Why the Stoics?

When people bother to learn anything about me, they are often confused about why I have such a strong commitment to the Stoics, in contrast to the many other schools of philosophy I so deeply admire. 

“Wait, you taught me all about St. Thomas Aquinas, and now you’re telling me that you don’t really follow Aquinas?” 

“I spent a whole year reading Plato with you, and it seemed like you were consumed by anything and everything Plato had to say. What gives with your constant private quotes from Marcus Aurelius? Were you lying to us?” 

“Did we just waste a whole semester studying Aristotle, only to learn that he was wrong?” 

No, no, and no. 

I love you enough not to force you into a corner, and I love myself enough not to bow down to any mortal tribe. The slavery to any “-ism” is your greatest enemy. 

For your sake, I ask you to think for yourself. For my sake, I demand an openness to Truth, in all of its forms, and I sadly know that I am at my worst when I narrow my vision. 

But why that annoying love for the Stoic tradition? 

On the level of theory, I have never read a philosopher who hasn’t taught me something of great value, either positively or negatively, so I continue to broaden the horizon. 

On the level of practice, however, the only thing that has saved me from total despair, and from a completely pointless death, has been the Stoic principle that nothing is good or bad for me except for my own moral judgments. 

Aquinas will nudge you that way through his complete search for the Divine, and Plato will remind you to follow the Good above all else, and Aristotle will insist that happiness depends upon the habit of virtue. 

All three, however, are still enamored of supposedly ideal circumstances, by the best lay of the land, so to speak, and yet only the Stoic will take it all the way, with absolutely no footnotes, limitations, or conditions. 

I am as good a man, and thereby as happy a man, as I choose to be. In this, I serve God, I serve the Good, and I serve virtue. In making something of myself, I have found myself as a part within the harmony of the Whole. 

Only the Stoic has the balls, pardon my French, to completely transcend the conditions, and thereby to express happiness in its purest form. The Stoic makes no apologies for being poor, or sick, or ugly, or unpopular—he knows exactly where he’s at, and so he doesn’t waver. 

Why should he need to, when he sees his own nature in its naked purity, as but one instance of Nature itself, a sliver of Providence given to him, as his own power to make his own mark? However small, it is always significant. No piece is ever disposable. 

Stoicism speaks to me with such force because it cuts through the nonsense, the excuses, the mediocrity. I have already cursed once, but I will also add that Stoicism tolerates no bullshit. 

I need no longer listen to the arrogant priest who commands me to blindly obey, only so that he might be gratified in this world. 

I need no longer suck at the teat of the fat politician, who requires my vote for his supposed favors. 

I need no longer be terrified of the mighty boss, because he really has nothing to offer me, and, most importantly, he really has nothing he can take away from me. 

Stoicism is a “high octane” philosophy, and, in the Western tradition, it stands as a pinnacle of wisdom, in its most down-to-earth form. I also see something of that same strain in Mystic Catholicism, or in Vedanta Hinduism, or in Vajrayana Buddhism, or in Sufi Islam, but that is a discussion for another time. 

The Stoics, quite literally, saved my life. That says far more than any academic degree, or business promotion, or pious posturing. 

—4/2016