Has Stoicism become a new religion?

Little did Zeno of Citium know that 2,300 years after he founded Stoicism in the street-schools of Athens, fragments of his thought would be passed around Silicon Valley by latte-swilling millennials as though he were the oracle himself.

“Happiness is a good flow of life.”

“Man conquers the world by conquering himself.”

“Someone could sooner immerse a bladder filled with air than compel a virtuous man to act against his will.”

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This New Stoicism has had mixed results. Uber whistleblower Susan Fowler credited the philosophy with her decision to go public on Silicon Valley's sexist culture, leading to the downfall of a former boss – she has called Epictetus "my guide to living a good, intellectually rich life".

At the same time, Stoic thinking – and especially its emphasis on "accepting the things that cannot be changed" – has been repackaged as a comforting balm for those who don't want to face up to their social responsibilities. As one New York Times technology writer put it: "The philosophy is handy if you already believe that the rich are meant to be rich and the poor meant to be poor."

As a long-standing specialist in Stoicism and its ethical roots, Nancy Sherman has seen the fortunes of the philosophy ebb and flow, and she is not enamoured by its modern, "self-help" iteration. It has become "more about finding calm, or a western version of Zen", she observes, despite the fact that Stoics "were among the first to develop the concept of cosmopolitanism" and put a heavy emphasises on collective welfare.

'There is definitely a strand in Stoicism, rather strong, that we are in sync with some divine plan or cosmic order . . . That can lead to a terrible sense of resignation, or acceptance of the status quo'

"Marcus Aurelius has many passages on this, and one of them is very graphic", alluding to the battlefield, she notes. "If you've ever seen bodies strewn with limbs torn apart from their trunks, that's what we make of ourselves when we cut ourselves off from each other.

“This idea of being connected through social support has just got eclipsed in the current conversation.”

The New Stoics instead focus on control. Know what’s in your control and what’s not, and don’t sweat over the latter, they say. “It’s very comforting,” says Sherman. “But (a) it leaves you kind of alone and (b) it ignores the fact that we often, in healthy families and healthy societies, depend on each other for resilience and support.”

Sherman, who is a philosophy professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC and has a psychoanalytic research background, is best known for her work with army veterans for whom Stoicism can be a double-edged sword. Her latest book, Stoic Wisdom, is designed for a general audience and it seeks to set the record straight on a philosophy still in flux. She explains further as this week’s Unthinkable guest.

A common criticism of Stoicism is that it benefits the status quo. Can you be a Stoic and a social reformer at once? Or both a Stoic and an environmentalist?

“There is definitely a strand in Stoicism, rather strong, that we are in sync with some divine plan or cosmic order, and that we need to adapt really fast in order to update our intakes of the world so we are in sync with real-time possibilities. That can lead to a terrible sense of resignation, or acceptance of the status quo.

“The way I deal with it is to think hard about the psychological habits and practices that the Stoics advocate. They suggest that we monitor our fast impulses whether they are to do with thoughts or emotions . . . Many of the impressions that come in are distorted, or betray what is reality, or they don’t track good values.

“That gives you layers, and levels of slower, reflective thinking for monitoring psychological habits. You can see the world in categories that you might have inherited, or that might reflect the status quo to do with race, ethnicity or the use of fossil fuels.

“Is that the only way to read the texts? Of course not. But I am interested in producing, as everyone does with ancient texts and is an interpreter, a healthy, modern Stoicism.

“It’s a challenge but I think there’s a lot in there, especially in collectivity and global outreach. They have various psychological mechanisms for making a person further away from you drawn to the centre, through imagination.”

Stoicism can sometimes seem austere, but one aspect you highlight in the book is self-mercy, particularly in the context of military personnel and veterans with whom you’ve worked very closely. Can you explain your thinking, particularly your idea of “guilt as self-anger”?

“Yes, it’s this idea of just beating up on yourself, and just racked by ‘could haves and should haves’ – hindsight bias you might say. I think of it a lot these past weeks with the sudden collapse of Afghanistan and the sense that everything was futile: the loss of colleagues, interpreters and fellow Afghan soldiers.

“The idea of merciless self-anger can be suicidal. We know this – we have had suicide epidemics [in the US military] – and we are on suicide watches of a sort again because people feel ‘I should have done more, I should have had more foresight about this. I feel betrayed.’

'There's a lot of anger – moral indignation and moral outcry – that if we didn't have, we wouldn't advance socially and personally'

“Complex PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] it is often called. It is not about fear, or life-threat, but rather it’s about identity cracks. And that kind of shattered, moral identity often needs mercy. Self-mercy, or self-compassion, can be hard to come by.

“I found it fascinating reading Hercules’ Rages, the Seneca play, in which it is the friend of Hercules and his father who say ‘Stay your hand, use your heroic courage to show yourself some mercy’. This is the protocol that is being used a lot and successfully in veteran mental health where you imagine a benevolent other – a friend or a buddy – and you see yourself through his eyes: Would he blame you as hard as you blame yourself? Or as mercilessly?

“This idea of swapping perspectives gives you a handle on a viewpoint toward yourself that you can’t muster.”

But does Stoicism not tell us to keep a “stiff upper lip”?

“That is stoicism probably with a little ‘s’ but all that buttoning up is not the full story of Stoicism. There are many other places where tears are okay.

“[Some New Stoics] also get rid of anger too quickly. There’s a lot of anger – moral indignation and moral outcry – that if we didn’t have, we wouldn’t advance socially and personally.”

What makes Stoicism true? Is it truthful merely in the sense that it has practical value?

“I see that as two questions: Is it just instrumental, and if so, is it a good instrument? And does it have long theoretical legs?

“Let me answer the second question first. I think it does have long theoretical legs. It is the most complex emotion theory I know of in the ancient corpus.

“I am a cognitivist, and the Stoics really have a complex understanding of emotion. The founders of CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) claim some descent from stoicism. The Stoics also have complicated theories about epistemology, and how to regulate beliefs . . . That’s theoretically.

“Practically, Epictetus was getting 18- to 22-year-old boys to his lectures and he had a lot of punch and zingers in order to entertain them, and he succeeded and he still succeeds – people love to quote Epictetus. And Seneca was the master writer. That’s why it’s very practical. They give you techniques. You can quote things very easily and distil it.”

Does it work as therapy?

“I have had enough psychoanalytic exposure to know that the way the Stoics continue through the western world is through [Sigmund] Freud, which is very discursive – with this caveat: Freud realised that too often we beat up on ourselves through our superego [and recommended] letting go of the harsh superego criticism. The Stoics would like us to hold onto it.

“There is finger-wagging; there is moral chastening all the time. In that regard, it’s a secular religion and that is some of the appeal for many. You can get the preachy tone without going to church . . . and it’s calming.”

So one’s understanding of Stoicism really depends on the Stoic one listens to?

“That’s right. Someone like Seneca is writing letters in his final years. He knows he could have done better but he doesn’t want to anguish too much. To him, it’s about moral edification without being overly harsh.”

Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience by Nancy Sherman is published by Oxford University Press

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Ask a sage:

Should I join the Great Resignation?

Seneca replies: “I say, let no one rob me of a single day who isn’t going to make a full return on the loss.”