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- Should Stoics Be Rich?
Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.
🏛️ Theory
The Stoics taught that wealth was indifferent. What matters is how you use it.
Today, we take almost contradictory attitudes towards both. We strive for wealth while criticizing the rich. We escape from poverty, despite praising the underdog. Is any of that deserved? The Stoic answer is that it depends. Neither poverty nor wealth are intrinsically moral or immoral – what matters is who we are.
Both stations possess unique risks and benefits. Neither is fundamentally better than the other.
Wealth
Wealth can bring about complacency and a life focused on consumption.
If you’re wealthy you may become less risk-averse – you may be too afraid of losing what you have.
The person who lives luxuriously would also be entirely unjust, inasmuch as he would shrink from performing tasks he ought to undertake on behalf of his own city, if performing them meant abandoning his luxurious lifestyle.
If you’re wealthy, you have the opportunity to help others – at a local and global level – this power can be overrated, but it’s a benefit and responsibility one gains with economic success.
Wealth can cause you to inflate your moral status. Wealth may be weak evidence for some good character attributes – intelligence, discipline, and such – but each of those attributes are only good when put in the service of virtue as a whole. Likewise, it can cause you to look down on others when they do not deserve it.
These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.
The risks of wealth may be so great that Musonius Rufus said he would prefer to be physically sick than live in luxury.
Being sick harms the body only; living in luxury harms both soul and body, by making the body weak and powerless and the soul undisciplined and cowardly.
Poverty
The lack of wealth too carries its risks.
Lacking goods can make it seem like you need them more. But this is not so. Are the rich that much happier because of their wealth? Probably not. Many of the central problems of living do not disappear when we find financial success.
If you’re poor, you may be less likely to fulfill your roles. In today’s world, we cannot avoid participating in the market in order to provide for those around us. The question is whether we will do it well.
The narratives surrounding financial success can tempt you to lose self-respect if you don't achieve it – but a lack of wealth does not make you a bad person or a failure. Likewise, poverty can cause you to reduce other people’s moral standing. Wealth does not make other people bad or good. We must resist simplified narratives that equate character with financial standing.
Perhaps the greatest luxury of wealth is that the rich know that financial success is not sufficient for happiness. They can see that fact with their own eyes. One of the most significant risks of poverty is that many of the poor have not realized that fact yet. They likely already have enough – it's not money holding them back from flourishing.
This is especially true because the modern world is rich. Compared with the world of the ancient Stoics, nearly everyone living in the developed world is wealthy. We have the luxuries, lifespans, and opportunities that would make even the richest Romans envious.
Make Yourself Rich
Striving for more wealth – no matter your station – is often a sign that your desires are out of sync.
If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.
So, should you try to be rich?
As always with the Stoics, it comes down to the details. And we can't avoid that the Stoics disagreed with one another – Musonius Rufus was not as forgiving towards wealth as Seneca was. Seneca believed you could own great property if it didn't own you. Musonius Rufus taught that the power of wealth to corrupt was too strong.
Regardless, both Stoics promoted philosophy.
The central task is not to be wealthy (or more moral than others) but to be a philosopher.
🎯 Action
Take a moment to reflect on your attitude towards wealth and poverty.
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đź”— Links
🏅 Check out The Stoic Path to Wealth for sensible financial advice placed within a Stoic framing.
💠Sometimes you’ll come across content and videos with the titles like Stoic Life Hacks For Entrepreneurial Success or The Stoic Mindset For Wealth – and these don’t have the subtlety that Darius Foroux’s book does. It’s worth remembering that these are shallow forms of Stoicism. The deeper forms focus on internal transformation, not external prizes.
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