Getting excited about virtue: forty-four Stoic virtues to journal with

In September 2025, I strived to be virtuous in accordance with the principles of Stoicism. I journaled daily and, during an examination-of-conscience exercise, I went over my experience with a fine-tooth comb: one made out of forty-four virtues uncovered by stoicism scholarship. This exercise helped me become more courageous and this courage deepened my practice of Stoicism.

Illustration from Richard Deakin, Flora of the Colosseum of Rome, 

or, Illustrations and Descriptions of Four Hundred and Twenty Plants Growing Spontaneously upon the Ruins of the Colosseum of Rome (London: Groombridge, 1855)

Getting excited about virtue

My partner and I have gotten into the habit of talking about “getting excited about virtue”.

When we use this phrase, we are referring to our unabashed acknowledgement that we are trying to be morally good; which involves nerding out about the details of such an endeavour, and openly expressing how cool we find this to be. This is set against a contrasting background of unphilosophical cynicism: people who think that any talk of moral goodness indicates that you are either (or all at once) naive, pretentious, and/or boring. They think moral mediocrity, in language and in life, is a sign of savviness.

What’s more, when we use this phrase, it is often to talk about a pivotal period in our lives. By default, we used to be like these bad cynics, and we had no enthusiasm about virtue. If we did, it was too taboo to express it. But after feeling lost and unhappy for a while, we eventually found our way to the relevance of moral virtues, and to the people who are not ashamed to talk about them. Most of the transition was between seeing moral aspirations as something imposed on us, like tedious homework, and seeing them as something that comes from us and organically grows out of our own interests.

Getting excited about virtue is great, and cool, and fun, and we should all do it.

Walking the talk

That being said. You know how you can be a science fiction nerd and yet never have watched Star Trek? Well, that was a bit my situation before this month’s philosophical experiment. Yes I was “excited about virtue” but I had never really spent time trying to cultivate specific classic virtues such as moderation, courage, etc. Most of my spiritual practice is about cultivating the catch-all virtue of mindfulness, which falls on you like a big block of humbleness, open-mindedness, patience, etc… But I had spent very little time thinking about distinct & contextual virtues – as nouns like “temperance” – and then wondering how I can embody a particular virtue in a particular situation. So I am definitely a virtue nerd, yet my experience of virtue ethics mostly comes down to thinking it would be cool to finally get into virtue ethics someday...

I tried to remedy this situation a little bit. For this month’s experiment I decided to practice an examination of conscience exercise. This was an exercise that was practised in ancient times. The version I used this time was this: you try to journal every morning and evening; setting an intention in the morning & anticipating potential difficulties, and then reviewing how well you did in the evening. All of this planning and evaluating, I did it by using “virtues” as assessment tools. I constantly wondered what virtues meant for what goals I should set, for how I should try to achieve these goals, and for interpreting why things went well or not.

But what virtues are we talking about here? From what framework? Let me tell you, because I am very excited about that. I found the most wonderful thing. A very in depth and niche, yet accessible, article written by Matthew Sharpe, called: “Forty-Four Stoic Virtues: Pseudo-Andronicus’ On Passions, and Stoic Life”¹. This article lists and explains a lot of Stoic virtues. It allowed me to go from merely using the broad Stoic framework (“you focus on what you can control”) to branching out a little bit more and learning to cultivate particular virtues in service of that way of life. (That said, I appreciated the fact that stoicism believes in the unity of the virtues, and therefore I felt right at home when it felt like I was sometimes cultivating the all-encompassing mono-virtue of stoic discernment.)

The main four stoic virtues are wisdom, moderation, justice, and courage. The 40 or so virtues of that list fall into those four main categories. Most of this month, I was content with thinking about those four broad categories and checking specific virtues only to make sure that I was broadly on the right track. However, near the end, I started zooming in on specific virtues, and that’s when things got more interesting.

Courage!

It didn’t come as a surprise to me that I eventually came to yearn for a deeper understanding and more focused training of my courage specifically. I am not a very brave person. I was very aware that this was something that I would want to work on. Indeed, my lack of courage is exactly the type of thing that makes me excited about virtues, because I believe I could improve myself and become better at it. Moreover, I completely agree with Matthew Sharpe when he says “The forms of courage, I would contend, are in many ways the most interesting, and most distinctively Stoic.”² There is something uniquely exciting about the virtue of courage as understood by the Stoics.

The biggest takeaway for me is the idea that the virtue of courage truly completes the stoic system of wisdom. Think about it: how can it be consoling to “focus on what you can control and not care about what you can’t control” if you are constantly worrying if you have judged correctly back when you were assessing what is in your control vs. what is not. For this problem of ceaseless re-litigation, there is the brave virtue of “Karteria”, “the lasting knowledge of having judged correctly”. Similarly, what good is the dichotomy of control, if you are afraid that, yes, right now you may be a stoic but tomorrow you might fail to be a stoic? Again, for this problem, there are corresponding, future-oriented, virtues:

“Tharraleotês involves a courageous knowledge that we are prepared for whatever happens—a virtue which is difficult to conceive outside of a Stoic framework, for which things we can’t control are all considered to be “indifferent”.

Such a revaluation of all values means that a Stoic who has made progress will over time reasonably develop a sense of confidence that, whatever happens, “they’ve got this”.”

You can develop a healthy sense of self-confidence; even referred to as “invincibility”. Without it, your stoic practice remains shaky. This is the “skipping leg day” equivalent of the philosophical workout. You might become good at discernment but if you don’t develop a sense that you are indeed good at discernment, how can you truly be consoled? Often, tranquillity requires a sense that some matters are settled.

Conclusion – Put pen to paper, or find an accountability partner

I had a blast. My partner and I went on daily walks, talking about how we would implement the four main virtues throughout the day. This was one way we kept each other accountable.

Another way was to put pen to paper twice a day, and to stick to that schedule.

I settled on this experiment because I was so disappointed that I had failed to properly journal during one of my previous experiments. When you deal with resources that are made of Thoughts & Words, it is so very tempting to forget that there is a big difference between lightly consulting those Thoughts & Words in your head while you’re still “on the go” AND actually- literally-concretely taking the time to put pen to paper and go through those concepts and your experiences in an orderly manner. Having a pen in hand is a wonderful way to stay awake to that reality. Otherwise, you are day-dreaming. It is so easy to go back and forth between “I don’t need to journal, I know my thoughts” and “I can’t journal, I wouldn’t know where to start”, and this illusion shatters the moment that you actually take the time to do it rather than to think about doing it.

Here, we have a big list of virtues and they can serve as wonderful journaling prompts. But you have to do it, you can’t just think about it.

(PS: On this blog, we explore a new philosophical exercise every month. For example, one time, we tried the joyful practice of stoic death writing. Another time, we practiced Plutarch’s anti-curiosity exercises. Take a look around the blog for more exercises!

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(13/10/2025)

Pierrick Simon

my email: lemiroirtranquille@outlook.fr

(do not hesitate to reach out)

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NOTES:

1https://modernstoicism.com/forty-four-stoic-virtues-pseudo-andronicus-on-passions-and-stoic-life-by-matthew-sharpe/

2Idem, beginning of “Courage” section