The Craft of Stoic Happiness

The meaning of life for the ancients

Mar 04, 2025

Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.

🏛️ Theory

Every craft has a target.

The runner aims to run well. The painter aims to paint well. The writer aims to write well. Ancient philosophers saw philosophy as a craft, no different than these others except it had a different aim.

The philosopher’s craft is living. The philosopher aims to live well.

Often, we translate this idea of ‘living well’ into the English word ‘happiness’. The Greek word is eudaimonia. Literally this meant having a blessed spirit watching over you, ‘eu’ meaning good, and Daimon meaning spirit. Daimon is the same root word we get the modern word demon from. To have a eu-daimon was to be protected by a good spirit, as opposed to a bad or a cursed one.

Practically, this meant having a kind of blessed life. One that people could point to, and say: that is a good life, something I aspire to and admire. Some people, like Aristotle, argued that it was something you couldn’t even properly evaluate until the end of someone’s life.

Eudaimonia does not mean fleeting pleasure, or a state of elation. It is not a great night out with friends, or the feeling of a big accomplishment, or even gentle contentment - as nice as those things are.

Happiness for the ancients, and the Stoics, means a good life, a prosperous life, the kind of life other people want. It is not something gained or lost on a daily basis. Think of this in terms of a deathbed reflection. A happy life was one that you could reflect back on with pride and contentment.

Many great people, who lived great lives, faced challenges and setbacks. A happy life, for the ancient Greeks, is not necessarily a life that is easy, or free of pain, grief or challenge.

So almost every school of ancient hellenistic philosophy aimed at Eudaimonia, or happiness, as the end of life.

What sets the Stoic idea of happiness apart, is that it is achievable for anyone, because it depends on things that are up to us.

🎯 Action

Be happy today, that is all.

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