Reading Recommendations for Studying Stoicism

What books should you read first and why those? Here's some helpful advice

(originally published in Practical Rationality)

Many newcomers to Stoic philosophy ask me for recommendations about what books they ought to read. Sometimes they’ve already paged through one classic Stoic text —usually Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Epictetus’ Enchiridion — and they want to know what else they should check out.

Much more often, they’ve encountered Stoicism in some other manner, through some present-day writer, podcaster, or speaker referencing portions or passages of that ancient philosophy. They’re looking for some idea about how to study Stoicism in a fairly systematic and progressive manner.

That’s precisely what I’ve written this post to help people with. I also get to help myself out with this one as well, since I can use it as a standard response going forward when people ask me for recommendations.

Three Short Stoic Works To Start With

Often people want to know which single book they should start with. And there isn’t any one-size-fits-all answer to that. I tend to think anyone who says there is one single book to start with either isn’t far enough along in their studies to be a good guide, or they’re so irrationally committed to that one book (maybe as one that “changed their life”) that they’re a decidedly non-Stoic cheerleader for it. Anyone who really wants to learn about what Stoicism has to offer them will also want to open themselves up to the possibility of learning from multiple, complementary sources.

It is also common for many readers to want shorter works recommended to them. And that makes good sense. Time is a resource always in short supply, and so shorter works that do not require as much time for an initial reading are attractive. Some people also think a more bare-bones presentation will get straight to the heart of the matter and give them the essence of the philosophy.

The three first shorter works I’ve settled upon as recommendations each give the reader some accurate idea of what Stoicism teaches, focuses on, and has to offer. None of them should be taken as THE definitive statement of Stoicism — that is a mistake some beginners do fall into — but they do provide some of the key and core starting points. These works are:

• Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes

• Seneca’s On The Happy Life

• Epictetus’ Enchiridion

Why those three in particular, one might ask? Isn’t Cicero an author who isn’t actually a Stoic? And why isn’t Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in that list? Good questions. Let’s answer them in reverse order.

I do recommend Marcus’ Meditations, just not in this initial three (we’ll get to him in the very next section). It is a shorter Stoic work by comparison to some others, but it is longer than all three of these put together.

Cicero is indeed not a Stoic, and identifies specifically with a moderate sort of skepticism associated with the (formerly Platonic) Academy of his era. And yet, in another work recommended below, he tells us that if he were not a skeptic, he would be a Stoic.

Now, why these three works in particular? They’re all short enough to read through and think about in the space of an afternoon. They are all incredibly rich, rewarding rereadings you’ll want to give them (works of Stoic philosophy — like any classic works — are not a “one and done”). They all yield to the attentive reader some absolutely central Stoic doctrines. And because of that they are all likely to prove challenging and provocative — Stoicism is counter-cultural and to many counter-intuitive.

The very title of Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes signals that. The Stoics were well-known for making claims, arguments, and suggestions for living that many people found implausible, incredible, or frankly unbelievable. Those are paradoxa — what go against the doxai, the common beliefs of the times and culture. This little work doesn’t cover all of these paradoxes, but it will introduce you to six of them, and Cicero provides some needed explanation of what the paradoxes mean, and the lines of reasoning that Stoics used to support them.

Seneca’s work, On The Happy Life is also short, but packed with key classic Stoic teachings. In it, you’ll find him covering some of the same ground as the Stoic Paradoxes, but going beyond it as well. The central topic is revealed by the title itself — the nature of human happiness, and what we need to do (and how we need to think) in order to attain it. Since Stoicism is a complex, interconnected system, Seneca understandably also references and unpacks a number of other central ideas.

I should mention here that Seneca has several other short works that you could substitute in place of On The Happy Life, because they do a lot of the same work for the beginning reader, introducing you to key Stoic ideas and terms, focusing in on a key problem for human beings, and charting out a path towards a better life. On Tranquility of Mind, On The Shortness of Life, and On The Constancy of the Wise would each fit the bill well. I just happen to like starting people off with the focus on happiness.

Then we have Epictetus’ Enchiridion or “Handbook”. While it is reflective of Epictetus’ teachings, the Enchiridion wasn’t actually written by Epictetus himself, but rather by his student Arrian. It is composed of passages drawn from the much longer Discourses (some portions of which have been lost). Think of it as Arrian’s attempt to provide us with what he thought to be the most essential teachings of Epictetus’ Stoic philosophy in the form of a little book you could keep with you and consult whenever you need to.

So those are the three short works I’d advise starting out with: Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes, Seneca’s On The Happy Life, and Epictetus’ Enchiridion. You can read them in any order you’d like, of course.

If you’d like a bit of help as you read through them, I do have videos on each of these in my big Stoic Philosophy playlist.

A Few Words About Common Worries And About Rereading

There is one very common worry that beginner readers and students often have. Even though I’ve encountered it hundreds of times at this point. I’m happy to hear or read it expressed, because it’s easily answered when it is brought out into the light. When it just sits there in the dark, unexpressed, it often leads to inaction on the part of would-be readers. So before going on to more recommendations I’d like to address this issue.

Here’s the worry: “What edition or translation should I get and read?”

This is often framed as: “What’s the best edition or translation?” The only real honest answer is that there simply isn’t a best one for these works. It depends very much on what you, the reader, are looking for. For most of these works, there are multiple translations available, and they read differently from each other. I know which ones I prefer, but that doesn’t mean for an instant that those are automatically the “best” or “right” ones for you.

You’ll find nearly all of the works I’m recommending here available online in one place or another, if you put in the time and effort to look for them. The translations on those sites will likely use older language and terminology, because they are public domain texts, no longer in copyright. You can also buy — or check out from libraries — more recent translations. Which one you get is up to you, and you have to determine what works well for you as a reader.

The Big Three: Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius

The Stoic authors we still have full writings from are all what get called “Late” or “Roman Stoics”. Although we do know a good bit about the many Early and Middle Stoics, and we do possess fragments of their works, we don’t have any of their full writings. Fortunately, we do have books by Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and there is a lot that can be learned from them.

If I had to pick which three books you should engage with next, this is a really straightforward selection. You want to go deeper and broader into classical Stoic philosophy, right? You’ve read those first three short works, and you’re ready for something more challenging. . . but not too difficult? You’re ready now to read the big three authors and their most central books:

• Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

• Seneca’s Letters

• Epictetus’ Discourses

I did say we’d get to Marcus’ Meditations, didn’t I? If you like, you can start this next stage of your progress in learning about Stoicism by jumping right in there. It’s a very popular text among modern-day students or advocates of Stoicism. You should be forewarned, though, that if you’re looking for any kind of systematic exposition of Stoic philosophy, this isn’t it. Marcus isn’t actually writing to you, the reader, but to himself, over time. So he does shift from topic to topic quite a bit from one book, or even one chapter, to another. Marcus does have some excellent and profound things to say in this work, but I would say that the Meditations is the lesser of these three books.

You’ll find Seneca’s Letters called by all sorts of titles. Moral Epistles, Letters to Lucilius, Moral Letters, among others. They’re all the same text, and it’s one that you will definitely want to spend a lot of time with. Seneca is writing to his Epicurean-leaning friend Lucilius, ranging over a slew of topics, telling us all sorts of important and useful things not only about Stoicism but about other philosophical schools as well.

Epictetus’ Discourses is an absolutely central text for Stoic philosophy and practice. The key themes and teachings you find sketched in summary form in the Enchiridion get much more fully worked out in the longer text. For example the distinction between what is up to us and what is not up to us, often called the “dichotomy of control” set out in Enchiridion 1 gets a lot more needed discussion throughout the Discourses.

If you put the first three short works mentioned earlier together with these three, you’ll find yourself having covered a lot of important ground. These three, of course, also require not just reading once, but rereading multiple times. That’s going to keep you busy for a good long while!

Works of Additional Stoic Philosophers

Aside from the “Big Three,” we do still possess some remaining portions of other Stoic philosophers. Some of what we have are just sets of “fragments,” and these are derived from other writers who cite those Stoic authors. You can find these in the Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, a multi-volume work compiled by Hans von Arnim, some bits of which have been translated.

We do have some significant portions of a few Stoic philosophers’ works. These include:

• Musonius Rufus, Lectures and Sayings

• Hierocles, Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts

Musonius Rufus was Epictetus’ teacher in Rome, and we do have a number of his Lectures. These are quite interesting and important, adding some additional insights to the stock derived from the earlier mentioned books.

The same can be said about what we have of Hierocles, which includes the Elements of Ethics, as well as portions and fragments of his On Duties. If you’ve heard of the notion of widening concentric circles of affection, and perhaps the term oikeiosis along with it, that’s coming to us from Hierocles’ work.

Adding these two authors, we widen the scope of our study of Stoicism, taking in further viewpoints, getting a more solid conception of what it was that the Stoics taught and thought.

Summaries of Stoic Doctrine

Sometime along the way, if your goal is to understand the fuller context of Stoicism more adequately, you will want to get your hands on the two main summaries of Stoic doctrine, which tell us about key teachings of the various members of the Stoic School.

Cicero’s works — which we’ll talk about shortly — also give us a lot of invaluable summaries of Stoic positions, distinctions, claims, and arguments. But there are two other places we can turn to learn more about Stoicism in a more or less systematic manner. These are:

• Diogenes Laertes, The Lives of the Philosophers, book 7

• Arius Didymus, Epitome of Stoic Ethics

Diogenes Laertes work provides us with anecdotes, sayings, book titles, and summaries of a great many philosophers and schools. In fact, when it comes to a rival school and its founder, Epicurus and the Epicureans, Diogenes Laertes proves to be an absolutely invaluable source in book 10. He’s also quite helpful when it comes to the Stoics, who he discusses in book 7, discussing the key figures from Zeno the founder up to Chrysippus, the third scholarch of the Porch. In the Life of Zeno, he tells us: “I have decided to give a general account of all the Stoic doctrines,” and that, more or less, is what he does.

Arius Didymus actually wrote summaries of several different schools, but the one we’re most interested in is his Epitome of Stoic Ethics, where he covers a lot of the same ground as Diogenes Laertes does, but sometimes differs from him in significant ways, or provides us additional information about the positions the Stoic school holds.

Adding in these two summary works to your study will help provide additional context to the Stoic works and authors you have read up to this point.

Cicero’s Works Relevant To Stoicism

As noted earlier, Cicero himself is not a Stoic, but he does hold them in high respect, and on many matters he is in agreement with them. The Stoics play a central role in quite a few of his dialogues, in some of which Cicero will have a character present the Stoic position, and then either he or another character will then criticize the Stoic views and arguments. In addition to the Stoic Paradoxes mentioned at the start, here are some other works by Cicero you will find very helpful to read.

• On Duties

• On The Ends

• Tusculan Disputations

• On Fate

• On Divination

• On The Nature of the Gods

• Academics

He does have other works where Stoic authors or doctrines get mentioned, but this is already a long enough list, I expect!

On Duties, On The Ends, and Tusculan Disputations are all works dealing with a host of ethical matters, including duties or appropriate actions (officia), the virtues and the vices, the emotions, indifferents, human nature, and our roles. The whole of On Duties reflects Stoic teachings, some taken from the Middle Stoic Panaetius. Book 3 of On The Ends has Cato presenting the Stoic ethics, and then book 4 has Cicero criticizing it.

On Fate and On Divination bring in considerations of volitional freedom and causal determinism. In the second work, Cicero first presents the Stoic position and arguments for divination — which requires that there be a causal determinism which the gods could foresee — and then proceeds to criticize the the Stoic doctrine.

On The Nature of the Gods is a very interesting work in its own right, presenting and criticizing Epicurean, Stoic, and Skeptic viewpoints. Book 2 of that work is one of the most important presentations of what we can take to be the orthodox Stoic conception of God and the gods, the universe and its connection with the divine, human beings’ place in it, and a number of arguments for the existence of God.

Then there is the Academics. This is a work in which Cicero much more strongly takes the side of the skeptical Academy, and it is focused on questions concerning knowledge and its possibility. In the process, though, he does tell us a good bit about the Stoic epistemology (which they would place within what they called “Logic”).

You’ll find as you add in Cicero to the works you’ve read so far, that as with the summaries of Stoic doctrine, he fills in a lot of otherwise blank spaces within the map, if you like, or the jigsaw puzzle, to use another metaphor, representing the complex development of the Stoic school.

Where and Who Else?

All things must come to an end, and this advice-giving piece is already stretching out quite long! There are other authors and works you might well read, after you’ve gone through these. Seneca’s other works, for instance — perhaps I’ll write another followup specifically about them. There are also other ancient authors that do something similar to Cicero, but are a bit less receptive to the Stoics, like Plutarch or Galen — and you can get a good bit out of reading through their relevant writings.

For now, though, let’s say that you now have enough on your proverbial plate. It’s going to take you a good amount of time to work your way through these dishes, let alone to digest them! So I’ll end this here, hoping that this proves helpful for you.