Today, Stoicism is best known as the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca the Younger—the so-called “Big Three” Roman authors of surviving Stoic tradition.
Stoicism is a virtue-ethical philosophy that proposes to offer a psychologically healthy and flourishing life (εὐδαιμονία, eudaimonia) for its practitioners. Its basic tenet, which dates to Socrates, is that moral excellence (virtue) is sufficient for the good life, and should be valued above all else.
While Stoicism is centered around the four cardinal virtues of Western tradition—Practical Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, and Justice—this website focuses primarily on the social virtue of Justice and its role in informing the lives and actions of 21st-century Stoics.
Wait—there are still Stoics today?
Stoic tradition has never really gone extinct. Admirers of Stoic ideas and texts have been found throughout history—St. Augustine, Descartes, and George Washington, just to name a few.
In recent years, however, an especially remarkable revival has occurred. For the first time in centuries, it is now possible to learn and practice Greco-Roman philosophy as part of a wider community, either online or through local organizations like the Stoic Fellowship, and with the help of extensive resources offered by various book authors and non-profit groups, such as Modern Stoicism.
Today there are atheist and agnostic Stoics, Christian Stoics, Buddhist Stoics, and traditional pantheistic Stoics, all united by a shared value system, a fascination with the same classical texts, and set of rigorous “spiritual practices.”
Many factors have contributed to this renewed interest in the Stoic life, but here are some of the most important:
- Starting with Erik Wiegardt’s Stoic Registry in 1996, the Internet has allowed once-isolated fans of Stoic literature to connect with each other and form a shared community of practice. The online Stoic community has grown steadily to include a number of different organizations and social media groups—some with tens of thousands of subscribers. This has made a recent trend toward local in-person fellowship groups possible, and the Stoic Fellowship network now sports dozens of branches around the world.
- Academic interest in ancient Greco-Roman philosophies of life increased dramatically when virtue ethics was revived in the late 20th-century by authors like G. E. M. Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre. Pierre Hadot’s interpretation of ancient philosophy as a “spiritual exercise” is especially notable, as is Lawrence Becker’s New Stoicism (1999), which put a revived variation of Stoicism on the map as a modern and defensible approach to professional philosophy.
- Stoic practice is similar to and even helped to inspire modern cognitive-behavioral therapy. As CBT has become the dominant approach to psychotherapy today, many psychotherapists and their clients have become increasingly curious about the approach’s philosophical roots.
- More recently, a number of popular books, op-eds, podcasts, and blogs by authors like William Irvine, Ryan Holiday, Donald Robertson, Chris Fisher, and Massimo Pigliucci—as well as well-attended events like the annual Stoic week and Stoicon—have helped to make the Stoic life more accessible and appealing to a wide readership.
