Lives of the Stoics

Those are the very first words of the book.

Why do we study philosophy?

To become a Philosopher in the deepest, etymological sense of the word.

To become a LOVER OF WISDOM. To understand how to live a good life.

To move from THEORY to PRACTICE to MASTERY. Together. TODAY.

How do we do that?

Well...

One of the Stoics Ryan profiles is a guy named Antipater.

Ryan tells us: “Antipater was a major force in moving the Stoics in this commonsense direction. He loosened the absolutism of being either all virtuous or all vicious. He stopped minimizing the ‘indifferent’ things of daily life—whom we marry, how we dress, what we eat—and brought ethics to the forefront of the philosopher’s concern, so that philosophy could be a productive life practice. A guide to living. An operating system.

And again, we can imagine him modeling these very things at his dinner parties and in his daily life, just as Zeno had first modeled the way of the sage to Cleanthes long before. …

For him the human being in action is better understood as an archer. We train and practice. We draw back the arrow and aim it to the best of our abilities. But we know full well that despite our training and our aim, many factors outside our control will influence where the arrow hits the target—or if it falls short entirely.

Think what the pursuit of virtue is in real life. We study. We train until things become second nature. The moment arrives. We commit. We hold up what’s right as our target. We take action. But much happens after that—much of it not remotely up to us. Which is why we know that our true worth doesn’t reside in whether or not we hit the bull’s eye.

In the real world, we miss. Sometimes by a lot. But we have to keep trying. The more we work on it the better we get. The more shots we take, the more times we’ll hit the target and the more good we’ll do.”

Here’s to practicing our philosophy, taking aim, and doing our best together. TODAY.

Zeno was the founder of Stoicism. His story is told in the first chapter.

Ryan kicks off the chapter by telling us: “The story of Stoicism begins, fittingly, in misfortune.”

How so? Well, Ryan tells the story beautifully.

He tells us: “On a fateful day in the fourth century BC, the Phoenician merchant Zeno set sail on the Mediterranean with a cargo full of Tyrian purple dye. Prized by the wealthy and by royalty who dressed themselves in clothes colored with it, the rare dye was painstakingly extracted by slaves from the blood of sea snails and dried in the sun until it was, as one ancient historian said, ‘worth its weight in silver.’ Zeno’s family trade was in one of the most valuable goods in the ancient world, and as it is for many entrepreneurs, their business was on the line every day.”

Ryan continues: “No one knows what caused the wreck. Was it a storm? Pirates? Human error? Does it matter? Zeno lost everything—ship and cargo—in a time before insurance and venture capital. It was an irreplaceable fortune. Yet the unlucky merchant would later rejoice in his loss, claiming, ‘I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck.’ For it was the shipwreck that sent Zeno to Athens, on the path to creating what would become Stoic philosophy.”

How great is that?

Stoicism was founded on the other side of a SHIPWRECK.

If that isn’t the best possible expression of antifragility, I don’t know what it is.

Vernon Howard comes to mind as I typed that. In The Power of Your Supermind, he tells us: “If it takes apparent misfortune to turn us into true philosophers and doers of good to receive good, then apparent misfortune is our greatest fortune.”

Zeno is the living embodiment of that wisdom.

Marcus Aurelius expressed parallel wisdom in his Meditations when he wrote: “The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

And, of course, Ryan wrote an entire book on the subject called The Obstacle Is the Way.

Finally, Tom Morris has a great line in Stoicism for Dummies in which he quotes Seneca who once said: “Disaster is virtue’s opportunity.”

Now, let’s talk about the essence of Zeno’s Stoicism.

For Zeno and the ancient Stoics, the purpose of philosophy was simple: “to be in harmonious accord” with our guiding spirit.

They called that guiding spirit our daimon.

As we’ve discussed many times, the Romans also had a word for our guiding spirit. You know what they called our daimon? They called it our genius.

EVERYONE was said to have a guiding spirit—a daimon, a genius. And the entire point of philosophy was to help us align with and express that best version of ourselves.

Couple other things to know...

If you asked the ancient Stoics HOW to live in alignment with our best, highest selves, they would have answered you in a single word: ARETÉ.

Of course, as we’ve discussed many (many!) times (get my book yet?!), we translate the word areté into English as “virtue” or “excellence” but it has a deeper meaning—something closer to “expressing the best version of ourselves moment to moment to moment.”

We live with areté by paying attention to and “living in accord with” that guiding spirit of ours. When we do that, we experience the ultimate aim of life—a deep sense of well-being or flourishing. We experience what the Greeks called eudaimonia—which literally means “good soul.”

Note: As you know, we don’t just have the “good” voice within our minds. We also have the less-than-awesome voice chirping at us all day, every day.

Know this: The diminutive of daimon is demon.

Pro tip: Pay attention to which voice YOU are listening to TODAY.

P.S. For a little chronology, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle taught in Athens from the late 5th century BC to the late 4th century BC.

Socrates lived from roughly 470 BC to 399 BC. Plato lived from roughly 427/428 BC to 347/348 BC. Aristotle lived from 384 BC to 322 BC.

Zeno lived from roughly 334 BC to 262 BC. To put it in perspective, he was born 65 years after Socrates died. He was a young boy of about 13 when Plato died. However, his life overlapped directly with Aristotle. Zeno was about 12 years old when Aristotle died in 322 BC. As a young man, Zeno moved to Athens and actually studied at Plato’s Academy under Plato’s later successors.

P.P.S. Fun family fact, once upon a time, when Emerson was about 5 years old, he got a gecko. We named him Zeno. :)

That, of course, is from the chapter featuring Musonius Rufus.

There are three well-known Stoics: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Unless you’re really into Stoicism, you’ve probably never heard of Musonius Rufus. He is known as the fourth great Stoic. And, in his era, he was known as the “Roman Socrates.”

He lived in the first century. He was born around 25 AD and died around 100 AD. To put it in perspective, Seneca was born about 20 years earlier and Epictetus was born about 25 years later. In fact, Epictetus was his best student and went on to teach the guys who taught Marcus Aurelius his Stoicism.

To understand that passage above, you need to know that back in the day there were PHILOSOPHERS like Musonius Rufus and then there were SOPHISTS who were more like those “flute players” performing and pandering to the crowd.

Donald Robertson talks about this in How to Think Like Socrates as he compares the situation from 2000 years ago to our modern world filled with “influencers” performing to the modern crowd. It’s the first Big Idea we discuss in that Note.

Donald says: “Socrates, however, said that this meant orators resembled confectioners. At first this perplexed everyone, but Socrates explained what he meant. ‘Confectioners,’ he said, ‘come up with recipes for sweets, which appeal to the tastes of their customers. They learn, through trial and error, how to give people what they want regardless of whether it’s good for them or not.’ Socrates said that he therefore considered both rhetoric and confectionery to be forms of pandering to others, by attempting to gratify them: one with sweets, the other with fine words.”

And: “‘Pandering,’ said Socrates, ‘pays no attention to the best interests of its subjects and instead catches the foolish with the bait of pleasure, tricking them into esteeming it more highly than their own good.’ On this definition, of course, the vast majority of ‘politicians’ would be panderers, or demagogues, rather than genuine statesmen. These men employ rhetoric in order to gain power instead of studying justice and learning how to benefit society.”

Now... Epictetus is the next Stoic Ryan features after Musonius. (We’ll get to him next.)

Ryan tells us: “It was from this kind of teacher [Musonius] that Epictetus came to understand philosophy not as some fun diversion but as something deadly serious. ‘The philosopher’s lecture-hall is a hospital,’ he would later say to his own students. ‘ You shouldn’t walk out of it feeling pleasure, but pain, for you aren’t well when you enter it.’”

P.S. Ryan gives a little nickname to each of the Stoics he profiles. He dubs Musonius “The Unbreakable” in part because he was exiled THREE (!) times during his lifetime.

P.P.S. We have a Note on wisdom from Musonius Rufus I encourage you to check out. His intensity is FANTASTIC. Here are a few gems from that Note:

“Just as there is no use in medical study unless it leads to the health of the human body, so there is no use to a philosophical doctrine unless it leads to the virtue of the human soul.”

“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the goodness endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.”

“Indeed philosophy is nothing but the practice of noble behavior.”

Epictetus.

As Ryan just shared, he was born and lived most of his life as a SLAVE.

His name *literally* means “acquired one.”

I have a Heroic portrait of Epictetus staring at me from my office wall as I type this.

He is my all-time favorite teacher.

A few pages into the chapter on Epictetus, Ryan shares one of my all-time favorite pieces of wisdom from Epictetus.

Ryan tells us: “Although Musonius Rufus was not a slave, he and Epictetus had long conversations about the human condition. Both, clearly, had experienced the worst of what men could do to each other—Musonius with his repeated exiles, and Epictetus living through bondage. Yet instead of taking bitterness from this, instead of losing their sense of agency over their lives, they were both pushed by these painful events toward realizing that the only power they actually had was over their mind and their character. ‘If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious,’ Epictetus said, yet we so easily hand our mind over to other people, letting them inside our heads or making us feel a certain way.”

P.S. Check out our Notes on all of Epictetus’ wisdom for more. Although he never wrote a book, we have one of his best students (a Roman General/historian named Arrian) to thank for sharing his lecture notes in Discourses and The Enchiridion.

Plus we have Notes on A.A. Long’s brilliant book How to Be Free along with Massimo Pigliucci’s equally brilliant How to Be a Stoic. Others influenced by Epictetus include Vice Admiral James Stockdale (check out our Notes on Courage Under Fire and Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot) and Albert Ellis, the founder of modern cognitive behavior therapy (A Guide to Rational Living and How to Control Your Anxiety). And... Check out Notes on Donald Robertson’s The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

That’s from the Conclusion. We skipped Aurelius who is the last Stoic featured and, in fact, the last great Stoic of the ancient world. Check out our Notes on Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor for more on him.

For now... Know this: “There is no role so well suited to philosophy than the one you happen to be in right now.” <- LITERALLY. What role are YOU playing RIGHT NOW?! For me, in this moment, it’s Philosopher. In a few minutes when I take a break and connect with the family, it will be Husband and Father. When I was working out earlier today, it was Athlete. When I connect with a friend later today it will be Friend and Mentor.

All day, every day, we are in the perfect role to practice our philosophy—to listen to and to live in accord with our inner daimon as we live with Arete and give the world all we’ve got.

As Ryan says in the very last words of the book: “As Epictetus wrote, ‘Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person stretching to avoid error.’

That’s what Stoicism is. It’s stretching. Training. To be better. To get better. To avoid one more mistake, to take one step closer toward that ideal. Not perfection, but progress—that’s what each of these lives was about. The only question that remains for us, the living heirs to this tradition: Are we doing that work?”

Here’s to doing the work. To practicing our philosophy. All day, every day. Especially TODAY.