It would be a mistake to assume that the Stoics didn’t appreciate the good life. Just because they preached the need for self-discipline and occasionally practiced voluntary hardship, doesn’t mean that they didn’t enjoy the finer things. 

Marcus Aurelius still lived in the imperial palaces of Rome. Seneca had country estates. Epictetus had plenty of nice possessions. The key was that they tried not to be attached to any of these things, they tried not to let the luxuries their wealth or success provided go to their heads. In fact, to the Stoics, being rich and powerful was an interesting philosophical challenge. Could you have money and not let it change you? Could you have power and not be corrupted by it?

Think about Marcus’s famous passage where he deconstructs the expensive feast he is sitting at—how it’s just a dead pig, and how the wine is rotten old grapes. Notice he doesn’t say anything about not eating it after. Even when Marcus slept on the ground or on a hard mattress—it wasn’t in the slums of Rome. It was in a mansion. “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver,” Seneca wrote, “but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware.” 

That’s the idea. You don’t have to abstain or reject every luxury in life. If you can afford it, or if it was given to you, what’s the point? What you do have to reject is the idea that possessing or enjoying them says anything about you as a person. You have to reject the idea that these things are somehow special because they are valuable or because other people desire them.

No. An expensive house is still just walls with a roof. A silver dish is still just a way to transport food. Suckling pig prepared by a Michelin star-rated chef is still just a dead baby pig. It’s not special and you’re not special for having them. 

Enjoy!

P.S. This was originally sent on February 24, 2019. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.