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Articles

The Stoic’s Lacuna

Alex Richardson explores the ethical cavern at the centre of Stoicism.

“What is up to me, what is not up to me?” – Epictetus

“You can’t control the weather, you can’t control other people, you can’t control the society around you” – Dr Michael Sugrue

There is a fault line running through Stoic philosophy. This faultline was present in its ancient Greek and Roman origins, but in the modern world it has become pronounced. The faultline is that, despite the protestations of its founders and some of its advocates today, Stoicism can lead to political quietism – a withdrawal from the sphere of political life, and public life more generally, exclusively into the realm of the individual and personal. My argument is that this tendency towards quietism is a foundational flaw in Stoicism which co-exists uneasily with much more powerful and useful Stoic meditations on self-mastery as a prerequisite of virtuous intervention in the world.

Before we examine this issue, it is worth mentioning a caveat.

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