Ask Stoics source guide · Stoicism and Relationships
Stoicism and Gossip
Examine speech, reputation, truth, and the duties owed to absent people.
On this page you will get a clear explanation, a way to examine the idea, exact evidence from public-domain Stoic texts, and links for continuing the study.
The central distinction
Examine speech, reputation, truth, and the duties owed to absent people.
The relevant primary texts approach this through Epictetus, Discourses. Read the excerpts as parts of arguments, not as slogans.
How to examine it
Name the event in plain observable language. Then name the judgment, prediction, demand, or appetite added to it.
Separate what belongs to choice—attention, assent, refusal, intention, and action—from another person, the past, chance, and the final outcome.
A practical method
Use Imagining the Sage Observes You: Borrow the attention of a wise observer for one honest check-in. The practice supplies a fixed sequence so the idea is tested in experience rather than admired in the abstract.
Claim only the practice and the felt experience of doing it. Do not turn a philosophical exercise into a promise that an emotion, relationship, or circumstance will be cured.
Common confusion
Stoic practice does not require pretending that pain, fear, grief, or anger never appeared. The first movement can arrive before deliberate choice.
The work begins with the use made of that movement: whether it is accepted as a command, enlarged by a story, examined, delayed, or answered with character.
What the primary texts say
These excerpts keep their work and exact locator so you can check the claim in context rather than accepting a detached quotation.
“A certain person said to him (Epictetus): “Frequently I desired to hear you and came to you, and you never gave me any answer: and now, if it is possible, I entreat you to say something to me.” Do you think, said Epictetus, that as there is an art in anything else, so there is also an art in speaking, and that he who has the art, will speak skillfully, and he who has not, will speak unskillfully? “I do think so.” He then who by speaking receives benefit himself, and is able to benefit others, will speak skillfully: but he who is rather damaged by speaking and does damage to others, will he be unskilled in this art of speaking? And you may find that some are damaged and others benefited by speaking. And are all who hear benefited by what they hear?…”
“Should I try to please you? Why? I suppose, you know the measure by which one man is estimated by another. Have you taken pains to learn what is a good man and what is a bad man, and how a man becomes one or the other? Why then are you not good yourself? “How,” he replies, “am I not good?” Because no good man laments or groans or weeps, no good man is pale and trembles, or says, “How will he receive me, how will he listen to me?” Slave, just as it pleases him. Why do you care about what belongs to others? Is it now his fault if he receives badly what proceeds from you? “Certainly.” And is it possible that a fault should be one man’s, and the evil in another? “No.” Why then are you anxious about that which belongs to others? “Your question is…”
“What then? it (the will) says, if the fact is so, can that which ministers be superior to that to which it ministers, can the horse be superior to the rider, or the dog to the huntsman, or the instrument to the musician, or the servants to the king? What is that which makes use of the rest? The will. What takes care of all? The will. What destroys the whole man, at one time by hunger, at another time by hanging, and at another time by a precipice? The will. Then is anything stronger in men than this? and how is it possible that the things which are subject to restraint are stronger than that which is not? What things are naturally formed to hinder the faculty of vision? Both will and things which do not depend on the faculty of the will. It is the…”