Understanding Stoicism
Stoicism was born in Athens some twenty-three centuries ago, reached its height in Rome with Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and has never lost its appeal. In today’s West it is embraced by entrepreneurs, athletes, soldiers and therapists alike, as a practical philosophy for coping with stress and keeping an inner calm.
The appeal of Stoicism is real. It teaches us to distinguish what is within our power from what is not, to govern our emotions by reason, and to keep our dignity and composure in adversity. Hegel thought highly of the Stoics, seeing in them an important stage in self-consciousness’s path to freedom: whether on the throne or in chains, thought is free.
Yet Stoicism also has profound limits. Its freedom is a freedom of retreat into the inner self, an indifference to reality rather than a transformation of it. It suppresses the emotions rather than understanding and elevating them, and its “living according to nature” often slides into passive acceptance of whatever situation one finds oneself in. This series presents the core ideas of Stoicism, its historical influence and its modern revival, and from the standpoint of dialectics shows where it falls short, so that we can take what is best in it and truly make it our own.