“... we can find beauty in our companions and environment no matter where we are. Instead of longing for “beautiful” objects or surroundings, we can identify the deep beauty that resides in every person, place, and thing.”

Stoicism and beauty are not words you hear together very often, perhaps because our culture tends to associate beauty with external (non-virtuous) things: physical appearance, luxury goods, expensive real estate, or picture-perfect vacations. For Stoics these “goods” may be aesthetically pleasing, but they are merely preferred indifferents, not goods in themselves. While we can certainly appreciate them in passing, we don’t devote ourselves to acquiring them.

Types of beauty worth pursuing

But there are other types of beauty that, from a Stoic perspective, are worth pursuing.

Moral beauty

One type is moral beauty – the beauty of virtue and everything associated with it. A virtuous character, representing the best human of nature, is beautiful in its own right. Here is Seneca painting a vivid portrait of moral beauty in the sage:

If we could examine the mind of a good man, O what a beautiful, what a sacred sight we would see! What grandeur, what calm would shine forth in it, and what constellations of the virtues: justice on one side, courage on the other, moderation and prudence over there. Besides these, frugality, self-control, endurance, generosity, and cheerfulness would shed their light upon it … what grace, and, by god, what dignity would these bestow! How great its authority would be, and how much appreciated: beloved it would be, yet at the same time revered. - Seneca, Letters on Ethics, 115.3

Moral beauty, as Seneca describes it, elicits not an aesthetic reaction but a spiritual one. Like more prosaic types of beauty, it has a forceful impact on the observer. Unlike physical beauty, however, moral beauty often inspires virtue in others. Seneca says moral beauty is “appreciated,” “beloved,” and “revered,” and in fact 21st century psychology research confirms the inspirational nature of moral beauty (Diessner, R., Iyer, R., Smith, M., and Haidt, J. Who engages with moral beauty? Journal of Moral Education, 2013). When we encounter moral beauty in someone, we experience a “moral elevation” that inspires us toward our own morally beautiful thoughts and actions.

Appreciation for the natural world

Another type of Stoic beauty is appreciation for the natural world around us. As Stoics, we should actively appreciate the inherent beauty of our astonishing universe. Not just beautiful vistas or photogenic fauna, but everything. Thus,

Truths as this should be carefully noted, that even the by-products of natural processes have a certain charm and attractiveness… Ears of corn bending toward the earth, and the wrinkled brows of a lion, and the foam dripping from the jaws of a wild boar, and many other things are far from beautiful if one views them in isolation, but nevertheless, the fact that they follow from natural processes gives them an added beauty and makes them attractive to us. So if a person is endowed with sensibility and has a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, he will find scarcely anything which fails to please him in some way by its presence… - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.2

Finding beauty in the natural world is not a matter of seeking out aesthetically pleasing people, objects, or settings. Rather, it’s a matter of seeing the beauty in whatever is already around us – the existing order of things. When we develop a deep love of life as it is, we appreciate the underlying beauty of wrinkled skin and the foaming mouth of a wild boar, even if they are not conventionally attractive. These things are beautiful simply because they are a part of the universe, and the universe is beautiful.

That means we can find beauty in our companions and environment no matter where we are. Instead of longing for “beautiful” objects or surroundings, we can identify the deep beauty that resides in every person, place, and thing. We look not to their physical appearance but to the part they play in the beautiful and vast cosmic order.

Appreciating conventional beauty

Of course, we can still appreciate conventionally attractive things as preferred indifferents, but not in a way that mistakes them for true goods. To live a good and happy life, we should spend less energy pursuing indifferent beauty and more energy pursuing true beauty. As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, if we cultivate deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, we will take real pleasure in the simple and natural things around us.

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Brittany Polat, author of Tranquility Parenting: A Guide to Staying Calm, Mindful, and Engaged, holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics but currently researches and writes about Stoic psychology and philosophy. Brittany's latest project is Living in Agreement, where she applies her lifelong interest in human nature to the discourse and practice of inner excellence.

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