{"id":2599738,"date":"2026-05-07T06:50:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ryan-holiday-learns-being-a-stoic-is-not-as-easy-as-it-looks\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T06:55:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:55:16","slug":"ryan-holiday-learns-being-a-stoic-is-not-as-easy-as-it-looks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ryan-holiday-learns-being-a-stoic-is-not-as-easy-as-it-looks\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Holiday Learns Being A Stoic Is Not As Easy As It Looks"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fryan-holiday-learns-being-a-stoic-is-not-as-easy-as-it-looks%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2599738&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article discusses the author Ryan Holiday, a widely popular \u201cpopularizer\u201d of Stoicism, and argues that while his work often helps people, he also faces criticism for turning Stoicism into an internet and business platform-and for letting his politics spill into personal, public controversies. The writer claims holiday\u2019s most recent backlash began when Holiday posted a reaction video to ivanka Trump praising Marcus aurelius, where Holiday is portrayed as visibly mocking her while contradicting what he says Stoicism requires.  <\/p>\n<p>As the controversy grew, the author says it expanded into broader scrutiny of Holiday\u2019s other remarks-especially his comments about parenting and morality using secular examples, which the writer argues come off as shallow or insulting to those who take faith and ethics seriously. The piece also points to Holiday\u2019s increasingly combative social media behavior.  <\/p>\n<p>From there,the article broadens into \u201cthe limits of Stoicism.\u201d It argues that Holiday\u2019s approach may be constrained by simplifying ancient philosophy and by interpreting it mainly through <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >modern secular liberal assumptions<\/a>. The writer contrasts Holiday with more scholarly or historically contextual approaches, using Edith Hamilton as an example of how translations can be \u201cwrong\u201d in detail but still capture emotional and moral resonance for contemporary audiences.  <\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the author suggests that Holiday\u2019s frustrations may stem from Stoicism alone being insufficient as a moral compass, and proposes that a fuller framework-especially Christian ideas about human failure, forgiveness, and redemption-better addresses what Stoicism can\u2019t. The piece closes by conceding that Holiday\u2019s *Meditations* is still valuable, while insisting his public moralizing in politics often doesn\u2019t match the standards he applies to others.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Let\u2019s just get this out of the way \u2014 I like Ryan Holiday.<\/p>\n<p>In case you\u2019re not aware of who he is, Holiday is a popular author who\u2019s become a popular author by being famous on the internet. Unlike a lot of internet influencers, his chosen domain of expertise is somewhat unusual, however. For more than a decade, he\u2019s been the public face of Stoicism \u2014 the ancient Roman philosophy that advocates regulating your emotions and being resilient in the face of external challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially, Holiday has repackaged the words of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, et al. into various modern contexts, and pitched stoicism as a panacea to the anxieties of the 21st century. There are some problems with the way Holiday\u2019s denatured stoicism to make it palatable for the masses, and let\u2019s be honest, very profitable. Aside from selling millions of books, Holiday is huge on the lucrative corporate lecture circuit. Still, when you survey the landscape of what his fellow self-help gurus are selling, Holiday\u2019s stoic advice, which frequently amounts to telling people to toughen up and not be a slave to their desires, has a much better chance of actually helping people than most.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, his huge email lists and popular podcast have become an important vehicle for promoting other authors who write on a wide variety of topics that go well beyond stoicism. Holiday owns a bookstore and is constantly touting books he likes on his YouTube channel, which is also admirable.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the problem with being the world\u2019s most famous advocate of stoicism is that the world expects you to be, well, stoic. And recent events involving Holiday\u2019s somewhat incongruous advocacy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-wokeifying-americas-military\/\" title=\"SHAPIRO: Wokeifying America\u2019s Military\">left-wing politics<\/a> have revealed that Holiday can definitely let his emotions get the better of him in a very public fashion. <\/p>\n<p>Like I said, I like much of what Holiday does, and I\u2019m not judging him too harshly for this. As a somewhat public figure, I\u2019ve been angry on the internet myself. But what\u2019s happened to Holiday is fairly ironic. If it involved someone else, it might be the kind of thing he himself would characterize as a teachable moment stoicism was made to address.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018Plato\u2019s Reserves\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>The proximate cause for Holiday\u2019s bout of internet infamy began just over a week ago, when he posted a short reaction video to Ivanka Trump talking about some of the positive things she had learned from reading Marcus Aurelius\u2019 <em>Meditations<\/em>. If you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h1OfTQusvYM&#038;t=115s\">watch the video<\/a>, from the very beginning Holiday is smirking and rolling his eyes, and at one point he literally sticks his tongue out and makes a big thumbs down gesture on the split screen as Ivanka is talking \u2014 even though everything she says about Aurelius is uncontroversial and anodyne.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as she\u2019s done talking Holiday renders his judgment. \u201cHere\u2019s the thing: She\u2019s totally right,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what Marcus Aurelius said. That\u2019s exactly what stoicism is about. She\u2019s just not living or acting in accordance with it in any way. If you did, you\u2019d have an intervention with your dad, whose life would be dyed with his horrible, negative, mean bullying thoughts all the time.\u201d It devolves from there.<\/p>\n<p>I think we can agree that in many very obvious respects Donald Trump has whatever the opposite of a stoic temperament is supposed to be, but how is it a matter of stoicism to necessarily make this his daughter\u2019s problem? Especially when she\u2019s out in public espousing \u201cexactly\u201d what Holiday says is good about stoicism. Nothing about this, starting with sticking his tongue out at someone and ending with criticizing her for someone else\u2019s behavior is recognizably stoic.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s impossible to say what measure of influence Ivanka Trump has over her father or whether or not she is using any influence she has to make him a better person than he might otherwise be. Aside from Holiday\u2019s evident anti-Trump political animus, I don\u2019t want to speculate about any personal motivations he might have. <\/p>\n<p>But since he went there, I\u2019ll just note that Holiday wrote a piece back in 2016 entitled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/ryanholiday.medium.com\/dear-dad-please-dont-vote-for-donald-trump-907dfdc74229\">Dear Dad, Please Don\u2019t Vote For Donald Trump<\/a>.\u201d That piece was originally supposed to be published in The New York Observer, where Holiday was an editor and columnist. But the Observer rejected that column, perhaps because the owner of The New York Observer was Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n<p>It took a few days for his video calling out Ivanka to cycle through the internet, before turning into a controversy. At that point, people started snarking at other bits of unflattering content, like this <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/johnkonrad\/status\/2050543361728053514\">baleful exchange<\/a> in one of his podcast discussions with a New York Times science writer. Holiday states that as secular leftists they have to be more intentional about inculcating morals in their children because they can\u2019t rely on a religious faith to do it for them. The New York Times writer counters, \u201cI watch <em>Ted Lasso<\/em> with my son, and there\u2019s just so much in there to talk about.\u201d And Holiday presumptively agrees with her.<\/p>\n<p>Setting aside the fact that <em>Ted Lasso<\/em> is <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/05\/03\/can-we-all-finally-admit-ted-lasso-is-a-terrible-show\/\">a self-celebratory mess where<\/a> \u201cthe moral rot behind the decisions of well-meaning characters should be painfully easy to see, but no one within spitting distance of the writers\u2019 room has any deep personal convictions about sin\u201d \u2014 surely Holiday, who has written a book on and has a newsletter dedicated to instructing people on the finer points of fatherhood, has to see how insulting and superficial this is to people who do take their faith and morals seriously. And that was before it was pointed out that Holiday has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kbtx.com\/2023\/02\/24\/how-texas-activists-turned-drag-events-into-fodder-outrage\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hosted<\/a> a \u201cdrag queen story hour\u201d in his bookstore.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, for most of his public career, Holiday has been a broadly agreeable figure who\u2019s routinely gotten very favorable press from the corporate media. I can relate to his evident trouble at suddenly being ridiculed online, and speaking from experience, I would have told him to step away from the keyboard. But he was all over X doubling down, posting footage of himself <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RyanHoliday\/status\/2051435849351660002?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">speaking<\/a> at an anti-ICE rally, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RyanHoliday\/status\/2051744500645597488?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">attacking \u201cMAGA,\u201d<\/a> criticizing Elon Musk by <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GadSaad\/status\/2051701347460792823?s=20\">taking his words out of context<\/a>, and calling one of his critics \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RyanHoliday\/status\/2051320696660214010?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a f\u2014king goober<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a guy who has 800,000 followers on X and 2 million YouTube subscribers, all of his pushback landed with a predictable thud. In this respect, maybe the relevant Roman here isn\u2019t some stoic, but Cicero, who once observed: \u201cI like modesty in speech. The Stoics say that nothing is shameful or obscene in the saying of it. Wise men will call a spade a spade. Well, I shall keep as I always have, to Plato\u2019s reserves.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>The Limits of Stoicism<\/h2>\n<p>But I began this by saying I like Ryan Holiday, and I meant it. At least part of that affinity for him is putting a brave face on my jealousy \u2014 making lots of money writing for a huge popular audience and owning a quaint bookstore is about as close to an ideal lifestyle as most writers such as myself can envision.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, for the most part Holiday\u2019s alienating forays into politics are incidental to what he does. As for Holiday\u2019s main focus, well, the world needs popularizers to keep history and philosophy alive. Popularizers are by their very nature controversial; making things popular inevitably involves sanding off the rough edges of things. If you go looking for it, you will find no shortage of critics of Holiday, who claim that he has dumbed stoicism down into a lifestyle brand for affluent Americans, who wouldn\u2019t otherwise find the philosophy\u2019s true ascetic ideals at all appealing. And then there\u2019s the fact that Holiday <a href=\"https:\/\/ryanholiday.medium.com\/12-lessons-from-7-years-of-the-daily-stoic-66e43b4c9940\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">knows<\/a> neither Latin nor Greek, and more scholarly critics say his attempt to repackage existing translations into commercial products devoid of context bulldozes over important nuance.<\/p>\n<p>These are not unfounded criticisms, and Holiday is hardly the first to face them. A couple of generations ago, Edith Hamilton was a Baltimore school headmistress who became one of America\u2019s biggest authors by selling the reading public on the glories of ancient Greek thought. Her book <em>Mythology<\/em> is still widely taught to school kids (though these days I fear it\u2019s probably more confined to private and religious schools).<\/p>\n<p>It became a favorite book of RFK\u2019s after Jackie gave it to him following his brother\u2019s assassination in the hopes that he would find some comfort in it. It left such an impression on Bobby Kennedy that he actually quoted Edith Hamilton from memory in his iconic, and apparently extemporaneous, remarks given when he was informed Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. More specifically, he <a href=\"https:\/\/pshares.org\/blog\/robert-f-kennedy-and-the-ancient-greeks-of-edith-hamilton\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">quoted<\/a> Hamilton\u2019s idiosyncratic translation of Aeschylus. Unlike Holiday, Hamilton had degrees in classics back when that meant something \u2014 her master\u2019s thesis was on the stoic Seneca, no less \u2014 and was quite fluent in Greek and Latin:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>[W]e have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: \u201cIn our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That single line cuts right to the heart of why Hamilton was both flawed <em>and<\/em> great in a way that I hope is instructive to Holiday. Many self-respecting classics scholars would be aghast at the notion of a Greek referring to a monotheistic God; but Hamilton understood the line would have more resonance with a midcentury American audience if she rendered it that way, and indeed it wound its way, inaccuracy and all, into one of America\u2019s finest moments of oratory.<\/p>\n<p>It typifies how, in all of her writings, Hamilton makes an explicit assumption that what was bequeathed to us by the Greeks and Romans exists within a broader Western tradition. And this subsequent and more expansive view of Western thought, which rather notably includes Judeo-Christianity, should also influence our moral interpretation of 2,000-year-old philosophers and statesmen. Flawed translations be damned, in this respect Hamilton got the big picture regarding the Greeks and Romans right, where the myopic literalism of classics scholars missed what it is about ancient wisdom that might appeal to ordinary people. (For what it\u2019s worth, the previous Cicero translation also comes from Hamilton\u2019s <em>The Roman Way<\/em>, so I\u2019ll let the Latin scholars out there object if necessary.)<\/p>\n<p>Holiday\u2019s a smart and very talented man, so it\u2019s my hope that he eventually comes to understand that maybe some of the recent frustration he\u2019s expressed, politically and otherwise, is a result of hitting the limit of what stoicism can do, especially since the only other moral guide he uses to interpret it is contemporary secular liberalism. Until he can marry the wisdom of the stoics to some recognizable vision of transcendence \u2014 and I would note that Hamilton was a very unorthodox Christian, and I don\u2019t think she was proselytizing per se \u2014 he\u2019s not going to find a way to reach and persuade people the way that he wants to.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the reason I follow Holiday and like much of what he\u2019s done is that I have a lot of admiration for the stoic philosophers and their practical insights, and he has a talent for explaining them. At the same time, I would never call myself a stoic. I am first and foremost a Christian, in part because Christians have a much better understanding of human nature than the stoics ever did. Being resilient and in control of our emotions is a goal to strive for, but perfect self-mastery is unattainable, and as such, admonitions about being a better person are useless without forgiveness and redemption when we inevitably fail at self-improvement. Seneca said a lot of wise things, but a moral philosophy that tells people <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/romanhelmetguy\/status\/2051722985380176173\">if things go badly you can always kill yourself<\/a> isn\u2019t one I would rely on.  <\/p>\n<p>In Christian terms, the problem with Holiday\u2019s video attacking Ivanka Trump and his subsequent minor crashout is that it all amounts to works righteousness. He\u2019s asking for others to adhere to a standard of public morality regarding their political choices that he himself not only doesn\u2019t hold, but given the vagaries of modern American politics, is impossible for anyone to adhere to.<\/p>\n<p>If Holiday wants to forsake his normal audience and rail against Trump\u2019s corruption, well, as someone who voted for the guy, I\u2019m far more receptive to the criticisms of the shady crypto dealings and the pay-for-pardons than he probably realizes. What Holiday doesn\u2019t realize is that it\u2019s hard to make that argument when you\u2019re also willing to go on, say, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/jayplemons\/status\/2044945342001754433\">Gavin Newsom\u2019s podcast<\/a>. Do I get to stick out my tongue and hold Holiday accountable for not staging stoic intervention with a guy who lied about going to rehab to explain away sleeping with his campaign manager\u2019s wife, and is at this point knowingly enabling public corruption in his state on a level that far surpasses concerns about the Trump campaign\u2019s self-dealing?<\/p>\n<p>And as bad as all this contemporary corruption seems, I wonder what Holiday would make of burnishing the historical legacy of a leader who, despite his celebrated and well-intended rhetoric, was responsible for killing thousands of harmless people whose only crime was believing in the wrong thing? Because that\u2019s Marcus Aurelius and Christians, and Holiday has forged a career using superlatives to describe a rather problematic politician.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, <em>Meditations<\/em> is still a great book, and acknowledging this simple fact amply demonstrates that having to make necessary judgments that do not entirely align with our own moral standards is hardly a new political phenomenon. In his better moments, Holiday would probably ponder this unfortunate fact of life and remind us that per Epictetus, \u201cThe chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I would agree, with the caveat that once we are clear on our actual concerns, political progress will be made by seizing on opportunities to talk to those we disagree with, and hoping a shared desire for forgiveness forges a new understanding. In times of political turmoil, we should look beyond the stoics to Aeschylus, who, by way of Hamilton, got it right when he said wisdom only comes through the grace of God.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/heminator\">@heminator<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s get this out of the way: I like Ryan Holiday. He\u2019s a popular author who rose to fame online, focusing on Stoicism-the ancient Roman philosophy that promotes emotional control and resilience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":2599739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ryan-holiday.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[27464,49262,79245,46826,56998],"class_list":["post-2599738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mindset","tag-philosophy","tag-ryan-holiday","tag-self-improvement","tag-stoicism"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ryan-holiday.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599742,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599738\/revisions\/2599742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2599739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}