Stoicism is back

If Marcus Aurelius were around today, would he have a podcast? The answer, of course, is no. His meditations were for his own guidance and never knowingly meant to be published. This doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have found himself shoved forward as a hero of a new resistance. His sound bites would be rendered into TikToks while teenagers put his quotations as their phone backgrounds. Twenty-somethings working in industries he couldn’t conceive of (‘digital marketing’? Quid est?) would stutter his words like mantras as they shiver in Clapham back garden ice baths. For stoicism has returned, and in its strangest form yet.

The philosophy truly got its modern mojo back in the books of American marketer and author Ryan Holiday. Three million book sales and a top podcast later, you’re now just as likely to find Meditations or Letters from a Stoic on the bookshelf of a pop diva as your perma-bachelor Latin teacher.