Six years ago I wrote an article entitled “God or Atoms” about the question as to whether a modern follower of Stoicism can be an agnostic or an atheist.  At the start I emphasized the following:

None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics themselves but others may have been. What matters is whether they, and other Stoics, would have accepted that someone else could potentially be both an agnostic (or atheist) and a Stoic.

Well, little did I know how much uproar that would cause!  Since I published it I’ve been periodically bombarded with comments, emails, and messages online from some surprisingly angry people who feel very strongly aggrieved because they claim I erred by (allegedly) saying that the ancient Stoics were atheists or agnostics.  That, of course, is not what I said.  We’re all familiar with religious fundamentalism in Christianity, Islam, and other world religions but it turns out that some individuals also want to approach Stoicism in pretty dogmatic (modern sense of the word) manner.  I was somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of the backlash against my (imagined) transgressions, especially coming from other Stoics as we’re all meant to be pretty chill about these things, basically.  Among other things, I was apparently a liar, a fraud, a bigot, and a charlatan, because of my views.  Here’s a typical example of one email (from a barrage of seven sent in one day) that I received from one particular aggrieved individual who somehow perceived my personal agnosticism as “bullying” and aggressively “arguing down” his own “theistic” conception of Stoicism:

The funny part is that when I first came across you my impression was that you were a self serving egotistical person who had no real interest in Stoicism other than to promote your own business by using [Stoic Week] to give yourself some credibility. But I decided that as I did not really know you I would set such ideas aside and address you according to what you said. And what you, together with a number of other people, said came across as an attempt to argue down (bully?) any person that questioned the limitations of the Stoicism being presented, especially any person who addressed the theistic nature of Stoicism.

(For what it’s worth, my previous businesses, which were a CBT clinic in Harley Street and a psychotherapist training school in South London, had virtually nothing to do with my work on Stoicism, which I’ve now been studying for well over twenty years.  And Stoic Week is a registered non-profit project run by volunteers.  I can easily just ignore comments like these, and far worse that I’ve received, but I am concerned about other people, especially newcomers to Stoicism, being hounded and bullied online by some of the same individuals.  That’s something that moderators, where possible, should step in to prevent. )

Over the past six years, I’ve received quite a lot of emails, PMs, and other comments like that, from various strangers on the Internet.  (By the way, it never ceases to  amaze me how well some people think they can read your mind and judge your character without ever having actually met you.)  According to some of these (pretty angry) “religious” Stoics, I was being dishonest, and  misrepresenting things on purpose, and refusing to answer questions or back up my claims.  In fact, I spent many hours answering their questions about this topic online, probably far too many hours, trying to explain that my position was not what they seemed to believe!  I have a policy, though, of politely withdrawing from conversations when people begin introducing personal attacks, like calling me a liar and stuff, which is what tended to happen when things got heated.  One of the criticisms repeated many times by one of my most vocal critics was that my previous article didn’t include any references to modern scholars.  I heard that a lot.  Well, the article was actually intended to provide my own commentary on the primary sources.  It contains dozens of references to passages in ancient texts, and it’s pretty big already, so I didn’t want to turn it into something the size of a doctoral thesis by adding more and more commentary from modern academic authors.  It was just meant to be a short blog post!  Nevertheless, he was wrong.  It does, in fact, contain references to about six or seven modern authors/scholars who have written on Stoicism including Pierre Hadot, Frank McLynn, C.R. Haines, and John Sellars.

I got bombarded with angry comments about this again yesterday, though.  So as it keeps coming up periodically I decided to sit down and write a statement explaining as clearly as possible my attitude toward religion, in relation to Stoicism.  That way I can hopefully just send this to the people who want to argue about it rather than getting drawn into endless heated debates.  (So if you want to find me, I’ll be in the garden listening to the radio and eating watermelon.)  Anyway, once and for all, here are my personal opinions on this…

I do not hate religion.  I’ve always been fascinated by it, in fact.  I am an agnostic, leaning toward atheism, but I’m also very interested in and place great value upon all world religions.  As a teenager I read the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Gnostic corpus from Nag Hammadi, which I studied very closely, and many Christian mystical texts such as The Cloud of Unknowing, The Imitation of Christ, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, St. John of the Cross, and so on.   It was actually my interest in Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism and Gnosticism that led me to study Stoicism.  However, I was also particularly interested in Buddhism.  As a student, I meditated daily, attended Buddhist retreats, and was secretary to the university Buddhist society.  (I even have a Buddhist tattoo!)  I practised yoga and read many yogic texts.  Over the years, I also studied the Dhammapada, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, Chaung Tzu, and even the I Ching, and countless other Oriental scriptures.  In fact, although my first degree is in philosophy, I also took courses in cultural anthropology, because I was interested in shamanism and animism.  In addition, in the History of Religions department, I studied Buddhism and Hinduism, mainly focusing on the Gita and Dhammapada.

And not much has changed.  I’ve had a lifelong fascination with comparative religion, which endures to this very day.  It was first inspired by reading Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy.  The only major tradition about which I have to confess my ignorance is Islam because my studies in philosophy meant I didn’t have time to attend classes on it at university.  As I noted earlier it was my interest in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism that led me to become interested in Stoicism, around the time I finished my philosophy degree, in 1996, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to immerse myself in studying the Stoic literature to this day.

However, I’m agnostic.  I don’t know for certain whether God exists, whichever god that might mean.  I think he probably doesn’t, because I don’t see much evidence of it, so I lean toward atheism.  I don’t, however, hold that view strongly, because I might be wrong.  I don’t believe that anyone can know with certainty that God exists and so I view it as ultimately an indifferent question with regard to the goal of life, because it seems to me to require speculation or a judgement based on probability.  And so I don’t really mind whether anyone agrees with me or not in that regard.  It’s a matter of indifference to me.  (So I’ll be glad when I’ve finished writing this piece if it means I don’t have to keep arguing with angry people on the Internet about it!)  😉

With regard to Stoicism.  I have always accepted (like everyone else) that most of the ancient Stoics believed in a provident God called Zeus.  Cleanthes, of course, wrote a famous Hymn to Zeus, in which he literally instructed his Stoic students to sing hymns of praise to Zeus, their divine father, creator, and benefactor:

Most glorious of Immortals, mighty God,
Invoked by many a name, O sovran King
Of universal Nature, piloting
This world in harmony with Law,—all hail!

Now, I cannot honestly say with certainty that “all of the ancient Stoics” believed in this for the simple reason that only about 1% of the Stoic literature survives, and there were loads of Stoics, with different beliefs, in different countries, spanning a period of half a millennium.  Stoicism was, and still is, a philosophy not a religion.  Perhaps others will disagree with my definition of the word “religion”, which is fine, but by that I mean that Stoicism encouraged its followers to question their assumptions very deeply, using the Socratic method, which inevitably meant that the school tolerated considerable disagreement about stuff like theology.  (Sorry but the fact is it did.)  Traditionally Stoicism also believed in divination, because it followed from their conception of Zeus as provident, organizing and planning the world in a causally determined manner, that the future could be predicted by priests who knew how to read the entrails of sacrificial animals and whatnot.  (Like tea-leaf reading but a bit messier.)

What is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno, Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any real existence. (Diogenes Laertius)

Strangely, though, even the most ardent proponents of “traditional Stoicism” today don’t seem to go so far as to employ ancient divination.  Ancient Stoics were also free to reject the whole concept of divination, though, because philosophical beliefs are based on reason and subject to constant questioning, whereas religious beliefs, according to my definition at least, tend to be based primarily on faith, divine revelation, or cultural traditions.  For what it’s worth, that would mean that some types of Buddhism might be better described as a philosophy rather than a religion, although there are other forms of Buddhism that appear to me more like the Judaeo-Christian religions.  (Buddhism is a huge and very diverse tradition, of course.)

There were certainly Greek philosophers who rejected or at least radically questioned belief in the gods.  (No, seriously there were; such as Theodorus the Atheist for a start, who was a contemporary of Zeno of Citium.)  There’s also Bion of Borysthenes, who we’re told followed Theodorus, but is also associated with Cynic philosophy, and “would often vehemently assail belief in the gods”, and “denied that the gods really exist”, although he allegedly repented on his deathbed. (Bion seems to have had the Macedonian King Antigonus II Gonatas as his patron, who surrounded himself with a circle of philosophers, incidentally, but was best-known for being a student of Zeno and a patron of the Stoic school.)

So given the paucity of evidence to the contrary I would say it’s possible that at least one or two guys out of the thousands of ancient Stoics may not have been 100% sure that God exists but, again, whether they did or not is basically indifferent to me.   We know that most Stoics were pantheists who believed the whole universe was a single, perfectly rational, living organism called Zeus who cared providentially for humankind.  I don’t believe that.  We do also know that some famous ancient Stoics didn’t believe that either and substituted other theological beliefs instead, which happens to confirm that the school tolerated diverse opinions and was not rigidly doctrinaire in this regard.

Example #1: Aristo of Chios rejected the importance of theology completely and was considered a renegade or “heterodox Stoic“.  Cicero says he was “in a state of complete uncertainty” about whether or not God was alive (“animate”), because he denied God could have sensation (presumably because he has no eyes or ears, etc.) and Aristo also couldn’t conceive of his form.   However, although he was considered a “heterodox Stoic” he was still labelled a “Stoic”.  There is no reference to Aristo actually leaving the school or joining another school.  (Indeed, Marcus Aurelius was inspired centuries later to commit his life to Stoicism after reading Aristo’s books.)

Example #2: Boethus of Sidon was a famous Stoic best known for having totally rejected Stoic pantheism but, again, there’s no indication that he was booted out of the school for that.  He wrote several books on Stoic theology and philosophy of nature.  We know he believed in provident God but not the pantheistic Zeus of the early Stoics.  He believed that instead of permeating the whole cosmos, God dwells far away from us in the sphere of the fixed stars.  That was okay because Stoicism was always a philosophy and encouraged Socratic questioning and not a religion based primarily on faith or tradition, or if you prefer it wasn’t a rigidly orthodox and doctrinaire type of religion.

So can you be a Stoic and be an agnostic or even an atheist?  The short answer is that I think it’s an indifferent question.  If someone managed to persuade me that I couldn’t call myself a “Stoic” if I happen to be agnostic then I’d probably say “Sure, fine, I’ll just call myself something else” and it wouldn’t really ruin my day too much, to be honest.   (I’m still waiting to be persuaded.)  However, as it happens, I believe that the ancient Stoics considered the central doctrine of their philosophy, as we’re repeatedly told, to be their definition of the nature of the good: virtue is the only true good.   It seems to me that as long as you believe that then you’re pretty much a Stoic, whatever else you believe, within reason.  It’s all good!  It’s crystal clear from the ancient Stoic texts that the definition of the supreme good as virtue was the central doctrine of their school.  Cicero calls it the cornerstone of their whole philosophy, for example.

Suppose, hypothetically, that there were such a thing as a modern-day agnostic Sage, someone exceptionally wise, just, courageous, and temperate, who called himself a “Stoic” but who happened to feel it’s impossible to be certain whether or not God exists.   He believes that Darwinism and modern scientific cosmology provide a sufficiently plausible explanation for why things around us look almost as though they were designed by an invisible craftsman to work the way they do.   So he rejects Zeno’s use of the Argument from Design, in other words, and doesn’t accept that it conclusively proves a provident God exists, called Zeus, who planned everything and cares about humankind.  (How many people today do actually believe in the Argument from Design apart from Christian fundamentalists?)

Let’s suppose we had a time machine and could send our perfect “Stoic” back in time to meet Marcus Aurelius.  So he’s perfectly wise and just, courageous and temperate, but he’s not sure about the whole Zeus thing.  Would Marcus Aurelius say: “Get out of here you fake, you’re not a real Stoic!”  I don’t know.  Neither do you.  I’d guess probably not, though.   Why?  Because he was a philosopher, first and foremost, and not a religious fundamentalist.  Marcus, like other Stoics, believed that virtue is the only true good, and that someone virtuous is therefore good, and could be a Sage, perhaps even if they happen to be uncertain whether Zeus is real or not, or to agree with Zeno and Cleanthes on the theological details.

As most people who have actually read The Meditations tend to notice, Marcus refers to “God or atoms”, or a similar trope, about ten times.  (C.R. Haines, his translator, says nine but I’m pretty sure I spotted another one he missed.)  Example: “Recall once again this alternative: if not a wise Providence [God], then a mere jumble of atoms…” (4.3).  Similar figures of speech are also found in Seneca and Epictetus, all three of our major surviving sources for Stoicism, so personally I take that to suggest this was most likely a very well-known Stoic argument and probably came from an earlier source all three share in common.  I appreciate other people may believe these passages could be interpreted differently but my belief is that Marcus is saying to himself that even if he didn’t believe that the whole universe was being planned and organized by a provident God called Zeus, who cares about humankind, even if it was all just the chance product of the random collision of atoms, like many people believe today, Stoic Ethics would still be rational and justified in that world.   In his “God or atoms” passages, Marcus says that even if we live in a godless world just the random aimless collision of atoms, it doesn’t matter, as long as we are not aimless ourselves but have virtue as our goal (9.28), because we have our ruling faculty (hegemonikon) to guide us using reason (12.14), and we can still view ourselves as part of the whole and akin, like a brother, to all other rational beings (10.6), therefore we would still have no reason to complain or feel harassed (8.17; 9.39).  The people who want to argue that Stoic Ethics is inconceivable without belief in God either just completely ignore these and other related passages or they tie themselves in knots trying to interpret Marcus as meaning the opposite of what he actually said, ten times.

How on earth, you may ask, could Marcus possibly believe that Stoic Ethics might be plausible without reference to God?  (Or at least people who are really religious sometimes say that.)  Well, blow me down if the Cynic philosophy, from which Stoicism itself emerged, didn’t consist of a fundamentally similar ethical doctrine, that virtue is the only true good, without any reference to theology.  (As did other ancient philosophies.)  Diogenes the Cynic is variously portrayed as saying that the gods don’t exist, that they do exist, or that he’s not sure.  He didn’t care, basically.  The Cynics, funnily enough, had a notoriously cynical (small c) attitude toward all forms of religion, which they sneered at in all sorts of ways.  Diogenes thought it was hilarious, for example, that people would pray for good health rather than just adopting a healthy way of living.  He reputedly used a wooden statue of the god Hercules as firewood to cook his lentils.  (Hercules was originally a Greek hero and demi-god, incidentally, but according to some versions of the myth Zeus granted him an apotheosis, making him a god in his own right.)  The Cynics, the legendary forerunners of Stoicism, were generally perceived as thumbing their noses at all forms of religion and as regarding the question of God’s existence with fundamental indifference, because it was totally irrelevant to their conception of virtue and their philosophical way of life.

Marcus quite possibly, at least in my reading of the evidence, started off as a Cynic before becoming a Stoic.  He certainly knew Cynics and had read about Cynic philosophy, which he mentioned in The Meditations.  So the notion that you could believe in virtue ethics without bringing God into the equation would hardly have come as a massive surprise to him, contrary to what some people might want to tell you.  He knew fine well that lots of philosophers, throughout the centuries, held broadly similar ethical views to his own but didn’t use the existence of Providence as justification for them.  As mentioned above, his private letters appear to state that he was finally convinced to dedicate his life to philosophy after reading Aristo of Chios, a Stoic who totally rejected the study of theology.  So these observations probably explain why Marcus keeps banging on about “God or atoms” in his private notes: he’s reminding himself that even if doubts do creep into his mind about religion, it shouldn’t cause his Stoicism to waver.  He knows, from the example of countless other philosophers, that he still has sufficient reason to live virtuously with or without Providence looking over his shoulder.

Moreover, Marcus and the other Stoics didn’t live in a bubble.  They knew about  other philosophies.  Marcus had also studied Platonism and Aristotelianism under private tutors in the imperial household for years and he’d read Cicero and Lucretius the Epicurean, and presumably a load of other stuff we’ve never even heard of because he was a highly-educated and intelligent man, with a lot of books at his disposal.  He wasn’t a dunce.  He knew that Skeptical counter-arguments could easily be used to challenge traditional  arguments for belief in the existence of God, like the Argument for Design.  (“Everything looks like it must have been designed by someone, therefore it was.” – really?)  He clearly believed in God but he also realized some people didn’t and that Skeptical arguments had been widely circulated for many centuries that could challenge or refute the traditional Stoic reasons for believing in Providence.  So, presumably like many Stoics before him, he bolstered his Stoicism by providing himself with the argument that even if someone logically persuaded him that Providence doesn’t exist and the world is just the pretty side-effect of a load of atoms bouncing around, like the Epicureans and other atomists said, it doesn’t really matter because he could still carry on being virtuous and a Stoic anyway, as long as he follows his own nature, by living in accord with reason.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems fairly obvious to me that’s what he meant when he says repeatedly that whether “God or atoms” explain the universe, either way he should follow Stoic Ethics .   (See my previous article by the way for all the references to these passages, and everything else I’ve mentioned.)  I think that’s why the Stoics were able to consider individuals like Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes the Cynic to be wise and virtuous even though they didn’t share the same theological beliefs as the Stoic school.  If Socrates or Diogenes the Cynic walked into Epictetus’ school and said “Hey can I be a Stoic?” would Epictetus boot them out saying “No because you’re not certain that Zeus exists and is provident, get lost!”  I don’t know.  Neither do you.  I’d guess probably not, though.  In fact, the Stoics believed Cynicism offered a “shortcut” to virtue, compared with ordinary Stoicism.  It’s pretty tricky, though, for anyone who wants to portray the assimilation of Stoic theological doctrines as mandatory to explain how a way of life that completely ignores those doctrines came to be be held up as a shortcut to Stoic virtue.

The ancient Stoics believed that virtue is the only true good, and that’s the central doctrine or cornerstone of their whole philosophy.  I think virtually all of them must have believed in a provident God called Zeus but there might have been one or two, over the 500 year period we’re talking about, who weren’t sure because they were doing philosophy and using the Socratic method of questioning rather than just indoctrinating their students into religious dogmas based on the teacher’s say-so.  None of the Stoics claimed to have that kind of absolute authority.  None of them claimed to be wise: that’s why it’s called the Stoic school and wasn’t (except for a short spell) named Zenonism after Zeno (Zenon in Greek), its founder.  There is no Stoic pope.  You do philosophy and if you arrive at the same conclusions as them then you might as well call yourself a Stoic.  I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if you want to be a Stoic you’re going to have to actually do philosophy.  Turns out Stoicism is not a personality cult like Epicureanism or Pythagoreanism were (sorry guys!) and you might actually have to think for yourself rather than just rote learn the sayings of the founders and repeat them like a parrot.

What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover. (Seneca, Letter 33)

Epictetus is even more emphatic.  He repeatedly warns his students that reading the books of famous Stoics such as Chrysippus and committing their teachings to memory is just another vice, a sort of intellectual vanity, unless they actually learn to think for themselves and apply philosophical reasoning in daily life.  He says that the real evidence of having learned Stoicism should be visible in someone’s ability to master his fears and desires, like the physique of an athlete is evidence of their training.  We should judge him by the signs of virtue he exhibits in life, not by his ability to recite a catechism of “orthodox” Stoic dogmas – indeed, that would be absurd.

In any case, by the time Marcus Aurelius was around the whole Stoic movement was pretty loosely defined and leaderless but he was still famous, even in his own lifetime as a “Stoic” philosopher.   If Marcus  Aurelius woke up one day and said “Hmmmm…  God or atoms?  You know, I’m not 100% sure about that bit anymore but I still agree with the rest of it” would people have stopped calling him a Stoic?   Probably not, right?  As long as he still lived like a Stoic, exhibited the Stoic virtues, and was committed to the belief that virtue is the only true good.  To hear some people talk these days, you’d think there were “Stoic police” going around making sure of everyone’s Stoic orthodoxy but, guess what, there weren’t!  In Marcus Aurelius’ day there wasn’t even a leader of the Stoic school so there was nobody with the authority to enforce any sort of rigid orthodoxy any more than there is today – thank goodness.  The last Stoic scholarch (head of the school) was Panaetius and he’s been pushing up daisies, six feet under, since the second century BC, nearly three hundred years before the time of Marcus Aurelius.

At the end of the day, though, it’s fundamentally indifferent whether you call yourself a “Stoic” or not.  The only advantage is that you can more easily hang out with other fascinating people who like to call themselves “Stoic”, most of whom happen to be agnostics or atheists anyway, whether the fundamentalist-types like that or not.  By contrast, if you said “I’m totally into everything Marcus Aurelius said and I try to live my life by it but I’m not actually a real Stoic because I don’t worship Zeus” most people would probably look at you like you were crazy.   By the way, people who are really into religion and Stoicism nevertheless vary tremendously in their level of commitment to the ancient traditions.  One guy got really annoyed with me for using the phrase “worship Zeus” although that’s literally what the ancient Stoics were talking about.  I pointed out to him that another guy I’d been arguing with online actually had a profile picture of himself dressed in the robes of an ancient Greek priest and that he did literally worship the Greek gods.  (Over the years I’ve met quite a few modern-day individuals who combine Stoicism with Hellenistic religious practices.)  At the other end of the scale someone who was arguing with me about how all Stoics absolutely must believe in divine Providence suddenly changed his tune after admitting that he didn’t know what the word “Providence” means (pronoia in Greek) and I showed him a dictionary definition.   “Oh, if that’s what it means then, no, I don’t actually believe in it; sorry for bothering you.”   Often, I find that the more determined someone is to  argue to the death about something on the Internet the more likely it is that they probably haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.  There are plenty of people online who will argue with you about Stoicism until they’re blue in the face and call you all sorts of idiots if you don’t agree with them.  Then, a few hours, or days, later they’ll casually admit they’ve not actually got round to reading any books on the subject yet.   That’s life, folks:  welcome to the Internet!

So, anyway, if you’ve got to the end of this and you’re a super-religious Stoic who’s still really angry with me for not being sure whether God exists or not then, well, thanks at least for your patience.  I really don’t hate you or anything you believe.  I’m just not 100% sure you’re right.  I also think that, especially as Stoics, we should all be more tolerant of others who happen to disagree with our beliefs.  In any case, being so angry and sending me these emails and messages calling me names probably just does you more harm than good, my friend.  If you ever want to talk about it in a sort of friendly dispassionate way feel free to get in touch, though.  Thanks! 😉

Postscript

Just out of curiosity, I polled my Facebook group for Stoicism to find out their religious views.  Surprisingly, most of those who responded (n=663) are atheists, and agnostics like me are not the majority.

• 50% – I’m an atheist.
• 29% – I’m an agnostic.
• 14% – I believe God exists but I don’t believe he resembles the Stoic conception of Zeus or Providence.
• 8% – I believe God exists and he resembles the Stoic conception of Zeus or Providence.

So 78% are either atheists or agnostics, although they’re “into” Stoicism, and only 22% believe in God, either Stoic-style Zeus or some other definition.

Many people assume that Stoicism is synonymous with being unemotional.  I think this is often because they confuse stoicism (lower-case), the “stiff upper lip” personality trait, with Stoicism (upper-case) the school of Greek philosophy.  (Here’s an article explaining the difference.)   In fact, the Stoics teach us how to replace unhealthy emotions with healthy ones, and the latter play an important role in their philosophy.  They have a system for classification of both.  The Stoic term “passion” actually encompasses both what we call desires and emotions and the healthy ones, termed eupatheiai by the Stoics, are divided into three broad categories:

1. Joy or delight (chara), the enjoyment of perceiving goodness in ourselves and others, which is the healthy alternative to hedonistic pleasure; we’re told it includes both feelings of cheerfulness (euphrosunos) and peaceful contentment (euthumia).
2. Caution or discretion (eulabeia), a healthy and rational aversion to vice, which we might perhaps compare to feelings of conscience; we’re told it includes dignity or self-respect (aidô) and a sense of aversion to what is profane or impure (agneia)
3. Wishing or willing (boulêsis), a healthy and rational desire for what is good, or goodwill toward ourselves and others, perhaps encompassing a rational form of love or friendship; we’re told it includes benevolence (eunoia), kindness (eumeneia), acceptance (aspasmos) and affection (agapêsis)

Diogenes Laertius says that good passions such as joy (chara) and cheerfulness (euphrosunos) are not strictly-speaking virtues but that they “supervene” on the virtues, a kind of side-effect of them.  He also describes them as being more transitory than virtues.  Hence, these sort of healthy feelings and desires are not the goal of Stoicism per se but rather a byproduct of the underlying attitudes that constitute genuine wisdom and goodness.  We can nevertheless say that the ideal Stoic Sage is someone who feels relatively calm and cheerful in the face of adversity, has a sense of dignity or conscience that prevents him doing what he senses is wrong, and feels goodwill, a sense of kindness, and even affection toward others, and presumably also toward himself.

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that the Stoics typically held up Socrates as their supreme role model and it’s easy to see how he might fit this description.  Far from being stuffy or a cold fish, Socrates is generally portrayed as a very lively character.  Both Xenophon and Plato wrote dialogues entitled the Symposium where he is depicted drinking and feasting with his friends.  Indeed, Xenophon opens by saying that he thinks it’s important not only to portray great men in more serious situations, presumably with the trial and execution of Socrates in mind, but also to show the sort of people they were during lighter moments, enjoying banter with their friends.  Plato even notes that Socrates looked like Silenus, the mythic drunken tutor of Dionysus (shown above), who exemplified both humour and wisdom.

Indeed, Socrates is cheerful and good humoured, even in the face of adversity such as facing his own execution.  He’s kind and gentle toward his friends, and treats them with obvious affection.   Socrates was also famously guided by a mysterious daimonion or inner voice, which warned him not to undertake certain courses of action.  I think we can obviously compare this to the Stoic concept of eulabeia, a healthy feeling of aversion to folly and wrongdoing.  The Stoics point to Socrates as an example of their ideal so the vivid descriptions of his character found in Plato and Xenophon, etc., undoubtedly help us to interpret what the Stoics have in mind when speaking of the “healthy passions” exhibited by the wise.

However, I also want to say something about three sources of joy described by Marcus Aurelius in The Meditations, as I think these help to shed some light on what the Stoics had in mind.  First of all, Marcus says the wise man’s sense of delight comes from one thing alone: acting consistently in accord with wisdom and virtue (6.7).  This certainly appears to be the most important source of joy for Stoics but Marcus also mentions two others. 

Different people find their joy in different things; and it is my joy to keep my ruling centre unimpaired, and not turn my back on any human being or on anything that befalls the human race, but to look on all things with a kindly eye, and welcome and make use of each according to its worth. (8.43)

These three types of joy correspond to a recurring threefold structure that should be very familiar to readers of The Meditations.  They broadly correspond with the virtues of wisdom (ruling faculty), justice (human race), and the combination of temperance and courage (external events).  

Elsewhere, Marcus returns to these forms of joy in separate different passages:

1. Contemplating virtue in ourselves.  Marcus describes this as the primary source of both “serenity” and “joy” for the Stoic Sage (7.28).
2. Contemplating virtue in others. However, he also tells says that when he wants to gladden his heart, he should meditate on the good qualities of those close to him, such as modesty, generosity, etc. (6.48).
3. Welcoming our fate (amor fati). Marcus tells himself that rather than desiring things that are absent, as the majority do, he should train himself to develop gratitude by reflecting on the pleasant aspects of what he already has before him, and contemplate how he would miss them if they were not there (7.27).

The second source of joy for Stoics, the contemplation of virtue in others, is presumably related to religious sentiments such as piety or love of Zeus, as well as love of the ideal Sage.  Likewise, in Book One of The Meditations, Marcus seems to provide numerous examples of virtues among his family members and teachers, which gladden his heart in this way.  Contemplating the virtue of others was an important source of inspiration for ancient Stoics.  They recognized that we learn by emulating the examples set by others, role models such as Socrates or Zeno, whose characters we admire.  Students once enjoyed the company of teachers such as these and were inspired by knowing them in person.

The third source of joy is perhaps the one most often overlooked in discussions of Stoicism.  So it’s worth quoting the key passage in full:

Do not think of things that are absent as though they were already at hand, but pick out the [the best] from those that you presently have, and with these before you, reflect on how greatly you would have wished for them if they were not already here. At the same time, however, take good care that you do not fall into the habit of overvaluing them because you are so pleased to have them, so that you would be upset if you no longer had them at some future time. (7.27)

The word Marcus actually uses here to describe a healthy and moderate sense of enjoyment in those external things that deserve to be valued is charis or gratitude.  It is is related to chara the more general word for the healthy passion of Stoic joy.  He means the kind of gratitude that we would experience when we perceive that someone has done us a favour or shown goodwill toward us.  (If like the Stoics, we think of Zeus or Nature as being providential and caring for our welfare, then this would resemble Christian joy in the grace [charis] of God.)

Marcus seems to be saying here that in addition to rejoicing in virtue, his own and that of others, the Sage will experience joy or gratitude by contemplating what Stoics call “preferred indifferents”.  These are external things to which it’s reasonable to assign value (axia), within reasonable bounds, such as health, property, and friendship.  External things such as these aren’t strictly “good” because they don’t contribute directly to the goal of wisdom and virtue but it is nevertheless rational to prefer health over sickness, life over death, property over poverty, and friendship over having enemies, etc.

For Stoics, the two most valued externals or preferred indifferents are life and the company of friends who are wise and good.  These are probably the two things for which we should be most grateful, as they’re both externals granted to us by fortune.  There are many things such as food and shelter which contribute to life and Stoics are grateful for these insofar as they have value in supporting life, providing us with the opportunity to flourish by acquiring wisdom and virtue.  However, as Marcus emphasized above, we should not become so attached to them that we would be distressed if they were lost.

The attitude we should seek to cultivate is described by Epictetus in the Handbook and Discourses as that of someone who has been invited to a banquet or festival and behaves like a good guest.

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. Do so with respect to children, so with respect to a wife, so with respect to magisterial offices, so with respect to wealth, and you will be some time a worthy partner of the banquets of the gods. (Encheiridion, 15)

We should, in other words, be grateful for what life gives us, as if we were receiving a gift or a favour, without becoming over-attached to them, greedily craving things we don’t have or clinging on to those of which we must let go.  However, he does goes on to say that Diogenes the Cynic, Heraclitus, and other wise philosophers like them, were regarded as divine because they did not even take as much as they could have and looked down on such externals with an even greater sense of indifference than the Stoics.  Perhaps this is an allusion to the Stoic notion that the Cynic way of life, which involved greater renunciation and voluntary hardship, can provide a shortcut to virtue.  Epictetus appears to have believed, though, that the austere life of a Cynic is only suitable for certain exceptional individuals.  Stoics typically adopted a more moderate way of life which allowed them to participate in ordinary society, to earn a living and attend social events, etc., as long as they don’t place more importance on the externals they value than they do on their own character, or living wisely and in accord with reason and virtue.

One of the most common misinterpretations of Stoicism is the notion that Stoics believe all external things are totally indifferent.  That’s arguably closer to the philosophy of the Cynics, or possibly of the Skeptics or even the renegade Stoic, Aristo of Chios, as we’ll see.  For these philosophers, everything except virtue and vice is classed as indifferent.  That includes things like health, wealth, property, reputation, and so on, which philosophers called “externals” because they’re external to the mind, or more specifically external to our volition or  faculty of moral choice.  As Epictetus put it, only our actions are good or evil, and everything else is indifferent.

However, when Zeno founded the Stoic school he distinguished it from earlier philosophies precisely by asserting that although externals were, in one sense, indifferent, in another sense they were not. 

“Indifferent” has two meanings. In one sense [used by the Stoics] it signifies the things that contribute neither to happiness [eudaimonia] nor unhappiness, like wealth, fame, health, strength, and the like; for it is possible to be happy even without these things, though depending on how they are used they contribute to happiness or unhappiness. But in another [non-Stoic] sense “indifferent” signifies things that excite neither attraction nor aversion, as is the case with having an odd or even number of hairs on one’s head, or with extending or bending one’s finger. But it was not in this sense that the things mentioned above [such as health] are called “indifferent” [by the Stoics], since they are able to excite attraction and aversion. This is why some of the indifferent things are selected and others rejected, whereas indifference in the other sense provides no grounds for choosing or avoiding. (Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno)

For Stoics, external things are not good or bad in the strongest sense.  They don’t make our souls better or worse, or affect our fulfilment (eudaimonia) in life.  What matters ultimately is the use we make of them, good or bad, virtuous or vicious.  However, Zeno said that they do have another sort of value (axia), which allows us to choose between them.  Indeed, it’s perfectly natural and rational to prefer some externals over others.  We’re quite right to prefer life over death, health over sickness, and friends over enemies, generally speaking, as long as we do so “lightly”, to borrow a phrase from Epictetus.  Put simply, we shouldn’t place so much value on these external things that we become upset if we get what we don’t want, or don’t get what we do want.  The Stoics talk about “preferring” or “dispreferring” externals, as opposed to strongly desiring them.  We choose between them, without becoming attached to them, or strongly averse to them.

More than this, however, Zeno and the Stoics argued that wisdom, and the other virtues, consist precisely in our ability to distinguish rationally between the value of different external things.  Ironically, someone who discounts all externals as totally indifferent, or equally indifferent, would therefore be foolish according to the Stoics.  They would lack prudence.  They’d also lack the ability to exercise justice by knowing what it’s fair and benevolent to give other people or to do for them.  They’d also lack the virtues of courage and moderation because they wouldn’t be able to distinguish rationally between things worth enduring or renouncing and things not.

In De Finibus, Cicero portrays a conversation between himself and Cato, representing the “complete Stoic”.  He begins by tackling precisely this misconception of Stoicism.  After Cato asserts the Stoic principle that virtue (moral worth) is the only true good, Cicero replies:

“What you have said so far, Cato,” I answered, “might equally well be said by a follower of Pyrrho or of Aristo. They, as you are aware, think as you do, that this Moral Worth you speak of is not merely the chief but the only Good […] Do you then,” I asked, “commend these philosophers, and think that we ought to adopt this view of theirs?” “I certainly would not have you adopt their view,” he said; “for it is of the essence of virtue to exercise choice among the things in accordance with nature; so that philosophers who make all things absolutely equal, rendering them indistinguishable either as better or worse, and leaving no room for selection among them, have abolished virtue itself.” (De Finibus)

Notice that he says very clearly that virtue itself is effectively destroyed if we treat all externals as equal.  In Discourse 2.23, Epictetus discusses in depth the importance of assigning value to externals.  

Man, be neither ungrateful for these gifts nor yet forget the things which are superior to them. But indeed for the power of seeing and hearing, and indeed for life itself, and for the things which contribute to support it, for the fruits which are dry, and for wine and oil give thanks to God: but remember that he has given you something else better than all these, I mean the power of using them, proving them and estimating the value of each.

He emphasizes that reason is supremely important because it assigns value to everything else.

What then? does any man despise the other faculties? I hope not. Does any man say that there is no use or excellence in the speaking faculty? I hope not. That would be foolish, impious, ungrateful towards God. But a man renders to each thing its due value. For there is some use even in an ass, but not so much as in an ox: there is also use in a dog, but not so much as in a slave: there is also some use in a slave, but not so much as in citizens: there is also some use in citizens, but not so much as in magistrates. Not indeed because some things are superior, must we undervalue the use which other things have.

Despite the fact he’s speaking of externals, Epictetus actually tells his students that those who fail to make any distinction between the value of speaking well and speaking badly or between beauty and ugliness are not only fools but cowards. 

But this is the great matter […] to learn what is the most excellent of all things, and to pursue this always, to be diligent about this, considering all other things of secondary value compared with this, but yet, as far as we can, not neglecting all those other things. For we must take care of the eyes also, not as if they were the most excellent thing, but we must take care of them on account of the most excellent thing, because it will not be in its true natural condition, if it does not rightly use the other faculties, and prefer some things to others.

Virtue, in other words, consists precisely in our ability to apply reason by weighing-up the value of different external things.  Cato returns to this  point later:

“Next follows an exposition of the difference between things; for if we maintained that all things were absolutely indifferent, the whole of life would be thrown into confusion, as it is by Aristo, and no function or task could be found for wisdom, since there would be absolutely no distinction between the things that pertain to the conduct of life, and no choice need be exercised among them. Accordingly after conclusively proving that morality alone is good and baseness alone evil, the Stoics went on to affirm that among those things which were of no importance for happiness or misery, there was nevertheless an element of difference, making some of them of positive and others of negative value, and others neutral. (De Finibus)

For instance, some Cynics believed it was courageous to endure self-immolation, burning themselves alive to protest.  The Stoics, however, would say that if the protest is futile then this isn’t courage but rather folly.  Marcus Aurelius says that although Stoics believe suicide can be a reasonable decision it’s only appropriate to prefer one’s death to life when based on sound judgement, given certain circumstances such as euthanasia in extreme old age and sickness, or self-sacrifice in warfare for the greater good.  By contrast, the Christians, he says, endure death (martyrdom) out of foolish obstinacy and a desire to make a tragic spectacle of themselves (11.3). 

Marcus Aurelius elsewhere defines social virtue as treating our fellow man “kindly and justly, according to the natural law of companionship, though aiming at the same time at what he deserves with regard to things that are morally indifferent” (3.11). He means that justice requires helping others to obtain things that are morally indifferent, though reasonably preferred. What those things are will vary depending on the individual and their circumstances, although the Stoics typically say it’s rational to prefer health to disease, wealth to poverty, and having friends to having enemies, within certain bounds.

Epictetus actually spells this out to his students very clearly:

“But my mother grieves when she does not see me.” So why has she not learnt these doctrines? I am not saying that it is wrong to take care that she should not lament; but that we are not to wish absolutely what is not in our own power. Now, the grief of another is not in my power; but my own grief is. I will, therefore, absolutely oppose my own grief, for that is in my power; and I will endeavour to prevent another’s grief as far as I am able: but not absolutely […] (Discourses, 3.24.22–23)

People often ask me for a very simplified description of Stoicism.  To help newcomers to the subject, I created a free Crash Course in Stoicism with a video, quiz, popular quotes, etc., that takes less than ten minutes to complete.

However, sometimes what’s called for is an “elevator pitch”, a one or two sentence description.  That’s tricky!  Stoicism is a big philosophy, with some subtle concepts, and aspects that are easily misunderstood.

It also depends what sort of explanation they’re looking for.  For example, if you just want to know where Stoicism comes from or who the Stoics were then I’d probably say…

Stoicism is a branch of Greek philosophy, founded in 301 BC by Zeno of Citium, that later became popular in Rome.  The most famous Stoics are Seneca, Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

If you want a traditional description of what ancient Stoics believed in two sentences then I’d say:

Virtue is the only true good, and vice the only true evil; everything else is indifferent with regard to the goal of life.  However, virtue consists precisely in our ability to distinguish between external things on the basis of their value.

The famous Roman Stoic teacher Epictetus gave his students the following summary:

That of things some are good, and some are bad, and some are indifferent: the good then are virtues, and the things which participate in virtues; and the bad are the contrary; and the indifferent are wealth, health, reputation. (Discourses, 2.9)

If you wanted me to try to paraphrase that and put that in layman’s terms then I guess I’d say:

The goal of life is to strive for wisdom, by living rationally, in greater harmony with our own nature, the community of mankind, and the nature of the universe as a whole.  That requires taking greater responsibility for our character and actions and not placing so much value on external things, beyond our direct control, that we become perturbed when they don’t turn out as we might have wished .

That’s my best attempt to simplify 500 years of Stoic philosophy in a couple of sentences.  I hope it’s not oversimplified.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  Remember to check out my Crash Course in Stoicism if you’re looking for a bit more of an introduction.