stoicism
Stoicism is the Greek philosophy of Zeno holding virtue as the only true good; in everyday use, the habit of bearing pain or hardship calmly.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- In philosophy: the doctrine of the school started by Zeno in Athens, which held that a wise person lives in agreement with reason, values virtue above everything else and accepts what cannot be changed.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In general use: steady patience in the face of suffering, loss or difficulty, with little outward show of feeling.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Sometimes critically: a coldness or emotional reserve that hides what a person really feels.
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Examples
- He met the news of his diagnosis with a quiet stoicism that surprised his doctors.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - The book argues that modern stoicism is less about suppressing emotions than about choosing how to respond to them.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Her stoicism during the long recovery made it easy to forget how much pain she was in.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Students of ancient philosophy usually read Stoicism alongside Epicureanism, one of its chief rivals.
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Usage
The word lives a double life. Written with a capital S, Stoicism usually names the philosophical school and its teaching about reason, virtue and what lies within our control. Written in lower case, stoicism describes a personal trait: the ability to endure hardship without complaining. Many writers treat the capital as optional, so context decides which meaning is intended. The works of the later Stoics Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius survive in great part; the founders Zeno and Cleanthes survive only in fragments.
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Editorial team; surviving writings: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, vol. 25, entry Stoics (R. D. Hicks) (in-house source, no external address)As a trait, stoicism is mostly praised, but not always. Admirers link it with resilience, dignity and self control. Critics point out that a habit of never showing pain can delay help, hide illness or strain relationships, and they may use the word to suggest that someone is bottling things up. Typical adjectives are quiet, calm, grim, characteristic and remarkable; typical verbs are show, display, admire and maintain.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Related forms are common. A stoic, as a noun, is someone who endures without complaint, and a Stoic is a follower of the school. The adjectives stoic and stoical are close in meaning; stoic is the more frequent one before a noun, as in a stoic expression. The adverb is stoically. The noun stoicism is normally uncountable and rarely takes a plural.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Two senses appear in Webster (1913): the opinions and teachings of the Stoics, and a real or pretended indifference to pleasure or pain. Its entry for stoic describes the school as holding that people should stay free of passion and accept, without complaint, the necessity that governs all things. That second sense of an apathetic person shows how early the general meaning had grown out of the philosophical one.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Word forms
Regular forms according to English morphology (editorial description); the noun is normally uncountable.
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | stoicism |
| plural | stoicisms |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- quiet stoicism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - modern Stoicism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - ancient Stoicism
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Stoic philosophy
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - face something with stoicism
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Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourcealso
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourceRelated words
- stoic , base noun and adjective
- stoical , adjective
- stoically , adverb
- stoa , Greek source word
Related entries
Questions and answers
What does stoicism mean?
Stoicism has two meanings. It names the ancient Greek school started by Zeno, for which a virtuous life was the one real good and acceptance of what lies beyond our control was a duty. In everyday English it also means bearing pain or trouble calmly, without complaint.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Why is it called Stoicism?
The name comes from the Greek word stoa, a covered colonnade. Zeno taught his students in such a colonnade in Athens, so his followers became known as the people of the porch.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Is stoicism the same as having no emotions?
Not quite. In ordinary use it means not letting pain or worry take over your behaviour. The philosophy aimed at judging events by reason rather than being ruled by passion, which is different from feeling nothing at all.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Should Stoicism be capitalised?
Writers often capitalise it when they mean the philosophical school and use lower case for the personal trait. Both spellings appear in practice, so the surrounding sentence usually shows which sense is meant.