Nine Excerpts and Full Texts About Stoicism from Grant C. Sterling v1.
Nine Excerpts and Full Texts About Stoicism from Grant C. Sterling v1.
Texts: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Compilation: Dave Kelly. HTML rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
1. “Pared to their most basic level, the Stoics say:”
1) Emotions are bad.
2) Emotions are caused by false value judgments.
3) Ergo, if we change those false value judgments, the bad emotions will go away.
2. “The heart and soul of Stoicism”
“Only internal things are in my control. Unhappiness is caused by (falsely) believing that externals are good or evil, which causes us to desire the world to be one way rather than another, which inevitably causes unhappiness when the world doesn’t conform. If I eliminate my belief that externals are ever bad, I can even prevent all grief when my child or wife dies, or when I myself face death.”
3. “The vital heart of Stoic doctrine...”
“The Stoics believe that only things directly related to virtue (beliefs, desires, will) are in our control.
They believe that only virtue is good and only vice is evil.
They believe that all things not in our control (“externals”) are neither good nor evil.
They believe that desires are caused by beliefs about good and evil.
Hence, the good Stoic will have no desires whatsoever regarding external things.
They believe that our feelings of love, hate, fear, grief, anger, frustration, disappointment, etc., are all caused by beliefs that external things are good or evil.
Hence, the good Stoic will never experience any of those feelings, even in the slightest degree.”
4. “Stoicism is the theory that:”
“a) Emotions are caused by value beliefs (beliefs about what things are good or evil).
b) I am my soul/prohairesis/inner self.
c) Everything else, including my body, is an external.
d) No externals are ever good or evil.
e) All beliefs that externals have value are, hence, false.
f) All feelings that result from false value beliefs are, therefore, pathological and should be eliminated. This includes all fear, grief, and as well as mental “pleasure”, passionate love, etc. We eliminate them by changing the false value belief that generated the emotion.
g) Any feelings that arise from true value beliefs are not pathological, and hence are by definition indifferent externals. This includes ‘startlement’, physical pleasures and pains, and a few other things.
i) The goal of life is eudaimonia.
j) Eudaimonia includes bot
h living a virtuous life and living a life of positive feelings.
k) Living a virtuous life is necessary for eudaimonia [because it is part of the very definition of eudaimonia], and is also sufficient for eudaimonia [because the virtuous person will experience Joy, a positive feeling, and no negative feelings whatsoever].”
5. “Imagine someone says”
“Let me try one more time. Imagine someone says, I believe the following doctrines:
1) The goal of life is to obtain eudaimonia, which means both to act morally and to enjoy life.
2) Emotions are caused by our beliefs about what is good and what is bad — when I get something bad I experience anger, grief, sadness, fear, etc.
3) My identity is defined as the rational part of me, the part that chooses.
4) Therefore, only things that this part of me does can really be good or bad for me. Anything external to my will cannot be good or evil.
5) Therefore, the feelings that cut my joy in life and which lead me astray in my actions (anger, fear, etc.) are caused by false beliefs about what has value.
6) I control my beliefs, and so by disciplining myself to stop thinking of externals as being good or evil, I will be able to become morally better and have more joy in life” (Grant Sterling).
6. “System S says:”
“1) Eudaimonia (perhaps that’s what you mean by ‘genuine happiness’) consists in both complete psychological contentment and complete moral perfection.
2) All psychological discontentment is caused by the belief that externals have value.
3) This belief is factually false. (Note that this is not a psychological claim — it is a value claim.)
4) Therefore, someone with true value beliefs will have psychological contentment.
5) All moral imperfection is caused by the belief that externals have value.
6) Therefore, someone with true value beliefs will have moral perfection.
7) Therefore, someone with true value beliefs will have eudaimonia.”
7. “I receive impressions”
“I receive impressions. For the moment, let [us] take these as being out of our control. Those impressions are cognitive, propositional — they are not uninterpreted raw data, but rather ideas that claim that the world is a certain way. I do not see a collection of colors and patterns — I ‘see’ my backpack sitting on the chair in front of my desk. Some of these impressions are value-neutral (as that one is — there is nothing good or bad about my backpack being on my chair). But other impressions have a value component. Suppose that I remember having left my backpack on the floor when I left — I might now have the impression ‘my backpack is on my chair, which means someone has intruded on my office, which is a very bad thing!’
As I said, for the time being we are assuming that these impressions are not in our control. But what is in our control is how we react to them. We can assent, or not assent. That is, we can accept that a given impression is true, or reject it as unproven or false. (Rejecting it as false involves both refusing to assent to the impression AND formulating a new idea (the opposite of the impression) and assenting to that.) A few minutes ago, I assented to the impression that my backpack was on the chair. I didn’t have to, but I did.
The process of assenting is cognitive (it’s something that happens in the conscious mind), but is very seldom explicit. By that I mean that, for example, although I assented to the impression that my backpack was on the chair, at no time did I formulate the explicit mental thought ‘It seems to me that my backpack is on the chair. Should I assent to that impression? Yes, I think I will.’ My acceptance of the impression was so simple and momentary that it seems as though things just passed directly from impression to belief. But that isn’t the way it works. (Imagine a scenario where my backpack being there would be very unexpected, and you can see how it would be possible for me to question what my senses seem to be saying. I could question them even now (and really committed skeptics about the senses might be able to do this in ordinary cases), I just don’t.)
If I refuse to assent to an impression, nothing happens. No emotion, no action, nothing.
If I assent to an impression with a value component, then a desire will result. I will desire that the ‘good’ thing happen, or desire that the ‘bad’ thing not happen. If the impression says that this outcome has already occurred, then an emotion will result (in the example above, the likely emotions are anger or fear): positive feelings of mental enjoyment if the impression was that something good had happened, negative feelings if it was ‘bad’.
Further, this may lead to another impression, assenting to which will lead me to some course of action. For example, I might have the further thought ‘It would be good for me to go find out who has been in my office’, and if I assent to this further idea then I will stalk angrily down the hall to demand an explanation.
All of this sounds complicated, but it boils down to this: everything on the Stoic view comes down to assent to impressions. Choosing whether or not to assent to impressions is the only thing in our control... and yet, everything critical to leading the best possible life is contained in that one act. All our desires, all our emotions, all our actions are tied to assenting to impressions. If I get my assents right, then I have guaranteed eudaimonia. If I get one wrong, I cannot have eudaimonia” (Grant C. Sterling).
One final thing. I said above that we would assume that the original impressions are not in our control. Directly, that’s true. But indirectly, it isn’t, for two reasons:
a) Our impressions are closely connected to our character. If you reject an impression, then it makes that same type of impression less common and weaker. If you assent to it, it becomes more common and stronger. If it seems to me that it would be good to punch someone in the nose for insulting me, and I assent, then it becomes more likely that the next time something annoys me it will seem to me that I should lash out at someone, and that ‘seeming’ will be more compelling. If I refuse to assent, if I tell myself ‘hitting them won’t solve my problems’, then I will have fewer ‘I should punch someone’ impressions, and they will be weaker (more easily resisted). So, in this way, by being careful with our acts of assent (which are in our control), the impressions that we receive will be altered over time. This is a long process, but is critical for the Stoics — this is building a virtuous character. The Sage is simply someone who has controlled their assents so carefully for such a long period of time that they no longer receive the false value impressions (that externals are good or bad) in the first place.
b) While our impressions are not in our control, we do have the ability (suggested in above examples) to formulate new ideas. I receive the impression ‘Someone has been in my office — that’s a very bad thing.’ If I manage to refuse assent to this impression, I can choose to formulate an alternative impression — ‘it seems that someone has been in my office, but that is neither good nor bad.’ This proposition I can correctly assent to. I receive the impression ‘I should punch this guy in the nose’. If I reject it, I can formulate some alternative idea. One of my favorite passages in Epictetus is where he says that if you hear that someone has been criticizing you, don’t try to defend yourself, but instead say ‘Obviously he doesn’t know my other faults, or he wouldn’t have mentioned these.’ I wonder how much gossip and how many feuds would have been prevented if people reacted like that.
So what we should be striving for is:
a) Don’t assent to impressions that depict externals as either good or evil.
b) If we fail ‘a’, don’t assent to subsequent impressions that depict immoral responses to the good or bad thing as being appropriate.
c) Consciously formulate true propositions regarding the lack of value of external things. As far as possible, do this in advance. Remind yourself that your own life and health are neither good nor evil, as are the lives and health of those around you. The same for your job, etc. Whether or not you have done so in advance, try to do so at the time. ‘I have pictures here of your wife having sex with another man.’ Remind yourself: ‘my wife’s actions are not in my control. They are neither good nor evil. My happiness is in my control, not enslaved to the actions of others.’
d) Consciously formulate true action propositions. ‘I should report truthfully to my boss regarding the sales numbers from the last quarter: truth telling is virtuous, and I have a duty to act faithfully at work. If my boss fires me, I should remember that my job is an external, neither good nor evil.’ By paying attention to preferred and dispreferred indifferents, and to the duties connected with my various roles in life, I can recognize what it would actually be correct for me to do in each situation. Bring this consciously to mind, and assent to it.
e) When you do act correctly, assent to the proposition that you have done a good thing — then you will experience Joy (or at least proto-Joy.)
f) Over time, my character will change such that I no longer have the false value impressions in ‘a’ and ‘b’, and ‘c’ and ‘d’ and ‘e’ become routine. This is eudaimonia — good feelings combined with virtuous actions.
8. “Core Beliefs”
1. Happiness (eudaimonia) is to be found exclusively in Virtue.
2. The only things we control are inner events such as our beliefs, desires, and acts of will.
3. Virtue (or virtue and certain things that can be attained only by those with virtue) is the only genuine good, and vice the only genuine evil.
4. Ergo, since virtue and vice are types of acts of will, they are in our control.
5. Ergo, things not in our control [externals] are neither good nor evil.
6. Emotions (or passions, if you prefer) arise from (false) beliefs that externals have value.
7. No-one should be distressed by any external occurrence.
9. “Core Stoicism”
Section One: Preliminaries
Th 1) Everyone wants happiness.
Th 2) If you want happiness, it would be irrational to accept incomplete or imperfect happiness if you could get complete [continual, uninterrupted] happiness.
2*) Complete happiness is possible. [To be proven below.]
Section Two: Negative Happiness
Th 3) All human unhappiness is caused by having a desire or emotional commitment [I will henceforth say “desire” for simplicity] to some outcome, and then that outcome does not result.
4) Ergo, if you desire something which is out of your control, you will be subject to possible unhappiness. If you desire many things out of your control, the possibility of complete happiness approaches zero.
5) By 4, 2*, and Th2, desiring things out of your control is irrational [if it is possible to control your desires].
Th 6) The only things in our control are our beliefs and will, and anything entailed by our beliefs and will.
Th 7) Desire[s] are caused by beliefs (judgments) about good and evil. [You desire what you judge to be good, and desire to avoid what you judge to be evil.]
8) Ergo, Desires are in our control.
9) By 5 and 8, desiring things out of our control is irrational.
Th 10) The only thing actually good is virtue, the only thing actually evil is vice.
11) Ergo, since virtue and vice are types of acts of will, they are in our control.
12) Ergo, things that are not in our control are never good or evil.
13) [cf 9, above] Desiring things out of our control is irrational, since it involves false judgment.
14) Ergo, if we value only virtue, we will both judge truly and be immune to all unhappiness.
Section Three: Positive Happiness or Appropriate Positive Feelings
15) Ergo, if we truly judge that virtue is good, we will desire it.
Th 16) If you desire something, and achieve it, you will get a positive feeling.
17) Ergo, if we correctly judge and correctly will, we will have appropriate positive feelings as a result.
Th 18) Some positive feelings do not result from desires, and hence do not result from judgments about value. [E.g., the taste of a good meal, the sight of a beautiful sunset, etc.]
19) Ergo, such positive feelings are not irrational or inappropriate. [Though if we desire to achieve them or desire for them to continue beyond the present, then that would involve the judgment that they are good, and hence that would be irrational.]
Th 20) The universe is, or is governed by, Nature, Providence, God or the gods. [Different Stoics approach this idea differently.]
Th 21) That which is Natural, or is governed by Providence, God, or the gods is exactly as it should be. [Zeus is just, or however you wish to express this.] {Nota bene that this produces a problem for those Stoics who are strict determinists, since it would mean that even acts of vice were somehow correct, and are not actually in our control in any important sense. But I don’t think strict determinism about internal states is a core belief of Stoicism.}
Th 22) If you regard any aspect [or, better, all aspects] of the world as being exactly as it should be, you will receive appropriate positive feelings.
23) Ergo, the Stoic will be positively happy, will have positive feelings, in at least three ways: appreciation of his own virtue, physical and sensory pleasures, and the appreciation of the world as it is. The last of those three is something that the Stoic could experience continually, every waking second, since at every waking second one can perceive something as being what it is, and hence what it should be.
Section Four: Virtue
Th 24) In order to perform an act of will, the act of will must have some content. The content is composed of the result at which one aims.
Th 25) Some things are appropriate objects at which to aim, although they are not genuinely good.
Th 26) Some such objects are things like life [our own, or others’], health, pleasure, knowledge, justice, truth-telling, etc.
Th 27) Virtue consists of rational acts of will, vice of irrational acts of will.
28) Ergo, any act that aims at an [external] object of desire is not virtuous, since all desires [for externals] are irrational.
29) Ergo, virtue consists of the pursuit of appropriate objects of aim, not the pursuit of the [external] objects of our desires. Such virtuous acts will give us good feelings [by 17], and since we have no desires regarding the actual outcome, they will never produce unhappiness for us.
So now the threads of the sections can be tied together. Someone who judges truly will never be unhappy, will in fact experience continual uninterrupted appropriate positive feelings, and will always act virtuously. Anyone would agree that someone who led a life like that was happy. Judgment is in our control. Hence, not only is perfect continual happiness possible, it is actually in our control — we can actually guarantee it by simply judging correctly, and acting on those judgments.
10. “My ‘Action’ Is My Choice”
Grant Sterling email to the ISF.
“Again, I am pressed for time so I will attempt a broad response to multiple ideas....
On the Stoic view, my ‘action’ is my choice, not anything I physically do.
So, for example, today I agreed to go to lunch with another professor. We left the building, walked to the restaurant, ate our lunch, and returned. I made the choice to promise to go, the choice to walk out the door, the choice to continue walking toward the restaurant, the choice to converse and say various things, the choice to order one of the specials, etc.
Each of those choices was inappropriate or appropriate. ‘Appropriate’ means that it was rationally correct. My choice to agree to go was based on several considerations — I needed to eat some food, the walk would give me exercise, the weather was nice, the restaurant has good food that is not too expensive, the other professor is a colleague on my department so the conversation was likely to be both enjoyable and productive, etc. Given these considerations, I think it was correct... rational... appropriate of me to agree to accompany him when he asked me to go.
Having agreed to go with him, I needed to make more (rational) choices. I needed to choose a route to the restaurant that would get us there in a reasonable time without breaking laws or endangering ourselves or other people. I needed to make sure that I had cash or a credit card to purchase my meal. Etc.
So I needed to:
1) Identify rational goals to pursue.
2) Select a rational course of action designed to help realize these goals.
If I had failed in either case — if going to the restaurant to eat was immoral or irrational (imagine that the restaurant was known to use its proceeds to sponsor terrorist attacks, or that it was prohibitively expensive, or was known to frequently serve spoiled or poisoned food), or if my method of getting there was immoral or irrational (the restaurant is 50 miles away and I was planning on walking there during my lunch hour, the sidewalks are covered with ice and are highly dangerous, etc.) then my choices would be inappropriate.
{To go beyond making appropriate choices and achieve virtue, I must make appropriate choices and those choices must be connected together in a settled disposition to rationally evaluate all information that comes to me. Hence, one cannot perform one virtuous action — virtuous actions come when one has reached the stage where one’s inner rational development has been perfected. No-one achieves that except the Sage. I, personally, am willing to be a bit more generous and call some actions ‘virtuous’, but most of the ancient Stoics would not.}
So my action is my choice, and as such it is appropriate (or inappropriate) at the instant the choice is made. So it is utterly irrelevant if I am hit by a car before I get there, or my colleague changes his mind and decides not to go, or the restaurant turns out to be closed when I get there, etc. I have already made the choice, and it is already appropriate or inappropriate. By the same token, a choice to unnecessarily walk along ice and dangerous sidewalks is inappropriate, even if we manage to safely negotiate the dangers unharmed.
If you’ll forgive the odd comparison, the Stoic attitude towards actions is very like Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in Luke. ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ That is, Jesus is saying ‘It seems that this outcome is best, but if God wills otherwise then it must not be.’ This is very similar to the Stoic doctrine of choosing ‘with reservation’. The Stoic, in effect, chooses ‘the most rational means to a certain goal if God (the gods) will allow it to occur’. All outcomes are out of our control and in the hands of the gods — hence, it would be irrational as well as productive of misery for us to assume that we can actually produce any outcome. So I should choose the means that are most rational to select aiming at the goal which is most rational to aim at with the conscious recognition that if the gods don’t want it to happen, their will takes precedence. I choose a rational path to the restaurant, but when we get there we find it closed. I am not in the least upset, because all along I was not aiming to produce the outcome of eating at that restaurant, but rather aiming at the outcome of eating at that restaurant if it is possible. Now I recognize that it was not possible — the gods did not will it. Nevertheless all my choices were correct at the time, and so I am content. {Of course, now I must make new choices about what to do now.}
So:
1) Choose objectively correct, rational ends.
2) Choose rational means to those ends.
3) Make all those choices with the ‘reservation’ that these outcomes are never really under my control, and so if the all-wise gods will otherwise ‘not my will but theirs be done’.
Regards,
Grant
PS: On rare occasions it will be rational to do some task in an inferior way. For example, I may have good reason to take a shower, but at the same time recognize that I have a good reason to spend no more than 5 minutes showering and dressing. I cannot shower and dress thoroughly and well in 5 minutes... in this case, I’ll have to shower and dress somewhat sloppily. But such cases are rare.”
Texts: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Compilation: Dave Kelly. HTML rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
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