Forget Stoicism. Skepticism is the ancient philosophy we need today.

Skepticism used to be an integral part of any liberal arts education. Here’s why we need to bring it back.

Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons / Sarah Soryal

by Tim Brinkhof

If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, you’ve certainly heard of them — if not in school, then on Instagram, TikTok, or a podcast. Composed by the second-century Roman emperor in his tent on nights between long marches and bloody battles, they’re one of the foundational texts of Stoicism, an ancient philosophy that first emerged around 300 B.C., and which has recently found an unlikely second life on social media.

Stoicism’s modern-day resurgence has been traced back to viral marketing executive turned self-help author Ryan Holiday’s 2014 book The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, which introduced snippets of Meditations to professional athletes and Silicon Valley elite. Other books from Holiday — including The Daily Stoic, which spawned a popular newsletter of the same name — followed suit, as did numerous copycats. Finding audiences outside college campuses, new editions of Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic and Epictetus’ Discourses also became bestsellers.

Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, isn’t surprised at Stoicism’s newfound popularity. A lot of Stoic ideas and ideals — including resilience in the face of seemingly unbearable hardship — emerged during times which, like our own, were marked by “chaos, turmoil, and major political and social changes.” When the world appears to fall apart, Stoicism promises a way to prevent yourself from falling apart with it.

But Pigliucci also has a bone to pick with Stoicism, both the philosophy itself and its internet-age bastardization. That’s why, in his latest book, How to be a (Happy) Skeptic: The Power of Doubt in a Meaningful Life, he points readers to another ancient school of thought, one related to (yet not nearly as fashionable as) Stoicism, and which may be uniquely suited to deal with the problems we face today, both individually and as a society.

Learning from Socrates

Skeptic philosophy can be divided into two schools: Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism. The latter — and, to Pigliucci, preferable — school flourished between 266 and 90 B.C., when members of Plato’s Academy in Athens (hence the name) returned to the first principles of Plato’s mentor, Socrates. Where other philosophers formulated answers, Socrates — famous for professing that “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” — mostly stuck to asking questions, aiming for the truth by way of interrogating the beliefs of others. “The founder of Academic Skepticism, Arcesilaus, was even more radical, saying he didn’t even know for certain that he didn’t know anything,” Pigliucci tells Big Think.

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Today, cultivating a skeptical attitude may help you navigate an online media ecosystem filled with conspiratorial thinking, ideologically motivated reasoning, and AI-generated deepfakes. Skepticism may also help you spot disingenuous politicians, self-help gurus, or anyone else who presents falsehoods or half-truths as the full truth to further their own interests.

Skepticism can also protect you from yourself. Being proven wrong about something can be a humiliating ordeal that eats away at our sense of self-worth. To avoid facing this discomfort, some double down on their false beliefs — a potentially dangerous thing to do if those beliefs are connected to a conspiracy theory or extremist ideology.

Not so with Skepticism. “As a Skeptic, I can admit my mistakes without being ashamed of it,” Pigliucci says, “because it’s built into the philosophy that my personal identity doesn’t depend on assuming one thing or another. Skeptics recognize that the world is a complicated place and that we cannot know everything at any particular point in time. If new information or a better argument presents itself, then changing your mind is the rational, ethical thing to do.”

Research suggests that the skeptical example set by Socrates can fight back against polarization by allowing us to speak across political divides. As Pigliucci explains, “Socrates never tells you, ‘Do this.’ Instead, he asks, ‘What do you think you should do?’ And then he explores the question with you. Plato’s Socratic dialogues take place in a state of aporia, Greek for ‘suspension of judgment,’ and are less adversarial than debates. When you debate somebody, like you would in a court of law, or a presidential debate, you’re not searching for the truth — you think you already know the truth, and are trying to convince others.” In dialogue, one interlocutor can bring to light the contradictory beliefs held by another, drawing attention to what psychologists call cognitive dissonance.

A key problem with the Socratic method, Pigliucci admits, is that it “doesn’t really scale up.” Though widely used in private education, with small classes, “you can’t do it with hundreds of people, let alone millions. Otherwise, it’s not a conversation anymore.” At the very least, if you cannot participate in one yourself, you can still read one of Plato’s originals. Ideally, a 21st-century Plato would arise to write new dialogues on contemporary talking points like abortion, immigration, gun control, or climate policy.

Having a “good demon”

At a glance, Academic Skepticism more or less resembles the word’s contemporary definition, with its emphasis on scrutiny and suspicion. But originally, scrutiny and suspicion were just one side of the coin. That’s because the question “How do you know things?” wasn’t an end in itself, but a starting-off point from which to approach another, even more important conundrum: “How do you live a meaningful life?”

Today, skepticism is often conflated with nihilism and cynicism — with an unwillingness to believe in, and therefore attribute meaning to, anything whatsoever. But the ancient Skeptics were anything but indifferent or affectless. They didn’t argue that just because we cannot know anything for certain, we also shouldn’t commit ourselves to doing anything. Rather, they argued that decisions and judgments should be made with varying degrees of certainty and uncertainty in mind.

Like other ancient philosophies, the Skeptics believed that everything had a telos, or purpose. The telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree, while the telos of a clock is to tell time. The telos of a human being is not as obvious. To the Epicureans, concerned with pleasure and moderation, it was aponia and ataraxia: the absence of physical and mental suffering. For Stoics and Skeptics, it was eudaimonia, a word that literally translates to “having a good demon” (think an inner demon or conscience), and which essentially means to flourish by living in accordance with human nature.

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Socrates believed humans were defined by their ability to reason, and hence declared the “unexamined life is not worth living.” Cicero, who studied Plato’s Academy during the twilight years of its Skeptic phase, used a broader definition. Assuming (with a degree of uncertainty in mind) that humans are fundamentally social creatures, the Roman statesman posited that living according to nature meant using our ability to reason to live in harmony with one another. His most famous text, a treatise titled De Officiis (“On Duties”), suggested that eudaimonia lay not in private contemplation but in public engagement, and that to flourish individually was to contribute to the flourishing of the community and vice versa.

“What kind of life do you want to live? And why?” Pigliucci reflects. “We don’t ask ourselves these questions often anymore, especially the second one. A lot of us jump right into the fray, and might spend years, perhaps a whole lifetime, pursuing things that — in the end — were not actually worth pursuing, and thereby wasting the only opportunity they have.”

Questioning truth to power

There’s more to Stoicism than influencers and pop philosophers would have you believe. Far from a philosophy of and for traditional masculinity, the Stoics were among the few of their day to acknowledge that women possessed the same capacity for virtue and wisdom as men. Nor should it be treated as a shortcut to worldly success. “The Stoics were very clear that wealth and fame are relevant only if you acquire them in a virtuous way, without cheating or exploitation,” Pigliucci says, “and only if you then use that wealth and fame to help others.”

Still, one key criticism of Stoicism is its potential to encourage the acceptance of needless suffering. The school’s insistence on quietly bearing your suffering and not worrying about what you can’t control risks engendering passivity in the face of injustices you might otherwise work to rectify.

Skepticism may be a more pragmatic and surprisingly inspiring alternative in times of crisis and upheaval. After all, how do we know for certain what is and isn’t in one’s power to change? And why would the ability to distinguish between the two help you live a better, more rewarding life? It may be certainty — not doubt — that more often holds us back.

Anecdotally, the difference between Stoicism and Skepticism is perhaps best illustrated through the fates of Seneca and Socrates. Both were killed, and in more or less the same way: by being forced to commit suicide by authorities they’d run afoul of. But where Seneca died having educated the cruel and paranoid emperor Nero, whose unstable reign plunged the Roman Empire into a civil war, Socrates died as he had lived, speaking truth to power. Or, more accurately, questioning truth to power.

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