What Did the Stoics Think About Politics?

“Some of you are mad before you’ve even read this email. Relax. The Stoics lived 2,000 years ago. They had little in the way of policy beliefs that are relevant to us today.”Ryan discusses the Stoic’s obligation to being political, and why they must demand virtue from their leaders, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  What did the Stoics think about politics? So before you get mad, before I've even started, relax. The Stoics lived 2,000 years ago. They had little in the way of policy beliefs that are relevant to us today. Even of the modern Stoics, it's clear that Stoicism is not about specific issue-based opinions. Admiral Stockdale ran for vice president as an independent. General James Mattis is a longtime Republican. Arianna Huffington is a proud liberal. A Stoic is political. The philosophy obligates us to be, but it doesn't force us to align with one party or another. What Stoicism does, however,

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  is provide a framework for seeing the world that should shape our beliefs. The history of Stoicism guides us there, highlighting what is worth fighting for, living for, and even dying for. For instance, Cato was deeply committed to the idea of Roman libertas. Yet equally fervently, he cherished the idea of moderation, the natural and obligatory but self-imposed check on freedom. Seneca believed in kindness and mercy. Antipater and Diogenes believed in sympathy, our interconnectedness, but also in the self-correcting mechanisms of the market in a way that predicts the later Stoic writings

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  of the economist Adam Smith. And it was Marcus Aurelius, who, inspired by Thrasse and Helvidius, came to believe in a society of equal laws, of free speech, and, most importantly, of a ruler who respects their society. We can belong to any party. We can look for ourselves to decide what we're going to decide about this issue or that issue. What we can't do is disengage because we think it's somebody else's problem. What we can't do is give in to partisan radicalization, the silly team sport mentality that has consumed American politics along with many other countries. Finally, and most importantly, what we have to demand from ourselves and our leaders

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  more than anything else is character and competence. Because the policy doesn't matter if it's advocated for a bad or a selfish person. In fact, if it is, it should make us question our support for that policy and that party in the first place. So it's funny, sometimes we do write about politics here, or I do on my personal stuff, and people get really mad. But what's so funny about this is that if you actually look at the Stoics, which we did in the new book Lives of the Stoics, The Art of Living from Xeno to Marcus Aurelius, literally every single Stoic was political, if not an actual politician.

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  So it's a silly argument, but again, we're trying to zoom out, not say, hey, vote for this, vote for that. We are trying to say you have to apply the Stoic virtues to whom you vote for and the policies you support. So let's chew on that today.