Stoicism: Courage Under Fire

Book Review of Stockdale’s Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

People often see parallels between ancient Stoic philosophy and the brand of existential philosophy described by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his bestselling self-help book Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). Frankl never mentions the Stoics, perhaps he’d never actually read them, although he arrives at some remarkably similar conclusions concerning human freedom in the face of adversity:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. — Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl, who was Jewish, was incarcerated in several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during the Second World War. He developed his personal philosophy as a way of coping with the horrors of life there. After the war, his writings became famous, especially Man’s Search for Meaning. Many people find his ideas particularly inspiring, and credible as a source of finding emotional strength and meaning in adversity, because they were tested in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

There’s a similar but less well-known story concerning James (or “Jim”) Stockdale, an American naval pilot who was captured and…