While all of the Roman Stoics wrote about how to handle adversity, Seneca was the master of this subject. He addressed it widely across hundreds of pages. This question, How should we respond when bad things happen to good people?, never goes out of style, because the need to confront adversity is part of human nature. Even the richest and most privileged among us cannot avoid pain and suffering, the occasional mishap, and the feeling that things have taken a wrong turn. In fact, Seneca’s wise teachings on adversity contribute significantly to the popularity of his writings today. During the worldwide lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic, during which I wrote part of this book, many book sales were in steep decline due to the impact of halting the world economy. But during the first peak of the pandemic, sales of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic soared 747 percent higher than usual.3 During this highly stressful period, Seneca’s teachings about how to live calmly, despite adversity, attracted many new readers.
VIRTUE AND EQUANIMITY: HOW STOICS FIND GOODNESS DESPITE ADVERSITY
Don’t desire hardships, but the virtue that allows you to endure hardships.
—Seneca, Letters 15.5
We live in an unpredictable world—a world in which we will all experience adversity, hardship, and suffering. How, then, were the Stoics able to live calm and happy lives?
Based on common sense, the Stoics knew that adversity and hardships are just part of life, so they developed ways to anticipate and respond to these inevitable experiences. But most importantly, it was their underlying way of looking at the world that took away the emotional sting most people feel when misfortunes cross their paths. In other words, the Stoics learned how to see the world in a slightly different way than the average person, making hardships feel less painful.
Ultimately, the Stoics believed that a person with a well-developed character would be able to endure adversity with a glad or happy mind. As we saw in chapter 4, this doesn’t mean that a Stoic won’t experience normal human feelings. But how, the Stoics asked, can we look at the world to prevent those feelings from turning into something extremely negative or debilitating?
We can find the answer in two key Stoic ideas mentioned briefly in the introduction to this book. The first Stoic belief is that virtue, or inner excellence, is the only true good. The second belief is that some things are “up to us” and other things aren’t, so we should focus on the things that are actually within our control.
It’s now time to take a more in-depth look at these ideas and how they can work together to ease human suffering.
The word virtue, unfortunately, sounds stuffy and Victorian. But what virtue or aretē meant to the ancient Greeks was simply “goodness” or “excellence.” Even an inanimate object can possess excellence. For example, the aretē or excellence of a good knife is that it’s sharp and cuts well. The virtue of a good horse might be that it’s strong and fast. Once we reach the level of human beings, the thing that sets us apart from other animals is that we’re rational. So for the Stoics, to possess virtue as a human being, we must act in a rational, reasonable, or honorable way. This means we should develop a good and stable character, characterized by equanimity, in which extreme negative emotions don’t cause us to lose our mental balance.
Aside from being rational, there are many other virtues. Going back at least to Plato, the Greeks identified four primary or “cardinal” virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice, which the Stoics also saw as essential.
The second key idea is that some things are “up to us” or within our power, while others are not. Modern Stoics call this the dichotomy of control, and it’s central to all of Roman Stoicism.4 When you think about it carefully, however, there is very little under our total control. Even our bodies and thoughts are not under our control at all times.
To give another example, while we can control our intentions, we can’t control the outcomes of things. If you start a business, you might be able to get everything just right in terms of the marketing, which you could, in theory, have total control over. But the company might fail for millions of other reasons, including the possibility that there just isn’t enough demand for what the business is offering.
Today, the Stoic philosopher most famous for writing about the dichotomy of control is Epictetus, who was a teenager when Seneca died. But Seneca and earlier Stoics accepted this idea too; they just described it in different ways. Seneca spoke of virtue and Fortune.* For Seneca, virtue (and our inner character) is up to us, but Fortune or chance is not. (See figure 4.) While we should always try to make good use of the things outside of our control (to help create a better world), we should focus first on having a good character, because without virtue or a good character, we won’t be able to create anything good in the world either. As Seneca wrote, “Virtue itself is the only good, since nothing is good without it.”5
The Dichotomy of Control
Seneca
Virtue / Inner Character
Fortune or Chance
Epictetus
“Up to us”
“Not up to us”
Fig. 4: How Seneca and Epictetus described the dichotomy of control. While virtue and inner character are “up to us” and under our control, things in the domain of Fortune or chance are not fully up to us.
In Stoic philosophy, these two ideas—that virtue is the only true good and that some things are outside of our control—are like two powerful chemical substances. When they are combined and mixed together, an intense reaction occurs, and an entirely new way of viewing the world comes into being.
ONE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN an average person and a Stoic is that an average person sees external things—things such as having money, a lovely home, and a beautiful family—as being goods, while for a Stoic they are only seen as being advantages. At first, this might seem like a small difference, or even a verbal quibble. But for a Stoic, this is a crucial distinction, because virtue is the only true good. (That said, if possible, a Stoic will want to have external advantages, just like everyone else.)
For Seneca, “All the things under the power of chance are servants,” including money, the body, reputation, and most other things.6 As he explains, anyone who believes external things to be good puts himself under the power of Fortune, chance, and things outside his control. But the person who understands goodness to be a virtue can find lasting happiness within, regardless of external circumstances.7
For a Stoic, anything that’s a real good, like virtue, can never be taken away from us, while anything that can be taken away is not a real good—it’s just an advantage, or a gift of Fortune. “It’s a mistake,” Seneca wrote, “to believe that anything good or bad is given to us by Fortune.” Rather, Fortune just gives us the raw material for creating good or bad, based on the good or bad qualities within us.8 Similarly, when speaking to his students, the Stoic teacher Epictetus stressed this point forcefully: “Don’t search outside yourselves for what is good; seek it within, or you will never find it.”9
WHILE BELIEVING THAT MONEY, good health, friends and family, and many other things are advantages we should actively seek out, the Stoics believed that advantages are valuable, but refused to call them “goods.” But why did they make this distinction? Part of the answer goes back to Aristotle, who claimed that to lead a truly good or happy life, you also needed “external goods” like health, a certain amount of money, and even good looks. (Aristotle, by the way, was the sharp-dressing son of a wealthy father, who was the court physician to the king of Macedonia.)