Ancient faith for the modern world: Dr. Tyler Paytas on Stoic piety
If one school of philosophy can be said to have captured the popular imagination of the contemporary world, it is Stoicism. Something about the old, hardline, “fortress-of-the-mind” approach to ethical life strikes a chord with enough modern readers that local bookstores see fit to keep a few copies of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Epictetus’ Enchiridion on their shelves. But not all aspects of the ancient doctrine have undergone popular revival in equal measure, and the religious dimensions of Stoicism, despite their great potential to contribute to human happiness, are often regrettably overlooked. So argues Dr. Tyler Paytas, Senior Lecturer at the Australian Catholic University, with whom I sat down to discuss two papers he’s been developing on the topics of Stoic faith and piety.
So, Tyler, you were telling me there is a personal motivation behind this first paper of yours?
Yeah, the paper is called ‘Stoic Faith’, and it’s inspired by the transformation that Stoicism brought about in my life. It started the day after I first read the Enchiridion. I remember reading it before bed, and then waking up the next morning to an email that would normally have sent me spiralling into anger and worry. Instead, I found myself feeling unusually calm and optimistic. This didn’t seem like a coincidence, and from that moment I began to adopt Stoicism as my moral and spiritual framework.
Years later, I received a call from my sister informing me that our father had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. I flew home to take care of him in his final weeks and help him through the process of dying. During this time, as Stoicism was helping me meet the challenge, I noticed that my friends and family weren’t getting the same benefits from their more conventional religious beliefs. And so I became interested in why this was the case. Was there something about Stoicism that gives it an advantage over traditional religions when it comes to providing consolation and resilience?
Talk me through the paper’s main idea, then. What’s it about?
There’s a core Stoic principle which is essentially an article of faith: the Stoic-Socratic account of well-being. The basic idea is that well-being is entirely a matter of your character and doesn’t depend on external things like money, power, or pleasure. While the Stoics gave arguments for this, it’s not the sort of thing that can be proven with logic. It’s something that you have to ‘go in for’ in the same way that one would go in for religious faith.
But at the same time, I think this form of faith is more accessible and stable than conventional religious faith because it doesn’t require belief in miracles or anything supernatural. It’s simply a matter of accepting an answer to a philosophical question that can’t be settled by proof. And while the Stoic view can seem counterintuitive, whenever I read Socrates’ famous pronouncement: “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they can’t harm me,” I have no trouble believing it. And I’ve found that if we go in for this conception of well-being, it brings immense practical benefits in the form of consolation, moral motivation, and resilience.
Do you see this Stoic faith as compatible with traditional religious belief?
Yes, to an extent. Many Stoic doctrines align with ideas from the major world religions. But there are some non-trivial differences between Stoicism and these other traditions. Essentially, my aim with this project has been to win converts from among those who don’t currently have a robust spiritual or religious framework. For those who are turned off by conventional religion, Stoic faith is an alternative which provides many of the benefits of religion without some of the main drawbacks.
Interesting. What is the second paper about, then?
The second paper is called ‘If it Pleases the Gods: The Socratic Piety of Epictetus’. The more I’ve read (and re-read) Epictetus, the more enamoured I’ve become with his conception of piety, which is surprising given that I had been an atheist/agnostic for most of my life. I wanted to get clear on what exactly piety means for Epictetus, and my thesis is that it has three central elements: optimism, gratitude, and obedience, with Socrates serving as the role model in each case.
Explain to me each of these elements, starting with optimism. Is Stoic optimism what we typically have in mind when we think of an optimistic person today?
The way we normally think about it, the optimistic person is someone who says: “I really want things to go a certain way, and despite what the evidence suggests, I’m confident they will go that way.” This is not what Epictetus advocates. His version of optimism says: “Regardless of how events unfold, I know everything will be okay because I have the resources to turn whatever happens into a benefit.” This is also importantly different from hope. Epictetus cautions against hope because it involves faulty value judgements. When we hope for some outcome, we’re implicitly saying that we can be okay only if things unfold a certain way. In contrast, the Stoic view is that we can always be okay, because God—or the Universe, or Nature (whatever you want to call it) has given us the rational resources to be happy no matter what happens.
Is this optimism related to the gratitude element of piety, then?
Yes, definitely. Epictetus tells us to think of the world as a giant festival that we were lucky enough to have been invited to. We’re surrounded by stunning natural beauty and fascinating intelligible order. And we’re accompanied by fellow rational beings with whom we get to share the experience. All these things have been given to us. And what did we do to deserve them? Nothing! Everything we have (and will ever have) is an unearned gift. This alone warrants immense gratitude. But more than that: we’ve been equipped with the rational resources to make good use of everything that happens while we’re here. And even beyond that: if the festival doesn’t suit us, we’ve been given the option of exiting anytime we’d like.
So we really have no grounds for complaint. According to Epictetus, whenever you complain about your circumstances, you’re being ungrateful and impious. As he tells his students: “God doesn’t need a heckler in the audience.” I find this way of framing things enormously helpful. I mentioned my dad’s death earlier. I could easily frame that as an injustice and as grounds for complaint: my dad could have had many more years of life, and I missed out on more time with him. But applying the Stoic framing, I can ask myself how many years with an awesome father was I entitled to. The answer is zero. And I got 40. So am I really in any position to complain?
And obedience? Is it to God that we are supposed to be obedient?
Yes, but not as a sort of blind adherence to revealed commands. It’s a matter of obedience to your own reason, which is indirectly obedience to God, because God gave you your rational mind. According to the Stoics, our rational faculty is an offshoot of divine intelligence. So insofar as we obey the dictates of our rational mind, we’re demonstrating pious obedience.
In my view, the combination of these three aspects—optimism, gratitude, and obedience—makes for a compelling framework for orienting ourselves toward the universe and the situations we encounter. And while Stoic piety is, at bottom, a religious outlook, each of the core elements can be incorporated (with a few tweaks) into a secular worldview as well. So I think everyone can benefit from the pious outlook of the Gadfly of Athens and the Sage of Nicopolis.
Tyler will be presenting a related talk on Socrates’ attitude towards death in the Platonic dialogues at the 99th meeting of the APA Pacific Division, to be held online in April 2026. He also runs weekly seminars on Stoic life-guidance open to all university students in the Sydney area.–Will Taylor
Sydney Greek Philosophy Society 