Stoicism, Insults, and Political Correctness

What Stoic Philosophy Would Say About Offensive Behaviour

Recently I’ve been thinking more about insults and what Stoicism might tell us about how to view them. That’s been prompted by some articles by William Irvine and Eric O. Scott about insults, social justice, and political correctness, following Irvine’s recent publication of the book A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt and Why They Shouldn’t. Their discussion does a good job of applying Stoic philosophy to a specific dilemma that’s topical at the moment. There’s been a lot of reference in the media recently to “microaggression”, “safe spaces”, and “trigger warnings”, particularly on US college campuses.

I’m not attempting in this post to provide a comprehensive overview of these issues. I mainly want to contribute a few observations from my perspective as a cognitive-behavioural therapist and to point out some relevant passages in the ancient Stoic literature that I feel may have been overlooked.

Let’s start with microaggressions. I was a psychotherapist for many years, so this dilemma is pretty familiar to me because it frequently comes up in therapy sessions, particularly in the context of treating social anxiety and providing what therapists call social-skills training. Psychological literature on dealing with insults…