A free, self-paced textbook in 7 chapters. Read a chapter, then drill it with the 201 companion flashcards using spaced repetition.
Stoicism arose in Athens around 300 BCE when Zeno of Citium began teaching philosophy in a public colonnade called the Stoa Poikile, or "Painted Porch," from which the school takes...
For the Stoics, virtue is the only true good, while vice is the only true evil. Everything else—health, wealth, reputation, illness, poverty—falls into the category of indifferents...
Three Roman thinkers dominate the surviving literature of Stoicism: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Seneca, a wealthy Roman senator and dramatist who lived from 4 BCE to 65...
Stoics approach the inner life with what might be called a cognitive theory of emotion. Emotions, in their view, are not caused by events themselves but by the judgments we form ab...
Stoicism is not primarily a system to be read but a way of life to be practiced. The school emphasized daily exercises—what Pierre Hadot later called "spiritual exercises"—designed...
Stoics are not hermits. They value the inner citadel of the mind, but they also teach that human beings are fundamentally social creatures whose reason is shared. Cosmopolitanism—t...
Stoicism was not formed in isolation. Its founder Zeno studied with the Cynic Crates, and Cynicism—exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope and his rejection of social conventions in purs...