Stoics and the Self
What makes you YOU?
Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,
I don’t know if you saw it…
So, the trailer was just released for the upcoming Bruce Springsteen film. It seems every big rock star is getting a movie about their lives these days!
Anyway, the trailer begins with a car salesman conspiratorially telling the young rock star, “I do know who you are.”
Bruce cryptically replies to this with, “Well, that makes one of us.”
Now, while I suspect this little interaction probably never happened, the point ultimately still stands: we are mysteries to our selves.
Of course, this idea is absolutely nothing new. Its a problem the ancients were very much aware of, with the idea suffusing some of their greatest writings in philosophy and drama.
And they developed solutions.
So today’s article looks at how Stoic philosophy can help us understand our selves, that most complex and elusive of topics. In true Stoic fashion, it’s eminently practical and direct advice.
Read on below for an eye-opening look at what the ancients can teach us about, well, us.
All the best,
Sean Kelly
Managing Editor
Classical Wisdom
Stoic Self-Reflections For Getting To Know Yourself
by Allan John of What Is Stoicism?
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates talks of his life’s purpose being to “fulfill the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and others.” Indeed, to “know yourself” was seen as one of the highest pursuits in ancient Greece. And it’s this searching that is vital if we’re to really know ourselves.
Socrates, seen by most as the godfather of Western philosophy and from whom the Stoics took great inspiration, never wrote any of his thoughts down. Every day, he wandered around Athens, engaging people in conversation. He questioned people relentlessly, seeking to help them get to the heart of their own beliefs.
It was personal growth through the beauty of dialogue and deep thinking, the kind of conversations that neither participant would forget in a hurry. When was the last time you had one of those?
Stoicism
The history of Stoicism is usually divided into three phases: the Early Stoa, the Middle Stoa, and the Late Stoa.
It’s from the Late Stoa that most surviving texts come, and for that reason the most well-known ancient Stoics today are Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, who all lived during that period.
Although we don’t have much of their original work, we do still know useful details about earlier Stoics thanks to the people (such as Cicero) who wrote about them.
One example of a lesser-known, yet important, Stoic philosopher is Panaetius of Rhodes. Panaetius was instrumental in introducing Stoic doctrines to Rome and when he later returned to the Stoic school in Athens he became its last undisputed scholarch.
Perhaps Panaetius’s key contribution to Stoicism was establishing the idea that everyone has four roles, or personae, that make up their identity.
The best source we have for learning about these roles is the Roman philosopher Cicero, who wrote about them in his work, On Duties.
They can be summarized as follows:
Universal human nature: the rational and social nature each of us has as human beings.
Individual character: our unique talents and dispositions, our likes and dislikes, our traits and mannerisms.
Circumstances and social roles: our specific positions in society, such as profession or family roles, as well as where we live and our influence and means.
Self-chosen role: the path we deliberately choose for ourselves based on our values, aspirations, and the knowledge we acquire.
All four roles of these roles combine to determine our moral obligations, responsibilities, and the steps we will take in our journey toward eudaimonia, which is the Greek term Stoics used to refer to a state of being that we tend to translate as “happiness,” “flourishing,” “fulfilment,” “well-being,” or the “good life.”
This might get you thinking about your four roles. How do they combine on your journey toward eudaimonia?
Where are you stretching your own boundaries?
Reading, wrote Seneca, is indispensable: It nourishes the mind and refreshes it when it is wearied. The value of reading, to anyone seeking personal growth, can hardly be overstated.
It enables us to learn quickly what others have spent years researching, challenges our beliefs, and frees us from the limitations of what we didn’t previously know. How consistently are you picking up books that challenge you and contribute to your mental freedom?
So as promised, let’s expand a little on what Panaetius (and Cicero) wrote, so that you might be able to examine your roles and how they work together.
Here are some philosophical searches you might wish to conduct in the process of knowing yourself better:
● Know your roles and how to fulfill them
So you can be the best version of that role (e.g. son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, etc) possible
● Know what you know and what you don’t
So you can keep learning and developing your wisdom
● Know what your desires are and how you formed them
So you know what you really want and when you have enough
● Know what you’re comfortable with and what you’re afraid of
So you can develop courage by facing your fears
● Know what you’re doing too much of and what you’re not doing enough of
So you can develop self-discipline by making rational choices
● Know the philosophy by which you want to live and review your actions each day to know where you’re doing well and where you need to improve.
So you can live with purpose and help others to do the same
In this process of knowing yourself, it can be helpful to decide who you are and work backward from there. Define the principles that make you that person, and make decisions according to them. Soon enough, when you look in the mirror in the morning and ask yourself who you are, you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Are you being authentic?
Related to all this self-reflection, we might also want to think about our own authenticity when it comes to defining our roles.
Authenticity, as it relates to personality, seems like a simple enough concept.
We say a person is being authentic when they’re being themselves—when they’re enacting their honest response to a situation.
A layer of complexity is added, however, when we examine the motivations behind someone’s seemingly honest, authentic actions.
Are their actions actually guided by the pressure of societal norms or what others will say about them? If so, can this be considered truly authentic? Does it even matter?
Marcus Aurelius offers us some excellent advice on this exact issue, and it’s advice we can readily use to cultivate our own authenticity:
Do not waste the time you have left thinking about others unless it serves some good and useful purpose, for it takes you away from other work. Thinking about what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what someone else is saying, and what another is thinking or planning, and all things of that sort, causes you to wander away from the observance of your own governing principles.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4
Marcus’s advice here helps us to remove any complexity from the concept of authenticity. To be ourselves becomes a simple (but not always easy) matter of defining our own roles and our governing principles and acting according to them, regardless of what anyone else says or does.
 | A guest post by
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A way of milestones towards understanding who you are and what signs to watch along the way, as you develop and march forward (if you know the forward direction). But one must understand that no one, and I mean no one, knows who they are and what in a deeper sense, they want to be. One way to do this efficiently, is to examine how one acts, especially in challenging events that come your way. And how it effects others. The accent is on others. But this is not enough. Because one is engaging in an ever going activity.
In the end, one has to be silent, for only in silence, you are opening a door to the possibility of a spark of enlightenment. This is beyond cognition. How may you know others if you know not what makes you, you.
As usual, the Stoics make a great deal of sense.