Stoicism
Tradition · 3rd century BC to 2nd century AD, Greece and Rome · Philosophy, stage 2: Map the schools
Stoicism began with Zeno of Citium in Athens around 300 BC and later flourished in Rome, where Epictetus, a former slave, and Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, became its best-known Roman voices. Stoic ethics centers on a single distinction: some things are within your control, mainly your own judgments, intentions, and reactions, and everything else, including your health, reputation, and other people's actions, is not. Peace of mind comes from directing all your effort at the first category and accepting the second with equanimity. Stoic physics also holds that the universe is rational and ordered, which grounds the ethical advice that living well means living in accordance with nature.
What it claims
- Only your own judgments and actions are truly within your control.
- Emotional disturbance comes from mistaken judgments about what is good or bad, not from external events themselves.
- Virtue is the only true good; external things like wealth or health are indifferent.
- Living well means accepting what happens and acting rightly within it, rather than trying to control outcomes.
