You could argue some of these learnings are why it has become popular?
Millenials and the generations after them have grown up living in a perpetual state of crisis. Economically they are doomed, living from one recession to another, losing more hope of ever having a life as good as their previous generations while working twice as hard.
Climate change is inevitable and unstoppable now. Things are only going to be worse from here on.
Societal cohesion is eroding all across the world.
No wonder people want to focus on what they control and live like every day is their last, because otherwise, it is pretty miserable out there.
If you really wanted to reduce Stoicism to "a few takeaways", it's more proper to start from Stoic cosmology, since its ethics directly relates to it. According to Stoics, the universe as we know it is nothing but a manifestation of pure Spirit or Reason, out of which Matter and Force first separated, then the various forces and kinds of matter also became distinct. But everything in the universe is nonetheless ordained according to Reason, and thus is ultimately why we are also told to pursue reason in all of our actions and not let ourselves be affected by damaging 'passions'. It's a rather anti-materialistic philosophy, quite opposed to modern scientism.
The original stoics counted "nature" as something close to a proper God. I think not a lot is lost transmuting "nature" to be something more appropriate for modern interpretation of the philosophy though. Nature in a modern interpretation can be thought of the natural order of the universe and the way it is. Although there was also an implied fatalism (e.g. the future is predetermined) to their concept of "nature" which would not sit well with many modern stoics. Just adding some context for what "natural law" is and how modern philosophers have taken to viewing it.
I think many people lack a cohesive life philosophy and stoicism is a keen observation of the human condition that rings true today. Not a lot has truly changed and the ancient Greeks and other philosophers had as much of a valid viewpoint of the human condition as we do today. In many areas science has now filled in blanks that were given more mystical properties in ancient times. I could go on, but Stoics were not dour and fatalistic about the future, their philosophy strongly encouraged them to live in the moment.
My understanding about logos (nature / god), it is the governing reason of the universe. Because of logos being driven by reason, that which happens in nature or is natural is grounded in reason and serves a purpose. In this way, it is not much different than "God works in mysterious ways." It is a crutch upon which you can place acceptance.
I think that is about right.It does not change a lot about living with Stoicism to abandon or update their "nature" to something modern and sensible to the practitioner. For a agnostic/atheist it more or less does not matter in my opinion.
In my philosophy 101 class, we were taught about Kant, Hume, Descartes, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Then after we had pored over all of those works, the professor brought out Socrates and Plato. I have discussed this with other friends and this seems to be a common pattern for philosophy courses at University.
I wonder if because it is taught last, even though it is an older philosophical method, it is looked at as "best" purely due to an order of teaching?
There surely appears to be a "stoicism is best" and "stoicism is ancient and wise" popularity spreading across YouTube right now.
If you read the story of the Scientific Revolution, the major difficulty seemed to be overthrowing the deep-seated influence of ancient thinkers, and learning to think for themselves rather than comment endless on Aristotle, Archimedes, Cicero, etc.
It's not clear academic philosophy ever really moved past this inclination—a kind of perpetual scholasticism hangs over it, at least as commonly taught. The philosophical curriculum is what it is because—well, tradition; because that's what the teachers learned. You can stretch it to have something to do with the present, or to incorporate everything humanity has come to know to be true since then, but it seems to default to something closer to historiography than anything like what these writers were doing when they wrote in the first place.
The first book on Stoicism I ever read started from the observation by the author, a tenured philosophy professor, that most of his field was unable to provide any insight at all into one of the most common (and profound) philosophical questions that people seek answers to: how to live a good life.
Much of philosophy is about logic and analysis. Stoicism is about lived experience. When you're engaged in complex intellectual debate, there seems to me more to areas with logic and analysis. And that is what academic philosophy focuses on. But if you're trying to cope with life, Stoicism has a lot to say.
So Stoicism captures something important that a lot of people want out of philosophy. But it doesn't capture what's interesting to have complex discussions about. Let's take just one idea, https://mountainstoic.com/2015/06/03/on-the-stoic-acceptance.... How many conversations can you have about how it is better for you to go willingly along with fate than to be dragged kicking and screaming? OK, we can have another conversation about how the word "cynic" meant "dog" and so the Stoics were making fun of the Cynics in their dog and cart analogy. But really, there isn't that much to discuss. But there is certainly something to experience!
For a more extreme example, I believe that the most influential and widely read Greek moral philosopher was Aesop. But you'll almost never see his name in a book about philosophy. Why not? I think that it is because his fables, designed to speak directly to experience, offer nothing that looks like complex intellectual discussion!
Interesting! Formal logic is a completely separate series of courses at my University.
Now that you mention it, that is a very odd choice by my University. Formal logic seems very relevant to analysing the rest of the philosophical works.
You might mean different things by "formal logic". It makes a lot of sense to teach Aristotelian logic either before or with Aristotle. But modern mathematical logic really is a different field.
Did they ever get to Montaigne? Montaigne has a realisation of the messiness of human life, and how unbridled pursuit of virtue can cause more harm than good.
The surge in stoicism is reactionary, as the stoic
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me.
...is an anti-inflammatory response to the opposite sentiment embedded in the campaign to eradicate microaggressions. Stoicism is permission to not take damage from verbal barbs.
My lay-person understanding of stoicism is that it’s a philosophy that promotes an internal locus of control. Focus on the stuff you can control, let go of the stuff you can’t.
Internal locus of control has shown up as a good strategy in several psychology studies (yes yes replication crisis). Studies show that people with an internal locus of control report higher life satisfaction and better life outcomes.
We live in a time of doomscrolling social media full of emotional tugs and pulls about stuff that is so far outside our control it doesn’t even affect us in the least. The only reason we care is because an algorithm shoved it in our face. Then we can’t help but to care.
And you know the whole “Yep the world is definitely ending in our lifetimes” vibe that’s been going around the past 10 to 20 years. This is a big problem most of us can’t do anything about.
All this conspires to make stoicism look pretty appealing.
Now, is it true that we can’t “change the world”? Probably not. But it’s a lot easier to change the world with a series of actionable steps that are completable and within your control, than if you try to take on everything all at once.
It's the aborted branch of western thought that most closely converged upon the truths found in eastern philosophy. And for the same reason those ideolgies have risen in the last 50 years, stoicism has gained ground. The West has become so thouroughly materialistic, both physically and culturally, that the disconnect between the inability to achieve that material happiness due to income inequality and the reality of modern wage slavery has driven many to find solace in those ideas. The alternative is to resign yourself to mainline western thought, and more than likely end up in a state of ressentiment from the above https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment.
Massimo is who turned me Stoic. I expect he predates Ryan Holliday, both of which are the contemporary stoic masters. The article being focused on Ryan.
Why does stoicism work? Well psychology has extensively researched this for decades and without question has confirmed the value in mindfulness in so many ways.
Fundamentally it's about emotional regulation. Sensory management is often part of it as well. Afterall, you don't do mindful meditation with noise and light around.
Stoicism is the only Western philosophy with classical roots that is popularily promoted as a philosophy-for-living. The rest are steeped in How Many Angels Can Fit on the Pin Of A Needle chin-stroking.[1]
I tried to idly bring up philosophy for living questions a few years back. But I was asking academics (on Reddit) and I mostly got queer eyes about what I was asking such weird questions for.
It has a praxis, not just a set of ideas.
It also doesn’t have the “stain” of being associated with any religion. Which means that secular people can adopt it without some defensive stance on how they are only adhering to the “practical” or the “scientifically backed” parts without the “bullshit” (c.f. Buddhism).
[1] Popularily. I’m sure someone could be applying things like Cynicism and other classical philosophies.
Stoicism has been warped, like most things that get popular (see Agile, etc.). More than one finance person I know in London uses it to not let the plight of the poor shame them for voting for cutting social benefits, among other excuses for shitty behaviour.
It's like a comment I originally made about mindfulness meditation.
It helps you be more effective at doing what you want to do. This might not be a good thing if what you want to do is be an asshole.
The corollary, of course, is that the potential criticism doesn't stop it from being a useful thing for you to learn. Even if you don't like how other people use it.
I actually use the Daily Stoic (the book) as a sort of journal prompt generator. It has been really great to look at various things in my life from a different lens.
That said, I also read the source material (via translations, obviously) because I think a big part of the appeal is being able to interpret what is relevant to the individual reading the material. Read it, understand it, find what resonates, learn to apply it to your life in a sustainable way.
Is _everything_ in stoicism for me? Nope, as someone else mentioned in another comment, as someone who is not religious in any way shape or form, those particular bits don't apply, and therefore I substitute in something logical for my beliefs.
So far, stoicism has been very helpful and at the very least extremely interesting.
The Daily Stoic was created by Ryan Holiday. I believe that he really did a lot to encourage current popularity for Stoicism.
But it is interesting to note that he seems to have gotten into Stoic philosophy to make up for the sins that he committed as a digital marketer. Of his books, his expose on social media and digital marketing, https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato..., is my favorite.
There is a terrific lecture by Michael Sugrue on Marcus Aurelius where he discusses some of the history of Stoicism. I think that lecture can give you a good understanding of the appeal.
I tend to not like stoicism and similar ideologies that have a component of "suffering is noble."
There are certain things in life that you must be able to abide, but suffering is suffering. Reducing suffering for ourselves and for others is a good thing.
These systems can lead to the perverted notion that suffering is good, and that we should just allow it to happen. We should not. We should reduce suffering for ourselves and for others when we can.
My only hesitation with Stoicism is there seems to be a path that leads from "do I have control over this?" to "not my problem". And the "not my problem" response is apathy towards things you might be able to exert a minor force towards that manifests into an appreciable outcome. Assuming we're not omniscient, and we don't know how much control we actually have over things. What seems like a terrible issue outside of control may be turned into a less severe issue with some effort. Or am I misunderstanding Stoicism?
There is a further subdivision within the class of things over which you have no control (the indifferents). There are the preferred indifferents and the dispreferred ones [1].
I think the idea is not to be apathetic toward indifferents, but rather to not let yourself fall into dispair if something out of your own control doesn't go your way, at least that's how I choose to interpret it.
Everything in life is suffering. The one surefire way to "reduce suffering for ourselves and for others when we can" is letting go of our attachments, cravings and improper desires (while of course feeling free to cultivate good aspirations so as to replace those undesirable cravings - such as the virtuous aspiration of becoming a sage and helping enlighten the world at large), and Stoicism gives us lots of good suggestions as to how to achieve this.
I think this might be a skewed misinterpretation of the idea that you should not let the threat of suffering subvert your moral principles. I would be happy to look for a precise reference from the discourses of Epictetus if you are interested.
If you think that Stoicism says that suffering is noble, then you don't understand Stoicism. It focuses on emotional tools that let you do what you think is important, without normal difficulties causing you undue suffering. And it is PERFECTLY consistent with Stoicism that what you think is important can be reducing suffering for yourself and others if you can.
Therefore a wish to reduce suffering is a reason to study Stoicism, and not a reason to reject it.
You still might not think that Stoicism is worth learning about. But you shouldn't be rejecting it for the wrong reasons.
What's more curious is why is it becoming popular nowadays. The internet, of course, factors into it. But ideas don't stick only through dissemination. The adopters of the idea need to be able to relate to the idea to some degree.
It wasn't promoted. Philosophy in Ancient Greece was quite a lot different in that people were expected to develop their own sort of philosophy of life. Stoicism was just one among many ideological systems that kind of competed but really just more or less all co-existed - with just a bit of murder here and there, along with people's own personal interpretations on everything. It's only in this context that otherwise inexplicable things like the Pythagorean math cult [1], of Pythagorus, can make more sense.
This also applied to the 'ruling class' who would often have wildly divergent beliefs and values. IMO it this extreme diversity and freedom of thought that helped the Ancient Greeks make such incredibly rapid intellectual progress in basically every domain.
This article mentions all kinds of trends correlated to stoicism, but it completely failed to explain causation.
Stoicism gained recent popularity because it directly opposes other trending cultural perspectives, such as self-victimization dialogues surrounding mental health and self-accountability for survival under capitalism.
The topic is promoted by red-pill commentators because they are leveraging it to argue against societal complaints coming from other people whose needs are portrayed as “weak” or lacking accountability.
Is it actually stoicism that's (allegedly) become popular? Or is it just something calling it conservative?
I ask because when i see stoics in normal life, you'll often find them startiing with marcus Aurelius and ending up with Julius Evola. Who is Evola, you might ask? He's quite literally Nazi philosopher (graduating from Mussolini's Italy) that is popular on 4chan. There are edit wars on Wikipedia to remove the Nazi associations from his Wikipedia entry.
Evola is popular with various "trads". The central idea being that there is a moral corruption of our society and we need to return to traditional values, including traditional gender roles. In evangelical circles, you'll see terms like "complementarianism" thrown around to disguise the misogyny.
For many, this is the beginning of the alt-right pipeline. Not being happy with the modern world plus there are plenty of people to fan the flames to make you feel persecuted or oppressed. LARPing as being oppressed is an entry point to white supremacy.
Stoicism is fine. Self-improvement is fine. But if you see anyone on this path look for these signs because you'll start seeing them.
I dunno about young people, but me and some acquaintances discovered and got into stoicism and we just mixed it up with whatever we enjoyed before and that was anarchism, leftism, critical reasoning, philosophy, science, history, etc. It was just something else that was orthogonal..
When the organized populist socialist left is defeated and cannot effectively organize on behalf of working class people, and give secular and democratic answers to why the world often sucks and why crisis are happening...
Into the void steps far right anti-democratic authoritarian conservatism (of which one variant is fascism but also authoritarian conservative religious fundamentalism, etc). All the the conspiracy theories about the WEF and COVID vaccines and whatnot have this tiny yarn of truth attached to real injustices and inequalities, but once you start tugging them, they pull up a whole scary ball of yarn.
Obama promised "Change we can believe in" and ... they couldn't. Demoralization and right wing radicalization is a direct result.
But yes, I think you're right about various flavours of Stoicism making the rounds. They have the aura of "trad" and a kind of rational masculinity, seemingly grounded in some old pre-democratic, pre-enlightenment thought.
I'm getting major "working out will make you right wing" vibes from this comment.
The fundamental idea of stoicism is that I will focus on what I can control and accept what I cannot.
It only seems to ruffle the jimmies of people who want to force everyone to care about the things they care about.
At the end of the day there is very little I can do about Gaza or Ukraine or Taiwan or Inflation or a million other things that people all over the world are trying to shove down my throat. What I can do things about is being a good husband and father, serving in my local community, and striving each day to be a better person and help those around me.
Did you skip past "Self-improvement is fine" at the end of my comment?
I wonder if you're "getting those vibes" because you're somewhere on this pipeline? Gym rats don't normally get defensive about working out IME.
Working out is fine. Other forms of self-improvement are fine. Even living what you view as, for example, a "traditional" (as you interpret it) heternormative existence is also fine. It's also compatible with feminism, which is really about giving people freedom rather than assigning them gender roles.
IME this only becomes a problem when you start theory-crafting, rationalizing and imposing that viewpoint on others. It's the difference between:
> "I want to provide for my family with a stay-at-home wife."
and
> "The breakdown in society and increase in crime is due to the attack on and erosion of the traditional family. We need to enact policy to encourage ("force" in some cases) people to get and stay married, for the sake of the children."
The first is making a choice for your life, which literally nobody has an issue with. If two consenting adults decide that's how they want to organize their lives, go nuts. The second is enacting policy to impose your worldview on everyone else. You see the difference?
This has real-world implications like pushing legislation to withholding welfare from unmarried people (eg that may have been an abusive relationship).
I'd argue studying any philosophy correlates with people looking to study traditional thought. Traditional thought correlates with conservatism, not Nazism, maybe Nietzsche does though.
Depends on the strain and what you mean by "traditional thought."
Nazi party was in fact a coalition like any other successful political party. After they purged their left ("socialist") wing, it became a big tent of militaristic anti-enlightenment thinking. It was broad enough that otherwise intelligent people like Martin Heidegger could feel comfortable under the umbrella.
Likewise for Mussolini's actual fascist party. Appeal to a pre-enlightenment quasi-Roman Italy, and the symbolism around that. Fusing hierarchical / anti-democratic with traditional and romanticist aesthetics. They weren't as caught up with the racial superiority stuff either.
The word fascist or Nazi gets thrown around a lot for things that are ... unfortunately... new variants of an old strain to which the word won't precisely apply. E.g. Trump, Proud Boys etc. It is unfortunately important to engage with the content in these movements and offer a democratic alternative rather than just slap the pejorative on it and hope people are shocked out of finding it appealing.
A few takeaways from reading about the Stoic philosophy:
- Focus on what you can control.
- Amor Fati. The love of fate. Transmute everything into a lesson to be learned and something to grow from.
- If it's bearable, endure it with wisdom and grace.
- Does it agree with natural law? Is something in line with nature? If it's an abomination, leave it immediately.
- Memento mori. Remember you will die. Live every day as if it's your last. Don't postpone.