Stoicism

“Amor fati” — love of fate — is having a moment: on wrists, on mugs, on a thousand motivational posts, almost always filed under ancient Stoic wisdom. That’s not quite right. The phrase is Nietzsche’s, the idea is older than him, and the gap between his version and the Stoics’ is the interesting part. It’s…

Open any feed and you’ll meet the cartoon Stoic: jaw set, feeling nothing, “detaching” from everything that hurts. It’s the most common thing said about Stoicism — and it’s wrong. The Stoics weren’t trying to feel nothing. They had a precise theory of what emotions are and what to do with them, and it’s far…