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Stoicism for Dummies

by Tom Morris and Gregory Bassham

|FOR DUMMIES©2024·400 pages

As you know if you’ve been following along, Tom Morris is one of my ALL-TIME favorite teachers. As I mentioned in the SIX other Notes we’ve created on his great books, Tom has two PhD’s from Yale—one in Philosophy and the other in Religious Studies. He was a beloved philosophy professor at Notre Dame for 15 years. This book is fantastic. It isn’t for “Dummies” though. Tom and his co-author, fellow academic philosopher Gregory Bassham, do a great job of rigorously covering the history and practical application of Stoicism while injecting plenty of humor along the way. It’s arguably THE most thorough overview of Stoicism you’ll find. I highly recommend it if you want a deeper dive. As you’d expect, the book is PACKED with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!


Big Ideas

“This is the right book for you if you’ve heard about Stoicism from a podcast or through friends and want to learn more, or if you’ve read one of the best-selling books that are reintroducing this distinctive philosophy into our time and would like an opportunity to work more fully through the powerful and fascinating array of ideas to be found in this way of thinking and living. It’s also the right book for you even if you hardly know much about the Stoics at all but are ready for some fresh perspectives on your life, for some new ways of handling what’s challenging and difficult, and perhaps even for liberating yourself from so many of the forces that seem to hold people back from being their best, from feeling their best, and doing their best in the world. …

We all want to understand the best wisdom there is for how we can live and grow. And you’re in luck, because getting at least a good start on that task is the purpose of this book. We’ll give you the key background history and the greatest thoughts of some of the most interesting practical thinkers in history. In many ways just normal, smart people who used their curiosity and their talents well, and in that way reached extraordinary heights in their thoughts and daily practices for living well. And now they can help us do the same in our own lives.”

~ Tom Morris & Gregory Bassham from Stoicism for Dummies

Stoicism for Dummies combines two of my absolute favorite things: Stoicism and Tom Morris.

As you know if you’ve been following along, Tom Morris is one of my ALL-TIME favorite teachers. As I mentioned in the SIX other Notes we’ve created on his great books, Tom has two PhD’s from Yale—one in Philosophy and the other in Religious Studies. He was a beloved philosophy professor at Notre Dame for 15 years.

Once upon a time (15+ years ago now), John Mackey (Whole Foods co-founder/CEO) and I were having dinner and he encouraged me to read Tom’s books. In fact, he said he’d read ALL of his books. I follow advice like that and quickly saw why John was such a fan.

But… Here’s the fascinating thing. Tom ALSO wrote the old-school classic Philosophy for Dummies. I got THAT book nearly 25 years ago—around when it was first published in 1999.

As I was creating this Note, I was struck by how wonderful the world is as I connected the dots from THAT book (one of the first “self-development” books I ever read) to THIS book.

Between that book and this one, I’ve dedicated my life to mastering these ideas while sharing what I learned and Tom has become a dear friend, mentor, and Soul Uncle.

Now… This book is fantastic. It isn’t for “Dummies” though. Tom and his co-author, fellow academic philosopher Gregory Bassham, do a great job of rigorously covering the history and practical application of Stoicism while injecting plenty of humor along the way.

It’s arguably THE most thorough overview of Stoicism you’ll find. I highly recommend it if you want a deeper dive. (Get a copy here.)

As you’d expect, the book is PACKED with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

P.S. Before we get to work, here’s a quick look at other Notes I think you’ll enjoy...

Books by Tom Morris: True Success, The Art of Achievement, Superheroes and Philosophy, The Stoic Art of Living, Plato’s Lemonade Stand, and The Everyday Patriot.

Some of my favorite contemporary books on Stoicism: The Daily Stoic, The Obstacle Is the Way, Courage Is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, Stillness Is the Key, and Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy by Donald Robertson, The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot, How to Be Free by A.A. Long, How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci, The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth, A Guide to the Good Life and The Stoic Challenge by William B. Irvine, and Courage Under Fire and Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Stockdale.

And here are Notes on the classics: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic and On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, Discourses and Enchiridion by Epictetus, and Musonius Rufus.

Oh! And... Don’t forget to check out Stoicism 101 where I distill it all into an hour-long class!

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Clearly, no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re in right now.
Marcus Aurelius
In a sense, as Epictetus would later famously say, ‘the philosopher’s school is a doctor’s office.’ Our souls are sick with false beliefs, out-of-control desires, unruly emotions, and unnecessary worry. Philosophy, which is the love and pursuit of wisdom and proper perspective, provides the cure.
Tom Morris
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Ancient Stoicism

“Though Stoicism began in Ancient Greece, it flowered in imperial Rome, becoming for many centuries the leading philosophy of the Roman Empire. The Romans were tough, practical-minded people; they excelled as warriors, builders, administrators, and lawmakers, and generally had little interest in abstract speculation or subtle theorizing.

In Stoicism, educated Romans found a stern and demanding creed that provided guidance and consolation in an age of crumbling faiths, political despotism, and constant social upheaval. As rulers of a vast empire encompassing many diverse nations and ethnic groups, Romans also found Stoic teachings on universal law and world citizenship highly relatable. Much like Christianity, Stoicism had special appeal in Roman times to slaves and the poor, who found solace in its teachings about inner toughness, acceptance, managing negative emotions, and the essential connectedness of all humans.

What Romans valued most in Greek Stoicism was its ethics and practical art of living. In the philosophy of Romans like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, we can see concretely what it means to think and live as a Stoic.”

That’s from Part 1: Ancient Stoicism in which Tom and Gregory give us an overview of Stoicism’s origin story.

Here’s the short story...

A guy named Zeno founded Stoicism in Athens in around 300 BCE.

The best part of the Stoic origin story? Zeno created Stoicism after being shipwrecked near the Athenian port of Piraeus.

(Which, for the record, is precisely where I studied Socrates while awaiting my own ship to take me out to the Greek islands before heading to Turkey. Thankfully, my ship did not wreck. ;)

In his classic letter On the Shortness of Life, Seneca tells us: “When a shipwreck was reported and he heard that all his possessions had sunk, our founder Zeno said, ‘Fortune bid me a less encumbered philosopher.’”

After Zeno’s death, Stoicism thrived in Greece.

Then the Romans took over the show—starting with Seneca (born around the same time as Jesus) then moving on to Epictetus (who was a teenager when Seneca died) then on to Marcus Aurelius (who was a teenager when Epictetus died).

Those are the Big 3 of Roman Stoicism: Seneca the billionaire advisor to emperors and brilliant writer; Epictetus the former slave and teacher to Rome’s elite—including the guys who would go on to mentor the great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

P.S. We chat about this briefly in Stoicism 101 as well!

Stoicism overall demands great emotional control, a commitment to the common good over personal gain, and a strong devotion to virtue above all other ends.
Tom Morris
On the classic Stoic analysis, eudaimonia requires just one thing. One single item alone is both necessary and sufficient for happiness. And that is virtue. If you want the ultimate and all too elusive state of maximal flourishing or deep well-being in your life, arete will do the job. It will suffice.
Tom Morris

ARETÉ

The even more Ancient Greek word that the later Romans translated as virtus and that we also typically read as ‘virtue’ is the philosophically very important term areté, which was used by Greek philosophers generally to refer to the ideal peak human excellence. Areté is also often described as denoting a maximum of ability or even a superior potency for proper action. It’s meant to involve excellence in all things essentially human, from the moral and intellectual to the physical. The term encompasses the full range of qualities thought to facilitate the highest form of human potential and achievement. …

One of the authors of this book has an amazing friend, Brian Johnson, who spreads wisdom in the world and has the transliterated Greek word ARETÉ tattooed in thick block letters on the inside of his forearm, one inch tall and four inches across (see Figure 8-1). Throughout the day, he’s reminded by the bold ink of the vital importance of this concept for his life as the founder and CEO of the Heroic Public Benefit Corporation—teaching ancient and modern practices of excellence in our lives—and as a man, husband, father, and productive citizen who deeply cares about others. Areté counts. Virtue matters.

Yes, I got goosebumps typing that passage out.

What a sacred honor to be mentioned by Tom in this book.

As you know if you’ve been even *remotely* following along, Areté is the one-word summation of my entire life philosophy—which is why I tattooed my right forearm with the beautiful word and named my book Areté.

It’s also the one-word answer the ancient Stoic philosophers would have given us if we asked them how to live a good life.

Here’s a quick look at Figure 8-1 (the ONLY picture in the book):

Remember: The ENTIRE point of Stoicism can be distilled into a SINGLE word: Areté.

Want to win the ultimate game of life and experience a deep sense of sustainable joy?

Simple. Close the gap. Be your best self. Live with Areté.

Moment to moment to moment.

All day, every day.

Especially...

TODAY.

P.S. I’m not the only one with an Areté tattoo. Check out these (incredible!) pictures of members of our Heroic community who have also given themselves the ULTIMATE reminder of how to win the ultimate game of life!

Do you want to be happy? Be good. Embrace virtue. That’s the beginning and end of the story, according to our Stoic advisors
Tom Morris
The ancients thought of happiness as primarily a state of being. Modern people tend to conceive of it as a state of feeling. Those who haven’t thought about it enough wrongly construe it as a state of having. It may instead be more like a process of becoming.
Tom Morris

Money, Fame, and Happiness

The rich and famous did not have to wait until now to discover the disconnect between wealth, celebrity, status, or power and the deep goal of happiness. Pursuing the former to get the latter is a mistake that’s long been understood. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself:

Up to now, all your wanderings in search of the good life have been unsuccessful. It was not to be found in the intricacies of logic or in wealth, fame, worldly pleasures, or anything else. Where, then does the secret lie? In doing what nature seeks. But how? By adopting strict principles for the regulation of impulse and action, such as rules regarding what’s good or bad for us. So, for example, the rule that nothing can be good for a man unless it helps to make him just, self-disciplined, courageous, and independent, and nothing can be bad unless it has the opposite result. (Meditations 8.1)

The emperor may be the only person in history to have sought the good life or happiness ‘in the intricacies of logic,’ and it’s not at all a surprise that this path failed, along with wealth, fame, and pleasure. At the end of the passage here, he talks about having come instead to see the importance of seeking virtue and avoiding vice. We keep chasing the wrong things and hoping they’ll work, even when it becomes clear they don’t. The Stoics wanted to get us off this false path and onto the right road of virtue.

That’s from the same chapter as the one with the picture of my Areté tattoo.

The chapter is called “Virtue as the Goal of Life.”

So... You know this whole challenge of knowing the ultimate game and how to play it well?

Well... It’s a 2,500-year-old challenge!

As we discuss in the opening chapters to my book, EVERY ancient wisdom tradition across ALL cultures and ALL time have sought to address this challenge.

In more modern times, in his classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells us to be careful lest we climb up a ladder, get to the top, then look around and realize we put that ladder up against the WRONG wall.

David Brooks echoes the same wisdom in his great book The Second Mountain.

The first mountain?

We get to the top of THAT mountain, achieving a certain amount of “wealth, celebrity, status, or power” and then realize that didn’t give us what we *really* want to experience: a deep level of meaning and sustainable joy. That’s found on the SECOND mountain.

There’s ONE direction point on the compass that will get you there... It points to Areté.

Btw. As we’ve discussed a number of times, the FIRST thing we designed in our Heroic app was a virtue compass. If you look closely, you’ll see that the inside ring says: “Eudaimonia via Areté” | “Flourish by Putting Your Virtues in Action.”

The cardinal directional points on the compass are the cardinal virtues of ancient Stoicism: Wisdom, Discipline, Love, and Courage. The sub-directional points are the blends of those cardinal points and correspond to the virtues science says are most highly correlated with our well-being: Gratitude, Hope, Curiosity, and Zest.

If you want to live with Areté all you have to do is figure out which of those virtues you need more of in any given moment and then put that virtue into action.

I repeat... Want to win the ultimate game of life and experience a deep sense of sustainable joy? Simple. Close the gap. Be your best self. Live with Areté. Moment to moment to moment. All day, every day. Especially... TODAY.

But in the Stoic view, there is a pure simplicity beneath all this complexity: Virtue alone can guarantee happiness. So if you want to be happy, don’t seek that goal by chasing external things that can’t do the job, but rather by working on the inner virtue of your own soul. That is the only true and reliable path.
Tom Morris
And here the main lessons are simple. The inner is more important than the outer. We’ll never get external things right until we first get internal things right. It can’t be reasonable to sacrifice inner goods to get outer results. No accumulation of external things, however massive, can justify abandoning virtue and embracing vice on any occasion and however temporary. Happiness happens within.
Tom Morris

Fuel for the Fire

Everything that comes our way is a potential tool for use in self-development and in improving the world. But it depends on us whether those things function as tools and are employed well. Seneca writes:

Tools lie idle unless the workman uses them to perform his task. (On Benefits, 5.25.6)

What matters is how we use the things that enter our lives. Marcus Aurelius has a magnificent image, a fiery metaphor for how we can use our troubles, whether pains, sufferings, setbacks, obstacles, or hugely tempting pleasures that threaten to lure us off the proper path of life. He says:

When the governing power in us is true to nature, it stands poised and ready to adjust to every challenge and use each new opportunity. It’s ready for anything and pursues its own aims and embraces whatever it confronts, finding advantage in even opposition. It’s like fire in this way. While a small flame can be extinguished by trash that’s dumped on it, a big enough fire will just use and consume anything dropped in it. The more that’s thrown at it, the higher it rises and the hotter it burns. (Meditations, 4.1)

For a wise and strong person, everything is just fuel for the inner fire. So, to the Stoics, we don’t properly seek for pleasure or run from pain, but rather wisely develop our ability to use either well when they come into our lives. And like a strong flame, we then grow and prosper and rise higher from whatever we confront.

That’s a very good encapsulation of the essence of my most recent tattoo.

As you know if you’ve *really* been paying attention, a few days before New Year’s 2024 I headed back to Blindside Tattoo in Austin, Texas to get these two words permanently affixed to my left forearm: ANTIFRAGILE CONFIDENCE.

Nassim Taleb coined the word “Antifragile” to capture the power of moving past mere “resilience” by using life’s challenges to get STRONGER. The metaphor he used to make his point is strikingly similar to the one Aurelius used 2,000 years ago.

He tells us: “The wind extinguishes a candle but FUELS a fire.”

The question is: Which are YOU?

Know this: Helping you FORGE ANTIFRAGILE CONFIDENCE is how we will fulfill our Mission to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051.

The key, as we discuss often is to use ALL of life’s challenges as the catalyst to practice our philosophy. The WORSE we feel, the MORE committed we are to our protocol.

When we move from Theory to Practice with that wisdom, the things that used to destroy us become the things that make us stronger.

I repeat: REALLY getting that and REALLY practicing that is THE key to becoming as close to invincible as we will ever become. As Seneca says, the tools will lie idle unless we use them to perform our task. Let’s do that. TODAY.

Disaster is virtue’s opportunity.
Seneca

Your Heroic Role models

Stoics believe that it’s important to have good role models. For many of us, it’s often easier to see what is morally good if we simply ask, ‘What would role model X do?’ Rather than to engage in some complex pattern of moral reasoning, which we, being far from perfect, could easily botch. Because of this, Seneca quotes with approval Epicurus’s advice that we should ‘cherish some good man and keep him always before our eyes, so that we will live as if he were watching and do everything as if he could see us’ (Letters 11.9). …

A good role model can provide a concrete pattern and a vivid reminder of what it means to live a virtuous life. In tough situations we should call such a person to mind. What would she do? What would he advise or approve?

For some fans of the Stoics, these philosophers themselves can be in the choir of role models. What would Epictetus say? What would Marcus do, or at least complain about not having done when he write in his journal later in the day? A good role model, even a character in fiction, if vividly enough brought to mind, can help us become more resilient in the face of challenge and disappointment, while also more serene in how we carry on.

That’s from a chapter called “Finding Resilience and Inner Peace” in Part 5 “Stoic Virtues.”

Again, as you know if you’ve been following along, I have a couple dozen of my favorite heroes on my office/studio walls. They are constantly there to support me and provide me with the wisdom and guidance and inspiration to help me step up and close the gap between who I’m capable of being and who I’m actually being so I can win the ultimate game and give the world all I’ve got.

The question is: Who are YOUR Heroic role models? What one or two or three human beings embody the qualities YOU aspire to embody? Today’s the day to follow their lead as we do the hard work to forge the strength to show up and give the world all we’ve got.

Day 1. All in. LET’S GO, HEROES!

For the Stoics, virtue is not merely a good or even the highest good, but the only true good. It’s the be-all and end-all of human existence
Tom Morris

About the authors

Tom Morris
Author

Tom Morris

One of the world's top motivators and pioneering business thinkers.
Gregory Bassham
Author

Gregory Bassham

Former Professor of Philosophy at King's College (Pennsylvania)