About this episode

This episode explores the Stoic perspective on emotions, emphasizing their role as signals for self-understanding rather than obstacles to be suppressed.

What are your emotions really telling you? In this episode of the Via Stoica Podcast, we take a closer look at one of the most misunderstood aspects of Stoic philosophy: the real Stoic view on emotions and what they can teach you about yourself. Welcome to the Via Stoica Podcast, the podcast on Stoicism. This episode challenges the popular belief that Stoicism is about suppressing emotions and replaces it with something far more useful: understanding them as a source of information about your beliefs, your fears, and who you are becoming. The Stoics made a clear distinction between the involuntary first flash of feeling and the full emotional response that follows. That gap between the two is where your agency lives. By learning to pause and examine what judgment you have added to an event, you begin to see what your emotions are actually pointing at. Not an enemy to defeat or a wave to ride out, but a signal worth reading. This episode draws on the Stoic concepts of pathos, eupatheiai and propatheia to show how emotions rooted in false judgments take us away from reason, while emotions rooted in accurate ones can guide us toward virtue, better decisions, and more authentic…

People in this episode

Host: Benny Voncken

Topics covered

• Stoic philosophy
• emotions
• self-awareness
• decision making
• virtue
• personal growth

Keywords

• Stoicism
• emotions
• self-awareness
• pathos
• eupatheiai
• propatheia
• decision making
• virtue

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Badmic.com

Books & works: Via Stoica Podcast, Stoicism

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• Who Wrote Your Script? The Stoic Guide to Authentic Living · June 15, 2026 · 18 min

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