Stoicism Is Not A Philosophy But It Is A Personal Practice

On no occasion call yourself a philosopher … Show not your theorems.

- Epictetus, Enchiridion

This misuse of Stoicism comes from a miscategorization of Stoic’s and their writings. They are often grouped in with other Greek Philosophers, but their writings aren’t the same. Most philosophers package ideas and arguments into books to spread their way of thinking. Reading and understanding philosophical writings is all you need to do to claim, with authority, your understating of that philosophy. Reading and understanding the texts of Stoic writers is merely the first step. Stoic writings aren’t arguments to support a world view, they are instructions, practices, and mantras. To truly understand Stoicism you have to practice it every day. Stoicism is not a philosophy that you believe or disbelieve, it is an action that you take or do not take.

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One cannot prescribe Stoicism onto others. It is a deeply individual and inward looking practice of meditation that requires you to renounce judgement of external things, including the actions of others. Unlike almost all other things called philosophies, it is explicitly not a world view. Meditating on Stoic mantras helps you accept our inability to control the world, and therefore the pointlessness of taking a world view in the first place. Instead, Stoicism encourages you to focus on maximizing the good within yourself, as that is all that is within your control.

The brevity of Stoicism makes it a poor philosophy. Its terse, sometimes self evident statements aren’t good arguments or empathetic pieces of advice. They don’t prove hypotheses about the external world nor do they help others on their own. But this is because Stoicism is not an argument, or advice, or a philosophy. It is a personal practice, a path to ataraxia that one must work hard to follow.

- More here (via MR)