus than the real goal of life.

However, spending too much time chasing empty pleasures can also prevent us from pursuing activities that we may find genuinely rewarding, such as living more fully in alignment with our core values. Arguably, that’s the most serious problem of all.

Nobody has ever had the words “I wish I’d watched more television” or “I wish I’d spent more time on Facebook” engraved on their tombstone. If these empty and passive pleasures provide no lasting sense of fulfillment or satisfaction, the Stoics would caution us against spending too much time on them.

In particular, people suffering from clinical depression may find that unsatisfying pleasures have come to replace the more fulfilling activities that once gave their lives meaning. They can easily end up becoming forms of distraction or sources of emotional numbing.

I’m going to recommend a simple framework for evaluating and changing your behavior based on a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy and ancient Stoic practices. It consists of the following steps: 1. Evaluate the consequences of your habits or desires in order to select which ones to change. 2. Spot early warning signs so that you can nip problematic desires in the bud. 3. Gain cognitive distance by separating your impressions from external reality. 4. Do something else instead of engaging in the habit.

In addition, consider how you might introduce other sources of healthy positive feelings by: 1. Planning new activities that are consistent with your core values. 2. Contemplating the qualities you admire in other people. 3. Practicing gratitude for the things you already have in life.