How To Fix the Fatal Flaw of Stoicism

Stoicism Promises to Help Us Conquer Our Emotions but Is That Really Something to Strive for?

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

There’s a good reason why Stoicism has exploded in popularity over the last decade or so.

Stoicism is a school of philosophical thought that sprang up in Greece around the 3rd Century B.C. The work of “big three” of Stoics — Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelias — still get a lot of air time even today, amplified by high-profile proponents like Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss.

The Stoics’ ancient wisdom contains relevant and valuable lessons for today.

For instance, they rejected the Hedonistic definition of happiness that was prevalent at the time. A competing school of thought, the Epicureans, believed that the maximization of pleasure was the chief human good.

This Epicureans believed in Hedonistic happiness, the kind you get from chocolate, sex, and Netflix. It’s the happiness derived from sensual pleasure.

But the Stoics made a wise distinction between higher and lower pleasures. They considered sensual pleasures less valuable than the kind of happiness derived from acting within one’s nature and abiding by one’s values and virtue.