Roman Stoicism
50 BCE – 180
Stoicism stripped of its physics and logic and used as a daily discipline for people with power, or none at all.
- Active
- 50 BCE – 180
- Where
- Rome, and wherever Romans were posted
- Status
- extinct as a school, widely revived as a practice
- Tradition
- Roman
The claim
Some things are up to us and some are not. Judgement, intention and desire are ours; body, reputation, office and life are not. Nearly all distress comes from confusing the two.
What it held
The Romans took a complete philosophical system and used the last third of it. The cosmology, the theory of assent, the propositional logic — all present in principle, almost never discussed. What is discussed is how to get through the day.
The distinction that does the work is Epictetus': what is up to us and what is not. Whether you keep your health, your position or your children is not up to you. What you make of losing them is. This is not consolation but a claim about where agency actually lies, and it produces a striking political indifference — Epictetus was a freed slave and Marcus Aurelius ruled an empire, and their advice is nearly identical.
The texts are unlike anything earlier. Seneca writes letters to a friend. Epictetus was recorded by a student and never wrote. Marcus wrote to himself and expected nobody to read it. None of the three is composing a treatise, and it is precisely that which has kept them readable for two thousand years.
How it argued
Exercise rather than argument: rehearsing misfortunes in advance, examining the day at its end, distinguishing what is up to us in every particular case as it arises.
What it was arguing against
Epicurean withdrawal from public duty, and the assumption that circumstances rather than judgements are what make a life go badly.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether the practical turn abandons the system or completes it. Seneca's enormous wealth, and his years serving Nero, were held against him in antiquity and still are.
Common misconceptions
That it teaches emotional suppression. The Stoic claim is that emotions follow judgements and can therefore be revised — which is the opposite of suppressing what you feel. And it is not a philosophy of resignation: Marcus prosecuted wars, Seneca ran an administration, and both regarded public duty as owed.
How it began
Stoicism arrived in Rome with Panaetius in the second century BCE and became the default outlook of the senatorial class, in part because its ethics of duty matched what Romans already thought about themselves.
What became of it
No formal school ended it — Christianity absorbed much of it and displaced the rest. The texts survived because monasteries found them congenial.
Lasting influence
Christian moral theology took conscience, providence and natural law from it. Montaigne, Descartes' provisional morality, Adam Smith's impartial spectator and modern cognitive therapy all trace back here.
Why it still matters
It is the ancient philosophy people actually read now, and the only one with a substantial popular following outside universities.
Put another way
A dog tied to a moving cart. It can walk alongside or be dragged, and those are the only options.
Where to start
The Enchiridion. It is fifty short paragraphs and it opens with the distinction everything else rests on.
The surprising bit
Marcus Aurelius' notebook was never meant for publication and has no title. The Meditations is a name given to it later; he seems to have called it simply To Himself.
In their own words
Some things are within our power, while others are not.
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.
Connections
- Answers
- Middle Stoicism
- Opposed by
- Roman Epicureanism
- Influenced
- Augustinianism
The verdict
The least original Stoicism and by an enormous margin the most read.