I applied and got accepted into The College of Stoic Philosophers. The first I heard about the College was from the Stoicism on Fire podcast and I remember I was immediately intrigued, but I didn’t apply right away.
How I became interested in Stoicism?
I started listening to Stoicism on Fire at the beginning of 2025. I just finished reading a great novel by Donna Tartt called The Secret History and I was hooked on the theme of Ancient Greece, its language, culture and philosophy. So as a next book I picked up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius due to my very vague association of this popular book to the ancient world. At the time I had no idea that Marcus Aurelius lived quite a bit later after the Classical and Hellenistic era. I only knew that he was a Roman emperor and philosopher influenced by Greek Stoics. Nevertheless the book changed the course of my life.
Now I feel that listening to Stoicism on Fire to accompany my reading of Meditations was an especially lucky choice. Without it I would certainly have misinterpreted and misunderstood a large portion of the book and probably abandoned my study of Stoic philosophy pretty quickly.
Chris Fisher, the host of Stoicism on Fire, starts his podcast in a rather intimidating way. The first few episodes are dedicated to discussing Stoic conception of God, Logos and Providence. For someone like me, who grew up in a predominantly atheistic country, this topic was a little difficult to digest initially, but to my surprise I didn’t feel any unpleasant resistance to the Stoic idea of God and their cosmology as a whole. In fact I was intrigued and wanted to know more. That was one of the reasons I decided to apply to the College because I knew that their courses teach a traditional Stoic philosophy including all three fields of study (topoi) – logic, physics and ethics.
What is The College of Stoic Philosophers?
The College of Stoic Philosophers is an online school of Stoic philosophy. What makes the College different from other modern resources on learning Stoicism is its focus on teaching the philosophy as a holistic system and a way of life. Don’t expect to learn “7 tips how Stoicism can help you to be better at business” kind of stuff here. Instead the College teaches all three Stoic pillars:
- Logic - how to think well
- Physics - how to understand the nature of reality
- Ethics - how to live and act well
In the College these three domains are treated as an integrated and coherent system aimed at transforming student’s lives. The learning material is based on original texts by ancient Stoics and contemporary books by reputable academics. For example in the SES (Stoic Essential Studies) course, we use the Stoicism book by John Sellars. The College adopts a mentor based model to teaching and all mentors are recruited from within. All mentors are also practicing Stoics as far as I know.
Like all members new to the College, I started by enrolling in the SES course which is an initial course that introduces the student to the basics of Stoic philosophy. The course is supposed to be finished in approximately 4 months, but I don’t think that there is any strict time limit and you can take your time as long as you do the work consistently. To get into the course, you need to fill in an application that must include a written essay of at least 1000 words. In the essay you write a little bit about yourself, your interest in Stoicism, your beliefs and motivations. If you get accepted, you will get an initial conference with a mentor assigned to you and you’re off to the races.
So far I’m in the beginning of the course and currently working on the Logic module. I’m enjoying myself quite a bit working on this course. The material is presented in a professional manner and using academic texts for studying only underlines the feeling that you are learning about a serious subject. For example, part of the Logic module is learning about the differences between Aristotle’s and Stoic logic, and composing your own syllogisms. I would never guess that learning about modus ponens and modus tollens would excite me so much 😀 It’s completely different from, say, listening to a Stoic podcast where two dudes are just exchanging opinions and badly quoting Marcus Aurelius.
In conclusion, the experience of joining and starting the College of Stoic Philosophers has been pretty awesome so far. If you are intrigued and considering joining, I would definitely recommend it even though I’m also just starting.