## Metadata - Author: [[Steven Gambardella]] - Full Title: The Problem With New Stoicism - Category: #articles - Summary: It’s a pet peeve of mine that Stoicism is constantly referred to as a “practical philosophy”. The implied message in this label, sometimes… - URL: https://medium.com/the-sophist/the-problem-with-stoicism-cd4183f7a24 ## Full Document Photo by [Arnel Hasanovic](https://unsplash.com/@arnelhasanovic?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral) It’s a pet peeve of mine that Stoicism is constantly referred to as a “practical philosophy”. The implied message in this label, sometimes more explicitly expressed by its contemporary adherents, is that it’s opposed to the supposedly inconsequential and nonsense parlour games of other kinds of philosophy. Stoicism has seen a marked rise in popularity in recent years thanks largely to its promotion within popular psychology and business literature. In a blog post called “Stoicism 101: A Beginner’s Guide for Entrepreneurs”, the self-help author Timothy Ferriss wrote: > “Fortunately, there are a few philosophical systems designed to produce dramatic real-world effects without the nonsense. Unfortunately, they get punished because they lack the ambiguity required for weeks of lectures and expensive textbooks.”\* > > His guest blogger was the former CMO of American Apparel, Ryan Holiday. Holiday has been the greatest populariser of Stoicism as a practical philosophy “for entrepreneurs” since the publication of his *Daily Stoic*, a compendium of Stoic quotations, in 2016. Holiday wrote: > “[Stoicism] doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, it’s built for action, not endless debate.”\* > > It’s great that Holiday and Ferriss are giving the Stoics so much publicity in the modern age, but their perception of its utility is based on a major oversight. Holiday overlooks the fact that Stoic ethics are based on a Stoic cosmology, that is, a - er - complicated theory about the world. The particular Roman brand of Stoicism that contemporary popularisers love so much — the philosophies of Seneca (the Roman aristocrat and tutor/speechwriter of Nero), Marcus Aurelius (a later Roman emperor, who is among the five “good emperors”) and Epictetus (the Greek slave turned philosophical teacher), form an ethical system that simply would not exist without the cosmological foundations of earlier Greek Stoicism. The very basic tenet of Stoic ethics follows the idea that you cannot control external circumstances, but you can control your own thoughts and emotions. In the stoical sense, this isn’t simply that “shit happens”. The Stoics…