Book SummaryThe Stoic Challenge, by William B. Irvine

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Stoic Challenge

Daily life is full of difficulty—but we need not suffer through it. So argues William B. Irvine in The Stoic Challenge, where he explains that anyone can learn to live a good life by navigating adversity with resolve and resourcefulness. Deriving his method from the Stoics, a group of ancient Greco-Roman philosophers, Irvine explains how to reframe your troubles and live with more equanimity, effectiveness, and even delight.

Irvine, who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Wright State University, explains that the Stoics trained themselves to take on obstacles as opportunities to strengthen their...

The Stoic Challenge Summary Stoicism in Brief

To begin, we’ll briefly contextualize Stoicism, according to Irvine. As he explains, Stoicism is an ancient philosophical school that developed in Greece and Rome beginning around the early third century BCE. Today, we know Stoicism largely through the teachings of three main philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.

In general, the Stoics were pragmatists who focused on withstanding life's challenges with resolve and resourcefulness. They believed that you should try to control only what’s within your power—your beliefs, attitudes, and choices—and let go of everything else. (Shortform note: The Stoics might have appreciated the notion of antifragility, or growing stronger through surmountable struggles, as explained by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in...

The Stoic Challenge Summary Adversity Defines Our Lives

In this section, we’ll explain Irvine’s take on adversity—what it is, how we typically respond to it, and why those responses don’t work.

We All Experience Adversity

According to Irvine, our lives are defined by the constant presence of one thing: adversity. It affects us all and takes on numerous forms, from spilled coffee and stressful deadlines to the loss of a loved one or a failure to graduate from university.

(Shortform note: The Stoics’ intuition that adversity is ever-present evokes a central tenet of another ancient way of life—Buddhism. According to the Buddha, the First Noble Truth (one of the four statements at the core of Buddhist thought) is that suffering, or dukkha, is universal and constant. Both philosophies share the fundamental realization that life is inherently fraught with challenges and adversities; but as we’ll see, each offers different solutions.)

The key feature of such adversities, Irvine says, is that we can’t always see them coming or prepare for them. Troubling events ranging from mundane daily challenges to significant, life-upending events are often unpredictable. Further, they...

The Stoic Challenge Summary The Stoic Response to Adversity

Having set the stage, we’ll next explain the Stoics’ core strategy of treating adversities as tests of character. We’ll detail their view and their method, and we’ll discuss how Stoicism makes use of two psychological phenomena (the anchoring effect and framing) to change your relationship to hardship.

How the Stoics Handled Adversity

Though we might handle adversity poorly by default, Irvine argues that anyone can learn to navigate her troubles more effectively. You can begin to do so by understanding two Stoic insights:

• Most things are out of our control. Other people, the weather, society, the world’s governmental and economic systems, the natural world—no single person has power over these things.
• How we respond to the world is in our control. While we can’t stop storms, wars, or social disasters at work, we can control how we respond to these events.

So instead of reacting poorly when adversity comes along, a Stoic would choose to consciously respond—first, by using a mental technique to bypass and defuse their reactive emotions, and then by looking for ways to overcome the problem. This strategy served the main aim of a Stoic’s life,...

The Stoic Challenge Summary Practice and Apply the Stoic Strategy

Having discussed the Stoics’ strategy, how it works psychologically, and how you can use it today, we’ll now turn to implementing it in daily life:

• To begin, we’ll explain how you can practice the strategy in advance so that you’re prepared for real-world adversities.
• We’ll then detail how, according to Irvine, you can apply it to three key types of adversity—failure, reversals of fortune, and death—in order to live a better life today.

Train Yourself to Use the Stoic Strategy

We’ll first discuss two methods of training you can use to practice the Stoic strategy before you actually need it. Both training methods involve actively seeking out opportunities to use the Stoic strategy, and they’ll help you develop resolve and resourcefulness.

Expose Yourself to Unpredictable Adversities

Irvine’s first recommendation is to prepare for real-world setbacks by putting yourself in positions that will probably confront you with unpredictable adversities. If they come along, you have the chance to practice handling the situation as a Stoic would—reframe it as a test, diffuse negative emotions, and find a solution. The point of this training is to get...

Shortform Exercise: Plan for and Implement the Stoic Strategy

Irvine’s main purpose with this book is practical—he wants us to get out and use these methods. In this exercise, plan how you can start to do just that.

Irvine’s Stoic strategy is meant to address adversity—so to start, reflect on a recent hardship you experienced. How might you have implemented the Stoic strategy of reframing to handle it better?