S1E16 - You Cannot Be Just a Stoic

In this episode, I take aim at what I call “stoa shaming”—the habit of pointing out someone’s failure to be perfectly Stoic as a way of dismissing both them and the philosophy.

You’ve seen it. Someone loses their temper, struggles with their weight, or makes a mistake, and the response is: “That’s not very Stoic of you.” On the surface, it sounds like a call to higher standards. In reality, it reveals a misunderstanding of Stoicism itself.

Stoicism does not expect perfection from its practitioners. It defines perfection—sagehood—as something effectively unattain...