Stoicism

Zeno of Citium, a Phoenician merchant whose ship had been wrecked off the Piraeus, took up philosophy in Athens around 312 BCE. He studied with the Cynic Crates, then with members of the Academy and the Megarian school. Around 300 BCE he began teaching in the Stoa Poikile — the Painted Porch on the agora's north side. His successors Cleanthes and Chrysippus systematised the doctrine; the school flourished for five centuries.

Three classical periods are usually distinguished. The Old Stoa (Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, c. 300–150 BCE) — its writings now mostly lost. The Middle Stoa (Panaetius, Posidonius, c. 150–50 BCE) — the school's transmission to Rome. The Roman Stoa (Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, c. 50 BCE–180 CE) — the period from which most surviving texts come.

The Stoics divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. The three are not separable; each presupposes the others.

1. Logic — including epistemology and propositional logic. Chrysippus's propositional logic was so subtle that his contemporaries said: "If the gods used logic, they would use the logic of Chrysippus."
2. Physics — the cosmos is a single living being, pervaded by an active rational principle (logos, also called pneuma or fire) that orders matter from within. Everything that happens, happens by causal necessity.
3. Ethics — the human task is to live in agreement with nature: which is to say, with the rational order of the cosmos and with our own rational nature.

From these foundations follow the famous Stoic ethical claims: that virtue is the only good; that externals (health, wealth, reputation, even death) are "indifferents," neither good nor bad; that the passions (passions, not feelings) are mistaken value-judgments to be uprooted.

Zeno of Citium c. 334 — 262 BCE

The founder. Wrote a now-lost Republic contrasting his ideal city with Plato's: a community of sages, with no temples, courts, money, marriage, or schools. The wise will love each other freely; the fool's possessions are worthless to the wise.

Cleanthes of Assos c. 330 — 230 BCE

Zeno's successor as scholarch. Carried water at night to support himself; wrote the Hymn to Zeus, a Stoic prayer that survives complete: "Lead me, O Zeus, and lead me, Destiny, to whatever goal you have appointed me. I shall follow without flinching; even if, in my wickedness, I shrink, I shall have to follow regardless."

Chrysippus of Soli c. 279 — 206 BCE

The school's greatest systematiser. Wrote 705 books (Diogenes Laertius lists titles); none survive intact, only fragments. Without Chrysippus, scholars say, the Stoa would have collapsed under the criticism of the Sceptical Academy. He sharpened the logic, defended causal determinism, and held that fate and human responsibility are compatible.

Born in Córdoba; senator in Rome; exiled by Claudius; tutor and minister to Nero; eventually ordered by his pupil to commit suicide. The 124 surviving Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium) are the most quotable text in the Stoic canon — short, personal, addressed to a specific friend, full of practical exercises.

The exercises

1. Praemeditatio malorum — premeditation of evils. Each morning rehearse the troubles of the day; meet them prepared.
2. Memento mori — every day a small portion of life is being subtracted. (Ep. 24)
3. Daily review — at the end of the day, examine what you did well and badly. (De Ira III.36)
4. The view from above — picture your life from a great height; the supposed disaster shrinks to its proportions.

Epictetus wrote nothing himself. His pupil Arrian preserved the lectures: the four surviving books of the Discourses (Διατριβαί) and the brief, brilliant Enchiridion (Handbook). The lectures begin with one of the most consequential opening passages in philosophy:

The dichotomy of control

From this dichotomy descends the whole of practical Stoicism. We suffer, Epictetus says, when we treat what is not up to us as if it were our own — and when we neglect what is up to us, our judgments and actions, treating them as if they were not. Reverse this confusion and the foundations of unhappiness are removed.

Three disciplines

1. The discipline of desire (assent) — accept what happens as part of the cosmic whole.
2. The discipline of action (impulse) — act with reserve, noting that outcomes are not in your power.
3. The discipline of judgment (assent again) — interrogate the impressions that present themselves; do not assent to false ones.

Roman Emperor from 161 CE; campaigning on the Danube against the Marcomanni; reading Epictetus in his tent at night. The Meditations (Greek: Ta eis heauton, "to himself") are twelve books of Stoic exercises kept by the most powerful man in the world for his own use. They are sometimes ragged, sometimes repetitive, often beautiful.

Themes

The brevity of life. The cyclical movement of nature. The unity of the cosmos. The duty of the citizen. The patience required for the foolishness of others (and oneself). The image of the good — recurring throughout — is the well-disposed mind that meets each event by saying: this too belongs to nature.

The standing Stoic argument that virtue is sufficient for happiness, in a form Cicero attributes to the school in De Finibus III.

1. Happiness (eudaimonia) is the human good.
2. The human good must depend on what is essentially human.
3. What is essentially human is reason — our capacity to assent or withhold from impressions.
4. This capacity is wholly within our own power.
5. Externals (health, wealth, life itself) are not within our own power.
6. If happiness depended on externals, it would not be reliable; the wise would be at fortune's mercy.
7. So happiness depends only on the right exercise of reason — that is, on virtue.
8. Virtue is sufficient for happiness; externals are "indifferents."

Critics — chiefly the Peripatetics, in Cicero's reports — pressed: surely some externals matter? Tortured on the rack, the wise person is not happy. The Stoic reply: the wise person on the rack has not lost virtue, and hence has not lost the good. The doctrine is austere by design. To soften it is to lose its point.

Preferred indifferents

The school did acknowledge that some indifferents are "preferred" (proēgmena): health, wealth, intact senses. Others are "dispreferred" (apoproēgmena): illness, poverty, mutilation. The wise person rationally pursues the preferred and avoids the dispreferred — but not as goods, only as material on which virtue acts.

Stoicism quietly grounds modern cognitive behavioural therapy. Albert Ellis (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, 1955) cited Epictetus directly: "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them." (Enchiridion 5) Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy (1960s) descends from the same observation. When a therapist asks, "what evidence is there for that thought?" the question is straight from the Stoic discipline of assent.

Stoicism has had an unusual recent commercial revival — a slice of Silicon Valley reading Marcus Aurelius and a slice of social media performing it. Some of this is shallow. Some is not. The doctrines, properly understood, ask much more than the slogans imply. They are not about steely indifference; they are about a particular education of attention, sustained over a lifetime, in the company of other people one cares about.

Cautions

The school's claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness can encourage a too-easy reconciliation with injustice ("not in your power"). Modern readers should keep Marcus's privilege in view; the slave Epictetus is, in some ways, the better guide. The Stoic emphasis on apatheia is not numbness; it is the absence of the pathos that comes from confused judgments. The wise feel; they are not blown about.

1. Morning premeditation. Rehearse the day's challenges; rehearse the dichotomy of control. (Marcus II.1)
2. The view from above. Picture your life as it would look from a great height. The dispute, the deadline, the slight — they shrink. (Marcus VII.48; IX.30)
3. Negative visualisation. Briefly contemplate losing what you love. Returning, you see it again. (Seneca, Ep. 91)
4. Examine impressions. When an impression strikes you with the force of "this is bad" — pause. Ask: is this in my power? Is this judgment correct? (Epictetus, Disc. III.12)
5. Evening review. Where did I go astray? What did I do well? What is left to do? (Seneca, De Ira III.36)
6. The whole. Remember you are part of the cosmos; what hurts the part may serve the whole. (Marcus II.3, V.8)
7. Memento mori. "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." (Marcus II.11)

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