What kind of ethic is expounded by marcus aurelius

Once the contradiction is brought out, it becomes clear which of the two alternatives a Stoic must plump for, and what follows about the attitudes he must consequently adopt towards the world and every part of it. For example, at iv. Often, however, Marcus does not have to spell this out. So Marcus is telling his grumbling self: your grumbling is evidence of impiety, evidence of your being like an Epicurean—except that actual Epicureans are more philosophical and do not grumble about an irrational cosmos bringing them bad luck, but rather, try themselves to live rationally.

Perhaps bringing about the desired attitude calls for making hyperbolic statements in order to correct for some natural tendency he thinks he has. If we do not keep this in mind as we read Marcus, we will only find contradictions, tensions, and ambivalences and we will conclude that Marcus is an eclectic and imprecise thinker. According to Stoic epistemology, things in the world impress images of themselves on human and animal souls, as shapes can impress themselves on a wax tablet.

Human beings may also assent to or withhold assent from these impressions; judgments are the result of our assenting to impressions, or more precisely to the propositional articulations of our impressions. While assent is voluntary, impressions are not cf. Epictetus fr. What Marcus is telling himself to erase, Hadot says, is value-judgments about everything external to his character. Hadot thinks Marcus is simply confused in using the term phantasia for these judgments the correct term, which he sometimes uses [cf.

Yet the distinction between objective physical facts and subjective value judgments seems more existentialist than Stoic—for the Stoics value is objective, and indeed Marcus repeatedly exults in the beauty and goodness of the cosmos as a whole.

We should not assume that the evaluations are all added by us, the subjects, to the impression, for the Stoics think that there are evaluative impressions, cf. And it is also right that Marcus often deals with things that are conventionally accorded high value in reductive material terms. So, for example, he writes,. Take for instance the impression in the case of relishes and such edibles, that this one is the corpse of a fish, and that one of a bird or a pig.

Such are the impressions that get at things and go right into them, so that one sees how each thing really is. Indeed, Marcus himself describes what he is doing here as defining what each thing is stripped naked, and enumerating the components into which it disintegrates iii. However, this is only one of two complementary ways Marcus deals with his impressions. The other is to consider things that are conventionally disvalued in their larger context, so as to show what good they serve.

Indeed, the passage recommending the examination of each thing stripped naked continues,. Here Marcus is recommending, for the purpose of correct appreciation of the value of things, the reintegration of each thing into its cosmic context. The physical description of each thing is not a description of its naked physical appearance when isolated from everything else, but its reintegration into the beautiful and intelligent design of the cosmos. So Marcus writes,.

Again, figs, when they are ripest, gape open … and many other things, if one were to look at them individually, would be far from beautiful of appearance, but nevertheless, on account of their following things that come to be by nature, are well-ordered and educate our soul.

Insight into what is in accordance with nature is gained by determining, for each thing that obtains, its contribution to, or functional role in, the cosmos rather than by looking at what regularly happens, or what happens with healthy specimens, etc. And once one understands this functional contribution, one is able to see the value of each thing, how beautifully it contributes to a well-designed whole.

Now that we have a sense of what erased impressions are to be replaced with, we can return to the questions of what is to be erased, and what it is to be erased. Marcus does seem to speak indifferently about judgments and impressions: he tells himself to erase his impressions, and he tells himself to remove opinion iv. These are all accepted uses of the term. That Marcus may find the same defects of perspective in impressions is suggested indirectly by the corrections he prescribes: inspect your impressions ii.

In xii. Always look at the whole: what that thing is that gives you such an impression, and undo it, distinguishing it into its cause, its matter, its point, the time within which it must come to a stop. Perhaps making the second mark requires erasing the first—or perhaps making the second mark is a means of erasing the first, for it may be that the withholding of assent from compelling impressions requires countering them with others. This seems unfair, if impressions are entirely involuntary.

Marcus may think that while involuntary in the moment, impressions are subject to control in the long run. Perhaps if I keep refusing to assent to my present impression that wealth is good, wealth will eventually cease to appear to me as good. As mentioned above 1. It would be worth working this out for others of his frequent remarks, such as that we are tiny and temporary fragments in the cosmos, that death takes us all in the end, that we ought to live purposively rather than like mechanical toys.

Epictetus ethics: ancient political philosophy: ancient Seneca skepticism: ancient Stoicism. Life and Works 1. Living Stoically 2. Justice: Acting for the Sake of the Cosmopolis 4. Living Stoically Although he acknowledges that he struggles to live as a philosopher, Marcus urges himself to that life, spelling out what it involves in Stoic terms: …you are no longer able to have lived your whole life as a philosopher since youth; and it is clear to many others and to you yourself that you are far from philosophy.

Justice: Acting for the Sake of the Cosmopolis Marcus says that one should be concerned with two things only: acting justly and loving what is allotted one x. Piety: Welcoming What Happens as Part of the Whole Marcus writes, Every nature is satisfied with itself when it goes along its way well, and the rational nature goes along its way well when it assents to nothing false or unclear among its impressions, when it directs impulses to communal actions, when it generates desires and inclinations for only those things that are in our power, and when it welcomes everything apportioned to it by common nature.

So, for example, he writes, Take for instance the impression in the case of relishes and such edibles, that this one is the corpse of a fish, and that one of a bird or a pig. Indeed, the passage recommending the examination of each thing stripped naked continues, … nothing is so productive of greatness of mind as to be able to examine, systematically and in truth, each of the things that befall us in life, and to look always at it so as to consider what sort of use chreia it provides for what sort of cosmos and what value axia it has for the whole, and what in relation to the human being, they being a citizen of the highest city, of which other cities are like households iii.

Conclusion As mentioned above 1. Ad se ipsum libri XII , J. Dalfen ed. Marcus Aurelius , C. Haines ed. Trannoy ed. Hadot and C. Luna eds. Farquharson ed. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Books 1—6 , C. Gill trans. Marcus Cornelius Fronto 2 volumes , C. Pomeroy ed. Cicero, On Ends , H. Rackham trans. Miller trans. Hicks trans. Epictetus, Discourses, Manual and Fragments 2 volumes , W. Oldfather trans. Plato, Complete Works , J. Cooper and D. Hutchinson eds. Seneca VI, Letters 93—, R.

Gummere trans. Collected Fragments Long, A. Sedley, Von Arnim, H. Secondary Literature Ackeren, M. Ackeren, M. Annas, J. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science , 2: — Asmis, E. Barney, R. Brennan, T. Brunt, P. Cooper, J. Farquharson, A.

Gourinat, J. A Companion to Marcus Aurelius , — Hadot, P. Chase trans. Klein, J. Reydams-Schils, G. Sedley highlights two Stoic philosophers of the late First Century B.

Still, it is certainly the case that the best known Stoics of the time were either teachers like Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, or politically active, like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, thus shaping our understanding of the period as a contrast to the foundational and more theoretical one of Zeno and Chrysippus.

Importantly, it is from the late Republic and Empire that we also get some of the best indirect sources on Stoicism, particularly several books by Cicero ; for example. And this literature went on to influence later writers well after the decline of Stoicism, particularly Plotinus C. Neoplatonist Simplicius. The sources of such vitality were fundamentally two: on the one hand charismatic teachers like Musonius and Epictetus, and on the other hand influential political figures like Seneca and Marcus.

Others were not so lucky: Stoic philosophers suffered a series of persecutions from displeased emperors, which resulted in murders or exile for a number of them, especially during the reigns of Nero, Vespasian and Domitian.

If then there is an invincible necessity, why do you resist? But if there is a Providence that allows itself to be propitiated, make yourself worthy of the help of the divinity. More is said about this specific topic in the section on Stoic metaphysics and teleology. There is ample evidence, then, that Stoicism was alive and well during the Roman period, although the emphasis did shift—somewhat naturally, one might add—from laying down the fundamental ideas to refining them and putting them into practice, both in personal and social life.

One should understand the evolution of all Hellenistic schools of philosophy as being the result of continuous dialogue amongst themselves, a dialogue that often led to partial revisions of positions within any given school, or to the adoption of a modified notion borrowed from another school Gill To have an idea of how this played out for Stoicism, let us briefly consider a few examples, related to the interactions between Stoicism and Epicureanism, Aristotelianism, and Platonism—without forgetting the direct influence that Cynicism had on the very birth of Stoicism and all the way to Epictetus.

For example, Discourses I. A longer section, II. You might almost say that nothing proves the validity of a statement more than finding someone forced to use it while at the same time denying that it is sound. When you eat, where do you bring your hand—to your mouth, or to your eye?

What do you step into when you bathe? When did you ever mistake your saucepan for a dish, or your serving spoon for a skewer? So what, according to you, is good or bad, virtuous or vicious—this or that?

Even so, not all Stoics rejected either Academic or Epicurean ideas altogether. For my part, however, nothing seems to me more manifest than that there is more of a real than a verbal difference of opinion between those philosophers on these points. There are well documented examples of Stoic opinions changing in direct response to challenges from other schools, for instance the modified position on determinism that was adopted by Philopator C. We also have clear instances of Stoic ideas being incorporated by other schools, as in the case of Antiochus of Ascalon B.

We will take a closer look to each topos in turn, but it is first important to see why and how they are connected. Stoicism was a practical philosophy, the chief goal of which was to help people live a eudaimonic life, which the Stoics identified with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues next section.

Later in the Roman period the emphasis shifted somewhat to the achievement of apatheia , but this too was possible because of the practice of the topos of ethics. Logic and Physics are related to Ethics because Stoicism is a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. Perhaps the most famous of such analogies is the one using an egg, where the shell is the Logic, the white the Ethics, and red part the Physics. However, given how the three topoi were meant to relate to each other, this is probably misleading, possibly due to a misunderstanding of the biology of eggs the Physics is supposed to be nurturing the Ethics, which means that the former should be the white and the latter the red part of the egg.

The best simile in my mind is that of a garden: the fence is the Logic—defending the precious inside and defining its boundaries; the fertile soil is the Physics—providing the nutritive power by way of knowledge of the world; and the resulting fruits are the Ethics—the actual focal objective of Stoic teachings.

While the Stoics disagreed on the sequence in which the three topoi should be presented to students that is, just like faculty in a modern university, they had contrasting opinions about the merits of different curricula! This section describes the first two topoi and the next describe Ethics. Stoics made important early contributions to both epistemology Hankinson and logic proper Bobzien , and much has, deservedly, been written about it.

While Stoics held that the Sage, who was something of an ideal figure, could achieve perfect knowledge of things, in practice they relied on a concept of cognitive progress, as well as moral progress, since both logic and physics are related to, and indeed function in the service of, ethics.

Diogenes Laertius explains the difference VII. Chrysippus even suggested that it is important to absorb a number of impressions, since it is the accumulation of impressions that leads to concept-formation and to making progress. In this sense, the Stoic account of knowledge was eminently empiricist in nature, and—especially after relentless Skeptical critiques—relied on something akin to what moderns call inference to the best explanation Lipton , as in their conclusion that our skin must have holes based on the observation that we sweat.

It is important to realize that a cataleptic impression is not quite knowledge. The Stoics distinguished among opinion weak, or false , apprehension characterized by an intermediate epistemic value , and knowledge which is based on firm impressions unalterable by reason. Giving assent to a cataleptic impression is a step on the way to actual knowledge, but the latter is more structured and stable than any single impression could be.

Hankinson comments on an interesting aspect of the dispute between Stoics and Academic Skeptics, concerning the epistemic warrant to be granted to cataleptic impressions. If clarity and distinctiveness are internal features of cataleptic impressions, then these are phenomenal features, and it is easy to come up with counterexamples where they do not seem to work for instance, the common occurrence of mistaking one member of a pair of twins for the other one.

This is where we encounter one of the many episodes of growth of Stoic thought in response to external pressure. Cicero tells us , in Academica II. Frede advanced the further view that what makes a cataleptic impression clear and distinct is not any internal feature of that impression, but rather an external causal feature related to its origin.

According to this account, then, Stoic epistemology is externalist for example, Almeder , rather than internalist for example, Goldman Indeed, there is evidence that they became—again as a result of criticism from the Skeptics—reliabilists about knowledge Goldman Athenaeus tells of the story of Sphaerus, a student of Cleanthes and colleague of Chrysippus, who was shown at a banquet what turned out to be birds made of wax. After he reached to pick one up he was accused of having given assent to a false impression.

To which he—rather cleverly, but indicatively—replied that he had merely assented to the proposition that it was reasonable to think of the objects as actual birds, not to the stronger claim that they actually were birds. To simplify quite a bit but see Bobzien for a somewhat in-depth treatment , Stoic syllogistics was built on five basic types of syllogisms, and complemented by four rules for arguments that could be deployed to reduce all other types of syllogisms to one of the basic five.

The assertibles then are self-complete sayables that we use to make statements. It is also important to note that truth or falsehood are properties of assertibles, and indeed that being either true or false is a necessary and sufficient condition for being an assertible that is, one cannot assert, or make statements about, things that are neither true nor false. The Stoics were concerned with the validity of arguments, not with logical theorems or truths per se, which again is understandable in light of their interest to use logic to guard the fruits of their garden, the ethics.

They also introduced modality into their logic , most importantly the modal properties of necessity, possibility, non-possibility, impossibility, plausibility and probability. This was a very modern and practically useful approach, as it directed attention to the fact that some assertibles induce assent even though they may be false, as well as to the observation that some assertibles have a higher likelihood of being true than not.

Finally, the Stoics, and Chrysippus in particular, were sensitive to and attempted to provide an account of logical paradoxes such as the Liar and Sorites cases along lines that we today recognize as related to a semantic of vagueness Tye The Stoic topos of Physics includes what we today would classify as natural science White , metaphysics Brunschwig , and theology Algra Let us briefly look at each in turn.

This also implies a very different view of natural science from the modern one: its study is not an end in itself, but rather subordinate to help us live a eudaimonic life. Stoics thought that everything real, that is, everything that exists, is corporeal—including God and soul. The active principle is un-generated and indestructible, while the passive one—which is identified with the four classical elements of water, fire, earth and air—is destroyed and recreated at every, eternally recurring, cosmic conflagration, a staple of Stoic cosmology.

The cosmos itself is a living being, and its rational principle Logos is identified with aether, or the Stoic Fire not to be confused with the elemental fire that is part of the passive principle. Consequently, God is immanent in the universe, and it is in fact identified with the creative cosmic Fire.

This also means that the Stoics, unlike the Aristotelians, did not recognize the concept of a prime mover, nor of a Christian-type God outside of time and space, on the ground that something incorporeal cannot act on things, because it has no causal powers.

From all of this, as White puts it, emerges a biological, rather than a mechanical picture of causation, which is significantly different from post-Cartesian and Newtonian mechanical philosophy.

It is interesting to muse about the fact that some modern cosmological models also predict either identical or varied recurring universes Ungerer and Smolin , but of course do away with the concept of Providence altogether. Cicero, in De Fato , lays out the Stoic theory of causality and actually equates fate with antecedent causes. Chrysippus had argued that there is no possibility of motion without causes, deducing that therefore everything has a cause.

This concept of universal causality led the Stoics to accept divination as a branch of physics, not a superstition, as explained again by Cicero in De Divinatione , and this makes sense once one understands the Stoic view of the cosmos: predicting the future is not something that one does by going outside the laws of physics, but by intelligently exploiting such laws.

Metaphysically the Stoics were determinists Frede The Stoics did have a concept of chance, but they thought of it much like modern scientists as a measure of human ignorance: random events are simply events whose causes are not understood by humans. The consequences of Stoic physics for their ethics are clear, and are summarized again by Cicero, when he says that Chrysippus aimed at a middle position between what we today would call strict incompatibilism and libertarianism Griffith White interestingly notes in this respect that—just like Spinoza—the Stoics shifted the emphasis from moral responsibility to moral worth and dignity.

Stoic Ethics was not just another theoretical subject, but an eminently practical one. The early Stoics were somewhat more theoretical in their approach, with Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus attempting to both systematize their doctrines and defend them from critiques from both Epicurean and especially Academic-Skeptic quarters. For the Stoics human beings have natural propensities to develop morally, propensities that begin as what we today would call instincts and can then be greatly refined with the onset of the age of reason at the childhood stage and beyond.

The Stoics related these propensities directly to the four cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, justice and practical wisdom. Which brings us to the matter of how the virtues are related to each other. To begin with, the Stoics recognized the above mentioned four cardinal virtues, but also a number of more specific ones within each major category complete list in Sharpe , derived from Stobaeus : for instance, practical wisdom included good judgment, discretion, resourcefulness; temperance could be broken down into propriety, sense of honor, self-control; courage was divided into perseverance, confidence, magnanimity; and justice comprised piety, kindness, sociability.

Even so, they held to a view of virtue that is much more unitary than it may come across from this kind of list Schoefield Justice can be conceptualized as practical wisdom applied to social living; courage as wisdom concerning endurance; and temperance as wisdom with regard to matters of choice. Chrysippus further elaborated this idea of pluralism within an underlying unity, making the virtues essentially inseparable, so that, say, one cannot be courageous and yet intemperate—in the Stoic sense of those words.

Hadot draws a series of parallels between the four virtues, the three topoi and what are referred to as the three Stoic disciplines: desire, action, and assent. The discipline of desire, sometimes referred to as Stoic acceptance, is derived from the study of physics, and in particular from the idea of universal cause and effect.

It consists in training oneself to desire what the universe allows and not to pursue what it does not allow. The basic idea is that human beings ought to develop their natural concern for others in a way that is congruent with the exercise of the virtue of justice.

Here the area of study most directly connected to the discipline is that of ethics itself. Teach them then or bear with them. I will get back to the concept of assent in the next section, as it is related to the Stoic treatment of the moral psychology of emotions, but for now suffice to say that the discipline regards the necessity to make decisions about what to accept or reject of our experience of the world, that is, how to make proper judgments.

It is therefore linked to the virtue of practical wisdom, as well as to the area of study of logic. As we have seen so far, Stoic ethics is concerned exclusively with the concept of virtue and associated disciplines —whether understood as a unitary thing with a number of facets or otherwise. In this the Stoics were akin to the Cynics and unlike the Peripatetics, who instead allowed that a number of other things are necessary for a eudaimonic life, including some wealth, health, education, and so forth.

The Peripatetics would not have assented to the idea of a eudaimonic Sage on the rack, a classic Stoic concept. However, Stoic ethics actually attempts to strike a balance between the asceticism of the Cynics and the somewhat elitist views of the Peripatetics. Zeno distinguished between indifferents that have value axia and those that have disvalue apaxia. The first group included things like health, wealth and education, while the second group was comprised of things like sickness, poverty and ignorance.

There is much more to be said about Stoic ethics, of course, but before closing this introductory sketch let me comment on an issue that does not fail to come up, and which I have already briefly mentioned above: the connection between the undeniably teleological-providential views of the cosmos advanced by Stoic physics and the actual practice of Stoic ethics.

The issue is this: given that the Stoic themselves insisted that the study of physics and of logic influences how we understand ethics, and given that they believed in the providential nature of the cosmos, does that mean that only people who accept the latter view can pursuit eudaimonia? The generally accepted answer is no. Is it not sufficient to know the true nature of good and evil, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and also of our impulses to act and not to act; and by making use of these as rules to order the affairs of our life, to bid those things that are beyond us farewell?

It may very well be that these latter things are not to be comprehended by the human mind, and even if one assumes that they are perfectly comprehensible, well what profit comes from comprehending them? Stoicism may have developed within a worldview infused with presuppositions of a divinely-ordered universe … but the efficacy of Stoic counsel is not dependent upon creation, design, or any form of intelligent cosmological guidance.

On balance, it seems fair to say that the ancient Stoics did believe in a physical god that they equated with the rational principle organizing the cosmos, and which was distributed throughout the universe in a way that can be construed as pantheistic.

Recall that the Stoics thought the pivotal thing in life is virtue and its cultivation, while the Epicureans thought that the point was to seek moderate pleasure and especially avoid pain. Nonetheless, both schools thought that a crucial component of eudaimonia the flourishing life was something very similar, to which the Stoics referred to as apatheia and the Epicureans as ataraxia. There are, however, some differences between the two concepts, especially in the way the two schools taught how one could achieve, or at the least approximate, the respective states of mind.

The IEP article on Epictetus defines the two terms in the following fashion:. So, both apatheia and ataraxia are components of the eudaimonic life, and indeed, while the second term is usually associated with the Epicureans, both schools used it. That is why it is grossly incorrect to say that the Stoics aimed at a passionless life, or at the suppression of emotions.

The first group included pain, fear, craving, and pleasure. Here is a summary diagram:. The Stoics realized that we have automatic responses that are not under our control, and that is why they focused on what is under our control: the judgment rendered on the likely causes of our instinctive reactions, a judgment rendered by what Marcus Aurelius called the ruling faculty in modern cognitive science terminology: the executive function of the brain.

The Stoic view of emotions finds very nice parallels in modern neuroscience. Neuroscientifically, fear, for example, is the result of a defense and reaction mechanism that is involuntary and nonconscious, and whose major neural correlate is the amygdala. The two meanings are not in contradiction, but are rather complementary. Going back to the above diagram: pain is not the simple sensation of pain, but the failure to avoid something that we mistakenly judge bad.

Contrariwise, the eupatheiai are the result of a rational aversion of vice and harmful things discretion , a rational desire for virtue willing , and a rational elation over virtue delight.

It should be clear now why there is no such thing as a rational emotional pain. All of the above is why apatheia is best construed as equanimity in the face of what the world throws at us: if we apply reason to our experience, we will not be concerned with the things that do not matter, and we will correspondingly rejoice in the things that do matter. The Epicureans sought ataraxia as a goal, achieved most of all through the avoidance of pain, which meant especially to withdraw from social and political life.

It was good, for Epicurus, to cultivate your close friendships, but attempting to play a full role in the polis was a sure way to experience pain physical or mental , and therefore it was to be avoided. For the Stoics, on the contrary, the goal was the exercise of virtue, which led them to embrace their social role. Marcus Aurelius, for instance, constantly writes in the Meditations that we need to get up in the morning and do the job of a human being, which he interprets to mean to be useful to society.

And of course one of the four virtues examined in the previous section is justice, and one of the three disciplines is that of action—both explicitly prosocial. Apatheia , then, was not a goal for Stoics, but an advantageous byproduct a preferred indifferent, so to speak of living the virtuous life. As Long has remarked, Stoicism has had a pervasive, yet largely unacknowledged influence on Western philosophical thought throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and into modern times. The Epicurean emphasis on pleasure, as well as their metaphysics of cosmic chaos, where prima facie incompatible with Christian theology.

The case of Stoicism was more complex. On the one hand, the Stoic insistence on materialism and pantheism was criticized and rejected; on the other hand, the idea of the Logos could easily be adapted—if in a fashion that the Stoics themselves would not have recognized—and the emphasis on virtue was often seen as pretty much the best that people could manage before the coming of Christ.

This is why we find an interestingly mixed record of Christian attitudes toward Stoicism. Augustine initially wrote favorably about it, while later on he was more critical. Tertullian was positively inclined toward Stoicism, and versions of the Enchiridion were commonly used with Paul replacing Socrates in monasteries. Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were influenced by Stoic ethics too, while Thomas Aquinas was critical, especially of an early attempt at reviving Stoicism made by David of Dinant at the beginning of the 13th century.

A major revival of Stoicism did eventually take place, during the Renaissance, largely because of the work of Justus Lipsius He was a humanist and classic philologist who published critical editions of Seneca and Tacitus. His major opus was De Constantia , where he argued that Christians can draw on the resources of Stoicism during troubled times, while at the same time carefully pointing out aspects of Stoicism that are unacceptable for a Christian.

Lipsius also drew on Epictetus, whose Enchiridion had first been translated in English a few years earlier. The reception of Neostoicism was mixed. In both cases we have an all-pervasive God that is identified with Nature and with universal cause and effect.

For him Nature has no aim and God does not direct the cosmic drama. But as Long again points out, the differences are also quite striking: while Kant arrived at his system by a priori reasoning, the Stoics were eminently naturalistic and empiricist at heart. The 21st century is seeing yet another revival of virtue ethics in general and of Stoicism in particular.

Of course ethics is not a popularity contest, but these numbers indicate the resurgence of virtue ethics in contemporary professional moral philosophy. When it comes more specifically to Stoicism, new scholarly works and translations of classics, as well as biographies of prominent Stoics, keep appearing at a sustained rate. In parallel with the above, Stoicism is, in some sense, returning to its roots as practical philosophy, as the ancient Stoics very clearly meant their system to be primarily of guidance for everyday life, not a theoretical exercise.

But in life what do I do? What today I say is good tomorrow I will swear is bad. But Stoicism is a philosophy, not a therapy, and it is in the works of philosophers such as William Irvine , John Sellars , and Lawrence Becker that we find articulations of 21st century Stoicism, though the more self-help oriented contribution by CBT therapist Donald Robertson is also worthy of note. Perhaps the most comprehensive and scholarly attempt to update as opposed to simply explain Stoicism for modern audiences comes from Becker , though a more accessible treatment is offered by Irvine Irvine recasts the third category in terms of internalized goals, which makes more sense of the original dichotomy.

Consider his example of playing a tennis match. The outcome of the game is under your partial control, in the sense that you can influence it; but it is also the result of variables that you cannot control, such as the skill of your opponent, the fairness of the referee, or even random gusts of wind interfering with the trajectory of the ball. Your goal, then, suggests Irvine, should not be to win the game—because that is not entirely within your control.

Rather, it should be to play the best game you can, since that is within your control. By internalizing your goals you can therefore make good sense of even the original Epictetean dichotomy. As for the outcome, it should be accepted with equanimity. Becker is more comprehensive and even includes a lengthy appendix in which he demonstrates that the formal calculus he deploys for his normative Stoic logic is consistent, suggesting also that it is complete. This is also what leads him to make his argument for virtue-as-maximization-of-agency referred to in i above.

That movement has grown significantly in the early 21st century, manifesting itself in a number of forms. There is a good number of high quality blogs devoted to practical modern Stoicism, such as the Stoicism Today , maintained at the University of Exeter.