Life Support: Stoicism has a reputation for encouraging resignation and emotional detachment.

Illustration by Francesco Bongiorni

Some 2,300 years ago, Zeno of Citium left the sunny beaches of Cyprus to study under the Cynic philosophers, who were, at the time, all the rage. After leaving home, he learned and taught at the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Portico, part of the Ancient Agora of Athens. His students, taking their gathering place as an eponym, called themselves the Stoics, and their philosophy, Stoicism, has experienced an unexpected and digitally-based resurgence in the 21st century.

Though none of Zeno’s writings survive today, his quotes, or modern approximations of his quotes, can be found online, formatted into shareable, succinct posts by social media accounts bearing names like the Daily Stoic and Stoic Wisdom. Fans of this philosophy from antiquity can show their support by ordering mugs and totes bearing phrases like “man conquers the world by conquering himself.”

A self-described “former fat boy” turned bodybuilder wrote on his blog, Straight Talking Fitness, in 2020 that “the Stoic grind is the only way to win.” In that entry, he describes a Stoicism focused on stifling one’s own emotions, which are “fickle and fleeting.” This kind of Stoicism isn’t historically accurate, according to Sherman.

“The Stoicism that is distilled online into daily snippets doesn’t really get it, doesn’t understand what those who have turned to Stoicism — and who have been saved by it — really understand,” said Nancy Sherman, one of the world’s leading experts on classical ethics.

“Stoicism aligns with our modern understanding of resilience, which is about social support systems: how people are supported, how they take care of each other, rather than just themselves.”

A Philosophy of Constraint

Sherman, a distinguished university professor in the Department of Philosophy, has spent the last four decades thinking, researching and writing about how classical ethics, from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius and everything in between, can inform our understanding of ourselves and one another in the 21st century.

Sherman has been a member of the Georgetown faculty since 1989, lecturing on a range of topics, from Aristotelian and Stoic ethics to the philosophy of war and moral psychology. During her tenure, she has been recognized for her research with an array of awards, commendations and fellowships. In 2022, Sherman was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies for scholars in the nation.

Stoic ethics are, according to Sherman, much more complex than the current deluge of online posts would suggest. In her most recent book, Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience, she not only corrects many of the misconceptions that circulate online, but she lays out a more compassionate, socially interconnected vision of Stoicism that, she says, is also more accurate.

“Today, Stoicism is not so much a philosophy as a collection of life hacks for overcoming anxiety, meditations for curbing anger, exercises for finding stillness and calm — not through ‘oms’or silent retreats but through discourse that chastens a mind: ‘The pain isn’t due to the thing itself,’ says Marcus Aurelius, ‘but to your estimate of it,’ ” Sherman wrote in a 2021 New York Times column.

This macho take on Stoicism did not spring up overnight. In fact, Sherman first took note of the philosophy’s growing popularity while teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy in the late ’90s. There, Sherman served as the inaugural distinguished ethics chair, creating brigade-wide coursework in ethics for midshipmen. While teaching, she discovered that Stoicism resonated on a particular frequency with her students.

“One of the eye-opening moments was at the end of the course when, in a nonchronological but thematic order, we got to the ancients, and they were okay with Aristotle, they were okay with Plato, but what they really got interested in was Stoicism,” said Sherman. “We read Epictetus and the boat had come in. This was their philosophy.”

Epictetus, a first-century Roman slave turned philosopher, is credited as the inspiration behind the Enchiridion, a literal handbook on Stoicism written by Epictetus’ pupil, Arrian. Stoicism, which Epictetus had studied while enslaved, operated as a lifeline, helping close out things that were external, and outside of his control, and focus on those that were internal, such as his thoughts and feelings. For the midshipmen that Sherman was teaching, the entire course could have been on Epictetus.

“I couldn’t quite understand it until some of my TAs, high-level Naval Officers who had been in the Vietnam War, explained the connection to me,” Sherman said.

The missing link was James B. Stockdale, a Navy pilot who had been shot down over Vietnam in 1965. Stockdale was a hero to both those who had served in Vietnam and the young midshipmen in her class. After being taken as a prisoner of war, Stockdale spent seven years in the infamous Hỏa Lò Prison, the same facility where Sen. John McCain was held.

Prior to his deployment, Stockdale earned his M.A. in international relations at Stanford, where a professor had handed him the Enchiridion, which he read and re-read in his bunk aboard the USS Ticonderoga. While imprisoned, Stockdale relied on the Stoic philosophy to preserve his sanity. In later years, Stockdale wrote and spoke widely about Stoicism.

Stockdale, who Sherman interviewed several times, described his imprisonment as leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.

“It was his bible, it was his salvation,” said Sherman. “He could almost recitethe entire text, line by line, when I met him all those years later.”

In the so-called Hanoi Hilton, Stockdale recalled “taking the ropes,” a term the prisoners used for their physical torture, which occurred while they were tied down with ropes and unable to move.

“That was a real shock to our systems — and as with all shocks, its impact on our inner selves was a lot more impressive and lasting and important than to our limbs and torsos,” wrote Stockdale. “It was there that I learned what ‘Stoic harm’ meant. A shoulder broken, a bone in my back broken and a leg broken twice were peanuts in comparison. Epictetus said: ‘Look not for any greater harm than this: destroying the trustworthy, self-respecting, well-behaved man within you.’”

The separation — between the external, physical pain of torture, and the internal, mental peace of Stoicism — is a component of the philosophy but not its entirety.

“Stockdale developed, in many ways, the military take on Stoicism, with its blessings and curses,” said Sherman. “I always thought that it was a curse to suffocate your emotions, to internalize everything, to be too much of a denier of what you were feeling or thinking that might be traumatic. So, I tried to write a more humane version of Stoicism.”

I always thought that it was a curse to suffocate your emotions, to internalize everything, to be too much of a denier of what you were feeling or thinking that might be traumatic.

The Commonwealth of Humanity

To illustrate the social valence of Stoicism, Sherman turns to Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome from 161 to 180. During his time on the throne, Aurelius witnessed the outbreak of the Antonine Plague, a prolonged epidemic that decimated — and spread among — the Roman military.

Killing up to 10 million across the empire, the plague ended the so-called Pax Romana, more than two centuries of peace and prosperity for the Roman Empire. Aurelius, as a military leader, thinker and politician, turned to Stoicism to help guide his actions through an unprecedented era of instability.

In book eight of his Meditations, Aurelius writes about the relationship between the individual and society and compares an isolated man to “a hand, a food or a head, cut off from the rest of the body and lying dead at a distance from it.” Social isolation, Aurelius argues, is anathema to how people should live: “Nature formed you for part of the whole, but you have cut off yourself.”

“Aurelius is thinking, as the Stoics do, of the commonwealth of humanity,” said Sherman. “The word is kosmopolitēs, which translates to ‘citizen of the universe,’ from which we get the word cosmopolitan.”

A Confluence of Ideas and People

Since the publication of Stoic Wisdom, Sherman’s thought has returned to the origins of her academic career: Aristotle. As an undergraduate at Haverford College, Sherman was introduced to the Father of Logic by Aryeh Kosman, a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy.

“Aristotle is, really, my true love,” said Sherman. “Aryeh was also enamored with Aristotle and he kindled that spirit in me.”

As a graduate student at Harvard, Sherman continued to immerse herself in the classics, working with Martha Nussbaum, who currently serves as the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. With her grounding in Greek and Roman philosophy, Nussbaum brought Aristotle into conversation with Immanuel Kant, whom she studied under the tutelage of John Rawls. Rawls, perhaps best known for his A Theory of Justice, pulled upon Kantian ethics in his seminal work.

“I had Nussbaum whispering in my ear about Aristotle and Rawls whispering in my ear about Kant, and that’s how I ended up with my second book, Making a Necessity of Virtue,” said Sherman. “I tried to get these two philosophers, who spanned almost 1,500 years, talking to one another.”

Sherman’s first book, The Fabric of Character, delved into Aristotle’s theory of moral development and how individual’s nurture and maintain virtue. Sherman’s second book brought classical and Enlightenment thought together in one volume by arguing that Kant was actually expanding upon both the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions.

Sherman’s forthcoming book is tentatively titled How to Have a Soul: Lessons from Aristotle on Enduring Happiness.

“I think Aristotle has tons of lessons for us,” said Sherman. “One of the lessons is that we’re social and, probably, the greatest structure of a good life is one that is woven around friends and shared pursuits.

“He says you can’t have too many friends because it makes friendship watery or diluted. I think that’s incredibly important as we think about the loneliness epidemic. We’re seeing it in warnings about the overuse of social media, its hazards for young minds, and the horrible influences it can have on people in need who can be really lonely.”

A polymath, Aristotle was absorbed with the natural world, studying a variety of flora and fauna, and attempting to place humankind in the schema of the overarching cosmos.

“He situates us in this world, where we are part of nature,” said Sherman. “We are here with other creatures that have souls, not in the religious sense of a soul, but in the Greco-Roman sense, that it’s something that animates you, it’s part of what puts a lifeless body in motion.”

If there’s one book everyone should read, Sherman believes it’s Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

“Two of the 10 books in Nicomachean Ethics are on friendship — how we weave a life with another person, how we come to know ourselves through another self that’s willing to tell us about our foibles, or our flaws, and willing to set a mold for us, help us to give us something to emulate and aspire to,” said Sherman.