The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

Our experience of the world is our own doing, not the world’s doing, and the Stoic means to take responsibility for it. (Chapter 1.)

We should stake our well-being on what we can control and let go of attachment to what we cannot.

Stoicism therefore means applying one’s imagination to developments that seem unwelcome and using them as a kind of building material. The Stoic takes whatever happens and puts it to use. (Chapter 10.)

The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us.

If any external thing causes you distress, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now.

The Stoic claim, in other words, is that our pleasures, griefs, desires and fears all involve three stages rather than two: not just an event and a reaction, but an event, then a judgment or opinion about it, and then a reaction (to the judgment or opinion). Our task is to notice the middle step, to understand its frequent irrationality, and to control it through the patient use of reason.

We always feel as though we react to things in the world; in fact we react to things in ourselves. And sometimes changing ourselves will be more effective and sensible than trying to change the world.

1. The general principle. Stoicism starts with the idea that our experience of the world – our reactions, fears, desires, all of it – is not produced by the world. It is produced by what the Stoics call our judgments, or opinions.

Everything depends on opinion. Ambition, luxury, greed, all look back to opinion; it is according to opinion that we suffer. Each man is as wretched as he has convinced himself he is. Seneca, Epistles 78.13

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about those things.

There is only one road to happiness – let this rule be at hand morning, noon, and night: stay detached from things that are not up to you.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them.

“But why does God sometimes allow evil to befall good men?” Assuredly he does not. Evil of every sort he keeps far from them – shameful acts and crimes, evil counsel and schemes for greed, blind lust and avarice intent on another’s goods. The good man himself he protects and delivers. Does anyone require of God that he should also guard the good man’s luggage? No, the good man himself relieves God of this concern; he despises externals.

The day a man becomes subject to pleasure, he will also be subject to pain. And you see what wretched and hateful slavery a person is in when pleasures and pains – those most capricious and tyrannical masters – take captive of him in turn.

Soon you will have forgotten everything; soon everything will have forgotten you. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.21

Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself, and its beauty is self-contained. Praise is not part of it; nothing is made better or worse by being praised. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.20

Remember that you are insulted not by the person who strikes or abuses you but by your opinion that these things are insulting. So whenever another provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion that has provoked you. Epictetus, Enchiridion 20

What is it to be insulted? Stand by a stone and insult it; what will you gain? And if you listen like a stone, what will be gained by one who insults you? But if he has a stepping-stone in the weakness of his victim, then he accomplishes something. Epictetus, Discourses 1.25.28

So long as any word or deed is true to nature, consider it worthy of you, and do not be distracted by the comments or criticisms of others. If it is the right thing to say or do, don’t disparage yourself for saying or doing it. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.3 Someone will disdain me? That is his concern. My concern is that I not be found doing or saying anything worthy of disdain. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.13 Whatever someone might say about you, pay no attention; it is no concern of yours. Epictetus, Enchiridion 50

is the mark of a great mind to rise above insults; the most humiliating kind of revenge is to treat your adversary as not worth taking revenge upon. Many have taken slight injuries too deeply to heart in the course of punishing them. The great and noble are those who, like a lordly beast, listen unmoved to the barking of little dogs. Seneca, On Anger 2.32.3

If someone was going to put your body into the hands of anyone who happened to come along, you would be vexed. But that you entrust your mind to whoever you happen to meet, so that if he insults you, your mind is disturbed and confounded – aren’t you ashamed of that? Epictetus, Enchiridion 28

What others may speak of you, let them worry about it – for speak they will. And all that talk will be confined to those narrow regions that you see, nor did it ever last long about anyone, but it is buried with the deaths of men and extinguished in the forgetfulness of future ages. Cicero, On the Republic 6.25

If you hear that someone has spoken ill of you, do not make excuses about what was said, but answer: “Evidently he didn’t know about my other faults, or he wouldn’t have spoken only of the ones he did.”

Why is it that we are not stirred up when we meet someone whose body is disfigured or disabled, yet cannot tolerate a deformed mind without being enraged? Such vicious severity reflects more on the critic than on the defect. Montaigne, Of the Art of Conference

Among the other misfortunes of humanity there is this one too – a darkness of our minds, not so much a compulsion to go wrong as a desire to do so. Lest you be angry with men individually, you must pardon mankind as a whole, you must grant indulgence to the human race. Seneca, On Anger 2.10.1–

Keep this in mind, that each of us lives only this present and indivisible moment. Everything else has either already been lived or is uncertain. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.10

Whenever you take offense at someone else’s fault, turn immediately to find the fault most similar in yourself – such as attachment to money, or pleasure, or reputation, or whatever it might be. In seeing this, you will quickly forget your anger; it will occur to you that he was forced to act that way. For what else could he do? Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.30

Now, am I urging you to be hard-hearted, do I ask that you betray no emotion at the funeral, do I refuse to let your spirit even be touched? Not at all. It would be barbarous, not courageous, to watch the burial rites of one’s own – with the same eyes that watched them while living – and not be moved as one’s family is first torn apart. Suppose I did forbid it: some things have rights of their own. Tears fall even from those trying to hold them back; being shed, they lift the spirit. What, then, shall we do? Let us allow them to fall, but not order them to do so; let there be as much weeping as emotion may produce, not as much as imitation may demand. Let us add nothing to grief, nor enlarge it to match the example of someone else.

We cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose how to react to

The mind turns around every hindrance to its activity and converts it to further its purpose. The impediment to action becomes part of the action; the obstacle in our way becomes the way forward. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.20