Daily Stoic Sundays: The Four Stoic Virtues

On today's episode, Ryan discusses the Four Stoic Virtues: Courage, Justice, Moderation, and Wisdom. Listen to find out why the Four Virtues are so important in today's world. And check out the new Daily Stoic Four Virtues medallion at https://geni.us/FourVirtuesThis episode is brought to you by Thrive Market, an online marketplace where you can get over 6000 products, whether it's pantry staples, food, wine, and other groceries, or cleaning products, vitamins, or even bath and body products. They have products for any diet or value system, whether it's vegan, non-GMO, paleo, keto, kosher, halal, non-FODMAP, and more. Visit thrivemarket.com/stoic to get 25% off your order today. ***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: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Ryan:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: 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 Sunday edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. My name is Ryan Holiday. For over a decade, I've been writing and thinking and talking about Stoicism. And so each Sunday now, we're going to be rolling out a special episode that will be either me riffing on a number of topics, maybe me riffing or expanding on an article that I've written, or deep diving into an idea that I think's important, that I think you'll benefit from. So I hope you like it. Support our sponsors who make this episode possible. And of course, keep studying, keep reading, and thank you. For the Stoics, there's really sort of four tentpole values, sort of four bedrock ideas

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  that the whole philosophy is built around. And as it happens, these are the same ideas that Christianity is built around, that Aristotle's philosophy is built around. They call these the cardinal virtues. And those four virtues are really straightforward. It's courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom. We call them the four virtues at Daily Stoic because cardinal has this sort of religious connotation for people. Actually, all cardinal means, it comes from the Latin word cardos, and cardos just means hinge. So the idea of these four virtues is that life hinges on courage, and temperance, and justice, and wisdom. I think that's totally right. It's impossible to be a good person and have a good life if you're a coward, if you do

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  the wrong thing regularly, if you're totally out of balance, and if you're stupid, if you're ignorant, if you're not pursuing wisdom. And so for the Stoics, life was about facing every situation, greeting every experience with one or four of those virtues. Courage, to me, is one of the most important. You know, there's that line in All the Pretty Horses, he says, "The world wants to know if you have cojones, if you're brave." And I think it's impossible to have a good life without bravery. If you run from challenges, if you're afraid, if you don't believe in yourself, if you lack confidence, if you can't meet the blows that fortune heaves at you, as Seneca says.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  And so this idea of courage, the courage of a lion, that's how the Stoics tended to represent it, it's just essential. And then this leads into the next virtue for them, the virtue of moderation. You might think courage and moderation are opposites. Actually Aristotle believed that courage was in the exact middle between cowardice on the one hand and recklessness on the other. And so this idea of balance, Marguerite Yosseinor in Memoirs of Hadrian, she talks about how the Romans were poisoning themselves with excess and so doing like depriving themselves of the true pleasure, the sort of simple middle ground, the just, the right amount of things. And so for the Stoic, we have to find that right amount of things. And then what are the, what are the right things, right?

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  This is the virtue of justice. We go into the virtue of justice. So like if you're being courageous, but for your own good or for a bad cause, right? Julius Caesar and Cato are both courageous. Cato, the Stoic, is courageous for the right thing, the preservation of the Roman Republic, fairness, liberty, honor, duty. Julius Caesar is in this for himself. And so for the Stoic, courage is meaningless, moderation is meaningless if it's not aimed at the right goal. And then how do you find what that right goal is? This is the, this is the virtue of wisdom, the pursuit of wisdom. We live in times with unlimited information, but truth, truth is truly rare. And so for the Stoics, it was Sophia, the love of knowledge, the love of wisdom, chasing

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  truth that really mattered, finding what was right, finding great mentors, great teachers, great books, great philosophies in pursuit of that wisdom. And so this idea of the four virtues, it's like, look, there's nothing better than those. Marcus Aurelius, he said, you know, try not to exchange these virtues for others. He said, like, if you ever find anything better than courage, justice, wisdom and temperance, like it must be extraordinary, I would argue that thing doesn't exist. So in my, my pocket, I carry the virtues coin. Sophia, that's the owl, that's wisdom. We have the scales of justice. We have a man watering down his wine. That was the symbol in the ancient world for moderation. And then And then we have the courage of the lion.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  And so courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. Try not to exchange these for others. That's what Marcus Aurelius wanted. The idea is like, how do you have physical reminders of these ideas? Like, I think very few people would argue that courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom are not important. The key is like, how do you call up those ideas in situations where they really count, where they really matter? Virtue is eritate, which means excellence. Moral excellence is a part of that, right? Justice and moderation. But it's excellence, period. No one watches a coward. No one watches George Costanza pushing women and children out of the way, running from a fire in Seinfeld and goes, "That cowardice, that's excellence." Right?

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  No one sees a politician flip-flopping on an issue so they can stay in office. You know, no one sees someone abjectly embarrassing themselves to retain their, you know, a few more minutes of their 15 minutes of fame. No one sees that kinds of cowardliness and soullessness and goes, "That is a human being flourishing. That's someone being their best self." So to me, courage, and justice, and wisdom, and moderation, that is eritate. That is the human being being the best that you can be. And so I just always remind myself, like, is this situation an opportunity for one of these four virtues? It always is. And if I'm scared about the consequences of doing that, of standing up for what I think is right, of chasing some uncomfortable truth, of saying no to something, you know,

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  of committing to, you know, what I think is just or fair, it's like, look, life is way too short to do anything but these things. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoic email, go to dailystoic.com/email.