The Daily Stoic

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Marcus Aurelius’s step brother Lucius Verus was hardly a great man. Unlike Marcus, he was not as driven or as a smart. He was not always so diligent in his responsibilities. We hear that he liked to party. But still, Marcus loved his step-brother and not only found a role for him leading the troops, he celebrated his accomplishments as well, sometimes at the expense of his own. Would Marcus have t...

There is a great expression: Man proposes, God disposes. You don’t have to be religious to understand or agree with it. It just means: All we can do is plan...then life intervenes.  Certainly, the Stoics built much of their philosophy around this humble but brilliant insight. Seneca spoke repeatedly of the power of Fortune to dash all our plans and intentions to pieces. All we could do was be read...

Politics, like all contests, involves winners and losers. Cato lost elections , such as his first run for praetorship in 55 BCE and his run for consul in 51 BCE. Cicero lost some as well. James Stockdale lost in a landslide as Ross Perot’s running mate, after one of the worst drubbings in vice presidential debate history. As long as there have been Stoics running for office—from the days of ancien...

" Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both ." It is one of Marcus Aurelius’s most withering lines. The most powerful conqueror on earth was, Marcus implied, in the end, no better or no less mortal, than the man who drove his baggage cart.  It is a powerful point, particularly when one considers that, for thousands of years, we haven’t been sur...

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca both made no secret of their objection to escapism. They both spoke negatively of people who frittered their existence away, chasing one tourist destination after another. Seneca likened these folks to someone tossing and turning in bed, just trying to get comfortable. Meanwhile, they were sleeping their lives away. The only real retreat could be found by looking inward,...

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

There are a lot of tensions in Stoicism, as we have talked about before. How do you balance acquiescing to fate and embracing your own agency? How do you balance being aware of the dangers of the future without worrying about or fearing it? How do you think regularly of your own death without losing your taste for life? But perhaps the most relevant tension today is the one about balancing a philo...

The ask is just an ask, you know. Whether they’re asking you to pass the salt or asking you for a hundred thousand dollar loan, whether they’re asking you what you weigh or if you can come in and work on Sunday, the ask is just the ask. We decide that it’s offensive or presumptuous or rude.   That’s what Epictetus was saying when he observed that it’s not events that upset us, but our judgement ab...

It’s a staple of entertainment shows and those clickbait-y links at the bottom of the page on news websites: Where are they now? What happened to those famous TV stars of your youth? You’ll never believe what so-and-so is up to today. Funnily enough, Marcus Aurelius liked to play this game too . He’d say: Think about the emperors who came before you. Think about this famous conqueror or that notor...

The Greeks and the Romans were known for their parties. They threw huge ones. Seneca famously owned—not rented—three hundred ivory tables for entertaining. Imagine that. The ancients also knew how to drink. Cato liked to drink . So did Socrates. There’s no evidence that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca didn’t either But the accounts of their drinking don’t square one to one with our modern...

It would be wonderful if teams didn’t cheat and refs always got the calls right. It’d be wonderful if people in the media knew what they were talking about and didn’t stake out positions just to be controversial or contrarian. It’d be wonderful if other politicians operated in good faith and put country above partisanship. It’d be wonderful if drivers were courteous and followed all the rules of t...

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

“My pain is self-chosen,” Layne Staley sings on the melancholy Mad Season hit, River of Deceit . “ At least I believe it to be.” That belief, the Stoics would concur, is well-founded. Pain is a choice.  Now before you get upset hearing that, wait a second. We’re not talking about physical pain. You don’t choose the stabbing pains from a knife wound or a back injury. It’s not your fault that cancer...

The Stoics were all about routine and repetition. It wasn’t just about knowing what the right thing was, it was about doing it daily. Fueling the habit bonfire, they said. It was about creating muscle memory.  Epictetus said that philosophy was something that should be kept at hand every day and night. Indeed, the title of his book Enchiridion actually means “small thing in hand,” or handbook. Sen...

Clearly the Stoics were doers. They ran for public office. They fought in the army. They started business ventures. They created artistic works. How can this fit, though, with what Marcus called “ the art of acquiescence ?” Isn’t this resignation a contradiction? If you believe in a kind of predetermination, why bother? Perhaps the way through this puzzle is best captured in a quote from Democritu...

In Greek mythology, the god Apollo curses the Trojan princess, Cassandra, with the power of accurate prophecy that will always be ignored. In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon , Cassandra is brought back to Greece after the capture of Troy as one of the great spoils of war. Unlike Agamemnon, who is happy to be home, Cassandra predicts ominous deaths for both herself and her new master.  “I know that odor,...

There will come a moment in your life when you are faced with an important decision that appears to have two choices: one that feels like the status quo, the path of least resistance, the way things have always been done.  And then there is the one that appeals to you most. The exciting one; the new, risky one. The one that, if you make it, people are going to think you’re crazy. They’re going to...

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Even if you’re not a college basketball fan, you may have heard about this incredible upset in 2018, when top-ranked University of Virginia was defeated by University of Maryland-Baltimore County in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. It was the first time in the tournament’s 80 year history that a number 16 seed beat a number one seed. Virginia had been the favorite to win the entire 68-tea...

The Stoics did not reject worldly pleasures. They rejected the reckless ones. The dangerous, ephemeral ones. The Stoics were not afraid of joy. They just wanted to earn it.  Epictetus loved to quote Socrates: “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day by day.” Delight! Not a word you’d expect from Epictetus, but th...

It was December 25th, 1776. One of the darkest times in the American Revolution. George Washington was planning to cross the Delaware, a desperate move necessitated by a string of setbacks and ebbing support for the revolution across his struggling country.  Whose fault was this despair? How had things gone so poorly?  Washington wasn’t interested in those questions. As he wrote in a letter to Rob...

Here we are on Christmas Eve once again. The last couple of years, we took time during this holiday to look at the beautiful symmetry between two of the greatest philosophers to ever live: Jesus and Seneca .  It’s incredible to think that these two men were born in the same year, in similarly distant provinces of the Roman empire. Few would have expected the impact that both would have on the worl...

As a new year is about to begin, many of us are thinking about how we’d like to get healthier, wealthier, and wiser over the next twelve months. Of course, to the Stoics, what really mattered was that final bucket—getting wiser. Understanding yourself and the world better was their primary focus. So if your goal is to get smarter this year, where will you start? For most people, the obvious answer...

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .