Stoicism Does Not Exist
Go ahead and try to bend it
The movie The Matrix is full of philosophically interesting snippets. At one point in the film, the protagonist, Neo, speaks with a child who looks a lot like a Buddhist monk. Neo observes the child bending a spoon using just his thoughts. The child says to Neo,
Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends; it is only yourself.
One of the likely inspirations for this scene is an ancient Buddhist text known as the Milindapañha (The Questions of Milinda). The text is in the form of a Platonic dialogue between the Bactrian-Greek King Milinda (aka Menander I) and the Buddhist sage Nagasena. Nagasena demonstrates to the king the Buddhist concept of anatta (no self) by inquiring into the essence of a chariot, concluding that chariots do not exist because a chariot is not one singular independent thing, but is composed of parts and comes into being based on multiple causes and conditions.
The spoon I’d like to point you to is modern Stoicism. Unlike the spoon, Stoicism may be bent. Indeed, it has been bent in so many ways that various “Stoics” don’t recognize some other “Stoics” as Stoics. On one hand, there are the “Traditional Stoics” who retain the theological elements of ancient Stoicism, versus the “Modern Stoics” who reject them. Then there are the $toics who see Stoic philosophy as a way to be more successful in one’s career, the Broics who see Stoic philosophy as a way of enhancing their masculinity, and the military Stoics who see the philosophy as a way of becoming better soldiers. On top of all of this, there are influencers of various sorts who slap “Stoicism” on whatever because it’s trendy and lends credibility - even if it’s obviously contrary to Stoicism.
But underneath this Potemkin village, is there any identifiably Stoic Stoicism? Perhaps with the Traditional Stoics there may be an identifiable traditional Stoicism, but they’re a tiny fraction of what currently goes by “Stoicism,” and they are nearly unrepresented among influential Stoics. For example, there are lots of Stoic Substacks - some of which are tremendously popular - but I don’t know of a single Substack devoted to Traditional Stoicism.
For many years now, Stoic authors Greg Lopez and Massimo Pigliucci have organized a weekend Stoic Camp, sponsored by the New York City Stoics. At the 2022 session, they conducted a survey of the attendees about what ideas formed the essence of Stoicism. I can attest that these were all people who were pretty knowledgeable about Stoicism; I was there as a participant.
Afterward, Massimo published an article detailing the results of the survey, which I borrow from here. The big news is that of the 18 people who participated in the survey, not a single thing about Stoicism was considered to be essential to what Stoicism is. No wonder then that one “Stoic’s” “Stoicism” might have nothing in common with that of some other “Stoic.”
Here are the results of the survey, ranked by number of votes received out of 18:
Virtue is the only good (15 votes)
Four virtues (13 votes)
Epictetus’ fundamental rule (aka dichotomy of control) (13 votes)
Three disciplines of Epictetus (10 votes)
Live according to nature (10 votes)
Askesis (spiritual exercises) (9 votes)
Logic and “Physics” are necessary to understand Ethics (8 votes)
Knowledge is possible (for the Sage) (6 votes)
Providential cosmos (2 votes)
Unity of virtues (2 votes)
The goal is a smooth flow of life (1 vote)
We are all vicious (except the Sage) (0 votes)
Among these twelve items are some that would hardly distinguish Stoicism from almost anything else. The dichotomy of control is common sense and can be found in lots of other traditions. Pretty much every philosophy of life has spiritual exercises. The spiritual exercises commonly considered to be Stoic typically have little about them that would conflict with any other philosophy of life.
Some are vague. “Live according to nature” is a nice-sounding slogan, but what does it mean?
Some don’t seem to provide much direction. So what if there are four virtues, or that there’s a unity among them? How does that give philosophical guidance for one’s life?
The only distinctive claim that got a lot of votes is that virtue is the only good, with Epictetus’ three disciplines as a distant runner-up, followed by the idea that logic and natural science (what in antiquity was called “physics”) are necessary to understand ethics. And even at that, there would appear to be a lot of Stoics who don’t believe any of those are essential to their idea of Stoicism.
Stoicism has no essence. There’s no agreement about what Stoicism is.
Therefore, Stoicism does not exist.
Once you see that Stoicism does not exist, then maybe you’ll be able to see that it is not that Stoicism has been bent into all of these variants; it is only the activity of mind that defines and classifies. The thing itself is anatta (Pali: no-self) and adiaphora (Greek: without logically distinguishing characteristics).
Related Articles:
Is Stoic Practice Really All That Different?
In another way it's a bit like saying if you asked a gathering of people, atheists, spiritualists, military people to define love and everyone gave a different answer it shows love doesn't exist.
Most external teaching structures need to be systematized at some stage even the teaching of no self.
Liked the spoon story.
Nice deconstruction of essentialism.
I think the best (for me) is Wittgenstein's rope metaphor for how the meaning of word "hangs together".
“A rope is made of a huge number of fibres, but not a single fibre goes through the ropes entire length, it's the way they overlap that creates the strength.”