Practical Stoicism

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 unattainable. The Sage is a theoretical ideal: someone who never errs in judgment, never assents incorrectly, and never acts viciously. That’s not us. That’s not anyone.

What we are, instead, are prokoptôns—progressors. People in motion. People practicing.

This matters because if you misunderstand Stoicism as requiring perfection, then every mistake becomes evidence of failure, and every practitioner becomes a hypocrite. That’s the logic behind stoa shaming. It reduces a philosophy of progress into a brittle standard no one can meet.

But Stoicism isn’t a label you “achieve.” It’s a framework you use. Saying “I’m a Stoic” doesn’t mean you embody perfect virtue. It means you’re attempting to move toward it using Stoic principles.

That means mistakes aren’t contradictions of the philosophy—they are the condition under which the philosophy is practiced.

When someone says, “That’s not very Stoic of you,” what they’re often doing is collapsing the distinction between Sage and student. They’re holding a progressor to the standard of perfection and then using the inevitable gap to dismiss both the person and the system.

It’s also, in many cases, a defensive move. If they can frame you as inconsistent, they can ignore what you’re saying. If you’re not perfect, then your arguments don’t count. It’s an easy way to avoid engaging with the substance.

The Stoic response is simple: reject the premise. You are not trying to be flawless. You are trying to improve. And improvement requires error, correction, and continued effort over time.

So when you fall short—and you will—you haven’t failed at Stoicism. You’ve participated in it.

And when someone tries to use your imperfection against you, consider what they’re actually asking for: not progress, but perfection. Not practice, but performance.

That’s not Stoicism.

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I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at ⁠https://stoicismpod.com/members⁠

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In this episode I work through how Stoic Justice differs from what we moderns typically mean by the word — because when we say "justice" today, we almost always mean retribution: rewards for the deserving, punishments for the rest. Stoic Justice isn't concerned with desert in that sense at all. It's concerned with giving each person what is owed to them as a fellow member of the Cosmopolis, and failing to do that is, on Stoic terms, about as serious a moral error as you can commit.

Along the way I push back on the fairly common claim that Justice is the "highest" of the cardinal virtues — the one that orients all the others and without which courage collapses into bravado, temperance into private self-management, and wisdom into mere cleverness. I grant the intuition has some force, but antakolouthia — the mutual entailment of the virtues — rules out any hierarchy, and I note that Marcus, contrary to what some popular communicators like to imply, isn't in the camp that elevates Justice above the rest.

From there I trace how our thirst for a culprit is eating away at social cohesion in the West. The older western instinct — that it is worse to wrongly convict the innocent than to let the guilty slip through — is being quietly replaced by something uglier: not "did this person do the thing?" but "is this person close enough to the thing that punishing them will feel like justice?" We're no longer just eager to punish the accused; we're hungry to produce more accused, and the bar for what counts as worthy of condemnation keeps dropping. Evidence stops being something to weigh and becomes something to enlist.

I argue this is injustice in the precise Stoic sense — not the cartoon sense of wanting to hurt someone, but a failure of attention. You cannot give each person their due if you will not first do the patient work of finding out what is due. And I close with what I want listeners to actually do: the next time they feel themselves reaching for a verdict, pause long enough to ask honestly whether they're trying to find out what's owed, or whether they're just trying to locate a target for something they were already feeling before this particular person walked into view. Getting the right outcome by accident isn't justice — justice is the discipline itself, and what's true of the individual eventually becomes true of the society they're part of.
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Live in Leicester? Join me live on May the 23rd: https://tannerocampbell.com/events/stoicism-a-complete-framework-for-living-a-good-life

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In this episode, I explore the idea that “silence is complicity” and whether that claim holds up under Stoic scrutiny.

This phrase gets used as a kind of moral pressure—an attempt to force speech or action by implying that not speaking is equivalent to endorsing wrongdoing. But Stoicism doesn’t deal in slogans like this. It deals in judgment. It asks: what is appropriate for me, given my role, my knowledge, and the situation in front of me?

Sometimes speaking is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is not. The Stoic position is not that silence is always justified, nor that speech is always required, but that both must be evaluated through reason.

One of the problems with slogans like “silence is complicity” is that they bypass this process entirely. They encourage immediate assent to an impression—“something is wrong, therefore I must speak”—without first testing whether that impression is accurate, whether one understands the situation, or whether speaking will actually improve anything.

From a Stoic perspective, speaking without understanding can be just as irresponsible as remaining silent when action is required. Both are failures of judgment.

So the real question isn’t whether silence is complicity. The real question is: what is the just and appropriate response here? That requires slowing down, examining the impression, and being honest about what you do and do not know.

It also requires considering your role. Not every situation calls for your voice. Not every issue falls within your responsibility. And not every demand for speech is made in good faith.

That doesn’t mean you default to silence. It means you earn your speech. You speak when you have reasoned your way to the conclusion that speaking is the appropriate action—and you remain silent when that same process leads you elsewhere.

The takeaway is straightforward. Don’t outsource your moral judgment to slogans. Whether you speak or remain silent, make sure it is the result of clear reasoning, not social pressure.

Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.

I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at ⁠https://stoicismpod.com/members⁠

Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": ⁠https://stoicbrekkie.com⁠
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Register for the Leicester talk at https://tannerocampbell.com/events

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Tanner reflects on his recent speaking tour across Scotland—including stops in Glasgow, Fort William, Isle of Skye, Inverness, Ballater, Perth, and Dundee—and explains how the experience reshaped his perspective on what it means to “do the work” as a public philosopher.

While the podcast continues to reach a wide audience, in-person engagement proved uniquely impactful. As a result, Tanner is exploring live Stoicism workshops as a core extension of his work.

This episode introduces a pilot event: a one-day Stoicism workshop in Leicester, designed to test whether live teaching can become a sustainable and meaningful part of his professional model.
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