ANGEL AK I

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 11 number 3 december 2006

Deleuze, philosopher, son of Diogenes and

Hypatia, sojourned at Lyon. Nothing is known
of his life. He lived to be very old, even though
he was often very ill. This illustrated what he
himself had said: there are lives in which the
difficulties verge on the prodigious. He
defined as active any force that goes to the
end of its power. This, he said, is the opposite
of a law. Thus he lived, always going further
than he had believed he could. Even though he
had explicated Chrysippus, it is above all his
steadfastness that earned him the name of
Stoic.1
john sellars
his is the opening paragraph of André
T Bernold’s tribute to Gilles Deleuze, entitled
‘‘Suidas,’’ and published a few months after
Deleuze’s death in 1995. Modelled on the ancient
philosophical biographies that one finds in the AN ETHICS OF THE
pages of the ninth-century Byzantine encyclope- EVENT
dia Suidas and in the Lives and Opinions of the
Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, it presents deleuze’s stoicism
Deleuze as if he were an ancient philosopher. In
particular, it presents Deleuze as a philosopher
in a genealogy of Cynics (‘‘son of Diogenes’’) and outside the category of ‘‘being’’ but within the
Stoics (‘‘explicated Chrysippus’’). As it con- broader category of ‘‘something.’’3 This concern
tinues, Bernold’s tribute emphasizes that with the ontological status of sense is the
Deleuze ‘‘must be placed in the ranks of the principal reason why Deleuze turns to the
physicists,’’ alongside Heraclitus and Lucretius. Stoics, but his engagement with Stoicism in
Bernold’s text paints a portrait of Deleuze – The Logic of Sense is by no means confined to
supposedly the arch ‘‘post-structuralist’’ – that is their theory of incorporeals. He also explores
thoroughly pre-modern. their conception of time, which he presents as a
Anyone familiar with Deleuze’s œuvre as a twofold theory of aiôn and chronos,4 as well as
whole will know that in his 1969 book The Logic Stoic ethics and the Stoic ‘‘image of the
of Sense, there is an extended engagement with philosopher.’’5 One might say that Deleuze’s
ancient Stoicism.2 Deleuze’s project in The Logic principal theme of the logic (or ontology) of sense
of Sense is to give an account of linguistic provides him with a way into a much broader
meaning or sense as a non-existing entity, and exploration of ancient Stoicism.
in order to do this he draws upon the Stoic theory Broad as Deleuze’s engagement with Stoicism
of incorporeals, in which linguistic meaning is in The Logic of Sense might be, on its own
classified as one of four incorporeal entities it hardly seems enough to justify Bernold’s
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/06/030157^15 ß 2006 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI: 10.1080/09697250601048622

157
 deleuze’s stoicism
characterization of Deleuze as a Stoic. After all,
Stoicism forms just one of a number of sources in
just one of Deleuze’s books, which number more
than twenty in all. According to Bernold,
however, ‘‘even though he had explicated
Chrysippus, it is above all his steadfastness
(constance) that earned him the name of Stoic.’’
In other words, it is not Deleuze’s explicit
discussion of Stoicism in The Logic of Sense
that makes him a Stoic for Bernold; it is
something else, something deeper within his
overall philosophical outlook.
This deeper affinity with Stoicism can be
found throughout Deleuze’s œuvre, although
many of the seeds can be found in The Logic
of Sense.6 For him, the Stoics stand alongside
Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and others who
form an alternative to the dominant figures from
the history of philosophy whom he had encoun-
tered (such as Plato, Descartes, and Kant). In
short, Deleuze rejected the rationalist tradition
that he was taught and embraced what he took to
be an alternative empiricist tradition. In the
Preface to the English edition of Dialogues, he
writes:
In so-called rationalist philosophies, the
abstract is given the task of explaining, and
it is the abstract that is realized in the
concrete. One starts with abstractions such as
the One, the Whole, the Subject, and one
looks for the process by which they are
embodied in a world which they make
conform to their requirements.7
In contrast to this, ultimately Platonic, tradition
in philosophy, Deleuze presents himself as an
empiricist, adopting Whitehead’s definition of
empiricism: the abstract does not explain any-
thing but must itself be explained.8 For Deleuze,
this empiricism rejects abstract totalities and
unities, affirming instead the ontological priority
of pluralities and multiplicities, and insisting
upon the externality of relations. As William
James put it, ‘‘Empiricism [. . .] lays the
explanatory stress upon the part, the element,
the individual, and treats the whole as a collection
and the universal as an abstraction.’’9 With this
in mind, one can see why Deleuze chose to devote
his first book to Hume and why he felt a certain
affinity with Anglo-American philosophers such
as Whitehead, James, and even Bertrand
Russell.10 One can also see why he was drawn
to the empiricist Stoics who were among the first
to reject Platonic metaphysics. Indeed, one of
Deleuze’s principal reasons for turning to the
Stoics was because, he suggests, they were the
first to have ‘‘reversed Platonism,’’ a task that
Deleuze says is the task for all modern
philosophy, or at the very least his own.11 As
such, the Stoics stand at the beginning of a
tradition of immanence within Western philoso-
phy that runs from them through Spinoza and
Nietzsche to Deleuze himself.12 The Stoic reversal
of Platonism involves switching the ontological
order of priority between ideas and matter. For
Plato, ideas have ontological priority while the
world of appearances is merely in a state of
becoming. For the Stoics, by contrast, only
material bodies exist. The contents of ideas are
reduced to mere incorporeal effects in the form of
what the Stoics call lekta or ‘‘sayables,’’ while
universal concepts are dismissed as not even this,
being figments of the imagination on a par with
dreams and hallucinations. ‘‘The Idea again falls
to the surface as a simple incorporeal effect’’ (LS
157/132). The Stoics reject the Platonic heights
of transcendence and also the Presocratic idea of
hidden depths in nature. Instead, everything that
exists does so on the surface that is nature,
Deleuze suggests:
With the Megarians, Cynics, and Stoics, we
have the beginning of a new philosopher and
a new kind of anecdote. [. . .] This is a
reorientation of all thought and of what it
means to think: there is no longer depth or
height. (LS 155/129–30)
As this passage indicates, Deleuze connects
Stoic immanent ontology with a new image of the
philosopher as a creature of the surface, for whom
thought and life are united as one,13 an image
that Deleuze develops into his concept of
‘‘practical philosophy.’’14 Notwithstanding his
explicit definition of philosophy as the ‘‘creation
of concepts,’’ in a number of places Deleuze
gestures towards a practical conception of
philosophy that shares much with this Stoic
image of the philosopher. In a discussion from
158

1972 entitled ‘‘Intellectuals and Power,’’ Deleuze
and Foucault consider the relationship between
theory and practice.15 Deleuze suggests that in
the past, practice has been conceived either as the
application of theory (coming after theory) or as
the inspiration for theory (coming before theory),
and here he is primarily thinking in terms of
political theory and its relationship with political
activism. He goes on to suggest that ‘‘for us’’ –
for Deleuze and Foucault, and perhaps others of
their generation – the relationship between theory
and practice is no longer so linear (whether it be
theory leading to practice or practice leading to
theory). Instead, ‘‘Practice is a set of relays from
one theoretical point to another, and theory is a
relay from one practice to another.’’16 Indeed,
they go on to argue that theory is itself a form of
practice – theoretical action stands alongside
practical action, and both join together in
networks of relays. A theory is, says Deleuze,
like a box of tools, and as such must be useful and
must work. Furthermore, ‘‘If no one uses it,
beginning with the theoretician himself (who then
ceases to be a theoretician), then the theory is
worthless or the moment is inappropriate.’’17 The
position that Deleuze outlines in this discussion
bears some striking resemblance to the Stoic
conception of philosophy. Philosophy proper is
not merely philosophical theory or discourse;
instead, philosophy is a lived practice that is built
upon both philosophical theory and practical
exercises. Of course, Deleuze does not equate the
practices that he is discussing with the sort of
philosophical training outlined by the Stoics; the
parallel is at the level of the relationship between
theory and philosophy itself as a practice. What
Deleuze and the Stoics share in common here is
the thought that philosophical discourse is but
one part of a broader practical conception of
philosophy.18 The aim of philosophy in both
cases is a transformation of one’s mode of
existence or way of life.
Resonances with Stoicism can also be found in
Deleuze’s collaborative work with Félix Guattari,
especially A Thousand Plateaus. In this work,
we find a philosophical project aimed at calling
into question the rigid boundaries between the
self and cosmos that is a striking echo of the
project laid out in the Meditations of
159
sellars
Marcus Aurelius.19 How might one, they ask,
replicate the escape from the self embodied by
the schizophrenic or the drug user without falling
into complete self-destruction. Might it be
possible, they ask, to replicate the experiences
of the schizophrenic or the drug user without
going mad or becoming an addict, ‘‘to get drunk
on pure water, as in Henry Miller’s experimenta-
tions’’ (MP 204/166)? Deleuze raises this same
question in The Logic of Sense, where he
wonders whether it might be possible to recover
the effects of drugs and alcohol independently of
the use of those substances (see LS 188–89/161).
With this in mind, he suggests becoming a little
crazy or a little alcoholic, ‘‘just enough to extend
the crack, but not enough to deepen it irreme-
diably’’ (LS 184/157–8). Deleuze wonders just
how this might be attained. He responds to this
question of his with the words ‘‘How much we
have yet to learn from Stoicism . . .’’ (LS 184/
158). Here, in The Logic of Sense, Deleuze rather
enigmatically implies that his project of recover-
ing the experiences of the drug user without
drugs, of extending the crack in the self without
cracking up, that dominates his later work with
Guattari has already been accomplished in
Stoicism.
We also find in A Thousand Plateaus an
analysis of the politics of space that echoes Stoic
cosmopolitanism. According to Plutarch, Stoic
cosmpolitanism – in which the wise conceive
themselves as citizens distributed across an
undivided Cosmos, indifferent to traditional
States – was inspired by a reference in Zeno’s
now lost Republic exhorting all humankind to
live as if grazing on a common pasture (nomos).
For the Stoics, territory should not be divided
up among individuals; instead, individuals should
scatter themselves across an undivided space.
This pre-empts Deleuze’s own account of differ-
ing modes of distribution in Difference and
Repetition, which forms the basis for the
‘‘nomadology’’ of A Thousand Plateaus.20
As well as all of these resonances between
Deleuze’s philosophy and Stoicism, Deleuze also
goes so far as to suggest that today the Stoics
offer us the only meaningful form of ethics left –
not to be unworthy of what happens to us – and
he connects this with Nietzsche’s amor fati.
 deleuze’s stoicism
In what follows, I shall focus my attention on this
last Stoic theme within Deleuze’s philosophy,
namely his conception of an ethics of the event,
considering this alongside Bernold’s attribution
to Deleuze of a Stoic ‘‘steadfastness’’ (constance).
I shall begin (in sect. I) with Deleuze’s account
of Stoic ethics in The Logic of Sense and the
connections he makes with Nietzschean amor
fati. Then (in sect. II) I shall compare this with
the popular image of Stoicism as a philosophy of
heroic endurance or steadfastness, offering a
genealogical account of the origins of this
image. By returning to the works of the late
Stoic philosophers (in sect. III) I shall try to
account for the existence of these two apparently
conflicting images of Stoicism and then try to
reconcile them. By way of conclusion (in sect. IV)
I shall outline the Stoic character of Deleuze’s
ethics and then, finally (in sect. V), assess
Bernold’s presentation of Deleuze as a steadfast
Stoic.
I deleuze’s stoics
It is in the twentieth and twenty-first series of
The Logic of Sense that we find Deleuze’s explicit
discussion of Stoic ethics. First and foremost,
Stoic ethics is an immanent ethics built upon the
materialism of Stoic physics. Virtue and vice are
themselves bodies if they are to play any causal
role in actions. Good and bad encounters are
mixtures or interactions of bodies that are good
or bad from the perspective of a particular body
but not from the perspective of the cosmos as a
whole. For Deleuze, the principal lesson of Stoic
ethics is to affirm all such encounters: ‘‘Stoic
ethics is concerned with the event; it consists of
willing (vouloir) the event as such, that is, of
willing that which occurs (vouloir ce qui arrive)
insofar as it does occur’’ (LS 168/143).
According to Deleuze, who here follows the
work of Victor Goldschmidt,21 there are two
poles within Stoic ethics relating to its relation-
ships with the two other parts of Stoic philoso-
phy: physics and logic. The physical pole of Stoic
ethics is concerned with the continuum of causes/
bodies that constitute the cosmos.22 It is a
question of situating oneself within the order of
causes. This pole of Stoic ethics can be seen, for
instance, in the attempt by Marcus Aurelius to
develop a cosmic perspective.23 The logical pole,
on the other hand, is concerned with the use of
representations,24 and it is this pole that Deleuze
associates with ‘‘willing the event whatever it may
be’’ (LS 169/144). These two poles of Stoic ethics
are mapped onto the two sides of Stoic ontology:
the physical pole is concerned with corporeal
causes while the logical pole is concerned with
incorporeal events.
The logical pole of Stoic ethics concerned with
willing the event involves, according to
Goldschmidt, accepting that which occurs
(accepter ce qui arrive) – an active acceptance
that implies a welcome cooperation with fate.25
Goldschmidt cites the Stoic Epictetus:
The philosophers are right to say that if a wise
and good man had foreknowledge of events, he
would work to assist nature even when it
comes to sickness and death and mutilation,
being aware that these things are allotted in
accordance with the ordering of the universe.26
Moreover, to complain about what comes to pass
corrupts the perfection of the cosmos, according
to Marcus Aurelius:
There are thus two reasons why you should
be contented with whatever befalls you, firstly,
that it was for you that it came about, and it
was prescribed for you and stands in a special
relationship to you as something that was spun
into your destiny from the beginning and
issues from the most venerable of causes, and
secondly, that for the power which governs
the whole, that which comes to each of us
individually contributes to its own well-being
and perfection and its very continuance. For
the perfection of the whole suffers a mutilation
if you cut off even the smallest particle from
the coherence and continuity of its causes no
less than of its parts; and you break it off, so
far as you can, whenever you are discontented,
and, in a certain sense, you destroy it.27
Thus, it is necessary to bring one’s own will into
harmony with the will of fate. The event that
must be affirmed is ‘‘already in the process of
being produced by and in the depth of corporeal
causes’’ (LS 172/147), and consequently there is a
sense in which the event is determined before it
160

comes to pass. The Stoic sage must will the
embodiment of a pre-existing event. It is within
this context that Deleuze cites a line from Joë
Bousquet as a Stoic maxim: ‘‘my wound existed
before me, I was born to embody it’’ (LS 174/
148).28 Bousquet, paralysed by a war wound aged
20 and bedridden for the rest of his life, tried ‘‘to
reduce himself entirely to events,’’29 holding that
only events are real and that our task is to assist
in their realization.30 Bousquet’s maxim is a
striking echo of Marcus Aurelius’s ‘‘it was for you
that it came about, and it was prescribed for you
and stands in a special relationship to you as
something that was spun into your destiny from
the beginning.’’
Deleuze goes on to associate this Stoic (and
Bousquetian) ethic of willing the event with
Nietzsche’s amor fati.31 In an emphatic claim, he
says, ‘‘Either ethics makes no sense at all, or this
is what it means and has nothing else to say: not
to be unworthy of what happens to us’’ (LS 174/
149). One faces two alternatives: either to
embrace the event, whatever it may bring, or to
despise the event as something unpleasant and
unjust. In Nietzschean terms, this is the choice
between amor fati and ressentiment. For Deleuze,
the only meaningful ethical response is to affirm
that which comes to pass, to will it as if it were
what we would have chosen for ourselves. As
Bousquet said, with regard to his paralysing
wound, ‘‘I put all my strength into naturalizing
the accident that victimized my youth. I wanted
it to cease to be outside me.’’32 The task for
Bousquet was to transform the event of the
wound from a tragic external assault that afflicted
him into a vital and necessary event in his life
that made it possible for him to discover himself
as a writer, to become who he already was. For an
individual conceived as a unified, static object,
events are external assaults that threaten one’s
current existence; for an individual conceived
as a process or series of events, by contrast, every
new event becomes a constitutive component that
must be affirmed as part of oneself. In contrast to
this ethics of the event, what would be really
immoral, Deleuze suggests, would be to apply
moral concepts such as just or unjust, merit or
fault, to events (‘‘the world is unfair’’).33
161
sellars
The two poles of Stoic ethics – the physical
and the logical – are said to correlate with two
distinct conceptions of time.34 Deleuze labels
these two conceptions of time aiôn and chronos,
and attributes them to the Stoics, although it may
be more accurate to say that they derive from
Goldschmidt’s reading of the Stoics.35 Rather
than conceive time as a continuum divided into
the three parts of past, present, and future,
Deleuze suggests that the Stoics separated the
present from the past and future. On the one
hand the Stoics conceived time as chronos,
the extended, but limited, living present. On
the other hand they conceived time as aiôn, the
unlimited past and future. Under chronos, the
present moment has a certain extension or
duration (étendue ou durée), an extension that
can expand or contract – the present discussion,
the present day, the present year. It can even
expand to encompass all of time, becoming the
cosmic present. From the perspective of chronos,
the past and future are merely parts of some
larger present that subsumes the current present;
there exists a series of presents of differing
extensions enveloping one another, all ultimately
enveloped by the cosmic present. If one has not
reached the cosmic present, however, from the
perspective of a narrower present, ‘‘there are
many injustices and ignominies, many parasitic
and cannibalistic processes which inspire our
terror at what happens to us, and our resentment
at what occurs’’ (LS 177/151). In order to escape
ressentiment, then, we must cultivate the all-
encompassing cosmic present.
Under aiôn, the relationship between the
present on the one hand and the past and
future on the other is reversed. Instead of a
present that can expand and absorb the past and
future, under aiôn the extended present evapo-
rates in a process of subdivision into part of the
past and part of the future. The extended present
is replaced by the instant, a mathematical limit
without thickness or extension that stands
between past and future.
From the perspective of the cosmic present of
chronos – the eternal or divine present – all of
time can be encompassed, and each event can be
situated within the series of physical mixtures
that constitute the whole: this relates to the
 deleuze’s stoicism
physical pole of Stoic ethics. From the perspec-
tive of aiôn, however, each event is understood
only as a bridge between the immediate past and
immediate future, and Deleuze characterizes this
as an incorporeal transformation, related to the
logical pole of Stoic ethics. As we shall see, both
poles play a part in Deleuze’s Stoic ethics.
II amor fati versus heroic endurance
Deleuze’s presentation of Stoic ethics as a
precursor to Nietzsche’s amor fati shares little
in common with the popular conception of
Stoicism as an attitude of heroic endurance in
the face of adversity. In the popular image, the
Stoic is one who nobly endures the evils thrown at
him by a hostile world. The Oxford English
Dictionary, for example, defines a Stoic as ‘‘one
who practises repression of emotion, indifference
to pleasure or pain, and patient endurance.’’36
The origins of this modern popular image of the
Stoic can be traced back to the sixteenth century.
In 1584, the Belgian Humanist Justus Lipsius
published De Constantia, a work in which he
proposed Stoicism as an antidote to public evils –
in particular, the civil and religious wars afflicting
northern Europe.37 The book proved to be
especially popular and was translated into
numerous vernacular languages before the end
of the sixteenth century and reprinted throughout
the seventeenth century,38 while in the eighteenth
century, Lipsius is cited by Diderot as the
principal modern reviver of Stoicism.39 It is in
De Constantia that we find Stoicism presented
as a philosophy of heroic endurance in the face of
adversity.
Lipsius’s De Constantia takes the form of a
dialogue between Lipsius and his elder mentor
Langius, and is set within the context of a trip to
Vienna actually undertaken by Lipsius in 1572.
In the opening monologue, Lipsius recounts that
the principal motivation for his trip was to escape
the public evils (mala publica) plaguing his
homeland Belgium. Langius’s opening contribu-
tion to the dialogue immediately sets the tone for
the remainder of the work: Lipsius is mistaken,
Langius says, in thinking that fleeing troubles
in Belgium will enable him to escape troubles
completely; rather than run away from public
evils, Lipsius should turn his attention inward
and examine his own thoughts and emotions. The
solution to public evils, Langius implies, is to be
found in ethical psychotherapy rather than in
travel or politics. The public evils that Lipsius
hopes to flee are, Langius continues, the product
of ‘‘the smoke of opinions’’ for which the cure
is not travel but reason. Langius develops his
argument in a number of ways, building upon
two claims. The first is that if travelling were the
way to escape pubic evils, then it would require
travelling to a place completely free from such
evils; such a place does not exist. The second is
that even if such a place did exist, settling there
would offer no respite for the troubles afflicting
Lipsius, for those troubles are ultimately the
product of his own mind. Public evils are,
Langius argues, internal rather than external. As
such, travelling can never free us from them; only
reason can cure Lipsius from the public evils that
he is trying to escape. Langius quotes an anecdote
attributed to Socrates from Seneca’s Letters:
‘‘How can you wonder your travels do you no
good, when you carry yourself around with
you?’’40
With these claims, the Stoic flavour of the
work as a whole is made clear. For Langius, the
source of all human misery is internal rather than
external. Once we realize the true location of the
source of our suffering, not only are we a step
closer to being able to cure it, but also
we suddenly realize that it is something that is
‘‘up to us’’ (eph’ hêmin). As the Stoic Epictetus
put it:
Some things are up to us, while others are not
up to us. Up to us are conception, choice,
desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything
that is our own doing; not up to us are our
body, our property, reputation, office, and, in
a word, everything that is not our own doing.
Furthermore, the things up to us are by nature
free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the
things not up to us are weak, servile, subject to
hindrance, and not our own. Remember,
therefore, that if what is naturally slavish
you think to be free, and what is not your own
to be your own, you will be hampered, will
grieve, will be in turmoil, and will blame both
gods and men; while if you think only what is
162

your own to be your own, and what is not your
own to be, as it really is, not your own, then no
one will ever be able to exert compulsion upon
you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no
one, will find fault with no one, will do
absolutely nothing against your will, you will
have no personal enemy, no one will harm
you, for neither is there any harm that can
touch you.41
The antidote to public evils is, of course,
constancy (constantia). Constancy is defined as
‘‘a right and immovable strength of mind, neither
lifted up nor pressed down with external or causal
accidents.’’42 It is an attitude of indifference to
externals precisely of the sort proposed by
Epictetus.43 This strength of mind is built upon
rational judgement, in contrast to inconstancy,
which is the product of mere opinion.
Langius presents the battle between reason and
opinion as a battle between the soul and the body:
constancy will arise in a rational life directed
by the soul, unperturbed by the distractions of
the body. The ‘‘true mother’’ of constancy is
patience, defined as ‘‘a voluntary sufferance
without grudging of all things whatsoever can
happen to or in a man.’’44 Here we can see the
foundations laid for the modern popular image of
the Stoic heroically enduring whatever fate
throws at him.45
This Lipsian image of Stoicism as heroic
endurance, patient fortitude, and voluntary
sufferance is not without ancient precedent. By
training a classical philologist, Lipsius worked
closely on the texts of Seneca, eventually
producing an edition of Seneca in 1605. All of
the central arguments in De Constantia can be
found in the works of Seneca; indeed, three of the
four main arguments against public evils may be
found in Letter 107 of Seneca’s correspondence
with Lucilius. In this letter, we also find an
attitude of endurance. The text’s central theme
is unwanted external events. In response to
Lucilius’s anguish in the face of some of his
slaves running away, Seneca reminds him that
such troubles are neither unusual nor unex-
pected. He adds that they are also as inevitable
and necessary as getting dirty when walking in
the mud. For, Seneca reminds Lucilius, life is not
a delicate thing;46 rather, it is a journey in which
163
sellars
one will meet grief and sickness. These cannot be
avoided but they can be despised (effugere ista
non potes, contemnere potes).47 The task is to
prepare oneself to meet such evils, for once
prepared one will be able to meet them
courageously (fortius). Thus, one should engage
in a continual reflection upon future evils so that
when they come – as they surely will – one will be
ready. As Seneca puts it: ‘‘It is not possible to
change this condition of things; but it is possible
to take on a noble soul worthy of a good man,
thereby courageously enduring chance (fortiter
fortuita patiamur) and being in harmony with
nature.’’48
The task at hand, then, is to transform one’s
soul in order to bring it into harmony with the
law of Nature, which it should follow and obey
(hanc sequatur, huic pareat).49 We should,
Seneca suggests, follow the will of God without
complaint, under which everything progresses.
Rather than go against the divine order of the
world – a path doomed to failure – instead we
should follow the natural order of things. Rather
than attempt to reform God’s will, we should
attempt to reform ourselves.
For Seneca, whatever happens is something
that must be endured rather than welcomed. This
is emphasized in another text by his characteriza-
tion of events as the product of cruel fortune:
‘‘They have ordered me to take a firm stand, like
a sentry on guard, and to foresee all the attacks
and all the onslaughts of fortune (omnis conatus
fortunae) long before they hit me.’’50
The acts of fortune are not something to be
willed, but rather something to be suffered.
Occasionally, Seneca develops this into an
attitude of indifference, at one point suggesting
that ‘‘the mark of true greatness is not to notice
that you have received a blow.’’51 However, he
never develops it into an attitude of affirmation.
Seneca endures and suffers what fate brings, and
as such his attitude is one of resignation. The
essence of the letter may be summed up by the
maxim we find in it, optimum est pati – it is best
to endure.52 As Lipsius himself summarizes the
thrust of this letter, one should suffer that which
one cannot amend (patere igitur, quod non
emendas).53
 deleuze’s stoicism
III human and cosmic stoicism
For Lipsius and Seneca, then, Stoicism involves
an ethic of heroic endurance that is quite
different from Deleuze’s Nietzschean and
Bousquetian reading of Stoicism as an ethic of
amor fati. At this point, it may be helpful to label
these two competing conceptions of Stoicism – I
shall call them ‘‘human’’ and ‘‘cosmic’’ Stoicism,
respectively.
Human Stoicism is the popular conception of
Stoicism as heroic endurance or patient fortitude
that we have encountered in Lipsius and
Seneca.54 The Human Stoic conceives the world
as something external and hostile. His Stoicism
consists of a heroic response to whatever this
hostile world throws at him. Hegel’s presentation
of Stoicism in the Phenomenology of Spirit
conforms to this image.55 For Hegel, the Stoic
retreats into his consciousness because he has no
control over the external world; the Stoic seeks
mental freedom because he has no physical
freedom. Rather than engaging in the reality of
master–slave conflicts, the Stoic withdraws into
himself and preaches indifference towards what-
ever is outside of himself. What all of these
examples of Human Stoicism share is the
presumption of a rigid boundary between the
individual and the external world.
In contrast to this there is Cosmic Stoicism.
We can find this conception of Stoicism in the
works of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
Although both Epictetus and Marcus focus in
upon the self – in Epictetus the concern is with
what is ‘‘up to us’’ (eph’ hêmin); in Marcus
the self is an ‘‘inner citadel’’ (akropolis) – the
principal motivation behind this concern with the
self is a desire to overcome the boundary between
the individual self and the Cosmos so that there is
no longer any opposition between the two. For
the Stoics – like Spinoza after them – the only
truly free being is God, identified with Nature,
for only God encounters no opposition.
According to Stoic physics, any individual
entity will act according to its own nature or
internal cause – conceived as a desire for self-
preservation – unless hindered by some external
cause.56 From the perspective of the individual,
there are a whole series of external causes that
hinder one’s desires and actions. These external
causes are other individual entities acting in
accordance with their own natures. However, the
Cosmos – Nature, God – includes everything that
exists and so has nothing external to it. As Cicero
writes in his summary of Stoic cosmology:
‘‘The various limited modes of being may
encounter many external obstacles to hinder
their perfect realization, but there can be nothing
that can frustrate Nature as a whole, since she
embraces and contains within herself all modes
of being.’’57
Only the Cosmos as a whole has complete
freedom. It always acts according to its own
nature, never hindered by an external cause.
From the perspective of the Cosmos, then, the
distinction between internal and external causes
falls away. This distinction is thus always only
relative to the perspective of a particular finite
mode of being. The philosophical task is to try –
so far as it is possible – to attain a cosmic
perspective from which the boundary between
oneself and Nature is overcome. This forms a
recurrent theme throughout the Meditations:
‘‘You came into the world as a part. You will
vanish in that which gave you birth, or rather you
will be taken up into its generative principle by
the process of change.’’58
In Marcus the task is a dissolution of the man–
nature dichotomy which is presented in very
physical and material terms, reflecting the
influence of Heraclitus. In Epictetus, the same
task is presented as a desire to become one with
God, to will all of God’s actions as if they were
one’s own. A true Stoic, says Epictetus, is ‘‘a man
who desires to be of one mind with God, and
never to cast blame on God or man again.’’59 Of
course, unity with Nature and unity with God
amount to the same thing for a Stoic. The
important point here is that for Cosmic Stoicism,
the boundary between the individual and Nature
is overcome, and there is no longer an opposition
between the will of the individual and the will
of God, which is identified with fate.60 For
Epictetus, ‘‘my wish is always for what actually
comes to pass.’’61 In his Handbook, he enjoins us:
‘‘Do not seek events to happen as you want, but
want events as they happen, and your life will
flow well.’’62
164

This idea is elaborated in Discourses 1.12. In
this text, Epictetus defines freedom as having all
things happen in accordance with one’s choice or
will (prohairesis).63 However, this should not be
conceived as the freedom to act randomly or
without reason; instead, it must involve ‘‘learning
to will that things should happen as they do.’’64
In a striking passage, Epictetus offers some
examples and outlines the status of his ethical
position:
You are wretched and discontented, and if you
are alone, you call it desolation, but if you are
with men, you call them cheats and robbers
[. . .] whereas you ought, when you live alone,
to call that peace and freedom, and compare
yourself to the gods; and when you are in
company, not to call it a crowd and a tumult
and a vexation, but a feast and a festival, and
thus accept all things with contentment.
What, then, is the punishment of those who
do not? To be just as they are. Is a person
discontented at being alone? Let him be in
desolation. [. . .] ‘‘Throw him into prison.’’
What kind of prison? Where he already is, for
he is there against his will, and wherever any
one is against his will, that is to him a prison;
just as Socrates was not in prison, for he was
willingly there.65
To translate this into Nietzschean terms, the
ethical imperative behind amor fati is simply
the opportunity to avoid having to live a life of
ressentiment.
This desire to overcome the division between
the individual and Nature (¼ Cosmos, God, fate)
is quite distinct from the attitude we encountered
in Seneca and Lipsius, in which the existence of
such a division is a necessary precondition for the
endurance of external assaults upon the indivi-
dual. These two distinct attitudes correlate with
what Nietzsche calls ‘‘Turkish’’ and ‘‘Russian’’
fatalism.66 For Nietzsche, Turkish fatalism
opposes man, and fate against each other as two
distinct entities; one can try to resist fate, but
eventually fate will always win. This leads one
into a state of resignation in the face of fate when
in fact, Nietzsche comments, man ‘‘is himself
a piece of fate.’’67 This latter idea is developed
in his comments on Russian fatalism. In Ecce
Homo, Nietzsche presents Russian fatalism as the
165
sellars
remedy for ressentiment. It is a fatalism without
revolt against what happens, a welcoming of what
comes to pass by chance, free from any desire to
change or rebel against one’s situation –
‘‘accepting oneself as if fated, not wishing oneself
‘different.’ ’’68 Thus, it involves an identification
of one’s own will with fate, the will of the
Cosmos. This Russian fatalism correlates with
Cosmic Stoicism, while Turkish fatalism corre-
lates with Human Stoicism.
How might we try to explain the existence of
these two quite different Stoic positions? We can
do so by conceiving them as two distinct stages
on the path of philosophical progression towards
the ideal of the sage. For a Human Stoic such as
Seneca, much of Stoic thinking about fate has
been taken on board, but fate – the will of the
Cosmic God – is still conceived as something
external to oneself. For a Cosmic Stoic like
Epictetus, by contrast, the individual is conceived
as part of fate; one’s own will is identified with
the will of God. Epictetus expands his conception
of his will to include all causes, both internal and
external to himself. To borrow Deleuze’s Zen-
Stoic analogy, the Human Stoic is the disciple
who has not yet mastered the koan; the Cosmic
Stoic is the master who has attained enlight-
enment.69 That is to say, the Human Stoic
remains at the level of a philosophical apprentice
who has understood Stoic doctrines but has not
yet digested those doctrines to the point where
they will transform his entire life. The Cosmic
Stoic, by contrast, has fully digested those
doctrines to the point where they have trans-
formed his habitual beliefs and dispositions.70
While the Stoic beginner continues to grit his
teeth in the face of harsh fortune, the Stoic
master suffers nothing, for he knows that nothing
bad can happen to him, no matter what fate may
bring.71
IV deleuze’s stoic ethics
Deleuze’s presentation of Stoic ethics as the
precursor to Nietzsche’s amor fati is thus
legitimate, notwithstanding its distance from the
popular conception of Stoicism as heroic endur-
ance. It is worth noting, however, that so far we
have encountered two distinct senses in which,
 deleuze’s stoicism
in a Deleuzian–Stoic ethic, an event may be
incorporated into oneself.
The first sense involves conceiving oneself no
longer as a static physical entity but rather as a
process or series of events. An individual
conceived as a process will be constituted by a
series of events, and each new event – no matter
what its content – will become a necessary part of
who one is. This is the lesson that Deleuze draws
from Bousquet. It also reflects Deleuze’s wider
commitment to a process ontology, for which he
draws upon Bergson, Whitehead, and others.
The second sense in which an event may be
incorporated into oneself involves dissolving the
boundary between oneself and the rest of Nature,
identifying one’s own will with the will of the
Cosmos, which is, in turn, identified with fate.
This is the project that we encountered in
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In this second
sense, the task at hand is to see oneself no longer
as an isolated individual but rather as but one
part of a unified Nature. This is a lesson that
Deleuze draws from Spinoza.
Indeed, these two senses are the two poles of
Stoic ethics proposed by Goldschmidt: the logical
pole and the physical pole.72 The logical pole,
exemplified by Bousquet, receives most of
Deleuze’s attention in his explicit discussion of
Stoic ethics in The Logic of Sense, but the
physical pole is also touched upon. In some brief
remarks that prefigure his later work with
Guattari, Deleuze considers what may be learned
from the experiences of the alcoholic or the
schizophrenic for whom the rigid boundaries of
the self have begun to crack. How might we,
Deleuze asks, replicate those experiences without
falling into the black holes of alcoholism or
madness? His provisional reply is to comment
‘‘How much we have yet to learn from Stoicism
. . .’’ (LS 184/158). Later, Deleuze and Guattari
will develop this thought into a project aimed at
dissolving the division between individual and
Nature, in a manner close to the physical pole of
Stoic ethics.73
For Deleuze, this project of affirming the event
also forms the basis for an ethics. As we have
seen, he writes ‘‘Either ethics makes no sense at
all, or this is what it means and has nothing else
to say: not to be unworthy of what happens to us’’
(LS 174/149). It is important to be clear here
about the way in which Deleuze understands the
word ‘‘ethics.’’74 Following Foucault, Deleuze
draws a distinction between ‘‘ethics’’ and ‘‘mor-
ality.’’75 By ‘‘morality,’’ they both understand a
series of restrictive rules and regulations that
judge a person’s actions with reference to some
transcendent or objective norm. By ‘‘ethics,’’ in
contrast, they understand a series of optional or
immanent modes of behaviour that form a mode
of existing or way of life.76 According to
Foucault, Greek and Graeco-Roman philosophy
were far more concerned with ethics than
morality, the notable exception being Plato,77
while Deleuze uses this distinction to analyse
Spinoza. Rejecting morality, for Deleuze the
ethical choice is one between different modes of
existence. There are a number of ways in which
alternative modes of existence may be assessed
and then selected. The important point is that
there is no transcendent set of values against
which they may be judged as either right or
wrong. Instead, they can only be assessed by
immanent criteria, such as their power of
creation,78 their cultivation of joy, or – to put it
in the language of ancient ethics – the extent to
which they embody eudaimonia (well-being).
Deleuze’s rejection of ressentiment and affirma-
tion of amor fati is on the basis of the mode of
existence that the former expresses: ‘‘there are
things one can only do or say through mean-
spiritedness, a life based on hatred, or bitterness
toward life’’ (P 138/100).79 Elsewhere, he writes:
we always have the beliefs, feelings and
thoughts that we deserve given our way of
being or our style of life. There are things that
can only be said, felt or conceived, values
which can only be adhered to, on condition of
‘‘base’’ evaluation, ‘‘base’’ living and thinking.
(NP 2/1–2)
Or, as Epictetus put it earlier, the punishment for
those who choose not to affirm the event is
simply ‘‘to be just as they are,’’ to continue to live
a life of bitterness and resentment.80 The ethical
choice, for Deleuze, is one between a life of
bitterness and a life of joy.
We can see, then, an affinity between Deleuze,
Nietzsche, and Cosmic Stoics such as Epictetus
166

and Marcus Aurelius on the question of affirming
fate. It is important, however, not to emphasize
this affinity to the extent that the remaining
differences are ignored. Although the Stoics do
hold a cosmological doctrine of cyclical recur-
rence, there is no connection between this and
their affirmation of fate in the way that there is
for Nietzsche, for instance.81 For the Stoics, it is
the providential ordering of Nature that under-
pins their affirmation of fate. It goes without
saying that neither Nietzsche nor Deleuze would
identify fate with providence in the way that the
Stoics do. For Deleuze, the affirmation of the
event is the affirmation of the aleatory event,
such as Bousquet’s wound. His ethic of the event
conceives the event as a dice throw rather than a
necessary component of a providentially ordered
system. Here, he is explicitly following Nietzsche,
for whom the dice throw signifies the affirmation
of chance.82 In order to play well, to affirm the
outcome of the dice throw, it is necessary to deny
the existence of any purpose or end in Nature.
This is a significant difference between Deleuze
and Nietzsche, on the one hand, and the Stoics,
on the other.
V affirmation versus steadfastness
Let us conclude by returning to our opening
quotation from Bernold. According to Bernold,
‘‘even though he [Deleuze] had explicated
Chrysippus, it is above all his steadfastness
(constance) that earned him the name of Stoic.’’
While agreeing with Bernold that Deleuze’s
Stoicism goes well beyond his brief explicit
comments on the Stoics, it should by now be
clear that it would be a mistake to characterize
Deleuze’s Stoic ethic as constance, which we
might translate as ‘‘steadfastness’’ or ‘‘con-
stancy.’’ This notion of constance is the direct
descendent of Lipsius’s constantia which, as we
have seen, is quite different from the ethic
proposed by Deleuze. Deleuze’s Stoicism is
neither the Stoicism of Lipsius nor that of
Hegel; it is rather a Nietzschean and
Bousquetian Stoicism.83 In this latter form of
Stoicism, the affirmation of a single event implies
the affirmation of all of existence. If, argues
Nietzsche, we can say yes to a single event, then
167
sellars
this implies the affirmation not only of our entire
life but also of the entire world, for every other
part of the cosmos and every
past event are implicated in
the coming to be of that single
event.84 This is not constantia;
it is amor fati.85
abbreviations to works
by deleuze
AO L’anti-Oedipe, with F. Guattari (Paris:
Minuit, 1972); Anti-Oedipus, trans.
R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane
(New York: Viking, 1977)
CC Critique et clinique (Paris: Minuit, 1993);
Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. D.W.
Smith and M.A. Greco (Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1997)
D Dialogues, with C. Parnet (Paris:
Flammarion, 1977); Dialogues, trans.
H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London:
Athlone, 1987)
DR Différence et répétition (Paris: PUF, 1968);
Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton
(London: Athlone, 1994)
LS Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit, 1969); The
Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester (New York:
Columbia UP, 1990)
MP Mille plateaux, with F. Guattari (Paris:
Minuit, 1980); A Thousand Plateaus,
trans. B. Massumi (London: Athlone, 1988)
NP Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: PUF,
1962); Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans.
H. Tomlinson (London: Athlone, 1983)
P Pourparlers, 1972–1990 (Paris: Minuit,
1990); Negotiations: 1972–1990, trans.
M. Joughin (New York: Columbia UP,
1995)
PLB Le pli, Leibniz et le baroque (Paris:
Minuit, 1988); The Fold: Leibniz and
the Baroque, trans. T. Conley (London:
Athlone, 1993)
SPE Spinoza et le problème de l’expression
(Paris: Minuit, 1968); Expressionism in
Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. M. Joughin
(New York: Zone, 1992)
 deleuze’s stoicism
SPP Spinoza, Philosophie pratique (Paris:
Minuit, 1981); Spinoza: Practical
Philosophy, trans. R. Hurley (San
Francisco: City Lights, 1988)
notes
1 Andre¤ Bernold, ‘‘Suidas,’’ Philosophie 47 (1995):
8 ^9, at 8 (trans. Timothy S. Murphy; see 5http://
www.webdeleuze.com4).
2 Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit,
1969); The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester
(New York: Columbia UP, 1990), abbreviated to
LS, followed by French and then English pagina-
tion. See the separate list of abbreviations for
works by Deleuze, used according to the same
convention. Note also that references to
Nietzsche are cross-referenced to KSA ¼
Sa«mtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, eds.
G. Colli and M. Montinari, 15 vols (Berlin: de
Gruyter,1980; 2nd edn 1988).
3 See LS 13^21/4 ^11. Here, Deleuze draws upon
E¤mile Bre¤hier’s La the¤orie des incorporels dans
l’ancien sto|« cisme (Paris: Vrin, 1928; 9th edn 1997).
For a brief overview of Stoic ontology, see John
Sellars, Stoicism (Chesham: Acumen, 2006) 81^ 86.
4 On this, see n. 35 below.
5 For Deleuze’s account of the Stoic ‘‘image of the
philosopher,’’ see LS152^58/127^33.
6 There are few references to the Stoics before
the 1968 ^1969 trilogy of LS, DR, and SPE. Passing
references appear in a number of later works,
including MP and PLB. The most sustained discus-
sion after LS is in D 77^ 81/62^ 66, although the
form of the work deliberately makes it unclear
whether this should be attributed to Deleuze or
to his collaborator, Claire Parnet.
7 See p. vii of the English edition of Dialogues;
for the French version of this Preface, see DRF
284 ^ 87.
8 See ibid. and note also P 199/145. Deleuze’s most
substantial comments on Whitehead can be found
in PLB, esp. 103^12/76 ^ 82, but note also DR 364/
284 ^ 85.
9 William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism
(London: Longmans, Green & Co.,1912) 41.
10 On this topic, Deleuze was influenced by the
work of his teacher Jean Wahl; see esp. Les
philosophies pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Ame¤rique
(Paris: Alcan, 1920) and Vers le concret, E¤tudes d’his-
toire de la philosophie contemporaine (Paris: Vrin,
1932).
11 See LS16/7 and DR 82/59.
12 See CC171/137.
13 See LS152^58/127^33.
14 See esp. SPP.
15 This piece was first published as ‘‘Les
intellectuels et le pouvoir,’’ L’Arc 49 (1972): 3^10.
It is reprinted in a variety of places, including ID
288 ^98/206 ^13. I shall supply page references to
ID, but I may quote from the translation in
Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961^1984, trans.
L. Hochroth and J. Johnston (New York:
Semiotext(e),1996).
16 ‘‘Les intellectuels et le pouvoir,’’ L’Arc 49 (1972):
3^10 (¼ ID 288/206).
17 Ibid. (ID 290/208).
18 On this theme in Stoicism, see John
Sellars, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature
and Function of Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003).
19 See MP185^204/149^ 66 with discussion in John
Sellars, ‘‘The Point of View of the Cosmos:
Deleuze, Romanticism, Stoicism,’’ Pli: The Warwick
Journal of Philosophy 8 (1999): 1^24.
20 Deleuze introduces the concept of a
distribution according to nomos in DR 53^54/36
and develops it into nomadology in MP 434 ^527/
351^ 423. For Zeno, see the essay in Plutarch’s
Moralia entitled On the Fortune or Virtue of
Alexander 329a ^ b.
21 See Victor Goldschmidt, Le syste'me sto|« cien et
l’ide¤e de temps (Paris: Vrin,1953; 4th edn 1979).
22 Goldschmidt 77^99.
23 On this, see Sellars,‘‘The Point of View of the
Cosmos’’ 12^22.
24 Goldschmidt 99^124.
25 Goldschmidt 99.
26 Epictetus, Discourses 2.10.5; cited in
Goldschmidt 90.
27 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.8; cited in
Goldschmidt 101.
168

28 This line is also quoted in D 80/65,Qu’est-ce que
la philosophie? (Paris: Minuit, 1991) 151, and
‘‘L’immanence: une vie . . .,’’ Philosophie 47 (1995):
3^7, at 7. In LS, the source of this quotation is not
stated, although in Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? it is
given as Bousquet’s Les Capitales (Paris: Le Cercle
du Livre, 1955) 103. I have not been able to find it
there or anywhere in Les Capitales; it can however
be found in Rene¤ Nelli, ‘‘Joe Bousquet et son
double,’’ Cahiers du Sud 303 (1950): 177^ 86, at 180,
which Deleuze cites in LS174/348. For a discussion
of Bousquet see Ferdinand Alquie¤,The Philosophy of
Surrealism, trans. Bernard Waldrop (Ann Arbor:
U of Michigan P,1965) esp.165^72. As Alquie¤ com-
ments, Bousquet affirmed the event of his wound
as the origin of his subsequent career as a writer. It
is worth noting that Alquie¤, one of Deleuze’s tea-
chers, also labelled Bousquet a Stoic (‘‘I do not call
him stoic, wanting what he is, but one, being what
he is’’; ibid.167). For a brief discussion of Bousquet
and Stoicism, see Nicole Bhattacharya, Joe«
Bousquet: Une expe¤rience spirituelle (Geneva: Droz,
1998) 452^55.
29 Alquie¤, The Philosophy of Surrealism 168.
30 Ibid. 169. This part of Alquie¤’s text reprints
his 1950 article on Bousquet, ‘‘Joe Bousquet et
la morale du langage,’’ Cahiers du Sud 303 (1950):
187^90, cited by Deleuze in LS174/348.
31 See LS175/149 and note also D 80/65. Nietzsche
first introduced the concept of amor fati inThe Gay
Science 276 (KSA 3,521) but perhaps its clearest
expression can be found in Ecce Homo ‘‘Why I Am
So Clever’’ 10 (KSA 6,297): ‘‘My formula for great-
ness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants
nothing to be other than it is, not in the future,
not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to
endure that which happens of Necessity, still less
to dissemble it ^ all idealism is untruthfulness in
the face of necessity ^ but to love it’’ (trans. in
Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large (eds.), The
Nietzsche Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 509).
Note also the Epilogue to Nietzsche contra Wagner
(KSA 6,436). Deleuze, of course, has much more
to say about Nietzschean affirmation in NP, esp.
201^17/175^ 89.
32 Joe« Bousquet, Traduit du silence (Paris:
Gallimard, 1941; 2nd edn 1967) 11; cited in Alquie¤,
The Philosophy of Surrealism 170.
33 See LS175/149.
34 See LS176/150.
169
sellars
35 It would require a separate paper to expli-
cate the supposedly Stoic concepts of aio“n and
chronos, but some preliminary remarks may be
made. The theory of time (chronos) attributed
to the Stoic Chrysippus in the ancient sources
does indeed suggest two notions of the present,
one with a certain extension, the other an
extensionless limit between past and future
(see, e.g., the texts by Stobaeus and Plutarch
translated in A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The
Hellenistic Philosophers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1987) 304 ^ 05). Most commentators have
either attempted to reconcile these or dis-
missed Chrysippus’s position as incoherent. It is
Goldschmidt who attributes a dual conception
of the present moment to Chrysippus. He then
proposes that one of these conceptions is
echoed by Marcus Aurelius, who uses the word
eternity (aio“n) a number of times. Deleuze’s
‘‘Stoic’’ theory of aio“n and chronos is thus the
product of Goldschmidt’s highly speculative and
synthetic reconstruction that draws upon frag-
mentary and inconclusive reports of Chrysippus
and the Meditations of Marcus. In neither
Chrysippus nor Marcus is aio“n used as a techni-
cal term to refer to a specific conception of
time. Goldschmidt’s reading of Marcus has been
criticized in Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael
Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998) 137.
36 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford:
Clarendon Press,1989) vol.16, 746.
37 Justus Lipsius, De Constantia Libri Duo, Qui allo-
quium praecipue continent in Publicis malis (Leiden:
Plantin, 1584); trans. John Stradling, in Justus
Lipsius, On Constancy, ed. J. Sellars (Exeter: Bristol
Phoenix Press, 2006).
38 For the publishing history, see A.M. Van De
Bilt, Lipsius’ De Constantia en Seneca (Nijmegen:
Dekker & Van De Vegt, 1946) 105^ 08, and the
comprehensive bibliography in F. Van Der
Haeghen, Bibliographie Lipsienne: Oeuvres de Juste
Lipse, 2 vols (Gand: Universite¤ de Gand, 1886)
vol.1, 71^177.
39 See Diderot’s entry on ‘‘Sto|« cisme’’ in the
Encyclope¤die, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne¤ des Sciences,
des Arts et des Me¤tiers (Neufchastel, 1751^ 65)
vol.15, 525^33, esp. 532^33.
40 Seneca, Letters 28.2; see also104.7.
41 Epictetus, Handbook 1.1^3.
 deleuze’s stoicism
42 Lipsius, De Constantia 1.4.
43 As we shall see later, there are also some
important differences between Lipsius and
Epictetus.
44 Lipsius, De Constantia 1.4.
45 The remainder of the dialogue offers four
arguments designed to aid the internal transfor-
mation necessary to overcome public evils. For
further discussion, see John Sellars, ‘‘Justus
Lipsius’s De Constantia, A Stoic Spiritual Exercise,’’
PoeticsToday (forthcoming).
46 Seneca, Letters 107.2.
47 Ibid.107.3.
48 Ibid.107.7.
49 Ibid.107.9.
50 Seneca,Consolation to Helvia his Mother 5.3.
51 Seneca, On Anger 3.25.3: Proprium est magnitudi-
nis uerae non sentire percussum.
52 Seneca, Letters 107.9.
53 Justus Lipsius, Senecae Opera (Antwerp:
Plantin-Moretus,1605) 631.
54 ‘‘Human Stoicism’’ is a shortening of
‘‘Human, all too Human, Stoicism’’ which (with
apologies to Nietzsche) captures the anthro-
pocentric character of this conception of
Stoicism.
55 See G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)
esp. 119^26. Note also his assessment in his
Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree
(London: George Bell, 1890) 329: ‘‘for the systems
of that time ^ Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
Scepticism ^ although within their common
sphere opposed to each other, had the same
general purport, viz., rendering the soul
absolutely indifferent to everything which the
real world had to offer.’’
56 On the Stoics and self-preservation, see
Sellars, Stoicism 107^ 09.
57 Cicero, On the Nature ofthe Gods 2.35.
58 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.14; note also
4.21, 6.24. For discussion, see Sellars, The Art of
Living 150 ^54.
59 Epictetus, Discourses 2.19.26.
60 For the Stoics, the will of God, identified with
fate, is simply the order of material causes in the
Cosmos. Thus, as Cicero comments in On
Divination 1.126, Stoic fate is not the fate of
superstition but rather the fate of physics.
61 Epictetus, Discourses 4.7.20. On this theme, see
Andre¤-JeanVoelke, L’ide¤e de volonte¤ dans le sto|« cisme
(Paris: PUF,1973) 96 ^105.
62 Epictetus, Handbook 8.
63 Epictetus, Discourses 1.12.9.
64 Ibid.1.12.15; see also1.12.17.
65 Ibid.1.12.20 ^23.
66 On these terms in Nietzsche, see Joan
Stambaugh, ‘‘Amor dei and Amor fati: Spinoza and
Nietzsche,’’ in J.C. O’Flaherty, T.F. Sellner and R.M.
Helm (eds.), Studies in Nietzsche and the Judaeo-
Christian Tradition (Chapel Hill: U of North
Carolina P,1985) 130 ^ 42, esp.133^34.
67 On Turkish fatalism (Tu«rkenfatalismus ^ trans-
lated as ‘‘Mohammedan fatalism’’ by Hollingdale),
see Human, All Too Human II: The Wanderer and his
Shadow 61 (KSA 2,580), translated in Human, All
Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP,1986) 325. Leibniz also commented
on Turkish fatalism (which he labeled Fatum
Mahometanum) in x 55 of the Theodicy, attributing
it to the effects of hashish. See G.W. Leibniz,
Theodicy, trans. E.M. Huggard (La Salle: Open
Court,1985) 153.
68 See Ecce Homo ‘‘Why I Am So Wise’’ 6 (KSA
6,272^73), translated in Basic Writings of Nietzsche,
trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern
Library, 1968) 685^ 87. Later in the same text, of
course, Nietzsche will return to the theme of
amor fati (at KSA 6,297), on which see n. 31 above.
69 For Deleuze’s Stoic-Zen analogy, see LS 18/8,
161^ 62/136^37,171^72/146.
70 On the topics of philosophical apprentices,
training, and digestion, see Sellars, The Art of
Living, passim.
71 So Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000) 1: ‘‘[Stoicism] is not
a matter of gritting your teeth. It is about seeing
things differently, so that you do not need to grit
your teeth.’’
72 See Goldschmidt, Le syste'me sto|« cien 79 and
LS 169/144. These two senses also echo Deleuze’s
170

distinction between subject-type individuation and
event-type individuation, on which see P156/115.
73 This project runs through both volumes of
Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It is announced in the
opening pages of AO, 7^ 8/1^2 and 10 ^11/4 ^5. It is
developed at greater length (and with an allusion
to Stoicism) in MP185^204/149^ 66.For a prelimin-
ary discussion, see Sellars, ‘‘The Point of View of
the Cosmos.’’
74 For a helpful account of Deleuze’s approach
to ethics, see Daniel W. Smith, ‘‘The Place of
Ethics in Deleuze’s Philosophy: Three Questions
of Immanence,’’ in Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon
Heller (eds.), Deleuze and Guattari (Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P,1998) 251^ 69.
75 See the interview between Deleuze and Didier
Eribon from 1986, reprinted in P 129^38/94 ^101,
esp.137^ 8/100, commenting on Foucault’s articula-
tion of this distinction inThe Use of Pleasure, trans.
Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992)
25^32. However, Deleuze had already made this
distinction in his 1970 book Spinoza (Paris: PUF,
1970) esp. 29: ‘‘Ethics, which is to say, a typology
of immanent modes of existence, replaces
Morality, which always refers existence to trans-
cendent values’’ (repr. in SPP 35/23).This was pub-
lished just one year after LS.
sellars
34: ‘‘Joy emerges as the sole motive for
philosophizing.’’
79 See also SPE 248/269: ‘‘there are things one
cannot do or even say, believe, feel, think, unless
one is weak, enslaved, impotent; and other things
one cannot do, feel, and so on, unless one is free
or strong.’’
80 See Epictetus, Discourses 1.12.20 ^23, quoted
above.
81 On this point, see Hadot, The Inner Citadel
144 ^ 45.
82 See NP 29^31/25^27.
83 I am not convinced by Alain Badiou’s claim that
Deleuze’s Stoicism (which he acknowledges as sig-
nificant) is ultimately a philosophy of death (see his
Deleuze (Paris: Hachette, 1997) 23^24). I suspect
that this reflects a conception of Stoicism that
relies upon Hegel’s presentation (see n. 55 above).
84 See Nietzsche’s notebooks, 7[38] 1886 ^ 87
(KSA 12,307^ 08), translated in Friedrich
Nietzsche,Writings from the Late Notebooks, trans.
Kate Sturge (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003)
135^36.
85 I would like to thank Dan Smith for reading an
earlier draft of this paper.

76 Thus, the distinction here is subtly different

from the distinction between ethics (Sittlichkeit)
and morality (Moralita«t) articulated by Hegel.
77 SeeThe Use of Pleasure 30. In the interview ‘‘On
the Genealogy of Ethics,’’ Foucault explicitly
relates this to Stoicism; seeThe Foucault Reader, ed.
Paul Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)
341.
78 If there is a summum bonum in Deleuze’s philo-
sophy, then it might be‘‘creativity’’ (or alternatively
‘‘life,’’ defined as a creative process); see, e.g., CC
168 ^ 69/134 ^35 and now P. Hallward, Out of this
World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation
(London: Verso, 2006). In his work on Spinoza,
Deleuze characterizes this as a power of acting,
which he associates with joyful passions.
See SPE 252/273^74. Note also that joy (chara) is
one of the Stoic ‘‘good passions’’ (eupatheiai), on John Sellars
which see Sellars, Stoicism 118 ^19. For Deleuze, Wolfson College
‘‘joy,’’ another potential candidate for his summum Oxford
bonum, is closely associated with one’s power OX2 6UD
of acting; see SPP 139/101; note also P 14/6 UK
and Deleuze, Nietzsche (Paris: PUF, 1965) E-mail: john.sellars@wolfson.ox.ac.uk