Donald Robertson on the Four Main Reasons Modern People Are Attracted to Stoicism as a Philosophy of Life

by David Fideler 

Donald Robertson, a scholar of ancient philosophy and a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, is one of the founders of Modern Stoicism.

For many years, Donald has moderated the largest Stoicism group on Facebook, with almost 90 thousand members, and he is probably the most well-informed person in the world when it comes to why modern people are interested in Stoicism—since, over the years, he has personally spoken with thousands of modern people about why they are drawn to Stoicism as a philosophy of life.

Because of that, I was very interested to listen to Donald’s views about the four main reasons why modern people are attracted to Stoicism, which he mentioned in a recent discussion about Stoicism with John Sellars, which was sponsored by The Philosopher magazine, published in England.

You can watch the entire discussion here, on YouTube.

While I encourage you to watch the actual discussion, here are the four main takeaways that Donald mentioned, in his experience, as to why modern people are attracted to Stoicism as a philosophy of life:

 1) They see it as a Western alternative to Buddhism.

2) They see it as a secular alternative to Christianity.

3) They see it as a more down-to-earth and practical alternative to academic philosophy.

4) They see it as a more philosophical alternative to cognitive behavioral therapy, which—while based on Stoic ideas—is not a full philosophy of life.

Why does Stoicism appeal to you, as a modern person?

Please weigh in and leave a comment here, on the Stoic Insights web page on Facebook.

Related Resources

• The Stoic Insights interview with Donald Robertson
• The Stoic Insights interview with John Sellars