What Stoicism Is – An Anthropocentric Account

The Idiom of Stoicism – Toward a Stoic Renaissance
How do we discern if something is Stoic and in line with the philosophy? Which advances that have been made since antiquity can we advantageously adopt, and which inheritances may we alter or discard if necessary? And what kind of revisions and engagements with modern thought are even necessary? These are pressing questions for the modern Stoic with seemingly no clear or unanimous answers. Yet, contemporary adherents seem apprehensive about trying their hand at taking on the ancient tradition and moving it forward, which by my observations stems from not recognizing where the Gordian Knot begins or ends. Hence a causation can’t be established regarding how adding, changing, or removing something in one portion affects the whole.

To put it plainly: Stoicism is a “dead” philosophy. If your inclination is to reject this premise, as there’s contemporarily an increasingly thriving community dedicated to Stoicism, with an ever more profitable industry surrounding it, I urge you to withhold your assent and wait to pass judgment. And I’ll invite the reader to take a moment (or however long they wish) to reflect on the opening questions, before they continue on. Because being able to answer those is crucial for Stoicism to be a living, breathing tradition, that can continuously be built upon – hence its future course depends on the community (or a sub-set) forming a consensus that lays the foundation to build it upon. If the community is incapable of generating new Stoic theories, advice, techniques, and practices, then Stoicism is merely a fascinating ancient relic (pardon my abrasiveness).

Nearly a decade after I first discovered and fell in love with Stoicism myself, I located the solutions to the opening question in modern anthropocentric theories. Particularly those based on the Mimetic Theory of French philosophical anthropologist René Girard – including the path forward to “resurrect” the philosophy, the love for which we share. I won’t go into detail on the anthropocentric theories themselves in this article, but rather will keep it light, and share the insights needed to answer the aforementioned questions here. I’ll also provide the answers and conclusions I’ve come to; but I’ll leave it open to the reader, and the wider Stoic community, to interpret and hopefully come to a consensus on.

To begin answering what Stoicism even is, I invite the reader to participate in another thought exercise: To ascertain what Stoicism is, we must condense it down to its minimum. I.e. we must articulate Stoicism in the most minimal terms we can, so that we may still point to it and say “that’s Stoicism”, but cannot take any more from it before it ceases being Stoicism. Let’s try fitting Stoicism in the smallest nutshell that we can, by taking some of its parts and assessing whether it’s still Stoicism without them? For example, can we still call the philosophy Stoicism without needing “fatedness”? Can we imagine a Stoicism without the “breaths”? Must we need to hold a conviction of impressions leaving physical imprints on our psyche? Can we cut out the primacy of reason and virtue and remain recognizably Stoic? I’d encourage you to take a few moments (or however long you care to) and try this exercise yourself, before reading on to how I answered.

Originary Stoicism
In every book I read on the subject of Stoicism over the course of my research, all of them mentioned this one thing without fail. What’s more, they all typically brought it up in the introduction of the book – and rarely later than the first chapter. With my anthropocentric theories in mind, it became clear to me why all these various authors were impelled to reference this thing specifically – but didn’t realize the true importance or implications of.

To make a summarizing paraphrase of all of them, they’ll speak of eudaimonia as the ontological foundation and how we may understand it as “flourishing”, “happiness”, “contentment”, or a similar notion, and likely mention how other philosophies also sought to achieve the same. Hence eudaimonia cannot be the most minimal articulation of Stoicism, as it’s not unique to this philosophy. However, they’ll all continue and eventually get to the point where they’ll relay Diogenes Laertius’ or Arius Didymus’ (Lives, 7.87) account of how, when asked what the telos (end) to life was, Zeno of Citium replied “to live consistently”. And if they’re diligent, they’ll note how Cleanthes of Assos added “with nature”, as that was supposedly implied in Zeno’s original statement; how Chrysippus of Soli rephrased it as “to live according to experience of what happens by nature” (Lives, 7.89); and how many subsequent Stoics attempted to formulate it their own way. But the philosophy would always revert back to the original phrasing with Cleanthes’ addendum.
This is Stoicism:
To live consistently with nature

This is the Stoic ethos. It’s the source or origin point from which all of Stoicism flows, as it’s the first unique thing that appears past the ontology, and isn’t any further divisible while remaining recognizable as Stoicism. I call this the “founding idiom” as it’s the one that opened this entire disciplinary space within which we’re acting; any Stoic theory or practice must flow downstream from it, and anything “external” must map back onto it to be sanctioned as properly Stoic. What clued me in was how this was consistently repeated across the board, by authors of all stripes, as well as how Stoic figures of antiquity would also consistently revert to-, and tinker with the idiom… and I’ll admit, through the anthropocentric theories I knew it was something of this nature that I was looking for (explaining why is much beyond the scope of this article, as we’re jumping into some of their most advanced theories). Note that various authors and translations will phrase it a little differently, with the most typical being some variant of “to live according to nature” or “living in agreement with nature” – while I won’t claim they’re wrong, I’ll assert that these translations easily obfuscate the meaning of the idiom, and hence ought to be moved away from.

And to understand the meaning of the idiom entails knowing the assumptions that Zeno loaded it with. Hence, we’ll need to get through the assumptions as well to reach the true, smallest possible articulation of Stoicism. But first, a brief explanation of why we accept Cleanthes’ addendum may be in order: A couple of centuries prior to Zeno, sophists had begun distinguishing between “nature” (physis) and “custom” (nomos), and it was ascertained that any entity can only exist either naturally or spontaneously; or alternatively, through human invention or contrivance – i.e. “according to nature”, or “according to custom”. The question then became, what are the right customs? And they reasoned that customs will be right, good, and profitable when they conform to nature.

The assumptions the Stoics put into the word “nature” is practically diametrically opposite of how we understand it today. The Stoics’ conception of nature was one of perfection, the highest ideals, and what something ought to be. An example I like to use is that to the Stoics, the “nature” of a building is to stand complete and pristine – it’s not in a building’s nature to collapse. And they applied this understanding of nature to everything. However, the anthropocentric concern is how they applied it to humans: The highest human ideal is virtue (arete).

Virtue was obviously held in high regard by numerous philosophies in antiquity and thus is hardly where Stoicism differentiated itself from its contemporaries. However, Zeno’s original answer is the critical point of differentiation: Consistency. Because a person isn’t merely to be virtuous once in their life, or only now and again – humans must be recurringly and continuously virtuous. And this insistence that the Stoic must always be virtuous to live rightly, and achieve eudaimonia, is where we originate the vast bulk of Stoic theories, techniques, practices, and advice; why we work so hard to quell passions that’ll throw us out of course from the narrow path of virtue. Zeno surmised that to achieve consistency, reason and rationality (i.e. logos) was necessary to employ and perfect.

For the final part of the idiom to be treated, “to live” puts it squarely in the category of “philosophy of life”. This emphasizes that the point of Stoicism is to be embodied through how one lives one’s life, where the performativity or viability of all the theories, techniques, practices, and advice expounded is concretely tested against the only relevant adjudicator of all: Reality. The emphasis on practicality and embodiment leads to what I’d call an “imperative” grounding of Stoicism – as derived from one of the modes of language – meaning that Stoicism is action-oriented, i.e. where to claim something is to do or act, ensuring that any abstractions we may engage in yield real-world results. E.g. it’s all well and good to engage in abstractions and sentiments like “we must achieve world peace” or “we should all be friends”, but Stoicism demands an actionable plan, system, or similar.
Hence the smallest meaningful articulation of Stoicism is:

With this basic idiom in mind, we may see how Stoic theories, techniques, practices, and advice come back to this idiom: The “dichotomy of control” as some call it delimits how we can only create total consistency with ourselves and our own doing; the Stoic process of withholding assent so as to not act in a rash manner that compromises one’s streak of virtue; how indifferents aren’t appertaining to virtue, yet are the raw material of virtue; how there’s always an appropriate action (kathekon) available, but that these actions differ from person to person, likewise concerns virtue; how we may prepare in advance for misfortune by way of negative visualizations (premeditatio malorum), so that we won’t get knocked off the path, concerns consistency; etc. As Stoics, we attempt to let the ethos inhabit us, gradually ingraining it into our thoughts and actions – and much of Stoic philosophy I’d categorize as “wisdom literature”, which is supposed to aid us in keeping to the ethos properly.

And to anyone skeptical or directly in disagreement with my results, this is where you’ll have to show that I’m making mistakes. Either you’ll have to point some other idiom that’s more foundational but still uniquely Stoic or that I’m making mistakes in the assumptions going into the idiom. Because this is the very foundation, essence, and kernel of Stoicism, and any mistakes here could have a butterfly effect of tremendous consequences downstream. But any mistakes I may have made that aren’t directly tied to the idiom isn’t cause for dismissal, and at most serves as a cause for continuous refinement – for example, I listed the “dichotomy of control” earlier, which studied Stoics know is sort of a modern misrepresentation of a passage in the Enchiridion (I intentionally left that there to make a point).

Unfolding The Idiom
Whenever one’s looking to discern whether something is in line with Stoicism, what the Stoic course of action in the given context is, or how one ought to respond in compliance with the ethos, one must contrast and compare it with the founding idiom. Whether it’s something that could be adopted into Stoicism; whether it informs something within the philosophy; whether it’s a complication that demands new solutions or additional nuance; etc. Regardless of whether one’s immaculately studied in all the nuances of the ancient philosophy or not, as long as one just understands the founding idioms and the assumptions that goes into it, everyone’s essentially capable of applying Stoicism to their own life and “create” Stoicism for themselves. Hence this understanding of the founding idiom brings Stoicism back to the common man, as this is technical minimum one needs to know to “do Stoicism” – constituting a return to original “street epistemology” of Socrates that characterized the line of Antisthenes through Diogenes, of which was inherited by Zeno.

The order in which I treated the idiom was no mere accident and constitutes the sequence for how the idiom should be applied. Virtue is at the center of the Stoic ethos, with all our doing resulting in maximizing the time spent virtuously, until we achieve sage-hood as someone who always act in right reason – hence the first order of business is to figure out how the matter at hand relates to virtue. Next, we have to relate how it appertains to achieving consistency, applying our reason and surveying whether there’s any passions we have to be on guard for. And finally, we must figure out ways to practically apply and live out our solutions according to the matter at hand.

Consequently, I’m going to give a little demonstration by comparing and contrasting the founding idiom with a popular aspirant for adoption, namely Daniel Kahneman’s “dual process theory of mind” which is frequently brought up in Stoic circles – as well as parts of Stoic philosophy that perhaps ought to consider retirement.

Dual process theory of mind:
I routinely observe cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman, and his theories of system 1 and 2, being suggested as a candidate for treatment or even adoption into the philosophy. To briefly explain, he inquires of the human capacity for reason and rationality, where he develops his heuristic theories of “system 1” and “system 2”. He asserts that the cognitive processes he categorizes as “system 1” are a “fast thinking” collection which operates automatically, unconsciously, without voluntary control – in short, all the subconscious processes that just work in the background, processing inputs, but can also output impulsive behaviors. Alternatively, he asserts that the cognitive processes he categorizes as “system 2” are those which operate deliberately by our consciousness, allocating attention to things that require effortful deliberation, analysis, and evaluation.

Going back to the founding idiom, system 2 effortlessly maps onto “reason” – the problem with system 2, as Kahneman notes, is that it’s resource intensive and limited in usage, and not something that is possible to keep up continuously without end. This certainly complicates our understanding of how reason achieves consistency, perhaps to the point that it may entirely invalidate one of the core constituent elements of Stoicism! Fortune is by our side however, because the rescue actually comes in the form of system 1: As a system, it’s very resource efficient and requires basically no effort, and as he notes, it’s where our learned habits and routines are acted out. Habits and routines map onto the assumptions of the idiom in “recurrence”, and can thus be intimately tied to “consistency”.

Therefore, habits and routines are another vista to achieve consistency through, and can thus complement reason as a way to remain virtuous, in the face of physiologically limited capacity for reason – that’s the theoretically informed takeaway. Translated into practice, this means that we use our reason to learn skills, create routines, and ingrain habits, which abets our strides towards virtue – insuring that we remain on the narrow path, and don’t let passion enter whenever our reason is hibernating. And by creating good and useful routines and habits, we may minimize the tear on our reason so that we’ve got more to spare for our self-cultivation and cerebral matters. And personally, I think this focus on routines and habits ought to become so central to Stoicism moving forward, that they’re loaded separately into the idiom as constituent assumptions, in line with reason and rationality.

Retirees:
A theoretical area from the Stoic branch of physics I never see get brought up practically, would be their theories on “breaths” (pneuma). The Stoics, like the ancient Greeks in general, believed that the world was animated by these “breaths” and that e.g. our psyche was a mixture between the breaths of air and fire. While this is one of the areas I swiftly saw fit to skim through, it should quickly be evident that these breaths don’t really have any relation to the founding idiom, and were more just a belief they thought was the case. Particularly when you begin recasting concepts like “logos” in anthropocentric terms, it quickly becomes an antiquated leftover that can be retired without problem (which it already is in practice).

Another theory is that of impression on the psyche, where they surmised that impressions were physically shaping our mind (why we even call it an “impression” today). This theory is more directly linked to the founding idiom, as they surmised it impacted our reason and thus ability to remain consistently virtuous (i.e. the “shape” of one’s psyche impacts the range of choices a man is likely to choose in a given circumstance, where they had a metaphor of pushing a cylinder that keeps on rolling, vs. pushing a cube which stops). Given that we through modern advancements we know this isn’t how it works, locating a modern replacement theory would be prudent – and here modern anthropocentric theories also offer viable alternatives.

I just want to examine one more area of the ancient Stoic beliefs, and that’s the area of fatedness. This is an interesting area, because it doesn’t by itself map onto the idiom, however it’s likewise an area where the ancient Stoics derived a lot of advice and techniques from. Hence, it’s a situation where it’s more “they thought this was the case”, but one doesn’t strictly need to believe in it to hold to the Stoic ethos. Obviously, we can’t really prove that it’s not the case with our modern advancements and theories either, so it’s one of those areas that’s up to the individual Stoic to decide for themselves. And this provides us with a model, because there are many values and convictions one can hold to, that are orthogonal to the Stoic ethos itself, but where one may still be able to apply the founding idiom and derive Stoic theories, techniques, practices and advice for those who believe a certain way. For example, if it’s the case we’re made in God’s image, that means A-B-C; if we hold to evolutionary theory, then consequently X-Y-Z. And note that if you don’t believe in fatedness, then I still think there are ways to rescue a lot of their advice related to it, so that we may still obtain the performative aspect of that certain belief, without necessarily believing in it ourselves.

The Broad Philosophy
With the branches of physics and logic in mind, and taking the ontology into account, the broad Stoic philosophy can be written out almost like an equation:

Before concluding this article, I just want to present my views of the branches of physics and logic. Back when Stoicism was originally articulated, philosophy was essentially indistinguishable from intellectual pursuits in general. Philosophy was in practice synonymous with what we today call “science” and thus people who wondered about biology, anthropology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, economics etc. were philosophers – hence philosophical schools additionally being dedicated to those pursuits. However, through the ages the various disciplines have split off into their own categories – and I believe it’s time to retire these two from Stoicism. The ancient Stoics agreed that these two branches ultimately served to inform ethics, and there’s no doubt that’s just as viable with the separate modern disciplines we have today. Hence, I’m in agreement with Ariston of Chios’ view of “logic had nothing to do with us (…) while physics is far beyond our ken” (Lives, 7.160), and that a more narrowly focused version of Stoicism, entirely dedicated to ethics, would serve all parties better moving forward. Hence, I recommend dropping those two branches; and if there are parts of Stoicism that relied on what we find there, locate updated alternatives that could support the same theories or advice.

I realize there will inevitably be heave disagreement on whether it’s plausible to change, let alone remove, anything from the philosophy, and it remain the same – echoing Cicero’s quote “Can you imagine any other system where the removal of a single letter, like an inter-locking piece, would cause the whole edifice to come tumbling down? Not that there is anything here which could possibly be altered” (De Finibus, 3.74). The issue is that what we’ve inherited today is a fraction of all Stoic works ever created – and even then, we’re often relying on translations made centuries later, many of whom not even Stoics themselves. Thus, we’re already practicing a version of Stoicism where innumerous pieces have been lost.

Fortunately, this isn’t fatal; because the philosophy is so fortuitous that we know not only its founding idiom, but have good insight into the assumptions that went into it too (I cannot emphasize enough how fortunate Stoics should count themselves to be) – introducing the possibility of a Stoic renaissance. The founding idiom is the measure: And anything, even our inherited legacy, must always be evaluated by it. In theory, anything can be Stoic as long as it serves Stoic ends – those ends specifically being the founding idiom – which allows us to integrate advancements and innovations into the philosophy, and generate new Stoicism.

The Stoic character we’re trying to embody isn’t a metaphysical truth of the universe, and what determines its efficacy is how performative it is, i.e. how useful people find it to embody it in practice. And should anyone feel a bit intimidated to try their hand at developing new Stoic thought, it should be encouraging that we’re not dealing with matters of truth and falsehood, nor even right or wrong answers – but merely about the degree of performativity. This goes for my own work too, and while I do think I manage to generate some quite performative theories and practices, it’s supposed to be a starting point for an open-ended dialogue that’ll hopefully be carried forward – which would mean Stoicism is alive once again (which is not to suggest I’m not confident in my work – I am).

Therefore, I’ll double-down on recommending dedicating attention to modern anthropocentric theories, as they’re simultaneously more intelligible to moderns, while being commensurate and complementary to the inheritance – additionally being much more performative and able to carry Stoicism into the future, from my perspective. If you’re interested in knowing more, I’ve recently published my first book where I’ve already done the work of casting the full spectrum of Stoic ethics within it, as well as much of the wisdom literature (should I have missed something, let me know). Thus, I can provide a first-hand account that it’s capable of integrating all of it, and even able to rehabilitate certain parts within the branch of physics, which I do in my book Originary Stoicism – Rekindling The Flame.

The book explains both the anthropocentric theories, and practically demonstrates how they work, through the translation of Stoicism into its framework; simultaneously illuminating the inner workings of the philosophy. And Stoicism has in turn contributed back to the anthropocentric theories by going places I haven’t really seen them taken before, hence new anthropocentric concepts and theories are also developed in the book. This article pulls from the two first chapters of my book, and the anthropocentric theories breathe all new life into the storied philosophy, where I’m able to generate new Stoic theories, techniques, practices, and advice that are authentically Stoic – i.e. derived from, and in line with, the Stoic ethos; not just modern sensibilities and platitudes that are unrelated foreign elements, corrosive to its integrity.

Concluding remarks
With the understanding of Zeno’s formulation of the telos of life as the founding idiom of Stoicism, the source from which everything downstream must defer to, it unravels the Gordic Knot and reopens the possibility of properly altering and adding to the philosophy in an authentic manner. And this is what is necessary, not just for a Stoicism today, but for a Stoicism tomorrow. This opens the door for new Stoicism to be generated within the classic framework and conventions, however I wouldn’t recommend it – to truly be a living and breathing tradition for the future, I’d strongly endorse anthropocentric theories moving forward.

This project was in part possible because classical Stoicism has quite a sound understanding of the human condition, which is to say a good anthropological understanding (despite what detractors often claim), hence the ancient philosophy and modern theories were highly commensurate, requiring relatively minimal adaptation. But even more so, while they’re still relatively niche now, I’m convinced anthropocentrism is going to be the way of the future – and by tying itself to this disciplinary space, while we’re still relatively early on, Stoicism can secure itself a central position. Hence generating Stoicism anthropocentrically is strongly recommended moving forward.

And just for the final emphasis of the importance of “resurrecting” Stoicism: Today we’re in awe of what these philosophers achieved two millennia ago (myself included). Their thoughts, ideas, lifestyle, etc. seem so modern, one could easily mistake many of them for being formulated today. Yet are we doing awe-inspiring things today? Are we doing 10% of what the ancients, whom we revere, did? Are we even doing 1%? I’m firmly of the conviction that we could do so again, and from my own work, I’m confident the Stoic ethos, the founding idiom, isn’t close to being exhausted. If we refuse to engage with anything past the fall of the Roman Empire – particularly anything that goes ostensibly against the philosophy – we’ll be doing Stoicism a disservice long-term as it reduces its relevance, efficacy, and overall draw. So, for the sake of ourselves, and for the future of the philosophy we hold dear in common, I cannot implore you (yes you, individual gifted with reason) more to take up the mantle and pave the path forward anew. You’ve been shown the way!

Henrik Lund first encountered Stoicism in 2015 and immediately fell in love with it, studying and practicing it for several years. It was his gateway into philosophy, and soon he embarked on a journey through other philosophies and disciplines as well. He gradually fell out of favor with classical Stoicism due to some issues that became apparent to him, but in the back of his mind he contemplated how to amend them for years. When he located what he needed to do so within modern anthropocentric theories – not least of all how to raise the philosophy from the dead and generate new Stoicism – he returned confidently and set out to do the necessary work to aid the philosophy so dear to his heart. His latest book Originary Stoicism – Rekindling The Flame is available on Kindle and print through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNCGDDV7/