Stoicism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Stoicism, the third great philosophy of the Ancient World. It was founded by Zeno in the fourth century BC and flourished in Greece and then in Rome. Its ideals of inner solitude, forbearance in adversity and the acceptance of fate won many brilliant adherents and made it the dominant philosophy across the whole of the Ancient World. The ex-slave Epictetus said “Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them”. Seneca, the politician, declared that “Life without the courage for death is slavery”. The stoic thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, provided a rallying point for empire builders into the modern age.Stoicism influenced the Christian church, had a big effect on Shakespeare and Renaissance drama and may even have given the British their ‘stiff upper lip’, but it’s a philosophy that was almost forgotten in the 20th century. Does it still have a legacy for us today?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Angie Hobbs 24 episodes
  Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Warwick
• Jonathan Ree 8 episodes
  philosopher and historian
• David Sedley 3 episodes
  Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, University of Cambridge

Related episodes

• Marcus Aurelius
  
  25 Feb, 2021 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Socrates
  
  27 Sep, 2007 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Consolations of Philosophy
  
  1 Jan, 2009 100 Philosophy
• Epicureanism
  
  7 Feb, 2013 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Seneca the Younger
  
  23 Feb, 2017 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Neoplatonism
  
  19 Apr, 2012 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Humanism
  
  8 Feb, 2001 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Virtue
  
  28 Feb, 2002 170 Ethics
• Common Sense Philosophy
  
  21 Jun, 2007 100 Philosophy
• The Examined Life
  
  9 May, 2002 100 Philosophy
• The Philosophy of Solitude
  
  19 Jun, 2014 120 Epistemology
• Cynicism
  
  20 Oct, 2005 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
  
  2 Nov, 2023 170 Ethics
• Confucius
  
  1 Nov, 2001 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Nihilism
  
  16 Nov, 2000 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Schopenhauer
  
  29 Oct, 2009 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Heraclitus
  
  8 Dec, 2011 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Aristotle’s Politics
  
  6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science
• Roman Slavery
  
  5 Apr, 2018 930 History of the Ancient World
• Phenomenology
  
  22 Jan, 2015 190 Modern Western Philosophy

---

Programme ID: p003k9fs

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9fs

Auto-category: 100 (Philosophy and psychology)