What is Stoicism?

Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded in Athens around 300 BCE by Zeno of Citium, who taught in a painted colonnade, the stoa, from which the name comes. It became very popular in Rome. Its three best-known later teachers are Seneca (a statesman and writer), Epictetus (a former slave who taught in Greece) and the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Main ideas

• Virtue is the only real good. Wealth, health and fame are "preferred" but are not what makes a life good; wisdom, justice, courage and self-control are.
• Some things are up to us, and some are not. Epictetus opens his handbook with this: our judgements and actions are up to us; our body, property and reputation are not. Peace comes from working on the first and accepting the second.
• Disturbance comes from judgements. It is our opinion about an event, not the event, which upsets us.
• Live according to nature. We are rational and social beings, so we should use reason and act for the common good.

What it is not

In everyday speech "stoic" means putting up with pain without complaint. The philosophy is wider: it is about thinking clearly, acting justly and keeping calm. It does not ask for suppressing feelings; it asks for examining them.

See Marcus Aurelius.

The text is George Long's English translation of 1862, in the public domain, and its old-fashioned English ("thou", "thy") is unchanged. The notes beside it are our own wording. Marcus Aurelius wrote these for himself; they are a diary, not a book of rules.