Stoic affirmations
Stoic self-love affirmations, in the Stoics’ own words
The Stoics wrote no affirmations, but they wrote about self-love: Seneca describes the wise man who retreats into himself and lives with himself, and Marcus Aurelius wonders why every man loves himself more than all others yet values his own opinion of himself less than theirs. Their sentences make regard for oneself a matter of judgment, not of praise received or repeated.
In the texts
Seneca · Letter 9, §16
In some such way as this the sage will act; he will retreat into himself, and live with himself.
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, XII, 4
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.
Epictetus · Enchiridion, XLVIII
The Condition and Characteristic of a Philosopher is, that he expects all Hurt and Benefit from himself.
Seneca’s ninth letter to Lucilius, in Gummere’s 1917 translation, asks whether the wise man needs friends. The answer is that he wants them and can do without them: he is “sufficient unto himself for a happy existence, but not for mere existence.” When everything is taken from him, the sage behaves as Seneca says Jupiter does when the world dissolves: he retreats into himself and lives with himself. The letter does not describe self-esteem; it describes a man whose good does not have to be supplied from outside. The whole letter has its own page: Letter 9.
Marcus Aurelius states the same problem from the other side, in book XII of the Meditations, translated by George Long in 1862. Every man, he observes, loves himself more than all the rest of men, and yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. The proof he offers is a thought experiment: no one could bear, for a single day, to say aloud everything he thinks. The self-love he finds is real but misplaced, attached to reputation rather than to judgment. Book XII returns several times to the ruling part of the mind (Hegemonikon).
Epictetus gives the criterion in chapter XLVIII of the Enchiridion, in Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 translation. The vulgar person expects benefit and hurt from externals; the philosopher expects them from himself. The chapter goes on to the marks of a proficient: he censures no one, praises no one, and when he is praised, he secretly laughs at the person who praises him. What is in our power, in Epictetus’s division, is judgment and choice (Prohairesis), and that is the only place where he sets a person’s worth.
Read together, the three passages describe self-love as the Stoics allow it: keeping one’s own company without needing the approval of others to do so, and measuring oneself by what is in one’s power. The sage of the ninth letter still wants friends; his good simply does not depend on them (Stoic sage).
Why this is not a positive affirmation
A positive affirmation asks the reader to repeat a sentence about himself until it feels true. The Stoic sentences above are not addressed to the reader in that way, and none of them holds that a thing becomes true by being repeated. Seneca reasons about what a happy life needs; Marcus Aurelius records a fault he finds in himself and in others; Epictetus states a criterion that can be checked against one’s own conduct.
The difference is where the weight falls. An affirmation tries to change a feeling about oneself; the Stoic texts ask what that feeling rests on. If it rests on praise, Epictetus’s chapter puts it among the things that are not in our power, and the remark of Marcus Aurelius shows how easily it follows the opinion of others.
Terms in the glossary
- Prohairesis — προαίρεσις (prohairesis)
- Hegemonikon — ἡγεμονικόν (hēgemonikon)
- Stoic sage — ὁ σοφός (ho sophos), lat. sapiens
In Stoïque, the life theme “Fear of judgment” opens the passages on this subject, each with its reference. The theme is part of Stoic+.