My name is Thomas M. Just and I am just asking questions.
Out of nowhere, stoicism has become all the rage, especially within the manosphere.[1][2] Now, as someone with a philosophy degree, upon discovering that millions of people were rediscovering ancient wisdom and engaging with life's most important mysteries, my initial reaction was something like, 'Oh dear Zeus, it's finally happening!' That lasted all of five minutes until I realized that many charlatans had turned stoicism into something the actual stoics like Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius would not recognize. A cottage industry[3][4] has been built around peddling this faux version of stoicism to unsuspecting men genuinely interested in finding a better way to live.
Perhaps the best example of this trend is the book "The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph" by Ryan Holiday. The book has sold millions of copies and even become incredibly popular with NFL players. It is advice about how to find career success combined with thoughts about the Roman Empire updated for our times – that's a surefire bestseller for the manosphere. The book is loosely based on a cherry-picked quote from "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. Mr. Holiday explains in his preface the whole point of his book: Marcus Aurelius's formula isn't a "formula for thriving not just in spite of whatever happens but because of it."[5] Of course, I am not the first to point out this self-help bait and switch.[6] Nor am I the first to point out that much of this faux stoicism is incoherent bumper sticker material.[7] But here, I'd like to explore the questions and objections that Aristotle, Cicero, and Carneades raised in response to stoicism and, in fitting with my stated project, how they tie into modern questions around masculinity. Why are so many young men so infatuated with this philosophy? What need is it satiating? What are the potential drawbacks?
Before I go any further, I'd like to heed the advice of one of my favorite philosophy professors at my alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin (UT), Dr. Jonathan Dancy[8], who told me I should say what I like about an argument or philosophy before I stick the knife in. Honestly, there is much to like here. First, I am giddy with excitement that people are interested in something that defines who I am. That wise old sage, Socrates, may have been known as the ultimate gadfly, but his life's work of just asking questions saved me from the cult I was raised in. In honor of my namesake doubting Thomas, I have a tattoo on my right side of Jesus's spear wound with blood pouring out, surrounded by the quote from Peter Rollins, "to believe is human, to doubt is divine."[9] Second, I think this renewed interest in stoicism generally comes from a good place where people are seeking happiness (eudaimonia). Third, while I think the balance is off, I appreciate the focus on what we can do individually to achieve happiness. Fourth, I like the insistence that happiness is not derived from chasing wealth, fame, or power and that the good life is not rooted in any kind of career success. Finally, I applaud the emphasis on virtue (areté) as a key to achieving happiness.
Okay, now you might be asking what stoicism is. That's a fair question and an excellent place to start. (in the footnotes, I have also listed some incredible resources that go into further depth if you're interested)[10][11] The first thing to know is that stoicism is an all-encompassing and systematized worldview that consists of three parts: physics, logic, and ethics.[12] These three interconnected parts form a coherent and cogent system – significantly, stoics believed all of stoicism was an all-or-nothing proposition.[13] The singular goal of the whole thing is to achieve one's telos of happiness (eudaimonia). The Greek word telos is the idea that each one of us has an ultimate and definitive purpose, end, or goal. The Greek word eudaimonia, while often translated as happiness, does not mean feeling happy but is instead a state of being that can also be translated as flourishing. The stoics were also corporealists, meaning only bodies have being – they believed the soul was a physical thing (i.e., a body). Stoic thought did evolve, but it seems like most of the popular books focus on the Roman period, which is the latter part of its development. Zeno of Citium (300 BCE) is credited with being the original stoic thinker, and Socrates, Plato, and Cynic Crates heavily influenced him. I am admittedly going to skip over a lot, including exactly how stoic thought evolved from Old Stoa to Middle Stoa and into the Roman period. It suffices to say that those debates are still alive and well in academia.
The stoic ethics, however, is what tends to get the lion's share of attention. Stoics posited that ethics is discovering how to get your body to physically live in agreement with nature, which is attuning one's reason with the corporeal mind of God or Zeus. A person would flourish by studying nature to align your thoughts with God or Zeus. Therefore, virtue is the "perfected condition of human reason" and is necessary and sufficient to achieve your telos. When philosophers use these terms, they use terms of art with specific technical definitions from formal logic.
1) If A is a sufficient condition for B: If A, then B.
2) If A is a necessary condition for B: If B, then A.
3) If A is both necessary and sufficient for B: B = A
The idea here is that human happiness is entirely in the power of the individual and that virtue is the only good. Naturally, knowledge would play an essential role in this system: not only were virtues considered forms of knowledge, but knowledge was considered the highest rational achievement, and virtue was the perfection of human rationality. Stoics also asserted that he who has one virtue has them all. Here, we could spend the rest of our time delving into stoic epistemology – but I'm going suppress that urge and spare you. Suffice it to say questions examining the nature, limits, origin, and availability of knowledge take on critical importance within stoicism. One thing to notice here is how deeply interconnected metaphysics and ethics are to the Stoics.
In this system, passion is defined as an "impulse which is excessive and disobedient to the dictates of reason, or a movement of soul which is irrational and contrary to nature; and that all passions belong to the soul's commanding-faculty."[14] Furthermore, they reject the idea that the human mind has any non-rational parts – that's another bold and problematic claim that I'm going to gloss over for the sake of time. But it is a required premise for stoicism. A person experiences distress for one of four reasons: a present perceived bad, fear (a future perceived bad), a future perceived good, and delight (or pleasure) (a present perceived good).
Now that we have that thumbnail sketch, we can understand some of the possible objections that the original stoics might make to interpretations like in Ryan Holiday's books. First, it's challenging to extract ethics from the rest of the interconnected system that makes it a coherent philosophy, especially metaphysics and epistemology. Second, stoicism doesn't help you find motivation and career success. Stoics explicitly said that wealth and health were what they called 'indifferents' – meaning they had absolutely no impact on your ability to achieve your telos of happiness (eudaimonia). Third, this sudden cottage industry should raise alarm bells. Aside from all the books and merch, people are paying up to $300 an hour with 'stoic coaches' - who appear to have no more than the same basic undergraduate degree in philosophy from any old school. That's only $50 less than my hourly rate as an attorney. When I was a philosophy undergrad, the joke was we would all end up as lawyers or broke-ass baristas. Even Socrates didn't think it was ethical to charge for teaching philosophy – my professors loved it when I pointed that out. Who knew you could make a ton of money "teaching" philosophy if you ignored the ethics?
Encouragingly, millions of men have gone on to read and engage with the actual stoics. Unsurprisingly, the more interesting questions are around the potential weaknesses of genuine stoicism. Here, we are in luck because even at the time, there were plenty of contemporary critics of no less stature than Aristotle and Cicero. Carneades perhaps developed the sharpest and most comprehensive lines of attack against stoicism that predominantly concerned epistemology. For my purposes here, I will skip the epistemological arguments, but the reference to them is in the footnotes.[15] Aristotle and Cicero each designed their thought experiments to test the stoic claim that health and wealth have nothing to do with achieving happiness.
The first experiment goes something like this: imagine someone who lives in absolute abject poverty, who has no idea where their next meal is coming from and cannot remember when they had their last one. They spend their entire existence, from cradle to grave, just trying to survive, and they barely hang on. Can we believe that a person remaining in this state can achieve happiness in any meaningful sense? Would anyone call this flourishing? Also, if they spend all their time just trying to survive, when will they have the time and opportunity to not only receive but process this special knowledge to become virtuous? Even if they are virtuous, are we calling this happiness?
The second experiment says let's imagine someone being tortured. For example, imagine Deadpool, who is held on death's edge in the oxygen deprivation tank. Or you can go to a darker place in your mind, but you get the point. Can we seriously suggest that someone in the most excruciating pain imaginable is capable of being happy or flourishing?
Aristotle and Cicero believed that there are two possible responses to these thought experiments that show something is wrong with stoicism. The first response is to say health and wealth are good and contribute in some way to happiness, and the second is that happiness is not the ultimate goal. Neither response is a viable option for stoics, but seeing another coherent option is tricky. The problem with the first response is that it contradicts stoic claims about virtue being both sufficient and necessary, as well as happiness being entirely within a person's control. The second response violates the entire goal of stoicism. Various attempts have been made to make a coherent response that avoids being impaled on these pitfalls, but I don't find any convincing enough to cover.
Consider the words of Henry David Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life; living is so dear, and I did not wish to practise[16] resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Consider Lord Tennyson's declaration that "Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all"[17] or the poet's exhortation to "Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may."[18] And to this, the stoics reject all of it in favor of a muted, passionless existence. The showing of emotions, according to stoics, is antithetical to virtue. Here is where I start to have real problems and concerns. Philosophy should, wherever possible, be informed by the best possible empirical evidence. There are now mountains of evidence showing beyond any reasonable doubt that emotional suppression is a significant contributor to anger and depression symptoms, especially in men (obviously, this is just a handful of references from that mountain).[19][20][21][22] One question to ask is if it's worth the trade, but that question is meaningless if that trade isn't possible in the first place. If the pursuit of complete internal detachment just leads to bigger and bigger emotions that have negative consequences for your mental and physical health, then it starts to sound like a fool's errand. Obviously, there are potentially many good counterarguments the stoics might make here, but moderation is not one of them. It is precisely this lack of moderation when it comes to emotions that make stoicism distinctive. In fact, at the time, Aristotle explicitly rejected stoicism and put forward his Nichomachean ethics, which were all about moderation. For example, when it comes to anger, Aristotle said virtue lies in a middle way, in someone who has the right amount of anger, handles it in the right manner, and directs it at the right people. Vice lies in someone who has too much or too little anger. The key here is that, unlike the stoics, Aristotle saw that anger, in the right amount, could be a virtue, whereas the stoics see virtue as the complete absence of all emotions, including anger.
I will also say that in my own life, I received the same messages that many young boys do as I was growing up, including things such as don't cry, don't show emotion, and don't talk about your feelings, etc. That turned out to be terrible advice. I didn't know any healthy coping mechanisms when I joined the Air Force. One of the best decisions I ever made was to start going to therapy at UT right after I left the USAF. As a result, I have developed much healthier coping skills, including meditation, which explicitly teaches you not to judge your emotions but simply notice them and allow them to pass, which I have found to be incredibly helpful. I by no means have it all figured out, but the progress I have made is because I have made progress towards learning how to own and process my emotions – not trying to not feel or have them.
Stoicism is also uniquely hyper-individualistic. Remember, it asserts that the only thing a person needs to achieve happiness is virtue – no other people are required. This starkly contrasts Aristotle's assertion that "man is a political animal," meaning people are social creatures who need others. Or the assertion from Jhon Donne that "no man is an island."[23] Stoics even had a particular view of what cosmopolitanism meant, rejecting any local ties in favor of being a member of an abstraction that didn't and still doesn't exist, i.e., world citizenry. Married men live longer and lead healthier lives.[24] Men who have close friends are less likely to experience anxiety and depression or commit suicide.[25] It turns out we need each other to find happiness, and yes, it is also true that "hell is other people."[26] We're a paradox – that's the human condition.
The new stoics have touched a nerve and found a cash cow. They are selling their books like hotcakes. But why? I don't have the answer to that question, but I can guess. I don't doubt that many men are genuinely casting about for answers. But, sometimes, I worry that stoicism is a way to check out and stop caring about trying to fix our problems and wrap it in a virtuous-sounding philosophy. I also fear that it's a way to justify being a Vulcan asshole free to pursue one's ends - consequences for other people be damned. Other times, I wonder whether it's an appeal to a romanticized rugged individualism. Sometimes, I question whether it's a way to justify not doing the hard work of emotional growth. But perhaps more than anything else, I worry that it's a way to cling to familiar and comfortable gender roles in a world where those norms are shifting. The answer could include all, none, or some of these guesses.
But regardless of what the attraction is, while I applaud looking to the ancients for wisdom, I question whether stoicism is all that well equipped to help address the problems men face today. I worry that the net effect is that stoicism encourages us to lean into our worst instincts and exacerbate the issues of male loneliness and mental health. I could be wrong; after all, I'm just asking questions.
https://store.dailystoic.com/
[4] https://viastoica.com/stoic-coaching/
[5]Holiday, R. (2014). The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Penguin Publishing Group.
[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/03/28/stoicism-ryan-holiday-mark-tuitert/
[8] https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/philosophy/faculty/jpd346
[9] Rollins, P. (2011). Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine. Howard Books.
[10] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/#Bib
[12] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/
[13] http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0004.tlg001.perseus-eng1
[14] Stobaues, 65A
[15] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/carneades/
[16] Henry David Thoreau gets to spell it however he damn well pleases.
[17] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45336/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-27
[18] https://poets.org/poem/virgins-make-much-time
[19] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7023872/#:~:text=As%20predicted%2C%20emotion%20suppression%20was,mediating%20effect%20of%20emotion%20suppression.
[20] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032400001X
[21] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01461672992511010
[22] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11121-013-0367-9
[23] https://allpoetry.com/No-man-is-an-island
[24] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7452000/
[25] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/06/cover-story-science-friendship
[26] Sartre, J. P. (1989). No Exit and Three Other Plays. Vintage; Reissue Edition.
This is very good! I’m writing a post (that won’t go out for a month or two) about why I think stoicism is popular. From being the target memo, it’s definitely a touch of romanticized individualism. I think it’s also because one’s 20s is a time of transition and uncertainty, and stoicism and “having nothing else but your virtue” sort of sells the idea that you won’t be changed by it. It’s definitely a masculine impulse.