The Stoic Magazine Library

What makes a person a Stoic? What is the essence of Stoicism? We posed these questions to our contributing editors. You can find their thoughts in this issue of THE STOIC.

A wealth of resources

With this issue, The Stoic Gym’s flagship journal, THE STOIC, completes five years. During this time, we have published more than 400 articles, poems, book reviews, interviews, and graphic stories. In addition, our website TheStoicGym.com, has published another 300 blog posts, videos, etc. We have thus made more than 700 items available to you, free of cost, to support your Stoic practice.
 

Stoic quotes for every day of the month

Six themes constitute the core of Stoicism. First, Stoics stress the necessity of self-control. Second, Stoics insist on seeing things as they are. Third, living according to nature is vital to Stoics. Fourth, your virtue depends on doing your duties, which are defined by your roles. Fifth, having virtue depends on knowing. Sixth, Stoicism is an aspirationalist ethics. Let’s explicate each theme in turn.

If asked to consider the essence of Stoicism, I can only respond that I am still learning.  I’m not an expert (far from it) but after ten years of intentionally seeking out Stoic communities, reading the work of Stoic thinkers, engaging in Stoic practice, and participating in Stoic events, I consider myself much more a Stoic than not a Stoic.  As I consider the time I’ve already spent living, and the time I may have left, I know that I’m much happier and better off with Stoic principles guiding my way.  

Stoicism doesn’t need to be complicated. Tempted as we might be to quibble about the details of Stoic theory – and trust me, I do this plenty often myself – we can easily lose sight of the only thing that really matters about Stoicism: trying to be a good person.

Given the ever-expanding library of content discussing the tenets of Stoicism, one would think that the philosophy could be diluted down to a single essence. There’s an argument to be made that that has already been done with the maxim “live according to Nature”, and I would indeed argue that it has. However, with abstraction comes room for misinterpretation. Put another way, those four words do sum up the entire philosophy, but only if you understand the vast complexities of what it really means.

Despite that, perhaps there is a better way to sum up Stoicism in modern language. Perhaps we can answer the question: what separates a Stoic from a non-Stoic?

The essence of reformed Stoicism is that it has no essence. Is it too big a provocation to state this?

When the fearless leader of this publication, Chuck Chakrapani, suggested this month’s theme, I was un-Stoically giddy. I’ve spent the last two years of my life steeped in Stoic theory and practice, and if I’ve learned anything about contemporary Stoicism, through the communities that have formed around it, it this: many of its adherents are lost in the sauce; to the great detriment of their characters. Chuck providing me the opportunity to talk about this, is like offering Mister Toad a brand new mania – and if you don’t get that reference, that’s okay.