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Over the past decade, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has seen renewed public attention. Recent popular books are selling Stoicism as a guide to self-mastery, psychological resilience, inner tranquility and happiness. There is William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (2009); Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph (2014) and The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living (2016); and Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (2017), to name a few. The philosophy has garnered the interest of CEOs, entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley tech workers and professional athletes.

There are good reasons, however, to steer clear of Stoicism as a philosophy of life. For although the Stoics raised important questions and issues, which these recent books are surfacing, the answers the Stoics offered to these questions are, in the end, deeply problematic.

What is up to us and what is not

Popular treatments of Stoicism universally stress the Stoics’ point that some things are “up to us” and other things are not up to us, and that it’s crucially important to distinguish correctly between these. Many of today’s advocates of Stoicism cite the famous Serenity Prayer to capture what they take to be the essence of this point: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

In his book The Daily Stoic, entrepreneur and media strategist Ryan Holiday pitches this point as follows:

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can't. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather — no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.110

There is something right in this advice, as far as it goes. The problem, however, is that Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control. So, strictly speaking, nothing is up to us. And if nothing is up to us, what use is Holiday’s advice or the Serenity Prayer or anyone’s advice for that matter? There is no philosophically consistent answer to that question, except: “None whatsoever.”111

Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control.