The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

by Ward Farnsworth

A productive last question one might ask about Stoicism is: compared to what? Suppose – plausibly, I think – that typical students of Stoicism advance only slightly toward its goals. They end up with a little less anxiety over what they can’t control, and a little more patience with irritation, indignity, and misfortune; a bit more resistance to convention in their thinking, and somewhat less desire or fear directed at things undeserving of either, and so forth. In other words, they make some modest progress. There are those who get more than that from the philosophy, and some get less, but imagine that this much were a common result. Those are paltry gains compared to the attainment of sagehood, but considerable compared to a baseline without them. They are considerable, too, compared to the results of other kinds of philosophical study (how much more does any philosophy do for its students?). It would be foolish to regard small improvements with contempt when it is so rare to find any other kind. So if Stoics seek great things but get only part way there, the discrepancy should not cause them to be thought of as hypocrites. They aimed high, fell short, and did well.