Toxic stoicism vs. the real thing

What people mean by “toxic stoicism”

The phrase covers two different things. The first is stoic in its everyday English sense: putting up with pain without complaint. Pushed far enough, that becomes a rule. Never show that something hurts, never ask for help, handle everything alone. This is usually what people mean by toxic stoicism, and it describes a habit, not a school of philosophy.

The second is the online version, sometimes called broicism, a blend of “bro” and “Stoicism.” It borrows Roman names and a handful of famous lines and attaches them to a different set of values: discipline as a performance, emotional shutdown as strength, other people as rivals or obstacles, and money and status as the score. It is aimed mostly at young men.

Both deserve the criticism they get. Neither is a fair account of what Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca and Musonius Rufus taught. What follows sets the popular claims beside the texts, with sources you can check.

Five internet tropes vs. the texts

On the first trope, briefly: the Stoics wanted to be free of passions built on false judgments, such as rage, panic and envy, not free of feeling. Stoicism and emotions sets out the evidence. The other four need more room.

“Cut everyone off”

The online rule is to drop anyone who is negative, slows you down or doesn’t support your goals. Marcus Aurelius told himself to start the day expecting difficult people, and reached a different conclusion:

He expects the busybody, the ungrateful and the arrogant before the day has started, and he does not plan to avoid them. They are his kin. He can’t hate them, and he counts it as acting against one another “to be vexed and to turn away” (Meditations 2.1). He wrote this as an emperor, a man who could have dismissed almost anyone from his presence.

Epictetus makes the same point through roles:

Your obligations come from the relationship, not from how the other person is behaving this week. Say a coworker takes credit for your work. The posture says freeze him out. Epictetus’s question is what a good colleague does now: state plainly what you did, keep doing your part well, and don’t let his conduct decide yours.

None of this rules out distance. Seeing less of someone whose habits drag you down, or leaving someone who hurts you, is a choice about your own conduct, and that is up to you; dealing with difficult people covers where the line falls. What the texts rule out is the policy: treating people as disposable, and calling resentment strength.

“Dominate”

The posture is to win every exchange, never apologize, always get the last word, and sort people into high and low value. Epictetus’s list of the signs of progress describes nearly the opposite person:

No blaming, no accusing, no self-promotion, and when criticized “he makes no defence” (Enchiridion 48). This is not meekness for its own sake. The chapter opens with a contrast: the untrained person expects benefit and harm from outside, the philosopher expects them from himself (Enchiridion 48, in our words). Someone who believes that has nothing to prove in an argument.

Marcus held the most powerful office in the Roman world, and he warned himself against becoming the kind of ruler that power produces. What he wanted to keep instead was simplicity, sincerity, justice, kindness and affection (Meditations 6.30, in our words; the Marcus Aurelius page reads the passage closely). It is close to the opposite of what the dominance posture prizes.

“Flex your discipline”

The 5 a.m. alarm, the cold plunge, the long fast, each posted for an audience. Epictetus addressed the habit directly:

A sheep doesn’t bring up its grass to show the shepherd how much it ate. It produces wool and milk. Applied to practice, the measure is how you behave, not the evidence you display. The next chapter goes further: if you train yourself to put up with hardship, Epictetus says, do it for your own sake rather than for an audience. His example is a thirsty man who takes a mouthful of cold water, spits it out and tells no one (Enchiridion 47, in our words). And Marcus thanks his teacher Rusticus for teaching him not to show off as a man who practices a great deal of discipline or does good deeds for display (Meditations 1.7).

Choosing small hardships on purpose is a real Stoic practice, now called voluntary discomfort. In Epictetus’s version, nobody else needs to know.

“Philosophy isn’t for women”

Online Stoicism is often pitched as something for men. Musonius Rufus, who taught in Rome in the first century and counted Epictetus among his students, argued the opposite. His lectures survive only in versions written down by others, and the standard English translations are not in the public domain everywhere, so here is the app’s paraphrase, labeled as one:

In Lecture 4 he went on to argue that daughters should receive the same education as sons. That was a bold position for his time, and it was not modern equality: Musonius still thought men suited to heavier work and women to lighter work, much of it indoors (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (opens in a new tab)). But the central claim, that virtue is the same for everyone and so is the need for philosophy, is his. Seneca, for his part, addressed two of his consolations to women: Marcia, grieving her son, and his own mother, Helvia.

Justice is a Stoic virtue

The Stoics named four virtues: wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. The internet version keeps courage and a narrow kind of self-control and quietly drops the rest, above all justice, which for the Stoics covered honesty, fairness and kindness toward everyone. Marcus describes the difference between kindness that is real and kindness done for form’s sake:

Marcus’s test is motive. Doing good “barely as a thing of propriety,” he says, is the mark of someone who does “not yet love men from thy heart” (Meditations 7.13). The modern version of propriety is kindness as networking: generosity as personal brand, favors done for people who can return them. Marcus wanted doing good to delight you “for its own sake.” A fair test case is the new colleague who can do nothing for you, and how you treat them.

To practice justice alongside the other three on a real decision, the free Four Virtues practice asks what each virtue would have you do:

Gentleness is strength

The broicist assumption is that gentleness is weakness. Marcus wrote a list of reminders for when someone has wronged him, and the ninth answers that assumption directly:

Notice the scene. A violent man is trying to do harm, and Marcus’s advice is to correct him calmly and kindly while it is happening: “Not so, my child” (Meditations 11.18). In the full text he adds that the kindness must be genuine, not a forced smile. After the list, he takes on the question of manliness in the terms of his own culture. Mildness and gentleness, he says, are “more manly” than passion, and the person who has them “possesses strength, nerves, and courage” (Meditations 11.18). In the lines that follow, the man who flies into a rage is compared to the man who gives in to pain: both are wounded, and both submit (Meditations 11.18, in our words).

On this view, losing your temper is the weakness. The strength is in the person who can be struck at and stay kind. Stoicism and anger covers the rest of Marcus’s list.

Is Stoicism “cope”?

The charge is that Stoicism teaches you to feel fine about a situation you ought to change. Part of it lands: the texts say far more about changing your judgments than about changing your circumstances. Criticisms of Stoicism states the charge at full strength and answers it from Epictetus, who insisted that a resolution is worth keeping only after you have tested whether it is sound (Discourses 2.15).

Is Stoicism healthy?

Stoicism is a philosophy, not health care, and this site makes no health claims for it. What it asks of you is to examine your judgments, to act well toward other people and to put your effort where it can do something. Those are demands on character. You can judge for yourself, over weeks of practice, whether they make your days better.

What the Stoics did not ask is the toxic version: hide every feeling, refuse help, put up with anything you could change because it is supposedly “not up to me.” On help, Marcus is plain:

The duty is yours; how you get up the wall is not a test of pride. If you are struggling, talking to a doctor or a licensed counselor is a way of doing your part, not a failure at Stoicism. If you are in danger, contact local emergency services, or in the U.S. call or text 988 (opens in a new tab).

How to tell real Stoic advice from posturing

A few questions sort most of what you will read:

• Can you check the source? A genuine Stoic line can be traced to a book and a section number. Lines that come with only a name attached are often modern; see fake Stoic quotes.
• Does it include other people? Justice is one of the four virtues. Advice that treats people only as obstacles, rivals or an audience has left Stoicism behind.
• What is the measure? For the Stoics, money and status are at most preferred indifferents: reasonable to prefer, but not what makes a life good. Character is the measure.
• Is the discipline private? Epictetus says to train endurance for your own sake and keep it to yourself.
• What does it do with feelings? The Stoics examined the judgments behind them. They did not pretend the feelings were absent.
• Would it work for anyone? The best-known Stoic teachers include a former slave, Epictetus, and an emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Advice that only works if you look tough isn’t theirs.
• Does it change your judgments, or your image? The work the Stoics describe happens where nobody can see it.