Book review: The Stoic Challenge, by William Irvine

Imagine you get to the airport, ready for a (you think) well deserved vacation to Paris. As I will be doing soon after finishing the first draft of this essay. You have a long experience in traveling internationally. You pack your bags following a comprehensive checklist. You get to the airport with plenty of time to spare, maybe even enough to indulge in a glass of red wine before boarding your plane.

Then the flights board updates and your flight is listed as cancelled! What? This is terrible! How am I going to get to Paris? I have to leave on that plane. It’s a catastrophe if I don’t get on it. And so forth.

Welcome to the Stoic Challenge, a new book by Bill Irvine, subtitled “A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient.” In fact, the book begins and ends with two airport-related situations, though not exactly along the lines described above.

Irvine is not new to writing about Stoicism. His A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy was the very first book on modern Stoicism I have ever read (followed very closely by Don Robertson’s Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life, now in its second edition).

This new book is not a comprehensive introduction to Stoic philosophy, though it could pick the curiosity of people who have not encountered Stoicism before. The basic idea is simple: to use one very powerful mental trick, known to the ancient Stoics and well studied by modern cognitive scientists, to help us navigating life more easily. That trick is commonly referred to in psychology as the framing effect.

To see how it works, let’s go back to my (hopefully hypothetical!) predicament, presenting itself right at the beginning of my forthcoming trip to Paris. I could react in the way I indicated above, which is how many people would react. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy practitioners would call it “catastrophizing,” i.e., interpreting a series of facts in the worst possible fashion, and getting increasingly upset about them as a consequence.

But Stoics ought to always remember the opening lines of Epictetus’ Enchiridion:

“Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within…