The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

I will offer here my general view that many critics of Stoicism treat it uncharitably. They seize on the most extreme things the Stoics said but don’t account for ways in which those points were offset or qualified elsewhere. Or they judge the whole philosophy by its least appealing adherents or features or moments. That’s too bad, not because it is unfair to the Stoics (they don’t care), but because it distracts from all that they said that was better. But the criticisms still stick. Many of those who have a view about Stoicism base it on what they have heard, and what they have heard is calumny. Or they associate Stoicism with some single idea that seemed memorable when they heard it, probably because it was jarring. If you study the subject and talk about it with others who haven’t, you quickly will see for yourself. Opinions about Stoicism outrun knowledge of it by a hundred to one.