What Does A Stoic Body Look Like?

Stoicism is a philosophy that requires of its practitioners a disposition for patience and careful thinking — and, not dissimilar from the dog and the cart, if we come to Stoicism an impatient and thoughtless man or woman, we will be dragged along by the philosophy and made patient and thoughtful in the end.

There are, despite this truth, a lot of aspects to Stoicism that attract impatient people to it — one does not need to desire to become truly Stoic in order to desire to attain some of the byproducts of Stoic philosophy.

Strength, for example, is something most people desire — whether they interpret strength to mean emotional resilience, physical power, or social influence and standing. In this article I want to focus in on physical strength because it is clear, as you can see from the image below, that many people believe a true Stoic is, necessarily, a physically imposing and powerful being — with physiques to rival Zeus.

In this article, then, I’m going to talk about what is the “perfect Stoic body,” and how you may well already possess it (even though you may also look nothing like a CrossFit Games Champion).

Can physically disabled individuals still be Stoics?

This question should cause anyone who reads it to cringe immediately — it is a heinously stupid question, the answer to which is a very obvious yes. Yet, despite the cringe and the obviousness of the answer, when individuals claiming to be Stoic have “dad bods” or are “fat” or “too skinny and weak,” a not-insignificant number of so-called “Stoics” insist that if such individuals were “real” Stoics, they’d take on much stronger physical appearances.

First, a physically disabled person absolutely can go to the gym; but their workout routines will (likely) take on a modified form that accommodates their physical disability.

Second, we’d be right, at least in theory, to give some sort of leeway to the physically disabled person because physical disablement manifests in real world limitations and it is both kind and responsible to recognise that when forming expectations of, not just disabled individuals but, anyone.

Lastly, a “fat” person is not necessarily a lazy person. They may well be an individual who doesn’t prioritise their health (which doesn’t make them lazy), but they might instead have a host of medical and circumstantial variables present in their lives that make certain degrees of “fitness” or “health” practically unachievable.

What a person looks like, tells us nothing of their “Stoic-ness.”

A Stoic is not a Stoic because of their body

The measure of a Stoic hasn’t ever extended beyond their rational faculty. All the things that make Stoics Stoics live in their minds. The aim of Stoicism is the acquisition of perfect moral knowledge — of “Areté;” or “Virtue” if you prefer. The sage has perfect moral knowledge, that’s what makes the sage a sage.

Indeed, the possession of perfect moral knowledge will have an effect on the physical body because the sage will make only moral choices concerning their health. However, what makes a choice moral is the context surrounding it and context is never the same for any two people, let alone all people, and this is even true for the sage (and every sage).

Role Ethics come into heavy play here

Rule number one of Stoic Role Ethics: no role can contradict another role.

Rule number two: there are some roles we can elect to take on, and some which are assigned to us. Roles assigned to us (either by society or Nature, for example) can include parent, employee, tax-payer, human being, son, daughter, et cetera. Some roles that are assigned to us are able to be unassigned by us, such as employee or resident of Canada (because we can change jobs and move countries), while others cannot (we cannot un-assign ourselves from being a father, mother, daughter, son, or human being, for example).

Rule number three: If any role is contradicting or conflicting with any other role, we are either not fulfilling it justly/appropriately, or we’ve take on a role that we never should have.

Rule number four: there are only so many roles we can take on as individuals, and thus we must learn to limit the number of roles we seek to assume lest we over-extend ourselves and wind up fulfilling all of our roles poorly and unjustly.

What does all this mean for the “Stoic” body?

The Stoic body is any body resulting from the Just and appropriate balance of roles

Caring for our bodies is a Stoic choice, there is no arguing with that — it is a role (caregiver to our husks) that is assigned to us by Nature, and one we cannot walk away from without compromising our pursuit of moral excellence (for what does it say of a person’s character who ignores their health?).

However, caring exists on a fairly broad spectrum and we need not be on the most extreme end of it to be caring “appropriately” for our body. Instead, we need to be at the place on the spectrum that enables balance with our other roles.

To be clear: “appropriate” isn’t some dogmatic standard. Instead, it is a reasoned-to-be-so variable-in-flux which has a complex network of relationships (both inverse and not) with all our other roles.

This means the body which results from 7 days of relentless CrossFit training every week is only a “Stoic body” if the owner of that body is not allowing their commitment to fitness to cause imbalance elsewhere in their array of roles. If we’re prioritising leg day over attending our kid’s school play, do we have a Stoic body or a vicious one?

What this also means is that the body which results from 2 days a week of moderate jogging on a treadmill at the local gym is also a “Stoic body” if that level commitment to physical fitness and health is the one that maintains “role balance.”

The perfect Stoic body is necessarily dynamic in form

If “Stoic body” were a phrase in the dictionary, there would be no picture next to it. My body is a Stoic body, and so is yours, and her’s, and his… but only if we’ve given the contextually appropriate level of attention and care to it in balance with all the other things we must give contextually appropriate attention and care to.

It’s that simple.